People of the Owl: A Novel of Prehistoric North America (North America's Forgotten Past) (61 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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“Hot today,” Pine Drop called from across the small pond. “I could almost wish for some of that miserable cold from last winter.” She was struggling step by step, leaning as she pulled at the ropes that controlled the net.
Salamander watched her. Toned muscles slid under her smooth brown skin. He could see the strength in her arms and the swell of her thighs as she sloshed through the muddy brown water. Her broad shoulders tensed under the weight of the wet netting. Droplets of water mixed with perspiration as she bent her back, using her round hips for leverage. The top and bottom ropes had to be pulled correctly to create a pocket for the fish. Pine Drop held each rope in a knotted fist.
She glanced across at him, seeing the expression on his face, frowning. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
“Why are you looking at me that way?”
“You are so beautiful. I was just trying to understand, that’s all.”
“Understand what?” She seemed completely confused.
“How I could have been so lucky to have had you for a wife. I spend a lot of time watching you.”
“I know. Sometimes it’s disturbing. That look in your eyes, I mean. As if you’re about to melt.”
“You do that to me. If I have to melt for anyone, I would want to melt for you.”
She smiled then—shy, but happy. Her teeth gleamed in contrast to her lustrous black hair. “Do you want to pull on this net instead of wasting the day staring at me like I’m a lost Dream?”
“You are a Dream.” He leaned into the net, dragging it onward through the shallowing water and onto the muddy flats. As more of the netting was pulled from the water it grew heavier. He could feel the weight of the fish, their struggles carrying as vibrations in the netting. They thrashed in the shallows, hampered by the cords that bound them. He could see heads, tails, and fins protruding from the boil.
“Together now,” he called. “Pull! Pull! Pull!”
With each gasp, they threw their bodies against the sagging net, dragging the catch onto the mud. In the process the netting twisted neatly, trapping the fish in the folds.
Lungs heaving Salamander laid his end down. Fish were writhing, gasping, slapping against each other. He could see catfish, bowfin, gar, bass, suckers, and buffalo fish in the mix.
“Good catch!” Pine Drop said between gasps as she walked over to stand beside him.
“I thought so when I married you,” he said.
Her gleaming brown eyes reflected amusement. “What is it with you today? Do you want something?”
He saw delight shining behind a flawed mask of female cynicism. “I just want you. And my girls. I want everything to stay just as it is today and never change. I want to love you, and hold you, and watch my daughters grow. I want it so badly that it makes my souls ache.”
She reached out, drawing him into her arms. He sighed at the heat of her wet body. Her breasts were against his. Damp strands of her hair clung to the side of his face. His arms around her, he
reveled in her breathing, then detected her heartbeat as his ear pressed against her neck.
“You have me, Salamander. For as long as you want me.”
“I have asked for too much.”
“That’s nonsense. I am staying with you. It is our decision and no one else’s.”
“I just wish the decision was ours.”
She pushed him back far enough to stare into his eyes. “The clans cannot make us do what we do not wish to.”
He reached up to finger a damp lock of her hair away from her eyes. “I do not worry about the clans.”
“Then who?”
“Masked Owl.”
He could see her doubt. “Salamander, why? I mean, I know you have visions. I know about you and Power, but this worries me. Why would Masked Owl harm you?”
“Because I cannot do as he asks.”
“Why not?”
“If I follow the path to the One, I will lose you. I will lose everything. Like Wolf Dreamer, I will fall into the Dream and everything else will become meaningless.”
“I don’t understand.”
He raised a sympathetic eyebrow. “I don’t think anyone wants to be a Dreamer. The cost is so high.”
“Why can’t you stay just the way you are?”
“Because black clouds are gathering—among the spirits as well as among the clans. It is all coming together, Pine Drop.”
A frown pinched her forehead as she nodded. “I know. Uncle is up to something. I think he’s going to accuse you of witchcraft. I think he’s been making deals.”
“He thinks Snapping Turtle Clan will finally become preeminent.” Salamander ran his finger down the side of her cheek. “It isn’t going to happen that way, Pine Drop.”
“How do you know?”
“I’ve seen that part of the future.” He could see doubt firming her expression, and added, “You must trust me on this.”
“Trust you?” Irritation tugged at the corners of her mouth.
“Have you done so poorly on those occasions when I asked you to trust me?”
