People of the Owl: A Novel of Prehistoric North America (North America's Forgotten Past) (49 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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He had nodded, a terrible reluctance reflected in the set of his mouth. “I need you to come back to me.”
Impulsively she had reached out and drawn him to her in a desperate hug. She had held his thin body against hers, her swollen belly pressing the hollow of his. Then she had turned, grateful for his help as she awkwardly pushed the canoe into the cold water and climbed in.
I hugged him. Panther’s blood, why? It isn’t as if I really care for him. He’s the enemy. No matter that he severed my bonds one night.
Was it her imagination, or had something about Salamander changed over the moons? Men, she had heard, acted differently after they planted a child and could see it growing in their wives. Or was it that she had fought for him, for his honor, that day when she surprised Saw Back and Night Rain?
You didn’t mean to,
she argued with herself.
It was expedient to
shame Night Rain that way. If you’d killed them both, you would have been finished in Sun Town
.
She no longer went out alone to gather firewood, or collect nuts, or check the snares. Somehow, Pine Drop, Salamander, or Water Petal always seemed to be ready to accompany her.
Night Rain had surprised them all, demurely taking her place like a proper wife. Anhinga suspected that she buried herself in household activities to avoid facing people. Laughter still broke out at the sight of her, and occasional calls followed her around Sun Town, asking if she needed to borrow any clothing. The teasing would eventually die off like fall grass; Night Rain need only wait it out.
He is a better man than I would be in his place,
she concluded. Indeed, she’d have thrown the little witch out. Salamander, however, had acted as if nothing had happened, welcoming Night Rain into his house and his bed with great dignity.
How many nights had Anhinga lain in her bed, hearing their whispered conversation? Something was being forged between them, although Night Rain still shot her looks that bordered on the murderous.
At the end of the next strait, Anhinga glanced back, barely catching movement behind a distant cypress knee. She blinked hard to clear her eyes and stared. What was that dark blot behind the old roots? A man, or a shadow? Her canoe almost drifted into the bank before she straightened it.
Imagination, or trick of the light? She dared not take the chance, and drove her paddle into the water with renewed fury.
She shot out of the narrow channel and into one of the wide, shallow swamps. Her flying canoe sailed into the maze of trees as she followed her way south. A lightning-blasted cypress marked the entrance to the far channel, and gratefully she cast a final glance over her shoulders. Nothing. No. Wait. Movement, there, back in the trees! But was it a man, or an animal? Before she could determine, her canoe coasted into the channel, the banks obscuring her view.
Desperate again, panting, she drove herself onward. A red smear caught her eye as she shifted her grip on the paddle. When had her palm blistered and broken? Compared to the ache in her forearms and shoulders, it was nothing.
Time collapsed into fear, pain, and exhaustion as she raced her canoe down the winding passage. A hand of time later she emerged into a familiar swamp and marked her progress. Known landmarks, fallen trees, stumps, and oddly shaped cypress knees guided her through the brackish shallows.
She cried out with relief as she drove her narrow craft onto the muddy shore of the little island. For long moments she could only sit there and gasp for breath. Her arms barely supported her as she tried to get up. She propped herself on the gunwales and struggled against the bulk of her swollen abdomen.
Coming within a hair of capsizing herself into the muddy shallows, she stepped into the water, staggered sideways, and caught her balance.
As her legs came alive, she turned and looked back at the silent swamp. Nothing moved, not even birds, usually ever-present in the winter moons. The water reflected the sky’s dull gray sheen, motionless, heavy.
Slogging out of the water she rolled her arms, wincing. Tomorrow would be agony. Bending over her girth, she pushed the canoe higher up the bank and grabbed the sack of supplies she had brought. The drinking bowl that she normally filled before arriving here was empty, forgotten in the frantic flight.
She collected her atlatl and darts, tapping her ax with reassured fingers. Let him come. Here, on dry land, she could vanquish any fool who paddled a canoe up to the island.
