“It’s a secret method,” Spotted Frog explained. “No other clan knows it. First, we take the cobs, weight them down, and sink them into Bayberry Pond. The Water Spirits there are very strong. They creep into the kernels and eat away at the insides. And we all know what happens after we eat. When the kernels have filled with enough slime, we pull them up, scrape the cobs, and mix the mush with maple sap and water. Then we leave the sour-corn pot near the fire to warm. In five or six days, it is ready to drink.” Spotted Frog lifted his cup and guzzled several swallows. “Yes. Very tasty. I’m gratified you like it.”
Cornhusk peered down into his cup. His small dark eyes peered back. He didn’t see any slime clinging to the sides of the cup. “I am … honored,” he said, “that you would reveal your secret method to me, Spotted Frog. I vow never to tell anyone.”
Cornhusk picked up his venison leg again. A beautiful young woman knelt at his side and refilled his cup from a pitcher. He bit into the smoky meat. Think smoke, not slime. Smoke.
Spotted Frog tossed his gnawed bone into the fire and picked up his pipe bag. The blue, yellow, and white porcupine quillwork glimmered in the light. Whelk shells hung from the fringe, clicking pleasantly. Spotted Frog removed a clay pipe, and beaded tobacco bag. As he tamped the tobacco into the bowl, he said, “We have heard strange rumors about Walksalong Village. Have you been there recently?”
Cornhusk took one last bite from his venison bone and lowered the remains to his bowl. “Yes. I was there ten days ago.”
“Are things as bad as the rumors say?”
“Terrible. But what have you heard?”
Spotted Frog stuck a twig into the fire and lit his pipe with it. As he puffed, blue tendrils of smoke curled upward toward the soot-blackened ceiling. “A runner from Sleeping Mist told us that Jumping Badger had attacked their village, killed half the inhabitants, then run south and slaughtered Paint Rock Village. The runner also said that Jumping Badger had stolen the False Face Child. Is it so?”
Cornhusk wiped his hands on the front of his buffalo coat. “Yes. True. All of it.”
Spotted Frog took another puff, then handed the pipe to Cornhusk. “Is it true, as well, that as soon as the False Face Child reached Walksalong Village people starting falling dead like flies after a hard frost?”
“Well.” Cornhusk shook his head in disdain. “That is an exaggeration. Three people died. Not at all like flies after a frost.”
Two old women to Comhusk’s right elbowed each other and hissed, as if congratulating each other on being right.
“The Sleeping Mist runner said that the False Face Child stabbed one of the clan matrons, and that the two warriors who’d brought the boy into the village spat up their insides, and died screaming like clubbed dogs.”
Cornhusk sucked on the pipe and held the rich smoke in his lungs before slowly letting it out. “Fairly accurate. But I was there, Spotted Frog. I saw. The warriors foamed at the mouth first, thrashing about like gutted fish, shrieking and wailing.” He shrugged. “Then they spat up their insides and died.”
Hushed murmuring broke out, and quickly grew to a din. Spotted Frog held up a fist to quiet the people. The conversations languished into silence.
The patron rubbed his triple chin. “Then it was worse than we have heard.”
Cornhusk handed the pipe back, and prepared to deliver the speech he’d been practicing—the one they all expected him to give. That was, after all, why the villagers had crowded in and around the house. After he’d delivered his speech at Winged Dace Village, the people had showered him with riches. Since Silent Crow was a Turtle Nation village, he’d have to change some of the details, reverse the roles of heroes and villains, and add a few tidbits from Turtle Nation legends, but he had no doubt these people would respond in a similarly generous fashion.
He sat forward and lowered his voice to a bare whisper. “I tell you truly, Spotted Frog, thousands of winters from now legends will be Sung about the Spirits that roamed Walksalong Village during the Winter of Crying Rocks. They will Sing of how the clan matrons condemned the False Face Child to death, and how one courageous girl named Little Wren, and a brave Headman named Blue Raven, cut the boy loose and ran away with him. Of how they tricked the wicked madman, Jumping Badger—”
“The boy is free? He’s a-alive?” Spotted Frog spluttered. “We had heard he was dead!”
Cornhusk shook his head slowly. “No, he’s with Blue Raven and Little Wren, running for his life from a search party of over two hundred warriors.”