When Memory Dies: Tales of Tasimu, #2
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About this ebook
TASIMU is a youth learning of his spiritual gifts and his place in the world. When his people were forced by soldiers to leave their northern home, Tasimu and his family learned hardship as refugees. Now they are struggling in a dry southern land among unfamiliar cultures. Trying to be what his family needs, Tasimu works to connect with natural powers of the world.
When Memory Dies deals with issues of defining family roles and cultural disintegration as these tribal people are forced to become refugees, stolen away from their ancestral land. But it is also a story where love for one's family and people triumphs over a need for selfish desires and personal power. Kashallan Press is proud to release the second book in the Tales of Tasimu series by celebrated author Celu Amberstone. The first book in this series, Taste of Memory, was previously published in a shorter form by Kegedonce Press, with the title The Dreamer's Legacy.
Here's what award-winning authors had to say about the first book in the series Tales of Tasimu:
Truly an interesting book. It takes a familiar story of the colonization of Indigenous people, and gives it a new and exotic twist. Celu Amberstone has fashioned a truly original take on aboriginal storytelling - it teaches, entertains, and mystifies.
- Drew Hayden Taylor (author of The Night Wanderer: A Native Gothic Novel, Motorcycles and Sweetgrass)
This chronicle of an expulsion and forced migration of a peaceful nation by colonists, set in an alternate world. Narrated by a young boy of the tribe who discovers injustice, and his own filiation. A heartfelt story with a touch of spiritual. (Loosely inspired by the true history of the Cherokee nation, "legally" chased from their ancestral lands.)
Ecrit avant la publication de The Way of Thorn and Thunder de D H justice, me rappelle ce dernier livre pour l'inventivité et l'intrigue qui se déroule sur un monde secondaire. Les deux romans reprennent des thèmes autochtones en fantasy, puisque une première nation locale est chassée de son territoire et un adolescent révolté découvre sa filiation spirituelle.
-Michèle Laframboise (author of Mistress of the Winds)
An original and gripping story. Amberstone transports us to a sad, wild land that is not of our world to tell a heart-warming story from another culture and another time.
- Dave Duncan (author of The Seventh Sword, A Man of His Word, A Handful of Men)
Merges the mythic aboriginal world with the grim realities of cultural disintegration. The Dreamer's Legacy is a compelling read.
- Eileen Kernaghan (author of Wild Talent: a Novel of the Supernatural)
Celu Amberstone
Celu is of mixed Cherokee and Scots-Irish ancestry. Celu Amberstone was one of the few young people in her family to take an interest in learning Traditional Native crafts and medicine ways. This interest made several of the older members of her family very happy while annoying others. Legally blind since birth, she has defied her limitations and spent much of her life avoiding cities. Moving to Canada after falling in love with a Métis-Cree man from Manitoba, she has lived in the rain forests of the west coast, a tepee in the desert and a small village in Canada's arctic. Along the way she also managed to acquire a BA in cultural anthropology and an MA in health education. Celu loves telling stories and reading. She lives in Victoria British Columbia near her grown children and grandchildren.
Other titles in When Memory Dies Series (6)
Taste of Memory: Tales of Tasimu, #1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWhen Memory Dies: Tales of Tasimu, #2 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAbandoning Memory: Tales of Tasimu, #3 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBitter Echo of Memory: Tales of Tasimu, #4 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsReawakening Memory: Tales of Tasimu, #5 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMemory Reclaimed: Tales of Tasimu, #6 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Read more from Celu Amberstone
Refugees and Other Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to When Memory Dies
Titles in the series (6)
Taste of Memory: Tales of Tasimu, #1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWhen Memory Dies: Tales of Tasimu, #2 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAbandoning Memory: Tales of Tasimu, #3 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBitter Echo of Memory: Tales of Tasimu, #4 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsReawakening Memory: Tales of Tasimu, #5 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMemory Reclaimed: Tales of Tasimu, #6 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
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When Memory Dies - Celu Amberstone
Note to the Reader:
When Memory Dies is a work of fiction and I hope you’ll read and enjoy it as such. Though I’ve drawn material in the abstract from places I’ve lived and from my own mixed-race background, any resemblance to people, places, languages and cultures, Indigenous or otherwise existing in our world is purely coincidental.
