People of the Lakes(16)

Somewhere, to his right and behind him, a night predator disturbed the ducks, who quacked warily. Out of the darkness, Owl hooted as he drifted on silent wings. A fish thrashed the water in pursuit—or escape.

The bitter threat of storm traveled on the night wind. Otter could sense frigid air rolling down from the north, and he shivered at the increasing cold.

A cold to mock the chill in my soul. He stuck his hand farther into the icy water, his fingers burrowing down into the cold, dark mud.

Faint laughter carried on the night breeze. He stood, knotting his fist so the sticky mud squeezed out between his fingers in wedge-shaped curls. Turning, looking westward into the wind, he could see the Tall Cane clan houses—the source of the laughter.

Otter had just come from that place, had walked down to the landing where his long, sleek canoe waited with its promise of freedom.

The Tall Cane Clan celebrated for the fourth night with Singing and Dancing, feasting and storytelling, and the exchange of gifts. This marriage was a lucky union   between the White Shell Clan and the Tall Cane Clan. All of the lineages were linked now, as if this final marriage created one people out of two.

The clans, their territories facing each other across the river, had been enemies in the distant past. In the beginning, the White Shell Clan had built its clan house and burial mound on the eastern bluffs overlooking the river. The Tall Cane clan house and earthen mound had been built later, when the clan moved down river. They had chosen to settle on a small rise on the western bank. White Shell warriors had gone to drive the interlopers out of their territory. The Tall Cane Clan had been just as determined to hold their new home. Somewhere, back in the time of the Grandmothers, that feud had ended with a marriage, and so it had been since.

Otter had taken the first opportunity to escape the festivities.

He desperately needed time alone to nurse the aching wound in his heart. He had loved her so deeply, so passionately. Here he could look back at the ruins of that love.

How many times had he made his way to this settlement?

Those trips had been wondrous with the knowledge that she was waiting, anticipation in her eyes.

All gone now.

Sparkling fires honeyed the thatched roofs and pale walls of the clan house. The light danced and flashed at the incitement of the breeze. Here and there, despite the distance, he could make out the forms of people moving between the fires, casting shadows in his direction.

Her marriage strengthened the bonds between the people, tying the clans closer together. Villages in the central valley didn’t realize the frightening changes taking place in the world beyond.

Otter had seen them. The number of canoes passing the clan territories had grown by tens of tens over the last year. Young men like himself sought the chance to feed the growing demand for goods above and below the central valley.

We have entered an age of alliances—and, thereby, an age of great danger.

He turned again to the rippling black water. Even now, in the dead of winter, the river whispered, calling to him, drawing at his soul the way it ate at the sandbars and muddy banks.

“Otter?” The soft voice caught him by surprise. He wheeled to find his twin brother standing ghostly in the veiled moonlight.

Four Kills looked dashingly handsome in his wedding garb of brightly dyed yellow, black, and red fabrics. A copper hairpiece had been tied into the thick bun at the base of his skull. Alternating layers of bone and shell beads lay thickly across his chest.

The half-wash of moonlight gave his fine-featured face a pale delicacy—the eyes shadowed by the prominent brow ridge.

Otter found his voice. “Sorry, brother. You startled me.

The wind, I guess … it covered your approach.” He selfconsciously rubbed the tips of his wet fingers on his fox coat and glanced back longingly at the river.

He shouldn’t have been surprised. Four Kills would have known he’d come here. They had always shared a bit of soul.

So alike, so different, but then, the Father Water had determined that long ago. Perhaps that faraway night on the river had led directly to this meeting. A man couldn’t know the workings of Power—they just went on around him, throwing him this way and that, like a stick in the river’s roiling brown current.

Four Kills walked down the muddy slope, stopping beside Otter, staring out over the river with him, but seeing the dark bluff, where the White Shell clan house and earthworks stood on the other side. That difference marked them. For Otter, the river centered the soul; for Four Kills, it was the clan, and his obligations to Grandmother, that lay at the center.

“I’ve been feeling your hurt,” Four Kills said gently.

Otter reached out to drop an arm around his brother’s shoulders.