People of the Owl: A Novel of Prehistoric North America (North America's Forgotten Past) (5 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 barely heard the continuing commotion outside. Someone shouted. Voices called in answer as a party trotted past his house, coming in from one of the outer ridges. “They’re back,” one of the voices called. “At last, they’re back!”
Back? Mud Puppy frowned in the red-tinged gloom. Perhaps the party that had gone down to steal sandstone from the Swamp Panthers? Over the turning of seasons they had become ever more stingy about their precious sandstone. The trouble was that the Sun People depended on the hard sandstone for so much of their manufacturing. When people weren’t packing baskets of earth for the mounds, or Singing and celebrating, they were making things. Making plummets, gorgets, celts, and adzes required hard gritty sandstone. It was used for all kinds of things, even smoothing wood and grinding pigments. Lately it seemed like every expedition to the Swamp Panthers’ country, two days’ journey to the south, ended in a fight. Surely, there had to be a better way.
The cricket darted a finger length out from the mat, its body a black blot against the charcoal-stained dirt of the floor.
Mud Puppy waited, still as could be. The gray cup filled his hand, his arm poised. He would have to be fast, like a striking snake, lest
his little target escape. Did his muscles have it in themselves? Could he do it?
Wait. Let Cricket relax. He is on his guard now, freshly removed from cover.
Mud Puppy didn’t breathe, wondering how long it would take for Cricket to drop his guard. Long moments passed as Mud Puppy closed his ears to the continued calling and laughter outside. He blinked his eyes when Cricket’s black body blurred into the shadowed earth and seemed to lose its shape.
At last the little beast began its high-pitched screeching.
Mud Puppy nerved himself and clapped the cup down over the cricket, the move so violent it was a wonder the fiber-tempered pottery didn’t shatter.
“Got you!”
Now, how did he turn the cup over without allowing the cricket to escape? For a moment he puzzled on that and, in the end, rose from his bed and crossed the room to the net bag that held basswood leaves. Reaching in, he removed one of the big leaves and returned to his cup. He took a moment to toss a couple of hickory sticks onto the fire and waited for the flames to cast yellow light over the inside of his mother’s house.
He glanced around at the wattle-covered walls and the woodframed thatch ceiling overhead. Seeing nothing helpful there, he considered the soapstone bowls, the loom with its half-finished cloth, and the stacked pottery, then returned his attention to the cup, upside down on the dirt that separated the cane matting from the fire pit.
He stooped and carefully slid the leaf under the cup. Only when it extended past the other side did he lift both leaf and cup, slowly turn them over, and smile.
“Got you!” The swell of triumph expanded under his heart. “Now, tomorrow, when the sun is bright, I’m going to see how you can make such a loud noise, little fellow.”
Feet beat a cadence toward the doorway, and Mud Puppy looked up as Little Needle came huffing and puffing to duck his head into the doorway. Despite being thirteen, Little Needle—of all the children—was Mud Puppy’s only good friend. He had a face like the bottom of a pot with a pug nose pinched out of it; his most prominent feature was a set of large dark eyes that had a moony look. “Are your ears plugged, or what?”
“My ears are fine.” Mud Puppy held up his leaf-capped cup with pride. “I just caught a cricket!”
“Why do I put up with you?” Little Needle shook his head, a look
of disbelief on his round brown face. The black tangle of his unkempt hair had tumbled into his eyes, and he took a swipe at it with a grimy hand. “Your brother’s back! He’s alive. After all this time … and despite the people who bet he was dead. And you won’t believe it, but he’s brought
four
canoe loads of Trade. Four! Can you imagine?”
Mud Puppy nodded, a thrill shooting through him. “I know.”
“You know?” Little Needle’s brow furrowed. “He just got here, fool. You couldn’t have known.”
“Maybe,” Mud Puppy retreated, using one hand to tap his chest. “But I’d have known here if he was dead.”
“Uh-huh.” Little Needle’s frown deepened. “I suppose one of your pets”—he indicated the jar—“came to tell you.”
Mud Puppy’s expression fell. “I can’t say. I promised.”
Little Needle studied him thoughtfully. “At times, my friend, I’m almost tempted to believe you. It’s scary, some of the things you know. Like Soft Moss being hit by lightning that time. You said it was going to happen.”
“You didn’t tell anybody, did you?” Mud Puppy felt his souls twisting with sudden anxiety. He hadn’t meant to tell Little Needle, but there were times that his souls just cried out to share some of the things Masked Owl told him. He didn’t. He wouldn’t. Not even to Little Needle, whom he trusted completely. Masked Owl was too precious to him.
