“I saw Cottonmouth. I watched Musselwhite walk up to him. He murmured something I couldn’t hear, but I saw my little girl reach for him, and he bent down to kiss her. It made a sickening sight. This tall muscular man leaning over this … this child!” Seedpod turned horrified eyes on his new son-in-law. “Then I heard a sound I will never forget if I live to be tens of tens of summers old. It made my blood turn to ice. My daughter, ten-and-one summers, laughed like a woman. Do you understand, Pondwader? It was a soft, seductive laugh, but in a child’s voice. When Cottonmouth’s hand reached for her barely budded breast, I burst from my hiding place and shouted, ‘Stay away from my daughter! Or I will kill you!’ Cottonmouth immediately jumped back from Musselwhite … then I heard him murmur, ‘Go home. Your mother is calling you,’ and she turned, stumbled clumsily past me with that dazed expression on her face, and headed back into the village.” Seedpod gripped the air as if to wring the life from it. “I wanted to strangle him.”
“Why didn’t you? He deserved to be punished for what he had done! Why didn’t you tell the council of Spirit Elders?”
The rage and shock on Pondwader’s young face shamed Seedpod. He had often wondered that himself.
“It was not so easy, Pondwader.” He lowered his hands to the floor mat. “I am a fair man—probably fair to a fault. I relived that night over and over in my souls, and after much thought I was no longer certain that what I had witnessed was witchcraft. More likely it was just youthful indiscretion. Witchery is such a heinous crime, for the witch and his victim. I knew that if anyone discovered Musselwhite had been witched, they would fear her as much as him. Indeed, they might kill her to protect themselves.”
Pondwader said, “You mean, because a person who is witched can bring the evil into the village?”
Seedpod nodded. “Yes.”
“Did you confront Cottonmouth about it?”
“Of course,” he sighed. “I accused him of witching my daughter, and he vehemently denied it, shouting that he loved her. But he promised never to see her again until she became a woman. A promise he kept, incidentally.”
“He did?”
“Oh, yes. In fact, I never saw him at all for the next two summers. Though he appeared at our spring village site the moment she began her first bleeding. I recall it very clearly.”
His thoughts wandered, seeing it again. Another spring day. Childish giggles came from the three newly made women in the menstrual hut. Thunderstorm was so proud she could barely contain it. She had been cooking for days, preparing a great feast.
“When Musselwhite emerged from the sacred hut, Cottonmouth was there. Waiting for her.” Seedpod’s face fell into a mass of crisscrossing wrinkles. He fumbled with his gourd cup, drained it dry.
Pondwader gazed intently at Seedpod. “And Musselwhite remembers none of this?”
The fire flared, and its glow spread through the shelter, picking out the delicate designs painted on the globular bags swaying over Pondwader’s head. Seedpod had woven those bags last summer, just after Sun Mother’s Celebration Day. He had to touch up the paint, though; it faded so quickly in the bright sunlight. He took a breath, and answered, “Dogtooth must have told you that.”
“Yes. He said he didn’t think she recalled what had happened.”
“Well,” Seedpod sighed. “I don’t really know. We have never spoken of it. She begged to marry Cottonmouth. We refused. So she ran away to be with him. It tore her mother’s heart … . And mine. For a long time, I was very angry.” He toyed with a palm thread that had frayed from the floor mat. “I refused to see her.”
“But, Seedpod,” Pondwader said, “didn’t you ever wonder whether she had run away of her own choice? If he hadn’t witched her again?”
“Of course. I watched her very closely. But she acted perfectly normal. Stubborn, headstrong, but normal. I had no reason to accuse Cottonmouth a second time.”
But moons later, for a flickering instant, I wondered … .
Seedpod had passed by Standing Hollow Horn Village and stopped to see her, just for a moment, he’d proclaimed, but the moment had lasted five days. Musselwhite had seemed so happy. Almost too happy. But Cottonmouth seemed just as unnaturally blissful. His eyes never left Musselwhite. She was all he talked about—all he appeared to care about.
“It would have made as much sense for me to accuse my daughter of witching Cottonmouth, as the reverse. They were both mindlessly happy, Pondwader. Moons after she’d left Windy Cove, she told me, in strictest confidence, that they had secretly married—and that she carried his baby.”