People of the Morning Star (68 page)

“It won’t stop me, you know. It’s only a matter of time before I succeed.” He flipped his head the way he had as a boy when it was wet. “How did you know about the escape tunnel beneath Columella’s bed?”

“Piasa told me.”

He shot her a measuring look from where he climbed down, one hand clutching an old root; whatever tree it had once belonged to was long gone. His naked body was a colorful mess of smudged paint and mud, all running in the rain. His eyes had become black stones in a mess of black and yellow.

“Piasa
told
you?” His voice mocked her. “He’s mine.
Mine!
And I’m going to bring him to this world in the end.”

“All right, fine. Why do you think I’m doing this? Pus and blood, Spud! You haven’t changed. You’re still a spoiled, whining little monster.”

“And what are you?” He shot her a look as he slid, caught a foot on a piece of sandstone, and edged sideways in the gully to a better hold. “I heard. Moping. Soul-flying to the Spirit World. Grieving because Makes Three got himself killed up north?”

“
Don’t
use his name. Ever. Or I’ll—”

“Fly off to the Underworld and weep for him to return?”

She flicked the mud from her fingers. “I hate you, you know. What you did to me that night? I’d managed to lock it away, hide it down deep inside. My husband proved to me, allowed me to actually believe, that men weren’t all like Morning Star … like you.”

He paused blocking the narrow defile, water splashing over the foot he’d wedged in the drainage bottom. “That night? He was
no longer
your brother. That was just Chunkey Boy’s body. Morning Star can claim any woman he wants.”

“I’ve made my peace with Morning Star. Though not to his liking.” She tossed her wet braid aside, and glared down at him. “You had no excuse, Brother. It was incest and rape. And for that, I’ll never forgive you.”

He gave her a mocking grin. “We’re
not
like other people. The same rules don’t apply to us. Call it a bond, a special celebration of Morning Star’s happy return to us. Seeing you and him? I just
had
to see what it was like to follow a living god.”

“He hurt me.
You betrayed and humiliated me!
”

“Forget it, Sister. The world’s changed since that night. I have, you have. The voices were right when they told me to take you. They whispered in my ear that as good as it was for me, it would be just as good for you. Oh, it was good indeed! The final proof that I was the Wild One. And you know what else? I realized that night that I loved you more than I’d love any woman ever. The voices told me that you’d come to understand eventually, that though it might hurt you for the moment, it would make you stronger in the end. And they were right. That’s why you came to me, why I let you lead me out of that fire.”

“I just want you dead.”

“You had the chance, Sister. You could have shot me down when you first walked into the palace.”

“Oh, I wanted to. Believe it. He kept whispering in my ear to wait, to hold. Even as my muscles weakened.”

“He? Piasa?”

“He said it was a test. I only begin to understand.”

“Understand? You mean how we’re going to change the world again?” He paused. “Oh yes. We unleashed a spinning series of events that night. I’d always loved you, dreamed of you. No woman could ever live up to you, Sister. I knew that as a boy … that I’d always try and measure other women by your standards. And then, when I sneaked in, and saw him between your legs?”

“If you really loved me, couldn’t you have told him to stop?”

“It was like being hit by lightning!” he cried. “I saw how it would all work! The voices, you should have heard them! They began singing, laughing, crying, ‘Yes! Yes! Yes! This is the way!’”

“Nothing exists beyond your needs, does it?” she asked sadly as the cold rain trickled down her face and dripped from her nose.

“You don’t know what it was like, being in exile. I never laid with a woman when I wasn’t dreaming of you, remembering…”

“You’re possessed of twisted and polluted souls, Brother. Hurry up. The sooner we’re down, the sooner we’re in a canoe. The sooner you can have another chance at calling Piasa’s souls.”

He continued his descent. They were past the steepest part, and could now turn and walk the rest of the way. She ground her teeth, wanting to spit on his rain-streaked back.

“How long were you in contact with Sun Wing?”

“A couple of years,” he told her. “She was such a simple thing. And so easy to understand. I watched a girl just like her down among the Pacaha. She became my inspiration. Funny how seeing things from the outside suddenly makes you understand. Like Sun Wing, she’d been given over to indulgence, fawned over as the youngest, but perpetually frustrated by the knowledge that she’d never be the ruler. That’s when the voices told me to contact Sun Wing, to begin telling her stories, dangle the possibility before her. I only had to tempt her, and she was mine.”

