Snakes! This was Elder Wing Heart? By the evil mist, how could she have come to this?
“It’s all right,” Anhinga said softly. “There will be times in the future when her souls are closer.” She smiled at him, allaying his discomfort and reaching out to take his hand. “Our life together is just beginning. I am sure there are tens of tens of things to do.” She glanced cautiously at the old man. What did he suspect? “We have a house to build, and it must be a grand one, worthy of a Clan Speaker. Let us start there.” She led the way back past the pestle and mortar and surveyed the charred circle. “This must be cleared.”
Patience. Her uncle was right. The Serpent kept watching her as though she were a copperhead loose in a children’s play area.
She ignored the old man and his seeing souls. Her first concern was to lull Salamander. She smiled at him, taking his hand in hers. “We shall build a grand house here, and when it is finished, we shall make a great feast for just the two of us. When we are full, we will lie on a thick buffalo blanket and you shall fill me in the light of a happy fire.”
He smiled at that, as if seeing a fantasy in his souls. “I would like that.”
A memory flashed … a human liver, rising high into that wideopen sky above Sun Town. It flipped and jiggled as it rose, sunlight flashing on the wet, gleaming surface. For a brief instant it stopped, hanging magically before beginning its rush to the Earth. She remembered the sound so clearly: a hard splat! In a crystal image she saw the tongues, pink and fast between white teeth as the camp dogs licked up the pieces.
Thirty-one
A large turtle, a slider, lay on its back in the center of the coals. Its head and legs had been lashed tightly with green vines so they didn’t protrude and burn. The flesh steamed, hissing and sending aroma around the activity area between the houses. Salamander’s nostrils kept catching hints of it on the wind. He glanced back from his precarious position atop the thatching of his new roof. The house they had built on the location of his old one was almost completed.
Elder Wing Heart sat under the ramada, preoccupied with her incessant weaving. Her nimble fingers plucked at the warp and weft stretched between the peeled poles. This fabric, nearly complete, was a series of white birds on a brown background. One of the most beautiful pieces Salamander had ever seen. Even Anhinga had stopped short, gasping at its beauty.
The sky was overcast, gray with a thick bank of clouds that threatened even more rain. It cut the muggy heat that made a man’s bones want to wilt. The teasing wind, rising and falling, carried the warm moist scent of the forest, grass, and trees while it promised moisture.
Salamander had never built a house before, and but for Water Petal’s advice and guidance, he’d have made a bad affair of it. Together, the three of them—he, Anhinga, and Water Petal—had excavated the foundation holes, planted the uprights, woven the lattice, and plastered the walls.
They had retrieved longer poles and wrist-thick lengths of cane from the floodplain forest, their quest taking them a day’s paddle down the winding channels while they searched for just the right sizes of bald cypress. Power laced the wood, making it more resistant to rot than other kinds. Sweating under the sun, they had stepped the largest of them for roof supports. The rest they muscled up, setting them on the wall and interior supports as rafters. Slim cane stringers had been laid crosswise and tied in place with peels of freshly stripped bark. Vines had been interwoven to form a lattice both to support the thatch and to allow it to be fastened tightly.
Thatch, as Salamander found out, wasn’t as easy as it seemed. After the backbreaking labor of cutting the grass and bundling it, care had to be taken to pack the sheaves and tie them. Placing the bundles was as much art as it was hard labor.
Salamander used a length of cord—material provided by Water Petal’s husband, Darter—to pull the last bundle tight. “Watch your hand. Here it comes,” he called as he slipped the bone needle through the thatch.
“Got it,” Water Petal called as she grabbed the needle tip inside and pulled it through.
Salamander watched the cord pull tight, compressing the sheaf, and could imagine her knotting it and cutting it with a stone flake. He turned, perched like a big bird at the peak of the roof. “How does it look?”
Anhinga had her hands placed on her hips, her head cocked as she studied the final product. “It is a house, husband. At last, it is a house.”
He grinned, enjoying the harsh accent that came with her speech. Their languages were mutually intelligible, most of the words the same, but sometimes the usage led to incomprehension, and sometimes mirth. He’d been shocked when she referred to his penis as “your slug.” She had been stopped short in confusion when she found out his people called a vulva “a canoe.”