Walking through knee-high dry grass, she stepped into the beaten campsite she had shared over the moons with her relatives. A few damp pieces of wood lay on the wet ground. Looking around, it appeared that no one had been here since she and Uncle had left.
“You need dry wood. This won’t do to make a fire.” She kicked the wet wood and started off through the grass in search of old flooddeposited flotsam. She stopped and inspected a large branch. Thick as a man’s thigh, it had fallen from a water oak. Partially protected by the overhanging branches, the wood felt moderately dry to her touch. She looked around at the brown grass and weeds. Hip high, they masked her movements. The island slept, dormant and silent.
She laid her atlatl and darts to one side and worked her tired fingers, feeling the joints ache. It would take two hands to drag this back. The smaller branches would make kindling, and she could talk Striped Dart into hacking up the rest when he arrived.
She bent, got a grip, and heaved. The branch moved, and like some ungainly turtle, she dragged it one pull at a time toward her camp. With each tug, she took a moment to rise and peer out at the swamp. No movement marred the surface. No sound intruded on the normal noises.
As she bent once again and pulled, she caught a blur at the corner of her eye. Something struck her from behind, knocked her forward over the branch. The hard wood smashed her chin and left breast.
For a terrified instant her thoughts scrambled, then she rolled onto her back, staring up in disbelief. For a moment she could not place his face. “You?”
She was gasping, her heart pounding as Eats Wood grinned down at her. “Hello, bitch. Snakes, it’s been a long time that I have been waiting to do this.”
“What are you doing here?” She remembered him, remembered his fingers twisting her left nipple as he carried her from the canoe landing up to the Men’s House. His leer brought back all the terrible memories of that day.
“It took me a while to work out your trail. I learned a little more every time you left. Never followed you all the way. Just a bit at a time. And what should I find? You, bending your head with Jaguar Hide, planning ways to hurt us all.”
“He is my uncle!” She managed to brace her elbows under her. Eats Wood held a stone-headed ax in one gnarled fist. He swung it back and forth, each swing promising pain.
“He is our enemy.” He smiled down at her. “You made good time today. Jaguar Hide shouldn’t be arriving here for at least another hand of time.”
“What are you going to do?” Her atlatl lay back at the tree, her ax, however, was pinned under her hip, Had he seen it hanging from her kirtle?
“What I wanted to do the first time I saw you.” He tilted his head to the side, eyes half-lidded. “I’ll bet you don’t remember me.”
“I remember you,” she spat. “You and your grasping hands.”
“I’m going to grasp you again,” he told her. “I’ll consider it a warm-up before your uncle gets here. He’ll see the canoe, be expecting you. I might even be done with you and have a fire going before he gets here. Jaguar Hide’s head will be on Deep Hunter’s hearth by nightfall. A gift from my clan to his. He will be obliged to me and to Snapping Turtle Clan. I suppose you know, a great many good things come to a hunter who has a Speaker obliged to him.”
“I’m carrying a child!”
“Not after today,” he told her offhandedly. “I haven’t decided yet whether I’ll cut it out of you, or just leave it to rot in your body.”
“Salamander is married to your kinswomen!”
“No one will know what happens here. Besides, the Speaker and Clan Elder will be making other arrangements for Pine Drop and Night Rain. They’re too valuable to waste on your silly Salamander. So, are we going to do this easily, or am I going to have to soften you up a little? Conscious or knocked dumb, it won’t matter to me.”
With one hand he pulled the knot loose that held his breechcloth. The fabric fell away from his erect penis.
“Do as you will,” she murmured, trying to sound broken, wondering how she could turn to lay her fingers on the ax.
“Toss it away.” He wiggled his club. “The ax you are wearing. I’m not the fool Saw Back was. Toss it to one side, or the first blow I land will be right in the middle of that big belly of yours.”
She bit her lip, a sinking sensation folding around her hammering heart. With half-numb fingers she pulled the ax free, giving it a weak-hearted toss. Was it still close enough?
