Sixteen
I can feel the luminous darkness stirring, awakening, like the black depths of a mighty thunderstorm about to be unleashed.
I lean back in the canoe, my head close to Catcher’s. The dog”s breath warms my upturned face. And I marvel at that.
That I experience it at all. This elusive world grows more slippery for me every day. The Mask and its suffering have become my reality. The depths of its sorrow are stunning. The emotion twines within me with barbed tendrils, squeezing, stinging, and comes out of me like a volcano, erupting in hearty laughter.
And I know … I know … I must force myself to sit in the midst of that laughter, because if I do, it will teach me everything.
The smoldering pile of ashes did little to soothe Robin’s anger.
Guard posts canted “inward like ungainly teeth blunted by the green sprigs of sacred cedar. Some of the posts had been scorched in the fire, but they still stood, hemming the ghosts within.
“You came for my cousin,” Old Slate said. The blanket draped around her weary shoulders had been beautiful once.
Between smudges of ash and dirt, a hawk pattern could be seen.
She pointed with a thin arm. “There he is. Go on. Walk in there and get him.”
Robin turned uneasily and glanced back at the warriors who had followed him to Sun Mounds. They shifted, staring around uncertainly and clutching their weapons. Some wore cloaks of twined rabbit fur; others used finely woven blankets for covering.
Thick winter moccasins rose high on their legs, protection against the deep snow. The Shining Bird people stood separate, clustered in little groups. They huddled under soot-stained blankets, children peeking around from behind them.
They’d come expecting brutal war, but no one from the Shining Bird Clan had met Robin at the opening to the earthworks.
No challenges had been hurled over the snow-clad fields. Instead, they simply stared at him with haggard eyes, their faces smudged with soot as his warriors trotted into the clan grounds.
Most of the Shining Bird stood stoop-shouldered, and not a weapon could be seen anywhere.
Ash darkened the trampled snow of Sun Mounds. Occasional flakes still fell from the brooding sky. Robin could feel the tension in the air as the ghosts that lived in the place watched and whispered among themselves.
He studied the ashes, a pensive set to his lips. His enemy was dead. Over the years he’d come to hate Mica Bird. His rival had had everything—the benefits of status birth, the Mask, clan leadership, Star Shell, and the list went on. Was this where it ended, in smoldering ashes?
He fingered the war club at his waist, running his fingertips along the smooth wood. A thick blanket woven from split feather, cord, and strips of rabbit fur hung from his shoulders.
The human-jawbone breastplate covered his chest. He could feel the cold eating into his earlobes through the copper ear spools that marked him as an influential man. No, there had to be more.
He had been the sixth son of a farmer, his father nothing more than a man from an inconsequential lineage, eking out a living on poor, rocky soils. They’d lived in a hilly valley along the upper margins of Blue Duck territory. In those places he’d
learned to run, hide, hunt, and track. Even as a boy, he’d derided his brothers for their limited dreams of simple wives and back-forest fields.
At the time of his passage to manhood, when he took the name Robin—the darting hunter bird of the forest floor—he’d made up his mind to take a different path. The decision hadn’t been a hard one to make, not after watching his brothers follow in their father’s footsteps. Robin, of whom people expected so little, would have so much more. No matter what tfae cost.
He had dedicated himself to that task, consumed by the need to advance himself through politics and war. Power had favored him, for status had come rapidly, helped by the ruthless efficiency with which he attacked both problems and foes. He had already risen to leadership of his War Society, but now he wanted to go farther. It would not be enough to be the first man of his lineage to be buried in his own earthen mound; he would have all people know his name.
The living shall kneel before me! All the generations of men shall know my name. When I am dead, the ghosts of the ancestors shall receive me with humble, bowed heads.
Now, staring out at the ruin of the Shining Bird clan house, he told himself that the unease clawing at the edges of his soul was caused by the howlings of the two ghosts … nothing more.
His warriors looked as if they’d rather be anywhere but here, witnessing Shining Bird clan’s terror. What could he expect?
He’d led them here for a fight, and now the old woman offered him only burned ashes and the ghost of his enemy.