People of the Owl: A Novel of Prehistoric North America (North America's Forgotten Past) (50 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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“We think alike.” Striped Dart’s eyes were hooded. “I didn’t agree with Uncle’s plan in the beginning. You, Speaker, have shown me that it is good.”
“If I can be of service, Striped Dart, if a problem should develop, send word with the stone shipment. Give me a time, and I will meet you here, or send a known representative if I cannot come.”
Salamander stood. “I will leave you now. You probably have family matters to discuss.”
“You’re leaving?” Anhinga cried as she struggled to her feet. “Now?”
“I must get back.” He jerked a nod toward the body. “There are things I have to deal with.”
Worry tightened in her breast. He couldn’t just up and leave her. Not on this island, not with Eats Wood’s souls lingering about. “What will you tell Pine Drop and Night Rain?”
“Nothing, Anhinga. I am going to load his body into my canoe. Somewhere, out there”—he indicated the swamp—“he might slip off the side. That’s all.”
“You can’t just ignore it.” She thumped her breast in emphasis. “You killed to protect your family! Your child and your honor!”
“Do you think I should announce myself at the Men’s House and demand a warrior’s tattoos?” He smiled sadly, reaching out and running his fingertips along her cheeks. “This must remain our secret.”
“He
attacked
me!”
“Put yourself in Pine Drop and Night Rain’s position. I have
killed their kinsman. You know the pressure Mud Stalker and Sweet Root are already putting on them. No matter what, Anhinga, I will spare them.”
She could only stare in disbelief. He did everything for others. Did he do nothing for himself?
“Wait!” Anhinga turned, looking at Striped Dart. “I am going back with my husband. Brother, take the body, dump it on the way home. Someplace where no Sun Person can stumble across it. That way no bloodstains will be on our canoes when we get back to Sun Town.”
“And his canoe?” Salamander pointed to the craft they’d found hidden in the grass.
“Take it, Striped Dart. But you must promise me that you will destroy it.” She walked up to him as he rose to his feet. “Do you understand why that is so important to me?”
He nodded. “No one must recognize anything of his in the future. He will just have vanished.” A grim smile played on his lips. “Perhaps some large cat was out hunting?”
“You must tell no tales!” she reminded, shaking a finger in his face. “Not one, nothing about what happened here today.”
Striped Dart offered his hand to Salamander again. “You have my silence, Speaker, and my sister’s respect. A rare combination.” A veiled look crossed his eyes. “I look forward to dealing with you in the future.”
Salamander reached into his belt pouch. “A token,” he offered. “My Spirit Helper. If you ever need anything, send me this carving of Masked Owl.”
Striped Dart studied the little potbellied owl he held between thumb and forefinger. “It looks as pregnant as my sister.”
“Come, Husband.” Anhinga studied the brooding sky. The patches of blue had vanished, and the clouds had taken on a heaviness. “I think it will rain, and in this weather that will be most uncomfortable.”
I
am coming to the end of words.
I breathe slowly. I feel the way I am lying on the floor. I see the unchanging inner stillness that lives in my heart and, like a deer dying in the forest, I find myself absorbed by it. My attention focuses solely on these final moments. My chest rises and falls. My heartbeat pulses in my ears. The voices around me are faint, but pleasing. I thank the ancestors that I am not alone.
There is only one thing I have done in my life that I am truly proud of.
I have tried to be a teacher.
I think some of my students actually heard me, though the gods know, listening is not easy. The greatest danger for the Student is thinking he has heard everything perfectly. It takes a long time to understand that the wisest words are not rolls of thunder. They don’t strike at the heart like lightning. They are whispers, softly spoken into the ear, easily ignored by the spiritually intoxicated.
Oh, I am old, but I remember that intoxication, that heady rush of certainty. Even now, just thinking about it, I’m a little tipsy.
That’s why wisdom sneaks by. We’re tipsy. We can feel revelation surging in our veins. Who has time for whispers when the whole world is a divine shout?
Unfortunately, shouts are just air. Genuine spiritual awareness is hard work. It’s like quarrying stone beneath a blazing sun, day after day. A man gets tired.
So very tired.
It is just easier to sit down, smile, and think great thoughts in the shade.
The truth, you see, is that revelation isn’t fun. Revelation is pain.
I close my eyes.
My vision is growing dim.
I hear voices calling to me from far away. I think I recognize my mother’s voice.
I force myself to listen.
I listen for a long, long time.
And finally … I swear to you, I
do
hear the whispers.
I
n the Serpent’s central fire pit, flames flickered and cast their warm light. Smoke rose, pooling around the rafters and the sacked herbs hanging from the roof.
In the wavering yellow glow, Bobcat sat on his haunches, forearms propped on his knees. A worried look filled his moon-shaped face with its odd, beaklike nose. His mild brown eyes communicated his concern as he looked at the Serpent.
Salamander tried to breathe in shallow gasps. The stench of feces, clotted blood, and closing death permeated the air. Even now, after having been smothered with it for days, it clung in his nostrils.