“Prepare to die, you stinking barbarian bitch.” He leered at her, dropped to his knees, and slapped her legs apart. He was reaching for the hem of her kirtle when movement flashed in the corner of Anhinga’s vision.
She barely recognized Salamander as he rose behind Eats Wood and swung a stone-headed ax down onto the crown of the man’s head. Bone snapped. A violent shiver shot through Eats Wood’s body. His eyes popped in surprise. A spasmodic jerk of his legs drove his face into the crushed grass between Anhinga’s tense thighs.
She gaped, speechless, glancing back and forth between her husband and the jerking body. Blood, bright and red, welled from the oblong hole in Eats Wood’s head. His hair soaked it up like a vibrating brush as his twitching worsened. A gasping rattle came from his throat.
“Are you all right?” Salamander stepped over the man’s body.
“I …” Words were dead inside her. She could only nod, her eyes fixed on Eats Wood’s quivering body. She almost collapsed again when Salamander pulled her to her feet. She shrank against him, burying her face in the hollow of his shoulder and bursting into tears.
S
pots of blue broke the overcast of gray winter clouds. The island, normally her refuge against the world, now felt oppressive, dangerous. Anhinga’s souls kept flashing images of the assault. The leering expression on Eats Wood’s face hung behind her eyes. She could glance over her shoulder to see the tree. Beneath those branches, Eats Wood’s body was growing cold, his empty eyes turning gray.
His angry and frightened souls are rising, staring at me from among those naked branches.
A shiver traced down her muscles, as if he were reaching out for her with ghostly fingers.
She didn’t feel better. Not even Striped Dart’s arrival, a half hand of time ago, reassured her. Salamander sat close beside her. He kept reaching out, patting her in reassurance. When she looked into his eyes, though, she could see the disquiet he tried so hard to hide.
Panther’s blood! Why am I still scared? After all I’ve been through, I shouldn’t be shaken by anything!
“Anhinga?” Salamander asked as he leaned forward, searching her face.
“I thought it would be Saw Back,” she whispered.
The fire popped, blue smoke rising from the fire pit that separated her from Striped Dart. Her brother looked anything but happy; the deep grooves of worry might have been carved into his forehead. She could tell he didn’t approve of the situation. His expression darkened at Salamander’s solicitation, as if he begrudged this stranger’s intimacy with his sister.
Salamander made a face as he scrubbed Eats Wood’s blood from his ax. He kept shooting curious glances at Striped Dart.
In the moons since Anhinga had seen him last, Striped Dart, too, had changed. She didn’t remember this long-boned young man, his hair coiled tightly on top of his head. He wore a new puma hide; the gray-brown pelt hung over his shoulders with white belly fur gleaming in the gray light. He had a triangular face, attractive, much like hers but with harder, masculine lines. A stifled anger burned behind his brown eyes and reflected in the set of his jaw. He held an ax in his hand and slapped it against his callused palm.
“I thought I saw movement behind me.” Anhinga closed her eyes and hugged her bulging belly protectively.
“I didn’t want to get too close,” Salamander told her. “It was difficult, racing after you, then having to slow down and wait for you to get out of sight.”
“Why didn’t you call to me?”
He made a dismissive gesture. “If you had been safe, I would have turned around and left.” He inspected his ax, picking at bits of dark red in the binding. “You didn’t ask me to come here, Anhinga. This is your time with your own people.”
She stared.
Why would you do that? Surely you know I come here to plot against you!
Aloud she said, “I don’t understand.”
His dark brown eyes seemed to see right through her. Another shiver ran down her spine as he said, “You must be free to follow your heart, Wife. Wherever that takes you. Whatever the price.”
By the Sky Beings, what did he mean by that?
“She could have been killed,” Striped Dart’s accented voice interrupted. “This is too dangerous.”
“What do we do, Brother-in-law?” Salamander asked. “If you come farther north, someone—like Eats Wood—will take the opportunity to kill you.”
Anhinga glanced back at the oak, feeling the presence of the corpse lying there in the blood-soaked grass.
Snakes! What is Pine Drop going to say? Eats Wood is her cousin.
