People of the Morning Star(161)

She saw one of the warriors offer him a long, chipped-stone blade. It’s glassy surface rippled in the firelight.

“Let me down!”

Sheer panic burned through her in waves.

Twisting her head, her eyes fixed on the blade as Walking Smoke bent down. Then she looked into his gleaming and excited eyes.

“Got to do this just right, Sister. The timing has to be perfect.”

She tried to jerk, to kick away. Her weak limbs hardly moving.

Hard hands grabbed her hair, yanked her head down and back. Someone was holding the corrugated pot so that she stared down into its dark depths.

From the corner of her eye, she saw Walking Smoke crouch, the song rising on his lips. Her heart was hammering, blood pulsing in her head. She felt the sharp blade as it was placed against her stretched throat.

He waited until she’d screamed her lungs empty.

The sting surprised her as it burned through her neck from front to back.

She had the momentary glimpse of her head being pulled back even farther, felt the rush of air into her lungs despite her closed mouth. Heard her blood as it splashed into the jar. She could see the man now who tugged on her hair.

The last horrifying sensation was of a stinging line of fire as her belly was sliced open from breast bone to pubis. But that, too, vanished in an encompassing darkness.…





Chrysalis

Pure blood, Powerful blood.

This is the blood of my family. The life force of the Four Winds Clan, taken in the most beautiful and pure way. I have drawn it from my sister, and even better, from the unborn son who would have one day become tonka’tzi. Or, should the Morning Star have worn out Chunkey Boy’s body, the son whose souls would have been sacrificed to resurrect the living god yet again.

Such is the Power and purity of the blood I have offered to the four corners of the Earth that I don’t need to break my concentration to look at the places where my Tula have torn the matting up and dug sacrificial pits into the mound top. I can still see the dark holes through the eye of my souls, see the blood I poured pooling in the bottoms. Like a well pot in the very soul of the earth, I looked down and saw my reflection in that still surface. The same image Old-Woman-Who-Never-Dies was seeing as she looked up from the other side: me, staring down into her world with reverence and respect. Meeting her, eye-to-eye, and assuring her that I, Walking Smoke, alone of all men was worthy of the great task that I am attempting.

The voices tell me that Old-Woman-Who-Never-Dies knows I have no choice, that when I call her servant forth, the Water Panther will have a worthy host for his dark and violent souls.

In return I have offered her the noblest blood in the world.

I open my eyes to a slit and glance sidelong at Sun Wing. She sits tied to a bench post in such a way as to restrict the circulation in her legs and arms. Her face is tear-streaked, eyes swollen and panicked. The gag in her mouth distorts her lips. She understands the incredible honor I’m bestowing on her. I realize that the immensity of it has momentarily overwhelmed her.

“Lace was but the first offering, First Woman. Just as you begin to revel in it, I will offer yet more. And when you think there can be no greater sacrifice, I shall double it!”

For the moment, I am but a caterpillar, tempting Old-Woman-Who-Never-Dies. Through Lace’s offering she knows my heart. Knows that I will offer her my entire family, the very might of Cahokia, in return for Piasa’s souls.

I am shaken and awed. Is there no end to my love?

The voices whisper no.

For what greater sacrifice can a man make in the name of love than to offer up his family in the attempt to change the world?

I cannot take too much time, or gloat. I must focus as I dismember Lace’s body. Each cut has to be made just so. Both with her and the infant. The Underworld is watching and judging the perfection of my performance.

Unlike my last fumbling attempt in the farmstead, I cannot make a mistake.

With a glorious sense of rapture flowing through me, I fill my lungs and begin to sing!

From a caterpillar, I shall now become a chrysalis.





Fifty-eight

Columella’s stomach churned, and she dared not close her eyes lest it all replay behind her eyelids. Instead, she hunched forward, arms clenched over her now empty and growling stomach.

“It’s a dream. A twisted fantasy. I’m going to wake up soon, and it will be morning. None of this will have actually happened.” If she repeated it over and over, insisted with enough passion, believed hard enough …

She needed only to cast her gaze to the right where Lace’s corpse lay to disabuse herself of any such fantasy.

My children…?

Just down the bench from her, the heirs of Evening Star House—product of her own womb—huddled against the wall, feet up, curled against one another for reassurance. She could hear their weeping, feel their terror. Her heart ran cold. This day’s terror would scar them.