People of the Morning Star (27 page)

“Enough!” Night Shadow Star clapped her hands with a bang. “Power chose him. And I begin to see why.”

“To insult us?” Sun Wing cried. “It’s like being pawed at by a dirt farmer!”

“Quiet!” Night Shadow Star thundered. Rising from her litter chair she crouched eye-to-eye with her little sister. “Learn this, young
lady
!” The voice, oddly, didn’t sound like Night Shadow Star’s, but had deepened, almost hollow. “Our world is about to be torn apart. This isn’t about your pride, or our status. Someone out there wants to destroy us. If they do, you are going to be among the dead. And Cahokia, with all of its magic and wonder, will be a burned and gutted corpse upon which your pitiful fleshly remains will fall unnoticed and unmourned. Humanity will be despised and discarded. The Powers will be unleashed. The Morning Star will flee back to the Sky World in despair.”

Sun Wing swallowed hard, face pale. “Why are you doing that to your voice?”

“Do you begin to understand, young
lady?
Fingers of chaos and blood are reaching out for us. And if they manage to grasp hold, they will crush us all in misery and death.”

Five Fists took a deep breath, saying into the ensuing silence. “A small squad of picked warriors will be placed on guard.
Inside.
And out of sight.” He glanced at Seven Skull Shield. “Nothing that will alarm the people.”

“Now you’re thinking,” Seven Skull Shield told him. A cold understanding began to flow through his souls. “I think … think…”

“What?” Blue Heron barked.

He chewed at his lips for a moment, letting his souls gnaw on the revelation he’d just had. When she opened her mouth to demand more of him, he raised a hand, saying only, “Let me check on some things, Keeper. Just a hunch.”

“Go,” she told him.

“Wait!” Sun Wing stared at Blue Heron in disbelief. “You mean you
trust
him? Once he’s out that door, your precious thief is going to vanish like summer mist.”

At that Seven Skull Shield made a face, but turned, heading for the doorway, muttering under his breath, “Nasty little sheath, that one. But if I’m right, it’s more than Four Winds Clan they’re after.”

They mean to destroy the whole of Cahokia.

The Resurrection

The farmstead sits in Deer Clan territory atop the high eastern bluff. Looking west from the front door I have a remarkable view of Cahokia’s floodplain sprawl. The distant river and Evening Star town on the other side are invisible in the smoky haze. But from here, I can still discern the dot of Morning Star’s palace atop its great mound.

I smile to myself. By now terror has grabbed them by the throat. First came the attempt on the Morning Star himself. How propitious? I could almost have believed Power was with me—but for Night Shadow Star’s odd appearance. How did she arrive out of the rain just in time to revive her youthful skills as an archer?

Granted, I never expected everything to unfold perfectly. Creation, by its very nature, is a mixture of order and chaos. What my Mos’kogee friends call the white and red Powers. The
tonka’tzi
is dead. The Keeper is not. In victory I feasted on the blood of my victim. In defeat, one of my wolves has been chopped into pieces, his bones and flesh sunk into the river to be devoured by the Spirits of the Underworld.

What do the Tie Snakes, Water Panther, and the turtles make of my human wolf’s souls and flesh? Just like fishing, the right kind of bait must be dangled on the hook.

Do they have the slightest hint of my ultimate goal? Are they insulted? Horrified? Confused?

I laugh at the thought and turn to inspect my farmstead. The house is average sized with walls built of clay plaster over vertical poles. The roof is thickly thatched. Two storehouses and a ramada border the small yard with its log mortar and wooden pestle. Outside of the grand view of Cahokia, the most important thing is its bluff-top isolation. The nearest neighbor is five bow-shots to the east. And tonight that farmer and his family are away at the local temple and Council House. Most of the locals are making offerings to Old-Woman-Who-Never-Dies, praying for a successful growing season, asking for rain and good weather.

Perfect! The only people who will overhear are my wolves. They will prowl around throughout the night to ensure my privacy. One can’t be too careful when it comes to resurrecting the souls of the dead. Tonight I shall attempt to wield my awesome Power. If I can repeat tonight what I have done twice before in the south, I will shake the world.

I cast one last knowing glance at the Morning Star’s distant mound-top home. “Sleep in blissful ignorance, you fool. If I am successful, you will awaken to a different world come dawn.”

Then I step inside.

The central fire crackles and burns brightly as it illuminates the farmhouse interior. Bench-beds line the walls. The frames are covered with shoddy, coarsely woven blankets. In the space beneath I can see a mismatched collection of jars and pots, many cracked and held together with thongs. The styles are mindful of a half dozen of the immigrant groups who’ve flooded Cahokia.

I turn my attention to the six people on the back platform bed. My wolves have securely bound each of the captives; wads of ragged cloth fill their mouths. Five are crowded closely together for whatever comfort they can derive: a father, a mother, two daughters, and a young son. The family members stare at me with horror-filled eyes as I throw a couple of pieces of firewood on the blaze.

The sixth captive is a young woman who made the mistake of stepping out to use her latrine in the middle of the night. She swallows hard as my gaze falls upon her.

“I know you can’t understand me,” I explain. Their language is something incomprehensible from over east. “But you’ve been chosen for a great honor.”

I point at the young woman. “The Clan Keeper killed one of my wolves. Tonight we will see if, together, we can resurrect his soul in this young woman’s body.”

