People of the Mist (13 page)

 
          
“We
can’t. Why would anyone listen to us? My father is the most powerful man in his
country. He will not care what we say. Even if I were guilty, I don’t think he
would turn me over to Rat Pearl. It would make him appear weak in front of
Hunting Hawk, and that old woman would certainly use it against him. Think, Sun
Conch. I am barely a man, and one soon to be accused of murder, and you are but
a child. Who would listen to us?”

 
          
Sun
Conch paused uncertainly. She turned the problem before her, considering
different sides, possibilities she’d never thought of before. Faces flitted
through her thoughts. She rejected all but one. The only man alive who truly
terrified her. “Who would listen to us?” she repeated absently. “No one,
perhaps. But I think I know someone they will listen to.”

 
          
“Who?”

 
          
She
waved his questions away. “We need to sit down and talk. I must know every
detail of last night. Do you understand me? Everything! The expressions on
people’s faces, things that were said. Even if you do not think something
important, I want to hear about it. High Fox, if we are to save your life, I
must be able to describe your trip to and from
Flat
Pearl
Village
as if I had been there with you. I know you
are weary. So am I. Are you able to do this?”

 
          
He
looked at her in silence for a long time, then sat down on the moonlit sand,
and through a tired exhalation said, “Tell me where to start.”

 
          
“From
the moment you left the palisade with your father. What happened after that?”

 
          
High
Fox scooped up a handful of damp sand, and began molding it into different
shapes. “Father went a little mad. I’ve never seen him as red-faced and
emotional as he was that day. He slammed his war club into every tree we
passed, cursed me and my mother, promised to ‘take care of me’ when his
responsibilities to the Weroansqua were over. I swear, Sun Conch, I feared to
show him my back.

 
          
“When
we arrived at Flat Pearl, our people split up and Father ordered me to walk at
his heels in silence. I was not even allowed to speak to people I knew. Then,
at the dance that night… blessed gods …” He dropped the ball of sand and
gripped handfuls of his unkempt hair. “Red Knot was so beautiful. She kept
looking at me, you know, looking at me in that special alluring way, and I
wondered if Copper Thunder saw, and what he might be thinking. No man
misunderstands that look, especially when it’s directed at another man. I
thought I would explode, Sun Conch. Danger pressed in on me from all sides. My
father, Hunting Hawk, Copper Thunder. Even Flat Willow stared at me with a sort
of amused hatred in his eyes. I felt like a man in his first battle, desperate,
afraid.”

 
          
He
flung the ball of sand out into the water, and grimaced at the silver rings
that bobbed outward from the splash. “Then Red Knot started dancing in front of
me. Dancing for me alone …”

 
          
Sun
Conch sat cross-legged, her feathered cape tucked beneath her, and watched the
arrival of morning. The stars had faded to pale awl pricks of light, and the
heavens gleamed like wet slate. She exhaled a frosty breath. The night had been
cold and damp. A rim of ice crusted the shore.

 
          
High
Fox lay to her left, wrapped in his blanket. His handsome face shone with the
dawn. He had finished his story less than two hands of time ago, and fallen
into an exhausted sleep.

 
          
As
Sun Conch studied him, she twisted the softly tanned hide of her
red deer
hide dress into tiny peaks, then smoothed
them away. He had not told her the whole truth, and she knew him well enough to
be certain of it. She did not know why, but she trusted him. If he had kept
some things to himself, then he must have reasons, good ones. Still, the gaps
in his story left her uneasy. She kept trying to fill them in with her own
imagination, which did no good at all.

 
          
Quietly,
she rose to her feet, and headed down the shore toward the line of canoes. She
always thought better when she was walking. Off in the distance, a huge flock
of geese honked as they flew in irregular chevrons across the pink sky. Water
lapped softly at the sand four hands away, and gulls rode the waves in the
distance. Their feathers flashed silver whenever a wave rolled beneath them.

