People of the Owl: A Novel of Prehistoric North America (North America's Forgotten Past) (7 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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“Yes. Curious isn’t it? He’s so different. Matings are such puzzling things.”
She raised an eyebrow, shooting him a glance from the corner of her eye.
“Now that White Bird is back,” Clay Fat mused, “Spring Cypress has just passed her first menstruation. She is a young woman now, and I know she favors White Bird.”
Wing Heart knew for a fact that Spring Cypress had passed her first menstruation last winter out at Sweet Root Camp—where she would have remained had Clay Fat and Graywood Snake not decided that White Bird was dead. In lieu of that decision they had brought her back to Sun Town to troll her through Frog and Alligator Clans to see what young man snapped at her allure. Gorgeous nubile thing that she was, and Rattlesnake, having the influence that they did, she had had more than her share of young males swarming after her. Either of those clans would have been more than happy to send one of their sons to her house.
“We shall see,” Wing Heart replied casually. Did she dare contemplate another alliance with Rattlesnake Clan? Or, given the potentials of White Bird’s exploding popularity, would she be better served marrying the boy to one of the other clans?
“You could do worse, you know,” Clay Fat continued. “And, well, until tonight, a great many people were worried.”
“As was I,” she relented.
“They thought you might name Mud Puppy as Speaker!” Clay Fat laughed, his rotund belly wiggling.
“Mud Puppy as Speaker …” At that moment she caught sight of old Mud Stalker. He was walking in the shadows off to the side, his ruined right arm cradled in his left. Beside him, Deep Hunter was talking, his hands moving to emphasize his words. The one person Deep Hunter hated more than Mud Stalker was the Swamp Panther cutthroat, Jaguar Hide. So, why were they talking now?
What venom are you concocting, old man? How do you intend to inject it into my flesh?
The thought of it sent a cold shiver down her spine.
When she looked back toward the night-veiled lake, she could see
nothing. No fire had yet been built on the Turtle’s Back.
Instead, oddly, she noticed Mud Puppy where he stood at the water’s edge, a solitary figure, totally absorbed by his cup.
Mud Puppy? Speaker for the clan? I’d lose my souls before I’d allow that to happen.
T
hat night as Mud Puppy lay deep in sleep, a soft gulf breeze blew up from the south. It carried the tendrils of rising smoke northward, away from the curved lines of houses that dotted the concentric ridges of Sun Town. The darkness lay thick, light from Father Moon and the myriads of stars blotted by the mass of clouds that alternately drizzled rain on the land.
As the Dream slipped its hazy fingers around Mud Puppy’s souls, Owl wings sailed silently through the falling tendrils of misty rain and over the arched ridges of Sun Town. The great bird circled slowly above a single dwelling on the eastern end of the first ridge.
The oval-shaped house had been built of saplings driven into the ground, woven together with vines, and plastered with clay. Sheaves of grass formed a thick thatch that was bound to the cane roof stringers by wraps of stout cord. The tight thatch shed the rain, letting it drip just beyond the clay walls to pool in the rich soil.
The door was an oblong hole in the wall covered with a hempfabric hanging just thick enough to block most of the chill. Around the top, and along the overhang of thatch, smoke drifted out, carrying with it the odor of hickory and maple.
Inside, a cane-pole bench that served as seating and bedding had been built into the wall circumference. The woman slept fitfully on the western side, her aging body covered with a fine deerskin blanket. The boy, in his bed on the eastern side, lay lost in dreams, his
body covered with a worn fabric. He had curled on his right side, the rounded angles of his face visible in the reddish glow cast by the coals in the central hearth. His eyes flicked and wiggled under tightly closed lids.
The Dream knotted itself in Mud Puppy’s souls, wrapping around them, spinning and cavorting.
He sat at the top of a high mound, the ground warm under his buttocks and thighs. He reached down and raked the earth into his hands. Holding it to his nose, he sniffed the pungent musk, drawing it into his body and souls. After it became one with him, he pinched the dark silty soil into shapes with his fingers. The moist earth seemed to flow as though of its own accord, forming at his very thoughts, the image perfectly rendered by his supple brown fingers.
First he sculpted the body, rotund, with a protruding belly. Then he shaped a round head, his thumbs curving up and around the face to reveal a hooked beak between two broadly recessed eyes. With thumb and forefinger he pinched out the ears, pointed and high. Using a fingernail he circled the large eyes—and when he lifted his hand, they blinked at him, bright yellow with gleaming black pupils.
