People of the Owl: A Novel of Prehistoric North America (North America's Forgotten Past) (36 page)

Read People of the Owl: A Novel of Prehistoric North America (North America's Forgotten Past) Online

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

BOOK: People of the Owl: A Novel of Prehistoric North America (North America's Forgotten Past)
2.72Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
“By whom?” Night Rain leaned forward, searching her sister’s face.
What does she know? What does she suspect? She is more intimate with Mother and Uncle’s plans. Have they told her something?
“Power,” Pine Drop answered, a hand covering her mouth. “Spirits. Something.”
“Why would you think that?”
She shook her head as though baffled. “It’s just a feeling.”
“A feeling?” Night Rain shifted, glancing covertly around the room. “What happened the day that you and Salamander were gone? Remember? The day you left me the bladderwort?”
Pine Drop smiled slightly, then her perplexed look returned. “It was …”—she seemed to be searching for the right word—“ … fun.”
“Fun? A day with Salamander?”
Pine Drop raised her hands and dropped them. “You can’t understand.”
“That’s drilling the bead in the center. You’re right, I
don’t
understand. I think he’s about as much fun as a lump of mud. He hasn’t so much as broken a smile since we’ve been married. He’s a dupe, Pine Drop. People laugh at us behind their hands. I can’t wait until Uncle says the time is right to divorce him. I just thank the Sky Beings he hasn’t crawled into my bed for nearly a moon.”
Pine Drop’s lips pinched. After a long pause, she said, “How does it make you feel now that he’s spending his time with that Swamp
Panther and not us? I mean, doesn’t it bother you that he prefers the companionship of some wild barbarian to ours?”
“Eats Wood says it’s the same woman White Bird captured during the raid at Ground Cherry Camp. The one who escaped so mysteriously in the night. Remember? She took Red Finger’s canoe? He says it’s a Swamp Panther plot, that she came here to do something terrible to us in revenge for what we did to her and her friends.”
“Eats Wood is an idiot.”
“Well, so is our husband.”
“Is he?” Pine Drop wondered. “I’ve heard Uncle and Mother talking about it. About this marriage. They want to believe like Eats Wood, that it is some terrible plot hatched by Owl Clan with the Swamp Panthers to hurt the clans, but they are both worried they might be wrong.”
“How so?”
She shook her head. “Think about it. Wing Heart has lost her souls. Any action Water Petal would take is instantly challenged by Moccasin Leaf. The fight between the lineages has paralyzed Owl Clan. Salamander is the Speaker, but everyone thinks he’s a fool.”
“He is.”
Pine Drop ignored her. “Nevertheless, this
fool
now has an alliance with the Swamp Panthers, and Owl Clan receives a canoe load of sandstone every moon.” She gestured around, pointing.
At every location at least one, and generally several pieces, of sandstone were lying on the packed clay floor amidst pieces of wood, leather, and stone. The material was essential to Sun Town. The finishing of most stone tools and all woodwork depended on the abrasive quality of the sandstone. Anything that needed to be smoothed or fitted had to be ground, and Swamp Panther sandstone was the perfect abrasive. She opened her other hand, showing Night Rain the piece of sandstone she had been grinding the ocher on.
“Sandstone will not return them to authority,” Night Rain declared. “Snapping Turtle Clan now occupies that position.”
“We’re not on top yet. Thunder Tail has been given leadership of the Council. But for us the vote would have been unanimous.”
“Give Uncle several more moons, and we’ll be on top. Just wait and see.”
Pine Drop asked, “Did you know that Deep Hunter detailed men to kill Jaguar Hide? Our husband managed to delay them. Somehow he kept Saw Back’s party on the Turtle’s Back just long enough so that Jaguar Hide escaped into the channels. Salamander baited them, confused them, and the Swamp Panther got away. Deep
Hunter was furious. He stalked back and forth in a rage for a whole day. He still can’t understand how he was thwarted, but he exiled Saw Back to Yellow Mud Camp for four moons.”
“Delayed how?” Night Rain was curious for the first time. “Saw Back is a really a handsome man. He’s Alligator Clan, and, well, you know, I’ve been thinking that after we’re through with Salamander, he’d make a fine husband.”
Pine Drop gave her a sober look. “You’d better hope he can placate his Speaker. That, or, assuming we are ever ‘through’ with Salamander, you had better plan on enjoying your life in Yellow Mud Camp.”
“Having a man like him to share my bed, I could stand the climate over there. I’m surprised that he didn’t just ignore Salamander. Everyone else does.”
“Perhaps, but Salamander talked Saw Back out of fulfilling his Speaker’s orders. And Deep Hunter blames Saw Back, not Salamander.” She seemed to retreat again, lost in her thoughts.
“You’ve been preoccupied ever since he married that barbarian.” Night Rain shook her head. “It’s not a disaster! It frees us! Think, Sister. Why does he need us? He’s got her, a barbarian, for a wife. That makes him more of a freak than he already is. I think we should ask Mother and Uncle to get us a divorce.”
Pine Drop was nodding absently. “Perhaps.” A pause. “What could he see in her?”
Night Rain stood and walked to the large ceramic pot that held the mixture of cattail down and hanging moss. At just the mention of sharing a bed with Saw Back, her flow increased.
When she returned, Pine Drop was still looking confused.
