People of the Owl: A Novel of Prehistoric North America (North America's Forgotten Past) (56 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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“You will do this thing, won’t you?” Night Rain’s voice pinched with excitement.
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know? You could be the greatest Speaker ever! You would have Many Colored Crow as a Spirit Helper! No one could stand against you.”
Then Heron’s words echoed in his memory. “
Everything comes at a price
.”
T
he day had turned out clear but humid. Sunlight touched the leaves with a green that almost wounded the eyes. Brightly colored
birds flitted among the trees. Thick curls of vines bloomed, the colored flowers at odds with the tiny green blossoms on the tupelo.
“I just can’t believe Deep Hunter and Mud Stalker would start a war between the clans! Would they really stoop to murdering their rivals?” Salamander cried as he helped Anhinga bait and drop one of the fish traps into the current. He played out the thin cord that tied it to a wooden float with its identifying owl carved in the weathered wood.
Their canoe sat in the middle of one of the winding channels, riding on smooth chocolate waters. The spring flood was marching across the bottoms, carrying silt and water into the backswamps. With it came fish, eager to feed in the newly created shallows, to breed and lay their eggs. Life was coming to the bottomland swamp.
In the rear of the canoe, Water Petal watched him with uneasy eyes. “There are stories of witchcraft circulating about you, Cousin. If they will lie to get you murdered, why not someone else?” When she used the paddle to drive them forward, smooth muscles made her greased skin shine.
“He is no witch!” Anhinga declared, then glanced suspiciously at Salamander. “Are you?”
“No.”
“Did you bury one of those little statues under Pine Drop’s bed?” Anhinga was watching him with hard eyes. “I saw where the dirt had been disturbed.”
“Yes.”
“Did you dispose of it?” She glanced thoughtfully back at her baby where it rode in the cane cradleboard.
“I did. Just as the Serpent told me to.”
“What is this?” Water Petal asked.
“I wanted my wives to have healthy deliveries. Relax, Cousin. It was the Serpent’s charm, not something from the dark side of Power.”
“You worry me,” Water Petal told him.
He chuckled uncomfortably. “You have no idea what worry is. One night I Dream and I fly with Masked Owl, knowing he drove a lightning bolt through White Bird. The next, it is Many Colored Crow who comes to talk to me in my sleep. Each wants me to choose his way.” He dared not mention Heron. She was the most enigmatic of all. “I just don’t know what the right choice is. Everything is coming together here, and I am right in the middle of it.”
“That is an understatement.” Water Petal sent them deeper into the channel, her face marked with unhappiness.
Salamander took the moment to study Anhinga. She, too, looked uneasy. A tension lay behind her pretty face; something smoldered behind her eyes. With the sunlight glistening in her raven black hair, she looked dangerous yet vulnerable. An irresistible combination. He stifled the sudden urge to reach out and run his fingers down her muscular thigh. Since giving birth, both she and Pine Drop seemed oblivious to his sexual desires. Water Petal had told him that would pass with time.
“I feel trapped,” he said. “Whatever decision I make, I will offend one or the other.”
“I’d keep an eye on the clans, Cousin,” Water Petal retorted. “Within a moon, they will act to remove you from the Council. You know that threat is coming. What about the ones that are being planned in secret? Who can tell when someone might call you a witch and use that excuse to sneak up behind you and smack your skull in two!”
He gave her a wry smile. “I should be worried about a simple smack from behind when a lightning bolt might explode my head the way it did White Bird’s? Somehow, upsetting Masked Owl or Many Colored Crow is a little different than worrying about Mud Stalker and Deep Hunter.”
“You could leave,” Anhinga told him. Her dark eyes burned. “You don’t have to stay here. You could come with me. We could go to the Panther’s Bones, and you could leave these people who do not appreciate you.”
He reached out and took her hand, beguiled by her desperation. “I thank you for that, Wife. Your offer means more to me than I can ever tell you. As much as I would like to have that freedom, it wouldn’t solve my trouble here.”
“It would take you away from Sun People who want to murder you!”
“Masked Owl could drop a tree on me down at the Panther’s Bones just as well as he could here. Spirit Helpers aren’t bound by human territories.”
“As you described it, Many Colored Crow would make us great,” Water Petal said thoughtfully. “Our clan would become preeminent. No one could challenge us. Imagine that, Salamander. Owl Clan would be forever. Everyone else would be obliged to us. The uncertainty would be gone. We would lead the Council.”