A Short Summary of Book One: Taste of Memory
Tasimu is a boy with inherited magical gifts, but he is also troubled by the mystery surrounding his parentage. Some of his friends taunt him, claiming that he isn’t truly human. Before he can discover the truth, soldiers from the Empire come north with orders to remove his people from their arctic home, when gold is discovered on their land.
Along their journey out of the northern mountains, his people face hunger and many hardships. But Tasimu meets another man of power who knows of his heritage and can teach him, if Tasimu will agree to pay his price.
He agrees and learns how to see events from afar by weaving magical patterns with a child’s toy, a loop of string, and to call upon spirits to save his family lost in a storm.
But he is also an unwitting agent for a sickness brought into the refugee camps by his mentor who seeks vengeance against the converts to the Empire’s new religion, for they are the ones who signed away the tribe’s land.
Fearing that he might unwittingly be the cause of his baby cousin’s sickness and death, Tasimu chooses to give up his lessons with the man his grandfather claims is an unsuitable teacher. But by choosing family over magic Tasimu also fears he has lost any chance of continuing his studies and contacting the enigmatic Seal man that is his father.
Book one ends with the death of Tasimu’s young cousin and his people nearing the end of their terrible journey to the Empire’s Tribal Preserve.
Rushton Archives: pg. 346, Second Interview with subject 297
To the Empire and her great lords all Indigenous peoples they found when they took our lands were alike, no matter where we lived and the different languages we spoke. We were just savages and dirty zaunks. It only made sense to them to put us all together on the Tribal Preserve. It was more cost-effective and easier to administrate, they argued.
The Preserve, I discovered by listening to my relatives’ ration day gossip, was a large arid basin hollowed out between a western and eastern mountain range. At its southern tip a briny, undrinkable lake created a bleached desert of salt and other minerals. Most of the Kukiya, the tribal peoples who were native to the desert region, and therefore some of the first to be relocated, had been settled in that hot southern land.
Further to the north-east where our agency was located, the land was harsh and water starved—by our standards—but not as unkind as by the salt lake. But the dry desert land to which they brought us was also land their own people didn’t want, and so alien to our northern home. It is no wonder we didn’t thrive there.
Part One
Chapter One
The smothering cloud billowed about the column of soldiers, wagons and my weary relatives trudging among them. Dust. It stung my eyes and sucked the last drops of moisture from my lips and tongue. There was no escape from the torment. It was everywhere, pale as the bones of the dead we’d left beside the trail, and just as dry.
So, this is the glorious new land the traitors, May the Unseen Ones curse them, sold our ancestral home for?
Uncle Tli ended his words with a bitter laugh that soon changed into a fit of coughing.
Plodding along behind my mother, I glanced over at the skeletally-thin man doubled over, the dry hacking sound making my own throat hurt. Who was he talking to? Why had he bothered to speak at all? I felt dizzy, my head pounding; the sun’s glare in this barren land nearly blinding.
I glanced up and saw Grandmother and Tli’s wife Shilshigua watching him anxiously from their place in the jostling wagon. There is room in the wagon for you, Son,
Grandmother called. Come sit beside us and rest.
Mother stopped and offered her brother her hand. Still coughing, he waved her away. With a grimace of pain he spat out a dark gob of phlegm and blood. Ignoring his wife and mother’s further coaxing, he straightened himself and kept walking.
You should listen to the women and ride for a time in the wagon, my son,
Grandfather coaxed putting a hand on Tli’s shoulder.
With an angry gesture Tli brushed his hand away. I’m fine. Leave me be. I don’t need to ride like an invalid with the women and old people.
Grandfather sighed and stepped away. The women and Grandfather exchanged troubled glances.
Stubborn Man,
Mother walking beside me muttered under her breath.
Tli wasn’t fine; he knew it and so did everyone else, but there was no point in arguing with him. The farther we traveled from our northern home by Big Ice Lake, the more withdrawn and angry my Uncle had become. His young wife, Grandfather and all my female relatives were worried about him.
I suppose in part I shared their concern, but I also understood his resentment. Finding the yellow rocks they valued so highly by the shores of our lake, the Chamuqwani’s emperor sent his soldiers to force us from our homes. We had no choice but to go with them—or die.