 
          
She
shivered as she walked, for more reason than the morning air and High Fox’s
secrets. No one had come looking for her during the night, and in the corners
of her soul she could hear her aunt’s gruff voice saying, “Leave her be. A
night alone in the dark and freezing cold will do our little Sun Conch some
good. Perhaps it will remind her of the importance of her relatives.” She’d
heard Aunt Threadleaf say such things about other wayward girls, and Sun Conch
could imagine her mother’s torn expression.

 
          
She
kicked at a piece of driftwood.

 
          
Usually
the shore bustled with people, fishing, hunting birds, collecting wood. Today
there was no one. She felt oddly as if time had frozen. As if only she and High
Fox still lived, and breathed. Tracks lined the shore. She identified a deer,
several birds, and a raccoon, but saw none of them. Her moccasins pressed into
the icy mud of a world gone still and silent.

 
          
When
she reached the canoes, she could make out folded fishing nets, and paddles.
Here and there lay shell fishhooks, and harpoons. Her uncle Sawtooth’s slim
dugout nestled in the middle of the group of canoes. White zigzags of lightning
decorated its hull. It would be the easiest for her to control. She had ridden
in it many times before, and knew its quirks. It tended to pull to the right

 
          
A
cry split the morning, and Sun Conch spun around.

 
          
High
Fox lay on the beach breathing in short gasps, his hands clawing at the sand.
Mournful sounds came from his lips, desperate sounds, like those of an animal
caught in a trap.

 
          
She
folded her arms and hugged herself.

 
          
He
cried out again, and bolted upright, panting.

 
          
“I’m
here,” Sun Conch called softly, and headed toward him. “You’re safe. I’ve been
keeping watch all night, as I said I would.”

 
          
High
Fox seemed to deflate. His shoulders hunched forward and he rubbed shaking
hands over his face. “Blessed Spirits, I—I dreamed that my father was hunting
me. That he had joined forces with old Hunting Hawk to find me.” He pulled his
hands away and gazed at them as though he’d never seen them before. “They cut
off my hands, Sun Conch. Both of them. Hunting Hawk cut them off, then my
father threw them into the ocean. Wh-what an awful dream. My blood flooded our
village. My entire clan drowned in it.”

 
          
Sun
Conch stood awkwardly, uncertain how to respond. “You didn’t kill her, High
Fox. No one is going to hurt you.” He exhaled hard, said, “I pray you’re
right,” and stared out at the shining water.

 
          
“I
promise you that he will come, High Fox. I will make him. Together, we will
prove your innocence.”

 
          
Sun
Conch turned toward her uncle’s dugout canoe, and High Fox got to his feet. He
stood for a moment, and seemed to be bracing himself, then walked toward her.

 
          
“Sun
Conch, please, go carefully. This is a dangerous task. It may cost both our
lives.”

 
          
“No
gain comes without an equal amount of loss.” She pushed the canoe off the sand
and into the water.

 
          
“Wait.
One moment, please.” He trotted to his own canoe, and drew out his bow, war
club, and quiver, then hurried back and handed them to her.

 
          
“No,
High Fox. You will need your weapons, I—”

 
          
“I
will make new ones.” He thrust them at her. “You always wanted to be a
warrior.”

 
          
Sun
Conch reluctantly took them, surprised by the weight of the war club. “We must
hurry, High Fox. It will be light soon. My relatives will be coming down for
water and wood. And the sooner we begin this journey, the sooner it will end.”
‘

 
          
“I
know. I just…” He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, hesitating;
then, as if he’d made a decision, he stepped forward and pulled her into his
arms, holding her tightly. “Sun Conch, listen to me. Just for a time, don’t say
anything. I think sometimes that you know me better than I know myself, and so
I—I’m sure you are worried that I did not tell you everything last night.” She
twisted in his arms, wanting to respond, but he tightened his hold, said,
“Hush, please. I want you to know that I will tell you. Not now, but soon. When
I can. Will you trust me?”

 
          
“I
trust you. I do not understand, but I trust you. If I am your best friend, as
you say, then why can’t I know?”

 
          
“I
can’t tell anyone, Sun Conch.” He stroked her hair. “I can’t even talk to my
own soul about it. Not yet. Perhaps in a few days I will be brave enough. Then,
I will tell you.”

