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

People of the Owl: A Novel of Prehistoric North America (North America's Forgotten Past) (30 page)

BOOK: People of the Owl: A Novel of Prehistoric North America (North America's Forgotten Past)
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You should see the Serpent about it
. Yes, she should, but the idea of discussing such a problem with someone who was close to her husband rankled. What if the old shaman went straight to Salamander to say, “Your wife is having female trouble the week before and after she is bedding her lover.”
That assuredly wouldn’t do. And, rot take it, why hadn’t Three Stomach’s seed planted in her womb? It was common knowledge, spoken of in the Women’s House, that a woman took about midway in her cycle. Snakes knew, the man had pumped her full enough times in the passing moons. His own wife had conceived in the last moon. She and Three Stomachs were hoping that this sixth child would be the one who lived.
She followed the trail out from the canopy of trees south of her clan grounds and trudged toward the distant curve of Sun Town’s
ridges. In the gloom, she could see the lines of houses, some haloed by cooking fires.
“Greetings, Niece.” Mud Stalker’s voice startled her. He was sitting in the grass, his head and shoulders barely visible. “Sorry to frighten you.”
“Uncle!” She took a breath to resettle her heartbeat. “I didn’t expect to find you out here.”
“Nor did anyone else.” He grunted and climbed to his feet, then gestured toward home. “I had hoped that you would take this trail back. I need to talk to you. Several things have happened. First, I don’t think you should see Three Stomachs again. At least, not as a lover. We are starting to hear talk.”
“Let them talk.” She matched her stride to his, the bag of bladderwort swinging from her shoulder. “I could care less if people know I’m dissatisfied with Salamander now, or later.”
“Ah, yes, but I do care.” He studied her in the darkness. “You are not pregnant, I take it?”
“I won’t know for another half moon, Uncle. Let’s see if I have to retreat to the Women’s House, shall we?” She winced, slowing, a cramp tightening just below her navel.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes, Uncle.” She made a face and forced herself to straighten. “It comes and goes. I’ll be over it in a week or so.”
“Here, let me take the bag.” He reached for the sack. “What’s in it?”
“Bladderwort. I’ll look like a perfectly dutiful wife when I prepare it for our household.” She glanced at him, walking with one hand pressed firmly against her abdomen. “So, tell me, Uncle, have you found a lover for Night Rain yet?”
“She must be handled a bit more judiciously.” He had his head cocked, his strong left hand knotted around the sack of bladderwort. “Has she mentioned any young man besides Saw Back? Anyone that might have caught her eye?”
“No. And I have even suggested several. She’s very young, Uncle. She thinks only as far as Saw Back.”
“She’s a woman, no younger than you were when you married Blue Feather.”
“I loved him.” She shook her head, relieved that the cramp was fading. “Give her time, Uncle. She is younger than I was at her age. She has always been unsure, and for the moment, she is confused and unhappy. Marriage hasn’t been what she expected, and I think it will take a while for her resentment to pass. When it does, we can find a man to pair her with. Until then, forcing her to do so might cause us more harm than it will do good.”
“We agree.” He paused. “You can stop seeing Three Stomachs without regret? This thing between you, it hasn’t gone to the heart yet, has it?”
She laughed at that. “No, Uncle. It hasn’t gone to the heart. I don’t mind locking hips with him, but I would hate to be married to him. I think he only has a single thought in a day, and not a very interesting one at that.”
“Good. He shouldn’t be much of a problem. He has had affairs before and never made a pest of himself afterward. If you gently tell him that you can’t see him anymore, he should just shrug and walk away.”
“Indeed, Uncle? You know a lot about him, then?”
Mud Stalker chuckled. “Let’s just say that he has proven useful when it came to placing women in compromising positions. Depending upon the woman, and depending upon the nature of her indiscretion, a great deal of leverage can be acquired by the party who happens to ‘stumble’ over them in the act. Politics is partly flexibility, partly being smart, and partly leverage.”
“I will remember that.”
“Good.” He made a smacking with his lips. “A runner went to Wing Heart tonight from Jaguar Hide asking for the Owl Clan’s support in safe passage to Sun Town. What one of our kinsmen overheard at the canoe landing was that Jaguar Hide wants to make peace between our peoples. He evidently still thinks that Owl Clan is preeminent.”
She already guessed where this was headed. “You want me to find out what this is really all about?”
“I do. And I want to know if it is to our advantage to let Owl Clan make this peace, or whether we can use this as an opportunity to cut yet another support out from under them.”
