People of the Morning Star(110)
He laughed at that. “Very good, Grandmother. Yes, I’m hunting him. And I’d really like to find him before he kills someone else.”
“Beware, hunter.” She tugged impulsively at one of the remaining locks of brittle white hair. “I knew Badgertail, Tharon, and the great Nightshade. Powerful and dangerous people, they were. But this one? Hunting for him will be like reaching your hand into dark places in search of a scorpion. You will not like it when you finally find him.”
As if to finish, she pointed. “He went right between those two corn granaries and turned east, mingling with the traffic on the road.”
Like a scorpion in the dark. The phrase stayed with Seven Skull Shield as he touched his chin respectfully, and walked out to the Avenue of the Sun.
The scorpion had turned east? Obviously to watch the results of his handiwork from the crowd, to assess his success, and monitor Blue Heron’s response. He could have gone anywhere after that. Seven Skull Shield turned his feet toward River Mounds, thinking, It’s just a hunch. That tingle at the base of the spine, but I’ve got that feeling …
The Falcon
The lesson surprised me. I’d been in a clearing in the deep forest, the old growth. There the black oaks, the various hickory trees, maple, sycamores, and chestnuts grow to giant heights. Towering beech and mighty sweet gum fill the low spots. Walking through deep forest is a journey down from the shadows with only an occasional shaft of sunlight filtering through the green heaven high above. The leaf mat beneath one’s feet is a soft and spongy layer of hollows transected by circuitous patterns of giant roots. Vines of all sizes, the largest as thick as a man’s thigh suspend themselves like ropes from the branches above.
Instead of what should be haunting silence, the noise almost hurts the ears as the endless chirring of insects, the musical songs of birds, and the chatter of squirrels create a cacophony.
That day I’d been occupying myself by stalking a huge flock of passenger pigeons where they fluttered and chuckled through the high canopy. As they plucked apart seeds, bits of detritus rained down like a perverted snow. I clutched my long cane blowgun with its slender dart, and stared up at the heights in despair.
The chances that any of the birds would drop down to my distant earthly level were slight.
And then I broke out into the clearing. Here a tornado had blasted a narrow path through the forest giants, snapping branches, toppling trees this way and that, splintering the mighty trunks and littering the landscape with broken forest.
I stopped short after I climbed onto a broken arch of branch and squinted in the bright sunlight. Awed by the devastation, my attention was nonetheless drawn to the thousands of passenger pigeons as they swarmed out of the surrounding trees to hunt the recently made clearing.
Still half blinded by the dazzling sunlight, I fumbled in my pack for more darts, and tried to pick a target from the fluttering columns of descending birds. I’d no more than target one, than two or five or twenty would fly between me and my prey. I stood paralyzed, the blowgun to my lips, lungs filled with the breath that would propel my dart, and I could do nothing.
The surprise was complete. I’d just come to the conclusion that I needed to wait, to shoot one on the ground, when the streak flashed down from the sky.
The pigeon never knew what hit it. One moment the bird was following its fellows, intent only on the feast below. The next it had been smacked senseless from above and behind, feathers trailing in its wake.
I stared in stunned amazement as the falcon’s wings rasped in the air, braking its descent. Feathers still trailed from the hammered pigeon where it dangled from the falcon’s taloned feet.
Time seemed to stop for an instant. A heartbeat later, the vast flock of passenger pigeons exploded in a roar of fluttering wings. In mad confusion thousands of birds thundered into the safety of the forest, some fouling others in the process.
My own response was to duck, tossing away my blowgun to wrap my vulnerable head in my arms.
As quick as a snap of a twig, it was over. I peered through my fingers to see the clearing empty but for a sprinkling of falling feathers.
And high in the sky, the falcon was climbing, the dangling body of his pigeon firmly clasped in his talons.
And what might the lesson be? It was that the most dangerous of predators strike from nowhere, when least expected.
Today, I am the falcon. My sky is the crowd of vendors carrying packs of dried corn, ceramic bowls, skeins of cord, and other necessities. On my back is a large bundle of firewood.
I have taken a station at Lady Lace’s palace, for I know that soon someone will step out and come down the stairway.
As I wait, I glance off to the west. If I am going to succeed I can take nothing for granted. I’ve had too many setbacks as it is. They are my fault. I was overconfident, arrogant. I underestimated the talents and Power of the opposition.