People of the Owl: A Novel of Prehistoric North America (North America's Forgotten Past) (9 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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“What about your uncle?” Hazel Fire watched the interplay of emotions on White Bird’s handsome face. “You were worried that he might have died while you were gone.”
“He wasn’t well when I left last spring.” White Bird pursed his lips for a moment. “It was a gamble that Yellow Spider and I made. My mother is Clan Elder, her brother, my uncle, is Speaker for the clan when in Council. I told you, Power is passed through the mother in my people. When my uncle dies, my mother, as Elder, has the right to nominate another Speaker. I hope to be that Speaker.”
“Then what is the problem? Why can’t she just put your name forward?”
White Bird thumped his chest. “I’m young. Not even married.”
“You are to Lark. And, if I don’t miss my guess, the father of her child.”
“On my soul, take no offense from this, but she isn’t here, and none of my people recognize her clan. Formally, among the clans, she wouldn’t be recognized as a real wife.”
Hazel Fire nodded. “No offense is taken. So, let’s say you marry that pretty young thing I Dreamed about all night. Marry her and be Speaker.”
“Not that easy.” White Bird waved a cautionary finger. “Most men live all of their lives before they are nominated to be Speaker. It’s different for a wet-nosed boy like they consider me to be. That’s why Yellow Spider and I had to go so far north. That’s why we needed so much Trade. That’s why I had to risk so much. I had to do something spectacular, Hazel Fire. I may not have gone farther than any of our people have gone before, but I brought more Trade back from that distance than anyone else has.”
“For that alone they should name you Speaker.” Hazel Fire made a gesture with his fingers. “But what about your uncle? What if he would have been dead?”
“Mother would have had to nominate another Speaker. I’m the
only one left in her lineage. She had no sisters, just brothers. And Cloud Heron is the last of her brothers who is alive.”
“What about Cloud Heron’s children? Why don’t they qualify?”
“You forget, we trace descent through the woman. Uncle Cloud Heron’s children belong to his wife. Her name was Laced Fern, and she is a member of the Eagle Clan. So all of Cloud Heron’s children belong to the … ?” He cocked his head, an eyebrow raised to provoke the answer.
“The children are all Eagle Clan,” Hazel Fire supplied. “I understand.” He pressed his fingertips together. “Is it so bad for your lineage to lose the Speaker? Couldn’t some other clansman serve just as well?”
White Bird shrugged as he dug some of the silty mud from his drawing. Black and slick it stuck to his fingers. “Perhaps. This is difficult to explain, but neither my mother nor I wish to see another take over leadership of the clan. It has been in our lineage for three generations. I am the last. After me, it will go elsewhere because my children will belong to my wife’s clan.”
“Not the ones from Lark, if you’ll recall.”
“But Lark is a long way from here.”
“Yes, yes, I know, and your people probably consider her to be some kind of wild animal or something.”
“I never said that.”
“You didn’t have to.” Hazel Fire laughed. “That’s how my people would think of that pretty Spring Cypress if I carried her home; why wouldn’t it be the other way around?” In a more serious voice, he said, “Besides, there’s your little brother. What’s his name?”
White Bird made a face as he rolled the black silt into a small round ball. “We call him Mud Puppy.”
“Like a dog covered with mud?”
“No, a mud puppy is our name for immature brown salamanders. You know, before they are mature, when they still have those star-shaped gills sticking out behind their heads.” White Bird rubbed the silt ball between his hands. “Perhaps he’ll grow out of this stage he’s in, just like a mud puppy grows into a salamander.”
“He’s how old?”
“Just ten and five winters now.” He reached up to finger the fetishes on his necklace. “Mud Puppy as Speaker, now there’s a thought for amusement. They would destroy him.”
“Destroy?” Hazel Fire cocked his head. “What about all that talk about harmony?”
White Bird gave him a sober look, his dark eyes haunted. In a low voice, he said, “Why do you think we work so hard at it? Prominence
of the clans is everything to us. We give things to place people in our debt. Owing something to someone else holds us together like water holds this mud.” He lifted the silt ball. “Without gift giving and the obligation it implies, we are nothing. Barbarians. We need Trade to overcome our real nature. Without it, we would be at each other’s throats. I swear, within a generation, we would destroy ourselves.”
As he said that, he extended his hand, holding the silt ball between his fingers as he placed it into the water. Hazel Fire watched as the lapping waves melted the ball into goo.
M
ud Puppy sat on a cane mat in the sunlight on the eastern side of his mother’s house. Images from the Dream the night before burned through him, replaying between his souls with such clarity that he might have just seen them spun out of the misty morning sunlight. A shiver ran down his bones. He could sense the lingering Power that emanated from Masked Owl. It had been so real!
Frown lines ate into his forehead when he stared down at the cricket. As long as his thumb from knuckle to nail tip, its shell gleamed midnight black in the cup bottom. The antennae were waving in sinuous arcs. But, despite his vigilance, the cricket refused to surrender its secret. Crickets and Sky Beings—they both eluded him.
