People of the Owl: A Novel of Prehistoric North America (North America's Forgotten Past) (59 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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For her turn, Night Rain couldn’t stand the slow pace of life in the camps and outlying settlements. After several days, the monotony, the limited companionship, and boredom set in. She swore she would pull her hair out if she couldn’t return to Sun Town with its constant activity, games, feasts, and visiting.
Water Stinger surprised her when he directed her off the beaten route just outside of Raspberry Camp. Following a faint trail in the grass, he led her over the sloping embankment and down the steep incline. The way wound around roots of walnut, oak, and sweetgum. A spongy leaf mat muffled their steps as the path leveled into a brushy bottom.
Pushing through the willows and cane, Water Stinger led her into
a small clearing. There the willows had been pushed flat and several canoes dragged up onto the crushed vegetation.
To one side, Red Finger had his arms crossed. Uncle and Mother stood over a mud-stained canoe, faces grim in the morning light. Sweet Root’s face reflected anger, grief, and frustration. Uncle just seemed to brood as he fingered the elbow of his ruined arm. Of them all, Red Finger had a look of satisfaction.
“What is this?” Night Rain asked as she stepped forward to stare down at the canoe. At first she didn’t recognize what she saw: A large yellow gourd with holes in it, bits of sticks and … “Snakes!” She placed a hand over her pounding heart. “Who is it?”
“Do you recognize the canoe?” Uncle asked softly.
She studied the craft, seeing the familiar lines. “It looks like Eats Wood’s.” She swallowed hard, leaning forward, fingers pressed to her breastbone. What she had first taken as sticks and a gourd were long bones and a skull. What might have been collapsed willow stays from a fish trap could only be the remains of a rib cage.
Looking more closely she could see that the body had been laid out, supine, the arms and legs straight. Muddy water had yellowed the remains. Waterlogged brown fabric about the waist had been a breechcloth. She could see the familiar turtle motif woven into the cloth. Eats Wood’s mother was quite a weaver. While Night Rain couldn’t be absolutely positive, she was pretty sure that that cloth had come from the old woman’s loom.
“Where did you find him?” The fingers at her breast had closed into a knotted fist.
“Deep in the Swamp Panther’s territory.” Red Finger shifted. “Believe it or not, a crow led me to him.”
“A crow?”
“But for the bird, no one would have ever found Eats Wood. His killers sank the canoe with his body in it. Once it was submerged, they wedged it under the roots of a cypress, where it wouldn’t come loose.” Red Finger shook his head.
“We were meant to find him,” Uncle said as he massaged the scar tissue on his arm. “Your crow was a messenger. Power leading us to justice.”
“You think the Swamp Panthers did this?” Night Rain asked incredulously. “Why would they hide the body?”
“They wouldn’t,” Sweet Root answered. “This isn’t war, silly child.”
“I don’t understand.” She was shaking her head, staring at the oblong hole in the top of Eats Wood’s round skull.
Mud Stalker leaned forward, his hard brown eyes burning into hers. “We’re talking
murder
!”
Murder? “Why would the Swamp Panthers murder Eats Wood?”
“They didn’t,” Sweet Root hissed. “If they had killed him, they would have taken his body to the Panther’s Bones and strewn the pieces around like the animals they are.”
“Think, Night Rain!” Uncle leaned closer, his eyes boring through her. “Who travels to the Swamp Panthers every moon? Who would have had a reason to hide the body instead of abusing it? Who would have done anything to
avoid
having to face us with our kinsman’s death?”
“Snakes, you think Anhinga did this?”
“She’s very good with an ax,” Sweet Root reminded. “If you will recall, daughter.”
Night Rain stared wide-eyed at the oblong hole in the top of Eats Wood’s skull. “You think Eats Wood would have let her drive an ax into his head? He knew what happened to Saw Back. I heard him say he’d never be that stupid.”
“Look at him, Cousin. Look hard, then you tell me what you think.” Red Finger crossed his arms.
“There is a way to prove what we suspect,” Uncle replied stiffly. “That is, assuming you still have any loyalty to your clan.” He pinned her with his eyes. “How is it with you, Night Rain? Are you still Snapping Turtle Clan, or are you someone else? Someone who betrays her blood and kin. Someone without relatives?”
