People of the Owl: A Novel of Prehistoric North America (North America's Forgotten Past) (51 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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Deep Hunter and Thunder Tail stood next in line. It seemed like everywhere Thunder Tail went, Deep Hunter showed up.
He is being wooed.
That knowledge sobered her. Too many things were changing. Even Mud Stalker and Deep Hunter—who had been lifelong rivals, barely sharing a civil word—stood together like brothers.
“They are hardly brothers, Wife,” Salamander said absently, his dreamy eyes on the rising smoke and steam.
Snakes! I never spoke!
Salamander’s tongue stumbled over the words. “You Dreamed it.”
A sudden fear tightened around her souls as her eyes darted warily around. Her heart began to race, a fear, colder than the rain, tickling her skin.
W
ith a whoosh, one-half of the Serpent’s roof let go. People stepped back as sparks and bits of burning thatch began sprinkling down from the sky.
“Come,” Pine Drop said, tightening her grip on Salamander’s hand. “You are cold, Husband. You have been up caring for the Serpent for a night and a day without sleep. You have done your duty.”
“He’s here. See him flying? Right here around us.” Salamander raised his other hand, his finger pointing up into the rain. “Go in peace, my old friend.”
Pine Drop jerked him hard enough to pull him off-balance. It took all of her strength to keep him from falling into the mud. People were watching, curiosity in their somber black eyes.
“What’s wrong with you?” Pine Drop demanded as she tried to lead him away with some semblance of dignity.
“He was the only one who …” He caught himself, pinching his mouth closed.
“Who could understand?” she asked. “Is that what you were trying to say?”
He clamped his jaws, his huge glazed eyes looking back at the flames. Thunder! What was he seeing? Surely nothing of this world.
“Nothing of this world,” he whispered.
She tugged insistently on his arm, desperate to get him away as fast as his ill-balanced tottering feet would carry him. By force of will she overpowered his reluctance to leave.
“Salamander, I would talk to you.” She kept glancing around, trying to hide her fear, telling herself it was nothing. He was tired. That was all. Grief left him dazed, his souls crying for his lost teacher and friend.
Snakes help them if anyone heard his disjointed rambling!
“You have done enough! Come home. Anhinga and Night Rain have fixed something special.”
“There is no hurry. The buffalo tongue hasn’t baked all the way through yet.” He might have been talking to a shadow. “I just have to make sure that he knows …”
“He knows, Husband. You and Bobcat made sure.” She nearly jerked him off his feet again, aware of the stare that Clay Fat and Three Moss gave them. The latter had already leaned to whisper into Cane Frog’s ear. When the old woman died, would Three Moss continue leaning over to whisper, even if only the empty air heard?
“It is her way,” Salamander said simply.
The roar inside the Serpent’s house was dying as Pine Drop pulled him down the ridge, their feet slopping in the silt. As they passed, rain dribbled from house roofs to patter into ring-shaped puddles around the walls. Wet dogs lay in the scant shelter of the overhang before the house doors, looking cold, miserable, and starved.
“He told me so many things,” Salamander said half to himself. “He opened my eyes to the One.”
“The One?” He seemed to be half out of his head. Snakes, his souls weren’t coming loose like his mother’s, were they?
“The One,” he whispered in assent. “The Dance. The place where Dreams cross.” He smiled sadly. “What I would give! Oh, Pine Drop, I don’t want to die. If I could only rise and fly away from all this. Just spread my wings … and fly!”
“I think your souls are loose enough already.” She tightened her grip on his hand. She had to tug to keep him moving as they passed the head of the second ridge. His house huddled in the rain before them, faint threads of smoke lost in the downpour. She had kindled a fire there, just in case the rain stiffened. As it had.
She led him to the door and set it aside, ducked into the dark interior with him, and reset the cane door behind them. In the gloom she stepped over to the woodpile. Placing several lengths on the glowing coals, she made the awkward descent around her pregnant belly to blow the embers to life. As the flames licked the logs with yellow light, she looked up. His eyes were large and hollow, his expression vacant. Water dripped off him to spatter on the ashstained floor in little round star bursts.
She grunted as she stood up. He seemed oblivious, so she took the rain hat off his head. “You are soaked clear through, Salamander.”
“His souls were loose,” he said in that oddly detached voice. “He didn’t know who we were. One minute he was fighting evil spirits, the next he was grinning, curing people long dead. He was talking to the Dream Souls of the Dead. I never really understood. They’re here, right in the air around us.”
She took the wet cloak from his shoulders, shocked by its sodden weight, and laid it next to the fire to dry. She plucked the knot loose on his breechcloth and pulled the wet fabric from between his legs. Setting it aside, she positioned him over the fire, where the warm heat and smoke rose along his shivering naked body. Trickles of water ran down his skin, reflecting like silver veins in the firelight. Droplets beaded silver in his pubic hair.
“Stand there while I find you dry things.” She waddled around to his bed and retrieved his buffalo hide. Wrapping it across his shoulders, she made sure the edges were well clear of the flames and backed onto the bench. Stripping off her own cloak, she realized she was as wet as he.
“Snakes, it feels good to be alone with you again.” She glanced at him. “What is happening to you? Salamander? Please, tell me.”
“You said Anhinga and Night Rain were expecting us?” At least that thought was lucid. Maybe his belly was eating through his grief.
“They are at my house. We thought it better. The food is there.”
And I have you alone for the first time in weeks.
“They do not expect us yet. Night Rain has just stepped outside. She can see the smoke plume through the rain.”
“How do you know that? You can’t see through walls—let alone that far across the plaza.”
