Faces flutter across my soul, and guilt overwhelms me when I must struggle to put names upon their smiles. Images whirl like snowflakes around each face, falling, falling…
Now I even understand how I did it.
As I grew older, piece by piece, I chose to move outside myself those ideas and people that cluttered my solitude. Old friends. New friends. They were all the same. I did not have the stamina for them. I truly believed that. Like bits of granite, they weighted my soul, demanding attention, gobbling more and more of my precious internal moments. I was fighting for my life! For the lives of other people! I could not afford such draining ties. I thought that if I set them aside I would have the strength for greater, more profound efforts. Not just for myself, but for everyone.
But that is not how it happened.
You see, I was a solitary for the sake of the work, and the work required me to create a magnificent self. All of my strength went into that. The splendid impostor.
For many Comings of the Leaves, I have been telling myself that doing battle with him is too difficult, I am too old and tired. Surely I can postpone the battle for another day. A day is nothing. Tomorrow I will begin the hunt. Tomorrow I will stalk him until he leads me into myself.
But as I blink up at the firelight dancing on the ceiling, I realize there may be no tomorrow. . There may be no tomorrow, and I am condemned to spend my last moments with a man I do not know at all
A soft desperate laugh escapes my throat.
Blessed gods, my gods. What a vast sparkling wasteland I carved in my heart.
For the sake of the work.
Nineteen
Hunting Hawk hated mornings like this. She stepped out of her Great House and squinted up through the naked myrtle branches at the gray sky of morning. The misty chill already pierced her thin flesh. Her rickety old bones soaked up cold the way old fabric absorbed rainwater. And once it leached into her bones, she couldn’t seem to get warm no matter how many hours she spent next to the fire.
Patches of low cloud hovered over the arched roof of her home like vultures over a dead deer. How close they were: a strong warrior could have shot an arrow into their fluffy bellies as they drifted above the frosted palisade posts. She didn’t need her breath puffing whitely before her nose to know that winter lay heavily on the land.
Hunting Hawk flexed her aching fingers and took stock of Flat Pearl Village. People did morning chores. Some ran errands. Others walked beyond the palisade to relieve nature’s demand. Girls hauled water from the inlet while the tide was low and the water fresh. A group of sleepy eyed boys plodded toward the gate, no doubt sent out to scout for firewood. The old lightning-riven oak would be scavenged yet again for its dwindling supply of fuel.
She took a deep breath, nose and throat rebelling at the cold air, and tapped the frozen ground with her sassafras walking stick. Her hips ached, and her knees and ankles pained her, too. Even the small of her back gave her twinges. Winter did that to her, made every joint ache. Not even rubbings of hemlock and teas of roasted and chopped poke root seemed to help anymore. Perhaps later today she would call Green Serpent to the sweat house and have him perform an herbal steam cure of cedar, bull thistle, and dwarf sumac. ,
She waddled toward the House of the Dead to offer tobacco and corn to Okeus, and her ancestors.
Lost in such thoughts, it took her a moment to recognize the gray-haired elder who stepped in from the palisade gate, his lanky form shadowed as usual by Sun Conch.
Hunting Hawk twitched her lips, considered, and changed course to intercept The Panther. She was within hailing distance when he saw her, stopped, and smiled.
“Greetings, Weroansqua,” he called respectfully. He had his old fabric blanket wrapped around his bony shoulders, and raccoon-fur leggings covering his calves and the tops of his moccasins. “A good morning, wouldn’t you say?” -She snorted, annoyed. “Good? My legs ache, my fingers ache, my feet ache. The colder and damper it gets, the worse I feel.”
The Panther gave her a knowing smile and raised his thick eyebrows. “Ah! Been taking the usual cures, I suppose?” “Them, and others. That old heel bone, Green Serpent, said he was fixing to rub me all over with sturgeon oil and sweat me until my meat cooked.”
“Sturgeon oil?” Panther fingered his chin. “That’s a new remedy.”
Hunting Hawk narrowed an eye. “If you ask me, he’s tried everything else. Lightning Cat told Flying Weir, who told Walks-By-Trail, who told Yellow Net, who told me, that Green Serpent had muttered something about never seeing a sturgeon that had bone-joint disease.” She gave him a crafty look. “How would you interpret that, old witch?”