“Why did you take Lace first?”

“No matter what Sun Wing might have told me, giving her proof that I was clearing her way to the
tonka’tzi
’s chair could only reassure her.”

“Did you feel nothing when you killed Father? Tortured Lace’s husband? Slit her throat and cut the baby out of her body?”

“Did I feel it?” He threw his head back and howled in ecstasy as he shook fists at the storm-lashed skies. “You should have
felt
the Power! The rapturous joy that almost burst my chest and bones. Sister, think. No man alive has ever offered the blood of Morning Star House in sacrifice. Then, to follow it with Sun Wing’s and yours? Perhaps the Keeper’s, or Matron Wind’s?”

They were walking side by side now, hurrying down onto the beach. The rain-grayed sand was firm under their muddy feet as they approached a line of canoes, each marked with a family or clan emblem. This early, and given the intensity of the rain, the beach was abandoned.

“I felt like I had the sun burning inside me.” His face expressed a reverential awe. “To have experienced that … like a blinding light searing through my heart, lungs, and gut?
Blessed gods, Star!
Not even the tingling jetting of semen can compare, and it was consuming my whole body. Pleasure, pain, joy, harmony, ecstasy…” He sighed. “The only other time I felt anything even close was that night when my seed exploded inside you.”

“Lucky me.”

She reached the closest canoe, a small dugout crafted from cedar. Given the blunt bow and thick hull, it was probably a dirt farmer’s. She certainly didn’t recognize the designs painted on its sides. The section of rope that tied it to a stake upslope looked old and ratty. Though firmly beached, the rope provided additional security should the river rise unexpectedly.

She untied the knot, glancing in to see three paddles.

“I can assure you, Brother, what I felt that night was nothing but pain. Every kind of pain, physical as well as soul-bruising disbelief and that shattering sense of betrayal. I know what we got away with as children. We were evil, Brother. And you have just grown worse.”

He seemed to be ignoring her, pointing up at the slope. “Someone’s coming.”

She followed his finger, seeing a muddy, bloody, man slipping and sliding as he followed their path down the drainage-cut bluff.

Fire Cat.
She bit off a hollow chuckle. “Come, let’s be on the river. The sooner we’re away, the sooner I can fulfill my promise to you and Power.”

Together they pushed the canoe out onto the rain-stippled water. Night Shadow Star jumped into the bow and picked up a paddle. Mud was running from her moccasins to mix with the rainwater pooled in the hull.

As Walking Smoke hopped in the stern and began to paddle out into the river, she untied her calf-high moccasins.

“We’re not evil,” he said reasonably. “Just like in the Beginning Times, we are changing the world. First we brought back the Morning Star. In the future, when people sing of the Wild One, they’re going to sing how Thrown Away Boy, who would have sacrificed his sister, brought Piasa from the Underworld to this one.”

He uttered that silly little laugh that once had charmed and then infuriated her. “And yes, I would have killed you that night. But it wouldn’t have been permanent. I would have brought your souls back. Given you another body. Not only did I love you that much, it would have been epic.”

“You’re
not
Thrown Away, or the Wild One, or any such nonsense. I’m not Corn Woman! Chunkey Boy wasn’t the Morning Star, either. That came later. He was nothing more than a mean little boy, and later a violent youth, who never had to face the consequences of his actions. Not until the living god took him.”

“Then who are you, if not Corn Woman?”

“I’m Night Shadow Star, Piasa’s mouthpiece, accursed and alone.” She barked a bitter laugh. “And here’s the irony: You’re the one who made me that. It was you who broke me down, rubbed my face in the muck of my own false sense of arrogance. You caused me to see the vile being I had become. You forced me to live it from the other side, the victim’s side. You made me
feel,
Brother.”

He snorted, his paddle trickling water as they drove for the center of the river. “And if I am not Thrown Away, who am I? Who but the Wild One could call the Power of the Underworld? I cut my father’s throat! Sacrificed my sister! If I am not great, what am I?”

