People of the Lakes(12)

g them, as if each individual felt the weight of Power in the winter air.

“Don’t worry,” he promised them. “I’m Dreaming for you.

I will care for … make your lives easier.”

“If you’re strong enough,” Many Colored Crow reminded.

‘ ‘ were I you, Dreamer, I’ d not make a promise I didn’ t know I could keep. My brother tells me I’m a fool to bet on a man—but he is making his own bets. He has no more sense than I.”

“I will keep my promises.”

“And help Power keep its own?”

“Yes! Yes!” The joy of flight surged through him, rapture pulsing with each beat of his shining sable wtings.

Within the snug shelters, people scooped the daily meal of hickory nuts, dried berries, or milled goosefoot seeds from the large ceramic jars stowed under the sleeping benches. Some lifted squash from storage cysts cut into the earthen floors as others heated piles of cooking clays for the earth ovens.

Here and there, a canoe passed across the runways in the swamp. Word of the missing Clan Elders was traveling. Exclamations of wonder passed as widened black eyes turned in the direction of the temple.

“It’s all right,” Green Spider cried, his voice lost in the clouds. “I’m being granted my Vision! Things will be better! I can make them better!”

“Yes, perhaps you can. It would only be fair to tell you, Green Spider, that if you are truly strong enough to do as I ask, you will never be the same again.”

“I want Power!” he cried again. “Anything! Just let me see the Truth!”

“To know the Truth, you, and all that you are, must die. Can you destroy yourself to find what you seek?”

Despite the growing buzz of worried chatter, those who had traveled to the City of the Dead from outlying clan territories huddled about their fires, either telling—or listening to—the winter stories. Stories of Many Colored Crow calling the ghosts, tricking them onto the mountain of fire.

The Dead knew so much more than ordinary folk. People glanced reverently at the beautiful pots that contained the ashes of family members who had died during the preceding year. On this day, they would mix the remains with those of the ancestors in the clan commons of the City of the Dead. None of their loved ones would ever be lonely again.

Ashes came from as far away as the gulf coast. Kin who had died in those distant lands had been cremated, the remains carried up the waterways and over the divides in the packs of Traders. Now the remains were home, in the land of their birth, to rejoin their families.

The charnel houses waited somberly, their roofs hoar-frosted.

Within these structures, many corpses had been cared for during the preceding moons. Now the souls would be freed to mingle with the other ghosts.

Excitement swept the people, all of them dressed in their finest fabrics. Gleaming shell, polished copper, or finely ground stone gorgets hung from their necks. Strands of bone, stone, and shell beads rattled gaily on proud chests. Feathers of shocking brightness had been woven into silky black hair, and faces had been painted with painstaking care.

As the Dancers on the mounds gyrated and Sang their prayers to the Spirits, relatives removed corpses from the pole benches in the charnel houses and carried them to the crematories—shallow clay pits filled with ricks of dried hardwood. There the desiccated bodies would be laid out and fire brought from the Sun Clan’s temple on the south of the mound complex. The flames would crackle up, returning the flesh into the nothingness from whence it came.

Reverent relatives would pray and Sing to the souls of their departed. The ghosts knew they were remembered and had no reason to linger in the land of the living. Then food, drink, and gifts would be offered on the mound tops, or attached to the poles that canted out at an angle around the bases.

Offerings would also be made to Crow, the carrion bird, the tricky hunter. Because Crow knew the Dead and did them favors, he could bring messages to people here in the world of the living. Therefore, Crow was revered, and his image was often carved on pipes, pounded into pieces of copper, and cut from sheets of mica.

“Yes,” Green Spider said, feeling haunted and uneasy. “I will die if it will grant me Power. I will do anything I must to learn the secrets of Power.”

“Are you sure? After all, you’re only Dreaming, your soul drifting free from your body. You’ve lain there on the matting for four days and nights without food, without water. You’ve forced yourself to stay awake, to empty your soul of thoughts.

Perhaps you’re raving.”

“Are you telling me that this is all illusion? I can see everywhere … the way Crow can see when he circles in the sky!”