People of the Owl(131)

“What?”

Pine Drop might have been stone. “I am the first wife, Sister. When it comes to this marriage, I have the right to expect obedience from you—something I have been lax in. You do not have to like Salamander, but you will treat him with respect. It is the way of our ancestors. You don’t have to like it, you must only obey. If you have a problem with this, we will go out behind the house and settle it once and for all. Do you understand?”

Night Rain nodded in a daze.

“There, good. Let us start fresh, then.” Pine Drop smiled when she looked back at Salamander. He had managed to keep his jaw from falling.

“Now,” she began brightly, “what are your plans for tonight? Can you spend it with us, or must you go back to Anhinga?”

He tried to bring his racing thoughts together. “I told her I might not be back until morning.”

“Good.” Her eyes reflected concern when she said, “I want you to know, I have never seen the courage that I saw today when you voted with the Council on Moccasin Leaf’s motion.”

His voice turned hoarse. “Afterward I heard people whispering that I had shown disrespect for Mother.”

“Did you?” Pine Drop asked.

“No. She cannot lead. She is ill. I, alone, am responsible for my clan. As much as I hated to do it, it was the right thing,” he said woodenly, the wound in his souls opening.

She reached over and placed her hand on his. “Sometimes the right thing is hard to do, isn’t it?”

He nodded, jarred by the sincerity he saw in her eyes. Snakes! Who was this new Pine Drop?

“I have to get air,” Night Rain said, bursting for the door.

“Give her time,” Pine Drop told him as he watched his young wife flee. “She still has a lot to learn.”

“We all do,” he murmured warily.





Anhinga watched the evening fall. The shadows cast by the rows of houses lengthened, the dome of the sky deepening in color. A trio of buzzards circled in a high spiral overhead, mocked by a single surly crow who dived and harassed them. Children’s voices rose and fell as they engaged in a stickball game on the grassy Northern Moiety flat just across the borrow pit. Even the smoke from the evening fires seemed lazy as it rose into the quiet air.

Anhinga rubbed her arms, smearing the grease that kept mosquitoes from her skin. Casting an uneasy glance down the row of houses, she could see Water Petal’s and sense the worry there. The little baby’s fever had burned hotter, cooking life out of that thin and fragile flesh. She had seen it among her own people. It would be soon now.

Here I am. Alone in the camp of the enemy. She made a face and walked from her house, past the pestle and mortar, to the ramada where Wing Heart sat at her loom.

Anhinga cocked her head, watching the old woman’s nimble fingers as they slipped thread back and forth through the warp.

“Hello, Elder,” Anhinga called.

Wing Heart seemed oblivious.

Anhinga stepped over and seated herself on the cane matting. She snugged her knees inside her arms and studied the old woman’s visage. Fleeting expressions seemed to shift like leaf shadows in a breeze. They rippled across the texture of the old woman’s face, slipping among the wrinkles and hiding at the corners of her mouth. Her dark eyes, like midnight droplets, sparkled and danced, animated by some clinging remnant of her souls.

“My uncle always feared you,” Anhinga ventured. “Do you remember him? Jaguar Hide? Does that name conjure any spark in your memory, old woman?”

The bony brown fingers never skipped, the vacant eyes never flickered.

Anhinga frowned and reached down. Salamander’s adze lay forgotten on the cane matting. Anhinga picked it up, staring thoughtfully at the tool. The handle was the length of her forearm, and had been crafted out of the Y of a branch. The angle of the Y held a thin slate celt that had been set into the wood and bound by wraps of what looked like deer sinew. She tested the edge with her fingertip. Recently sharpened.

“Does it worry you to be here alone with me?” She studied Wing Heart from the corner of her eye.

Nothing.

“Your people killed my brother.”

Wing Heart’s eyes remained focused on a far horizon.

“Your son killed the man I would have married.”

Wing Heart’s lips twitched, and unexpectedly she said, “No, Cloud Heron. I don’t think you should marry Back Scratch.” Her head dipped, as if hearing a reply. “Surely not.”

Anhinga glanced around, seeing no one the old woman could be talking to. “What happened to you?”

“Thumper’s a good man. Hard to believe he’s kin to young Mud Stalker.”