Anna Redsand

Below is the first chapter of the new YA novel Anna is writing, TOO SOON THE THUNDER.

CHAPTER ONE
Talbah and Rownkee slipped down into the Web together and walked rapidly toward the Skipgan, the great underground chamber where First Frost ceremony would be held. Excited voices echoed through the tunnels of the Web. The sounds signaled the movement of the entire Veediné Tribe on this late afternoon in early September. The brother and sister emerged into open air directly behind the enormous rock that concealed the double carved doors to the Skipgan.
Haneza, the chief Storyteller, stood beside the left door panel, which was carved with frost patterns. Next to the images of frost, a huge tooled spiral would split in half when the doors opened. Carvings to the right of the spiral depicted thunderclouds and lightning bolts.
Shortly after Talbah and Rownkee arrived, a tall, broad-shouldered man and a lithe, muscled woman rose from the Web. Like the three already standing at the Skipgan door, their faces were light brown, the color of coffee with lots of cream in it. The man, Feerbeensteen, had gray-green eyes. Lubenza, the woman, had eyes that were gray, flecked with amber. The others, too, had eyes that were some variation or combination of gray, green, blue, light brown, gold or amber. All but the Haneza had some shade of reddish hair. Haneza’s hair spoke of her age; the red had all gone to silver.
“First Frost is early this year,” Haneza spoke solemnly. “May we be able to arrive at completion.”
The others nodded, equally sober. They knew what she meant.
Soon the Tribe began to arrive. Everyone wore their best, resplendent with ribbons, jewelry, bright quilts and intricately patterned, hand-woven blankets. Their faces shone with the joy of First Frost. Some had painted frost flakes on their cheeks.
Haneza used her tall oaken staff to press a bar that looked at first no different from the rest of the rock. Slowly the doors swung apart. She motioned to Rownkee, who stepped to her side, and as the two began the procession inward, he took a sunlighter from his pocket and lit the first suntorch inside the door.
Just before she entered, Talbah looked up at the sky and gasped. It was no longer the clear, cold blue it had been in the morning when she first stepped outside the family husgan to greet the sun. Instead, dark clouds were gathering low above the mesas. She nearly forgot herself and ran to grab Haneza’s elbow to call her back out of the tunnel. Then she stiffened into a dignified pose and said to herself, No. It cannot be.
She moved forward, the youngest and last of the four Storyteller apprentices. The Veediné followed, single file. They kept on coming, a seemingly endless line of children, women, and men. Once inside the entrance to the Skipgan, they proceeded down a sloping tunnel. The floor on both sides of the tunnel was lined with lumpy, patched cloth bags. Above the bags, shelves rose to the ceiling. Both held objects the Veediné had gathered from flea markets, dumps, dead coal mining towns, and from the deserts and forests. Old silver spoons and forks, rags, old sweaters and other clothing, gnarled driftwood, plastic bags, pottery shards, spools of colored wire, magazines, and chipped and broken plates were just a few of the items. From these things, the Veediné would five new life to discarded items, creating sculptures, baskets, new clothing, quilts, blankets, jewelry, handmade paper and fine mosaics.
The tunnel began to wind to the left as it proceeded downward. While the group progressed, Rownkee continued to light suntorches every few feet along the wall. As the torches came to life so did millions of chips of mirror and glass in the walls and ceiling, until the entire Skipgan sparkled. The people filed down the spiral, for that is what the tunnel had become. All along the pathway stood benches and chairs, and in front of those, work tables, quilting frames, looms, and all manner of tools. As people reached their own workspaces they stopped and stood facing the deep center in anticipation.
The bottom of the coil was a rough circle paved with red, gold, apricot, cream and mauve flagstones. In the center of it stood a very large metal cylinder, a sunstove. A polished red-and-gold cedar bench surrounded the stove. Haneza seated herself first on the east side of the circular bench, where the sun rises and where human life begins. On either side of her sat Feerbeensteen and Lubenza, her Ready Apprentices. Talbah and Rownkee, her Young Apprentices, flanked them.
All grew silent as Haneza closed her eyes and sat completely still. After a short time, she and the four apprentices moved counterclockwise, to face south, then west, and at last north, where human life ends. All the while there was silence, except from the babies who hadn’t yet learned. Then the Haneza rose. She pounded the floor with her staff, four deliberately spaced poundings, and said, so all could hear,
"We bless the sacred Stories and the work we are about to do. When the earliest Veedinéting gave us our Stories after First Frost, they said: 'Our Stories hold us together. They make us a people. They weave a web of safety around us. Our Stories feed us from our barnsal until our passing. Never forget this. Our Stories bring the colors and the shapes, the lines and the absence of lines, to our Art. Our Art feeds our bodies. It blesses the Others who live near and far. This is our gift. Never forget this.' When they had spoken, the Veedinéting said in one deep voice, “At the sound of First Thunder, it is finished.”
The people seated themselves at their looms or stood at their workbenches. As they sifted through the objects to begin new projects or take up the ones they’d left unfinished last year, Haneza began to speak again.
"Now begins First Story of First Cycle on the afternoon of First Frost."