Her throat tightened, and she wished she were anywhere but here, looking down on these pitiful remains. “How can we be sure? I mean, how can we know that Anhinga did this? Only bones are left.”
Red Finger bent down, picking up the globe of the skull. Muddy water drained from the big hole where the spine had been. It spattered off the damp wood and pattered onto her bare legs. She cringed at the feel of it on her warm skin.
Mud Stalker frowned, pained, as he studied the skull. “It doesn’t take long for the crawfish, minnows, and bugs to clean up a body, does it?” He indicated the oblong wound in the top. “Here, Night Rain. This will tell us.”
“How?”
“I want you to bring me Anhinga’s ax.” Mud Stalker gave her a blunt stare. “You can do that, can’t you? Borrow it? Sometime when she isn’t looking?”
“I … Uncle, don’t ask me to do this.”
“You
owe
us!” Mud Stalker thrust his face into hers. “
We are your kin!
”
She stepped back, desperate to get away from him.
“Or do you serve someone besides your own flesh and blood?” Sweet Root asked. “Is it Deep Hunter? Salamander? Or perhaps that witch, Anhinga?”
“Have you forgotten your ancestors?” Red Finger asked, a sneer on his lips. “Would you rather serve strangers than your clan? Would you leave your cousin’s, Eats Wood’s, souls to wail over the injustice of his murder while you laugh with his killers?”
Night Rain couldn’t catch her breath. She glanced from face to face. Water Stinger had stood to the rear, his expression brooding and angry.
“Do this thing,” Uncle added in a softer tone, “and all will be forgiven between us. You and I will begin again on a new footing … as if the problem with Deep Hunter, and your betrayal, never happened.” He paused. “Night Rain, do you understand the opportunity we are giving you?”
She bit her lip and nodded, feeling her heart thudding in her chest. “Yes, Uncle.”
“Good.” Mud Stalker took a deep breath, stepping back to look down into the canoe. “In the meantime, I think we should tell Pine Drop. Have her—”
“No,” Night Rain whispered. “Don’t tell her yet. Salamander will find out. She will demand an answer from him. Anhinga will find out, and her ax will be gone long before I can get to it.”
“What makes you think Night Rain can manage this?” Sweet Root asked Uncle in a caustic voice. “She couldn’t even manage a meeting with her young lover without getting wound up in another’s snare.”
“I can
do
this!” Night Rain stamped her foot. “If it means fixing the damage I have done, I can.” She took a breath of the muggy air and waved at a pesky fly that came to buzz around her ear. “I will get Anhinga’s ax. No one will know. Not even Pine Drop.”
S
alamander saw morning come from his perch atop the Bird’s Head. As he watched Sun Town in the hazy yellow light, he saw it as Many Colored Crow had shown him in the vision: abandoned, burned, and littered with rotting corpses and wreckage. That scene had filled his nightmares, now it intruded into his waking thoughts.
The full moon hanging over the western horizon had depressed him further. When it came full again, it would coincide with the summer solstice. If his vision was correct, he had that long to find a solution. The tendrils of his souls could feel the strands of Power pulling tight.
After breakfast with Anhinga he walked to the canoe landing where Yellow Spider worked on a new canoe. The sky that day had a hazy white cast, and the sun’s heat beat down unmercifully. On Morning Lake the milky brown waters shot beams of light from sluggish waves. They lapped at the muddy shore in irregular and weak splashes.
Salamander squinted his eyes at the acrid smoke that boiled out of the hollow cypress log. Yellow Spider had towed it in from the heart of the swamp several days ago. He had had his eye on this particular bald cypress for several turnings of the seasons. The trunk was straight, fine-grained, and just the right diameter for a good Trade canoe. Last summer, after his return from upriver, he had ringed the tree by cutting through the bark. After killing it, he had allowed the wood to cure over the long fall and winter.
Now the partially formed hull had been muscled up onto the beach, and the laborious process of burning out the interior had begun.
Salamander waved at a shining black fly that tried to suck sweat from his forehead. He watched as the pest rose, buzzing in a lazy circle—and was in turn snatched from the air by a long green dragonfly.
“Sometimes things do work out for the best,” he called after the departing dragonfly.
“What was that?” Yellow Spider asked as he added kindling to a pile of coals in the hollow. Flames crackled as blue smoke rose in a smudge.
