People of the Owl: A Novel of Prehistoric North America (North America's Forgotten Past) (10 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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Their relations with the Sun People were always tenuous. Sometimes they traded, but with the most guarded of interactions. Fact was, Jaguar Hide’s Panther People had little need for anyone else. The Creator had given his chosen people the finest place in the world to live. Here, in spring, as the floods filled the great river to the east, the waters actually reversed, changed direction, flowing backward into the lakes and watercourses. In the rejuvenated waters fish thrived. The highlands in the western portion of their territory contained sands, gravels, and their fine panther sandstone: a white, coarse-grained slab that was perfect for smoothing wood and grinding stone. The Creator had made a perfect place for his people. Here they wanted for nothing.
Not at all like what he had done for the Sun People to the north. Perched on their silt ridge, they had no source of stone for cutting, no sandstone for grinding, no sand to temper their pottery. The only riches the Sun People had been given were fish and plants. So they came here when they needed sandstone, to Jaguar Hide’s land, and tried to trade, or more usually, to steal stone. It was when they were caught that young men like Bowfin paid the price.
His heart twisted at the pain and grief in Anhinga’s broken sobs. How many times in his life had he heard the wailing and sobbing of relatives grieving for a loved one? How many lives had been taken from them by a brutal stone-headed dart? If the Creator had meant for the Sun People to have sandstone, he would have given it to them.
I will do something about this. This time, I will find a way to pay them back.
He knotted his souls around the problem as he continued to paddle through the muggy swamp. At their approach a turtle flipped off a cypress knee, a line of bubbles marking its descent into the murky depths.
Anhinga sniffed hard and straightened. “On my brother’s soul,” she whispered fiercely, “I will do whatever it takes to make them pay.”
“Anything?” he asked casually.
“Anything,” she insisted doggedly, picking up her paddle and driving it into the brown swamp water.
An idea was forming in his mind. Something that he hadn’t tried. It would take more thought once he had returned home to the Panther’s Bones.
T
he watering of his mouth came as White Bird’s brief warning before he bent double and threw up the bitter-tasting brew. Again and again his stomach pumped, heaving violently as it emptied itself of what remained of a boiled fish breakfast.
The sun burned down on his bare back, its heat adding to the sweat that beaded his flesh. It wasn’t enough that he and his companions had spent the night alternately sweating in the small domed lodge and bathing in the brackish waters of the lake, but the Serpent had showed up several hours before dawn and begun brewing his concoctions.
The Serpent had begun by Singing, painting his face, and shaking a gourd rattle as he circled the area. With great care he laid a fire of red cedar. Then he placed tinder in the center and used twigs to place a hot coal atop it. Bending low, puffing his cheeks and blowing, he coaxed the fire to life.
On this he placed a soapstone bowl propped with clay balls so the fire could lap around the stone vessel’s sides. From his belt pouch he extracted yaupon leaves and dropped them into the heating bowl. As he did, he called to the four directions: to the east, the
south, the west, and north. With a round stone he crushed the leaves, bruising them to release their color. Using a hickory stick painted crimson, he stirred the leaves as they slowly reddened and curled. When appropriately roasted, he employed a bison-horn dipper to carry water from the lake and one after another filled the pot until a yellow froth formed on the boiling liquid. The Serpent stirred it with his red stick, satisfied to see that the roiling liquid had blackened beneath the foam. Reaching into his pouch again, he extracted a section of snakemaster root and, with a white chert knife, shaved slices into the brew. Then as the steam rose, he began to dance his way around them, thrusting the rattle this way and that.
“Why is he doing that?” Gray Fox asked nervously.
“To announce to any evils that he is coming to drive them off,” White Bird had explained. “It is hoped that by so stating, the harmful spirits and malicious ghosts will simply leave, making his work easier. This way he can turn all of his attention to the few stubborn and recalcitrant spirits who remain. It gives him a chance to identify the ones that wish to challenge his Power as a spirit warrior.”
“I wouldn’t challenge him … alive or dead,” Jackdaw muttered in his own language. “Isn’t he just the ugliest old man you’ve ever seen?”
