People of the Lakes(8)

He blinked. What was happening? Colors … all the colors were draining from the world, bleeding away like life from a body with a mortal wound. The golden rays of sunlight that streamed through the branches paled to a dusty white, bleaching, sucking at the greens and blues until nothing remained but the mottled shades of thunderheads, and yet … Yes, feel it! Power, flowing through me. Changing, making me great!

Through the eye holes of the Mask, he glanced back at his grandfather’s corpse, seeing a blackened, shriveled thing. Crow Caller, the name rose unbidden. Just like Crow Caller’s soul when Wolf Dreamer Danced it away.

Mica Bird lowered the Mask, awed by the >vords within him.

His grandfather lay next to the desiccated corpse, but different now. Not the grandfather he’d always admired and feared, but a husk—like a maggot casing:

It would be difficult to haul the body back, but the impression it would create on his people would make it all worthwhile. He had to think like a leader now. Everything must be calculated for the greatest effect.

A faint whisper of his grandfather’s voice seemed to echo in the hollow of the rocks. No! it repeated over and over. No, don’t do this thing.’ Don’t make me watch your destruction!

Taking a deep breath, Mica Bird replaced the Mask in its sack.

When he turned to the task of bearing his grandfather’s body, he thought he heard an old woman’s voice Singing:

Taken by sea, their father came, Born of Sun, of Sun the same. :

One must live and one must die.

See the souls rise to the sky.

One The naked young man lay facedown on the split-cane matting of the temple floor. His name was Green Spider, but now he looked more like a plucked bird than a spider. His arms stuck out like wings, his legs were close together. He might have been dead, so limp did he lie.

Only on close inspection could the faint rise and fall of his bony back be detected. Smooth, coppery skin sparkled with beads of sweat. Arching from the middle of each shoulder blade across to the collarbone, three deep cuts marred his flesh. The blood—an offering to the Spirit World–had trickled down the strips of muscle and bone that composed his sapling-thin body.

A bone skewer, split from a deer’s cannon bone and ground sharp on both ends, pinned the tight bun of thick black hair in place at the base of his skull. He looked young, no more than twenty-five winters in age Despite the awkward angle of his head, part of his face could be seen. Broad cheekbones accented a high brow, and the nose appeared narrow and hooked, like a raptor’s beak. Thin shells— each delicately carved into the shape of a spider and dyed bright green—dangled from the lobes of his ears; For four long days—deprived of food, sleep, and water—he’d lain thus: sweating, praying, falling into the hole in his soul, seeking, seeking … … and the Vision had begun to form, that of flight … sailing … twisting on the predawn currents of cloud and wind.

Far below, the earth waited, gray and somber, locked in the grip of winter. Patches of ice-crusted snow molded around the boles of trees and contoured the mottled yellow-brown leaf mat of the oak-hickory forest.

His strangely acute sight located the winding course of the Father Water and followed the familiar sinuous shape to the mouth of the Deer River, then turned eastward, up toward the divide. Nestled in clearings, small thatched huts clustered, awaiting the winter solstice sunrise.

There, along the north bank of the Deer River, blocky earthen mounds had been constructed on the high terraces above the swampy bottoms. Some—centrally placed—rose higher than the trees and had an unbroken view of the distant horizon. Each capped with yellow sand, they glistened in the predawn light.

Other earthen mounds had been placed along the solstice and equinox lines that radiated out from the towering central mound.

These were rectangular, and capped with white sand in preparation for the Dances and offerings. Yet other mounds, smaller and rounded, bore the bones and ashes of the Dead. These mounds had been placed along the lines of the constellations.

“Do you know this place?” a voice asked from the hazy gray distance.

“The City of the Dead.”

The humped shapes of charnel houses clustered in the flats between the mounds. Young trees had been harvested for their construction, the butts placed in pest holes and bent to stress the wood into firm bows before saplings Wtre woven into the framework and lashed together. The whole had been covered by tightly laced shocks of grass.

On this special day, the Spirits of the Dead waited, already anxious and hungry for the feast in their honor.

"I am giving you a special gift,” the voice told him. "I will let you see through my eyes … the eyes of Many Colored Crow.”