 
          
Sun
Conch sighed and nodded. “I have to go. I have much to do today. A long way to
go.”

 
          
He
gradually slackened his hold on her, and she stepped out of his arms and turned
toward her uncle’s canoe. She waded out into knee-deep icy water, and pulled
the canoe off the sand. It rocked and bobbed in the incoming swells.

 
          
She
stepped into the boat and rested the weapons on the gunwales.

 
          
High
Fox pushed the dugout into deeper water, and gave it a hard shove. “Be cautious,
Sun Conch. You know he’s dangerous!” he called after her. “There is no telling
how he will greet you. Keep your bow ready!”

 
          
“Look
for me in two days,” she said, and dipped her paddle to send the slim canoe
forward. “I’ll meet you at the place we agreed upon.”

 
          
“Sun
Conch?” High Fox shouted. “You carry my soul in your hands. Hurry back to me!”

 
          
The
words to me lingered in her heart as she guided the dugout along the shoreline,
past the fields and patches of woods, and into the main channel of
Fish
River
. Dawn’s light shimmered from the green
water and painted the tree-covered shores with patches of pale blue.

 
          
“I
will save him,” she told the gulls that fluttered around the canoe. “He did not
kill Red Knot. I know he didn’t.”

 
          
A
big white gull dived at her, squawking and flapping its wings. When Sun Conch
looked up, she found the bird peering at her through one skeptical eye.

 
          
She
took two more strokes with her paddle, and inhaled a deep breath of the salty
morning air. As she paddled out beyond the wide mouth of the
Fish
River
, The Panther’s island, small and wooded,
made a hazy mound on the distant horizon across the choppy waters of
Salt
Water
Bay
.

 
          
Fear
tickled her belly.

 
          
She
glanced up at the hovering bird: a laughing gull, called that because of the
strange humanlike cackles it made as it hunted the shore. People said The
Panther could change himself into any animal he wished. Dog, worm, or bird.
They also said he could scare a person’s soul right out of her body, but the
person didn’t always die. Often, the terrified soul wandered the land,
whimpering and thrashing tree branches, until it turned into an evil forest
spirit with hollow and lifeless eyes; the person’s soulless body continued to
move among the living, but could no longer speak or take care of itself.

 
          
She
had seen one soulless body in her four and ten Comings of the Leaves. An old
man named Brightness. He’d lost his soul the previous summer. Every day after
the event, his family had set him on a grass mat outside their house and, while
he’d peered openmouthed at nothing, drool had dribbled down his chin. The
horror still coiled in Sun Conch’s belly.

 
          
Above
her, the gull let out a loud laugh, and flapped away. She paddled as if being
chased by enemy warriors. The canoe shot across the bay, skimming the water
like a swallow.

 
          
She’d
seen four Comings of the Leaves when she’d first heard of The Panther, Old Wolf
Leggings, one of the Sun Shell Clan elders, had been racing through the village
with a bag of salt in her gnarled hand. As she’d scattered it around the
palisade, she’d whispered darkly that “The Panther” had returned. “He’s making
corn husk dolls of each of us,” she’d said, “and witching them.” That same
night a big black dog had loped around the palisade, howling Wolf Leggings’
name. They’d found her the next morning, dead, her fingernails clawing at the
earth, as if she’d been trying to dig a way out of her house.

 
          
A
cold gust of wind lifted the hair on Sun Conch’s neck. She shuddered and
stopped paddling. The canoe listed sideways. Aunt Threadleaf had cursed Sun
Conch using The Panther’s name. Had he heard?

 
          
“Panther?”
she called to the fluttering gulls. “I am coming to speak with you, but I am
just a girl. I mean you no harm.”

 
          
The
gulls cackled and dove, their wings glistening whitely against the golden
background of dawn.

 
          
She
steered her canoe toward the point in the distance. Despite her resolution, her
gaze kept straying to the skies. Clouds hung low over the eastern shore. Never
had she paddled so far, and the muscles in her arms, chest, and shoulders began
to ache. She hadn’t understood the immense size of the Salt Water Bay, or the
terror that lurked in those long swells that raised and lowered her canoe.