“It is the price you must pay for now.”
Masked Owl’s Dream words echoed in his memory. “
Be worthy of me
.”
“Well? Are you coming or not?” Little Needle was dancing from foot to foot. “Barbarians came with him! Six of them! They call them Wolf People, but they just look like real people, except different. You know, in their hair and what they wear. But then White Bird and your cousin, Yellow Spider, are dressed like them, too.”
Mud Puppy looked around, wondering where to put his cricket. “All right, I’ll come.”
“How can you be so unconcerned?” Little Needle almost shouted it.
“Because my cricket might escape!”
“Sometimes I think everyone is right, you’re nothing more than an idiot!” With that Little Needle turned and sprinted off into the darkness.
“He just doesn’t understand, does he?” Mud Puppy asked the trapped cricket as he set the cup down and laid a piece of polished slate over the leaf to keep his catch in place. Then he turned and ducked out into the warm spring night.
I
watch the boy with my eyes squinted.
This evening, for the first time, I think maybe he’s not the half-wit people say he is.
There is a very old story my people tell in their lodges on cold winter’s nights—about a bridge guarded by animals. You see, we believe that there is a narrow log bridge that spans a deep canyon on the trail to the Land of the Dead. That bridge is guarded by the animals each person has known in his life. If the person treated those animals well, cared for them, and helped them, then the animals will be happy to see him and will guide him safely across the bridge to where his ancestors wait in the Land of the Dead. But if the person treated the animals badly, if he shouted at them or hurt them, they will chase him across the bridge, tearing at his heels with sharp teeth, or stinging him, or clawing his head with their talons, until he loses his balance and falls into a rushing river of darkness and is lost forever.
As I study the boy, I wonder.
He listens very attentively to everything alive, and often to things like windblown leaves that I’m fairly certain are dead.
But I could be wrong.
Innocence is the opposite of Truth, isn’t it? That’s what I’ve always thought. But perhaps it’s just the price, and maybe that price is too high.
The thought makes me smile.
Perhaps if I sought my solace in innocence rather than Truth, I would see what the boy sees.
I vow to watch him more closely.
T
he scar tissue that crisscrossed Mud Stalker’s mangled right arm ached and itched. That boded no good. Mud Stalker, Speaker for the Snapping Turtle Clan, son of Clan Elder Back Scratch, ran idle fingers over the ridges of hard tissue. He had been but a youth when an alligator clamped itself on his arm and began thrashing the water into bloody froth. He had been insane with pain and panic, halfdrowned and vomiting water, when Red Finger had beaten the alligator off with an oar and pulled him from the red-stained water. It had nearly killed him, infection eating at his flesh, fever burning his souls from his body. It had taken several turnings of seasons to recover—and crippled his arm for life.
As the itchy feeling increased, he scowled, thinking it a sign. It was bad enough that White Bird had returned. It was worse that so many people were coming down to the canoe landing to see his latenight arrival. Mud Stalker stood between the beached canoes at the water’s edge and watched the people trooping to the landing. They carried cane torches down the slick incline from the high terrace above the lake; the yellow flames bobbed with each step. In the inky night the light might have been a Dream creature that flowed down the packed silt embankment.
Mud Stalker turned his head, staring out at the silent black waters where the canoes waited. Four of them, solid craft, floated less than a stone’s cast from the shore. They reminded him of fingers stretching out of the night, monstrous and black. The canoe’s occupants
were standing, their feet balanced on the narrow gunwales. Over the babble of excited people, Mud Stalker could hear the grunting and clucking sound of the barbarians’ tongue as they talked. What could have possessed White Bird to bring them down from the north?
“Are you sure we cannot land?” one of the foreigners asked in Trade pidgin.
“Not until we are given permission.” That was Yellow Spider, another youth from the Owl Clan. Unlike White Bird’s family, Yellow Spider’s had declared him dead just after the Winter Solstice.
Mud Stalker turned his attention to where White Bird stood in the rear of the canoe. Even across the distance, he could see the young man’s teeth shining as he smiled, cupped hands to his mouth, and called, “What news?”
“Things are well,” Clay Fat, the Rattlesnake Clan Speaker returned. His round stomach stuck out like a pot, his navel a protruding knob. “We have sent for your mother.”
“And my uncle?” White Bird asked cautiously across the water.
Yes, there it was. The dilemma they all faced. Cloud Heron was little more than a breathing corpse. He could die at any moment. Why hadn’t he had the grace to do so before this foolish youth floated back from the dead?
