The Shadows of God - J. Gregory Keyes [134]
“I think you already do. Your own sacrifices prove that.”
Adrienne looked up in surprise. “My sacrifices? What were they? I didn't make sacrifices but choices. Others paid for those choices.”
“You aren't going to start whining again?”
Adrienne shook her head. “No. You're right. My son died for something. Hercule died for something—a better world. By God, I will do what I can to see that they get it. That's why I wanted to come out here—to remind myself.”
“Then you didn't need me to answer your question.”
“I will always need you, Veronique. In this or any other universe.”
The redhead looked away—blushing?
“Do you suppose men are any different now that you have retuned the world?” Crecy wondered, after a second.
“I doubt it. It would take more than a subtle change in the harmony of the spheres to affect the hearts and minds of—”
“No, you misunderstand. I meant men. In bed. Has this transmogrification of things made some substances, for instance, more hard, more enduring? Will the pleasure be greater or less?”
Adrienne laughed softly. “It's been three days. I find it difficult to believe that you haven't experimented in that field yet.”
“Well—I've been wondering. With the world remade, suppose—” She frowned. “Suppose I am virgin again?”
Adrienne laughed softly and took her friend's hand. “We are all of us virgin again, Veronique.”
“Damn.”
Red Shoes gazed down at Tug's unmoving form and felt his throat close up.
“I want him buried like a Choctaw,” he told Minko Chito. “Like a warrior.”
“If you will sponsor it, it will be done,” the chief replied.
“I will sponsor it.”
“He must have been a good friend, this Na Hollo.”
Red Shoes nodded brusquely, looking at Tug's possessions where they were laid out. A cutlass, a knife, the charm Red Shoes had made him once.
When Minko Chito was gone, he spoke softly to the corpse. It was raised a few feet above the ground on a bed of wood.
“Here are your things,” he whispered. “You may need them on your journey, so I leave them out for you. When the flesh of your body has rotted away, I shall hire a bone picker to clean your skeleton, and we shall bundle your bones in the House of Warriors. Then you will be free, and you may roam whatever seas you wish.” He paused. “I am sorry, my friend, that I can never say your name again. It was an odd name, but I liked to say it.”
Then he went back to his own fire, where Grief was waiting. He stared at the flames, waving away a bowl of food when she approached with it.
“Speak to me,” she said. “You haven't spoken to me in three days.”
“I will take you home, if that is what you want,” he said.
“I am home. I am with you.”
“You don't know me. You only know what I was, and I am not that anymore. I am not the great serpent, or even Red Shoes of the Choctaw. I am accursed.”
“You are a man,” she said. “A good man. Even filled up with evil, you were a good man.”
“I do not know what I am. I only know that I have nothing to offer you. All my life I have been a hopaye. I never learned to be a good hunter—there was no need. I have no house, no possessions, nothing.”
“Ah. So you want a Choctaw wife, that you may have those things? I understand. I have no property, so you want to be rid of me.”
“No. You don't understand.”
“Make me understand.”
“I can no longer feel my shadow. It is hidden from me. And I have been a terrible thing, done terrible things. I cannot go on as before—I cannot see a new path.”
“I don't pretend to understand what has happened to the shadow world—but the earth and sky seem the same to me. Water tastes the same. My heart feels the same. And your people still need you. You understand the white people as no one else does. You have the knowledge to make sense of the world as it is now. You have that responsibility, too. You are a coward, if you run from that.”
“My people cannot trust me.”
“They don't know what happened to you.”
“But I know, and I know they cannot trust me. How can I put them in danger? Evil does not leave a man, once