“What have you got there?” Mother’s words caught him by surprise. He looked up, seeing her standing beside him, her arms braced on her hips, face shadowed. The morning sun blazed like white fire in her silvered hair. She had left it down this morning, and it hung over her shoulders. Her white skirt was belted about her hips, leaving her top bare. Mud Puppy could see the line of tattoos, like a chain that circled her sagging breasts and merged to make a double row that ran down the midline of her stomach to surround her navel.
“It’s a cricket,” he replied in a low voice, wary and unsure. He never knew how she was going to react.
“A cricket?” Wing Heart seemed distracted, her face reflecting no emotion. “What are you doing with it?”
He swallowed hard, knowing better than to lie to her. “I told you about it last night. A cricket is such a small animal. I was trying to see why it makes such a great noise. I’ve been waiting patiently for cricket to sing, then I will discover his secret. You told me that patience was the footprint of greatness.” He hoped that would win him a little goodwill. It pleased her to have him repeat her teachings. “When cricket sings, I’ll rip off the bass leaf and see how he makes his noise.”
She chewed on the corner of her lip for a moment, then reached out with one hand. “Give it to me.”
Reluctantly, he extended the little gray ceramic cup with its bassleaf cover. She took it, removed the leaf, and stared down into the cup. “A cricket.”
“Yes, Mother.”
“Do you understand that your brother has returned? Did you see him last night? Are you aware of what he’s done?”
“I was at the landing last night. Me and Little Needle—”
“Ah, Little Needle. I’d wager that but for Little Needle you wouldn’t have had the slightest notion that anything was afoot, would you?”
He didn’t answer, lowering his gaze to the dark-stained earth at his feet. A bit of red chert gleamed in the sunlight, an old perforator; someone had broken the tip off and discarded it. It seemed to wink maliciously at him.
“What am I going to do with you?” Mother asked plaintively. “I swear by Mother Sun, I could almost believe that Back Scratch and Mud Stalker knew in advance that you would come of it when they sent Thumper to my bed. I could almost believe that they paid the Serpent to cast a spell on the man’s testicles. Thumper’s not a dolt, and neither am I, so how did our union produce you?”
Mud Puppy winced, his heart hurting at the tone in her voice. He kept his eyes focused on the bit of gleaming red chert so out of place in the black dirt. Was it trying to talk to him? Was that why it was winking so?
“All you do is waste time.” Wing Heart lifted her arms in supplication. “Do you not understand how close we came to disaster? It is not enough that your uncle’s Dream Soul has fled? What if he had lost his Life Soul as well? What if White Bird hadn’t come back in triumph?” She squatted, lifting his chin with one hand to glare into his eyes. “Do you understand that we are the last in our line to
dominate the Council? Do you understand that if we lose that, we are nothing? That we will be just like everyone else?”
“Is that so bad?” he whispered.
“Is that so bad?” she mimicked his voice. “Very well, I’ll explain it to you
one
…
more
…
time
.” She paused as if searching for the right words. “As you live your life, Mud Puppy, you will want things. Perhaps it will be a certain woman, though Mother Sun knows, I should be so lucky given your proclivities. When that happens, you must have the position, the prominence among others, and the outstanding
obligation
to be granted that desire. You like to quote my lessons back to me, very well, quote this one: With obligation comes prestige. With prestige comes authority. With authority comes gratification.”
He nodded, hating the eye-to-eye contact she maintained. That burning look made his souls squirm around each other.
“Everything we do is based on obligation.” Her words were like burning coals. “All that I have achieved, I have achieved through binding others to me through their debt. I didn’t achieve my position by studying crickets, or carving little stone figures, but by playing one clan off of the other. By knowing my enemies, and making them beholden unto me. That, my misguided son, is the secret to survival. It is by adhering to such a strategy that, in the long run, we will keep Owl Clan in the center of our world.”
“I understand.” Why did she dominate him like a hawk did a mouse? His ears burned with humiliation. “With obligation comes prestige. With prestige comes authority. With authority comes gratification.”
“Very good.” She stood then, a frown lining her sun-browned forehead as she studied him. Without a thought, she flipped the cricket from the cup and tossed the empty vessel back to him. “I don’t seem to make any impression when I tell you these things.” Her eyes drifted to the distance, searching the west. A sudden smile crossed her thin lips. “I want you to know that you have driven me to desperation. I am going to teach you a lesson once and for all.”
Mud Puppy swallowed hard. Mother’s lessons were never easy.
She narrowed her eyes, a finger on her chin as she thought. “Yes, just as soon as the Serpent can free himself from his duties. It may take a couple of days, but I am going to have him take you up the Bird’s Head—and leave you!”
He blinked, trying to understand. No one frightened him like the Serpent did.
She continued, “I want you to spend the night alone up there, Mud Puppy. All by yourself. Just you and the darkness. And if you
don’t come down changed, I’m going to send you up there again and again until the spirits of the Dead finally get you.”
He shot a quick glance westward to where the looming pile of earth rose like a small mountain above the plaza flat. “Can I take Little Needle—”
“Alone!”
“But, if I get afraid—”
“
Alone!