Striped Dart finally said, “If she will not come home with me to the Panther’s Bones, she is safer staying in Sun Town until the child is born.” He looked up at Salamander and smiled. “It would seem that you are more than capable of protecting her.”
“When she’s not battering her enemies herself,” Salamander replied. She could tell from his expression that he didn’t feel the levity he projected.
“I was told that you were a fool.” Thick muscles slid under
Striped Dart’s smooth brown skin. “But my uncle, he sees things differently than I do.”
“Many people call me a fool,” Salamander replied.
“But you’re not, are you?” Striped Dart asked.
Salamander’s lips twitched. “Can any of us truly know that he is not a fool, Brother-in-law? I doubt myself all the time.”
Anhinga blinked, as if seeing her husband anew. He seemed so controlled, possessed of a calm sadness. He had just killed his first man—one of his own, someone he knew, not a stranger. He sat across from an enemy, yet he might have been comfortably at his mother’s fire rather than deep in Swamp Panther territory with the corpse of Pine Drop’s cousin weighing on his souls.
Striped Dart’s eyes narrowed. “I did not approve of Anhinga going north. I did not approve of this ‘peace’ of his. Our sandstone is ours, given to us by the Creator at the beginning of the world.” Striped Dart shot Salamander a steely look, daring him to disagree.
“You speak truthfully, Striped Dart. I cannot second-guess the Creator’s reasons for placing things where he did when he made the world.” Salamander stood and slashed his ax through the air to fling the water off, then walked over to lower himself beside Anhinga. He took her hand, rubbing his fingers across her soft brown skin. The touch soothed her as he added, “In Sun Town, we have a need for sandstone.”
Striped Dart said bitterly. “Along with your thefts, your people killed my brother—and countless others over the turnings of the seasons!”
“We were wrong.” His dark brown eyes seemed to suck up her souls. She felt a tingle run through her as he said, “For that I apologize.” He turned his attention to her brother. “Looking back, Striped Dart, one cannot say who started this or who is more wronged. The sandstone is yours. For now Jaguar Hide has offered us safe passage to take one canoe load each moon.”
Anhinga took a deep breath, relieved at the cool air pumping into her oddly starved lungs.
Salamander saved my life. This is the second time. I owe him for that.
But how did she balance that against her vow to strike back in the names of Bowfin and her friends? Just being here, in the presence of her brother, rubbed the wound raw again.
Striped Dart was giving Salamander a hot look. “I tell you now—do not come for sandstone again,
Brother-in-law
. My people will kill yours.” He made a dismissive gesture. “It is
our
sandstone. Why should we allow you to have it just because you promise not to kill us while you help yourselves?”
“We have a peace,” Salamander reminded, “but for one, I do not
wish to send my kinsmen where they are not wanted.” He steepled his fingers, thinking. “Jaguar Hide told me that we could have one canoe load per moon, but that if we wanted to take two, we would have to send a load of gifts.” He glanced at Striped Dart. “You are right, Brother-in-law, it is not equitable.”
What are you saying?
Anhinga wondered.
That sandstone is one of the few things Owl Clan has left to barter with for obligation!
Striped Dart opened his mouth, but the hot retort died on his tongue. “I’m right?”
Salamander nodded. “Of course you are. We are getting many things for nothing. I have a beautiful wife, a canoe load of sandstone each moon, and peace. You, my friend, just have the peace from one clan. Mine. It is not fair.”
“What are you saying?” Anhinga snapped.
“I’m saying we should renegotiate.” Salamander spread his hands wide. “Striped Dart, what if we sent a load of gifts with each trip? What would your people like?”
“Fabrics,” Anhinga said quickly. “No one makes fabrics like Sun Town. And dyes. You make the most beautiful dyes. Smoked meat, like the buffalo and elk you have Traded for. My people don’t get such luxuries.”
“Stone?” Salamander asked, indicating the sharp greenstone celt hafted onto his ax.