“Occasionally good comes of the right timing.” Salamander changed the grip on his adze and began chipping at the charcoal inside the cavity. Making a canoe was an art that involved moving fire constantly up and down the interior of the boat. The burn had to be hot enough to char the wood, but not so hot as to split the grain. Easy at first when the log was thick, it became a great deal trickier when the hull began to thin.
For two days Salamander and Yellow Spider had been at the chore while Bluefin made the Trade run for Swamp Panther sandstone. He chipped charcoal loose and flicked it back into the fire to be completely consumed. All in all, though slow, it was a great deal easier than hacking hard cypress wood out by hand.
Yellow Spider bent to his work, satisfied the fire was burning as he wished. For a time nothing but the hollow
thunk
,
thunk
of their adzes disturbed the morning. That, and more flies, drawn by their sweat.
Yellow Spider straightened and ran a hand over his damp forehead. “Did you know that Moccasin Leaf has been talking to people in the lineages?”
“She is saying that it is time that I was replaced as Speaker,” Salamander replied flatly. “There is talk that I am not worthy of being Speaker. That I have been dabbling in witchcraft.”
Yellow Spider nodded. “People are uneasy, Salamander. Some think you had something to do with your mother losing her souls. Others think you and Anhinga have forged some kind of destructive alliance, that you are plotting with her to harm the People.” He shook his head. “I don’t understand it. I’ve never seen you act like a witch.”
“I frighten them.”
Yellow Spider stopped short and stared. “I thought they just didn’t like you.”
“It’s not that. I’m something they can’t understand. They can feel the Power that has wound around me. It whispers to their souls, but they can’t quite hear the words. They can feel the struggle about to be unleashed.”
“What struggle?”
“For the future of the People. I am supposed to choose.”
Yellow Spider’s soft brown eyes looked puzzled. “I don’t understand. No one wants you to choose anything.”
“Masked Owl does, and so does Many Colored Crow.”
“So, choose one. Why should that be so difficult? People align themselves with Spirit Helpers all the time. I should be so lucky to have Power interested in me.”
Salamander could only stare at his cousin. “You don’t have the faintest idea what you are saying.”
Yellow Spider waved at the noxious blue smoke that curled around him and tapped his chest. “I’d ask for prestige, a beautiful wife, and long happy days filled with friends.”
Salamander smiled sadly. “Then Many Colored Crow should have gone to you instead of me. He has offered me those things.”
“So, why don’t you take them?”
“Because if I do, Masked Owl will probably drill a hole through me with a bolt of lighting.”
Yellow Spider squinted one eye. “You’re right. Choose Masked Owl instead.”
“If I do, all of this”—he gestured a big circle to include Sun Town—“will be gone by next summer solstice. Deep Hunter and Mud Stalker will turn the clans against each other, Cousin. Those of our people who are not killed outright will flee into the forests. The Dream that is Sun Town will die.”
“You’re right. Better that it’s only you who gets drilled by lightning.” Yellow Bird tried to make a joke of it but failed. “Sorry, Cousin.”
Salamander took a deep breath. “When you boil the fat off the alligator, what you have left is a choice between my souls and the greater good. I could go off and Dream the One, my souls in bliss. Or I could become the greatest leader our people has ever known. Whichever way I choose, it will be at another’s expense. Masked Owl said that if I choose Many Colored Crow’s way, uncounted people will end up as slaves. If I choose Masked Owl’s way, Many Colored Crow has shown me the destruction of our people.”
Yellow Spider parked himself on the unfinished gunwale upwind from the fire. He flicked his adze as he asked, “I don’t understand this. Why you?”
Salamander shrugged. “I don’t think they planned it this way. Lines of Power have come together in a way that leaves Masked Owl and Many Colored Crow trapped in two possible futures. For them it is one or the other. Because of the way the lines of Power came together, they just happened to cross on me.”
“Like the lines on your chest?”
Salamander nodded, feeling the muscles in his back knot as he chipped at the charcoal. “Cousin, I want you to promise me something.”
“Anything, Salamander.”
“I have something in mind. Maybe it’s a way out of this.”
Yellow Spider glanced up, his face sooty from the fire. “Such as?”
“I can’t tell you. You’ll just have to wait and see.”
“Salamander, maybe if you shared this idea of yours with someone, it might help.”
He smiled wanly. “You will just have to trust me, Cousin.”
