She began to hum louder. He could see the thin muscles in her neck and imagine the brittle bones under that sagging skin.
“Another fragment of the vision showed me Sun Town, tens of tens of tens of years from now. All that was left was unbroken forest. The People were scattered, living in little villages among the trees. We no longer built our giant earthworks, no longer built monuments to the Creator and the Sky Beings. The Trade was dead. Each tiny band feared its neighbors. They lived in isolation.” He shook his head. “They had lost their souls, Mother. Had lost that inner strength that told them who they were. I felt such emptiness.”
He watched Mother’s long fingers. Never had anyone seen such fabrics as those that came off of Wing Heart’s loom after she lost her souls. The weave, so tightly packed, could hold water. The intricate designs she wove into the warp and weft were magical. The creatures she created looked real. Even the texture of feathers could be seen in the pattern of threads she used to make her birds. Veins filled the leaves and flowers. With a fingertip, one could trace the texture of bark on the stems she wove.
“I caught another flash of the future. Of all the bits and pieces of visions, this is in many ways the hardest to explain. The people were so different. They lived for one ruler, crushing all others under their feet for his glory. Imagine what the clans would be like if instead of obligation, they used force to achieve their ends. What makes that future enticing is the size of the cities, the splendor of the high mounds and great buildings. I see canoes so huge they carry tens of tens, and cross the oceans to the ends of the world. We could be so great.” He shook his head. “Imagine your great-grandchildren raising mounds in the distant lands. Imagine them speaking your name in barbarian languages.”
Wing Heart smiled despite her empty eyes. Her lips must have felt something the rest of her body did not.
“I don’t understand how the visions are linked together yet. The choices I make will influence those futures. To make one come true, I must give up something else. I just don’t know how it all fits together.” He leaned his head back, an emptiness in his breast. “I can see the coming trial. I know what they have in store for me. I have seen it, Mother. When I flew with Masked Owl, I caught glimpses, but only those that Masked Owl wanted me to see. When Heron and I Danced with brother mushroom, I saw the whole future unfolding like a magnolia flower in the morning.”
She chuckled under her breath, hearing something in her imagination. The twitching of her lips slowed, humor in her eyes before it faded to blankness.
“I understand why you made the choice you did. I wish I could choose the past, too. It would be so easy.” Salamander frowned down at his hands. “I could tell Heron that I wanted to Dance the One. She could take me away from all of this. How does a lone man make that decision? How can Power expect me to choose misery over paradise?”
Wing Heart gave him no answer.
“Oh, Mother, how I envy you.”
Mud Stalker lay with his back pressed into the rounded stern of the canoe and peered out through the screen of cane and grass that had been tied around their craft. He fingered the hard knot of his bola with his good left hand. The weapon lay on his flat stomach. The bola was a series of three leather thongs the length of a man’s arm, each tied with a round stone at the end. When thrown, it rotated through the air like a three-legged spider to ensnare whatever it encountered.
In the bow, Clay Fat lay with his bulk wedged between the gunwales. The Rattlesnake Clan Speaker made the bow float considerably lower in the muddy shallows than Mud Stalker’s stern.
On the strengthening southern winds, the migratory fowl were riding their way northward toward spring. Sun Town lay at the southern end of the great flyway. This was just the beginning of the great migration. For days the flocks would blacken the sky, Vs of birds winging northward. From it the people harvested any number of ducks, geese, coots, cormorants, herons, and other species.
Mud Stalker’s clan had used this old choked channel for many turnings of the seasons. Last night he and his kin had strung nets along three sides of the narrow cove. The netting was stretched from tree to tree, and propped on posts to overhang the brackish water.
The open end that emptied onto a sluggish channel had two screened blinds at the entrance: One that he and Clay Fat rested behind, and the other, opposite them, where Red Finger and Thumper waited, their canoe obscured with a similar willow, grass, and cane blind.
In the middle of the trap, duck decoys made of feathers, wood, and bundled reeds floated in a fair imitation of a flock.
Mud Stalker’s party had been here, waiting for more than a hand of time. Two flocks had gone winging past, neither falling for the bait.