Jaguar Hide cocked his head, asking, “Yes? A feeling? Of what?”
“Of something changing.”
He watched the back of her head. She had been silent most of the day, moody since they had departed from the western uplands. Twice he had observed the shaking of her shoulders as sobs possessed her. The grief had been a palpable thing, like a swarm of mosquitoes that shimmered around her.
“Things change, girl. That is the way of the world.” He lowered his voice. “But I can see that this is something more. Tell me.”
He watched the slight lowering of her head. Dappled sunlight sent shafts of yellow through the green leaves above to speckle her gleaming black hair. “Bowfin’s Dream Soul met mine the night he died. He was so anguished to be dead. It was so unfair. I am angry, Uncle. His death has changed my life. I have learned to hate.”
Jaguar Hide considered her, noting how her back arched. The set of her head. Gods, she looked just as his sister Yellow Dye had at her age. “Indeed?”
She remained silent, so he extended his paddle, sending the canoe forward as he guided it between the trees. Here and there they had to duck as low branches blocked the way.
“Whenever I close my eyes I see him lying there, sweat running off of his skin in rivers … his eyes glazed with fear and pain,” she whispered. “The smell haunts me, Uncle. It clings to my souls. I can imagine what he felt … how it was to have his guts eaten out like that. It must have burned, like a fire being pulled through his belly on a splintered pole.” She shook her head. “He could smell himself. Smell that awful stink coming out of his ripped guts. How did he stand it? Knowing it was his own?”
“Niece, you can stand many things when you have no other choice.” Jaguar Hide winced at the pain her voice. “It is how the Panther made the world. Look around you.” He gestured at the brown-water swamp they paddled through. “Everywhere you look, you will see life dancing with death. Does the alligator cast a single tear for the fawn he drags down to death? Does the egret weep for the minnow she spears out of the calm waters? Do you cry at the sight of fish gasping and flopping in the netting of a mud set when it is pulled aboard a canoe? Do these sweetgum trees mourn for the saplings they suffocate with their spreading branches? No, girl. When a hanging spider catches a beautiful butterfly in its web, it eats it with a smile. That is the lesson you should learn. Life is a desperate hunt. As you grin gleefully over your victim’s body, remember that tomorrow someone else will be grinning over yours.” He hesitated, letting that sink in, then asked: “Do you understand, Anhinga?”
She nodded.
Once again he waited, allowing her time. To his right, a line of yellow-dotted gourd floats indicated that Old Blue Hand had set a gill net.
“It just seems so unfair. This was Bowfin, my little brother. He was just a boy, Uncle. I took care of him. We played together, laughed and cried together. They murdered him.”
He paddled steadily as she broke down into tears. He had wondered how long it would take for the reality of her brother’s death to settle over her souls like a net. Sometimes the young didn’t understand, and Anhinga had been lucky, life had protected her for the most part. She had never suffered such a rapid and painful loss.
Their relations with the Sun People were always tenuous. Sometimes they traded, but with the most guarded of interactions. Fact was, Jaguar Hide’s Panther People had little need for anyone else. The Creator had given his chosen people the finest place in the world to live. Here, in spring, as the floods filled the great river to the east, the waters actually reversed, changed direction, flowing backward into the lakes and watercourses. In the rejuvenated waters fish thrived. The highlands in the western portion of their territory contained sands, gravels, and their fine panther sandstone: a white, coarse-grained slab that was perfect for smoothing wood and grinding stone. The Creator had made a perfect place for his people. Here they wanted for nothing.
Not at all like what he had done for the Sun People to the north. Perched on their silt ridge, they had no source of stone for cutting, no sandstone for grinding, no sand to temper their pottery. The only riches the Sun People had been given were fish and plants. So they came here when they needed sandstone, to Jaguar Hide’s land, and tried to trade, or more usually, to steal stone. It was when they were caught that young men like Bowfin paid the price.
His heart twisted at the pain and grief in Anhinga’s broken sobs. How many times in his life had he heard the wailing and sobbing of relatives grieving for a loved one? How many lives had been taken from them by a brutal stone-headed dart? If the Creator had meant for the Sun People to have sandstone, he would have given it to them.