People of the Weeping Eye (North America's Forgotten Past) (58 page)

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Authors: W. Michael Gear,Kathleen O'Neal Gear

BOOK: People of the Weeping Eye (North America's Forgotten Past)
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“‘Time for you to go home,’ he told me. His voice was musical, and I realized this was the being who had Sung me to the river. He picked me up in his jaws, and the next thing I knew, I was on a shoreline. Just lying there, a broken lump of flesh. What was I to do? I had no idea where I was, or which way to go. No strength was left in my limbs. I could barely raise myself far enough off the ground to crawl.”
He smiled faintly, the patterns of scars rearranging. “I could sense the people coming. Hear the strokes of their paddles on the water. I heard their voices, and the language was Tsoyaha. I shouted, at least tried to. My throat was raw from screaming curses at the Chikosi while I hung in their square.” He made a smoothing gesture with his good hand. “What I did next surprised me. I reached out with my souls and called to them. Touched them, and drew them to where I lay on the bank, all covered with mud.”
The Kala Hi’ki sighed. “At first they thought I was some sort of monster. ‘No!’ I croaked. ‘It is Bull Shield Mankiller, escaped from the Chikosi.’
“‘You are dead!’ they cried.
“So I told them who I was, who my relatives were, and how I got my man’s name. Only then would they believe me. But they still didn’t want to touch me, so they carefully loaded me into a canoe by using a coat to sling my body aboard. Then they brought me to Rainbow City, where the Priests interrogated me, heard my story. They were suspicious at first, but I knew things
about Horned Serpent that only the Priests know. And I could see through the eyes of my soul. I told them things about the Spirit World, about beings I could see through my new kind of sight.
“Meanwhile the story of my escape traveled along the rivers. It was told how Flying Hawk was frothing with anger. How his nephew, Green Snake, had tried to kill his brother, how the Power at Split Sky had gone wrong that night I vanished. The Chikosi had followed my bloody trail to the river, where they thought I had drowned.
“And I did. The man my people knew, he died that night. I was given a new life, a different existence, by Horned Serpent. Down there in the Underworld, he saved me. Gave me a Vision I would never have had. Now, Seeker, you will see what I rarely show any other man.”
With great care, he reached up with his good hand and undid the white cloth binding around his head. As it came loose, the Kala Hi’ki turned to stare.
Old White gasped. Pressed into the scar tissue in the empty eye sockets were two large crystals.
“These were the gift of Horned Serpent,” the Kala Hi’ki said. “They are scales that fell from his body onto the moss in that cavern deep down in the earth. When I placed them where my eyes should have been, I could see.” He smiled, the effect sending a shiver through Old White’s bone and muscles. “It was through these eyes that I saw the Contrary. This is the gift of Horned Serpent to the Kala Hi’ki.”
T
he world had turned on its head once again. Morning Dew tried to make sense of it. She crouched in the sunlight on the southern side of Heron Wing’s house. Just behind her the matting screened the old storage pit where they relieved themselves. What made the odor bearable was the oyster shell that Morning Dew crushed. She used a large river cobble to grind the shell into a fine powder. When she had enough, she would scoop it into a shallow bowl and hand it to Heron Wing. Heron Wing in turn pressed the ceramic bowl down in a bed of hot embers to further process the shell. The resulting rotten-onion stink overwhelmed anything rising from their toilet.
“I’m still a slave,” Morning Dew mused. She couldn’t help but think about the wealth that had been heaped upon her. Unlike her marriage gifts, this she could keep, although good manners dictated that it be given back to people in the coming days. Gifts came with Power. People who hoarded wealth that was bestowed as an honor offended that selfsame Power. Misers were known targets of witchcraft, illness, and other bad humors.
“You’re
my
slave,” Heron Wing corrected, shifting upwind from the cloying smell given off by the cooking oyster shell. The purpose of grinding and heating the shell was for use as temper in the production of ceramic cookware. Part of Heron Wing’s spoils from betting on stickball had included a sack of oyster shells that had been Traded north through the Pensacola. With it,
Heron Wing could barter for new cooking pots. Clam shell made better ceremonial pottery, but oyster was more durable for everyday use.
Your slave.
“I still don’t see how that could have happened. Smoke Shield doesn’t often let loose of his things, does he?”
Heron Wing chuckled. “He did this time. I’m sure the last thing he would have expected was that I would bet against my own moiety. Nor can he come here demanding anything. I sent that crawling Thin Branch back as a gift. It would make Smoke Shield look like the foul-tempered badger he is if he made a fuss. Fact is, for the time being I expect him to leave. He’s not the type to walk around and take it when others can strut.”
