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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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Looking down she could barely see over her belly.

Three moons had passed since that day his gaze had fixed on her swollen belly. She had said, “I’m pregnant.”

“You have been for many moons.” He had just looked at her with those fathomless brown eyes, and said, “It’s all right, Anhinga. Go to them. The four or five days you spend away harms nothing. But perhaps, as the child comes to term, you might not travel so far? I think your uncle would understand.”

The words had struck fear into her in a way that no threat, no angry denunciation could have. Deep in her heart she had the distinct feeling that Salamander knew her every plan. Why, then, hadn’t he taken some action against her?

Logic might have led her to believe that the sandstone was worth it to him, but her worried souls knew better. No, he was playing some complex and terrible game, betting on her. How? To do what? Thinking that she wouldn’t go through with her plan to kill the father of her child?

Then you are wrong, husband
.
When Uncle tells me the time is right, I shall strike the Sun People in a way that will shiver their hearts for ages!

She need only remember that terrible day she had watched her friends butchered, their bodies cut to pieces and fed to the dogs. That nightmare lived and ached in her souls.

Knowing that he knew had changed something in their relationship. Salamander continued to treat her with respect and kindness. He had stopped coupling with her, fearful of damaging the child, and that, oddly, concerned her. Pine Drop was several moons behind her and just beginning to show. A worry had begun to form down in Anhinga’s souls. Was he going to spend all of his nights at his first wife’s house now that he could only couple with Night Rain? Not that she was any kind of a faultless wife.

Why do you care what they say about her? You are going to kill them in the end anyway!

It took all of her concentration to remember her uncle’s warning. “
You cannot see them as people, Anhinga. That is the single greatest threat to your success.
”

Some subtle reflex caused her to look up. There, perched on a high branch, a huge barred owl stared down at her. She almost missed a step. The bird’s penetrating stare ate clear through her, probing like shafts of dark light. The round head bobbed slightly, accenting the facial disks. He might have been peering at her through a mask.

Unease crept up her spine. She hadn’t known they could grow so big. Despite the bird’s size, it triggered a memory. With its whitespotted red feathers puffed against the cold, she couldn’t help but think of Salamander’s carvings, of the potbellied owls he made.

“I have nothing to do with you,” she called over her shoulder as she hurried away. A prickling of danger rode lightly on her nerves. She could almost feel Power crackling along the ice-shrouded branches. Hear it throbbing in the winter depths of the forest. Only after passing beyond the bird’s sight did she slow down again.

Sighing with relief, she picked her way with care, watching her deerhide moccasins crush the frosted grass underfoot. Overhead, bare black branches webbed the sky. The ground, covered with icecoated leaves, required all of her concentration. Her moccasins, while warm, made each step a tricky proposition. The smooth soles had no grip on ice-slick leaves.

She picked her way past gray vines that hung from the trees, seeking the trail she knew led the way back, past the hunter’s blind. Rounding the thick bole of a beech tree, she stopped short. A naked man stood in the trail, steam rising from a fresh puddle of urine.

As their eyes met, she recognized him: Saw Back. The youth who had been sent to kill her uncle. The one Salamander had tricked on the Turtle’s Back. He was holding his dripping penis, naked but for a necklace made of two sections of a human jawbone. Naked? A curious state considering the breath whitening before the young
man’s mouth. They stared at each other in disbelief.

“Saw Back? Are you coming back?” a familiar female voice asked from the low hunter’s blind at the side of the trail.

“It’s you!” Saw Back cried, finding his voice. “What are you doing here, you barbarian bitch? Come to spy on me?”

“Anhinga?” A face appeared in the blind’s shadowed doorway, “Here?”

“Night Rain?” Anhinga asked. She saw the hatred rising in Saw Back’s eyes. “Slipping out to part your legs for just any camp dog?”

“Camp dog?” Saw Back cried, stepping forward, his dark skin prickling against the cold. “You call me a camp dog? You’re nothing but a murdering barbarian weasel. They sent me away because of you! You
and
that skinny joke of a Speaker.”