Along either side of the rotund body he shaped the wings, outlining the feathers with his nails. From the bottom of the torso he pulled out the feet, his thumbnail tracing the individual toes and talons.
“You have done well,” the mud sculpture told him. “But you have to learn to fly before you can learn to Dance.”
Mud Puppy stared at the owl, aware that it was changing, that its beak had turned yellow, feathers softening around the ears, but the face, he realized, looked fake.
A mask! He’s wearing a mask!
“You are Masked Owl!”
“Yes, I am.” Masked Owl chuckled at that. “And what is a mask, boy?”
“A covering.”
“Is it?”
“Of course. Just like at the ceremonies when the deer dancers come in. It’s to make them look like deer.”
Masked Owl cocked his head. “In so many ways you remind me of Bad Belly.”
“Who?”
“A young man I once knew, one carried away by the world. Like you, he saw wonder in everything. It comes of an innocence of the soul. I cannot tell you how precious that is.”
“What happened to him?”
“Oh, he became a hero in spite of himself.”
“He didn’t want to be?”
Owl’s head tilted again. “Have you ever been a hero?”
“No.” Mud Puppy frowned down at his dirty hands. “But my brother is.”
Masked Owl considered this. “Then you do not know what it costs to be a hero. The price is high, as your brother is about to find out.”
“Is he—”
“Why are you called Mud Puppy?”
“I—I had one. A mud puppy, I mean.” He looked down at his hands again. As he picked the silt from his fingers, he rolled it into worms. In the sway of the Dream, they began to wiggle and burrow into the rounded top of the mound upon which they sat. Below him the world seemed to inhale and breathe, the trees, water, soil, and grass alive and vibrant with color.
“What finally happened to your mud puppy?”
“I kept it in a ceramic pot filled with water. I petted it and went out every day and caught it insects.”
“And?”
“It changed. It became a beautiful salamander. It went from an ugly brown color to the most incredible reddish orange. Like sunset in the clouds, with black spots all over it. Its eyes were bright yellow, like yours, but smaller.”
“That’s the Power of Salamander.” Masked Owl’s haunting yellow eyes bored into Mud Puppy’s as if seeing inside to his Life Soul. “People don’t understand how magical Salamander is. They ignore him for the most part.”
“It’s because he’s close to the Monsters Below.”
“He is, but that’s not why people ignore him.”
“It’s not?”
“No.” Masked Owl hesitated. “People usually see the world as a reflection of themselves. Pride, arrogance, and status preoccupy them. Let me ask, would your brother rather have Falcon or Salamander for a Spirit Helper?”
“Falcon,” Mud Puppy replied without hesitation.
“And you? Which would you chose?”
Mud Puppy jabbed his fingers into the dirt. “My mother says I’ll never have a Spirit Helper. She says that I’m too stupid.”
“But if you could have a Spirit Helper?”
Mud Puppy glanced shyly at the owl. “I don’t know much about them, but Spirit Helpers pick the people they go to, don’t they? So
I guess I’d want a Spirit Helper that wanted me. If it was Salamander, that would be all right. Everyone wants Falcon. Maybe it would make Salamander happy if someone wanted him.” He paused. “Do Spirit Helpers worry about things like that? About whether people want them or not?”
“Yes, Mud Puppy, they do. And now let me tell you something that most people don’t know. Falcon is indeed powerful, and many people want him for a Spirit Helper, but he has a weakness. He is very fragile. His bones are hollow. His body breaks very easily. He can’t stand any sort of poison because his system is so delicate it will kill him.”
“And Salamander?”
“Ah, Salamander is anything but delicate. He can survive floods, drought, fires, and frost. Not only can he live underwater, but atop the ground, too. His flesh is poisonous to his enemies such as Wolf and Raccoon. Best of all, he stays out of sight most of the time. While the great beasts rip and tear each other’s flesh, Salamander lies under the stones and Dreams the Dance.”
“The Dance?”
“Ah, yes, the Dance.” Masked Owl twirled around, his wings rising in a splendid arc. “To Dance the One. As I am doing now.”
“You are?”
“Indeed.”