“Such as?”
“Such as allowing Elder Wing Heart to promise safe passage, then ambushing Jaguar Hide on his way home.” He made a gesture. “Not that we would have to do it, mind you. Deep Hunter would have more than a passing interest in bringing that Swamp Panther cutthroat to justice.”
She nodded. “I see.” A hesitation. “My husband and I don’t talk, you know.”
“That is another reason for interrupting your affair with Three Stomachs. At least until the whispers dry up. We don’t want him to find out. If he does, he could become completely alienated, and, as much as I would love to humiliate him and Owl Clan, it is a bit soon for such a revelation.”
She glanced at him. The notion of taking Three Stomachs to her bed had been bothersome in the beginning. What if she did conceive? And what if the child were stillborn? Given the man’s incredible potency, she had convinced herself that it had been a combination of bad luck and his wife’s infertility that had led to the five dead infants his wife had delivered, but what if it wasn’t? That she hadn’t caught in three moons was starting to worry her—as were the cramps during the weeks of her heightened fertility.
That thought having lodged between her souls, she cocked her jaw. Just how deep did Mud Stalker’s hatred run? Deep enough to place his own kin at risk? She shook her head, unwilling even to consider that the uncle she had known and looked up to all of her life could even contemplate such a thing. No, he was acting in the clan’s best interest—and in hers and her sister’s.
Leadership depends on these kinds of things.
The words lingered in her thoughts.
A leader cannot be like the rest of the people. More is demanded of him. To be a leader means giving up part of yourself for the rest of your clan.
She had taken those adages into her souls as her infant body had taken her mother’s milk. With the exception of a few times as an adolescent girl lost in daydreams, she had never questioned it. Now she found herself a confidante of the Speaker, her mother in line to be named clan Elder, and married to the Speaker of Owl Clan, dolt though her husband might be.
I am in the center of my clan’s leadership.
“You have grown silent,” her uncle noted.
“Thinking about what it means to be a leader, Uncle. About the things we have to do. Until now I have never really understood the words I have heard all of my life. About a leader’s responsibility to her people.”
“And now that you understand?”
“It is a terrible burden, Uncle.”
“Yes?”
“One I will carry.” She felt a tingle in her loins, and tensed against a cramp that didn’t intensify. “I will see what I can learn from Salamander about Jaguar Hide’s purposes in coming here.”
“Good. I am so proud of you, Niece. So very proud.” He made a gesture. “You should know, your grandmother is dying. She may not last the night.”
“I should go to her.”
“Yes,” he replied. “And think of what her death will mean for your future.”
W
e humans spend so much time working to shrink the miraculous to the size of our own pettiness that it’s a wonder we manage to get anything else done.
Our lives are filled with miracles that we do not see. Every time a hawk shrieks or a bear roars, it is the visible breath of the Creator entering our world.
But we look and look away.
Each time a raindrop lands, our world is clothed in the glory of its greatest possibilities.
But we go inside our houses where we can’t see it.
We are too preoccupied with who might be saying bad things about us to care that the wildflowers have bowed their heads in profound gratitude and the vines have spread their arms in prayer.
That is the challenge we face. It is only when we allow ourselves to experience the divine presence each moment that we live our lives to the fullest.
And that is the dilemma. It is a summons to wonder that most of us will turn our backs upon in favor of belittling someone else.
Are we really so terrified to look into the Creator’s eyes?
What do we fear we will see?
The primary purpose of a miracle, after all, is not revelation. It is redemption.
T
he night after Back Scratch’s funeral, Salamander blinked his eyes open and listened to the sounds. Birdsong had sent its first melodies through the darkness. Dawn couldn’t be more than a hand’s time from breaking over the eastern horizon. He reached out and lifted the deerhide, aware of Night Rain’s sleeping form where she lay beside him. His second wife was snuggled against the wall, her back to him. She shifted, some sleep-ridden sound deep in her throat as he slipped from the covers into the cool air and resettled the deerhide over her shoulders.
The events of the previous night came tumbling out of his sleep-heavy souls. After Wing Heart had excused herself and gone to bed, he and Water Petal had sat up late, discussing the implications of Jaguar Hide coming to Owl Clan. Did it mean that he had heard of their weakness, or did he still come to them believing that he dealt with the most prestigious of Sun Town’s clans? Assuming the former, did he have designs on Wing Heart, seeking to further damage her standing among the clans? Or would this be the challenge that would snap her out of her endless mourning for her brother and son?