Death was everywhere. It filled his dreams, creeping out of the corners of his souls. It showed him Eats Wood’s face as it rotted in some secret location. In his dreams, he watched the flesh turn brown, soften, and slip from the skull. In off moments, he felt the cracking of bone through the handle as he drove his ax through the top of Eats Wood’s head. His souls flinched as the corpse twitched in his memory.
He hadn’t expected killing to be like that. Not after the way the warriors spoke. He had found no glory in the murder of Eats Wood. Instead, he was plagued by an aching hollowness, the lingering nightmares, loss, and the bruise of regret.
Now Death lurked here, Dancing with the firelight, slipping among the shadows. It hovered with the smoke in the rafters, clinging
to the sooty cane poles as it peered down at the dying Serpent with liquid black eyes.
My friend is dying. Who am I going to talk to now?
Salamander’s souls ached in anticipation of the coming loneliness.
The Serpent lay on his back, faceup, mouth gaping. Rasping air passed back and forth between his dry lips. His body was little more than bones with a thin leathery skin sagging off them. Only his belly, just left of the navel, was swollen. Scabs showed where Bobcat had punctured the skin, using a stone sucking tube to try and draw out the evil. When Salamander touched the lump, he discovered it was hard, like a rock.
“He said that it entered him sometime ago,” Salamander replied wearily. “How could it beat him? He is the strongest of us.”
“Sometimes evil is the strongest of all.” Bobcat laced his fingers together.
They waited.
The Serpent muttered, half of the words garbled, but now and then a name would come out: that of someone long dead. Or a snatch of conversation, one-sided, as the Serpent babbled to someone only his frantically jerking eyes could see. At other times his limbs moved. He might have been walking in some distant time or place.
“He’s talking to the Dead,” Bobcat said. “It won’t be long now, Salamander.”
“Then they are all around us.” He looked up at the cloudy smoke, hearing the rain pattering in puddles as it trickled off the roof. Ghosts? All around? Who were they? Was his uncle there? Did White Bird circle in the hazy smoke, looking down at Salamander?
Hello, Brother! Hello, Uncle. Are you there?
His souls ached to speak with them again.
Bobcat reached into a bowl of filthy water and squeezed out a red-brown-stained cloth. The stench strengthened in the air. Raising the Serpent’s stick of a leg, he wiped at the man’s fouled anus and cleaned the slight dribble of urine from his thigh. Finished, Bobcat dropped the cloth back in the water.
“Wolf Dream,” the old man gasped suddenly, his eyes flickering. He began to mumble:
“Raise the infants to the god in the sky.
Earth, hey, Earth, from it spread,
Raise the Underworld of the Dead.”
A rattle sounded in his throat before he added:
“Flight of the bird, so big so loud.
Calls the lightning from the cloud.”
“What is he saying?” Bobcat watched the old man as his mouth opened and closed, the tongue moving pink and silent behind his toothless gums.
Salamander leaned forward. “Serpent, are you saying that Masked Owl calls the lightning?” Coldness ran through him. “Did Masked Owl kill my brother?”
“Yes … coming … for the seeds …”
“The goosefoot seeds?”
The old man’s eyes flickered weakly from side to side, the muscles spasming this way and that. “Not time …”
“Not time for what?” Salamander asked.
“We don’t understand, Elder,” Bobcat cried. “What are you trying to tell us?”
Muscles tensed in the Serpent’s legs, his limbs pumping weakly then going still. His fingers nibbled, like a dog after a louse.
“Take … care, Salamander … between the gods.” The Serpent shuddered, a croaking in his throat. “To see … mushrooms …”
The eyes rolled back, whites showing a tracery of blood vessels as the old man’s shallow breathing came in weak gasps.
“Mushrooms?” Bobcat turned uneasy eyes on Salamander. “You have journeyed?”
“I rode the clouds with Masked Owl,” Salamander replied absently, his souls locked on the Serpent’s revelation. “My Spirit Helper? He killed my brother?”
Bobcat had a sick look on his face. “You should be the next Serpent, Salamander. The Elder always favored you.”
“You know I cannot, Bobcat. Nothing has changed since the last time we had this conversation. I don’t know the Songs, the ceremonies, or the rites. Power wants something different from me.” He looked across at the young man, seeing the uncertainty in his eyes, the fear of the future falling so rapidly toward them. “You are the Serpent.”
“But this thing between you and Masked Owl? You ride the sky with his wings? You are touched, Salamander. Power has woven itself through your life. You are part of things I cannot comprehend.”
“Nor can I. However, I can tell you from my souls, you
must
be the Serpent. For all I know, I may be dead soon.”
“Dead?”
Salamander rubbed his face wearily. “When one is caught between warring Powers, one can’t count on digesting supper, let alone savoring its taste.”
“What do you know?”
Salamander shook his head. “I can feel Death, sense it stalking me. In bits and fragments of Dreams, I am dead, Bobcat. It is coming so quickly—and I have only recently discovered what it means to be alive.”
“You look frightened. I’m not used to that in you.”
“I just don’t know, Bobcat. That is the part that is driving me crazy! What am I supposed to do? What does Power want with me? Why
me,
of all the people to chose from?”