Anhinga ducked out of the tumpline, letting the firewood bundle drop with a clatter. She groped for her ax handle, quartering as she backed away, keeping it out of his sight behind her kirtle. If this turned nasty, her only hope lay in his belief that she was defenseless.

“It’s me she’s spying on!” Night Rain declared as she scuttled out of the blind. Her mussed black hair fell around her bare shoulders in tangles. Cold had hardened the nipples on her round breasts and coaxed a faint mist from the damp tuft of her pubic hair.

“I spy on no one,” Anhinga answered hotly. “You can part your legs for every flea-infested cur in camp for all I care, fool.”

“Fool? You’re calling me a fool?” Night Rain thrust out a slim finger. “At least I find satisfaction with a real man.”

“Look at my tattoos, barbarian bitch!” Saw Back thumped his chest. “I am a
warrior
! Not like that child who shares your bed.” He stepped closer, a dangerous gleam in his eyes as he lifted the jawbone necklace. “These I made from the Swamp Panther slime I drove a dart through at Ground Cherry Camp!”

Her vision swam for a moment. Which of her friends was it? Cooter? Spider Fire? Slit Nose? From the way the bone had been ground, she couldn’t be sure. The teeth gleamed whitely in the gray light.

“I could add yours,” he told her, tapping the polished bone. “I could tie them under right here so they would hang under your dead kinsman’s.”

“You are a sneaking cur.” She could feel the danger settling around her like haze, see it in his sharpened eyes, in the tensing of his muscles.

Through gritted teeth, he said, “I am a warrior. My Spirit Helpers have brought you to me.” He danced a half step toward her. “My ancestors are watching, crying for your blood, and now you have
stepped into my hands. After I am done with you, no one is going to find your body.”

By the Panther’s bones, he is going to kill me!
The revelation blew through her like a winter wind.

Thirty-nine

“
S
aw Back?” Night Rain called, unsure for the first time. “If anyone finds out …”

“They won’t,” he called over his shoulder. “We’ll hide her body until after dark. Bury it in the hollow under a deadfall. Once covered with leaves, she’ll be rot before spring: meanwhile, her souls will wail in the lonely depths of darkness.”

Anhinga swallowed hard. A vision of Spider Fire’s face lingered in her memory. Somehow she knew that’s whose jaw he wore.

“I thought about this the entire time I was exiled, bitch.” He crouched, ready to spring. “I dreamed of my fingers choking the life from your skinny neck.” He bared his teeth and leaped.

Anhinga’s reaction was instinctive. She swung her ax up from behind her. To his credit, he was quick, twisting away in midair. The sharpened ax, freshly ground that morning on a slab of Panther sandstone, sliced neatly along his ribs. The impact, pain, and surprise sent him reeling, feet slipping on leaves to dump him full on his butt.

He sat there for a moment, stunned, reaching down to run fingers through the blood that began leaking out of his side.

“You witch!” Night Rain cried. “You’ve
killed
him!”

Anhinga stepped back just as Saw Back bunched his feet under him and leaped for her. She could have killed him. Perhaps should have. At the last instant she turned the ax and caught him full on
the side of the head with the flat. The snapping smack was loud on the still air, the handle stung her hands.

The blow sent him sprawling into the frozen leaves. He lay there, gasping, fingers clenching spasmodically in the leaf mat. A look of surprise filled his face, eyes wide and glassy, mouth gaping like a dark round hole. As she watched, the damaged skin on his freshly dented cheek reddened.

Kill him! Kill him now!
She hesitated, swallowed hard, and tightened her grip on the ax.

Something in Night Rain’s horrified expression stopped her. If she killed him, she would be forced to flee—all of the moons she had spent here gone like smoke.

Think! How do you get out of this?
Everything was changed. Her position was in peril. All because stupid Night Rain had to warm her canoe with Saw Back’s worm? She stalked up to her co-wife. The young woman watched her with wide eyes, jaw hanging. Anhinga reached, twisted a fistful of Night Rain’s hair, and yanked.

Night Rain came squealing as Anhinga dragged her to the tied bundle of wood. Night Rain reached out, scratching with her hands, trying to kick Anhinga. To quell her, Anhinga thumped her between the shoulders with the ax handle.