And the harshest dregs of this bitter draft to swallow, was knowing that some of our own Qwani’Ya people, those blundering fools who had converted to the newcomers’ religion, signed the emperor’s treaty. And this treaty bound all Qwani’Ya People. They had given away, not only their own, but all our homelands, lands belonging to Convert and Traditional alike—forever.
Uncle Tli is right to curse them,
I said to my cousin Samiqwas. "The Tribal Preserve the Chamuqwani promised us seems to be nothing more than waterless brown hills of sage, rabbit brush and cactus. When I turned my head I could see the violet snow-capped peaks of the mountains we’d descended to come here, looking cool and inviting on the eastern horizon.
And I’m baking in this heat,
I grumped, wiping dust and sweat off my face with the cloth covering my nose and mouth.
Samiqwas snorted. It’s still winter, yet it’s already hot and no snow. We’re going to fry like bannock on a hot stone come summer,
he complained.
I had no extra breath or the energy to lower the cloth I’d replaced over my nose and mouth and answer him, so I just shook my head and kept moving.
My people’s Qwakaiva, our spiritual power, had always been immersed in the essence of water.
Perhaps the ones who came for us didn’t know how leaving our land would torment and shrivel our souls, maybe even the old drunkard of a priest in our community didn’t understand,
Grandfather said, as if thinking out loud.
But the Chamuqwani god and his black sorcerers knew,
I growled, glaring at him.
Like my former mentor Chumco, I believed with all my heart that the empire wished us dead, so that no power would be left to challenge their dominion over the land. And also I now knew to my own bitter regret that Chumco was right about other things...
We were at war with these strangers. And like a mewling pup whining after its mama’s tit, I had heeded Grandfather’s entreaties, abandoned my studies with Chumco and most likely forfeited my chance to help my people survive.
Allowing my unwary tongue to voice some of my thoughts, I heard myself say, I wonder if they knew how much sending us to a desert land would break our spirits? Did their priests and rich lords plan so cunningly the torture above all others that would shatter our souls?
Wherever there is life there must be water, Grandson. And water is everywhere there is life. Lake, river or desert seep, we can drink from its Qwakaiva and grow strong,
Grandfather said in a tired voice. He waved a hand vaguely in the direction of the gray and brown bushes through which the wagons were rolling. These plants are dormant now but rain must give them life at times. We, too, will survive—even here.
Tli snorted with disgust. Yes, look at those plants; most of them covered with thorns. Even they don’t want us here.
For just a moment I saw the hurt in Grandfather’s eyes, then he forced out a laugh. I know that isn’t much of a comfort, my children. My soul too feels as if it will shrivel up and blow away in this heat. But the water’s Qwakaiva is here. I feel it flowing deep within the rock. With a little coaxing, it will come to us.
And will Qwa’osi the Otter swim that dangerous underground water to come and lend you his Qwakaiva?
I couldn’t resist taunting him.
Water underground,
Grandmother scoffed, black water belonging to Kunai and his Aseutl relatives. Since when do you put your trust in those unpredictable creatures?
Grandfather opened his mouth as if to argue, but dust swirled around his face and he coughed instead. Grandmother knew little of the ways of power, but there was some truth in her words. Most of our northern Qwakaiva was lost to us when we left the well-spring of our power by Big Ice Lake.
I stared at him incredulous. Did he actually believe he could call upon his soulmate Qwa’osi and draw The Otter’s power from these deep pools under the earth? His eyes met mine for a moment then he looked away. Perhaps not. Perhaps the old man was only trying to cheer us, because he made no further comment on the subject. A hunter and fisherman born, that hot dry land must have challenged even his Qwakaihi’s great power.
Examining him more closely for the first time in a long while, I saw how this terrible journey southward out of the mountains had aged his strong work-hardened body. A shiver of fear sliding down my backbone, I suddenly realized that my beloved grandfather had aged without my paying attention. He had transformed into a shrunken old man.
An old man who one day soon would die...
OUR USUAL ROUTINE ALONG the march was to stop in late afternoon. A cai herd beast would be slaughtered and rations handed out. This allowed the stragglers a chance to catch up before dark. But there were no more herd beasts to slaughter, hadn’t been for several days, and that day we continued on long past our usual time for camping without the soldiers offering an explanation.
The sun was just sinking behind the purple mountains to the west, when we climbed a brushy slope and looked down at a muddy ribbon of water winding through a dusty valley. When asked, the soldiers told us this place was our final destination.