When you get scared—
and I want you trembling to your bones
—you will stay and overcome your fear. No son of mine has the luxury of fear. Do you think your brother was afraid when he went upriver? Do you think he let fear stop him from taking the most dangerous of risks? No. And one day he’s going to need you, need your courage and your loyalty to back him.” Her voice hardened. “
And you will be there for him, or I will haunt you to your dying day.
”
She turned, striding purposefully away down the side of the earthen ridge upon which they lived. Her back was straight, her silver-streaked hair swaying with each regal step.
“But I get afraid in the dark,” he whispered, turning his eyes to the southwest, past the house where his uncle lay dying, past the line of clan houses and across the plaza. As if embraced by the curve of the raised earth, the tall mound stood, and just below the top, he could make out the little thatched ramada. Terrible things happened up there. Gods came down and whispered things into people’s ears. Lightning frequently blasted that high summit. From those heights, it was said that a man could see into the Land of the Dead. Worse, that the Dead could look back and see you. That’s why nobody but the most Powerful of hunters and warriors, and old Serpent and his students, ever spent the night up there.
“
You’ll lose your souls
,” a tiny voice said.
Mud Puppy looked down at the broken fragment of red chert between his feet. He reached down and plucked it up, watching the sunlight shine off the smooth stone. “Then you’ll lose yours with them,” he answered, “because I’m taking you with me. Whatever happens to me will happen to you.”
T
he swampland around the Panther’s Bones had been inundated for two moons now. Sultry brown waters lapped at the water oak, sweetgum, tupelo, and bald cypress. Long wraiths of hanging moss
dangled from the branches. Birds perched amidst the lush green leaves, disturbed only rarely as squirrels scrambled from tree to tree in search of ripening fruits. Fish leaped with hollow splashes that barely dented the whirring of the insects and the rising birdsong. Far out in the swamp, a bull alligator roared his desire for a mate.
At the sound, Jaguar Hide turned his head, holding his paddle high. Was it worth turning, going after the big bull? As he considered, his canoe drifted forward, a V-shaped wake disturbing the smooth surface and rocking bits of flotsam and tacky white foam.
“I would rather go home, Uncle,” Anhinga said from the bow, her paddle resting on the gunwales. “I have a feeling.”
Jaguar Hide cocked his head, asking, “Yes? A feeling? Of what?”
“Of something changing.”
He watched the back of her head. She had been silent most of the day, moody since they had departed from the western uplands. Twice he had observed the shaking of her shoulders as sobs possessed her. The grief had been a palpable thing, like a swarm of mosquitoes that shimmered around her.
“Things change, girl. That is the way of the world.” He lowered his voice. “But I can see that this is something more. Tell me.”
He watched the slight lowering of her head. Dappled sunlight sent shafts of yellow through the green leaves above to speckle her gleaming black hair. “Bowfin’s Dream Soul met mine the night he died. He was so anguished to be dead. It was so unfair. I am angry, Uncle. His death has changed my life. I have learned to hate.”
Jaguar Hide considered her, noting how her back arched. The set of her head. Gods, she looked just as his sister Yellow Dye had at her age. “Indeed?”
She remained silent, so he extended his paddle, sending the canoe forward as he guided it between the trees. Here and there they had to duck as low branches blocked the way.
“Whenever I close my eyes I see him lying there, sweat running off of his skin in rivers … his eyes glazed with fear and pain,” she whispered. “The smell haunts me, Uncle. It clings to my souls. I can imagine what he felt … how it was to have his guts eaten out like that. It must have burned, like a fire being pulled through his belly on a splintered pole.” She shook her head. “He could smell himself. Smell that awful stink coming out of his ripped guts. How did he stand it? Knowing it was his own?”
“Niece, you can stand many things when you have no other choice.” Jaguar Hide winced at the pain her voice. “It is how the Panther made the world. Look around you.” He gestured at the brown-water swamp they paddled through. “Everywhere you look,
you will see life dancing with death. Does the alligator cast a single tear for the fawn he drags down to death? Does the egret weep for the minnow she spears out of the calm waters? Do you cry at the sight of fish gasping and flopping in the netting of a mud set when it is pulled aboard a canoe? Do these sweetgum trees mourn for the saplings they suffocate with their spreading branches? No, girl. When a hanging spider catches a beautiful butterfly in its web, it eats it with a smile. That is the lesson you should learn. Life is a desperate hunt. As you grin gleefully over your victim’s body, remember that tomorrow someone else will be grinning over yours.” He hesitated, letting that sink in, then asked: “Do you understand, Anhinga?”
She nodded.
Once again he waited, allowing her time. To his right, a line of yellow-dotted gourd floats indicated that Old Blue Hand had set a gill net.
“It just seems so unfair. This was Bowfin, my little brother. He was just a boy, Uncle. I took care of him. We played together, laughed and cried together. They
murdered
him.”
He paddled steadily as she broke down into tears. He had wondered how long it would take for the reality of her brother’s death to settle over her souls like a net. Sometimes the young didn’t understand, and Anhinga had been lucky, life had protected her for the most part. She had never suffered such a rapid and painful loss.

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