“Snakes, no. But it leaves me wondering how someone as young as you can always be right. You’re three summers younger than I! Where did you learn all this?”
“In the Spirit World,” he replied uneasily. “The things I’ve seen—”
“You’re not using those mushrooms again, are you?” Warning flashed in her eyes.
“No. Not recently. I don’t have to. Bird Man showed me things.”
“Bird Man?
The
Bird Man?”
“Before I choose one way or another, however, I have to go see someone in the Spirit World.”
“You’re not making sense!”
He let himself look into her eyes, seeing her souls as they tried to comprehend him. “She is older than the Hero Twins. She saved my life that time.”
“The old woman you talked about?”
“Yes.”
She shook herself, stepping away, looking at the fish as they gasped and flopped in the net. “I don’t understand this, Salamander. I just don’t want to lose you. I’ve come to love you. Do you understand? I’m afraid!”
“So am I.”
“Well, let’s stop it! Let’s find a way to save you.”
He hesitated before testing the idea on her. “Would you give it all up?”
“What?” The question had taken her by surprise.
“All of it,” he insisted. “Could you give up Sun Town? Give up being Clan Elder someday? Your position in the leadership? Your clan? Would you just go away with me? Knowing that we could live the rest of our lives in peace? Raise our daughter?”
She gave him a blank look. “Just leave? Everything?”
He nodded.
“The clan
is
everything, Salamander. It’s who we are. What we are. The clan is our blood and bones, our heart and lungs and souls. It is the air we breathe and the food we eat. It is our warmth and protection. Everything, the whole world, is determined by the clan. What we own, where we go, who we marry. The clan gives us our place in the world.”
“Yes, it does.”
“So, you’re asking, could I give up the whole world?” He could see the confusion behind her expression.
“That’s right. Can you give up everything for nothing.”
She slowly shook her head. “I don’t think I understand you. I don’t think you can give up the world, Salamander. To do what? Just go off and live at the edge of the Earth? Be alone?”
“Totally.”
“In other words, you’re asking if I could give up being a person.”
“It’s a hard question, isn’t it?” The answer—the one he had expected—was in her eyes. He smiled reassuringly at her and indicated the fish. “Come on, we’d better stun the ones that haven’t died yet and lug them to the canoe. The thing about a big catch like this is that work is just starting.”
But a great sadness lay between his souls. If Pine Drop, the bravest person he knew, couldn’t even comprehend the question, how could he find the courage actually to do what she thought unimaginable?
N
ight Rain tried for all the world to look normal. Belted at her waist, she wore a fabric kirtle with a prominent turtle design on the front. A square bark hat perched on her head with two long brown pelican feathers stuck into her hair above her ears. A single round ceramic pot hung from the net bag over her shoulders.
Ceramic vessels were light, easily made, and reliable containers. For a people who practically lived in canoes, they served many purposes. Placed in a fire, they could be used to boil liquids and cook soups. By preheating cooking clays, they could become a portable oven for the baking of foodstuffs, and when traveling, fire could be built inside, and the pot changed into a portable heat stove. Finally, when collections of nutmeats, dried seeds, and other foodstuffs were stored, pots could be sealed so that rodents and insects couldn’t gain access. Generally it was for the latter purposes that people carried ceramic vessels. The trouble with boiling water inside them was that given their poor firing, the food often acquired grit and tasted muddy as the inside of the pot began to flake away.
So it was that Night Rain approached the Owl Clan ridges from the north, her ceramic pot bouncing just above her buttocks.
She kept her head down, trying for all the world to appear as just another young woman at her daily tasks. She watched the ground ahead of her and cast surreptitious glances from the corner of her eye. After climbing out of the deep drainage that bounded the northern side of the Owl Clan grounds, she threaded her way along the
path past the ridges. To her left, under the embankment, Morning Lake looked silver in the afternoon light. To the right, the ridgelines of houses cast shadows in curving ranks. Smoke drifted skyward from tens of tens of fires as meals were being prepared in anticipation of the solstice.
People were everywhere, many having arrived from outlying camps and settlements for the solstice celebration. Most had moved in with relatives, bearing sacks full of dried, smoked, and cured fish, meat, and plant foods. Most of these would be succulent meals by the time the ceremonies started.
Night Rain passed the second ridge and turned onto the first. She walked right up to Salamander’s door and leaned her head in.
“Hello? Anhinga? Are you here?”
Silence.
