People of the Lakes(250)
“Malicious deed?” Star Shell shook her head. “Outside of marrying my husband, I really don’t have any regrets. Oh, I’d go back and change some things. I wish I’d never told my father that I’d never forgive him for making me grind my aunt’s goose foot seeds. I’ll regret that forever. I threw away at least two big jars of it. When no one was looking, I dumped it in the creek to wash it away. Aunt was half-blind. She never noticed the difference.”
“That was malicious?”
“What would have happened if we’d had a really bad winter?
She was up there alone on the farmstead, old, half-blind, and a silly girl dumped two big jars of goosefoot. Why? Because I was spoiled and lazy.” I was too proud. The beautiful daughter, too good to grind flour for an old woman. And look at me now.
“But you must have done something purposely evil, Star Shell.”
She frowned, thinking back. “Worse than dumping the goosefoot?”
“Much.”
“Well … there was a girl I didn’t like in the Pale Flower lineage. Stone Rose was her name. She was always causing me trouble. She thought I was pampered, arrogant … and too pretty.” Which I was. “We hated each other. I got more attention from the boys, and she didn’t like that one bit.”
Star Shell picked at the dirt under her thumbnail. “I found out that Stone Rose was involved with a married man of the Fast Squirrel Clan. One time when he sneaked off to be with her, I sent a message to this man’s wife. Had a friend of mine tell her that her husband wanted to meet her down by the river in the willow patch.”
“And that’s where Stone Rose lay with the woman’s husband?”
Star Shell nodded, seeing into the past. “I would change that if I could. No matter that I didn’t like her! It wasn’t right to harm her like that.” Tall Man sighed and winced, involuntarily placing a hand to his right side. The stitch of pain seemed to have grown worse over the last few days. “Is that the worst thing you’ve ever done?”
“Other than marrying my husband? Yes. He brought me nothing but pain.”
“You didn’t know he was going to become a monster. You didn’t do anything wrong. I mean, it wasn’t a malicious act, something that you knew was wrong when you did it.”
“If I knew it was wrong, why would I do it?” She gestured the futility. “I felt so wretched after dumping Aunt’s goosefoot seeds that I swore I’d never do anything like that again.” Tall Man sighed and shook his head. “I find it hard to believe that you were such a perfect child.”
I wasn’t, Magician. I was proud, vain, arrogant in my beauty and privilege. She tipped her head back, listening to the big drops spattering randomly on the blanket. “My parents brought me up to be responsible, I guess. They always were. My father took his duty to heart. Mother was the same way. Everyone loved her, and not just because she was married to the clan leader.”
“Yes,” Tall Man said wearily. “Everyone loved her.”
“She was a beautiful woman. Right up to the end.”
“Like a fantasy woman come to life.”
“I’ll miss her. I just wish Silver Water could have known her.” Familiar grief tightened in the back of her throat. She glanced at the pack that contained the Mask, silently hating it.
” So will I.” Tall Man bowed his head, lost in his own musings.
“So,” she said with a sigh, “we are back to my original question. Why you? I would think, Magician, that Power would have understood your character and left you alone. Or didn’t your sorcerer’s ways work?”
“They always worked very well, Star Shell. Too well.”
“But you’re still here, running just like me. It hasn’t been any more pleasant for you than it has for me. Can’t you cast a spell, or conjure a fog, and slip away?”
He gave her a sober appraisal. “My abilities are given by Power, girl. First Man showed me what was in store for me.
And I understood and accepted his offer. What is given must be taken. Balance is the heart of everything.”
Star Shell shifted, trying to find a more comfortable spot. Her feet hurt, swollen and chafed from her rain-soaked moccasins.
She picked at the stubborn laces, caked with mud, and peeled them off. Her feet looked pale and shriveled. Had the leather of her moccasins not been superbly tanned and smoked, they’d have dried hard by now, and shrunk so small that not even Silver Water could have worn them.
“You must have done something terrible to deserve this,” she insisted. “What do you think it was? I told you the most terrible things I ever did. How about you? You poisoned a man because you wanted his wife … and then you sired a child off of her, but couldn’t make yourself live with her. You killed people for hire—maybe for good reasons, maybe for bad. Did you steal babies’ souls? What single thing do you take as your most malicious?”