“A witch,” she said simply. “One possessed of demented voices and polluted Power. Evil. A witch driven to sate your appetites for status and authority no matter how much misery, pain, and despair you inflict on others. You never see past yourself.”

“You think it’s about me?”

“Completely.”

“It’s about the
world,
Sister! About how I’m going to remake it. I’m surrendering
myself
to Piasa. Sacrificing
my
body. How can that be about me?”

She turned then, staring back at him, seeing the gleam of anticipation in his eyes.

“When you surprised me that night, beat me into submission and pinned my arms above my head, do you remember what you said as you were ripping my skirt off my hips? How you were weeping with joy? Do you remember your words when you drove your knee between my legs? Or the whimpered words that passed your lips as your seed spilled into my torn sheath?”

“I was taken by the Power of the moment, changing the world, changing you to—”

“You cried, ‘Oh, yes. Oh, yes.’ And ‘How I’ve wanted this.’ Over and over. I wasn’t there, Brother. Not as your sister, not as a terrified girl, not even as a person. I was a just a hot piece of meat with a terror-dry sheath to plunge your spear into. That’s when I knew you for what you were. And I’ve hated you ever since.”

For the first time, his eyes narrowed. He flipped his head to sling the rain off. “Then why are you helping me?”

She gave him a triumphant grin. “Helping you? Piasa told me how it had to end. It took every ounce of my strength to keep from shooting that arrow into your accursed heart. I looked at the pieces of Lace’s body, remembered her sweet face. Saw again how excited she was at her first pregnancy, and the fact that she actually loved her husband. She was trying so hard, studying at how to be a good Matron Wind in anticipation of the day she ascended to the Four Winds chair.

“I loved my father. As much for the license he gave us as children, as for the service he gave to Cahokia and its people as
tonka’tzi
.”

“He—”

“Quiet! I
loved
them all. And you murdered them! Would have murdered Sun Wing, me, Columella, and those children! Pus and blood, I wanted with my very soul to drive that arrow through your heart the way you
drove your shaft into my sheath that night.
”

“Then why didn’t you?” he asked through a sneer. “It’s because you know my Power, want to share it, to—”

“Piasa kept whispering for me to be patient, that I was clever enough to eventually get you here.”

They were drifting on the current now, rain spattering on them, stippling the river’s roiling surface. Someone had pushed a canoe out from the shore, a single figure, paddling like a madman in an attempt to catch up.

Walking Smoke arched an eyebrow, chuckling to himself. “Why would Piasa choose you? Look around. We’re on the river. Headed south. In a quarter moon we’ll be beyond Morning Star’s reach. I don’t have to conjure Piasa’s souls in Cahokia. There are other places that—”

“You are
just
where we want you,” she told him simply.

Walking Smoke threw his head back and laughed. “Quite the opposite, Sister. You’re alone with me. On the river. And as much as I appreciate your help getting out of Evening Star town, you still
ruined
my ceremony. And for that you must be punished.” He cocked his head. “But fortunately for you, I do love you so. The last time I shared my love, I didn’t hear you gasp when you reached your pleasure. But you’ve given yourself to me now. Before Piasa takes my body, I
will
hear that explosive little cry of delight.”

“Want to try now?” she asked, reaching down and peeling her moccasins off, the canoe wobbling as she did. One after the other, she tossed them into the river. “Are you desperate enough to take me in a canoe, here, in the rain?”

His chortling laugh sent shivers through her as she struggled to pull her sopping wet dress over her head. With a flourish, she sent it sailing to slap down on the waves. Carefully shifting, she turned in the canoe to face him.

His face was possessed of rapturous awe as he stared at her naked body. “You never cease to amaze me, Sister. Oh, yes. I’m up for the challenge. I will have to hurt you, you know. I can’t just forgive the part you played in spoiling my ceremony.”

She opened her arms in an inviting embrace, taunting him by arching her back, spreading her knees against the hull, and leaning back. “I’m yours, Brother. To do with as you wish. If it’s better for you, more pleasurable if you hurt me in the process, do it.”

He raised himself on the gunwales, his blue-stained shaft already rising. As he carefully clambered onto her body, she whispered, “I can’t tell you how I’ve waited for this. Piasa finally says it’s time.”