People of the Owl(203)

The crow had landed on a low-hanging branch. It stared at him with a curious brown eye, opened its mouth, and flicked a sharptipped tongue at him.

“Insolent bird.” Red Finger carefully braced himself; easing his atlatl back as he fitted another dart into the nock. In a sinuous movement his arm went back. The cast was liquid, fast, and accurate.

To his amazement, the crow bobbed down, flattening itself on the branch as the dart hissed within a feather’s breadth of its shining back.

C a a a a w w w w w! The sound echoed through the swamp as the crow mocked him and bounced to yet another branch. There, it flapped its wings, teasing him.

Red Finger muttered under his breath and picked up his paddle. The cursed bird had to have been someone’s pet. A fledgling stolen from the nest, raised and trained by some swamp hunter.

As he closed, the bird flipped off the branch and sailed farther into the swamp. Red Finger paddled after it, stopping on occasion to reach up and finger the raw place on his scalp.

For a hand of time he followed the pesky bird. Each time his interest waned, the crow dived at him, snatching at his hair, raising his ire to the boiling point again.

Thus it was that by the middle of the day, he found himself deep within Swamp Panther territory.

The crow circled him, fluttering just out of reach. Red Finger used his atlatl to flail at it, hoping to smack the miserable pest from the sky. It avoided his wild blows with uncanny ease.

“What do you want of me?” he declared, half in anger, half in wary suspicion. Snakes! This wasn’t a spirit bird, was it? Or, blood and pus, worse, it wasn’t some creature trained by the Swamp Panthers to lure unwitting hunters into their territory where they could be ambushed and killed?

With that thought, he lifted his paddle, prepared to leave the accursed bird to its own devices, when he saw it wing to a cypress knee. Sunlight shone on its sleek black feathers. It studied him with an intelligent brown eye.

The crow bobbed its head, pointing its beak toward the brackish water.

“What do you want of me?” Red Finger glanced around, wary of a Swamp Panther ambush. Every direction he looked, he could only see the swamp, the surface of the water marred here and there by the normal rings left by water bugs, fish, and bubbles. Insects fluttered around him, songbirds filled the spring-flush leaves with song.

Red Finger cocked his head as the crow plucked a white stone from the top of the cypress knee and dropped it into the water with a plop.

A stone? Out here? Atop a cypress knee?

He paddled forward, an eerie fear climbing his spine. No, this was no trained pet, but something else. He wasn’t a man used to Power, but he could feel it swelling around him.

As the bow of his canoe slipped past the knee, the crow gave him a loud squawk, leaped into the air, and flapped through a ragged hole in the canopy above. Rays of vibrant color, reds, blues, and greens flashed off its wings.

Red Finger scratched his cheek in confusion. Then, bending over the side of his canoe, he looked down into the water. There, several hands below the surface, he could see a small round white stone. It was resting in what looked like a sunken canoe.





Fifty-four

Salamander trotted down from the Bird’s Head after his sunrise devotions. He felt a lingering sense of foreboding, partly from his disturbing Dreams the night before, partly from Night Rain’s violent bout of morning sickness. Whereas neither Pine Drop nor Anhinga had been bothered much, Night Rain’s first experience of pregnancy was proving to be downright miserable.

“Must be a boy,” Pine Drop said as she cuddled her suckling daughter to her breast.

“That or a monster,” Night Rain had insisted as she wiped her mouth and cast suspicious eyes on Salamander.

He had raised his hands in defense, and said, “I would have asked Power for another daughter. I’m in deep enough trouble with your uncle as it is. Knowing that I had produced another heir for his lineage might make him smile a bit more kindly when I’m around.”

The round red-yellow sun seemed to drift off the horizon and higher into the morning sky. The light made Salamander squint as he rounded the first ridge, where Cane Frog’s house stood. The old Clan Elder hadn’t emerged yet to greet the morning with her sightless eyes. Nor had Three Moss come to check on her mother and see to her needs.

He cast a cautious glance at the round Council House as he passed, knowing that soon, no doubt just before the solstice celebration, he was going to face expulsion. The topic of his witchcraft was now on every lip, some people even speaking openly of it.

How does a person prove he is not a witch?

How could he blame them? Last spring he had been considered an odd boy, even despised by his mother. Within a turning of the seasons his popular brother was dead, Salamander was Clan Speaker, with three wives, two houses, and an unheard of alliance with the Swamp Panthers. People knew that he was tied up in the ways of Power, that he spent a great deal of time with the Serpent. He had helped prepare the bodies of the dead. Each morning found him alone at the top of the Bird’s Head when normal young men were waking up in their wives’ arms. If witchcraft didn’t explain that, what did?