Read Shadow Valley for Free Online Page B

know my sin cost your mother her life in childbirth. Great Mother has never let me love again.”
    T’Cori did not want him to say these things, did not want to open that pathway. She knew that lurking at its end was the lonely girl she had once been. Like the kernel of an ancient baobab, that child would always live within her. That girl had often dreamed that somewhere, someone loved her as a father or mother loved a child, and would hold her close and call her precious.
    With nothing and no one to fill that void in her life, only Great Mother and Father Mountain offered solace.
    She honored Water Chant but could not love him, and she hoped he would never ask if she did.
    T’Cori took his hand. “I believe you are my father. If that is true, and you are a good man, then I am sure that you did only what Great Mother told your heart to do. Because of you, Stillshadow found and taught me—”
    He blinked, holding back tears. “I don’t know why Father Mountain or Great Mother gave you to me. But even if you could not call me father, I think you should know your sisters.”
    “Sisters?” She blinked in shock. In all these moons, she had not gone to him and asked if there were brothers or sisters who might have accompanied him. Had she been afraid to ask? To
hope?
Had that been another piece of herself she had abandoned to be Sky Woman?
    Just twice ten tens of Ibandi, walking for moons now, and she had not known that her sisters walked among them. What mists had wreathed her mind? What manner of leader was she?
    She turned just in time to see two girls approaching along the shallow streambed leading from the camp. From glimpses of her own reflection, she knew they resembled her. Two or three years older, perhaps, with the same high cheekbones, beautiful dark-clay skin. Their hair hung in ringlets instead of braids, but was the same brown as hers, a few shades darker than their eyes. They had slender bodies, with full breasts. Unlike T’Cori, those breasts were exposed: a dream dancer’s sexuality was reserved for Father Mountain’s chosen hunters.
    Her sisters could have been her, living different but very familiar lives. Strange. She knew them to be lovely but had never thought of herself in such a way. A clutch of children dangled from their arms and followed at their backs.
    Both women noticed her swollen belly, touching it and clucking approval.
    “Sisters?” T’Cori repeated, stunned.
    Water Chant pointed. “This is Flower, and this—” he said, pointing to the shorter of the two “—is Morning Thunder.”
    “Such a strong name,” T’Cori said.
    Flower smiled. “She was a very loud baby.”
    “Louder than me?” T’Cori asked.
    “I think so, yes,” her father said.
    The two girls were her people’s future. Great Mother … if her people had any future at all. She could not allow her private terrors to intrude. Had Water Chant waited for her to come to him? She had never done it, nor reached out. Now, Chant had risked his heart to present his daughters, her
sisters
, whom she had never known.
    Their eyes welled with wonder and with hope.
    Morning Thunder was the first to lose her shyness. “Is it true you are our sister? Could our greatest dancer share our blood?”
    Be what they need.
“We all share blood,” T’Cori said.
    Disappointment clouded their faces. Swiftly, T’Cori added, “but I thinkthat we three may be closer than any. We can make our own small circle within the greater one. Bring your food to my fire tonight. We will eat and then walk together.”
    And for those words, they gifted her with eager smiles.
    By the time Frog returned from his morning exercises, T’Cori and her sisters were laughing and talking like childhood friends.
    She met him before he reached their fire, taking his warm, strong hand in hers. “Come,” T’Cori said. “Meet my other family.”
    “Family?” Frog protested. “What is this?
I
am your family. The dreamers are your family.” At first she