People of the Owl(139)

Green Crane, however, wished to start a life of his own, one in which she figured not only as his lover, but as his wife. Among his Wash’ta people, a woman came to a man’s clan with a dowry. Spring Cypress had arrived with nothing but a fabric bag slung over her back and her incredible beauty. Before his clan would allow him to marry, a payment had to be made. Her subsequent status within both clan and village would be dictated by the value of that payment.

The hide-covered load behind him consisted of an entire turning of the seasons’ worth of Trading, dickering, hunting, and collecting. The bulk of the goods were from buffalo: finely tanned winter hides, smoked and dried meat, carved and polished horn implements. In addition, they carried lumps of silvery galena for ornamentation, different mineral pigments, raw hematite, and large quartz crystals, all of which brought a premium at Sun Town.

“I shall ensure that you come to me as no woman has come to this clan in living memory,” he had promised.

In that brief moment, her eyes had shone and she had thrown her arms around his neck, hugging her slim body to his. “I cannot go with you, Green Crane. I cannot step into that place again. Not as I am now, a failure and a fugitive. My clan could reclaim me, hold me. I will not be their prisoner again.”

So he had come here, paddling down the White Mud River from his Wash’ta Mountain homelands. But somehow, along the way, he had become lost in the winding channels that led into narrow distributaries, dead ends, and ever-circling swamps of cypress and tupleo.

“How do people live in this mess?” Always Fat wondered.

“They must know the ways like we do the valleys of our home. I’ve heard of flatlanders getting lost, not being able to tell one valley from another.”

“Mountains make sense,” Always Fat reminded. “They have ups and downs. This place just has around and around.”

Green Crane shook his head. He pointed a finger at the tiny patch of open sky over their heads. “Up!” He turned his finger toward the calm water. “Down!”

Always Fat pointed a finger over his shoulder. “Back.”

They turned the canoe around and began paddling the way they had come.

After a hand of time they had retraced their way to the branch they had last taken. There, the canoe bobbing, Green Crane bent over, his hand cupping water as he slaked his thirst. “Tastes like tree roots and mud,” he muttered.

“It could be worse.” Always Fat pointed at the yellow lotus flowers in the shallows. “At least there’s always something to eat here. Out in the western plains you can die of thirst and starve to death.”

Green Crane glanced up at the sky, seeing the angle of the sun. By the Striking Eagle, had another day gone? “Well, from the sun, that way is west.” He pointed.

“Hooraw! Saved.” Always Fat lifted a mocking eyebrow. “Which way is Sun Town? For that matter, which way is anything?”

Green Crane considered the webwork of waterways around him. The hanging moss draping the low branches reminded him of green buffalo beards. Gaudy birds chattered and sang as they flew past. Two anhingas perched on a protruding log, unconcerned by a human presence as they sunned their wet wings in the afternoon.

“I don’t think we could retrace our path even if we tried.” Always Fat tapped his fingertips on his paddle. “So, we take the little channel, there.”

“Why would that little channel take us through when the wide one we just tried wouldn’t?”

“Because it’s a way we haven’t tried yet,” Always Fat reminded. “If it turns bad, we’ll come back and try something else.”

Green Crane smiled as he shrugged, lifted his paddle, and drove them into the narrow channel. Many of his friends didn’t appreciate Always Fat. But in the turnings of the seasons that they had passed together, Green Crane had come to value his companion’s ever-present good humor. What a gift the gods had given him. No matter what the trial, Always Fat could only see the bright side.

The trees closed in, arching over their heads as they guided their slim canoe between the narrowing banks. Light dimmed; the canopy overhead turned opaque. Green Crane ducked vines, batting away spiderwebs. “Are you sure about this?”

“No. But our canoe isn’t stuck in the mud yet.”

Tufts of leaves began brushing his elbows as he used the point of his paddle to push them along. The forest sounds tightened, bearing down on him. Gods, this was getting narrower.

He ducked a low branch, its bark scaly with moss and algae. What he thought was a vine turned out to be a green snake that slithered away within inches of his eyes. He caught his breath, placing a hand to his heart.