I remind myself that purity is of the highest essence, and sigh as I begin washing her healthy brown body. This is sacred work and I try to ignore the tingling in my loins as I sponge the length of her slim legs and feel tense muscles slide beneath that so-smooth skin. I re-wet my cloth and move to her neck, then follow the contours of her shoulders. The way her arms are bound behind her makes washing them difficult. I start on her chest, and perhaps linger too long on her breasts as I roll them under the cloth. When I am done her dark nipples have hardened, and so have I.
I need to finish, to battle both my impure thoughts and my traitorous genitals. Both she and I will have to be absolutely cleansed for this to work. Nevertheless, my heart begins to pound as I carefully smooth my damp cloth over the slight swell of her abdomen and allow my finger to dip into her navel. She is shivering and crying against the gag in her mouth as I wind the cloth back and forth to the dark-matted prominence of her pubis. Somewhere between my souls, I am saddened that such a marvelous pelvis will never cradle new life within its warm, liquid depths.
“Discipline!” I whisper harshly. After all, if I am successful, and Bobcat’s soul is actually called back, he’s going to be angry enough awakening in a female body, let alone one I’ve just ejaculated into.
I set the cloth aside and begin the ritual of painting her for the ceremony. Oddly I do not find this nearly as stimulating to my male nature, and thankfully, my body begins to relax. I am unsure of which colors go where on her. But the colors are right: red for life and blood, yellow for renewal and first dawn, blue for the sky, and black for night, death, and the Underworld.
Finally I am done. I throw more wood on the fire and stand above it, letting the heat and smoke carry the last of my carnal thoughts to the high smoke hole and out into the night. I sing softly as smoke bathes my body, and I inhale the acrid scent, letting it burn through my nose and throat.
From where I left it beside the door, I retrieve the beautiful brown-chert knife with its razor-sharp curved blade. I am sorry for the terror dancing brightly behind the girl’s eyes. The farmer, his wife, and children are screaming into the gags, twisting against the binding ropes. The little boy has wet himself, and tears are streaking down the little girls’ faces.
In that moment I realize I, too, am terrified of what I am about to attempt.
Then, purifying the thin stone blade in smoke, I turn to begin the ritual.…
Twenty-two
Passing himself off as a Hawk Clan man was as easy as painting his face brown to cover his Four Winds Clan tattoos, and repainting the Hawk Clan designs on his cheeks. But High Dance’s stomach had tied itself into a worry-tight knot. The few Hawk Clan people he’d passed had just nodded and smiled. What unnerved High Dance was the chance that he might have to stop and talk to one, at which time his sham would be instantly discovered.
And what would they do? Shout, “He’s an imposter!”
What then? Just run? And what if the Hawk Clansman pursued? Kept shouting and pointing?
High Dance’s stomach pulled its uncomfortable knot tighter as he hurried across the clay-packed causeway. On either side lay boggy marsh. The rains had left standing water in the low spots and turned the rich black mud to goo beneath the new green shoots of swamp grass.
High Dance nodded at a stone Trader and stepped as far to the side as the arched surface of the causeway would allow. The man was older, perhaps in his mid-thirties, short, with a knob of nose, deeply lined face, and stringy black hair. The heavy leather sack over his shoulder bulged with flat slabs of sandstone quarried from the distant bluffs.
“Quite a load,” High Dance said as the man plodded past, his muscular calves knotting like gnarled pine roots with each step.
“Yes, yes. Good stone. Make Trade, yes?” the man panted, voice accented, then added something else in one of the immigrant languages.
After he passed, High Dance stepped back on the trail and continued on his way. Most of Cahokia had been built on silt-laden floodplain. Sandstone, limestone, and cherts were locally available in the distant bluffs and uplands, but every bit of stone used for tool making, abrading, sculpting, ballast, cooking fires, axes, adzes, hammers, hoes, woodwork, net sinkers, burnishing pottery, bolas … you name it, had to be imported.
He immediately had to give way again as a woman came plodding down the causeway, back bent under sheaves of bound grass for roof thatching. High Dance made a face as he tried to step aside, his right foot sliding down into the black muck beside the causeway’s sloping side. The woman muttered, “Pardon, pardon,” as she passed with her load, head down, her voice strained.