Night Rain shrieked and dropped flat beside the tied firewood. “I’ll kill you! I swear! My uncle will rip your throat out!”

“Perhaps.”
Panther’s blood! What have you gotten yourself into here?
She had just gone for firewood, wanting time alone in the forest to think, and here she’d twisted herself into the middle of one of the Sun People’s political messes.

Anhinga glanced at Saw Back; he was moaning as he tried to sit up. He had one hand to his face; blood from where the binding on the ax head had broken the skin was leaking red behind his fingers. When he pulled his hand back to look, she could still see the dent in his cheek. Had she broken the bone?

You can’t explain this, Anhinga. Who’s going to believe that he was going to kill you?
She fingered the ax.
Or you can kill them both, hide the bodies like they were going to do with yours.

No, that was too risky. No one might have cared if Anhinga had disappeared, but people would come looking for these two. She needed a reason, something people would believe. That, or she had best smack them both in the brains and run for all she was worth, hoping to make it south before the bodies were discovered.

And be a failure again? You’ll be letting yourself, Uncle, and all of your dead friends down again. Think! You’re smarter than this!

Night Rain was blubbering and shivering, her naked body squirming as she cast a frightened glance over her shoulder. “What are you going to do with me?”

“Since it’s all your fault”—Anhinga smiled as she figured a way out of her mess—“I’m taking you home.”

“Saw Back!” she squalled. “Kill her! Kill her now!”

One glance showed her that Saw Back had problems of his own. He couldn’t seem to get to his feet.

“Pick up that wood!” Anhinga gestured with the ax.

“My kirtle and cloak …” Night Rain glanced back at the blind.

“If you can rut naked in this weather, you can work naked!”

“You want me to walk back naked? I’ll freeze!”

“The cold didn’t seem to bother you before I showed up.” Anhinga accented her order by whistling the ax head past Night Rain’s ear. “
Move!
”

Night Rain scuttled on her hands and knees, gaping as she passed Saw Back. Blood washed his sliced side in a crimson sheet. He was dazed, eyes half-lidded at the pain in his head. Was it imagination, or were his pupils two different sizes now?

“
Pick it up!
” Anhinga ordered, pointing at the stack of wood with her ax.

Night Rain broke into sobs, her limbs shaking as she fumbled for the cord. “Why are you
doing
this? What do
I
mean to you?”

You’re my excuse
,
you silly, stupid bitch
. Anhinga fingered the sharp edge of her ax. It was greenstone—a fine piece traded down from somewhere far upriver. “By rutting around with scum like him, you disgrace yourself, your sister, your husband, and me.”

Night Rain wailed, “Saw Back? Help!” But her lover had just bent double to throw up on his thighs.

“By the Panther’s blood,” Anhinga whispered, “if you don’t pick that up, I’m going to kill you both!” She took one more menacing step toward Night Rain, her face contorting.

Night Rain nearly toppled as she swung the load up, clawing to set the tumpline on her forehead. The rabbithide cushion had slipped so that the cord ate into the young woman’s forehead.

“It hurts!” Night Rain pleaded.

Anhinga slapped the ax handle across Night Rain’s buttocks, leaving a red welt. Night Rain screamed.

“To hear you, I’d think someone was burning a bobcat to death.”

Night Rain tottered forward, shoulders jerking with each of her sobs. “You just wait! Wait until you get hurt sometime! I’ll laugh while you scream.”

Anhinga fingered the scars on her shoulders, remembering, hating.
“You are worthless, Night Rain. A whimpering little child. By Panther’s bones, why did he ever marry a wretch like you.”

She turned, reaching down. Her fingers knotted around the necklace at Saw Back’s throat. She threw her weight against it and jerked. Saw Back flopped backward and clawed at his throat. The cord parted with a snap. Stepping away from him, she inspected the two halves of human jawbone that had been polished, drilled, and strung with beads.

It is only a small justice, my friend. I cannot kill him now. Not yet.

She glanced over her shoulder. Saw Back just sat there, naked and cold in the leaves, looking bloody and sick.

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

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