People of the Owl: A Novel of Prehistoric North America (North America's Forgotten Past) (22 page)

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Authors: Kathleen O'Neal Gear,W. Michael Gear

BOOK: People of the Owl: A Novel of Prehistoric North America (North America's Forgotten Past)
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The bodies were never seen again, but often the souls of those Alligator had taken spoke to the Serpents when they entered trances and traveled to the Underworld. That was how people learned of Alligator’s secrets.
As Mud Puppy watched, he noticed minnows flicking along the line of the alligator’s jaw. The little fish were nibbling at the scales, tails wiggling as they appeared, then vanished into the murky water. The sight amazed him. A lesson lay in that. Delicate little fish, dancing back and forth, safe in the presence of the most terrifying of beasts. How could they, of all creatures, pass with immunity?
Because they are small, unnoticed, and unimportant.
He considered that as he stared into the impenetrable eye. What was he supposed to learn? How did he use a lesson like that?
“Mud Puppy?” an accented voice called, breaking his concentration.
“Shush!” Mud Puppy carefully lifted his chin high enough to answer. “Stay where you are.”
The alligator seemed not to have heard. No change of expression could be seen in that black slit of an eye. Not a ripple moved in the still water. Alligator remained oblivious, the little fish playing around his head. Was he Dreaming? Floating and Dreaming, seeing things of Power and magic and joy?
Mud Puppy himself had lain in the warm water, his body buoyed while sunshine beat down in radiant warmth. For him, too, it had been dreamlike, sharing a oneness with the swamp around him. Sound had been dulled, turned inside of him. The faint beating of his heart, his slow breathing, and the water stroking his skin, had left him in a shallow state of bliss. Was that how Alligator lived, his world muted by the pressing warmth of the water?
“Snakes! That’s the biggest alligator I’ve ever seen! What are you doing? Trying to get killed?” the accented voice cried from somewhere behind Mud Puppy.
“Stay back,” Mud Puppy replied carefully. “Come no closer. We were just talking, he and I.” Reluctantly Mud Puppy gathered himself, inching upward and back. As his silhouette began to emerge over the gunwales, Mud Puppy said, “Go away, Grandfather. I mean you no harm.”
With a flip of his tail, the big alligator eased ahead, a faint V drifting back from his nose and eyes. Water rippled along the protruding scutes in his back.
“I don’t believe it.” The accented voice sounded stunned.
Mud Puppy turned to see Hazel Fire and Two Wolves, the Traders, watching from one of their sturdy canoes. Both had darts nocked in atlatls, ready to cast. Each had a bright expression of wonder in his eyes as their canoe drifted slowly to one side. Mud Puppy looked back in time to see the big alligator drift into a duckweed-filled cove and come to rest, eternally one with the swamp.
“What are you doing out here?” he asked when he looked back. They were still perched, their darts held at the ready.
“We went fishing.” Hazel Fire lowered his atlatl and dart, swallowing hard. “We’ve been out here for hours, just going around in
circles. How do you find your way in this mess?” He indicated the endless trees rising from the still water.
“My people just know.” Mud Puppy shrugged and pointed. “That way is home.”
“That alligator”—Two Wolves indicated the great reptile with his darts—“you talked to him? You speak his language?”
“He was Dreaming,” Mud Puppy said. “Seeing between the worlds.” Movement caught his eye as a broad-banded water snake slipped from a tupelo root and swam in gentle undulations to a foam-caked pile of flotsam. There it lay quietly, in wait for whatever might chance by. “He was teaching me things.” Why he said that, he wasn’t sure, but the words might have been a bee sting given the way they jolted the Wolf Traders. Both of the young men looked as if they had been stabbed by an unseen hand.
For a long moment, an uneasy silence passed, and Mud Puppy couldn’t force himself to look at them. In the end, he asked quietly. “Please don’t tell people I said that.”
“We won’t,” Hazel Fire agreed, and a crooked smile crossed his lips. “If you won’t tell anybody we’re lost out here.”