“If the Serpent knows, he’s taking the answer with him to the Land of the Dead.” Bobcat reached for the smelly cloth and cleaned the old man’s anus again.
“The Land of the Dead,” Salamander mused, his eyes straying to the lines of pots, stone bowls, and bags with their carefully tended herbs. Reaching over he lifted a thin bit of dried plant from one of the stone bowls, and stared at it with worried eyes.
“You’re not thinking of going after him, are you?” Bobcat asked as he recognized the dried mushroom cap.
“I need answers, Bobcat.”
“Are you willing to take the risk of losing your souls to get them?”
The Serpent whispered, “ …
Sing, Sun God, blood rises … stingers … in the sky …
”
Stingers in the sky? The words rolled around Salamander’s soul as he fingered the desiccated mushroom cap.
Do the answers lie there? Is that what you are trying to tell me, Serpent?
A softening of the rattle in the Serpent’s lungs was accompanied by a relaxation of his arms and legs.
The old man died.
R
ain slanted at an angle. Bobcat’s breath fogged as he pranced around the Serpent’s house and shook his painted-turtle rattle. He Sang in the old tongue. In better weather he would have carried a torch with him, but the constant drizzle and intermittent rain hadn’t let up for days. Clouds hung low overhead, heavy and dark with moisture.
Clan Elders and Speakers were gathered in the front of the crowd,
breath misting as they stamped their cold feet in the mud. Cane Frog, Thunder Tail, Sweet Root, Clay Fat: they were all here, clustered around Pine Drop and Salamander to mourn the passing of the Serpent.
Pine Drop’s heart ached at the expression on her husband’s face. How did he deal with the terrible load that Power had placed upon his shoulders? She had come, hearing that Salamander and Bobcat had finished with the ceremonial preparation of the dead Serpent’s corpse. When she had walked up to Salamander, she might have discovered another person inhabiting her husband’s body.
Pine Drop shivered and reached out to take Salamander’s hand. What was wrong with him? She had never seen him look so odd. He seemed hardly to be aware of the weather, of her, or the people around him. He was wet and clammy, his fabric cloak soaked. Rain dripped from the back of his square bark hat. He looked slack, unresponsive. Unshed tears pooled within his souls. When his eyes met hers, they had a liquid quality that unnerved her.
“Go free, Serpent!” Bobcat called as he ended the Song. Then he ducked into the doorway.
Because of Salamander’s prestige as Speaker, he and Pine Drop stood in the front of the crowd and could see inside the low doorway. Bobcat lit a pine-tar torch from the central fire. In the flickering light, the Serpent’s carefully stripped bones gleamed where they rested on a wooden rick inside.
Bobcat raised the torch, holding it high so that it ignited the soot-stained interior thatch. For long moments, nothing seemed to happen, then blue smoke began welling out of the gaps between the roof and walls.
Bobcat ducked out, coughing, as thick smoke bellowed from the doorway behind him. He gasped mouthfuls of the cold clear air and sniffed before turning back to watch.
The fuel load overcame the saturated thatch, and a spear of yellow fire leaped up from the dark roof to challenge the sky. Steam hissed and popped. A huge plume rose as a low roar built, and sparks gyrated upward in the white-gray column.
“Good-bye to you, too, old friend.” Salamander might have been answering an unheard speaker. He leaned his head back and let the rain pelt his face. “Yes, I hear you just fine. Your words are clear, Serpent. Look at you flying! Take him, Masked Owl. Bless his souls and fly with him to the One.”
She glanced around uneasily and squeezed Salamander’s hand. “Shhh! People are listening.”
Snakes! What is he hearing?
Pine Drop considered the words, wondering what the One was. Then her husband
shivered, and she could see pimpled flesh on his thin arms. The welling heat from the burning structure barely seemed to dent the cold.
Clay Fat stood just to their right, his round stomach dwarfing her pregnant belly. He was watching Salamander, puzzlement on his face.
“We’ll miss him,” Pine Drop said, trying to act as if nothing had happened.
“There won’t be another like him anytime soon,” Clay Fat replied, then looked up at the spiraling white plume that carried the Serpent’s souls to freedom.
“A Serpent is a Serpent,” Cane Frog muttered, her unseeing white eye blinking as she reached a hand out to feel the heat.
“Mother!” Three Moss hissed. “Keep your voice down!”
Pine Drop arched a slim eyebrow.
And they think Salamander is an idiot?
“They think many things, Wife. It is a clutter. Hear them? Like a thousand birds.” Salamander turned those eerie wounded eyes on hers.
Surely her thoughts hadn’t sent that painful sliver into his souls?
Salamander tilted his head back to stare into the leaden sky. He didn’t seem to mind the rain pattering on his open eyes. “One man’s idiocy is another’s Dream.” A pause. “They have never seen the world from above.”
Was anyone else hearing this? She looked past Salamander to where Mud Stalker stood with his mangled arm wrapped in warm fox hide. Uncle wore a conical hat that shed rain in all directions. His prune-sour expression reflected distaste at the event, the weather, and life in general. Everyone’s spirits were down, as waterlogged as everything else in their world during the endless winter rain.

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