“At a price, Cousin.” He reached for another piece of bait and dropped it into the next fish trap. “Power doesn’t promise these things freely. You speak of obligation? What would we owe Many
Colored Crow?” He shook his head. “The Hero Twins are just like us—like our clans. If you just choose one, the balance will be ruined. The harmony that we have tried so hard to maintain will be broken.”
Anhinga was weighing his words, a frown on her smooth face as she played out the cord while the trap sank in the murky water.
“Did we do so badly?” Water Petal asked. “Has Thunder Tail been a better leader in the Council than Wing Heart? What of Mud Stalker if he is chosen for the leadership? Would Deep Hunter have been better than Cloud Heron over the turnings of the seasons? Or, Snakes help us, Cane Frog? Could she have done the things your mother and uncle did? Our lineage has been good for Sun Town, Salamander. Look at the building we have done! The ridges are finished. People live in constant protection from the forces of the North and West. We are Trading with peoples we have never heard of before. Life is good.”
He nodded, unable to argue with her. “That might have been luck.”
“Luck?” Water Petal asked.
Anhinga raised a questioning eyebrow.
“What if Mother hadn’t been chosen to follow Grandmother? What if Moccasin Leaf had been chosen Clan Elder instead? Would life still be good?”
Water Petal’s eyes hardened.
“This talk is helpful, but it doesn’t dig down under the guts where the real question lies.” He dropped a square of fish meat into the next trap and with Anhinga’s help, lowered it over the side. The marker float bobbed in the current as Water Petal steered them down the channel.
“And just what do you think lies under the guts?” Anhinga asked.
“Doing what is right,” he answered. “Not just for us, not just for Sun Town, but for everyone.”
“Right? By the Panther’s blood, what is right?” Anhinga’s frown deepened. “What is right for Sun Town will not be right for my people. Even your own clans have different ideas about what is right.”
“That, Anhinga, is my problem,” he told her. “How I can choose what is best for everyone?”
Water Petal cocked her head. “Salamander, why should you have to?”
“What?”
“Why should
you
have to do this? Why not someone else? Why did Power choose
you
?”
He shook his head sadly. “I don’t know, Cousin. All I can tell you is that if I don’t choose correctly, I just know something bad is going to happen.”
A
shaft of ocher light bored through the Dream, as though barely penetrating a midnight gloom. Anhinga stood passively—partially hidden. She could barely discern the grim surroundings. Darkness swirled at the edges, as if smoke choked the air and devoured the reddish light that illuminated the place. Dark shadows, beings of some sort, flickered and twisted at the sides of her vision. She could barely make them out—only that they were whip-thin, quick, and dangerous. In the center, the bloody light bathed five somber young men.
Mist Finger stood at the head of the group. His arms were raised high, like a bird preparing to leap into flight. Behind him Cooter, Spider Fire, Right Talon, and Slit Nose followed his lead, lifting their arms at angles. About them, the eerie figures detached from the darkness, lunged, struck, and withdrew. The attackers were menacing, vaguely human, thin as whips, and so incredibly fast. They struck with blurred movement, and each touch of their sharp arms sliced skin on one of the youths. Each feint, each stroke, came with the rapidity of a snake’s lightning tongue.
Anhinga watched in horror as her friends’ bodies writhed in pain. Their faces twisted in terror. Why didn’t they run? Why didn’t they act to protect themselves? She found her voice, calling out, “Mist Finger?”
He turned terror-bright eyes on hers, his face contorted, the black hole of his mouth open in agony. “Dead,” she heard him say.
“Get away!” she cried. “All of you, flee! Run! Escape!”
Yet they stood, arms lifted, heads rolling as they flinched from each blow given them by the darting wraiths. Their bodies shone red as blood slicked their quivering skin in sheets. Each gaping cut hung open, and beneath the cleanly sliced skin she could see exposed muscles straining and jumping like knotted ropes.
The darting manlike shadows continued their dance, flitting, slashing with pointed hands. Anhinga stifled a cry as patches of skin began to hang, draping like soggy cloth. Her friends opened their mouths and shrieked—but she heard only silence.
“
Run!
” she pleaded, clasping her hands in front of her as she sank to her knees. “In Panther’s name, run!”
