People of the Lakes(15)

So they continued their vigil—despite the significance of the day. Black Skull shook his head. No good would come of this.

Green Spider heard Many Colored Crow whisper, “Go ahead, Black Skull. Worry. It costs nothing more than little pieces of the soul. The time has almost come for me to give my Vision to Green Spider. And, afterward, lonely warrior, your life will never be the same.”

The sun ascended higher in the cloud-strewn sky as the sacred Songs resonated across the hills and the ghosts were freed to their eternal future. Through it all, the young man. Green Spider, continued to lie facedown on the split-cane mat … lost in the Spiral.

“Green Spider, hear me. If you are willing to die and give up all that you love, I will grant you knowledge known to no living man. You may climb the tree of the world, walk the Land of the Dead, and finally I will open your eyes to the Mysterious One. You will have your Truth, Dreamer,”

“And I will go and find your Mask.”

“Prepare yourself. The moment has almost arrived.”

When the sun reached the highest point in the sky, Green Spider blinked, his aching, tortured body lying on the split-cane mat. He knew what was happening beyond the walls of the temple. As the Feast of the Dead was laid out, people began reaching into steaming cook pots.

Time to die. He could feel Many Colored Crow tighten a taloned foot on the lightning, take aim, and cast. The flickering bolt crackled through the clouds, blasting asunder the temple where Green Spider’s body lay.

People whirled, stunned. In the echoes of the thunderbolt, silence fell over the City of the Dead. Tongues of fire crackled in the wreckage of the temple as dry wood ignited. Within seconds, flames leaped and roared, and piteous cries rang out.

Two My first sensation is of unimaginable blinding light, hot, searing.

My eyes are closed, of that I am fairly sure, yet the light penetrates my body like tens of tens of slivers, piercing clean through my soul.

My thoughts are disjointed at first, firming like crystals of ice on a puddle. What … what is happening to me?

“You were crying for a Vision,” a disembodied voice answers from a great distance.

“Where am I?”

“In the place between life and death.”

I am afraid. I twist and turn, seeking to hide from the terrible brilliance. “I can’t see! It’s burning my eyes out!”

“Of course. Brilliance always blinds. Light gives birth to Darkness. And Darkness gives birth to Light. All the time, back and forth, back and forth. Never ending. Remember that. Green Spider, you can only see Truth if you look at it backward.

I am shaking now. I don’t understand. All I know is that I feel my flesh burning, burning … Moon Woman’s face shimmered silver-white through the thin film of clouds that rode down out of the northwest. A faint few of the Star People shimmered around her, bright enough to penetrate the nacreous veil. Pale white light bathed the land, illuminating the riverbank and the canoes that lay canted on the beach like fat black lances.

A lone man, tall and muscular, stood with braced feet and stared out over the mighty river. A winter shirt woven of heavy fabric dyed yellow and red hung down past mid-thigh. Leather leggings kept his legs warm above tall moccasins. A foxhide coat draped open over his shoulders—too warm for even this cold time of the year, when the moon deepened after the winter solstice. His breath puffed out in ragged white billows.

His people—the White Shell Clan—called him Otter. Up and down the river, however, he was known by another name: the Water Fox. And what more complimentary name could a Trader have?

The river ran smoothly before him; waves pushed out onto the black surface by the wind that blew across his left shoulder like a sash, and onward, southeastward, across the giant river and onto the breaks that rose in flat-backed, mottled humps on the far bank. In the faded moonlight, the trees created a hazy dove-colored fur on those distant eastern uplands.

Otter’s attention, however, centered on his obsession: the river. His life had been altered by the roiling Spirit of the Father Water. On this night, of all nights, he knew the extent of its Power over his soul.

With reverent fingertips, he bent down to touch the gentle lap of water on sand. The surface stretched black and forbidding, and only as his vision traveled out toward the channel did flecks of moon glow dance silver across the waves. He could feel the strength of the current as it flowed southward toward the sea.

Feel it? Feel the call of the river? Powerful, beckoning, like a woman’s soft touch, like … It all came back to women, didn’t it? For him, it came back to one woman: Red Moccasins.

Otter took a deep breath and filled his lungs with the familiar heady musk of water, the tang of sandy mud, and the pungency of the backswamp. The backswamps were critical to the river people. Otter knew the swamps’ quiet ways—ghosts of the old river channel—the water still and spotted with ice that clutched at the brown reeds, cane, and cattails. The smooth mottling of the ice mocked the bulbous bases of the tupelo and moored to the lined columns of cypress trunks.