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Authors: Kathleen O'Neal Gear,W. Michael Gear

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BOOK: People of the Owl: A Novel of Prehistoric North America (North America's Forgotten Past)

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“You said the Sky World turns?” Mud Puppy blurted in surprise. His terror had begun to recede replaced by fascination with the things the Serpent was telling him.

“Indeed it does. If you sit here on a cloudless night, boy, you can watch the stars slowly spin around the North Star. You must be very still and patient and mark the paths of the stars as they circle the heavens. They move so slowly. No one can tell you why. It is only one of the many mysteries.” The Serpent smiled wistfully. “But that is not what I have come to teach you today. No, I just tell you this to tease you, to stimulate your curiosity. There are more mysteries, but they are for the future, boy. Instead I want you to look down at Sun Town and tell me what you see.”

Mud Puppy turned back toward the dusk-heavy town. Cooking fires had begun to sparkle on the concentric ridges. The south wind carried blue tendrils of smoke northward across the ridges and toward
Star Mound. Was it imagination, or could he smell the burning hickory and maple from this great height?

“I see Sun Town.” The thought struck him again that it resembled a huge bird, its wings outspread. Power rose around him, slipping along his skin with a feathery touch. “I’ve never seen it from up here before. It’s so different.”

“Yes, it is. There is a reason for that. You see the One. The unity. That is the miracle of this place, boy. The Power of Sun Town—of the moieties, the clans, and the lineages—is that we are all so many pieces. Just like a body, made of bone, muscle, blood, and organs. Each piece separate under the skin. Sun Town is our body, the whole of the People, living, breathing,
being
… but it is more than that. It is our world. The directions: East, South, West, North, Up and Down. Our mounds rising to the Sky, our borrow pits sinking into the Earth. All the pieces of the world come together here. This place is the reconciliation of the world. What you see around you is the harmony of all the parts of Creation working together.”

“You said that we are at the center of the world.”

“Ah,” the Serpent replied, his old toothless mouth agape, “now you begin to understand. I am an old man, but the wonder I see in your eyes still fills me when I stand up here. All those tens of winters have flowed past like the Father Water, and still I look and marvel at who and what we are. It is here, of all the places on Earth, that the One is knit together.”

“The One?”

The old man’s eyes had turned dreamy. “The One, the Dance, the terrible disruptive harmony.”

Mud Puppy shivered, hearing the words of Masked Owl reverberating from his dreams.
The One! The Dance!
A tingle of excitement ran through him.

The Serpent waved a callused hand out to encompass the curving lines of houses below them. “They don’t see it, don’t feel it, don’t Dance it in their souls. No, boy, they stand at the center of the world, bathed in a pitch-black brightness, and study the mud between their toes. They scheme, dicker, bargain, and plot to gain prestige or authority—and forget the miracle of who they are.”

The venom in the old man’s words shocked Mud Puppy. He couldn’t help but think of his mother, the Clan Elder, and her constant preoccupation with the demands of keeping clan and lineage preeminent.

“You are different, boy,” the Serpent whispered. “No matter what they do to you, remember that. If you ever doubt, climb up
here and look down. See with the eyes of your souls and listen to the deafening silence. They will try to take the harmony away from you, to weight your feet down until you cannot follow the Dance.”

“I don’t understand.”

The old man glanced at him, his thin form silhouetted against the scudding charcoal clouds. The wind sent its fingers rippling through the frail white hair and tugged at the old man’s sash. Despite the growing darkness, the Serpent’s eyes were aglow. “
He
came to me in a Dream.
He
told me your mother would come, that she would give me this chance.”

He? He, who? The old man’s words made no sense. Fingers of sudden worry stroked at Mud Puppy’s souls. He turned his eyes back to the darkening lake and the dimple created by the Turtle’s Back. A flickering fire had sprung to life there. “I would have thought you would be out with my brother. It’s his last night of purification.”

The Serpent muttered something under his breath, sighed, and finally said, “Tell me about how people first came into this world.”