Cold stone ate into her knees as tears streaked down her cheeks.
The shadowy apparitions ducked, whirled, and lanced out with greater frenzy.
Anhinga saw sections of muscle sliced away, bloody bone exposed here, entrails dropping out of gut cavities there. And still the screams her ears could not hear shattered her souls.
Bit by bit their guts came tumbling out, falling past their savaged crotches to puddle in a slippery mess at their feet. It didn’t end as bits of their bodies were flayed away. It didn’t even end when only crimson skeletons stood teetering in the gaudy light, bits of sinew hanging like web from the brutalized bone.
The darting wraiths continued to collect in the smoky shadows only to strike repeatedly. Now each flashing stab of arm or leg neatly severed a bone from the wavering remains.
One last strike snapped Mist Finger’s blood-matted skull from his neck, sending it tumbling down. Like a gourd, it spattered into the steaming viscera, and rolled down to rock on its side no more than an arm’s length before Anhinga’s face.
Wide-eyed, she stared into that grisly visage. Where once Mist Finger’s dark brown eyes had rested, now raw hollows rimmed with torn tissue gaped. Blood caked the skull’s teeth as it gave her a thin grin.
“What can I do, Mist Finger?” she wailed, sagging further toward the cold stone floor.
The voice, lonely, as dismembered as the corpse before her, hissed, “
Kill them, Anhinga. Kill them for all of us. It is time! Send our souls some relief. Make them pay … for us!
”
Jerking awake, she bolted upright, surprised at the vividness of the Dream. Cool air washed over her sweat-slick skin. Her daughter was crying in the darkness, disturbed by her thrashing.
A Dream! Blessed Panther, only a Dream. She closed her eyes, seeing that blood-smeared skull staring back from her memory. So real, as if Mist Finger’s Dream Soul had been wrapped around hers.
She rubbed a nervous hand over her damp face. Tangles of hair clung to her clammy cheeks.
“It is time, Anhinga,” she whispered to herself. “It is time to do what you came here to do.”
She reached out, feeling the bed where Salamander usually lay. Empty. He was at Pine Drop’s on this night.
Her fingers caressed his bedding, tracing the memory of his face. She could see his worried eyes, sense the tension in the set of his lips. If she tried, she could imagine the beating of his heart.
“
I
think you should be fasting,” Bobcat said to Salamander as he leaned forward and lit the end of his stone pipe with a twig from the fire. The mixture of sumac, sweetgum, and wild cherry leaves left an acrid tang in the air.
The Serpent’s house was new; but the poles, saplings, and vines that supported the roof already had stained to a dark amber color. The place smelled new, having yet to develop that characteristic smoke-flavored stuffiness of an old house. The plaster hadn’t been smudged by greased bodies.
Bobcat leaned back, puffing contentedly, and raised his eyebrows as he studied Salamander. “I don’t know what more to tell you, my friend. Perhaps if the old Serpent had lived? Who knows? He might have known what you could do to prepare yourself.”
Salamander squirmed as he leaned forward on the pole bench. He propped his elbows on his knees and blew through his fingers before saying, “Fasting would do little good.”
“Purification always helps when it comes to the ways of Power.”
“In my case, I don’t need to find a vision. It seems like every time I close my eyes some Spirit Helper is chasing down my Dream Soul to impart advice. Masked Owl wants to lead me away to bliss as I Dance with the One. Many Colored Crow will give me the authority and prestige to save Sun Town from clan violence. He will make us great. That is the choice that looms before me. Enlightenment or fame and glory.”
“Given my calling, Salamander, I would have to choose enlightenment. I can only imagine what the One must be like.” Bobcat shook his head. “Truly, friend. I wonder sometimes if I am not fooling myself and everyone around me by becoming the Serpent.”
“You know how to Sing the cures. You know the plants, Bobcat, and how to conjure their spirits to heal. I’ve been thrilled at the sound of your voice as you Sing the ceremonies.” Salamander paused. “I think being the Serpent is more than losing your souls in the search for the One. Many Colored Crow is right about that. You have a duty here, to do your best for the People.” He chuckled hollowly. “That is the trap, my friend. Do you save yourself? Or do you save others?”
“How can you save others if you do not save yourself first?” Bobcat asked.