Night Rain ducked inside and squatted by the smoking fire pit. She laid her ceramic bowl to one side and slipped it out of the netting. Only then did she take a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dim interior.
She rose and stepped to the wall where the tools lay. There, propped against the wall, were two stone-headed hoes, Salamander’s ax and adze, several hardened digging sticks, an assortment of bow drills for fire starting and drilling holes in stone, bone, and wood, and finally, yes, Anhinga’s ax.
Night Rain reached out, her fingers tracing the smooth wood of the handle. She grasped it, her gaze running the handle’s length with its carved panther design. She studied the sharp greenstone head set into a notch in the wood and wound tightly with deer sinew. The freshly ground edge was sharp where she pressed her finger against it. Sharp enough to cut. How well Night Rain remembered the blood streaming down Saw Back’s side in a slick sheet.
Could this be the weapon that knocked a hole into Eats Wood’s head? She tried to remember the wound in the top of that mudbrowned skull. Oblong, sinister. Just like this ax.
Night Rain made a face as she remembered this very handle slapping her cold buttocks as Anhinga drove her home under a load of firewood and humiliation.
What a child I was.
The moons since that horrible event seemed to have run together, to have woven themselves into something else. Her life up to that day in the forest might have belonged to a different person—some child she no longer knew.
“But I still belong to my clan,” she whispered, grasping the ax. She turned and hesitated—Salamander’s face forming between her souls.
What if Anhinga
had
killed Eats Wood?
Night Rain reached out and encircled the ax head with her thumb and forefinger. Did the cool stone seem to vibrate? Was it alive, harboring some sort of soul?
Eats Wood was a maggot
.
The often-uttered cautions slipped out of her memory: “
I don’t want you girls alone with him! Do you understand?
” She could imagine mother bending down, pointing a stern finger in her face. “
That boy is not to be trusted! Not even with kin! Snakes, not even the horror of incest would worry his souls if it meant the opportunity to stick himself into pretty girls like you.
”
Night Rain’s expression hardened as she remembered the way Eats Wood used to look at her. Something in those eager brown eyes had chilled her souls.
If Anhinga is proven to be the killer, she’ll be banished at best. At worst, Uncle would manage to have her killed.
And Salamander? What would that do to him? How many times had Night Rain wondered at the love in his eyes as he watched Anhinga? Snakes, it would wound his souls if anything happened to her.
Night Rain bit her lip, considered, and carefully replaced the ax. The reason why would plague her souls afterward, but at that moment of decision, she grabbed up Salamander’s ax instead. She slipped the handle into the kirtle’s belt and turned back to the fire.
With a stick she scraped some embers into the pot before she tucked it back into the net bag. “I just stopped for some hot coals to take back. It was just quicker than building a fire at home,” she would say if anyone asked.
With a final glance, she ducked out the door, and, casually as possible, started across the plaza for her uncle’s.
M
ud Stalker smiled as he bent down in the dusk and lifted the skull from the mud-caked canoe. Behind him, beyond the screen of thick cane and willows, he could hear talking as people passed up the channel in a canoe. Still more arrivals headed for Sun Town and the solstice celebrations. Their voices carried anticipation as they neared their goal.
Sweet Root and Night Rain stood across from him. His sister’s eyes gleamed, while Night Rain’s looked disconnected, lost in a tangle of conflict. Conflict over what? This was her chance to even the score and pay that barbarian witch back for the humiliation of
that long-ago day in the forest. She should be happy to see her junior wife proven guilty of murder.
“Does it fit?” Sweet Root asked, leaning forward in the dusk to see better. She batted at the humming column of mosquitoes with an irritated arm.
“Just a moment.” Mud Stalker turned the skull, feeling the cold bone in his hand. How did a human head become so light? He paused, staring into the empty eye sockets, seeing the Y-shaped holes at the back. Even if he could do it by a wish, he wouldn’t will Eats Wood’s eyes back into those orbits. The young man had been a disappointment from the days of his birth, and truth to tell, Mud Stalker had always accepted that someday Snapping Turtle Clan would have to pay for the boy’s indiscretions.
“Better this way,” he whispered softly to the grinning skull. “You are now serving your clan as you never would have in life.”
“The ax,” Sweet Root reminded as she lifted it from where it had rested on the canoe gunwale. “Does it fit the hole?”
Mud Stalker turned the skull until it faced her.
She lowered the sharp edge to the oblong wound. The ax made a partial fit. The length was right, but something about the width didn’t work.