I experience a rush of excitement as I undress and begin the process of purification. After washing my body with water, I cup handfuls of smoke and ritually rub it on my arms, legs, chest, buttocks, genitals, and face. As I do I watch the young woman with anticipation.

Opening my box of paints, I apply them in exactly the order I did last time, feeling my skin tingle as the Power of the colors and designs begins to pulse.

When the lengthy ritual is complete, I step over and lift the struggling young woman from the bench.

The farmers cringe away from me, terror bright in their eyes as I remove a sharp chert blade and begin to cut the young woman’s clothing from her body. Bound as she is, I have no other way to strip her. What I did not anticipate is the delight I take in revealing her smooth brown skin. With some regret, I can’t help but stroke her young breasts.

I remind myself that purity is of the highest essence, and sigh as I begin washing her healthy brown body. This is sacred work and I try to ignore the tingling in my loins as I sponge the length of her slim legs and feel tense muscles slide beneath that so-smooth skin. I re-wet my cloth and move to her neck, then follow the contours of her shoulders. The way her arms are bound behind her makes washing them difficult. I start on her chest, and perhaps linger too long on her breasts as I roll them under the cloth. When I am done her dark nipples have hardened, and so have I.

I need to finish, to battle both my impure thoughts and my traitorous genitals. Both she and I will have to be absolutely cleansed for this to work. Nevertheless, my heart begins to pound as I carefully smooth my damp cloth over the slight swell of her abdomen and allow my finger to dip into her navel. She is shivering and crying against the gag in her mouth as I wind the cloth back and forth to the dark-matted prominence of her pubis. Somewhere between my souls, I am saddened that such a marvelous pelvis will never cradle new life within its warm, liquid depths.

“Discipline!” I whisper harshly. After all, if I am successful, and Bobcat’s soul is actually called back, he’s going to be angry enough awakening in a female body, let alone one I’ve just ejaculated into.

I set the cloth aside and begin the ritual of painting her for the ceremony. Oddly I do not find this nearly as stimulating to my male nature, and thankfully, my body begins to relax. I am unsure of which colors go where on her. But the colors are right: red for life and blood, yellow for renewal and first dawn, blue for the sky, and black for night, death, and the Underworld.

Finally I am done. I throw more wood on the fire and stand above it, letting the heat and smoke carry the last of my carnal thoughts to the high smoke hole and out into the night. I sing softly as smoke bathes my body, and I inhale the acrid scent, letting it burn through my nose and throat.

From where I left it beside the door, I retrieve the beautiful brown-chert knife with its razor-sharp curved blade. I am sorry for the terror dancing brightly behind the girl’s eyes. The farmer, his wife, and children are screaming into the gags, twisting against the binding ropes. The little boy has wet himself, and tears are streaking down the little girls’ faces.

In that moment I realize I, too, am terrified of what I am about to attempt.

Then, purifying the thin stone blade in smoke, I turn to begin the ritual.…

Twenty-two

Passing himself off as a Hawk Clan man was as easy as painting his face brown to cover his Four Winds Clan tattoos, and repainting the Hawk Clan designs on his cheeks. But High Dance’s stomach had tied itself into a worry-tight knot. The few Hawk Clan people he’d passed had just nodded and smiled. What unnerved High Dance was the chance that he might have to stop and talk to one, at which time his sham would be instantly discovered.

And what would they do? Shout, “He’s an imposter!”

What then? Just run? And what if the Hawk Clansman pursued? Kept shouting and pointing?

High Dance’s stomach pulled its uncomfortable knot tighter as he hurried across the clay-packed causeway. On either side lay boggy marsh. The rains had left standing water in the low spots and turned the rich black mud to goo beneath the new green shoots of swamp grass.

High Dance nodded at a stone Trader and stepped as far to the side as the arched surface of the causeway would allow. The man was older, perhaps in his mid-thirties, short, with a knob of nose, deeply lined face, and stringy black hair. The heavy leather sack over his shoulder bulged with flat slabs of sandstone quarried from the distant bluffs.

“Quite a load,” High Dance said as the man plodded past, his muscular calves knotting like gnarled pine roots with each step.

“Yes, yes. Good stone. Make Trade, yes?” the man panted, voice accented, then added something else in one of the immigrant languages.

After he passed, High Dance stepped back on the trail and continued on his way. Most of Cahokia had been built on silt-laden floodplain. Sandstone, limestone, and cherts were locally available in the distant bluffs and uplands, but every bit of stone used for tool making, abrading, sculpting, ballast, cooking fires, axes, adzes, hammers, hoes, woodwork, net sinkers, burnishing pottery, bolas … you name it, had to be imported.

He immediately had to give way again as a woman came plodding down the causeway, back bent under sheaves of bound grass for roof thatching. High Dance made a face as he tried to step aside, his right foot sliding down into the black muck beside the causeway’s sloping side. The woman muttered, “Pardon, pardon,” as she passed with her load, head down, her voice strained.

High Dance almost toppled into the ooze as he tried to extricate his foot. The mud sucked the deerhide moccasin off his foot.

Cursing, he finally managed to reach down and pull it from the gooey mess.

“If they knew who I really was…” He smiled wickedly as he beat his moccasin on the packed clay surface, glaring at the people who passed on their business. Then, seeing no more large loads headed his way, he hurried as fast as he could on the irregular rounded surface.