“I think we should discuss this inside,” you say.
I glance around. People stand in the gathering place—members of your clan and mine—listening intently to the developing tale.
“Yes,” Shava says. “Thank you. I think I really would prefer to sit down.”
My father leads us into the now-empty kitchen. Shava is offered a place to sit along the wall, and she drops down beside a pile of discarded eggshells. The room is warm. Beads of sweat form on Shava’s forehead and temples, creating a frame of moisture around her eyes.
Shava’s mother sits beside her, but Chev does not hang back. He enters the room with purpose, followed closely by you. Without hesitation, Chev takes a seat directly in front of Shava. Kesh is last to enter the shade of the room. A patch of sunlight that clings to the top of his head reluctantly falls away as the door drapes shut. Even through the purple shadows of this darkened space, I see the tight pinch of fear across his brow.
Clearly, he knows no more of what Shava is about to say than Chev does.
“Go ahead,” Shava’s mother prompts. “You no longer need to fear. Your loyalties are with your betrothed’s clan now, and Chev is a friend of this clan. He is also the rightful High Elder of the Bosha clan, as your grandmother has told you many times. Tell him what you know.”
“I know,” Shava starts, but her voice breaks on her words. My mother comes up quietly and hands her a waterskin to drink from.
Shava takes a long, shaky drink with unsteady hands. “I know,” she continues, her voice strong and clear this time, “that someone is plotting your murder.”
TWENTY-TWO
The room itself seems to suck in a breath.
“And who is plotting to murder me?” Chev rocks forward, moving so close to Shava that only a small sliver of light separates the silhouettes of their shadowed faces.
“Lo—the High Elder of the Bosha clan.”
You are the first to react. “Lo?” you ask. “How could it be Lo? Her father is High Elder—”
“Lo’s father is dead.”
A note fills the air, a chorus of gasps.
“That’s not possible,” I say. “Just yesterday, she was on her way to see her father. She said she had to help him—”
“Lies,” Shava whispers, as if Lo might somehow hear her, or have spies listening in.
Spies . . .
“But why? Why pretend her father is alive if he’s dead? What does any of this have to do with murder?” My tone is beyond skeptical—it’s accusatory. I lean over the spot where Shava sits. Am I hoping to intimidate her? Behind me, my mother opens a vent in the roof, letting in a shaft of light, but my shadow paints the floor like a stripe of night, keeping Shava cloaked in violet darkness.
“Everything is by design,” she answers. “We didn’t land on your shore and then discover Chev here. We knew Chev was here, so we came to your shore. Lo wants to manipulate perceptions. She creates elaborate secrets—secrets she claims are to protect the clan. It’s a clan secret that her father has died—that anyone has died. The truth, she says, would expose our weaknesses.”
Shava looks up at Kesh and he smiles and nods. Her eyes move to mine and then quickly dart away. I can feel the suspicion fixed on my face. I do not believe her, and I’m certain it shows.
She looks down and curls inward, but her mother takes her hand.
Clearing her throat, Shava’s mother glances from face to face with a sharp light in her eye. When it sweeps over me, from my furrowed brow to my tightly drawn lips, I feel indicted by that light. “My daughter’s story is true,” she says. “Lo wants to give the impression that those who remained have thrived since Chev left, but that’s a lie. They have struggled. Lo blames Chev for taking the best hunters, for taking the Spirits of the game when he left. My family—my grandmother, my mother, me and my daughter—we are all storytellers. We keep the stories of the clan. When we first returned, my mother taught Shava and me all the old stories—stories of abandonment by Chev and his family, about the Spirits following Chev south, Spirits of the herd animals—mammoth and bison. We learned all the stories of struggle, suffering, and death—”
“Lo shares the old stories whenever she can,” Shava interrupts. “But her plans for the future . . . Lo won’t share those with the elders. Instead, she plots in secret. She quietly converts her followers—her believers—many of whom were so young when Chev left, they hardly remember him. Lo’s lies have become their truth. Those who listen to her have been suffering a long time, and hunger has made them vulnerable.
“She works with Orn, who is full of cunning and charisma. He is training to become a healer, and he reads signs from the Divine that support what Lo says. Those who are desperate for something to believe in have put their faith in them.
“She intends to take back the bounty of the clan. She is making a plan to repay death with death.”