“No. We have plenty of our own,” Striped Dart answered. “Trading rocks for rocks sounds silly. But these other things?” He looked genuinely interested. “You would do that when you didn’t have to?”
“I would, Brother-in-law. I would simply because it is right. And we have to consider safety.” Salamander jerked his head toward where Eats Wood lay out in the weeds. “Someday soon, someone like Eats Wood, from one of the other Sun Town clans, will come to raid and steal sandstone. He will come to break the peace, not because he hates the Swamp Panthers, but because it is a way to hurt my clan.”
Anhinga asked, “So what will you do? Kill him, too?”
“No, Wife. I will try to be smarter than my enemies.” Salamander’s brows lowered. “I will only send a canoe on the full moon, Striped Dart. I will always send someone you know: Yellow Spider, Bluefin, one of my kinsmen. If you see a canoe with strangers in it, be wary. My advice would be to avoid it.”
“Why? It is our territory. Why should we put up with raiders?”
Salamander let that strange brown gaze of his bore into Striped Dart. To Anhinga’s amazement, her brother squirmed, then lowered his eyes.
Salamander spoke in a respectful tone. “The decision is yours, Brother-in-law. I cannot tell you whether or not to attack them, but I would have you consider that so long as this peace lasts between you and me, it is a thorn in the side of the other Sun Town clans. If we break it, they will have won … and you won’t get fine fabrics and exotic foods in return for your stone.”
Anhinga shook her head. “Striped Dart, you can’t make this agreement. It is up to Uncle. He is our Elder! When he hears, he’ll be furious! He already distrusts you.”
“He and I think differently, Sister.” Striped Dart had pursed his lips. “I had to beg to get this chance to see you alone. He has the winter solstice to plan for, or he would be here, telling me ‘no.’ I’m not a child any more than you are. One day, I will be Elder. I want to be a good one.”
“We need not tell Jaguar Hide,” Salamander said easily. “If there is trouble over the Trade, simply say that Anhinga has talked me into sending it as a ‘gift’ to my wife’s people. Such things are done.” His expression went solemn again. “Like you, I am planning not just for this moon, but for many moons in the future.”
Striped Dart smiled, reaching out with a strong hand. “Done.” Then his smile slipped. “We have one other thing to settle between us. The child.”
“Yes?”
“It is ours. A member of my clan. I want my nephew to be raised as a Panther, not as a Sun person. He is to learn our ways, and I am to teach him.”
“And if it’s a girl?” Anhinga asked.
“Then she is to be raised by Mother.”
“Our child will be raised by me!” Anhinga told him sharply. “I will see to its needs.” What was she saying? She wasn’t going to be in Sun Town for much longer. All she needed was Jaguar Hide’s order to act, and she would impliment the plan she had in mind. Immediately she would take a canoe, head for home, and her clan would raise the child.
“You are going to teach my nephew to hunt?” Striped Dart cried. “How to fish and stalk enemies?”
Salamander raised his hands. “This is a matter between the two of you. But know this, Striped Dart, if anything should happen to Anhinga, I will bring you the child as soon as I safely can.”
“Why?”
“Because it will be your kin, Striped Dart.”
Striped Dart looked confused, as if he fished for thoughts in his
head. He asked, “Do you fear me? Is that why you do this?”
Salamander shook his head. “You do not scare me. No, just the opposite. I think that you and I could become great friends in spite of what our peoples have done to each other in the past.”
A crooked grin crossed Striped Dart’s lips. “You are
not
what I expected.” He paused. “I think you should keep my sister safe until the child is born.”
“No!” Anhinga started to say. “I have …” Her voice trailed off as both men gave her an inquiring stare. To say more was to give away everything. “Very well, tell Uncle I will come after the child is born.” Somehow she had been outmaneuvered, placed in a position she didn’t want to be in.
Salamander said, “I will send word with the sandstone boat when she will be coming to meet you again. And perhaps I shall send an escort, trusted warriors who will deliver her safely, then stand off. This place”—he gestured around—“is too well known now.”

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