The kick caught her by surprise. His foot slammed into her ribs, rolling her. She yelped at the pain, frightened by the hollow thump.
“You’re stupid, Night Rain! No one cares for a woman like you.” Mud Stalker turned his head and spat. “Least of all your skinny, witless husband.” A pause. “No, this is something else. Some plotting he must be doing at the behest of that Panther witch who wraps him around her bony fingers.”
“Uncle, I—”
“Shut up! I’m thinking, trying to understand.”
“Please, Uncle, I didn’t do anything!”
“You betrayed me. You and Pine Drop. But don’t think I haven’t learned, Niece. Indeed, I have learned a great deal about you—and your husband. I’ve underestimated him. I won’t do that again.”
She could feel his gaze as he studied her. She wanted to shrink, to shrivel up and burrow into the waste-tainted mud.
“In the future when I come to you, you will tell me the truth, Night Rain. And someday, to make up for this humiliation to Snapping Turtle Clan, to your lineage, and me, I am going to ask you for something. When I do, you are going to do as I say, or I am going to break your head with a stone-headed hammer. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Uncle.” Her voice came as a hoarse whisper.
“In the meantime, stay out of my sight.”
He turned, walking wearily away—head down, shoulders bowed. He plodded up past her house and headed east on the ridge.
She closed her eyes and sagged into the stinking mud.
Branches, like gray fuzz, softened the distant border between the forest and sky as if one faded into the other. The morning was cold, silent but for the calls of the winter birds. Not even the ducks stirred when Anhinga’s canoe slipped silently down the channel.
Her breath puffed whitely. Despite the cold she paddled with her cloak thrown back over her shoulders; her muscles provided enough warmth. On the still water the cold seemed thicker, sticky, ready to sap a body’s heat. She glanced at the canebrakes, tawny and gray. The banks were brown, the trees black, their fringe of branches lonely and longing for spring.
“You shouldn’t be taking this trip,” Pine Drop had warned the night before.
As if I need advice from her! Anhinga made a face, feeling the cold in her cheeks. The bulge of her belly made sitting in the canoe awkward, but she needed time away. Besides which, her brother, Striped Dart, would be coming to meet her this time. Half a cycle had passed since she had seen him last. He would be bursting with news about people at the Panther’s Bones. She, in turn, had so much to tell him about the Sun People, and Night Rain, about smacking Saw Back, and the ruckus she had stirred in the Council as a result.
Thinking about Saw Back brought a shudder to her. The side of his face looked horrible. In the weeks since the incident, he had healed, but her ax had peeled a long scar that ran from beside his navel to just under his left nipple. The thin arch of bone ahead of his ear had been crushed. Had she not turned the ax at the last moment the blow would surely have penetrated his skull.
When he, or any of his clan, looked at her now, it was with a simmering hatred.
He attacked me. That memory clung to her like summer cobwebs. The incident filled her thoughts, recurring in her Dreams.
By the Panther’s bones, that had been a close one. But for her quick wits, it could have turned out worse than it had. Oddly, she rather enjoyed having put Night Rain in her place. Over the long term, however, she had a hunch that her actions that morning would come to haunt her.
Overhead a V of geese crossed above the web of branches. The swish of their wings and the lonely honking were the only sounds outside of the water gurgling around her paddle.
She glanced up at the banks—just enough higher that each tangle of dormant honeysuckle or nightshade could conceal a crouching warrior. She could imagine Saw Back’s smile of anticipation as her slim canoe coasted within range. He would feel the joy of revenge in his breast as he rose, sighted, and drove a dart through her body.
He will kill my baby. Her mouth went dry. Panther! Why hadn’t that thought occurred to her? It wasn’t just her anymore. If anything, the baby was even more of a temptation to Saw Back. He could kill her and Salamander’s child in one stroke. He could wreak his retribution on her while repaying Salamander for his trickery in allowing Jaguar Hide to escape: two for one.
A stick cracked in the forest. A squirrel dropping a nut? Or the weighty step of a man’s foot?
The silence pressed down upon her. As the canoe coasted she pulled her atlatl and darts closer to hand. Next she slipped her ax through the belt of her kirtle.
Ghostly fingers of breeze stirred the quiet air. She whirled, rocking the canoe. The channel behind her lay empty, her wake spreading toward the banks. In the cold winter sun the water had a silver sheen. She couldn’t see far, the channel twisted and looped, choked with cypress, tupelo, and water oak. The trees watched her, silent, as if their ancient souls were waiting.