Mud Puppy squinted as the wind batted his straight black hair against his forehead. “It was after the Creator split the Sky from the Earth. Everything was water. The Sky Beings looked down from above the dome of the Sky and saw water everywhere. It was Water Beetle who finally flew from the Sky on his wings, dived into the water, and swam to the bottom of the ocean. There, he found mud and brought it up to the surface. Time after time he dived down and brought up mud. That’s why to this day Water Beetle’s children dive to the depths. They are still making the Earth a bit at a time.”

“Yes, that’s right. What happened then?”

“The mud was soft and wet and sticky, and the Sky Beings who flew to Earth couldn’t land lest they sink into the mud. That was when Bird Man soared across the world, and with each beat of his wings, he pushed the land down or pulled it up. From that, mountains were formed. In the low places, Brother Snake crawled out of the Underworld and slithered down to become the river.” Mud Puppy looked out to the east, where he knew the great Father Water flowed beyond the flooded sweetgum swamps.

“And the animals?”

“They were fashioned out of dirt, molded into their shapes and sizes by the Sky Beings and the Earth Monsters. Wolf was the one who dug into a giant earthen mound and fashioned the dirt he dug out into the shape of First Man and First Woman. He breathed his soul into them and led them out into Mother Sun’s light.”

“That’s right. So tell me, Mud Puppy, having looked down on
Sun Town, do you understand why we raise soil into giant mounds?”

“It is to remind us that we are of the Earth.”

“What purpose does that serve?”

“I don’t know.”

“It is to remind us of
what
we are, where we came from. Our bodies come not from the Sky, but from the soil itself. It is our souls that are of the Sky, breathed into us by Wolf just after the Creation. Very well, you have just told me the story of First Man and First Woman. How did the other people come into being?”

Mud Puppy frowned. “They were born of the Hero Twins, the two sons of First Man and First Woman. One, Light Boy, was born of the joining of First Man and First Woman when they lay together. He passed from her womb into air and light. The second twin, Dark Boy, was born of blood and water.”

“Very good. Can you tell me how that happened?”

“First Woman had her regular bleeding while she was bathing in the river. The blood draining from her womb mixed with the river water and the dark twin was conceived. It was Raven who plucked him from the water as he floated past. That’s why women are not to enter the water during their bleeding. Instead, they must secret themselves in the Women’s House.” He pointed at the Mother Mound now barely visible at the eastern edge of the plaza.

“You are here”—the Serpent gestured at the mound top—“to reflect on that story, boy. You are here, at the highest point of the Bird’s Head. Symbolic of the place where people were brought out into the light. But your mother wants you to learn another lesson up here.”

“She does?”

The Serpent chuckled, the sound like the clattering of cane slats. “Oh, indeed. But I’m not sure if she understands what you are—or the Truth that you will learn here.” He filled his lungs, the ribs sticking out on his thin chest as he looked up at the cloud-choked sky. “Remember this, boy: You cannot know the light until you have been blinded by the darkness. Just like this place, opposites crossed. She has never understood that.”

“I don’t think I do, either.”

“Your mother, boy.” He knotted a fist of gnarly bone. “She doesn’t understand what’s coming. She has lost the harmony, never set her feet to the Dance. They are going to destroy her.”

“Who is?”

“She is caught between the Twins. Strong, yes, that she is. But the mighty Wing Heart is brittle inside. Her souls hang in the balance.”
His voice had gone far away, worried by the wind. “The lightning is coming.” A pause. Then he clapped his hands together, shouting,
“Bang!”

Mud Puppy jumped in spite of himself, his heart racing again. The fear that had ebbed with the magic of the place came rushing back to strangle the breath in his lungs.

The Serpent gave Mud Puppy a sad look. The intensity of those dark eyes sent worry pumping through Mud Puppy’s veins with each beat of his heart.

“Take this, boy. Eat it.” The old man reached into his pouch. When he withdrew his hand it clutched some shriveled thing.

“What is it?”

“The future, boy.” The Serpent extended his hand as if it held something dangerous. “If you’re strong enough.”

Mud Puppy felt it drop onto his palm, surprised by the lightness. It had the feel of desiccated bark. He lifted it to his nose, smelling must and dust.

“Eat it,” the old man said. “
He
told me to give it to you.”

“Who?”

