“Right now?” he demanded, rising painfully from his pole bed. “I’m taking a nap!”
“I’ll tell her you are indisposed, Sky Flier.”
“You’ll tell her no such thing,” he said with a sigh. “She’s Morning Star House, boy. Young, yes, but steeped in Power and authority.”
In their younger days, she—and her wild siblings—had been no end of trouble for Sky Flier. That Night Shadow Star came to him? And after rumors of her soul-flying in the Underworlds?
That had portents even the stars would have trembled to contemplate.
He struggled to his feet, reaching out with a thin arm to brace himself on the bed as he tottered for balance. From a storage box, he retrieved his simple black tunic with its dots of stars portrayed by shell beads; they’d been sewn onto the fabric in the pattern of constellations.
To the initiate, he said, “Find the venerable Day Keeper. Have him pull down the Morning Star House box from the temple shelf where it rests. Tell him I need the record string for Night Shadow Star’s birth.”
“Yes, Sky Flier. Do you need your litter?”
“No. I’ll walk.” He belted his tunic about the waist, irritated by his forever-full bladder. He dared to take enough time to relieve a bit of the pressure.
Two young men of the Day Society, finely dressed in their capes and feathers, waited to take his arms and assist him as he toddled around the mound to find Night Shadow Star. She waited, tall and stately in a brilliant blue skirt, a raven-feather cloak about her shoulders.
Even through his blurry vision, she looked magnificent.
“Greetings, Lady.”
“Greetings, Sky Flier.”
She offered something to one of the Day Priests who waited on one side. The man bowed and touched his forehead, indicating that whatever Trade it had been, it would be more than satisfactory compensation for whatever Night Shadow Star wanted.
“And what can I do for you?” Sky Flier fought to control his balance.
She stepped close. “I would speak to you in confidence.”
“Ah, that, then.”
“You already know?”
He indicated the great circle of the observatory, its forty-eight finely carved posts rising to create a ring; the midday shadow’s shortening length marked the progression of spring. “Through the observatory, I learn many things.” He gave her a wide, toothless grin. “But everything else I learn through listening, thinking, and drawing simple conclusions.”
The Day Keeper exited the temple, descended the short stairs, and bowed as he handed a beaded record string to Sky Flier.
“All of you, leave us, please.”
Touching their foreheads, the others departed.
Sky Flier glanced at Night Shadow Star. “Could we sit on the step? These old bones, not to mention the rest of me, could collapse at any moment.”
She took his arm, steadying him as he sat, then lowered herself beside him. “I shouldn’t have bothered you.”
He bent his rickety neck as he fingered the patterns in the beads, refreshing his memory. “Perhaps you should have indeed. I can hear the worry in your voice, feel it tensing your body.” He snorted. “Odd, isn’t it, that in all of Cahokia, you can only come to me?”
She stared at the ring of tall, carved, effigy posts that made up the observatory. Elbows between her knees she rubbed her hands together in nervous agitation. “We caused you a lot of trouble. I’m sorry for that.”
“Your brothers may have been more at fault than you.” He raised a finger. “Though you joined in with wild abandon. Took us nearly a quarter moon to reconstruct the measuring cords, get the knots right.” He shook his head. “That Chunkey Boy, he was a bad one. So many of the things he and his brother got away with were nothing less than evil. And what he did to that poor Fish Clan girl and her family…?”
Night Shadow Star exhaled through her nostrils, head dropping. “They’ve had their comeuppance: one consumed by Morning Star, the other dead somewhere in the south. That leaves me. Power has seen fit to exact pain for pain.”
His fingers traced out the patterns in the beads again. “Word travels that you have become intimate with Piasa and the Powers of the Underworld.”
“Word is correct.” She chuckled. “Reconciliation of opposites, Sky Flier? My clan is aligned with the Powers of the Sky World. But my dream soul has been devoured by Piasa, one of the Underworld’s greatest Spirits. Now he whispers to me at odd hours of the day. I catch glimpses of him in the corner of my eye.” She gestured toward the record strings with their patterns of beads. “Was that foretold at my birth?”