“Heron Wing,” Morning Dew said. “If I am now your property, what do you intend on doing with me?” She glanced around. “It’s Wide Leaf, isn’t it? She’s going to marry that man.”
Stone came racing through, a small stickball racquet in his hand. Two of his little friends charged after him. Stone threw the ball; the other little boy missed it. Morning Dew remembered her own lack of skill at that age. Proficiency only came with years of practice.
Heron Wing raised her brow in disbelief. “The gods alone know why, but old Builder seems to like her. So, yes. I’ll let him build my room on the back for a Trade, and she can go with him. At least until he throws her out.”
A pause, then Heron Wing continued. “As to you, Morning Dew, when the time comes I think you should go back to your people.”
Morning Dew stopped short, staring with disbelief. “Back to the Chahta? Gods, why?” She swallowed hard.
“I mean, yes. I’d do anything. But, why would …” She shook her head. “Why would you do that?”
Heron Wing studied her from under a questioning brow. “I’m so glad you didn’t choke up like that on the stickball field. I’d have lost everything.”
Morning Dew continued to stare incredulously, her heart pounding.
“It’s simple, really,” Heron Wing told her. “In the end we’re better off having good relations with the Chahta. At first casual glance, you appear to be the only White Arrow woman from the Chief Clan that we have around here. Like it or not, you are the matron. If we can manage to find a way to send you back, you can probably help bring this trouble between us to a conclusion.”
Morning Dew shook her head. “This still confuses me. Don’t you know what happened to me? What your people
did
to me? What you Chikosi put me through? Do you know what it cost me to …” She bit her tongue and looked away, terrified of what she’d been about to say.
“Now you’ve ceased to think like a matron.” Heron Wing turned back to her roasting shell, using a stick to stir it. “Stop thinking of yourself and think of your people. Of course terrible things happened to you. That’s the way of war. Tell me that you didn’t hang the Alligator Town chief in the square, and that his wives weren’t enslaved, raped, and humiliated.”
Morning Dew sighed. “We did. And, yes, they were.”
“I would really like to know what prompted your people to raid Alligator Town. Looking back, I can’t see the logic of it. If you’re going to pick a fight, think it through carefully. Sometimes war can’t be avoided. Just like once Alligator Town had been destroyed, there was no way the Council couldn’t have sent Smoke Shield to strike back.” Heron Wing again raised that questioning eyebrow. “So what was the reason behind that raid?”
Morning Dew returned to crushing oyster shell. “I think it just grew. A suggestion from Biloxi: ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if we could put the Chikosi in their place for once?’ An answer from my … our war chief: ‘Well, there is a way. No one would be expecting a raid at this time of year.’ And back and forth it went, growing, gaining possibility.” She shook her head. “They didn’t know any better.”
Heron Wing chuckled dryly. “How often has that been said, in how many towns and villages, for how far back in time? Worse, I don’t suppose that it will stop with our lifetimes, either.” She shot a speculative look at Morning Dew. “But I suppose that you do know now. I think you have become someone very different from the girl who married Screaming Falcon. Life hurts, doesn’t it?”
“If it’s lived, I suppose it does.” She put her effort into grinding the shell. “Very well, I’m listening, Heron Wing. How do you see this working? What do you want me to do?”
“Be patient. For the gods’ sake, don’t go speaking of this to anyone! And whatever you do, don’t make a run for it. Do that and I’ll never get you home. At least not while you’re still young and attractive, and certainly not with your tendons uncut above those flying heels. No, for the time being, you just be a good slave. If anything happens, if you get so desperate that you can’t stand this a moment more, you come and talk to me. We’ll find a way out of it.” She made a skeptical face. “Somehow.”
“I don’t think your Council is going to take kindly to this suggestion.”
“Not at present. That’s why we wait.” She grinned. “Selfish she-bitch that I am, it’s going to be tough letting you go even when the time comes. You’re a wonder at stickball.”
Morning Dew smiled at that. She still ached from that last fall.
Heron Wing jabbed her stick in the stinking shell. “No, things are going to have to play out for a while. But Morning Dew, I won’t give you false hopes. This may take some time. Can you work with me, even if it means another winter?”
That long?
Her heart sank. “If you are being honest with me, by Breath Giver, yes! Think, Heron Wing. How long do you suppose I’d have remained alive if you hadn’t placed that insane bet against Smoke Shield? Putting that in perspective, I imagine I can tote water, cook
food, wash clothes, and keep your house.” She paused. “And another thing. My moon is starting.”
