“There’s High Fox,” Nine Killer said stubbornly. “He still has the means, reason, and opportunity. Maybe Red Knot changed her mind at the last minute. Maybe Quick Fawn’s arguments made her feel guilty as she ran up the trail?”
“And maybe,” Sun Conch said, her spine stiffening, “Copper Thunder killed her after all.”
“How’s that?” Panther asked. “We’re pretty sure he offered her as bait to Flat Willow.”
“Elder,” Sun Conch said, “Copper Thunder was out there, remember? Maybe he saw her leave, followed her, figured out that she was deserting him. You know him, Elder, better than any of us. You saw that rage in his eyes. His alliance with Greenstone was running off to meet some callow youth. His deal with Flat Willow was about to paddle off to who knew where? That was a slap to his pride and manhood. How do you think he’d react?”
Panther stared absently at the fire. “I must be getting old to have missed that. Blood-streaked bats, he’d have followed her to see what she was up to—and once he’d determined what she was about, he’d have gone into a rage. In that state, he’d have killed her without a thought.”
“And,” Nine Killer reminded, “his war club has that stone ball on the end and a copper spike just below it. It would have left two dents in the girl’s skull.”
Waterfall
When I was young, I used to sit at the base of a waterfall on the Black Warrior River, just to watch the misty halo gleam. The water had climbed as high as it could, and lingered in sparkling glory.
Like my life, that halo was a place of eternal suspension.
And how I prized that!
Floating above was so much easier, and cleaner. Though the water was in fact blood, I could not see it. Those were not bones grating beneath my feet, but rocks. Not cries I heard, but wind in the trees. I couldn’t see anything… except myself haloed in glory.
I took great care to sustain that halo, so that I could hide in the blinding brilliance.
I had to witness many Comings of the Leaves—oh, let me see, perhaps five tens and five—before I realized that the Suspended Life was neither.
No matter how I tried, I couldn ‘t stay aloft. That brilliant sparkling halo was cut from nothingness. It blinded me to the fact that I stood nowhere. I had no place to stand. In my entire life, I had never built anything solid or lasting.
If I had only known. Blessed gods, I wish I could have seen myself for what I was.
Empty. Utterly and completely.
I did live suspended. For a few brief Comings of the Leaves.
But when I fell, the sparkling halo became a whirlpool of tiny glinting knives. Spinning and murderously beautiful, it cut me to pieces.
And I’m still falling.
And afraid, terribly afraid, that I lived suspended for so long, there may be no bottom. Not for me.
My sentence may be to fall forever, my soul evaporating as I tumble through the emptiness. Watching things go by. Reaching out. Never able to touch, or hold. . Or close my eyes.
Twenty-six
Hunting Hawk mused on a great many things as she sat before her warming fire. Around her and her family, the slaves collected dishes. The meal that night had been the last of Nine Killer and Many Dogs’ catch of fresh fish. A big pot of hominy, now half-empty, still steamed by the side of the fire.
For herself, Hunting Hawk had concentrated on the clams, collected by Yellow Net’s family and steamed in a fold of damp cloth. Midwinter’s extremely low tides exposed mud banks hidden through the rest of the year. People and gulls scavenged this virgin territory by day, raccoons by night.
Hunting Hawk’s old dog lay by her side, allowing her the privilege of scratching her silky ears. The bitch made snuffling sounds through her gray muzzle, and her fat tail thumped the mat; a particularly sensitive spot had fallen under Hunting Hawk’s arthritic fingers.
Across the fire, Copper Thunder glared into the coals; the red light emphasized his forked eye tattoos, the spider gorget, and the gaudy copper necklaces. Since his meeting with The Panther, a sullen anger had hung around him like a black mist.
Fascinating, Hunting Hawk told herself. A most interesting exchange. So much had come clear. Here, in her village, two old enemies, like circling spiders, were spinning out their final conflict. Somehow, Red Knot’s death had become the foca] point for both of them.
And for me, Hunting Hawk reminded herself. What had once been a desperate, risk-filled gamble had now grown into something more. Not just for the future of her clan and the Independent villages, but for the entire Eastern Shore of the Salt Water Bay. When that blow landed on Red Knot’s head, a flood of events had been unleashed, a torrent cascading down upon them.