At the end of the trail we were following, was a Chamuqwani settlement and some fenced enclosures for their herd beasts. Maybe a half day’s walk further down the creek, sprawled other encampments of tents and brush shelters. Like other encampments we’d seen on our way here, I was certain this one would be filled with ragged and hungry strangers. People from other tribes, speaking unknown languages, but like us, condemned to exile in this terrible place.
Like the settlements we’d passed before, the Willow Creek Agency proved to be nothing more than a cluster of log buildings set in the bend of a nearly dry streambed. I recognized among them a soldiers’ barracks, a long building with a roofed porch, and some smaller structures which I later learned were the homes of the agency people.
Off to one side, the foundations of what looked to be the half-finished temple dedicated to Mighty Djoven the Thunderer squatted ominously in the shade of a few drooping trees. I shuddered and felt a knot of fear tighten in my gut. The lightning bolt emblem over the doorway, the symbol of the temple’s power, had drawn my eyes like an evil charm.
Had the vision granted to Chumco by the Great Aseutl been true? In the back of my mind Chumco’s departing laughter echoed, twisting the knot in my gut even tighter. I had been warned, but I had chosen and now was abandoned to face the enemy alone.
Swaying on my feet with thirst and exhaustion, I was too tired to worry about what retribution might befall me if the evils lurking within its walls discovered my presence. Only the need for water, food and sleep could hold my interest. None of which would soon be offered us, I discovered as our weary band arrived.
When we finally halted at the agency, a short Chamuqwani man with a large belly and a red face came hurrying from the long building that held the crown and crossed long knives of the Emperor’s crest above the doorway. He took a long look at the convoy of wagons and ragged people stumbling along beside them and his face became even redder.
Shouting for the column to halt, Captain Mu’Dar, the commander of the soldiers who had guarded us on our journey, rode past us with some of his officers. The soldiers dismounted in front of the squat official and put fists to chest in a thumping salute.
Content to close my eyes and lean against the wagon nearest me, I would have probably fallen asleep where I stood, but a sharp jab in the ribs jolted me upright, my eyes flying open.
Samiqwas grinned and made a motion towards the head of the column. Grandfather and our headman Tsanqwati were pushing through the crowd with the rest of the Elders to hear what the soldiers and the agency officials were saying.
Hurry up before Grandmother notices we are following,
Samiqwas whispered.
Tired as I was, I reasoned that I was nearly a man-grown, so, I figured I had a right to be apart of such things. I was also just plain curious and didn’t want to be left out.
As we huddled small behind the Elders, hoping not to be noticed and sent back to our female relatives, I peered from Grandfather’s side and saw Captain Mu’Dar speaking to the fat little man. Tall and dark-skinned, Mu’Dar managed to look proud and commanding in spite of the dust of travel that coated his gray uniform. I knew him to be hard and ruthless when his rules were defied, but he was also an honorable and just man in his way.
He had followed his emperor’s orders and forced us to leave the north, but he was also not a cruel man. Watching the red-faced official dressed in brown that was now yelling so disrespectfully, I wondered if we would fare better or worse if left here under his rule.
By this time other inhabitants of the agency were coming out of the buildings to gawk at us and listen to the shouting going on between the two men. A blue-robed priest and another high-ranking soldier dressed in brown joined the men’s conversation.
The new soldiers at the agency wore brown uniforms with a blue lightning bolt on the right shoulder. These men had the blond hair and ruddy skin the paler Chamuqwani often get when exposed to hot sun for long periods of time. Lord Hiram’s soldiers, who had brought us from the north, through the mountains and rolling farmlands to this place, wore gray uniforms. They had shared our hardships in some ways and knew our suffering. Even the most hardened among them I believe came to pity us before the journey ended.
I saw no compassion or understanding in these hard-faced men’s eyes. To them we were no more than filthy zaunks,
ignorant, lazy, and bound to give them trouble if they showed us any kindness. Already we had come up against this attitude on our journey in the settled Chamuqwani country through which we had traveled.
Zaunk, I had no idea what this foreign word meant to them but they spoke it with contempt. It was an ugly word, and I hated the sound of it. When they flung it with all the power of a curse, I felt small and ashamed. The epithet stuck to my spirit like a leech on a white fish, sucking away my strength.
