She glanced over her shoulder at the old woman seated at her loom. From the first glow of dawn to sunset’s last light she sat there, humming, talking to the dead, and weaving the most beautiful fabrics Anhinga had ever seen.
She had approached Wing Heart several times since that first night, cautiously seating herself and remarking about the weather, the taste of the stew, or the beauty of her weavings. Each time she might have been a leaf blown in by the wind for all the notice the old woman gave her. Sometimes she wiped up drool. Since the death of Water Petal’s baby, Anhinga had found Wing Heart’s kirtle fouled. She couldn’t stand the thought of the soulless Elder squatting in her own waste. Irritated by her compassion, Anhinga had sponged the woman clean before walking down to wash the fabrics in the borrow pit.
I came here to kill her. Now I’m caring for her infirmities. Anhinga slammed the pestle into the mortar, flattening more of the ground nuts into paste. As she worked, images kept swimming out of her memory. If she closed her eyes she could smell the fires of home. That blue smoke hung low in the trees surrounding the Panther’s Bones. She could imagine the earthy scent of the swamp clinging in her nose with a blossom’s intensity.
She could see Striped Dart, seated before a fire, his legs akimbo. He had that preoccupied look on his face, his smooth black hair pulled back into a tight curl and pinned to the side of his head. In the fantasy, her brother looked up at her and smiled.
Panther’s blood! They’d had some times. She could see him again as he had been as a boy. How they’d played, she, Striped Dart, and Bowfin! Tag, hide-and-seek, ball games, and play war. She remembered splashing in the waters of Water Eagle Lake when they’d traveled east to the bluffs. The sun shone on their naked brown skin as they frolicked and dived in the murky depths.
Her mother’s and father’s faces formed as they had been then, young and in love, happy with their family. That had been so long ago, those golden summers, lost with the passage of time like water down the rivers of her homeland. Bowfin was dead. When she conjured her mother’s face it was to see the lines of grief as she wailed over Bowfin’s body.
Other memories rose to fill her. Firelight flickered as Mist Finger stood before her. She was on her stomach, propped on her elbows, her knees and toes digging into the soft black dirt. Her breasts had barely begun to bud, his shoulders only beginning to widen.
“I will be a great warrior!” he had said as he strutted back and forth before the fire, his walk an exaggerated mimicry of a great blue heron’s.
“You’ll be a lazy fisherman,” Cooter had replied where he lay on his side, the firelight flashing yellow on his belly. “Me, I’m just going to make canoes.”
“Canoes?” Anhinga had cried. “When you could be a great warrior and have pretty young maidens like me sing your praises?”
“I like making canoes,” he had said simply. “It’s an art to make a good one.”
“I’ll let the maidens sing my praises,” Mist Finger had declared. “But, just for you, old friend, I’ll use one of your canoes to carry them off into the swamp when I choose the right one.”
They had all laughed at that. Now, over so much time, it echoed hollowly in her ears.
I miss them. She bent down, setting the pestle aside, and scraped the paste from the mortar bottom, placing it in a ceramic bowl. She studied the vessel for a moment. One thing was sure, Sun Town potters made better bowls than her people did.
That led her to remember Webfinger, the young potter at the Panther’s Bones. She wasn’t a known beauty, her face round but pleasant. Anhinga had spent hours sitting at her feet, watching those quick fingers as they worked. Through her magic a lump of mud was turned into a thin-walled hollow by means of pinching, scraping, and pressing with her palms and the wooden anvil.
Home! What I’d give to be there now.
“Excuse me?” A female voice caught her by surprise. Anhinga straightened, picking paste from her fingers.
The woman was young, comely, her breasts still firm, the lines of her belly unspoiled by the growth of a child. She wore a tan-and-black kirtle tied with a married woman’s knot. Her gleaming black hair was tastefully parted down the middle and pinned on the sides of her head. A basket hung from the crook of her right arm. Her face caught Anhinga’s attention; it had a regal bearing. Something in those eyes made her alert. She didn’t need to see the strings of beads, the tufts of exotic northern furs woven into her hair to know that this was a woman used to authority.
“Yes?” Anhinga instinctively rested her hands on the pestle. The solace of the stout wood reassured her. Not all of Sun Town’s people could be counted on to be happy with her presence here.