Pondwader crawled out on the northern side of the Pond, and sat down heavily in a thicket of reeds. Green stems leaned at differing angles around him. A red stain appeared on his left side, and began growing, and growing.
“Are you hurt?” Kelp thrashed through the cattails to stand beside him.
“No. No, really. I don’t think. There was a dart … .” He appeared dazed as he reached down and probed his side. More blood stained the fabric, spreading in a bright red circle around his fingers.
“A dart?” Kelp threw down her warclub and bent over to survey the wound more closely. “Blessed Sun Mother, you’re bleeding badly! Pondwader, what—”
He looked up. “It happened when I first dove down. The dart had been planted in the mud with the tip up. The cut isn’t bad. The water just spreads the blood, makes it look like there’s more than there is.”
Kelp put her finger through the rip in the fabric to touch the wound. “How deep did it go, Pondwader?”
From somewhere out in the forest Dogtooth yelled, “He’s dead! He’s dead!”
“He is not!” Kelp shouted back. “He’s sitting right here! You’re a liar as well as a lunatic!”
“He may be alive now,” Dogtooth’s voice lilted on the wind. “But he’ll be dead soon.”
Pondwader’s expression turned anguished. “Oh, Kelp, it’s not my fault.”
She pulled her gaze from the last place she’d seen Dogtooth and frowned at her brother. He looked absolutely terrified. “What, Pondwader? What isn’t your fault?”
He held his stomach and rocked back and forth. “I’m dying. I’m dying, but I don’t know why. I can feel my life seeping away.” Wet white hair dragged the reeds around him, leaving trickles of water flowing down the stems. “What have I done to anger Sun Mother so much she would want me dead? I can’t help what’s happening to me. I didn’t want the thunder to wake up. It’s not my fault!”
Kelp crouched before him, breathing hard. Tears glistened on his colorless lashes. “Come on. I have to get you home,” she said, and tugged on his hand until he stood up. He staggered. Kelp grabbed his arm and pulled it over her shoulders to steady him. “Pondwader? Can you walk?”
He rubbed a muddy hand over his forehead, and murmured. “Yes, I—I think so.”
Five
“I am certain of it, Spirit Elder!” The young warrior spoke quietly in the jumping firelight of the council shelter. “We tortured one of the runaways before we killed him. He said that Musselwhite’s husband had escaped, too!”
“And you believe this man is Diver?”
Diver opened his eyes. His wounds, the one in his back and the more recent one in his left shoulder, throbbed so violently he could barely concentrate on their words. Though he knew they had tied his arms over his head and secured them to the main support beam of the shelter’s roof, he could not feel them. His muscles neither ached nor tingled. They might have been severed from his body, except that he could see them, dripping sweat in the heat of the flames.
Two young warriors sat around the fire with gourd cups of tea in their hands. The other man stood with his back to Diver, a hand propped on the northeastern post, gazing out across the moonlit ocean where the white backs of floating gulls glimmered and vanished with the rolling waves. The man had braided his long, graying black hair and coiled it into a bun at the base of his skull, then secured it with a beautifully etched pelican bone hairpin. He wore only a breechclout, and all of his exposed skin shone with insect grease. A long white scar angled down his left shoulder. Cottonmouth. Diver had never seen him, but he knew that’s who it must be. Musselwhite had described that deep, haunting voice tens of times. Though Diver had not suspected he would be so slender, or so tall.
A ripple of polished marginella shells flashed as the man slowly turned and his necklace caught the firelight. White shells, bleached by being roasted in hot sand. Yes, Cottonmouth. He had a reputation for being extremely handsome, though age had cut lines around his huge dark eyes, and turned the hair at his temples a solid silver. He had a perfect face, oval, the nose and full lips seemingly carved from stone.
Beneath that intent gaze, Diver straightened, getting his feet under him, and started shaking. Pain and fear blended to leave him pathetically weak.
Cottonmouth walked forward. “Are you?” he asked. “Are you my beloved Musselwhite’s husband?”
The irony in Cottonmouth’s voice sickened Diver. The man had said “beloved” like a curse. “I am Panther, of the Sea Turtle Clan.”