People of the Owl(132)

The adze balanced well in Anhinga’s hand. She glanced around again, seeing that no one was close. In the shadows, it would be so easy. She could rise, drive the sharp stone head of the adze right through the Clan Elder’s head. The body wouldn’t be found until morning. She would be long gone, having struck the Sun People a terrible blow.

“I have hopes, Brother.” Wing Heart smiled at that, her face lighting with joy.

Uncle’s words came back. “Wing Heart? She is the greatest of them. She and Cloud Heron remade Sun Town. Oh, to be sure, they had started on the ridges and high mounds several lifetimes ago, but those two, they dominated the Council. What may have never been finished has been done in two tens of years under their leadership. Never forget: None is as crafty as Wing Heart.”

“You don’t look so crafty now,” Anhinga noted. Instinctively she reached out, brushing a mosquito from the old woman’s shoulder where Water Petal had missed greasing her. “Panther’s bones, you can’t even take care of yourself.”

The gray head bobbed in the twilight. “White Bird will return, Brother. I can feel it in my bones. With the spring. That’s when we’ll see him.” When she smiled, a thin drop of saliva tricked from the corner of her mouth.

“He’s dead, Elder.” She pointed at the spot across the borrow pit. “He died there, remember?”

Was that a reaction? The old woman’s smile dimmed; pain glistened in her eyes.

Anhinga lowered her gaze, a heaviness on her souls. The smooth handle of the adze had warmed in her hand. She absently rubbed her thumb along the grain, then laid it to one side. What honor came from tormenting the tormented?

“Elder, you are drooling,” she murmured as she reached for a bit of fabric and wiped at the corner of the old woman’s mouth. “There, that’s better.”

She rose, stepping over to where the grease pot sat. “If you will allow me, you need a bit more grease or the mosquitoes are going to eat you alive.”





“What is going on?” Mud Stalker demanded as he matched step with Pine Drop. She was carrying a grass-stem basket full of chinquapins. Midday sunlight peeked through low wads of clouds that scudded out of the southwest on a never-ceasing passage of the white-blue sky.

“Going on?” Her self-possessed look caught him off guard.

He tried to balance Night Rain’s hysterical ravings against this calm young woman. “Night Rain came to me. She’s upset. She says that you’ve either lost your souls like Wing Heart, or you’ve been witched. Which is it?”

“If it has anything to do with my souls, Uncle, it’s that I found them.” She gave him a smile too old for her age. She looked more mature than he remembered. The petty tightness at the corner of her mouth was gone. Her smooth brown cheeks seemed to have more color, and a serenity lay behind those dark brown eyes.

“I don’t suppose you’d like to elaborate on that?” He cradled his ruined arm, fingers stroking the scars.

“Uncle, let me ask you a question.”

“Go ahead.”

“Do you expect me to be ready to step in as Clan Elder someday?”

“It is the natural order of things. The Sky Beings willing, I’ll be long gone before your mother is, but yes, I fully expect our lineage to maintain its control. You are the logical one to follow your mother in the Council.”

“I thought you’d say that.”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous! You knew that full well. That’s why I devote so much time to you.” He realized he was scowling, too cagey a politician not to know that this was going somewhere he wasn’t going to like.

“I have to learn to be an Elder,” she told him. “I have to be worthy. To do that, I have to learn to think, to feel, and to lead. Do you agree?”

“Of course.” Had he just stepped full under the deadfall?

“I was hoping you thought that way, because I want you to know that I will do my best for the clan. I need your advice in all things, as I need Mother’s, but from here on, I am making my own decisions.”

“You’ve always made your own decisions.”

“No, Uncle. In the past I did as you said, as Elder Back Scratch said, and after her, as Mother said. But something has happened. I realized what I was becoming: Someone who only does the bidding of others, who can only follow orders, cannot give them.”

“So, what does this have to do with Night Rain and Salamander? We are almost at the point where we can rid you of him. Once we replace Wing Heart with Moccasin Leaf, it will be time to castrate the little tadpole. A statement of divorce will do that as effectively as—”