“For that, I have no answer.” Salamander rubbed his face. “But if you fall into the One, you will not want to leave it. I’ve touched it, felt its caress at the edges of my soul. It’s …”
“Yes?”
“More wonderful than I can ever tell you.”
Bobcat frowned at the wistful tone in Salamander’s voice. He puffed and exhaled a cloud of blue, thoughtful brown eyes watching the smoke rise. “I would give anything to have even that. Why don’t you just give in to the Dream? Let the rest of us sort this out on our own.”
“I have obligations.”
“Ah, yes, obligations.”
“They are what make us the Sun People, Bobcat. Obligations and responsibilities are what separate us from the animals.” Salamander pulled his hands back, studying the lines in his palms. “Snakes, I recall Mother giving me that lecture the night she sent me up the Bird’s Head. What I would give to be that simple boy again.”
“You could go away, Salamander. Take your wives and travel off to the Twin Circles Camp on the gulf. Or perhaps over to Yellow Mud Camp. We have camps and villages throughout the land for five days’ journey in any direction.”
“That might solve my problems here, but what about Many Colored Crow’s vision? Do you really think Deep Hunter and Mud Stalker could end up fighting? Could they really cause a war?”
Bobcat nodded seriously. “Yes, my friend. I believe it. They are driven men who see an opportunity. Owl Clan’s very success has led them to desperation.”
“If I choose one, how does the other react? If I choose Many
Colored Crow, is my head split by a lightning bolt the next day?”
“If you leave, you are no longer at the center. Maybe they will lose interest in you.”
“And maybe they will torment me and my wives for having disappointed them!”
“Well, you never can tell about Spirit Helpers.”
“Thanks.”
“I don’t feel like I’m doing you much good.”
“What would the Serpent have said?” Salamander mused. “What do you think he would have told me to do?”
Bobcat squinted one eye as he inspected the sooty end of his tubular stone pipe. “I think he would have told you to listen to your souls and to follow their bidding.”
“My souls are full of questions and troubles, Serpent. They have no answers.” Salamander rubbed his hands together as he watched the smoking fire pit. The pattern in the coals eluded him. “I know things about the future. I have seen Sun Town burned and abandoned. I have seen it strong and invincible. I have seen myself dead in one vision, and old and joyous in another.”
“You have?”
Salamander nodded. “I’ve heard voices whispering on the future’s wind as it blows to the past. I’ve caught flashes of things. Things I don’t understand. Tens of tens of canoes paddling to Sun Town in some visions. And great evil like a foul cloud settling onto us in others.”
“Is this some evil I can fight?”
“No, my friend. Not unless you have a salve for the souls of men.”
“In that realm, I am lost, Salamander.”
“So am I.”
T
he day was mild, the hazy sky filled with occasional patches of white cloud that sailed northward on the endless breeze. Salamander sat at the edge of the ramada, drilling holes in bison bone while Wing Heart sat at her loom, humming and talking to the ghosts, her gray head nodding back and forth.
In the northern half of the plaza, the moiety’s solstice team practiced pitching. They used sticks as long as a person’s leg, flattened at the far end to cup and sling a deerhide ball. Made up of young men and a few women from the Northern clans, the team would defend the moiety at the conclusion of the summer solstice ceremonies.
In the game the teams represented the struggle of the Powers of the North and South. It was thought that the winning side would be favored by luck and the Spirit Beings during the coming turning of the seasons.
If only it could be so easy
. Salamander watched the sleek bodies, greased and streaked with sweat. Yellow Spider ran in the fore, gracefully dipping his stick, flipping the ball up, and while still hanging in the air, batting it with the flat to send it flying forward.
But no game would settle Salamander’s dilemma. He rubbed his hands together and picked up his bow drill. With the device, he could drill holes in beads with dispatch. The hardwood drill stem was pointed by a red chert perforator, essentially a stone needle crafted from a flake. He would twist the stem around his small bowstring, place the tip into the dimple in the end of the bead, and, using a wooden block to guide the stem, saw the bow back and forth to spin the drill. A drop of saliva eased the tip as it cut through the soft bone in the bison scapula.
Drilling the hole was only the start of the process. Short sections of cane, essentially hollow tubes of different diameters, lay ready for use. Beside them on the palmetto matting sat two bowls, one filled with sand, the other with water. Sun Town, lying as it did on fine silt, had no sand deposits. Sand, like so many things, was imported from afar. Salamander’s had been sifted through fabric to obtain the correct grit, and then shipped in by canoe. He had Traded some of the buffalo hide for it that he had in turn obtained from Green Crane and Always Fat the summer before.
