People of the Owl(198)
“Not this way, Speaker.”
“This is your last chance.”
“You railed when Night Rain acted in concert with Deep Hunter. Don’t you think it difficult to blame her when you would use me, meddle with my clan’s affairs?”
He didn’t answer that, only saying. “I must destroy you, then.”
“It is what you have wished from the beginning.”
Mud Stalker jerked a nod, his eyes on the ballplayers across the barrow pit. “They’re going to lose, you know. And so will you.”
Salamander said nothing as the Speaker stood, shot a piteous look at Wing Heart, and walked around the borrow pit before heading south to his clan grounds.
Fifty-one
Anhinga filled her lungs with the damp odor of the swamp. Her canoe drifted the final lengths to slide onto the muddy beach of the island. She could see the blue haze of smoke from the fire. The tall figure of Jaguar Hide reassured her. Her uncle stood with his hands on his hips, his gray hair spilling around his muscular shoulders. A keen wariness lay behind his eyes.
Lifting herself above the gunwales, Anhinga swung out of the canoe and pushed it up onto the bank. From within she lifted the cradleboard that held her sleeping daughter. The infant was wrapped against the mosquitoes and flies, her face greased, while beads of pinesap added further discouragement to the pests.
“Niece! Let me see my heir!” Jaguar Hide came striding down the slope, his arms out.
She charged up to him, a desperate sense of relief bursting her breast. Her daughter began to cry, jounced as she was by Anhinga’s run.
After a crushing hug, she handed the cradleboard over to Jaguar Hide. He inspected the little round face. The baby girl had her eyes closed, her mouth open as she squalled her displeasure to the world.
“Yes, that’s it, my little joy, you tell the world that you are here. Bellow your presence out like the thunder itself so all may know that Jaguar Hide’s lineage goes on.”
“She needs changing and feeding,” Anhinga said, unwilling to take her daughter back from the fawning Jaguar Hide.
“At this age, they usually do.” Jaguar Hide was smiling, wiggling his finger like a worm in front of a catfish. “Here, little one, open your eyes. Yes, that’s it. Let me look inside you. Are you there yet, my little niece? Have souls fastened themselves to your little body?”
“We don’t know yet,” Anhinga replied. “She is still so young. The Sun People don’t believe that the Dream Soul fastens itself to a body until a child speaks. They claim that is the first actual proof that a soul is there.”
“That’s silly drivel,” Jaguar Hide insisted as he played with the crying infant. “You’ve been among them too long. The Life Soul comes with the first breath. That’s when the infant sucks it in.” To the little girl, he asked, “How could you live otherwise?”
Anhinga reached out and half wrestled the cradleboard from her uncle. “I take it that we are safe?”
His smile faded, and he nodded. “I got your message. Warriors are out and about. There will be no surprises. What has happened? We haven’t talked for moons.”
“Striped Dart didn’t tell you?”
Jaguar Hide shook his head, frowning. “Tell me what?”
Anhinga walked up to the fire, glancing uneasily toward the place where Eats Wood had been killed. Was his ghost still lurking here, prowling among the patches of hanging moss?
“Salamander killed a man who followed me. We swore Striped Dart to secrecy. Apparently, Uncle, my brother has taken such responsibilities to his heart.”
“A man followed you? And Striped Dart didn’t tell me? I’ll pull his arms out of his sockets!”
“No, you will not. He gave Salamander and me his word.”
Jaguar Hide narrowed his eyes. “You had better start at the beginning.”
She related the story as she unwrapped the baby from the cradleboard and changed the fouled moss with fresh. Then she raised her daughter to her nipple. “But for Salamander’s timely arrival, I would have been dead and Striped Dart ambushed,” she finished.
Jaguar Hide frowned pensively at the fire. “I should have thought of guards in the beginning.”
“We were being clever, remember? The fewer the people who knew, the better?”
“And this time?” He shrugged. “How do we know that you will not be ambushed when you return?”
“Yellow Spider will meet me. He has gone for sandstone at the quarry.”
“I have been wondering about the fabrics that were left there. Striped Dart said little about them, only that he had bartered with the stone boat.”
“I am starting to think he will make a good leader, Uncle.”