“I’ll be waiting at Oyster Shell Landing. ” High Fox’s words echoed. His solemn eyes haunted her, his handsome face radiating love. “Meet me at first light. “
No, this wasn’t wrong. Not in the eyes of the gods. They only reacted in rage over lying, murder, or that most horrible of crimes, incest.
She ran, feet pattering on the damp leaf mat. Over the years all the fallen branches had been scavenged for cooking fires, so she need only worry about roots that might trip her.
She almost missed the trail, but, heart beating, she sprinted up the steep winding path, her breath beginning to labor. The white-tailed deer had originally forged this route down to the cornfields, but they ran it no longer. Her people had all but hunted them out on the narrow neck of land surrounding the village. Now, only occasional deer raided the fields, and they did so at risk of an arrow. Was it not better to have the deer in the people’s belly than their corn in the deer’s?
She panted up the ridge, and thanked the Spirits that they had granted this warm spell and held off the snow that would have betrayed her tracks. Her toes drove into the soft, mulched soil.
When she reached the great beech tree, its smooth bark marred by the years, she stopped to catch her breath. Six men would have to stretch fingertip to fingertip to reach around the tree’s circumference. She stepped past the beech, out onto the rounded ridgetop, into the shade of the other forest giants. A robin chirped in the high canopy of bare branches, and a squirrel skittered across the fallen leaves.
Morning was coming. She had to hurry.
Red Knot took a deep breath, and started forward. She had only to cross the ridgetop, then descend the steep path on the other side to the’ Just as I thought,” a familiar voice called from behind her. “It’s all in the blood.”
Red Knot spun, gasping, the worst of her fears suddenly realized, as a blanket-wrapped figure stepped from the deep morning shadows behind a walnut tree. “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be in your…”
The blanketed assailant moved with uncanny speed. Red Knot glimpsed the war club, heard it whistle as it sliced the air…. The loud crack of breaking bone echoed across the quiet misty hills.
Two
Shell Comb, first daughter of Hunting Hawk, hesitated as she looked out from the shadowed doorway of the House of the Dead. She took a moment to steady herself.
Today she began life again. She had been cleansed, purged of the mistakes of the past and the price they’d exacted from her soul. She could start over, live as a Weroansqua’s daughter should. She had proven to herself that she was worthy of the awesome responsibility of authority. Still, as she watched the clearing beyond the doorway, she nervously smoothed her hands on her deer hide skirt.
Several people moved in the plaza, attending to various tasks. Rosebud’s daughter, White Otter, carried a water jug toward the gate. Old Blue Moon urinated on the back of his house, too blind to find his way outside the palisade. Shell Comb started when she saw the Great Tayac, Copper Thunder, slip in through the opening in the palisade, glance furtively around, and stride arrogantly toward Hunting Hawk’s Great House.
Shell Comb coughed and rubbed her sore windpipe.
Where has he been? And to what purpose? The Great Tayac had no allies here, and wouldn’t have until properly married into the Greenstone Clan. How long had he been gone from the village? A cold shiver raced down her back. Well, if his absence meant trouble, she would know soon enough.
She needed all her wits with one cycle of her life finished, and another beginning. This time, she would be smarter, wiser. The final stitch had been sewn into a bag too long open. Why, then, did her heart leap and her muscles tremble?
She made sure no one looked in her direction, then stepped out to meet this new day. With steely control, she forced herself to walk across the plaza toward the Great House. The Guardians, upright posts carved into the likenesses of human and animal faces, watched her pass the smoking fire pit in the plaza’s center. The ground here was hard-packed from the dancers the night before.
Old man Mockingbird tottered toward her, blinking in the half-light. He heard her cough, and tilted his head to squint at her. “Best tend to that, girl,” he warned. “Shouldn’t be out in this cold.”
“Thank you, Elder.” And Shell Comb hurried past.
Hunting Hawk’s Great House nestled beneath the spreading branches of three mulberry trees: a sign of her status. The house had been constructed of two rows of black locust interspersed with cut red cedar saplings, their butts set into the ground. The limber tops had been bent over and lashed together to create an inverted U. Cross braces of red maple gave the framework strength, bound together with pliable yellow pine roots, and the whole house had been covered with sheets of bark. The interior was six paces wide and nearly forty in length. Woven matting divided the Great House into three separate rooms.