Salamander stretched in the dark shadows and glanced at the door, a bare gray portal to the predawn outside. Moving in silence, he tied a cord around his waist and pulled his breechcloth into place.
Under his bed he found the wooden box that contained his herbs. The sweetgum wood had been decorated with an interlocking owl
motif, the wings of one blending into the wings of another to encircle the box. Opening it, his fingers encountered a soft leather bag in one corner. This he lifted and loosened the drawstring. He took a pinch, sniffing to ensure he had the right mixture. A quick glance ensured that both women were hard asleep; he dropped a dash of the powder into the stewpot. Sniffing his fingers again, he confirmed the ingredients: wild ginger, licorice root, dogbane, milkweed, and rue. Both Pine Drop and Night Rain were destined for another day of female discomfort.
He wearily returned the herbs to his box before closing it and restoring it to its place under the bed. From the clay pot beside the box he scooped out a liberal handful of rendered bear grease laced with pine resin. This he smeared liberally over his arms, legs, face, and belly—protection against the hordes of stinging and biting insects.
Finished, he reached for his atlatl and darts. To his dismay, one of the long cane shafts caught on the deerhide hanging from Pine Drop’s bedding.
“Huh?” she mumbled. “What’s wrong?”
He could see her shifting, sitting up under the soft hide. “Nothing. I’m sorry. It’s still early. Go back to sleep.”
“Salamander?” she groaned. “Snakes, the sun’s not even out yet.”
“Shush, go back to sleep.” He started for the door.
“Wait. Where are you going?”
“Out to greet the sun. And then hunting.”
“Have a good hunt.” She started to roll over, then stopped short as if suddenly thinking of something. “Wait. I’m coming with you.”
He froze. “Why?”
“I’m your wife. Can’t I come with you if I want to? You might be able to use some help.”
He could feel his souls sinking. “I might be gone for most of the day.”
“It’s all right. Night Rain can do the chores. I brought us bladderwort from one of the bogs down south. She can boil it and drain it.”
Fortunately, she couldn’t see his face while he waited for her to stand, tie her kirtle around her waist, and grease herself.
“Drink some of that stew,” he told her insistently. “If you don’t, you’ll be chewing sticks in two hands’ time.”
She crouched, lifting the ceramic pot and drinking deeply of the mixture. That, at least, brought him a little satisfaction.
“Wretched Snakes,” she said as she replaced the bowl and wiped her lips. “The fire is stone dead, and that tastes like swamp muck.”
“It’s food,” he reminded. “You’ll need the strength.” He wondered what he was going to eat. It wouldn’t do to go begging breakfast from Water Petal as he’d been doing for the last couple of months while he laced his wives’ food with the Serpent’s potions. It might turn into a very long day for his stomach.
He led the way out into the morning. Moisture rode on the southern breeze, speckling his skin and filling his nostrils. In the darkness, he could see tufts of mist curling along the ridge. The line of domed houses seemed to solidify as if from fragments of dreams as he and Pine Drop walked along the earthen berm to the first gap. From there he crossed to the Southern Moiety commons and cut across for the ramp leading up the eastern side of the Bird’s Head.
“Do you do this every morning?” she asked.
“Yes.” It had become a ritual with him. The last place on Earth he wanted to be was in Pine Drop’s house when his wives awakened. Having begun with such low expectations, their relationship had been deteriorating every since. It had been safe to assume that they wanted as much to do with him as he did with them.
He passed the Council House and started up the long ramp. It never ceased to amaze him that his ancestors had built such a triumph. He often tried to wrap his comprehension around the number of baskets of earth that had been dug, carried, and piled to create the Bird’s Head. The sheer size of it filled his souls with awe.
He had taken to sprinting up the long climb and chafed now that Pine Drop was clambering along behind him. Still, he hurried as much as he could, hearing her breath begin to strain when not even halfway up.
“Is there some pressing hurry?” she called from behind.
“Normally I run up this.”
“Well, go.” She waved him on in the foggy grayness. “I’ll see you at the top.”
Thus freed, he ran, enjoying the pull in his muscles as he dashed to the top. He came to a halt just past the ramada and filled his hot lungs with the cool air. As he turned back to the east, he could see the faint graying of the horizon. The south wind pushed at him, a last faint filtering of stars visible through the heavy air as they began to fade in the east.
She emerged out of the mist below, thin and well formed, her movements female and sinuous as she climbed. Her hair, loose and long, swayed with each step. Were it anyone but Pine Drop, the
moment would have been enchanting. As she neared, her image grew into Spring Cypress’s. A fantasy that passed as she raised her face to his.