Heron Wing sighed. “Well, at least Smoke Shield didn’t plant an heir to your Chief Clan. I’m not sure they’d want his bloodline.”
Morning Dew shot her an appreciative glance. “I have to tell you, I’m late. For a while I hoped my husband had caught, then I feared Smoke Shield might have. I think one was early, the other late. The worry and fear probably didn’t help matters.”
“I’m close as well.” She glanced up from her cooking shell. “You belong to Panther Clan now. You will be welcome in our Women’s House. Pale Cat will be delighted to have us both gone. He has time to spend with Stone now that the solstice ceremonies have passed. And it is good for my son to spend time with so good an uncle.”
Morning Dew nodded, wondering at the changes in her life, at the things she had done. “No matter what, Heron Wing, I shall always be grateful to you. From you I have learned strength and wisdom. I will need all of those qualities when I return to the White Arrow.”
The woman smiled wistfully. “I told you, it might be a while.”
“Yes,” Morning Dew agreed, remembering her vain boasting so long ago in the Women’s House. That silly girl had died the day she had been taken from Screaming Falcon’s house. This new woman had been born in blood, rape, and suffering. She had survived Smoke Shield, and robbed him of his greatest triumph. In the process, she had paid a terrible price, one that even now she could barely allow herself to contemplate. “But I will return to my people. I just know it. And when I do, I shall be the greatest matron they have ever had.”
“You’re sure of that?”
“Oh, yes.”
Home!
The word rolled around inside her. But then, Heron Wing was right. It might be a long time getting there. She shot a sidelong glance at the woman. Going
home would come at a cost, but how much would she have to pay?
Whatever I have to.
 
 
P
aunch made a face as his stomach growled. The smell of roasting fish had the juices flowing in his mouth. He glanced up at the sky, wondering at the cold emptiness of it. Not even clouds floated across the blue dome where he could see it through the naked branches of the trees.
“I’m not cut out to be a thief,” he muttered, prodding the fire with a stick. Flames licked up around the rounded sides of the pot where it rested in the coals. Odors of cooking fish mingled with hickory smoke. “I thought my heart would leap out of my chest.”
Whippoorwill gave him a sidelong glance. “It took courage to rob that Chahta fish trap last night.”
“And I almost froze my balls off!” he groused. “That water was cold. And scary! Wading around in the river at night. What chance would an old man like me have against a water cougar, or, the gods forbid, Horned Serpent?”
“Horned Serpent isn’t interested in you,” Whippoorwill replied. “He bides his time. And be assured, he will receive his due when the time is right.”
“As if you knew what drives a creature as Powerful as Horned Serpent!” he shot back bitterly.
She gave him that eerie smile, her eyes seeming to expand in her head. “Can’t you hear him, Grandfather?”
“What? Hear Horned Serpent?”
“He’s Singing, even now. The notes so musical they carry up from the river, across the land. It reminds me of drops of rain falling through a rainbow mist.” She rose, walking over to the bluff to stare down at the Horned Serpent River.
Paunch muttered to himself, prodding his fire. How long did it take a fish to cook, anyway? Then he looked out at the forest. It waited, silent, and he swore he could feel it, somber, watching him. If he looked sharp, he knew he’d see eyes staring back from the shadows cast by the thick trunks. Patient Spirit beings lurked back among the hanging vines of grape and greenbriar.
“I say this fish is done.” He used sticks to lever the pot out of the flames. It would have to cool before he dared to dump the flaking white meat onto his bark plate.
Listening to his knees crack, he stood, wincing at the sudden pain in his back. “I’m too old to be sneaking about like a forest rat. When can we go home?”
“Home, Grandfather?” Whippoorwill laughed. “Are you ready to face Smoke Shield? Anxious to hang in a Chikosi square while they slice the flesh from your old bones? Are you so chilled that the thought of burning cane brands against your skin has grown attractive?”
“I didn’t bargain for this,” he added, eyes taking in the silent forest.
“Yes, you did,” she said thoughtfully. “Bargained, and lost.”
He pinched his eyes closed. “Why me? Why not Amber Bead or one of the others?”
“Because you were there.” She turned her head, her long hair curling about her shoulders. “Power has made its gamble, picked its players. They have passed the test. Now we need but follow the Dance. One foot after the other, and trust to Power.”
“Trust to Power? Look where that got me!” He reached down, angrily throwing a moldy hickory nut at the forest. It bounced hollowly off an oak tree and rattled on the dry leaves.

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