After several heartbeats, she said, “Just because we are married doesn’t mean that we can’t be friends.”
“That wasn’t the impression I had when I first moved into your house.”
“I’m sorry.”
Ask her if she is just friends with Three Stomachs. He resisted the impulse, thinking instead of how Salamander was when raccoon was sniffing around his log.
“Sacred Snakes,” she whispered, and he looked up. A band of red had burned across the far northeastern horizon. Before them, Sun Town was wreathed in silvered mist, only the black tips of the rooftops protruding in curving rings.
“It’s beautiful,” she continued. “I had no idea.”
“That’s why I come here. For this one moment of the day, everything in the world is at peace, locked in beauty. In this instant, my souls Dance in joy and breathe the miracle of life.”
The distant fire of morning had illuminated her eyes with an unearthly shine and cast her smooth face in orange. Her lips were parted, and she moved her hands from her belly to the spot between her breasts, as if to feel the beating of her heart.
“ … My souls can Dance in joy,” she murmured absently, “ … breathe the miracle of life.”
“Watch this.” He raised a hand, anticipating the moment as the sun cracked the horizon and shot a seething sea of red across the mist. It rolled toward them, flicking color from the fingers of mist that deepened as the filaments of dawn threaded in to illuminate Sun Town itself in a warm orange glow.
“Beautiful,” she whispered, her face alight with joy.
Her expression stopped him. He had never seen her look this way. Monsters of the deep, she hadn’t actually allowed the morning beauty to touch her souls, had she?
“On clear mornings”—he watched the glowing world of color—“you can watch the sun as it moves through the Sky. The turning of seasons is marked as Mother Sun makes her way north and then back south. If you pay close attention, you can see her pass each of the ridges.”
“This is a thing the Serpent taught you?”
“Among others.”
“And there is Power in this?”
“There is Power in many things. Humans just don’t always understand them. Most of the time we refuse to hear the voices the world uses to speak to us. Listening for them isn’t something that comes naturally to people.”
She studied him, her face profiled in the red light. He had the sudden urge to reach up and trace the line of her forehead and straight nose. To follow the hollow onto her full lips and around her chin.
“Do you really hear those voices?” she asked in an oddly shy voice.
“Some of them.” With reluctance, he had to remind himself that this was the same woman who had been in Three Stomach’s arms yesterday. That, coupled with her sudden interest in sharing his day, brought wary reality back to roost between his souls.
“Well, come,” he said, carefully replacing his owl in its hole and covering it up. “We ought to get on with our hunting. I was thinking of taking a canoe and loading it with fish traps. The water level has dropped enough that the channels are forming.”
She looked uncharacteristically sad as she sighed and stood up. “Yes, I suppose so.”
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we really could live like this, share not only moments of beauty but the heart, too? A bitter laugh formed in the back of his throat. Such things were not meant for him. He might as well consider walking across the surface of the water.
Twenty-five
Who is this man? Pine Drop turned her head, cheek resting on the flattened wood of the canoe bow. From that angle she could surreptitiously watch Salamander’s face while at the same time keeping the blue heron in her sight.
A midday sun beat down, the air muggy and filled with insects who rose, fell, and circled on gleaming wings. Birdsong filled the backswamp forest, and the rich odor of wet earth, water, and plant life penetrated her nostrils.
Their canoe rested in a marshy shallow, partially lodged in a stand of swamp grass that obscured their outline. Herons were keen-eyed birds, among the most difficult to sneak up on. Nevertheless, by patience and stealth, Salamander had eased their canoe within a stone’s easy pitch of the tall bird. Through the stems she could see it as it hunted the lily pad-filled shallows. The graceful heron took one sure step, then, several heartbeats later, another. Between each step, the heron stopped, serene, its head slightly cocked, an alert eye on the dark water.
“He is so precise,” Salamander whispered. “No movement wasted.”
This is a day of revelations. She considered both the heron and her husband anew. She had known herons ever since she was a child. Her people hunted them: their meat was prized; the bones were used for awls and flutes; and the feathers served as personal adornment at ceremonials and special occasions. Through all those years, she had never observed a living bird up close—let alone for any length of time. She had never peeked into another creature’s life, never even considered that it might have a personality and unique characteristics.