“Can I learn your Dance? I’m not as stupid as people think I am. I learned the Circle Dance last winter at solstice when we Danced Mother Sun back into the sky.”
Masked Owl stopped, and those huge black pupils seemed to expand in the yellow eyes behind the mask. They grew, larger and larger, and as they did, Mud Puppy’s soul seemed to shrink.
“Would you like to Dance, Mud Puppy?”
“Very much.”
He felt rather than saw Masked Owl’s smile. “I am glad to hear that.” Then came sadness. “But I can’t teach you yet.”
“You can’t?”
“No.”
Mud Puppy pursed his lips, a terrible grief that he didn’t quite understand lying deep in his breast. Instead he said, “That’s all right.”
Masked Owl’s eyes swelled again, engulfing the world around them. Like pools of darkness, they ebbed and flowed, pulsing with the rhythm of the universe. “You are a good person, Mud Puppy. It pains me to ask, but will you do some things for me before I teach you the Dance?”
“Yes. If I can. But Mother says I’m not very good at doing important things. I heard her tell Uncle Cloud Heron that I can’t even be trusted to carry a cup of water through a rainstorm. You should know that before you ask. And I’m small for my age. Mother says I can’t keep my mind on important things. Most of my friends are working hard to become men. They hunt and fish and learn to be warriors.”
“Why don’t you?”
“I’m not good at those things. I try, but somehow …”
“Yes?”
“I like finding out secrets.”
“Secrets?”
Mud Puppy grinned. “Yes, like why Cricket can make such a loud noise. Or how a caterpillar can become a moth in a cocoon. Have you ever looked into a cocoon after the moth leaves? There aren’t any caterpillar parts left inside. So, where does a moth come from? And, if you cut a caterpillar open, it’s all full of juice. It sure doesn’t have a moth hidden in there anywhere. I know. I used a stick and stirred the gooey stuff to find out.”
Masked Owl’s eyes seemed to shrink, enough that Mud Puppy could see that Masked Owl had thrown his head back. His laughter shook the world and left the clouds trembling. When he stopped, he said, “Mud Puppy, you are a special boy. It has been a long time since I have found such an honest and humble soul.”
Mud Puppy winced, turning his attention back to his hands, picked mostly clean of mud now. All of the worms he’d made had burrowed into the ground. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?”
“Yes. Sorry that I’m all those things. You might want to ask my brother. He’s just come back from the north. Everyone is proud of him. If I can’t do what you need, he might be able to.”
Masked Owl was studying him with those terrible eyes. “What if I said I wanted you?”
“I will do my best,” Mud Puppy asserted. “Especially if you will teach me your Dance. Maybe if I do well, and try very hard, I could get a Spirit Helper? Maybe even one that was Powerful like Salamander?” He frowned; then an image of his mother’s face formed.
“What’s wrong?”
“Would Salamander mind if I didn’t tell my mother?”
“Why wouldn’t you tell her?”
“She wouldn’t like it if she found out that Salamander was my Spirit Helper.”
“Why not?”
“She wouldn’t understand.”
Masked Owl chuckled again. “No, I suppose not. And you, you really wouldn’t mind if Salamander was your Spirit Helper?”
“No!” Mud Puppy cried, abashed. “I would be so grateful.”
Masked Owl laughed again. “I shall talk to Salamander. I shall also accept your promise of lending me help. You should know, however, that it will be a terrible trial. What I will ask will take both perseverance and cunning. It will mean that you must stay true to your beliefs and never lose faith in yourself, no matter what other people are saying. If you are not clever and committed, it could cost you your life.”
Mud Puppy swallowed hard; for the first time fear began to squirm around in his gut. It prickled through him, raising beads of sweat from his skin and making his heart pound.
Masked Owl noted this and nodded. “Ah, good, you understand.”
“I will get a Spirit Helper and learn your Dance?”
“If you do not fail me, yes.”
“I …” the words couldn’t quite form in his throat.
Do I really want to do this? Can I do it? Will I fail? And what if I do? What if I can’t do what he asks?
“Then I will be most disappointed, Mud Puppy.” Masked Owl cocked his head. “I do not know if you can do the things I’m asking. Others have failed me in the past. I cannot resist your free will.”
Mud Puppy’s soul twisted like old fabric as he said, “I will do my best.”
“Do you promise on your souls?”
“I do.”

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