“Eat!”

Mud Puppy placed the bit of desiccated plant matter on his tongue. Dry and flaky it crumbled under his teeth. The taste made him think of rotting logs and leaf mold.

“What did you make me eat?”

The old man smiled sourly. “You ate a tunnel, boy. A hole. Through it you will pass into other worlds. See other places and talk with other beings. But I must warn you: Do not leave this place. Most of all, do not let loose of your souls. Do you hear me?”

“Let loose of my souls? How can I do that?”

“You will know, boy.
He
told me to make you do this. It was
his
will, not mine.”

“Who is he?”

“What did I tell you not to do?”

“Not to leave this place and not to let my souls loose.”

“That is correct. I will add one more thing. You must be brave, boy. Braver than you have ever been before. If you are not, if you surrender to fear,
he
will eat you alive. When that happens, you will die here, Mud Puppy.”

Mud Puppy blinked, bits of soggy mold still floating around his tongue. “I don’t know if I can be brave.”

The Serpent pulled his shawl up over his shoulder, hitched it, and pointed to the thatch-covered ramada just down from the summit.
“If it rains, you can go there.” His sharp eyes searched the scudding clouds that had darkened overhead. “But otherwise I want you sitting here. At the highest spot. It will be dark tonight.
Very, dark.
”

Eight

F
irelight flickered in yellow phantoms on the inside of the house walls and cast a shadow outline of Speaker Cloud Heron’s dead body. It gave the wattle and daub a golden sheen, accenting the cracks that had appeared in fine tracery through the fire-hardened clay. Overhead, the ceiling was a latticework of soot-stained cane poles and bundles of thatch. Net bags hung from the larger poles, the contents bathed by the rising smoke. Such was the gift of fire. Not only did it heat, light, cook, and purify, but its smoke preserved, kept roots, dried fish, nuts, and thinly sliced meat from molding in the damp climate of Sun Town.

The dead Speaker lay on the raised bench built against the wall. Poles set in the ground supported the framework that was in turn lashed together to support a split-cane bed. A thick layer of hanging moss rested atop the cane, and a tanned buffalo hide atop the moss. All in all, it made for a comfortable and dry bed just high enough off the floor to stay warm in the winter but low enough that in summer the haze of smoke kept the hordes of humming mosquitoes at bay and allowed the sleeper some peace in his repose.

Not that Cloud Heron, Speaker of the Owl Clan, would ever need to worry about mosquitoes again.

Wing Heart bit her lip as she studied her brother’s body in the firelight. That he had lasted this long was a miracle. Now, after months of watching his muscular body waste into this frail husk of a man, her strained emotions only allowed her a soul-weary sigh. It
was over. For that, and for her son’s return, she could be grateful.

“How is he?” Water Petal asked as she ducked through the low doorway. Her thick black hair was parted in the middle, indicating her marital status, and hung straight to her collarbones. She wore a brightly striped fabric shawl over her shoulders, its ends fringed. Her kirtle had been tied around her waist with a silky hemp cord, its girth relaxed now that her pregnancy was apparent.

Wing Heart added another piece of hickory to the crackling fire. “The Speaker is dead.”

Water Petal exhaled slowly, eyes raised involuntarily, as if she could see his Life Soul floating up in the smoky rafters. “He was a great leader, a man who never flinched in his duty.”

“Even in death,” Wing Heart whispered. “He waited until my son returned before surrendering his souls. When will we see another like him?”

“When your son assumes the mantle of Speaker,” Water Petal said firmly, eyes glittering with resolve. “Who in the other lineages could compare? Name anyone else in the clan—and surely not Half Thorn, no matter what Moccasin Leaf might say about him.”

Wing Heart stared absently at her dead brother’s face. The flesh had shrunk around it as though sucked down across the skull by the withering souls inside. His empty eyes lay deep in the hollow pits of his skull, the lips drawn back to expose peglike teeth. Sallow skin outlined the bones of his shoulders and chest. This man whom she had shared so much of her life with, whom she had loved with all of her heart … by the Sky Beings, how could Cloud Heron have faded into this wreck of bone and loosely stretched skin?