Samiqwas risked being noticed and gave me a lopsided grin. That fat man doesn’t look happy to see us.
I’m not happy to see him either.
I glanced around the dusty square; my throat was so dry that even the muddy water in that creek looked good
Maybe he will make the captain send us home.
There was a wistful note to Samiqwas’s words as he said them, though I’m sure he knew that wasn’t going to happen. I would walk on bloody stumps if they would let us go back.
We will go back one day, I silently promised him.
Samiqwas looked at me strangely, as if he had heard my unspoken thought. He opened his mouth to say something more but never got the chance, because just then the argument was concluded, and then the soldiers drove us into some large corrals that not long before must have held herd beasts of some kind, the sand still littered with their dung.
As she stepped from the wagon my grandmother grabbed one of the soldiers’ interpreters by his coat sleeve and demanded to know what the captain and the fat man were saying about us.
That man is the youngest son of Lord Joper,
the interpreter said to my grandmother and the crowd gathering around them to listen. The Emperor, may he live long, has appointed him the new agent for this portion of the Tribal Preserve. He is angry because there are too many people here already and he doesn’t have enough supplies and cai beasts for you here. He wants to send you further west, but Captain Mu’Dar says his orders were to bring you here so this is where he has brought you.
What will they do now?
Someone asked.
The interpreter shrugged. We will have to wait and see. Messages will be sent to the proper officials. They will speak to other officials and then other officials. Someone will decide and send word back here to tell the lord’s son and the soldiers what to do.
How long will that take,
Grandmother demanded.
He shrugged and pulled out of her grasp, stepped out of the enclosure and slammed the gate closed. Who can say? You must wait and see.
When settled in our pens for the night, we were given buckets of muddy water and hard-cake by the brown-clad soldiers. Now the sun had set and the chill of its absence enfolded the land. Tired people wrapped in their blankets lay beside smoky fires of animal dung, but the flames gave little protection from the chill. Wrapped in my dirty blanket I leaned against a fence post and opened my senses to the night around me and tried to rest.
Chapter Two
With the sun next morning came a delegation of brown-skinned people dressed in dust-coated Chamuqwani clothing from one of the settlements up the creek. With the other Elders Grandfather left our smoldering cook fire to join Headman Tsanqwati in greeting these newcomers, hoping to learn what they could about the new land and the Chamuqwani stationed here.
More interested in the oat-mush starting to thicken in the tin pot resting on stones atop the hot coals, I ignored Samiqwas’ suggestion to go exploring when he wandered over to our fire. Instead I settled myself near my mother and Grandmother, shaking my head. Samiqwas too glanced to the cook pot. He might have waited for me, sharing our meal, but a call from Matoqwa made him wave a farewell and move in that direction.
Samiqwas was my cousin and best friend. Until his mother, my aunt Tuulah, ran away with one of the Chamuqwani soldiers, he had lived in Grandmother’s household like the rest of the family. Now that Tuulah was gone Samiqwas was spending more and more of his time with his father Ko and his paternal relatives. I missed him, but I saw the logic in his defection. Ko’s widowed mother’s health was failing. She had no daughters to care for her and a young strong boy would be a great help to those people.
Not long after he left, we were joined by Uncle Tli, his wife Shilshigua and their baby daughter. When the mush was done, my mother lifted the big tin can off the fire. Grandmother left a portion in the pot for my absent grandfather, then poured the rest of the can’s contents into a wide shallow birch bark bowl to cool and sat it down between us.
Intent on quelling the ache in my belly with the tasteless steaming gray mass in Grandmother’s bowl, I was only vaguely aware of either the excited cries of reunited family members or the ominous angry mutters, going on around me. Instead I focused on scooping the sticky mass of oat-mush onto my fingers and cramming it into my mouth, until Grandmother’s soft words halted my gluttony.
You must eat, my son.
Startled, I glanced at Uncle Tli squatting with his hands still resting upon his knees. Tli by nature was a tall lean man with piercing eyes and a sharp wit and tongue to match. But over the moons of our journey his naturally lean frame had become cadaverous in its thinness. I’d heard the women talking; they feared for his health if he didn’t put on more weight soon.
Tli glanced around the fire and saw everyone looking at him. Reminded once again of their concern, he grimaced and muttered, I will eat when it is time.