“I’m not sure I understand what—”
“I need you to promise that you will support what I’m about to do. I am going to ask you to do certain things for me. They will need to be done quickly and just as I say. I want you to tell me right now that you won’t argue or make trouble for me.”
“What you’re saying doesn’t make any sense.”
“Neither will the instructions I give you. But believe me, it’s the only way out.”
“What is?”
“If this doesn’t work, if the clans turn on each other, I want you to promise me something more.”
“Of course.”
“When it looks like fighting is going to break out, I want you to take some kinsmen and capture Pine Drop and Night Rain and my children. Take them far away. North to the Wolf People, or up to Spring Cypress among the Wash’ta, I don’t care.”
“What about Anhinga?”
“Send her south right away if anything happens to me. Saw Back and Deep Hunter will move on her immediately. You might have to bind and gag her, but get her out first thing. Deliver her to Jaguar Hide in person if you have to.”
“And hope I get back alive,” Yellow Spider muttered.
“He will let you go for keeping his niece safe.”
“Then I take it you are going to choose Masked Owl?”
“I have something else in mind.”
“What?”
“The price I have to pay,” Salamander said pointedly.
“The way you’re speaking is scaring me, Cousin.”
“Not half as much as it scares me.”
P
ine Drop cried out, her body jerking her awake. She sat up, feeling for her daughter. The baby cried in the darkness as Pine Drop lifted her to a nipple and struggled to catch her breath.
“Are you all right?” Night Rain asked from her bed across the room.
Pine Drop blinked in the darkness, smelling the charcoal scent from the smoldering fire pit. “A Dream. By the Sky Beings, I’ve never had a Dream that vivid.”
“What was it about?” Night Rain shuffled under her deerhide. Pine Drop heard her yawn.
“I was on the Bird’s Head. Way up at the top. It was morning, the sun rising behind my right shoulder as I looked off into the West.”
“The Land of the Dead?”
“Yes. The sky was lavender and pink, so wonderfully colorful, and someone was standing in the distance. Huge, as if rising out of the forest and towering over it. In spite of the light, he was shadowy, vague. Looking through the light was like looking through mist. I couldn’t make out the face at first, and then I recognized him.”
“Who?” Sleep filled Night Rain’s voice.
“Salamander.” Pine Drop shivered, remembering the sight.
“In the Land of the Dead?”
Pine Drop nodded in the darkness. “He was looking at me with such longing. I could see the sadness in his eyes. He reached out with one hand, but as soon as I started to reach back, he shook his head and lowered his arm.”
“You mean, if you would have taken his hand you would have been pulled into the Land of the Dead?”
“Yes. He wouldn’t let me. Snakes! I wanted to, Night Rain. I wanted to like I’ve never wanted anything before.”
“Wanted to be dead?”
“Yes, maybe. Pus and blood, I don’t know. I just wanted to be with him.”
“It’s just a Dream, Sister. Go back to sleep.”
“I can’t.” She paused, eyes searching the darkness. “I don’t know how it happened?”
“How he died you mean?”
“That, too, but no. I mean I don’t understand how I came to love him so much. Remember when we were married? How horrified we were?”
“And how nasty we were to him.”
“I would go back and change that if I could.”
From the darkness, Night Rain said softly, “Me too.”
“I never expected to fall in love with him.” She shook her head. “What is it about him? He’s not even a single turning of the seasons past boyhood, but he seems so much older. Why did Masked Owl choose him?”
“You really think that Salamander talks to Masked Owl, don’t you?”
“Night Rain, I’ve seen things that I haven’t told you about. I wasn’t supposed to see him with Masked Owl, but I have.”
“You were spying?”
“No. It’s not that. I don’t know how to explain it, but I know that Salamander is in great danger. I just don’t know what to do about it. Night Rain, what if something happens to him? I’ve lost two husbands already. As much as I loved Blue Feather, I have come to love Salamander more. He is greater than any of us know. The Power that fills him frightens me at the same time it thrills me. When I look into his eyes, there is something there, some patient caring that makes my souls yearn.”
“I’m happy for you, Sister.”
“I’m scared, Night Rain. Scared that something is going to take him away from me. I can feel it.”
“Well, walk over to Salamander’s and crawl into bed with him and Anhinga. At least you’ll sleep.”

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