“Not so well,” Clay Fat replied. “Your return has come at a very opportune moment for your clan.”
That, Mud Stalker thought, was just the problem. He turned, aware that his cousin, Red Finger, had stridden up. The old man held a flickering cane torch in his bony hand. He raised it high to look out over the black water at the canoes riding so peacefully.
“So, it is true? White Bird is back?” Red Finger kept his voice low, fully aware of the continuing flood of people who were descending to the landing.
Mud Stalker lifted a foot and planted it on the gunwale of a beached canoe. “He is back.” He tried to keep his voice from communicating his displeasure. “Back, indeed—and with three upcountry canoes full of barbarians. Not only is he not dead—as we had hoped—but he returns at just the right moment. With canoes packed full of Trade.”
“Look at them,” Red Finger muttered, as more people crowded the shore and raised their cane torches to stare across the water. In the yellow light they could better see the new arrivals. “If those piled bundles are Trade, and for as low as those canoes ride in the water, he has brought back great wealth.”
Yes, if he has, his status will soar
. Aloud, Mud Stalker said, “Let us wait and see, Cousin.”
“Why, in the name of the Sky Beings, couldn’t he be long dead with worms crawling in and out of his skull?” Red Finger growled under his breath, looking around. “Where’s Wing Heart? I would have thought she would have been one of the first people down here. Is she missing the opportunity to prance up and down while telling of Owl Clan’s Power, courage, and skill?”
“Oh, she’ll be here.” Mud Stalker wet his lips. “But only when the timing is right. As always, she will want to make a grand entrance.”
“Wretched bitch. What I’d give to—”
“Patience, old friend. A great many things may yet go wrong for our young hero.”
“White Bird!” The shrill yell carried over the growing babble of voices. Mud Stalker turned in time to see Spring Cypress running down the slope, pushing through the growing throng of people. Having passed fifteen summers, she was a tall girl, thin and lithe. Her dress consisted of a virgin’s skirt loosely woven from bass-bark thread. It had been tied in the back with two beaded tassels. Cord fringe that attached to the hem dangled down past her knees. Each had been tipped with a stone bead so that it clattered and swayed with her steps. Born of the Rattlesnake Clan, Spring Cypress was Elder Graywood Snake’s granddaughter. The girl had pinned her hair for White Bird long ago. As the seasons passed, and rumors circulated that her young swain had died upriver, she had grown despondent. Now, despite the fact that she carried no torch, she seemed to glow. But that might just have been the reflection of the light on her oiled skin.
“Spring Cypress?” White Bird craned his head, the canoe bobbing at his action. Despite the youth’s exceptional balance, a careless move could capsize the boat.
“Yes! It’s me! They said you were dead!” She was jumping up and down on charged legs, her immature breasts bouncing in time to the necklace on her chest. The weighted fringes jerked and jangled on her skirt.
“Dead?” White Bird threw his head back and laughed. “Anything but! I’m more full of life now that I’ve come home.”
“What have you brought?” someone called.
“Where have you been?” cried another.
“What took you so long?”
“White Bird, who are these people with you?”
“Yellow Spider? What did they do? Marry you off to one of their grease-smelling hags up there?”
“How was the river? Is the water high?”
A thousand questions came boiling out of the crowd, each trying to outshout the others.
Mud Stalker struggled to hear the answers White Bird and Yellow Spider hollered back, but the roar of voices drowned them out. Instead, he turned his attention to the six young barbarians who stood uneasily on their canoes, watching with wide eyes. He couldn’t make out much about them, other than their hair was pinned to the backs of their heads in tight buns. They were muscular, naked to the waist, where hide breechcloths had been secured by thick white cords. Someone, probably White Bird and Yellow Spider, had given them grease and taught them how to smear it over their bodies to thwart the plagues of mosquitoes and biting flies that filled the swamps.
“Hides, tool stone, copper, buffalo meat and medicines, a great many things …” White Bird’s words carried through a lull in the conversation.
“Here comes Wing Heart!” Red Finger pointed up the hill.
The Owl Clan Elder was picking her way down the slope, two of her clan’s people, Water Petal and Bluefin, bearing torches to light her way. The yellow light reflected from her silver-streaked hair as if it had previously caught the sun’s rays and was now releasing them into the night. She wore a bearskin mantle pinned atop the left shoulder with a deer-bone skewer. Her right shoulder and breast were bare. Despite the late hour and the unexpected call, she wore a finely woven cloth kirtle. Spotless and white it swayed with each step she took. The preceding turning of seasons had been hard on her. Speaker Cloud Heron, her brother, had been slowly failing, his mind and health draining away like upland floodwaters. When White Bird had not returned last fall, she had taken it stoically, calmly stating that her son was detained. But the months had passed, and winter had dragged on, one grim gray day after another passing as her clan’s influence ebbed.
