People of the Lakes(31)

Catcher was one of the finest dogs Otter had ever known. For six years now, he and Otter had traveled the length and breadth of the rivers, even going down among the sandy lagoons in the Land of the Manatees to Trade with the people who lived there.

Otter scratched the floppy ears, until Catcher’s wiggling nose sought out the strip of fried turtle meat Otter had hidden in his belt pouch.

“What’s this? Ah! Yes, a bit of feast from the wedding, isn’t it?” He reached in and plucked the tidbit from the pouch.

Catcher trembled with anticipation, his tail lashing the rain.

Delighted brown eyes studied the bit of meat, and the ears pricked.

“You sit. That’s it. Now … wait.” Otter placed the brown strip of meat on the top of Catcher’s pointed nose. The dog’s tail wagged enthusiastically, swiping an arc through the mud.

Catcher’s eyes started to cross as he tried to focus on the treat tormenting his quivering nose.

“Okay!” Otter clapped his hands.

Catcher made a quick movement of his head, and the jaws snapped loudly in the blur. The turtle meat vanished. Catcher exploded into happy jumps and circled Otter with pattering feet.

“Good work!” Otter praised as he wrestled with the dog.

“You’d better be just as quick with a thief’s fingers!”

“Hey!” Jay Bird called from the doorway to the clan house.

“Grandmother wants you to get in here. Everyone’s waiting on you!”

“I’ll be right there! Let me check my packs.”

With Catcher dancing beside him. Otter hurried to the storehouse along the western curve of the embankment. The round building sat on raised posts. The walls had been made from split cane laced together with cordage. Shocks of grass thatch effectively shed the rain. The structure protected his goods from sun and storm, and the raised floor discouraged mildew and fungus.

His packs remained in the carefully arranged pile he’d left them in. All appeared secure.

Catcher watched with serious brown eyes, his tail slapping back and forth in slow arcs that slung mud this way and that.

Otter smiled, knowing that expression: anticipation of the moment when Otter would begin carrying his packs back down to the river—a sign that they’d be off again.

“Catcher? You guard the packs, now. All right?”

Catcher made a grumbling sound and scampered up the pole ladder to settle himself on the packs in the doorway. He snorted a sigh, hee’dless of the water and mud that dripped on the brightly painted fabric of the packs. Otter raised an eyebrow, gave it up as a lost cause, and turned his steps toward the big clan house.

The clan house served as a meeting place as well as sleeping quarters for visitors to the clan grounds. As leader of the clan, Yellow Reed did little in the way of manual labor. Her needs were supplied by her descendants.

The structure was square but had rounded corners. The interior measured twenty paces long and fifteen across and had been divided into three rooms by cattail matting. A fabric hanging kept the storm from blowing in through the south-facing doorway.

Otter paused, wishing he could simply slip away and nurse his heart. If only he could take some time to think about Red Moccasins and Four Kills. To think about himself. That practical side of his nature could wrap itself around the swelling sense of loss and slowly squeeze it back into nothingness. He could reorder his life the way a shaman ordered the bones before a ceremony. He could put his soul back in harmony.

Resigned, Otter ducked through the low doorway.

Foui From where I soar. I can look down on a green land that gives way to incredibly blue water. A crescent of white beach, the shoreline undercut by waves, lances off toward the horizon on the west. Clouds, a piled magnificence of fluff, fill the sky, dazzled by the high, blazing orb of the sun.

“There,” the voice tells me. “Just out from shore. Do you see. Green Spider?”

I tuck my raven’s wings and drop like a hunting falcon until I can make out the canoe, a beautiful craft with a fox-head prow rising above the water. Three men and a woman paddle the boat.

“Those are my people!” I cry in delight.

“Yes. And if you look to the east, across the land … “

I have to twist in the air to see, arching gracefully away from the huge lake, crossing endless forest. At this height, the leaf canopy billows like small green clouds.

“I see,” I answer. “The woman -and her daughter. Yes, and there’s the sack on her back! So. It is as you said, Many Colored Crow. Yes, at last I understand. I know the way now and can—”

Hard hands grab me from nothingness. Fingers work along my muscles, squeezing, prodding, massaging. I smell flower scented hickory oil.