Eyes, a thousand of them! She glanced around, looking up in the branches where brown-tinted hanging moss drooped wearily. Her quickened imagination saw faces leering out from the patterns of dry vegetation.
Swallowing, she picked up the paddle and drove her canoe forward. Hurry! Just leave this place behind. If he is after you, outrun him. Paddle like you have never paddled before. The canoe flew ahead.
He could be just behind her, and knowing these passages, he could beach his canoe, cut across a narrow neck of land, and ambush her from any patch of tangled brush.
Flee, you have no other choice. She couldn’t go back, not and take the chance of running headlong into him.
She tightened her hands on the paddle handle. You’re being silly, Anhinga. You have no proof that he’s behind you. No proof that he’s after you at all.
She was just jittery. Her imagination was teasing her. The strain had begun to make itself felt in her shoulders and arms.
I would be out hunting, if I were he.
She couldn’t help but remember that she herself, smarting from injustice, had brought a war party north to avenge Bowfin’s death. Perhaps Saw Back wasn’t as impetuous as she, but could she take the chance? How many eyes had been watching that morning as Salamander saw her off from the landing?
Paddle! A new surge of fear drove her onward. They would know she would have taken this channel south. It was the most direct way through the bottomlands paralleling Sun Town’s high silt bluff. If she made it to the rendezvous alive, she could always take another route home. It might be longer, out of the way, but a hunter wouldn’t know when or where to expect her.
If I go home. That thought caught her by surprise. She didn’t have to go back. Not after the affair with Saw Back. Uncle wouldn’t expect her to and neither would Striped Dart. They would rather have her safe, especially carrying her clan’s child.
She shot a quick look over her shoulder again. Nothing. Her wake was undisturbed by so much as a fish jumping.
Salamander would approve of her caution. In the gray dawn of the canoe landing she had seen the worry in her husband’s eyes.
“I have to go,” she had told him simply. “They will be waiting for me. If I don’t show up, they will worry. It might lead them to foolishness. We both know how dangerous it would be if they came here looking for me. Only Owl Clan is bound by your word of peace.”
He had nodded, a terrible reluctance reflected in the set of his mouth. “I need you to come back to me.”
Impulsively she had reached out and drawn him to her in a desperate hug. She had held his thin body against hers, her swollen belly pressing the hollow of his. Then she had turned, grateful for his help as she awkwardly pushed the canoe into the cold water and climbed in.
I hugged him. Panther’s blood, why? It isn’t as if I really care for him. He’s the enemy. No matter that he severed my bonds one night.
Was it her imagination, or had something about Salamander changed over the moons? Men, she had heard, acted differently after they planted a child and could see it growing in their wives. Or was it that she had fought for him, for his honor, that day when she surprised Saw Back and Night Rain?
You didn’t mean to, she argued with herself. It was expedient to shame Night Rain that way. If you’d killed them both, you would have been finished in Sun Town.
She no longer went out alone to gather firewood, or collect nuts, or check the snares. Somehow, Pine Drop, Salamander, or Water Petal always seemed to be ready to accompany her.
Night Rain had surprised them all, demurely taking her place like a proper wife. Anhinga suspected that she buried herself in household activities to avoid facing people. Laughter still broke out at the sight of her, and occasional calls followed her around Sun Town, asking if she needed to borrow any clothing. The teasing would eventually die off like fall grass; Night Rain need only wait it out.
He is a better man than I would be in his place, she concluded. Indeed, she’d have thrown the little witch out. Salamander, however, had acted as if nothing had happened, welcoming Night Rain into his house and his bed with great dignity.
How many nights had Anhinga lain in her bed, hearing their whispered conversation? Something was being forged between them, although Night Rain still shot her looks that bordered on the murderous.
At the end of the next strait, Anhinga glanced back, barely catching movement behind a distant cypress knee. She blinked hard to clear her eyes and stared. What was that dark blot behind the old roots? A man, or a shadow? Her canoe almost drifted into the bank before she straightened it.
Imagination, or trick of the light? She dared not take the chance, and drove her paddle into the water with renewed fury.