People of the Lakes(36)

“For the next couple of weeks, I Traded the copper plate, fine fabrics, galena, pottery, and other goods the White Shell Clan allowed me to carry down river. In return, I got many wonderful shells, tobacco, raw yaupon, sharks’ teeth, and many mission, I will take those things north to trade to the people up in the Copper Lands.”

Grandmother glanced around, then shrugged. “The clan will consider this request.” She cocked her head. “What did you hear in the south, Otter? What are your words for us? What have you learned? What advice do you have about the coming year?”

Otter took a moment to collect his thoughts. He had expected immediate permission to continue Trading. The request was a formality, since the Trade goods. technically belonged to the clan.

“Grandmother, nothing is going to be as it has been. The river Trade is changing. You yourself have seen the increase in the number of canoes passing each year. The demand for Trade is growing. We need to give this change careful thought, and to consider our role in it.”

The old woman nodded. “We have suspected as much. Go on.”

“Let me tell you about something I heard. Swamp Bear told me that the people living at the mouth of the river, the ones who call themselves the Anhinga, met some Traders, young men from the Khota villages. It seems that these young men decided to take four canoes to the mouth of the Father Water to see if they could Trade with the peoples there. They brought the usual things, of course, but while they were there, they noticed a young girl known as the Pearl. She is a granddaughter of the clan leader … the Anhinga are matrilineal. The Khota asked to marry her into the Khota Clan.”

Blue Jar leaned forward. “Haven’t you told us in the past that the Khota are patrilineal?”

“They are. The rumor is that this girl will go there, to the Khota, to marry Wolf of the Dead, the young war leader.” Otter added bitterly, “I hope she enjoys his company.”

“She can have him,” Grandmother said sourly. “Do the Anhinga know what they’ve committed their daughter to?”

“I doubt it.”

The Anhinga might not know about the Khota, but the White Shell did. Several years back, rumors had circulated that the Khota had been responsible for the death of Otter’s uncle. No one would speak Uncle’s name now. He had died in violence, and the corpse had not been recovered to be properly cleansed, purified, and placed among the ancestors in the City of the Dead.

Instead, the angry ghost still roamed abroad somewhere, committing mischief and mayhem. Mentioning Uncle’s name might draw it to White Shell territory. Should that happen, disease, bad luck, crop failures, and death would follow.

News of the atrocity had been particularly difficult for Otter; Uncle had been more to him than just his mother’s older brother.

Among the White Shell, as with most matrilineal people, Uncle had been responsible for Otter and Four Kill’s education. Uncle had raised the boys, taught them, rewarded good behavior and punished them for bad. Many Turtles might have sired Blue Jar’s children, but he had no responsibility for raising them other than offering advice every now and then. Many Turtles had enough on his hands with his own sister’s children.

Recognizing Otter’s obsession with the river, Uncle first took him upriver as. a little boy. A famed Trader, Uncle had taught Otter the ways of the river and the peoples who lived on its shores. At the old man’s knee, Otter had absorbed the skills of a Trader the way dry moss sucks up water.

Otter himself had paid a stiff price more than once when passing the Khota lands. The Khota were relatively new to the Ilini River, having moved down from the north within the last ten tens of winters. Originally fierce and warlike, they’d driven their predecessors from the country, taken the women, and adopted many of the ways of those they conquered.

Of all peoples, the Khota consistently proved the most troublesome; once they’d stolen an entire canoe-load of greenstone, galena, and steatite that Otter had laboriously paddled upriver.

Traders generally tried to slip past the Khota villages at night.

Those who tried to pass the villages in daytime were accosted, threatened, sometimes beaten—and always lightened of their loads. Traders categorized the Khota along with mosquitoes, ticks, water moccasins, bad storms, rough water, and other hazards of doing business. After all, the Khota created many fine artifacts, including effigy pipes, gorgets, and other goods that would bring fair profits up-or down river—provided one could survive the Trading process.

Many Turtles muttered: “Perhaps this Pearl will enjoy our Trade goods when she arrives there. At least someone will get