Hazel Fire and the others had laughed at that, and White Bird couldn’t find it in himself to disagree. The Serpent had passed more than five tens of winters. His hair had gone white and thin. Now it waved about his head like a wreath of water grass in a changing current. The old man’s face might have been trod upon, so flat was it. The nose looked as if it had been mashed into his features, the sharp brown eyes staring out of thick folds of flesh. Skin hung like dead bark from the Serpent’s frame, and through the wrinkles one could see patterns of snake tattoos that had faded into blue-black smears. He looked more like a walking skeleton, his ribs sticking out, the knobby joints of his knees thicker than his thin thighs.
Not even a finger of time had passed from the moment they had drunk the Serpent’s concoction before the first of them had bent double and thrown up.
White Bird’s stomach wrenched again. He cramped with the dry heaves.
“We’re poisoned!” Hazel Fire cried between gasps. The Wolf Traders were clustered around, some on hands and knees as they wretched and groaned.
“No!” White Bird made a face at the vile taste in his mouth. “Trust me. This is good for us. It’s driving any illness or sorcery out of our bodies. I swear, you’re not poisoned. It’s just …” His
stomach knotted, and he doubled up again as his gut tried to turn him inside out.
When the spell passed, he rolled over to seat himself on the damp soil. A shadow blocked the sun as the Serpent bent, mumbling to himself as he inspected the goo White Bird had deposited on the ground. The old man used a blue-painted stick to prod the watery mess.
“I see,” the old man muttered. “A chill was headed for your bones, young man. Good thing we got it out.”
“How do you know that?” White Bird placed a hand to his aching stomach and gasped for breath.
The Serpent cocked a faded brown eyebrow, the action rearranging the mass of wrinkles. He lifted the blue stick, gaze locked on a thread of silvery mucus that glinted in the sunlight. “You think this is easy? You think just anybody can read what’s hidden in vomit? It takes many turnings of seasons to learn these things. And very hard study. The signs of sorcery, not to mention the imbalance of the souls, are difficult even for the trained eye to detect. The spirits alone know what tricks foreign sorcerers would use to kill you.”
White Bird blinked, hesitating lest talking lead to another bout of retching. Finally, he said, “What about the others?”
The Serpent had turned and begun to jab his stick into the spattered remains of Jackdaw’s breakfast. “This boy was going to have a pain in his leg soon, but it’s out now. Haw!” The old man jabbed repeatedly at the vomit as if he were tormenting some unseen thing.
Jackdaw leaped back, crying, “What? What’s he doing?”
“You’re all right,” White Bird told him in his own language. “He just saved you from a pain in your leg.”
Unsure, Jackdaw backed away as the old man continued to chant and jab. “I’d have been happier with a lame leg. My stomach feels like it’s been turned inside out.”
“Mine, too,” Cat’s Paw moaned. Like his friend, he scuttled back as the Serpent turned to the place where he’d thrown up and began jabbing at it and uttering terrible cries.
One by one he attacked their vomit, and finally raised himself straight, his face lifted to the bright morning sun. “Mother Sun, I have seen the things carried by these people. I have exposed the blackness to your light.” He lifted his arms, the stick held high. “Help me now as I purify this place. Burn away the sickness and evil. I brandish your daughter in the cleansing.” With that he swirled about in an elaborate circle. “Take this evil—and
purify
it!” The old
shaman dramatically threw the blue stick into the fire, where cedar flames greedily devoured it.
“Why a blue stick?” Cat’s Paw asked.
“Blue is the color of the west, of death and failure. It is the color of ending, just as the sky darkens at night after Mother Sun slips away into the world below.” He pointed up at the sun. “In the beginning time, just after the Sky Beings came to Earth, they ensured that Mother Sun would light the world and the creatures that lived here. Fire came from Mother Sun, sent to the Earth in a bolt of lightning. With it Mother Sun ensured that the Earth could always be cleansed of darkness and disease and sorcery and corruption.”
“What now?” Hazel Fire asked warily as he wiped a hand across his mouth.
“We’re going to build fires where we threw up. It’s all got to be burned.” White Bird pointed to the stack of firewood under the thatched shed at the base of the sweetgum tree.
