“You won’t be. Not for long.”
I tense the muscles in my arms, and I feel feathers bite into the air. Nerving myself, I stroke powerfully, and shoot forward.
What wonder … have I always shared the soul of a bird?
“This being dead isn’t so horrible. I thought it would be, well, a great deal different.”
‘ ‘ are not finished with life. I have chosen you for a special task. And for that task, I will give you a special gift.”
“And what gift is that?”
‘ ‘ Spider, all of your life you have sought quiet, discipline,, and order, and the search has led you in the wrong direction.
You must turn around and look through those things to find their beating hearts. I am going to give ‘ the chance.
Your eyes are closed now, but when you open them, the patterned illusions of the many worlds of Creation will slip away, and the chaotic wasteland of reality will remain. Open your eyes, Green Spider. Do it now. See!”
Fear clenches my stomach. I open my eyes, and the blinding darkness dies.
I … I don’t … my mouth falls open and I scream. The louder I scream, the more terrible the silence becomes, until I can no longer hear anything at all. And I feel … I feel myself disappearing.
It is as if my breath is my soul, and it is escaping into the scream … becoming the scream.
Old Yellow Reed sat hunched behind the carved fox head in the bow of the big canoe as it rose and fell on choppy waves. The leaden morning sky reflected off the river with a sullen brilliance.
From the time she had been a little girl, sixty winters past, she’d loved sitting in the front of a boat. The way it lanced the water had delighted her, and despite the passing of years—
and numerous travels in canoes—it still did.
The storm had unleashed its fury with the morning, sending down veils of frigid rain. The heavy canoe dipped and bucked as it bore Yellow Reed and her daughters across the river toward the White Shell clan house. Craning her neck, the old woman could look back and see Otter’s pointed paddle flashing as it propelled them toward the east bank.
She lifted a small, tightly woven reed mat to shield her right side; there the mat caught the brunt of the icy rain that fell from the sky in slushy silver drops. Her hold on it was tenuous. With any luck, a gust of wind wouldn’t roar down and rip it right out of her aching fingers.
She wore a heavy shawl about her shoulders, and a thick winter dress beneath that. Nevertheless, cold had seeped into Yellow Reed’s bones, and for a woman her age, that meant utter misery.
She sucked her lips over toothless gums and battled the need to shiver violently, wincing at the cold trickle of water that ran from Her mat, down her hand and forearm, and dripped persistently from her elbow onto her lap.
“Mother?” Blue Jar asked. She leaned forward under her own mat..
“I’m fine. Just cold and wet, but that will pass as soon as we make shore and I can hobble up to the house. Spider Above knows, I hope that worthless husband of yours has the fires going.”
Blue Jar squinted against the storm. “After all these years, Many Turtles is wary of you. I imagine he’ll have the house as hot as midsummer.”
Yellow Reed chuckled. Blue Jar had just passed four tens and two winters. Her broad face and nose gave her a moon faced look, and she’d always had heavy eyelids that hinted of sleepiness.
Blue Jar, however, was anything but sleepy, lazy, or slow in the head. She had taken over many aspects of the administration of the White Shell Clan.
Water slapped at the hull as the canoe sliced a path through the river, and Yellow Reed smiled at the white splashes of spray that disappeared in the choppy, greenish-brown patterns of wind-pushed wave.
“You did well by your husband.” Yellow Reed leaned to the side to hold her reed mat higher against a changing slant of rain.
In doing so, she had a better view of Otter paddling in the stern.
He seemed oblivious to the weather. Otter wasn’t such a bad name for the boy—it fit him.
“I hope Four Kills will be as happy with Red Moccasins as Many Turtles has been with me.” Blue Jar hunched under her mat. Rain was dripping off the corner of the plaited grass and into the river, where the rings disappeared in the maze of pat68 Kathleen O’Neal Gear and W. Michael Gear terns cast by rain, wind, and wake; The breeze caught their mats, as if struggling to push the canoe sideways.
In misery, Yellow Reed peered back at Otter. With his usual acumen, he corrected immediately, grinning and paddling. The light of challenge lit his eyes.
“Yes,” Yellow Reed answered, “he’ll do fine. Red Moccasins is no one’s fool. Neither is her mother, or grandmother.