“It is done.” Mud Puppy dipped his paddle and coasted his canoe toward theirs. “To seal our deal, I have something for you.” He reached into his small belt pouch and drew out a red jasper carving he had made, the image of a small potbellied owl with a tilted head. “I just finished this. He’s a friend of mine. I call him Masked Owl.” Mud Puppy reached across and dropped the fetish into Hazel Fire’s open hand.
The Trader lifted the little owl, studying it with a practiced eye. “You are very good at carving, Mud Puppy. Look at this! Such fine detail. What is this around the owl’s eyes?”
“That’s a mask.”
“I see.” Hazel Fire glanced suspiciously at Mud Puppy, then back at the alligator where it hid in the duckweed. “Along with alligators, do you talk with Masked Owls?”
Mud Puppy considered the question. Did he dare trust these outsiders? Men from a place he could barely conceive of?
“Do not worry,” Two Wolves said, reading his unease. “Your brother is our kinsman. Among our people, that binds us. What you tell us, remains among the three of us, and
only
among us.” He indicated the gleaming stone owl in Hazel Fire’s hand. “Our trust is even bound by a gift. There is Power in that.”
“Masked Owl comes to me in my Dreams. He is helping me to find a Spirit Helper. There is a chance that Salamander might come to me.”
“Salamander?” Two Wolves asked curiously, but there was no derision behind his question.
“He has special Powers, including the ability to make himself unseen.”
Hazel Fire resettled himself in his canoe, laying his atlatl and darts to the side. “Why do I have the suspicion that your brother isn’t the only outstanding member of your family?”
“What are you talking about?” Two Wolves asked his friend.
“Mud Puppy, here”—he indicated with a casual hand—“is more than I think most people understand. It was his vision that sent us south to meet the Swamp Panther raiders. Now we find him talking to an alligator and making Power alliances.” He held up the Masked Owl charm to emphasize his point. “Yet his own people do not take him seriously.”
The talk, along with Hazel Fire’s intense scrutiny, made Mud Puppy’s gut feel like ants were crawling around his insides.
“Two brothers,” Two Wolves mused, “two different strengths. But we are outsiders.”
“And perhaps less blinded by our prejudices,” Hazel Fire agreed, raising the little carved owl. “Mud Puppy, consider us your friends, no, more than that, your kin.”
A sudden idea slipped into Mud Puppy’s souls. “Will you do something for me?”
“If it is within our ability, Mud Puppy.” Hazel Fire studied the little red owl thoughtfully.
“Tell my brother that he must not plant his seeds.”
A wry smile crossed Two Wolves’s lips. “I think, married as he is to two new women, he is already planting his seed, young kinsman.”
“I don’t mean that. I mean the goosefoot seeds he brought down from the north. Tell him not to plant those seeds.”
Hazel Fire cocked his head. “Why? He has told us his plan for them. We, ourselves, plant the seeds. Among my people it provides another source of food for the winter. Ask your brother, he ate enough of it last winter to know the advantages.”
“It’s not me.” Mud Puppy hesitated, cringing. Did he dare share this secret?
“If it is not you, then who, Mud Puppy?” Hazel Fire’s expression sharpened. “White Bird is a relative through marriage, a member of my family, stranger though he might be. We have shared many things over the last year. His child lives in my sister. If there is some threat to White Bird, I would know of it.”
“It came from a Dream,” he hedged. “Someone in the Dream told me that my brother would be killed if he planted those seeds. That it is not a thing for my people. Power doesn’t want it to happen here.”
“Want what to happen here?” Two Wolves looked confused.
“People to grow their own plants.” Mud Puppy made a helpless gesture. “I tried to tell White Bird. He thinks I’m being a silly child and won’t listen. He has turned blind; his ability to see is overcome by his new status and all the attention people are heaping upon him. He thinks he cannot be defeated.”
“Defeated by whom?” Two Wolves asked. “If there is a threat, we will protect him. He has earned our loyalty through his service to us, our clans, and our people, let alone to yours.”
“By Power,” Mud Puppy said miserably. “Masked Owl has told me that he mustn’t plant those seeds. If he does, he will change the world. Masked Owl doesn’t want that to happen. He wants us to stay …” Mud Puppy clamped his mouth, miserably aware that he’d just said too much.