“Is there much more of this?” Snow Water was on all fours, staring hostilely at the old man. “I’m starting to wonder if it’s worth it. I might just take my chances canoeing home alone.”
“Trust me, it’s worth it. One more day,” White Bird promised. “And it’s easy by comparison.”
“It better be.” Hazel Fire shook his head. “Or I’m slipping away in the middle of the night, too.”
“It’s important that we undergo this,” White Bird replied gently. “For the safety of Sun Town. We don’t fear the enemies that we know, only the ones we can’t see. I ask you to trust me. I told you about the cleansing.”
“You did,” Cat’s Paw admitted. “I just didn’t really appreciate what it was going to be like.”
“Just wait,” Hazel Fire promised, “and see what we do to you next time you come upriver.”
White Bird made it halfway to the woodpile before his gut caught him by surprise and sent him into convulsions. Maybe his friends were right about slipping away. But deep in the spot between his souls, he knew the correctness of a proper cleansing.
T
rue leaders, it seems to me, are born in betrayal.
My first teacher was a very old woman, a Clan Elder. When I became the Serpent, she told me that she believed we are born at the foot of the log bridge that leads to the Land of the Dead, and that the instant we slip from our mother’s canoe, if we truly listen, we will hear the animals we have known in our lives calling to us.
The boy is smiling to himself.
I watch him.
Does he know?
At his tender age, can he possibly understand that a person has to be shoved off the bridge by the one he trusts most before he can look up, see no one standing above to help him, and grasp that being alone is not the curse, it is the task?
W
ing Heart sat in the afternoon shade of the thatched ramada beside her house. With a facility that came from many seasons of practice she used her thigh and one hand to spin basswood fibers into cordage. She had stripped the fibers from the tree’s bark by first soaking, then pounding it with a stone-headed mallet. That loosened the fibers so that they could be pulled free, then combed, and assembled into the flaxen pile on her right. As she spun the fibers she looped the finished cord into a coil to her left.
Her house stood at the eastern end of the first northern ridge. From her ramada she could look out over the wind-patterned waters of Morning Lake. Waves lapped at the bank four body lengths below the sheer drop-off. Three glossy white herons sailed soundlessly southward, their wide wings catching the updraft along the bank before her.
Looking out onto the lake, her view included the Turtle’s Back: a low hump of earth topped by three sweetgum trees and trampled grass. She could make out the Serpent’s thin figure as he walked from one young man to another, tapping each of them lightly on the shoulders with an eagle-feather wand.
White Bird sat with his back to the gum tree’s trunk. If his posture was any indication, he looked absolutely miserable. It brought a smile to her lips. That was the point, wasn’t it? The people didn’t want evil spirits from distant places being carried into their midst. By making the host body uncomfortable, those same malicious
forces would drift away in search of a more pleasant body to inhabit while they worked their dark and sorcerous deeds.
“Bless you, my son,” she said with satisfaction, her gaze lingering on the four long canoes that had been pulled onto the small island’s muddy shores. Even from her vantage point she could see the piled packs and reflect on the salvation it meant for her lineage and Owl Clan in general.
She added more fibers from the pile to her right, twisting them into the center of the cord. Fibers had to be added as others were exhausted so that the cordage remained uniform in strength and thickness. The manufacture of cordage was important to her people. Not only did it bind things together like houses, drying racks, and roof thatch, but it was the essential ingredient in their fishnets and small-game snares. From it they braided strong ropes. On their looms it became a coarse fabric for burden bags and storage containers. Cordage allowed them to measure out the uniform earthworks that defined the limits of Sun Town and the holdings of the clans. Cordage was always in demand for Trade, as were the fine fabrics they wove and the wooden products they carved. Small loops of cord even provided for days of entertainment as the children played the finger-string game, creating patterns and designs as they plucked the loop back and forth from hand to hand.
She saw Clay Fat as he approached, walking across the open plaza from the line of houses dotting the ridges to the southeast. Rattlesnake Clan had its holdings there. The moment she saw him she knew he was coming to see her. No doubt the single unifying feeling among the members of Rattlesnake Clan was relief. White Bird had arrived despite their dire predictions. Their political situation, especially their relationship to Owl Clan, had been not only justified but was about to be solidified.