 
          
Gasping
and wincing at the pain in her strained body, she paddled on. She flinched at
her skin blistering on the wooden paddle handle, but the sores would heal
later. As she neared the low island, wind-sculpted trees crowded the shore.
Shadows leapt everywhere, ghostly and indistinct, like forest spirits vying for
the best position from which to view her arrival.

 
          
“I
am coming, Panther!” she said. “I’m afraid. I’m very afraid. But no one is
going to stop me. Not even you.”

 
          
The
water of the bay shone like silver in the midday sun. Ducks speckled the surface
and, here and there, jumping fish left ever-widening rings that interlocked and
vanished into nothingness. In the distance, the western shore resembled humped
gray fuzz capped by billowing clouds.

 
          
At
the edge of the water, the marsh grass gave way to pebbly mud flats He came
here at low tide in mud-soaked moccasins. In one hand he carried a digging
stick, in the other a leather sack.

 
          
Over
his long life, he’d had many names, but now he only knew himself by the name
given him by his victims: The Panther.

 
          
Periodically,
he’d stop, use his stick as a lever, and pry a clam from the mud. At other
times, he’d whack a skittering crab in the shallows, and drop it into his
bucket with the clams.

 
          
To
his left, dormant cord grass rose in thick unbroken ranks, a vast carpet that
spread to the east before finally giving way to the distant groves of trees. To
his right lay the great Salt Water Bay, its spirit mysteriously quiet today.

 
          
His
only company was the birds. Herons and egrets watched from a safe distance; plovers,
turn stones and sandpipers trotted out of his path, to rush in behind after he
passed. Overhead, a handful of gulls soared. The old man cracked a clam’s shell
with the hard butt of his stick, and tossed the treat up for the squalling
gulls. As they snatched the morsel in midair, he grinned, never tired of their
aerial grace.

 
          
He
found the place he was looking for and sloshed out into the water, as if
walking straight out into the bay. The chill ate into his calves, and then his
arthritic knees as the water deepened. Around him, small fish darted and
churned the surface. His reflection wavered as he walked, and periodically he
glanced at his distorted image. He wore his gray hair loose, letting it tumble
around his shoulders in a stringy mass. A ragged breech clout hung from his
lean hips, and a faded red fabric cape lay over his left shoulder, its tattered
threads hanging. Panther’s skin had turned grainy with age, and had loosened
from the ropy muscles on his arms, legs, and belly, but his eyes remained keen,
staring out from under a weathered brow. His nose, once hawkish, had grown long
and curved over a flat mouth.

 
          
He
had reached the oyster bed. Under his feet, the soft muck was broken by the
hard, sharp outline of the oysters. He walked and the bottom rose until he was
midcalf in depth. Here he peered down, prodding with his stick. Satisfied, he
bent and levered up a cluster of oysters. He inspected them, grunted, and
dropped them into his sack. The next cluster came with an oyster drill attached.
He used a gnarled thumb to scrape the moss from the drill’s shell, decided the
colors were good, and dropped it, too, into his bag. Within minutes, he’d
filled his bag, slung it over his shoulder, and trudged back through the
shallows. On the shore, he retraced his way northward to the small spit of dry
land with its tufted trees. A narrow path—little more than a track through cord
grass, spatterdock, and pickerelweed—marked the trail through the marsh. He
stopped at a stand of wild rice, and inspected the empty awns he’d harvested
earlier.

 
          
The
narrow trail led to a slight rise, dry enough that the marsh gave way to grass,
brush, and finally a copse of trees. He walked into the shadows of pine,
sassafras, and then into an oak grove. There, at the highest point on the
island, stood his rude house. He’d built it in a small clearing, partly
overhung by the spreading branches of the mighty oaks. Home consisted of a
dome-shaped framework thatched with shocks of cord grass To either side, one to
the east, the other to the west, stood even smaller huts—shrines to the twin
gods, the entrances closed off with ratty deer hide hangings.

 
          
The
remains of a small fire lay smoldering in a pit before the doorway. He sighed
as he lowered his sack next to a huge polished log half-sunk into the earth
beside the fire.