I glanced longingly at the depleted mound of mush, then at my uncle. Plastering what I hoped was a cheerful smile on my face. I licked my fingers clean and made sounds of enjoyment. Mm, Grandmother, that was so good, but I am so full I cannot eat another mouthful. Thank you very much for the good meal.
Murmurs of agreement came from mother and Shilshigua following my lead.
Tli gave me a sour scowl. He knew we were lying. But before he could voice a further protest, Shilshigua murmured in a soft, yet firm voice, Please eat, my dear one.
Tli grimaced as if the thought of food pained him, but under both his wife and mother’s stern glares he reluctantly began to eat.
I was about to wander off to find Samiqwas and the rest of my friends when I caught sight of Grandfather returning to our fire with a stranger in tow. The man was short and thick-bodied like many Qwani’Ya people. He wore his black hair close-cropped in the Chamuqwani fashion. His patched and dusty woolen trews and jacket were also Chamuqwani. I could see little under his broad-brimmed hat, but there was something about his features that looked vaguely familiar.
Stopping beside Grandfather, he studied each of us for a moment, then took off his hat and smiled. Hello, Amima.
He nodded to his sister and brother, then his glance lingered for a moment on my face and his brown eyes widened. And is that little Tas? My how you’ve grown. May the Thunderer be praised you made it here safely.
Grandmother stared in stunned silence with her mouth open for a long moment, hesitant and confused, then she rose silently to her feet. Letting out a strangled sob she held out her hands to him. Stepping to meet her he folded her trembling body into his arms.
On our way through the dry basin of this new Tribal Homeland we had come across other encampments of refugees and their soldier guards and imperial agents. It had never occurred to me before that moment that the camp we’d seen from the rise yesterday could be composed of northerners like ourselves. I should have guessed, and yet the knowledge came as an unwanted shock.
Then, without warning, I felt my temper ignite. Damn the converts and all the Emperor’s men! If this barren rock valley had to be my home, I didn’t want to share it with traitors. My own emotions in turmoil, I turned away from the family reunion and happened to catch a glimpse of Uncle Tli’s scowling face.
He hadn’t joined the others. But remained standing beside a worried Shilshigua, who held tight to their sickly daughter. The food we had coaxed him to eat a short time before seemed to have soured his digestion to judge from how he held a hand to his stomach. Our eyes met, and then the sending took me like a punch in the gut.
I staggered at its force, a pounding like horses’ hooves thundering inside my skull. I heard war cries and somewhere the sound of women screaming. Then a fountain of red exploded across Tli’s chest. Trembling I closed my eyes trying to blot out the vision, drive away the fear.
<
Gasping for breath, I willed the vision to fade, and as it did, the ache in my head eased. I followed Tli’s gaze back to the newcomer’s face. So this man was my grandparents’ eldest son, Uncle Da’wabin. While the women exchanged their greetings with the newcomer, I studied my Grandfather. Had he sensed the surge of Qwakaiva that had caused my Spirit Sending?
No, perhaps not. He seemed too intent on Tli’s radiating hostility that Da’wabin, too, was slowly becoming aware of.
Like me and many others in the encampment Grandfather had heard the angry mutterings of those who planned vengeance against the headmen who signed the treaty, giving away our land.
In the stillness that settled like a heavy blanket of dread over our little group, I saw Shilshigua take her husband’s arm, urging him to come away with her. Tli shrugged off her touch, and hissed something that caused her eyes to fill with unshed tears.
Disengaging himself from the women, Da’wabin’s round face sobered as he slowly came around the fire to stand in front of his younger brother. Though younger in age Tli was the taller of the two, Da’wabin favoring the shorter, rounder proportions of Grandmother’s lineage while Tli and Amima favored Grandfather’s family.
Well, little brother, have you no words of greeting for me?
Tli folded his arms across his chest and glared down at his brother, red spears of rage shooting from his Spirit Fire. Grandfather must have been viewing Tli with his spirit sight, too. His own aura radiating concern, he took a cautious step in their direction.
Tli’s smile was as cold as a blade made of glacier ice. A greeting is it you want from me? I have no greeting to offer a traitor—save for that of a war spear in the gut.
Da’wabin stepped back surprised by the intensity of his brother’s