Whereas last week her very existence might have been suspect—given the lack of attention she had been receiving—her circumstances had changed with White Bird’s arrival. One after another she had been entertaining Clan Elders and Speakers. Indeed, the world might have flipped from end to end since her son’s flotilla had nosed into Sun Town’s placid Morning Lake. Even old Back Scratch, the Snapping Turtle Clan Elder, had been forced to swallow her pride and toddle her creaking bones across the plaza to make pleasant talk. Sweet Root, her daughter, had accompanied her, slinking like the predatory cat she was. One day—and not so far away—Sweet Root would inherit her clan’s mantle. Spirits help them all.
Back Scratch kept a lid on most of Mud Stalker’s poison. Sweet
Root, however, wouldn’t have the sense to keep her brother on a short string. She had always been in awe of him, and after her mother’s death she would be a cunning and willing accomplice, ready and anxious to add her own machinations to those of her bitter, alligator-bitten brother.
As the day had passed Wing Heart had entertained them all. Smiling, gracious, she had played the game with all the skill that her turnings of seasons and innate ability had given her. Calling on her clan she had provided smoked fish and bread made from smilax root. A stone bowl continued to steam by the fire, sweetening the air with the pungent odor of black drink. The foamy tea made from holly leaves was normally reserved for special occasions. Having a pot of it on hand provided that extra bit of elegance to reinforce the notion that Owl Clan remained preeminent.
Wing Heart watched as Clay Fat continued amiably on his way across the plaza. His belly protruded over his loincloth, his knobby navel like the stem on a brown melon. A half-lazy smile traced Clay Fat’s thick lips, his expression dreamy, as if he had not a care in the world.
Wing Heart considered him. Clay Fat wasn’t an acutely smart man. Rather he was wedded to stability the way a fisherman enjoyed a deep-keeled canoe. He liked balance and was happiest when he knew exactly what was coming with the next sunrise. The passing of the last six moons—in the shadow of Speaker Cloud Heron’s impending death—had been hard on Clay Fat’s nerves. The uncertainty over young White Bird’s whereabouts upriver—let alone whether or not he was still alive—had been excruciating. Now, with the world set back to rights, he looked much like a fat toad full of bugs.
She owed him. Of them all, he had stood by her, steadfastly believing her promise that her son would return from the north, and that when he did, it would be with a stunning coup that would assure Owl Clan’s hegemony.
No, Clay Fat might not be the brightest of the Clan Speakers. Had he been someone other than himself, he would have taken that opportunity to try to propel Rattlesnake Clan into leadership. At least she, or any of the other Clan Elders, would have struck like a hungry snake when she sensed the slightest vulnerability in her rivals.
But is he so dumb?
Wing Heart turned the notion over in her mind, trying to see it from Clay Fat’s perspective. Was it not better to place Rattlesnake Clan in a perpetual secondary role rather than risk falling into even more pressing debt to the others?
“Greetings, Wing Heart,” Clay Fat called, waving as he trooped across the muddy shallows of the borrow pit and climbed the earthen ridge upon which the Owl Clan houses were built. As Clan Elder, Wing Heart had the most prestigious location, on the eastern edge of the berm overlooking Morning Lake. Here she could greet the sunrise, and best of all, monitor the comings and goings at the Turtle’s Back.
“A pleasant day to you, Speaker. How is your Elder, Graywood Snake, today?”
“She is well, Wing Heart. She sends her fondest greetings.” He strode up, breath coming in labored gasps. She could see the sweat beginning to bead on his swollen brown skin. “I must say, things are happening. So much talk.”
“Talk?” She pointed to the cane mat across from her. “Sit, old friend. Enjoy the shade. Would you like a cup of black drink? As you can see, the bowl is still steaming.”
“Bless you, but no. It’s too hot,” he muttered. “Here we are but a half-moon past spring equinox and it already feels like midsummer.” He grunted as he eased himself onto the matting. “Is it me, or are the passing summers getting hotter and hotter?”