 
          
“I’m
not as spry as I used to be,” he told the empty air. He winced as he rotated
his arm and massaged his bony shoulder. Ducking into his house, he surveyed his
scant belongings. A wooden bedstead was covered by deer hides the majority of
them shedding what little hair remained. A second fire pit glared up at him
from the middle of the floor like a cold black eye. Net bags were tied from the
roof, bulging with dried herbs, ears of corn, nuts, cord grass seed, and wild
rice. A bow stood next to the bedstead, and across from it, a stack of arrows
leaned against the wall. Panther’s eyes lit on the big, round-bottomed pot. The
rim had cracked and chipped off, but its corrugated surface could be seen
through the smudged soot. He picked up the pot, peered inside, and rubbed the
crusty interior with a callused thumb.

 
          
Ducking
outside into the slanting afternoon light, he settled his pot by the smoking
ashes, located the leather bag he used for water, and headed east through the
trees to a small freshwater seep less than two bow shots away. Here he lowered
his bag and dipped it full before returning to his house.

 
          
One
by one, he washed his clams, oysters, and crabs, placing each in the
round-bottomed pot. The last of the water just covered his catch.

 
          
Growling
to himself, Panther bent on crackling knees to blow the coals in the fire pit
to life. When he absently inhaled the swirling ash, he went into a fit of
coughing.

 
          
Choking,
he rocked back on his haunches, cleared his throat, and barked a harsh laugh.
“And they call me a sorcerer!”

 
          
When
the fire blazed, he placed three rocks in it for a tripod, and trundled his pot
onto the heat. Satisfied, he watched the flames lick around the sides. The
corrugated surface served to conduct more of the fire’s heat to the stew.

 
          
Wistfully,
he rose, reentered his house, and inspected his net bags, selecting corn from
one, acorns from another, some beechnuts, and rose hips. He added these to the
stew and settled himself on the log to watch dinner cook. If only he had squash
to cook. He loved freshly baked squash more than anything on earth. At the
thought of it, his mouth watered.

 
          
“The
only thing worse than a fool is an old fool,” he muttered to himself. “No, even
worse than that, a crazy old fool, and Panther, you’re that.” He scratched
under his grizzled hair. “But, if I’m crazy, then what does a man make of the
rest of the world?

 
          
“Even
crazier! If it wasn’t what would I be doing here?

 
          
“Avoiding
it all.

 
          
“Blood
and dung! I’m here for the peace.”

 
          
He
paused, remembering the pain, the voices inside his head, and the day he’d
packed up and left the human world. “You’ve always been a fool.

 
          
“No,
old man. Just crazy.” He chewed at his lip with stubby brown teeth. “Of course,
you really know you’re crazy when you catch yourself answering your own
questions.”

 
          
In
the years since he’d come here, he’d watched the seasons come and go ten times.

 
          
A
man should have answers in that amount of time. He made a face at the fire and rubbed
his dry brown hands together. But did he?

 
          
At
that moment, the two crows landed in the winter bare black oak above, and
stared down at him with inquisitive black eyes.

 
          
“What
is it?”

 
          
One
of the crows looked to the west, ruffled its feathers, and cawed.

 
          
“You
don’t say?”

 
          
Curious,
the old man rose and followed a beaten trail to the western end of his little
island. The waves had cut a beach here, and the bank dropped off steeply. At
the edge of the trees, he peered out against the setting sun’s glare.

 
          
A
young woman was paddling a canoe across the rolling water, each stroke so
perfectly timed that she seemed in no hurry.

 
          
Panther
eased deeper into the late-afternoon shadows and watched the slim vessel
approach. The voyager seemed hesitant now. Finally, she laid the paddle across
the gunwales and let the canoe drift.

 
          
Panther’s
old eyes hadn’t dimmed enough that he missed the indecision on that pensive
face.

 
          
What?
Another young fool coming for a love charm? Or does she wish me to bewitch some
rival? Youngsters could be such idiots. As he had once been.

 
          
A
long time ago … Panther waited patiently. The slim woman licked her lips, and
mustered courage. She took a deep breath, committed herself, and plunged the
paddle into the water to send the canoe toward the landing.