Hazel Fire’s thoughtful eyes had narrowed, his face pensive.
“All this came out of a Dream?” Two Wolves asked incredulously. “Why should White Bird believe your Dream, and not his own?”
Mud Puppy felt a sinking in his chest. He must have been suntouched to have confided in these strangers from the far north.
“Wait,” Hazel Fire’s low voice intruded. Then he spoke in the Wolf People’s tongue, the alien words hammering on Mud Puppy’s ears like hail. Whatever it was, it must have been so demeaning they didn’t dare talk in a language he would understand.
“Forget I said anything.” Mud Puppy picked up his paddle, refusing to meet their eyes. “I shall tell no one that you were lost. The Masked Owl seals that bargain.” He turned his canoe. “Come, it is this way home.”
“I said, wait.” Hazel Fire lifted a hand, those foreign eyes pensive. “You really believe this, don’t you?”
Mud Puppy said nothing, but his eyes must have betrayed him, for Hazel Fire said, “We believe you, Mud Puppy.” He gestured toward the alligator. “It takes a special person to talk to the likes of him. Your brother has been away from you for over a year. Perhaps he does not understand the changes in his little brother.”
“Changes?” Mud Puppy was puzzled.
Hazel Fire smiled. “It took me a while to understand that my little sister had become a woman. It wasn’t until I saw your brother’s
child growing in her womb that I knew. Two Wolves and I, we will speak to your brother. I don’t know that we can change his mind, but we are willing to try.”
Mud Puppy nodded, a sudden feeling of relief building in his belly. “I thank you. For this, I shall always be in your debt.”
“Then we are brothers,” Hazel Fire added. “May our bonds strengthen over time despite the distance that will separate us.”
“May it be so,” Mud Puppy agreed. “Come, let us go. There may not be much time.”
P
ine Drop lay on her side, the hard pole of the bed frame under her hips. She could feel the heat from White Bird’s body. Her own skin remained damp from the joining that had consummated their marriage. Careful not to wake him, she eased off the bed, squatted, and wiped herself with a handful of dried hanging moss.
She turned, studying the face of her new husband in the half-light cast through the doorway. The stranger slept on her bedding, his muscular left leg raised and braced against the mud-daubed wall. The right arm lay beside him, his left lax on his damp chest. His lungs filled and emptied with a slow regularity; the dancing of his eyes under smooth lids reflected obscured dreams.
How could this have happened?
She ran a callused hand down her face, then glanced at Night Rain, where she, too, dozed on the bed adjoining Pine Drop’s. Her sister rested on her back, her young breasts flat, a length of cloth covering her hips. She couldn’t be sure if Night Rain slept, or just had feigned it during the time Pine Drop had been coupling with White Bird.
White Bird? Her husband? Who was this man? Two days ago she had been a young widow, heartbroken, her souls aching with grief. Today she was married—she and her sister. Together. It might have been a tornado that had uprooted her life.
Just now she had lain with a stranger. In defense she had closed her eyes when he mounted her, wrapped herself in the past, filled her imagination with Blue Feather. In her fantasy, it was Blue
Feather who moved inside her. It was Blue Feather who brought her to ecstasy. As waves of pleasure rolled through her hips, she had tightened her arms around him—not this strange new man.
Time seemed to ebb and flow like stretched cattail dough in Pine Drop’s memory. Through the whirl of events, she had glimpses: Blue Feather’s body, hot and bright with fever; his eyes, racked by pain, losing focus as she held his hand; those last moments as he gasped for shallow breaths and his souls loosened for the last time. Had it been she who had set fire to the house she had shared for those few moons with Blue Feather? Had it been right on this very spot that she had burned their dwelling down to a ring of charred cinders? She glanced at the tamped ash-laden soil before the doorway. Blue Feather’s bones had been there, a tied bundle of them stacked atop a pile of white ash, oak, and hickory wood. He had been of the Alligator Clan. Members of his lineage had come afterward, picking through the bits of charcoal and ash to retrieve the broken and spalled slivers of fire-whitened bone.
Now I am married again. To a man of the Owl Clan, of all things.