“It is you,” she told him, her fingers spinning the cord along her thigh. “The summers are no hotter. It’s just that your belly gets larger and larger. It holds your heat in like a giant cooking clay.”
He laughed at that, slapping a callused hand against his stomach.
“So, there is talk you say? Anything of interest or are they just scrambling to cover themselves, saying, ‘Oh, I knew all along that White Bird would return!’”
He shot her a knowing glance, his dark brown eyes measuring. “Hardly. Envy and venom are whispered behind the hand while smiles and nectar drape public speech. At least that’s the way of the leaders’ lineages. For those who have no stake in the squabbles among the Council’s leaders, interest centers on what lies hidden under those packs in White Bird’s canoes. Most people, as you well know, Wing Heart, could care less who holds the ropes to the fish traps so long as they can share in the catch.”
“Runners have gone out?”
He nodded, reaching down to finger the end of the cane matting he sat on. “People are beginning to trickle in from the outlying camps. Everyone is expecting a feast and dancing, and an excuse to get together and gossip. For the people who are in need, it is a chance to refit, to replace what is broken or worn-out.” He glanced out across the lake, fixing his gaze on the Turtle’s Back and the
figures that hunched out there in a line next to the sweat lodge. “Is everything all right?”
“My son is going through a nasty cleansing. For a while yesterday he couldn’t stop throwing up. I believe that the Serpent is being particularly thorough this time. He wasn’t happy about a three-day cleansing. At White Bird’s suggestion, I requested it rather forcefully. It seems that his Wolf companions, as he calls them, are leery about what it will do to the health of their barbarian souls.”
“Their souls? Why? Is there something wrong with them?”
“Put it like this: Would you trust some Serpent you didn’t know to cleanse your souls? Say, perhaps, some Wolf Serpent whose ways you couldn’t differentiate from witchcraft? A strange Serpent from way up north? One who did things you didn’t understand? Sang strange songs, made you bare your souls to him?”
“I would be more than a little frightened.”
“So are these Wolf Traders,” Wing Heart added. “The last thing I need is for them to bolt in the middle of the night and take those loaded canoes with them.”
“There’s risk in that.”
“There’s risk in everything.”
“What if someone takes sick? What if after they’ve been rushed through cleansing, something goes wrong? People will say that you didn’t take enough precautions.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
He nodded, that slight smile returning to his lips. “Well, there is already talk.”
“Talk? We’re back to talk?” Which of course was what he’d come to tell her in the first place.
“My cousin, Fork Tail, and his party returned from his trip down south last night. He has several nice pieces of that white Panther sandstone. Not as many as he would have liked to have, but enough to still make the trip profitable. It will allow Rattlesnake Clan a chance to offer something at the same time you have to rid yourself of all those canoe loads of exotics.”
“Good for you.” She noticed the reserve behind his bland eyes. “But …?”
Clay Fat shrugged. “There were complications. He couldn’t load his canoe with all the stone he wanted. It seems that some of the Swamp Panthers ambushed him. In the fight that followed he wounded at least one of them. A youth.”
“Kill him?”
“He doesn’t know. Apparently the dart was sticking out of the
boy’s belly when he ran away. As to how serious it was, Fork Tail couldn’t tell.”
“These things happen.” Wing Heart spliced more fibers into her cord and continued spinning it along her thigh. “If we’re lucky, the kid just got nicked. Were others involved?”
“Apparently a party of youths.”
“So there’s no chance the boy might have gone off and died before anyone found out?”
Clay Fat gave her a shake of his head for an answer. “You had better circulate the word to Owl Clan that the Swamp Panthers will probably retaliate. My clan is already spreading the word through the lineages to the camps in the south.”
“Is that all the bad news you’ve got?”
“Of course not.” His thin lips widened in a smile. “You should know that Mud Stalker is nearly foaming at the mouth. He and Back Scratch were in the process of tightening their grip on leadership in the Council until your son paddled into the middle of their plans. He had come to think you were toothless, and all he needed to worry about was Deep Hunter. Then White Bird floats into Morning Lake with his barbarian friends, and Mud Stalker’s world is upside-down. It’s all that Mud Stalker can do to keep from popping the veins in his head.”

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