A deep sigh rose from around and up the spiral of the Skipgan. A few of the Veediné spoke soft words of pleasure, of joy and of agreement, so there was a sound like "shhh-shh-dledleshsh-shh" throughout. Then all settled to listen and work. Talbah was certain that no one listened so intently to each word or watched each gesture so carefully as she did. Her left hand strayed up to a curl, and she stroked it, feeling its silkiness, twisting it around her forefinger until it was the only strand of hair that hung straight.
Haneza continued.
"Long, long ago, it happened that two peoples came together from places long distant from each other. One of the peoples had brown skin with straight hair as shining and blue-black as the feathers of the raven. Their eyes shone brown as piñon nuts. The other people had skin as white as the clouds and curling hair as red as fire. Their eyes were like the turquoise stone.
The first people, the brown people, were called Diné. They had come up through a female reed from First World, Second World, Third World, and into the Fourth World, the world we live in today. As time went on, a group of them separated from many of their tribe and moved to this place where we Veediné live today, this place we now call Indykeyah. The Diné of that time were great warriors, and many still are today. But the Diné who moved off had decided that they did not want to be part of fighting any longer.
"The second people, known as Vikinger, came from their own Second World, a middle world, called in their language Midgard. Within that world, they were adventurers who sailed in great wooden dragons across wide expanses of water. Long, long ago, two of these wooden dragons, First Dragon and Second Dragon, set out across the water and came to the Fourth World. But they came to a place in the Fourth World that was very, very far from here.
"There they made a settlement in a place flowing with wheat and grapes. Because of the grapes, they called the place Vinland, meaning Wineland. The people of the First Dragon were not happy in the new place. They found themselves often in conflict with the natives of the land. They, too, were fierce warriors. After a time, they decided to return to the place from which they had come, which they called Greenland."
Talbah sighed. She loved the part of the story that came next, the adventure that would bring the two peoples together. By turns she imagined herself as Diné, awaiting the arrival of the Vikinger, or as Viking, soon to join the Diné.
"The people of Second Dragon were curious about this Fourth World. They were also a people who wanted, instead of fighting to find a way to get along with people. They decided to go deeper and further into the Fourth World. So they set out on foot. There were men, women and children, sheep and cattle. It took them several years to cross the Fourth World. At last they came to Indykeyah, but at that time the place did not yet have its own name. Here they met the Diné who had settled here. These Diné were curious people like the Second Dragon Vikinger, and they welcomed their visitors.
"These two groups that were so different from one another, talked at first through hand and face signs. They laughed a lot together as they learned each other’s ways and words. They were comfortable with one another, and some of the younger ones soon married. This resulted in people who look much as we do today—people with light brown skin, curly reddish hair, and green or gray eyes.
"When First Frost came that first year, the Diné told the Vikinger that First Frost marked the time for telling sacred Stories. They also said it was a sacred requirement to stop telling the Stories on the day of First Thunder."
Talbah loved listening, and at the same time she could hardly bear it. She wanted to jump in and take over the telling. She felt it like a terrible itch that she was not allowed to scratch, but Haneza went on.
"The Vikinger were curious about the Diné Stories. They said, “We also have sacred Stories, and we tell them most often in winter around the fire. However, we have no rule that says we may not tell them at other times of the year. Winter is just the best time, because there is not much else to do besides tell Stories and make things with our hands during the cold, dark times. Where we come from, it is dark for many,many hours on a winter day.
"After a time, this group of Diné and these Vikinger agreed to become one people. They began to put their languages together to create a new language and they began to name their children with names made from both languages. They called their new tribe the Veediné, which is how we are known today. The new name for the place where we live today was Indykeyah, yndig meaning lovely in the Viking language, and kéyah meaning land in the Diné language.
"The Veediné told one another their sacred Stories that first winter. They saw that their Stories were both different and similar. The Stories of both groups spoke of more than one world. Diné Stories had four worlds, and Viking Stories had three. These worlds existed one on top of the other, in layers, in both Stories. Both groups had Stories with a trickster character; the Viking trickster was named Loki, and the Diné trickster was Coyote. Both had giants and monsters, and they had heroes who came to save..."
At that very moment, a deep rumbling began above ground and swelled until it ended in a terrifying crack. Haneza stopped in mid-sentence. The sound was unmistakable, a tremendous roll of thunder. Throughout the Skipgan, people gasped. They looked up from their work and faced the Haneza. Nothing on the old woman’s face showed her feelings. She pounded the stone floor of the pit four times with her great oaken staff. Her voice boomed louder than the thunder, which had continued to grumble and crack. “It is finished,” she shouted.
“No, No!” Talbah bellowed. She stamped her foot so hard that she felt as if the small bones might have snapped. Realizing what she’d done, she slammed her hand against her mouth, but it was too late. From around the Skipgan another loud gasp was heard along with appalled murmers at her outburst.
Still showing no emotion, the Haneza addressed Talbah under her breath in as few words as possible. “After, Talbah.”
Talbah bowed her head, and beneath her bowed head, she felt her jaw stiffen and tighten to hold in words of anger, frustration, sorrow, and something else that felt suffocating. Shame, she realized, as the people packed up the work they had only begun. Shame at having acted out her feelings like a young child before the entire Tribe. And fear. Fear that her outburst could cost her her precious apprenticeship.