“Do you wish to be alone, Elder?” Water Petal asked. “To speak with his souls while they are still near?”

Wing Heart vented a weary sigh. “He has heard everything I have to say to him, Cousin. Over and over and over again until I’m sure he’s weary of it.”
As I am weary of saying it.

Snakes take it, had she grown so caustic and cynical? She could imagine Cloud Heron in another time, giving her that measuring stare. His brow had risen to a half cock, questioning her as only he could.

Her throat tightened at the sudden welling emptiness inside.

“Elder?”

“I’d rather have cut off my leg,” Wing Heart whispered, barely aware of the tear that burned its way past her tightly clamped eyelids and traced down her cheek.

“I understand, Elder.”

“No. You don’t, Cousin.” She knotted her fists in her lap. “For
ten and two winters now, my brother and I led the Council. For three tens and nine winters we have lived the same life, breathed each other’s air, shared each other’s thoughts, and bound our souls together. He was me. I was him. We were one. Like no two people I have ever known.”

“That was what made you great.”

Wing Heart nodded, hating the grief that rose as relentlessly as the spring floods; brutal and inevitable, she could feel it pooling around her lungs and heart, lapping at her ribs.

“How shall I continue?” she asked of the air. “Brother, what can I do? How can I do it? Without you, it seems …” Empty. So very empty.

“Your son is ready to step in at your side.” Water Petal sounded so sure of herself.

“My son is not my brother.” Her fists knotted, crumpling her white kirtle with its pattern of knots. “But he will do.” She bit back the urge to sob. “As I have trained him to.”

“Elder?” Hesitation was in Water Petal’s voice. “Would you like me to care for the Speaker? He must be cleaned, his clothes burned. The corpse must be prepared for the pyre.”

“Not yet.”

“As you wish, Elder.”

Wing Heart ground the heels of her palms into her eyes, twisting them as if to scrub her traitorous tears from her head.
I thought I had myself under control. I have been so calm, so prepared, and now that he’s truly gone, I am broken like an old doll. Why didn’t I know this was coming? Why didn’t I understand I would hurt so badly? Why didn’t you tell me, Brother?

“Would you like me to make the ritual announcement, Elder?” Water Petal’s voice remained so eerily reasonable.

“No, Cousin. Thank you. That is my job.”

A long silence passed as Wing Heart sat in numb misery, flashes of memory tormenting her with images of Cloud Heron, of the times they had shared triumph and pain. How did one pack a lifetime of memories, as if into a clay pot, and just tuck them away?

Brother, after a turning of seasons of watching you die, why is it now beginning to hurt?

“Elder, someone should at least let White Bird know that his uncle is dead. He should know before the others. It will give him time to prepare.”

“Yes.”
Tomorrow, yes, tomorrow I will be able to think again.
She waited hesitantly, struggling to hear Cloud Heron’s response to that, but the clinging silence of grief washed about her.

“And Mud Puppy?” Water Petal asked as she rose and crouched in the doorway.

“What about him?” Wing Heart asked, slightly off guard at the change of subject.

“Should I tell him?” A pause. “He’s up on the Bird’s Head. The Serpent left him up there at dark.”

Wing Heart shook her head, trying to clear the dampness from her eyes. She blinked in the firelight, gaze drawn inexorably to Cloud Heron’s death-strained rictus. “No. Forget him. He’s a worthless half-wit. It’s the future, Water Petal. That’s what I have to deal with. The future.”

“
T
his is not a good idea,” Cooter said from the darkness in the front of the canoe. He stroked his paddle in the rhythmic cadence they had adopted.

Anhinga glared where she sat in the back behind the others. She hadn’t anticipated the night being this dark. They canoed northward in an inky blackness that was truly unsettling. On occasion someone hissed as unseen moss flicked across his face or over his head.

“You would think you had never been out at night,” Anhinga managed through clenched jaws. Truth to tell, she was a little unnerved herself. Was it lunacy and madness to strike out like this with her young companions, to sneak north through the swamps in darkness?

“But for the wind, we’d be lost,” Spider Fire reminded. Overhead the south wind continued to roar and twist its way through the backswamp forest. With that at their backs they couldn’t get lost. And it helped to keep the humming hordes of mosquitoes down. They had greased their bodies, but the bloodthirsty insects still swarmed.

