People of the Lakes(11)
The old men in the temple stirred uneasily. The ceremonies were beginning, and each of the Elders had responsibilities.
How long would this vigil last? Four long days had passed since young Green Spider had prostrated himself in the Dream Quest.
Old Man Blood sighed, the action little more than a wheezing exhalation. He fingered the large conch shell and thought for a moment. “We must stay. We promised.”
Acceptance brought the barest bobs of heads. They would stay.
“These are honorable friends,” Many Colored Crow declared.
“All the better to test your determination. Are you preparing yourself, Green Spider?”
“Preparing myself?” What did Many Colored Crow mean?
Hadn’t he already done that?
“Oh, Green Spider, you’ve barely taken the first step. I have allowed you to fly, to slip into my Spirit wings. If you are strong enough, I will allow you to act in my place. You have made a request of Power. I will grant what you seek … if you will grant me what I wish. The way is long, hard, dangerous, and painful.
What will you sacrifice to Power?”
“Anything. Just as my people are now sacrificing.”
If the Clan Elders would forgo their responsibilities on so important a day, didn’t that serve as a lesson for Green Spider?
The clans knew the rituals; others—the men . would eventually succeed these ancient Elders—would make the offerings and lead the ceremonies.
“I will do as you wish, Many Colored Crow. Tell me what you desire. You can have anything that is mine to give.”
“Not yet,” the voice of Many Colored Crow called to him from the distance. ‘ ‘ is just the beginning. You have a long way to journey yet.
Green Spider’s soul turned its attention to the stirring of the people who shivered and tugged brightly dyed blankets around themselves. Their breath frosted in the icy air.
From the ceremonial huts around the clan mounds, Dancers emerged into the crystal cold of the purple morning. Dressed in
their finery, they looked, one by one, toward the tall mound where the Elders should have been. Finding no familiar forms outlined against the heavens, they turned their attention toward the square building at the mound’s base. The temple hunched in the gray light; its low palisade and tight cane walls obscured any hint of the Elders’ doings. Whispered questions passed back and forth as people clutched their blankets and climbed the mounds to initiate the ceremonies that would bring the birth of a new year.
Faces rose to the galena-gray sky, a wary squint in their eyes as they blew into cupped hands and stamped cold feet. The clouds twisted in the labor pains of a storm being born. Would snowflakes fall—or would freezing rain sheathe the bare, black tree limbs that transformed the rolling horizon into a fuzzy gray blanket?
“Your people seem worried,” Many Colored Crow noted.
“They are wondering what has become of the Clan Elders.
They know of my search for a Vision.”
Green Spider could sense the growing anxiety. Would the rituals be carried out correctly without the guidance of the old men? Would the coming of spring be affected? What did this mean to the lives of ordinary men and women?
Green Spider’s Spirit flipped and soared in a spiral over the earthen mounds. Didn’t they understand? It would mean that he would be granted his wish; he would be able to intercede, to help them, to control the weather and the storms, illness, and injury. He tried to see it all, the entirety of the clan holdings that would be his responsibility.
Beyond the limits of the City of the Dead, occasional clusters of houses and irregular plots of fields lay under a mantle of frost. They made a patchwork before giving way to the winter bare forest. Three more moons would have to pass while Father Sun worked ever higher to drive the blackness of winter into its northern lair once again. Then the rich soil could be tilled, the squash planted, and the maygrass and marsh elder gathered during the spring harvest. Knotweed, and goosefoot seeds, would be carefully inspected before being stabbed into the rich, red brown earth with sharpened digging sticks.
Along the southern border of the City of the Dead, the Deer River meandered through swampy bottoms where drying racks and duck blinds stood. Fish weirs poked up like pickets, and shell beds lay beneath the ice-clotted brown waters. Crusted patches of snow mantled the leaf mat, reeds, and cane that lined the banks of the murky river. Canoes, side by side like pointed pegs, had been pulled up onto the landings where the bluffs sloped gently to the waters. Drying ricks of spindly poles awaited the next harvest, when they would be taken from the meandering channel and back swamps.
Across those sullen waters lay the Sun Clan holdings, random dots of houses and conical storage huts intermixed with the helterskelter patchwork of fields. There, too, people stepped through door hangings to greet this special morning. Many offered their prayers to the sun and glanced northward toward the high, central mound that dominated the opposite shore.