“Close,” Sweet Root noted.
Mud Stalker frowned. “I don’t know. The edges aren’t quite right. This isn’t anything I could take to the Council.” He glanced to the side, seeing relief on Night Rain’s face. What was this? She was truly relieved to discover that that Swamp Panther camp bitch hadn’t killed Eats Wood? Why?
Unwilling to give up, Mud Stalker gestured with his head and when Sweet Root removed the ax, he turned the skull around. He would try everything just be sure that he hadn’t missed some … Sweet Root neatly dropped the edge of the ax into the hole in the top of Eats Wood’s head.
“Perfect,” Sweet Root whispered, her eyes widening.
“I’ll be,” Mud Stalker breathed. “She
did
kill him. But she sneaked up and hit him from behind.”
This time when he shot a glance at Night Rain, it was to find her expression betraying shock, astonishment, and disbelief.
F
eeling weary to her bones, smelling of fish, and with every muscle aching, Pine Drop plodded to her doorway. A faint glow of sunset
still shone in the northwestern sky. The night smelled of smoke, cooking food, and voices carried in the air. She could hear laughter, cheerful banter, and the soft murmuring of conversations. In any direction fires sparkled and illuminated thatch-roofed houses, ramada roofs, and countless people. So many people come in from the hinterlands. So many fires. The smoky air over Sun Town had taken on a reddish cast. Normally, she admired the sight.
She shifted her daughter with one hand and used the other to ease the tumpline from her forehead as she lowered the basket of fish that rode in the hollow of her back. Straightening, she winced and made a face at the stiffness in her back muscles.
Her house and ramada were dark, seemingly deserted. She walked to the fire pit on the north side of the ramada and bent down, her sleeping daughter cradled on her lap. With a stick she stirred the coals, finding a few gleaming red eyes in the heavy hardwood ash. From the tinder pile she placed some twigs on coals, shifted her daughter, and blew carefully until flames flickered.
Bit by bit she built up the fire until it cast a cheery yellow light to illuminate the insides of the ramada and the big wooden pestle and mortar.
For a long moment she sat, tired, and stared into the fire. How did a person give up being who they were? How could she just walk away from her world?
“Was he talking outside of his souls?” she asked her sleeping daughter. “What are we without our homes? Without our families, lineages, and clans?”
Her baby’s face was a round golden brown globe in the firelight. Silky strands of black hair had escaped the fabric wrap. Her tiny mouth hung open under the smooth button of her nose. The tightly closed eyes reflected an innocent peace.
Had he been serious about just going away? What would that solve? The people who depended on him would just have to find someone else to depend on. Owl Clan would continue its decline, and Snapping Turtle Clan would continue to grow in prestige.
“Hello, Sister,” Night Rain greeted from the night as she appeared from behind the house.
“Where have you been?”
“Uncle and Mother had some things for me to do,” Night Rain said with a hollow voice.
Even weary as Pine Drop was, she looked up as Night Rain squatted at the fire across from her. Her sister’s face reminded her of one of the Earth Monster masks the men wore on ceremonial occasions.
It was something about the set of the mouth, the emptiness in the eyes.
“What’s wrong?”
“There will be a Council meeting called tomorrow.” Night Rain reached a stick from the woodpile and inserted the end into the flames. As it caught fire, she lifted it, watching the fire eat at the wood before it went out and smoked. Night Rain inserted the smoking end into the flames again to relight.
“You don’t always look like you’re sick to your stomach when the Council is called.”
“Uncle orders that we both be there.”
“Blood and pus, I’ve got a canoe load of fish to dry.” She jerked her head toward the basket. “That’s part of it. I thought I’d get them split tonight and partially dried before the flies got to them.” She worked her hands, feeling the muscles in her forearms, hot and cramped. “But all I want to do is sleep.”
“You should know something.”
“I should know many things.” She rubbed her tired eyes, aware of how her hand smelled of fish. “I should know who I am.”
“What?”
“Who am I, Night Rain? What am I?”
“What brought this about?”
“A question that Salamander asked me today.” She studied her sister, seeing the sick worry in her face. “Could you give up being you? Could you just walk down to the canoe landing and paddle away from here? Maybe go and live somewhere in the forest without any clan or family? Could you just go away, Night Rain, and never see your mother, your uncle, or any of your friends? Could you stop being you?”

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