“I don’t worry about getting lost,” Mist Finger muttered. “I do worry about smacking headlong into a tree, capsizing, and drowning out here in the darkness.”

“Not me,” Right Talon declared uneasily. “It’s the stuff we keep sliding under. I don’t know when it’s hanging moss or when it’s a water moccasin dropping down to bite me in the face.”

“Thanks,” Slit Nose grumbled from his place in front of Anhinga. “That’s
just
what I needed to hear! Panther’s blood, I’d just about let myself forget about the snakes, and then you let your lips flap.”

“Some brave warriors,” Anhinga cried. “Should we turn around and go back? Is that what you want? My brother’s ghost is wandering about, unavenged because my uncle will do nothing!”

“Out here, in the darkness, where spirits can drift in with the mist and kill us, I’m not inclined to argue,” Cooter replied from his position up front. She could barely see his shoulders moving, or did she just imagine them as he stroked with his pointed paddle?

“He was your friend,” she reminded hotly. “You were there. You saw it.”

“I did,” Cooter said. “It was all I could do to escape. There was only the two of us against ten of them, their bodies slick with grease. We caught them levering our sandstone from the side of the hill. When Bowfin shouted at them they turned … didn’t even hesitate, and cast darts at us. Luck must have guided the hand of the first, for his dart sailed true. I still don’t know how Bowfin could have missed seeing it. He should have been able to dodge out of the way.”

“But he didn’t,” Anhinga told them. “I was there when he died. No one should die like that, their guts stinking with foreign rot while their blood runs brown in their veins and fever robs them of their wits.”

“I was lucky enough to run.” Cooter’s vigorous paddling mirrored the anger in his voice. “It was stupid of us to make ourselves known. It would have been better if we’d just sneaked away, called for more warriors.”

“That’s wrong!” Anhinga felt the anger stir in her breast. “It’s
our
land! It’s
our
stone! They have no right in our country, treating it as if it were theirs!”

They paddled in silence for a while, accompanied by the sounds of the swamp, splashing fish, the lonely call of the nightjar and the chirring of insects. Overhead the wind continued to slash at the spring green trees, rustling the leaves and creaking the branches.

Spider Fire finally said, “You’re right, it’s our territory, given to us by the Creator, but they have been raiding our land since the beginning of time. I will help you end this once and for all.”

“Will you?” Mist Finger asked wryly.

She had been glad when Mist Finger volunteered to accompany her. For the past several moons she had been alternately delighted and annoyed by the way he kept creeping into her thoughts. At odd times of the day, she’d remember his smile, or the way the muscles rippled in his back. The sparkle in his eyes seemed to have fixed itself between her souls.

“Branch!” Cooter sang out. “Duck, everyone.”

The canoe rocked as they bent their heads low to drift under a
low-hanging branch. Anhinga felt trailing bits of spiderweb dust her face, crackling and tearing as the canoe’s momentum carried them past. She reached up and wiped it away, hoping the angry spider wasn’t trapped in her hair. The thought of those eight milling legs tangling in her black locks made her scalp tingle.

Slit Nose broke the silence. “That doesn’t mean it’s acceptable. Anhinga’s right. It’s got to stop sometime. It might just as well be now.”

Mist Finger laughed, the sound musical in the windblown night. “You don’t think it’s been tried? How many of our ancestors, no matter what the clan, have died fighting with the Sun People? How many stories can you recall? You know, the ones about great-uncle so-and-so, or cousin what’s-his-name who was killed in a raid on the Sun People, or who, like Bowfin, was skewered by a dart, or smacked in the head with a war club. Is there any clan, any lineage that you can name that doesn’t have a story? In all that time, all those generations going back to the Creation, don’t you think that others have tried to teach them a lesson?”

“Does this have a point?” Spider Fire asked.

“Of course,” Mist Finger answered easily. “The point is that nothing is going to change. Our war is eternal. No one is going to win.”

BOOK: People of the Owl: A Novel of Prehistoric North America (North America's Forgotten Past)

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