People of the Lakes(28)

“But to send me off into the north—”

“You have a duty to the clan—and I wouldn’t want to waste you on some backward swamp hunter. Who, after all, is about the only imaginable prospect for you.” She’d shaken her head.

“No, girl. This is better. We all serve the clan. That is the lot of women. Responsibility. The Mysterious One made men to be irresponsible, to play through life without a care. But a woman must carry out her duties to Jier people. Bearers and maintainers.

When the Mysterious One made the world, that is how he fashioned us.” A withered hand had risen, shooing Pearl away.

“Now, I have spoken.”

As Pearl stood to leave, Grandmother absentmindedly fingered the new copper bracelet on her thin brown wrist. And a beautifully carved effigy pipe lay beside the fire among Grandmother’s things—the ones that would be laid into her burial mound when she and Grandfather died.

Pearl’s anger had flared, and it continued to smolder like a buried ember.

As she stared at the flat brown river ahead, she wondered: Would I have been so different? Wouldn’t I want to take exotic items with me when I journey to the Land of the Ancestors?

Within two tens of days, as soon as Trade goods, wedding gifts, and provisions had been collected, she had mustered all the dignity she possessed and settled herself in the Khota canoe.

She’d considered running away; no one would have been able to catch her. But to have done so would have shamed her family and stained the reputation of her clan for the foreseeable future.

With hollow eyes, she watched the muddy bank sliding past and stared at the huge oak trees that rose in spreading majesty beyond the waving grasses. Tumbled clouds, shot through with sunlight, patched the hazy sky.

Pearl rubbed her face where the spray had dampened her smooth skin. This was going to be no good. Uncomfortably, she shifted on the coarse fabric bag upon which she sat and wished it were filled with anything but seed corn.

Otter stood in the rain watching his grandmother, Yellow Reed, hobble up the path toward the clan house. The old woman clung to Blue Jar’s arm, placing each step carefully on the slick mud. The cold wind gusted, driving waves onto the

shore to slap against Wave Dancer as the big canoe lay canted on the bank.

With the help of five of his cousins, Otter managed to haul the heavy Trading canoe up on the mud bank, and together they turned it over, leaving it to rest on logs embedded in the bank.

Rain continued to fall in bitterly cold sheets from the galena smeared sky. Water had puddled on the silty sand, flecked here and there by charcoal from the bonfires they lit for night fishing.

Angular fragments of pottery from the inevitable broken pot stuck out at odd angles, or had been mashed flat into the mud.

The drying racks—spindly constructions of slim poles— perched like skeletal storks just above the spring flood line. In fall, those racks had bowed under a burden of fish, turtles, ducks, and geese. Now they looked ghostly and forlorn, mocking those warm autumn days when people had laughed, fed the fires, and Sang while brightly colored leaves tumbled down from the bluffs above. Beneath the racks, long fire pits had been dug, where hickory and other hard woods were used to smoke the catch. Now the pits gaped like empty mouths that drooled black stains across the ground as the runoff carried ash down the slope.

The last of the White Shell canoes had landed just downstream from Otter and his party. His cousins called and waved from where they pulled their canoe up onto the beach—then hurried up the path to the clan ground with its earthen mound, temples, and storehouses.

“Let’s go get warm!” Jay Bird cried, hugging muscular arms to his wet coat. He squinted against the pelting rain, his wide mouth pressed into a thin-lipped grimace that made his broad face look oddly flat. Droplets of water had beaded in his thick black hair, now pulled tightly into two braids.

“Go on!” Otter pointed to the trail that led up past the drying racks. Shielding his eyes against the slushy rain, he could see that Grandmother’s party had already reached the top.

Otter hesitated, running fingers down Wave Dancer’s curved hull. Too much moss. No wonder she’d felt sluggish on the way up from the Alligator villages.

The swamps to the south tended to grow moss on anything— even on the turtles and alligators. The only place worse was the Southern Ocean itself. There the Traders fought a constant battle with, barnacles, and with saltwater worms that ate holes in their vessels’ wooden hulls.

With the touch of a lover, Otter caressed the thinning bow.

His soul had gone into building the big Trading canoe. For an entire summer, he and Uncle had searched the forests for the right bald cypress. Bald cypress was a durable wood that resisted rot and splitting; a well-made canoe crafted from the heartwood would last through a man’s lifetime, provided that he cared for it.