Once he had finished the line of holes, he removed his drill and selected one of the sections of cane, studying the size of the hole it would bore. He wet the end, dipped it in the bowl of sand, and fitted it to his bow. In the bead-making process, this final step was the most important. It took great concentration to start the cut so that the sand-tipped cane would grind a precisely round groove around the center hole in the bead. If he were not perfect, the bead would be off-center.
Salamander didn’t realize his tongue hung out the side of his mouth as he fitted the cane over the first of the holes in the bison scapula.
“Have you ever thought of drilling the hole afterward?” Mud Stalker asked, his shadow blotting the sunlight.
Salamander looked up. “It’s harder to hold a small bead and drill the center than it is to do it this way.” He cocked his head. “We always make beads this way. Even when we’re making them of stone.”
Mud Stalker smiled, the lines in his face deepening. “Yes, but you like to do things differently than most people, Speaker.” Knees crackled as he squatted, his ruined arm cradled in his lap. A faint smile bent his sun-creased lips as he looked at Wing Heart. The old woman’s fingers plucked at the fabric on her loom. He raised his voice. “Good Morning, Wing Heart!”
Salamander’s mother remained oblivious, her lips moving as she talked soundlessly to her lost souls.
“Can I be of help, Speaker?” Salamander asked.
Mud Stalker turned flinty eyes on him. “I thought perhaps we could have a little discussion, you and I.”
“Speak.” Salamander eyed his drill, positioned it just so, and began rotating the sand-encrusted cane. To his satisfaction it didn’t slip to one side or the other.
“I made you.”
“What?”
“I made you what you are, Salamander. Without me you would have had nothing. On White Bird’s death, the Speakership would have gone to Half Thorn.”
“I suppose.”
“Good. I’m glad that you have enough sense to understand that.” His eyes hardened. “You are in a great deal of danger, Salamander.”
He couldn’t stop the faint smile. “If only you knew, Speaker. But I think you are more worried about Pine Drop and Night Rain than any predicament I might find myself in.”
“I would like you to divorce my nieces.”
Salamander sawed back and forth on the bow as the drill ate its way through the bone. Only when the sand-tipped cane cut a clean round hole through the bone, did he look up. “Have you discussed this with Pine Drop?”
Mud Stalker’s gaze hardened. “She has decided that she will stay with you. I am hoping that you—obliged as you are to me—will be a little smarter than she is.” His smile widened. “I would not like anything to happen to you.”
Salamander carefully positioned his drill over the next of the holes. Using his block to bear down, he rotated the tip carefully to create a guide. “Speaker, let us make one thing clear, shall we?”
“Indeed, Salamander.”
“I admit that you had a hand in making me Speaker. You were responsible for my initiation at the Men’s House, and for all of that, odd as it may sound, I thank you.”
“Why would that sound odd?”
“Because each of the things you did for me was for your own
personal gain. You wanted me as Owl Clan Speaker precisely so that you could destroy me. Through me, you could strike at Mother and at Owl Clan. Given that fact, I have no obligation to you. That is the thing I would like made clear.”
Mud Stalker reached up with his left hand to stroke his chin. “Others might not see it that way, Salamander.”
“But I do, Mud Stalker. So does Pine Drop.” He smiled. “Night Rain is pregnant.”
“She hasn’t missed her moon yet!”
Salamander enjoyed the rasping sound of his drill as it ground through the bone. “Shall we dispense with the rest of our pleasantries? Stated as briefly as possible: I owe you nothing. You and I have no obligation between us. In fact, if memory serves, Snapping Turtle Clan still has obligations to Owl Clan in return for the many gifts that my brother, White Bird, bestowed upon you when he returned from the north.” With his chin, Salamander indicated the copper turtle hanging on Mud Stalker’s necklace.
The Speaker’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Do not attempt to remind me of my obligations.”
“It is the food that nourishes the clans, Speaker.” Salamander shot him a measuring glance. “Without obligation, we are nothing. Harmony disappears, and we end up at each other’s throats. Depending on what happens, will you remember that in your dealings with Deep Hunter?”
“I have the ability destroy you.”

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