“Sister, who cares what he sees in her?”
Pine Drop airily replied, “I just wonder, that’s all.”
A
nhinga stepped out of the canoe and planted her feet firmly on Sun Town’s muddy landing. Above her on the high bluff she could see the hated Men’s House. The old Serpent stepped out of the canoe behind her, helped by Salamander. He was studying her, eyes prying at her souls, perhaps sensing the danger she brought to his people.
Anhinga walked warily behind her husband. Husband? The word still startled her. Of course she had known she was coming here to marry the man she was going to kill. Knowing and anticipating, seeing how it would be in the soul’s eye, was one thing. In that vision she was smiling as she stepped into White Bird’s arms, every essence of her being fixed on his painful death. He had been a tough and cunning warrior. A hero worthy of Anhinga’s wrath.
Now, six days after she had first laid eyes on him, she walked behind a skinny boy possessed of pain-haunted eyes. His hair was mussed, and she could see most every bone in his body. He walked with an ungainly amble, his souls off somewhere distant, lost in Dreams.
Where, Anhinga, is the glory in murdering this simple boy? He has neither craft nor cunning, and shows all the wariness of a rotten stump.
Patience. She would wait. Besides, the ordeal of having undergone that flat-faced Serpent’s “cleansing” made the souls cry out for someone to kill. Miserable though she had been, she was Anhinga, niece of Jaguar Hide. The last thing she would allow these
foolish Sun People to see was any hint of weakness.
The old Serpent watched her, his brown eyes like keen shining stones behind those folds of sagging skin. He might have been a fish eagle perched on a low branch, trying to peer below the surface of her skin for a glimpse of her souls. She had given him nothing, bearing the sweats, purges, chants, and smokings as if they were but a pleasant relaxation. By Panther Above, she
would
kill someone for that!
She fought a grim smile as she remembered the last time she had staggered down this very slope; the darkness had been complete, her body and souls filled with pain and horror. This boy had been with her then, too. Where she had left this place broken, shattered with grief, an escaped slave in the night, she came back in triumph as the wife of a Clan Speaker, walking head upright toward the small knot of people who had come to watch.
Salamander called greetings to some, nodding to others as they passed. One by one, Anhinga met their eyes, seeing one or two faces she thought familiar. And, yes, there was that one! The pus-sucking chigger who had twisted her nipple. She willed her face into a barksolid mask, avoiding his narrowing eyes. Did he recognize her? Cleaned as she was, dressed in a finery of feathers and finely woven cloth?
Then they were atop the bluff and turning northward. She had seen this place through pain-blurred eyes, but now, from a different perspective, it took her breath. How huge! The immensity of Sun Town hadn’t registered when, as a captive, she lay blinking against a headache, bound and trussed, watching her friends being butchered. Now she saw the incredible height of the huge Bird’s Head to the west, the span of the house-topped ridges that arched around her like the jaws of an immense monster. The entire place was open, mantled in green.
And the sky! She looked up in awe. She came from a forest people. She had never seen so much of the sky! Mother Sun beamed down on her, hot and bright. The sensation stunned her, left her feeling exposed, alone, and vulnerable. Never before had she been less than a stone’s throw from trees. Even at the Panther’s Bones, when she stood on the high Sun Mound, it was but an island among the trees.
Unnerved for the first time, she swallowed hard.
“It is something, yes?” the old Serpent asked from where he followed her.
“I hadn’t realized. The size of it!”
“The world crosses here,” Salamander said, turning his thoughtful eyes to hers and smiling shyly. One by one he pointed out the clan grounds. “And this building”—he stabbed a finger at the rectangular building that topped a mound overlooking Morning Lake—“is the Women’s House. Where you will have to go when your moon comes full.” Uncomfortable, he asked, “Uh, is that anytime soon?”
“Perhaps,” she replied offhandedly, her attention on the place. That would be unbearable, sitting in there for four days surrounded by hostile strangers, avoiding their prying questions, enduring their presence. “I might just go to the forest, if you don’t mind.”
Salamander gave her a short nod. “If you would be more comfortable. Up ahead are the Owl Clan grounds. There, that first ridge, is where my lineage lives. I am building your house there, next to Mother’s. It is a good location. From the front door you can see straight out across the lake to the east. Every morning the sun shines right through the doorway.”
“There was no house there?”
“There was. My brother was burned in it after lightning killed him. It happened right there.” He indicated a place on the edge of the borrow pit. Several wispy goosefoot plants stood on the spot, the trilobed leaves insect-chewed. “He was planting that goosefoot when he died. We don’t touch it.” He gave her a serious look. “It is not for us, do you understand? It belongs to the Sky Beings.”
After dark I shall be sure to urinate upon the spot.
“Who am I to question the Sky Beings?” she asked.
