Chained By Fear: 2 Read Online Free

already were roasting. Potatoes, beans and nuts simmered in clay pots. Peaches, berries, and figs were spread on long tables. Black tea brewed from smoked holly leaves stood alongside apple wine and cornstalk beer. All in all, it was more food and drink than twice their number could consume.
    “Come, daughter. We must return to the village before your mother’s side of the family eats everything.”
    Just then, the drums began to rumble. The ceremony had begun. A smile spread across Magena’s beautiful face, and she laughed again.
    “Race you there!” she said, sprinting down the hill.

3
     
    Fewer than five thousand Ropakans were sprinkled throughout the vastness of the Mahaggata Mountains. Magena’s village contained about five hundred Ropakans and was divided into ten clans. Takoda was village chief as well as patriarchal head of his clan, whose members were ranked according to the proximity of their kinship to their leader. Highest was his eldest brother, Akando, who would become chief if Takoda were to perish. Next came two younger brothers and three sisters, followed by his father, mother, wife, three sons, four daughters (including Magena), and thirteen grandchildren. But all members of Takoda’s clan, regardless of nobility, came to him for advice, guidance, and spiritual blessings.
    Magena scampered through one of the openings in the palisade, a circular fence of pointed logs that surrounded her father’s village. She passed huts of various sizes, some housing as few as four, others more than a dozen.
    Given her status as daughter of the chief, Magena lived with her family in the largest and most elaborate hut in the village, the lone dwelling in the central plaza. Its roof and walls were water-proofed with sheets of bark from hickory trees. To create more height, the floor was dug several spans below the ground. A hearth used for cooking and heating stood in the center.
    Magena joined the rest of the villagers in the plaza and stood beneath the ceremonial pole, which had been hewn from the trunk of a yellow poplar and was fifty cubits tall. She admired the trail of decorations carved on the pole, depicting what the Ropakans called the Path of Beauty. In order to recognize their own inner splendor, Magena’s people believed they needed to travel a path that acknowledged the beauty in all living beings. The perfect balance that allowed the pole to stand upright mimicked the balance of nature. All of the village’s major celebrations and ceremonies occurred in a clearing surrounding the pole.
    Several blazing fires lighted the clearing. More than a dozen men carrying deerskin drums already encircled the ceremonial pole. Their faces were painted with red ocher, and they wore feather headdresses adorned with fresh flowers. Jingly bells of varying shapes and sizes hung from their breechcloths, wrists and ankles.
    More scantily clad men and women accompanied the drummers. They shook hollow gourds filled with dried corn. The pounding and rattling produced an infectious rhythm, signaling the official beginning of the celebration. Magena, wearing a mulberry shawl and a short skirt, grabbed a wooden flute and blended into the throng, dancing with her mother, sisters and dozens of other women around the fires.
    A short time later, the full moon rose over the peaks of the southeastern mountains. Magena left the dancers, walked to the edge of the firelight and gazed at the golden orb. The sunlight reflecting off its mottled surface filled her with joy, and a blessed strength surged through her body. But something disturbed her. She could sense danger but was not able to identify it. Finally, she decided it was just her imagination, and she rejoined her family by the fires.
    Soon after, Takoda emerged from the darkness. Magena giggled with delight. Her father wore a headdress made from the red-tipped feathers of a war eagle sewn into a deerskin bonnet. Strings of beads and strips of colorful fur dangled over his face,