People of the Lakes(117)

Silver Water gets hot and cold and sweaty. Somewhere in a secret place in her soul, her father’s hands reach out through a green, watery glow, and she hears sounds of angry breathing, moccasins on a hide-covered floor. His fingers are hot—boiling grease poured on her body—and she is drowning … Silver Water’s legs go weak. She sits back hard, and the secret place flies away, plummeting down, down, like a falcon, until it is nothing but a tiny black dot on her bright soul. Her mouth has dried out. She clutches a handful of snow and chews it to melting. It is cold. Not hot. She is sitting in a forest, listening to men’s voices. But not his voice.

Silver Water slips her hands between the stems and parts them to peer out. Clamshell is different. Silver Water senses that she is absorbed by the feel of hands on her body, massaging, stroking.

Wavering shatters of light dance across her breasts. They must be warm. She seems to like that.

Silver Water’s mother straightens up, and looking around pensively, says, “Tall Man, where did you put the Mask? Is it still inside Clamshell’s house?”

“Yes. I left it by the fire. I didn’t want my old love to have to see ij. Not after last night.”

“Good. I don’t want to have to see it, either.”

Silver Water takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. Tall Man said that when children look into the eye holes of the Mask, they see themselves as they are, or as they want to be. This doesn’t make any sense.

She didn’t see herself at all. Snake eyes had filled the sockets.

Shiny, like golden suns racing toward her.

Four days later, after the prayers had been uttered and firewood dragged in, they scooped coals from the fire pit and poured them on the under at the foot of the pyre they’d built for Evening Star. The old woman lay supine atop the rick of wood they’d piled in the middle of her floor.

As the flames leaped up, Star Shell followed Tall Man outside into the dusk and swung the pack she’d made onto her shoulder.

This time, they would have food and a few necessities for their travels.

As the flames crackled along the bark walls, Tall Man picked up Evening Star’s sturdy hardwood digging stick. The old dog was staring mournfully at the burning house. In a lightning movement, the dwarf swung the heavy stick down in an arc. He caught the dog just behind the ears, the blow hard enough to snap the neck.

For a brief few seconds, the dog kicked, its muscles jerking in spasms. The tongue lolled from its open jaws.

“Why did you do that?” Star Shell demanded as she dropped to her knees and began stroking its gray side, watching as the aged eyes went dim.

“Kindness, Star Shell,” Tall Man said sympathetically.

“This old hound would have died from loneliness. I think he loved Clamshell more than all the other men in her life put together did.” He grabbed the tail and grunted, pulling the animal against the corner of the house, where it would be certain to be engulfed by the fire. “This way, he can go with her to meet the ancestors. He would have wanted to.” Then Tall Man shouldered his pack and started across the snowy field.

As Star Shell struggled to her feet, she noticed that Silver Water was looking into the dead dog’s eyes, smiling. Couldn’t her daughter remember petting the old beast? How could she smile?

“Come on,” Star Shell ordered, sounding harsher than she meant to. As they plodded in Tall Man’s short tracks, she looked back. The flames shot red and angry into the evening sky. Darkness would be falling soon enough to hide the telltale pall of black smoke.

She hadn’t really listened to the Song Silver Water was Singing.

Now she turned.

Silver Water sang:

‘ ‘ colored, the dead are laid.

Logs across and dirt is made.

Lazy sloth, in baskets carried—

Sun man, and woman high are married.”

“What is that song, baby?”

Silver Water looked up with her depthless eyes. “Nothing, Mama, just a Song I learned.”

“Learned where?”

Silver Water pointed. “We’d better hurry. Tall Man is way ahead.”

She dashed after the dwarf.

Star Shell bit back the urge to grab her daughter and shake the truth out of her. This isn’t the time. She’s had enough trouble for now.

shell’s death. It made slushy sounds under Star Shell’s moccasins.

Behind her, the fire crackled and snapped in a roaring inferno.

Did it spin some final Visions for Evening Star? And if so, would she see them differently because she had dared to look into the Mask?

The chert flake had turned slippery with blood and fat. Pearl wiped it on the hem of her skirt to clean the edge, then returned to the chore of butchering the whitetailed deer that Six Fingers and Tailless Cougar had brought in.