“Now what?” she asked, a tone of resentment barely hidden.
Salamander seated himself and dug into the moist soil with his fingers. “Now we wait.”
“Just wait?” She turned, staring out at the graying world around them. Her breathing slowed as she paced back and forth.
He found the little stone owl he had been carving and the flake that he had buried beside it the morning before. Wiping the black clay from it, he resumed his carving.
“
That’s
what you do up here? Just sit and carve?” She pointed at the stone image in his hands.
“Why don’t you go back and sleep? This can’t be pleasant for you.”
He could make out her features now. She was a striking woman, her round face balanced with a thin nose and perfect cheeks. She comported herself with a proud bearing and quiet dignity. He could see her teetering on the verge of stomping off. At the last instant, apparently by force of will, she relented and plopped herself down beside him to stare out toward the eastern horizon. The light there had begun to yellow.
He asked, “Why are you doing this?”
She mulled over the words before she said, “I thought that, perhaps, we might try spending some time together.” She was winding her gleaming black hair into tight ropes, only to flip them free and repeat the process. “If we are to live together, we must build some trust between us.”
“All right.” He shot her a wary look.
“Do you hate me?”
The question caught him by surprise. “No. I don’t hate you. I just don’t like you.”
She stared out at the distance, arms crossed as she leaned forward. He could see her expression tensing, as if she were fighting a pain in her stomach. Returning his concentration to the little red owl, he carefully began the notch that would separate the figure’s feet.
After several heartbeats, she said, “Just because we are married doesn’t mean that we can’t be friends.”
“That wasn’t the impression I had when I first moved into your house.”
“I’m sorry.”
Ask her if she is just friends with Three Stomachs
. He resisted the
impulse, thinking instead of how Salamander was when raccoon was sniffing around his log.
“Sacred Snakes,” she whispered, and he looked up. A band of red had burned across the far northeastern horizon. Before them, Sun Town was wreathed in silvered mist, only the black tips of the rooftops protruding in curving rings.
“It’s beautiful,” she continued. “I had no idea.”
“That’s why I come here. For this one moment of the day, everything in the world is at peace, locked in beauty. In this instant, my souls Dance in joy and breathe the miracle of life.”
The distant fire of morning had illuminated her eyes with an unearthly shine and cast her smooth face in orange. Her lips were parted, and she moved her hands from her belly to the spot between her breasts, as if to feel the beating of her heart.
“ … My souls can Dance in joy,” she murmured absently, “ … breathe the miracle of life.”
“Watch this.” He raised a hand, anticipating the moment as the sun cracked the horizon and shot a seething sea of red across the mist. It rolled toward them, flicking color from the fingers of mist that deepened as the filaments of dawn threaded in to illuminate Sun Town itself in a warm orange glow.
“Beautiful,” she whispered, her face alight with joy.
Her expression stopped him. He had never seen her look this way. Monsters of the deep, she hadn’t actually allowed the morning beauty to touch her souls, had she?
“On clear mornings”—he watched the glowing world of color—“you can watch the sun as it moves through the Sky. The turning of seasons is marked as Mother Sun makes her way north and then back south. If you pay close attention, you can see her pass each of the ridges.”
“This is a thing the Serpent taught you?”
“Among others.”
“And there is Power in this?”
“There is Power in many things. Humans just don’t always understand them. Most of the time we refuse to hear the voices the world uses to speak to us. Listening for them isn’t something that comes naturally to people.”
She studied him, her face profiled in the red light. He had the sudden urge to reach up and trace the line of her forehead and straight nose. To follow the hollow onto her full lips and around her chin.
“Do you really hear those voices?” she asked in an oddly shy voice.
“Some of them.” With reluctance, he had to remind himself that this was the same woman who had been in Three Stomach’s arms yesterday. That, coupled with her sudden interest in sharing his day, brought wary reality back to roost between his souls.
“Well, come,” he said, carefully replacing his owl in its hole and covering it up. “We ought to get on with our hunting. I was thinking of taking a canoe and loading it with fish traps. The water level has dropped enough that the channels are forming.”
She looked uncharacteristically sad as she sighed and stood up. “Yes, I suppose so.”
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we really could live like this, share not only moments of beauty but the heart, too?
A bitter laugh formed in the back of his throat. Such things were not meant for him. He might as well consider walking across the surface of the water.
BOOK: People of the Owl: A Novel of Prehistoric North America (North America's Forgotten Past)
9.65Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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