Pastwatch- The Redemption Of Christopher Columbus - By Orson Scott Card Page 0,128

want to see, not the boat made of water and air."

"I don't want to see the white men at all," said Putukam with a shudder.

"They are only men," said Diko. "Some of them are very bad, and some of them are very good. All of them know how to do things that no one in Haiti knows how to do, and yet there are many things that every child in Haiti knows that these men do not understand at all."

"Tell us!" several of them cried.

"I've told you all these stories about the coming of the white men," said Diko. "And today there's work to do."

They voiced their disappointment like children. And why shouldn't they? Such was the trust within the village, within the tribe, that no one was afraid to tell what he desired. The only feelings they had to hide from their fellow villagers were the truly shameful feelings, like fear and malice.

Diko carried her yoke and her empty water baskets back to her house -- a hut, really. Thankfully no one was waiting for her there. She and Putukam were the only women to have houses of their own, and ever since the first time Diko had taken in a woman whose husband was angry at her and threatened to beat her, Putukam had joined her in making her house available as a refuge for women. There had been a great deal of tension at the beginning, since Nugkui, the cacique, correctly saw Diko as a rival for power in the village. It only came to violence once, when three men came in the shadow of night, armed with spears. It had taken her about twenty seconds to disarm all three of them, break the spear shafts, and send them staggering away with many cuts and bruises and sore muscles. They were simply no match for her size and strength -- and her martial-arts training.

It wouldn't have kept them from trying something later -- an arrow, a dart, a fire -- except that Diko had taken action at first light. She gathered up her belongings and began giving them away as gifts to other women. This immediately aroused the whole village. "Where are you going?" they demanded. "Why are you leaving?" She had answered disingenuously: "I came to this village because I thought I heard a voice calling me here. But last night I had a vision of three men attacking me in the darkness, and I knew that the voice must have been wrong, it was not this village, because this village doesn't want me. I must go now and find the right village, the one that has a need for a tall black woman to carry their water." After much remonstrance, she agreed to stay for three days. "By the end of that time, I will go unless everybody in Ankuash has asked me, one at a time, to stay, and promised to make me their aunt or their sister or their niece. If even one person does not want me here, I will go."

Nugkui was no fool. Much as he might resent her authority, he knew that having her in the village gave Ankuash enormous prestige among the Taino who lived farther down the mountain. Didn't they send their sick to Ankuash now to be healed? Didn't they send messengers to ask the meanings of events or to learn what Sees-in-the-Dark predicted for the future? Until Diko came, the people of Ankuash were despised as the people who lived in the cold place on the mountain. It was Diko who had explained that their tribe was the first to live on Haiti, that their ancestors were the first to be brave enough to sail from island to island. "For a long time, the Taino have had their way here, and the Caribs want to do the same to them," she explained. "But the time is soon coming when Ankuash will once again lead all the people of Haiti. For this is the village that will tame the white men."

Nugkui was not about to let this exalted future slip away. "I want you to stay," he had said, gruffly.

"I'm glad to hear that. Have you seen Baiku about that nasty bruise on your forehead? You must have bumped into a tree when you went out to pee in the dark."

He glared at her. "Some say you do things a woman shouldn't do."

"But if I do them, then they must be things that I believe a woman