Pine Drop’s heart ached at the expression on her husband’s face. How did he deal with the terrible load that Power had placed upon his shoulders? She had come, hearing that Salamander and Bobcat had finished with the ceremonial preparation of the dead Serpent’s corpse. When she had walked up to Salamander, she might have discovered another person inhabiting her husband’s body.
Pine Drop shivered and reached out to take Salamander’s hand. What was wrong with him? She had never seen him look so odd. He seemed hardly to be aware of the weather, of her, or the people around him. He was wet and clammy, his fabric cloak soaked. Rain dripped from the back of his square bark hat. He looked slack, unresponsive. Unshed tears pooled within his souls. When his eyes met hers, they had a liquid quality that unnerved her.
“Go free, Serpent!” Bobcat called as he ended the Song. Then he ducked into the doorway.
Because of Salamander’s prestige as Speaker, he and Pine Drop stood in the front of the crowd and could see inside the low doorway. Bobcat lit a pine-tar torch from the central fire. In the flickering light, the Serpent’s carefully stripped bones gleamed where they rested on a wooden rick inside.
Bobcat raised the torch, holding it high so that it ignited the soot-stained interior thatch. For long moments, nothing seemed to happen, then blue smoke began welling out of the gaps between the roof and walls.
Bobcat ducked out, coughing, as thick smoke bellowed from the doorway behind him. He gasped mouthfuls of the cold clear air and sniffed before turning back to watch.
The fuel load overcame the saturated thatch, and a spear of yellow fire leaped up from the dark roof to challenge the sky. Steam hissed and popped. A huge plume rose as a low roar built, and sparks gyrated upward in the white-gray column.
“Good-bye to you, too, old friend.” Salamander might have been answering an unheard speaker. He leaned his head back and let the rain pelt his face. “Yes, I hear you just fine. Your words are clear, Serpent. Look at you flying! Take him, Masked Owl. Bless his souls and fly with him to the One.”
She glanced around uneasily and squeezed Salamander’s hand. “Shhh! People are listening.” Snakes! What is he hearing? Pine Drop considered the words, wondering what the One was. Then her husband shivered, and she could see pimpled flesh on his thin arms. The welling heat from the burning structure barely seemed to dent the cold.
Clay Fat stood just to their right, his round stomach dwarfing her pregnant belly. He was watching Salamander, puzzlement on his face.
“We’ll miss him,” Pine Drop said, trying to act as if nothing had happened.
“There won’t be another like him anytime soon,” Clay Fat replied, then looked up at the spiraling white plume that carried the Serpent’s souls to freedom.
“A Serpent is a Serpent,” Cane Frog muttered, her unseeing white eye blinking as she reached a hand out to feel the heat.
“Mother!” Three Moss hissed. “Keep your voice down!”
Pine Drop arched a slim eyebrow. And they think Salamander is an idiot?
“They think many things, Wife. It is a clutter. Hear them? Like a thousand birds.” Salamander turned those eerie wounded eyes on hers.
Surely her thoughts hadn’t sent that painful sliver into his souls?
Salamander tilted his head back to stare into the leaden sky. He didn’t seem to mind the rain pattering on his open eyes. “One man’s idiocy is another’s Dream.” A pause. “They have never seen the world from above.”
Was anyone else hearing this? She looked past Salamander to where Mud Stalker stood with his mangled arm wrapped in warm fox hide. Uncle wore a conical hat that shed rain in all directions. His prune-sour expression reflected distaste at the event, the weather, and life in general. Everyone’s spirits were down, as waterlogged as everything else in their world during the endless winter rain.
Deep Hunter and Thunder Tail stood next in line. It seemed like everywhere Thunder Tail went, Deep Hunter showed up.
He is being wooed. That knowledge sobered her. Too many things were changing. Even Mud Stalker and Deep Hunter—who had been lifelong rivals, barely sharing a civil word—stood together like brothers.
“They are hardly brothers, Wife,” Salamander said absently, his dreamy eyes on the rising smoke and steam.
Snakes! I never spoke!
Salamander’s tongue stumbled over the words. “You Dreamed it.”
A sudden fear tightened around her souls as her eyes darted warily around. Her heart began to race, a fear, colder than the rain, tickling her skin.
Forty-five
With a whoosh, one-half of the Serpent’s roof let go. People stepped back as sparks and bits of burning thatch began sprinkling down from the sky.