The hollow ache in her loins for Blue Feather had barely subsided; how could Mud Stalker and Back Scratch think this stranger could fill that place she had shared with Blue Feather?
“Is he asleep?” Night Rain whispered cautiously.
“Yes.” Pine Drop glanced at her sister, seeing one eye peering from under a lax brown arm.
“Snakes! Is that what it was all about?” She lowered her arm and swung into a sitting position. “Not like I imagined.” She glanced down, her hair falling around her in a tangled black mass. “Not like it sounded when he lay with you.”
“I wasn’t with him,” Pine Drop mouthed words, glancing uneasily at the sleeping man. At the question in her sister’s eyes, Pine Drop soundlessly said, “Blue Feather.”
“Oh,” Night Rain mouthed in return.
Pine Drop reached for her kirtle and gestured. Night Rain dressed silently and followed as Pine Drop ducked out the door. The house was new, built on the ruins of her old structure. It had been on this spot that Blue Feather’s dead body had been processed before the ritual cleansing. Now nothing remained of him except his Dream Soul. Had it been prowling around the house, watching this new man as he slid his manhood into her? Had Blue Feather known that she was dreaming of him, that she had willed White Bird’s hard member to be his?
Night Rain turned her young face up toward the cloudy sky. A
faint misty rain was falling. It speckled the young woman’s hair in silver specks. “Remember how we used to talk when we were little? How we swore that one day we would have a household together, that we would marry the same great warrior? That we would live on that way forever? Now, here it is, and it’s not like I ever thought it would be.”
“No.”
“Will I ever enjoy coupling with a man?”
“Perhaps, with time.” Pine Drop reached out and placed an arm around her sister’s shoulder. “Did he hurt you?”
“No.” Pine Drop felt Night Rain’s shrug. “It just wasn’t what I thought, that’s all. I expected lightning, and joy, and some great experience like riding on clouds.”
“And instead?”
“It was uncomfortable. He’s …”
“Big.”
“Yes.” She glanced sideways at Pine Drop. “I thought it would feel more like a finger.”
“I’m sorry.”
Night Rain shrugged. “Do you think I’m going to get pregnant?”
“Eventually.”
“You didn’t. I mean with Blue Feather. And you were married for almost six moons before …”
“Yes, well, sometimes it doesn’t happen right off in first moons you spend as a woman.” She tried to keep the regret out of her voice.
“We have done our duty to our lineage and to our clan.” Night Rain smiled sadly. “We are the granddaughters of the Clan Elder. That is all that matters.”
How could she say it with such simple faith? “That doesn’t mean that we must like it. What has possessed the Elder and the Speaker? We have always been adversaries of Owl Clan, especially that haughty Wing Heart. She acts so superior to everyone else. Did I ever tell you about the time she kicked me out of her path? I was little then, maybe four winters old. She treated me like dirt.”
“Now we are married to her son.” Night Rain’s eyes were on the long lines of houses that surrounded them. Cattails were waving green fronds above the dark water in the borrow ditches that separated the house ridges. “I wanted to marry Saw Back, of the Alligator Clan.”
“Well, you had better forget him—and hope that White Bird remains alive,” Pine Drop cautioned. “At least he is a Speaker, young
though he is. He has war honors that will transfer to our children and clan. He has prestige and status, and from the looks of things, it will only grow greater.”
“That is supposed to reassure us?” Night Rain asked hollowly.
“Yes, because the alternative is that if anything happens to White Bird, we go to that witless Mud Puppy! Think about that the next time our husband crawls on top of you and parts your legs.”
Night Rain chewed her lip thoughtfully. “What could Grandmother have been thinking? I don’t understand this new alliance with Owl Clan. It makes no sense.”
Pine Drop sighed, looked furtively back at the doorway to make sure that White Bird hadn’t awakened, and whispered, “We are to learn what we can about Wing Heart and help our clan gain ascendancy, silly gosling! The Speaker didn’t talk the Elder into marrying us to White Bird to make us happy. We are here to serve the clan, and that, Little Sister, is what we will do.”
Night Rain nodded. “I understand, Sister. When it comes to the clan I will do my duty.”

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