“She doesn’t think we’re coming yet. She’s ducking inside, telling Anhinga we will be longer.”
“Salamander, you are frightening me! It’s as if you can hear my thoughts. Talk to me. Are you well?”
Just tell me that the spirits haven’t taken possession of your souls!
The corners of his lips curled, threads of smoke rising from the confines of the tentlike buffalo hide. “I am the only one in possession of my souls. They bind me like rawhide. They suffocate me. It is so hard to breathe.”
“What?” She placed a hand to her breast, searching his eyes for an answer.
“My souls are cages, like fish traps. I can’t get free of them.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You’ve never flown,” he whispered sadly, and closed his eyes.
“Flown?” she asked. “How did you fly?”
“Masked Owl comes. He shows me the way.” His eyes were still closed, expression turning blissful. “Why can’t I ever do it on my own? Why can’t I break the cages that surround my souls?”
“Because you’ll die,” she cried.
“Death is release.” He smiled. “I never understood until the Serpent told me.”
“You really did talk to his souls?”
“It isn’t like speaking, Pine Drop. It’s different. Dreaming. I Dreamed him. I Dreamed them all. Saw into their souls.”
“What do you mean, Dreamed them all? The other Speakers? The Clan Elders?”
“They are so bitter. Their souls taste like green walnut rind. They leave a yellow cast within me.”
She nodded. “So many hands are raised against you, and I never hear a cross word, never see your temper flash. And sometimes, like today, you are gone somewhere, flying on Masked Owl’s wings, I think.”
She saw his smile growing. Her words had touched him.
“Salamander? They are drawing the net around you. You know that, don’t you?”
He gave the barest nod.
“You can’t just let them trap you.”
“I am who I am.” He was talking to emptiness again, eyes still closed. “I learn, watch, and absorb the lessons. I am Salamander, the one never seen. I have Danced with the mushrooms. I am floating.”
“Mushrooms?” she asked, heart tapping hard against her breastbone. “What mushrooms?”
“I see your soul, Pine Drop. I see our daughter’s life, glowing like an ember inside you.”
You really are scaring me.
“I’m sorry. You have no reason to fear me.”
Are you a mystic, or an idiot?
“You must understand: I am caught between Masked Owl and Many Colored Crow. The Serpent told me the night he died. Masked Owl killed White Bird.”
“What?” She was suddenly oblivious to the water that ran down her forearms from the soggy fabric.
“He was warned, but his pride wouldn’t let him stop. The goosefoot seeds, they would have changed this place. Changed us as a
people. Masked Owl doesn’t think it’s time. So he killed White Bird.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The Brothers, the Hero Twins. Born of Light, Born of Dark. Wolf Dreamer, Raven Hunter: the Two who make One.”
“You see this in the Dream?”
“Yes.”
“You’re a Serpent?”
“No. I am the place where Dreams cross.” His smile seemed to cast a glow into the gloomy interior.
“But … but Masked Owl. He is your Spirit Helper,” she stammered, trying to understand. “And he
killed
your brother?”
“It is a battle for the souls of men. Just like the one being fought here. Between the clans. Power sways and rises, like mating copperheads, twining and spinning, Dancing, and pulling apart. Look at it! So very beautiful—and so deadly! We are all part of the One, forever split apart, lonely, yet united. I see now. I begin to understand.”
He spread his arms wide. The buffalo robe unfolded like huge wings.
She gasped at the sight of his naked body. Lit from below, his thighs, the tip of his penis, his bony rib cage, and his jaw glowed orange. Shadows were cast across the hollows of his hips, over the twin arcs of his breasts. His eyes were hidden in blackness atop his lighted cheeks, his brow golden under a dark forehead. A man of fire and shadow, he stood before her, and she felt Power swelling within him.
“Salamander?” she asked timidly.
“Summer,” he said suddenly. “I have until the solstice. They will move then.”
“How can you fight them?” She shook her head. “Salamander, they are suspicious of me, but even I know that every clan is being turned against you. Deep Hunter is rabid, especially after Anhinga wounded and scarred Saw Back.” She clenched her teeth. “The Speaker, my uncle, suspects you of murdering Eats Wood. The young man has disappeared, and no one knows where.”
She was watching his face, searching for any reaction as she asked, “Did you have words with him? Did he threaten you?”
“I said nothing to him.”
She heaved a sigh. “Snakes, I was worried.”
His head tilted, the birdlike image ever sharper. “You may have to choose: Light, or Dark. You may have to Dream with us.”
She closed her eyes, souls dulling.
Blessed Sky Beings, what am I involved in here?
“Don’t ask me to go against my clan, Salamander. Don’t put me in that position.”
“Would you chose the clan,” he asked, “or the People?”
“I am nothing without the clan. Kinship is who we are. Without it, we are lost. Nothing. Faceless and nameless.”
“Nothingness is all there is,” he told her sadly. “It is the One. You can only understand when you Dance with it. The clans, this struggle to dominate, it is all empty, Pine Drop. In the end, it is as bitter as a green nightshade stem. Illusion, spinning around us like a waterspout.”
“So you will just let them destroy you?”
“You stand at the center of the world, Pine Drop. When the time comes, you will reach out and pick a direction.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The navel,” he answered. “The place where life starts, and peoples are born. Something special is happening here. See it growing? Carried by the Trade, borne by the bonds we form. The future flows from within our ridges. Like that infant in your womb, Pine Drop, we have made the future. Sun Town is the starting point. The clans don’t understand. They are bound, circumscribed by their mighty mounds.”

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