Now, here she came, looking to all the world as if it were just another day and not the salvation of her authority and prestige. The crisis of clan leadership had been delayed yet again, perhaps forever.
“You’d think she planned this from the very beginning,” Red Finger hissed irritably. Then he paused. “You don’t think she did, do you? Do you think that rascal son of hers has been hiding out in the swamp for months? Did she do this just to keep us off-balance? To make us show our hands?”
“What about these barbarians?” Mud Stalker twitched his lips in their direction. “Did she hide them in the swamps, too? And all the Trade things that I overhead White Bird say he brought? She might be a Powerful old hag, but she and White Bird didn’t just conjure Trade and barbarians from the mud and swamp moss. No, Cousin, he went north. Just as he said. We had better plan on how we are going to deal with that.”
“He was always a Powerful boy. Had a way about him.” Red Finger tapped his chin thoughtfully.
“We must take other steps, Cousin.”
Red Finger shot a sidelong glance at him, his eyes shadowed black in the torchlight. “Are you thinking what I think you are?”
“Perhaps. Let us be patient. We are descended from Snapping Turtle, Cousin. Like him, we must be prudent, silent, and crafty. Snapping Turtle always lies where you least expect to find him. He is a master of camouflage and stealth.” A pause. “And his bite can snap a man’s bones in two.”
Red Finger’s expression hardened. “We must be very
very
careful.”
T
he dark soil underfoot had turned treacherous. Evening mist had fallen, then hundreds of feet had churned it. The last thing Wing Heart would allow herself to do was to slip and take a tumble—not with half the town watching her. All of the terrible months of mixed hope, grief, and despair culminated here, now, at this moment and place: White Bird was home! She must use every sliver of advantage and opportunity.
Moccasin Leaf had been nipping at her heels, ready to slip Half Thorn into the Speaker’s position. Just that morning she had been contemplating whether any hope remained. The question had been: Would it be better to declare her son dead before her brother died, or after? Points could be made for either decision, but in the end it had been her Dream Soul rather than her Life Soul that had won out. She simply couldn’t stand to make a public admission of what she had come to believe in private. To do so would be too final, too void of even her thinly frayed hopes.
Then out of the darkness had come the word that White Bird had arrived. She was told that even as the runner spoke, her son was waiting in his canoe at the landing. She could hardly believe
that he had brought not just himself and Yellow Spider, but three more canoes full of Trade paddled by barbarians!
She picked her way carefully in the flickering torchlight borne by her cousins. No trace of the rushing ecstasy in her heart betrayed itself on her stern face. She kept the fingers of her left hand tightly knotted in the silky bearskin she’d pinned over her shoulder. Aware that all eyes had turned her direction, she held her head high. That was it, let them all see. Owl Clan would remain the preeminent clan in Sun Town.
She cast a quick glance around as the land leveled. Of course Mud Stalker had beaten her here. Snapping Turtle Clan had been poised to move on her. She could practically see him choking on his disappointment as he fingered the scars on his ruined forearm. Too bad the alligator hadn’t taken the rest of him along with his stripped fingers and skin.
To the left, amidst a knot of his kinspeople, Thunder Tail, Speaker of the Eagle Clan, stood with crossed arms, his face like a mask. She inclined her head politely in his direction, thrilled by the smoldering emotion in his eyes.
You would love to cut my throat, wouldn’t you, old lover?
To the rear, just back from the beached canoes, old Cane Frog stood. The Frog Clan Elder’s left eye gleamed like a white stone in the firelight; the empty socket of her missing right eye made a black hole in her face. She was propped up by her daughter, Three Moss. As always, Three Moss was whispering in the old blind woman’s ears, acting as her eyes. Several of the Frog Clan’s young hunters had gathered behind her, as if for moral support. Their gazes darted back and forth like a school of shiners in shallow water. The two plotters, Hanging Branch and Takes Food, hovered to one side, whispering to each other. But Frog Clan, for all their bluster and strutting, had never really been in contention for leadership of the Council. Cane Frog hadn’t the wits, and given Three Moss’s dull head, the future didn’t bode well for them either. Frog Clan would only be trouble if they aligned themselves with a rival.

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