He led her around the borrow pit to the toe of the ridge. It was a stunning location. The view was the finest she had ever seen. At her feet the bluff dropped away to the shores of the lake, a moderatesized body of water. Two canoes were trolling a net behind them, or so she assumed given that the occupants were paddling mightily, their bows pointed outward, and each trailed a rope into the water. Beyond them an endless vista of sweetgum, tupelo, bald cypress, and water oak stretched in a vast forest that merged into the distant horizon.
Looking northward, she counted out the five ridges to a low bank of trees. “What is there, beyond the sixth ridge?”
“A deep gully,” Salamander told her. “Beyond that a wide trail runs to the north, to the Star Mound. There, at the summer solstice, we thank Mother Sun for returning to us again and bringing the world to life. For the rest of the year it is a guardian against the Dark Powers.”
She nodded, thinking how similar their beliefs were to her own.
At the Panther’s Bones, her people retreated to the high rise at the north end of the village to conduct their summer solstice ceremonies.
“Our house will be there.” He pointed, a hesitation in his voice.
She looked behind her, seeing a collection of building material beside a burned circle. Charred posts still protruded from the ground. Grass had grown around the black outline where the heat from the burning house hadn’t killed the roots.
“My brother’s bones were burned there.” Salamander looked even more frail.
Good! May his souls watch as I couple with his brother. May he scream his warnings from the Spirit World onto deaf ears. May he wail as I avenge my people upon his family.
She could feel the Serpent’s piercing gaze boring into her back. She realized that a grim smile had come to her lips. Salamander was watching her, brown eyes large. “It was the way of Power,” he said simply. “Everything is.”
To cover herself, she said, “It will make a wonderful house, husband. The sooner we finish, the better. Who is that?” She pointed to the elderly woman who sat under a ramada not ten paces beyond, her body bent over a loom.
“That is Elder Wing Heart, my mother.”
She heard the worry in his voice. “You say her souls are loose?” Before he could answer, she added, “I would meet your mother. Your family is now mine, husband. Introduce me.”
Reluctantly, he led her forward. A wooden pestle and mortar stood halfway between the house locations. Charcoal and old cooking clays were scattered about, as were bits of stone: flakes and crumbled sandstone, the latter looted from her own lands, no doubt. She cataloged the belongings under the ramada: cordage and fibers, several soapstone bowls, bark plates, a ceramic pot half-full of cloudy water, and an array of bone needles and combs.
The woman held her attention; she looked used up, wrung out, and discarded by life. Despite the drawn lines in her face, she still carried a regal air. She would have been attractive once, could be again if her eyes weren’t lost and roving. She still sat erect, her strong fingers caressing the fibers with a lover’s touch.
“Mother?” Salamander asked softly as he bent down beside her. She seemed oblivious to his presence, her head tilting back and forth, smiles rising and falling on her lips. Her expression kept changing, as if she were having silent conversations inside her head. “I have come to introduce you to Anhinga. The niece of Jaguar Hide. Elder, we have a new daughter for you.”
Wing Heart continued her weaving. Her son’s words might have been the droning of insects for all the attention she paid.
“Mother?” Salamander touched her shoulder, looked unhappily back at Anhinga. “I want you to meet my wife.”
“Yes, yes, White Bird. Go tell your uncle. And don’t let that idiot little brother of yours miss supper tonight. He’s probably off looking under logs or something. Now, go on, and don’t bother me. The Speaker and I have things to do. Plans to make before the next Council.”
Snakes! This was Elder Wing Heart? By the evil mist, how could she have come to this?
“It’s all right,” Anhinga said softly. “There will be times in the future when her souls are closer.” She smiled at him, allaying his discomfort and reaching out to take his hand. “Our life together is just beginning. I am sure there are tens of tens of things to do.” She glanced cautiously at the old man. What did he suspect? “We have a house to build, and it must be a grand one, worthy of a Clan Speaker. Let us start there.” She led the way back past the pestle and mortar and surveyed the charred circle. “This must be cleared.”
Patience. Her uncle was right. The Serpent kept watching her as though she were a copperhead loose in a children’s play area.
She ignored the old man and his seeing souls. Her first concern was to lull Salamander. She smiled at him, taking his hand in hers. “We shall build a grand house here, and when it is finished, we shall make a great feast for just the two of us. When we are full, we will lie on a thick buffalo blanket and you shall fill me in the light of a happy fire.”
He smiled at that, as if seeing a fantasy in his souls. “I would like that.”
A memory flashed … a human liver, rising high into that wideopen sky above Sun Town. It flipped and jiggled as it rose, sunlight flashing on the wet, gleaming surface. For a brief instant it stopped, hanging magically before beginning its rush to the Earth. She remembered the sound so clearly: a hard splat! In a crystal image she saw the tongues, pink and fast between white teeth as the camp dogs licked up the pieces.

Other books

At Night We Walk in Circles by Daniel Alarcón
Tyrannosaur Canyon by Douglas Preston
Scammed by Ron Chudley
Going for It by Elle Kennedy
Magical Thinking by Augusten Burroughs
Her Last Whisper by Karen Robards
The Corpse of St James's by Jeanne M. Dams