People of the Owl(23)

I will do something about this. This time, I will find a way to pay them back.

He knotted his souls around the problem as he continued to paddle through the muggy swamp. At their approach a turtle flipped off a cypress knee, a line of bubbles marking its descent into the murky depths.

Anhinga sniffed hard and straightened. “On my brother’s soul,” she whispered fiercely, “I will do whatever it takes to make them pay.”

“Anything?” he asked casually.

“Anything,” she insisted doggedly, picking up her paddle and driving it into the brown swamp water.

An idea was forming in his mind. Something that he hadn’t tried. It would take more thought once he had returned home to the Panther’s Bones.





The watering of his mouth came as White Bird’s brief warning before he bent double and threw up the bitter-tasting brew. Again and again his stomach pumped, heaving violently as it emptied itself of what remained of a boiled fish breakfast.

The sun burned down on his bare back, its heat adding to the sweat that beaded his flesh. It wasn’t enough that he and his companions had spent the night alternately sweating in the small domed lodge and bathing in the brackish waters of the lake, but the Serpent had showed up several hours before dawn and begun brewing his concoctions.

The Serpent had begun by Singing, painting his face, and shaking a gourd rattle as he circled the area. With great care he laid a fire of red cedar. Then he placed tinder in the center and used twigs to place a hot coal atop it. Bending low, puffing his cheeks and blowing, he coaxed the fire to life.

On this he placed a soapstone bowl propped with clay balls so the fire could lap around the stone vessel’s sides. From his belt pouch he extracted yaupon leaves and dropped them into the heating bowl. As he did, he called to the four directions: to the east, the south, the west, and north. With a round stone he crushed the leaves, bruising them to release their color. Using a hickory stick painted crimson, he stirred the leaves as they slowly reddened and curled. When appropriately roasted, he employed a bison-horn dipper to carry water from the lake and one after another filled the pot until a yellow froth formed on the boiling liquid. The Serpent stirred it with his red stick, satisfied to see that the roiling liquid had blackened beneath the foam. Reaching into his pouch again, he extracted a section of snakemaster root and, with a white chert knife, shaved slices into the brew. Then as the steam rose, he began to dance his way around them, thrusting the rattle this way and that.

“Why is he doing that?” Gray Fox asked nervously.

“To announce to any evils that he is coming to drive them off,” White Bird had explained. “It is hoped that by so stating, the harmful spirits and malicious ghosts will simply leave, making his work easier. This way he can turn all of his attention to the few stubborn and recalcitrant spirits who remain. It gives him a chance to identify the ones that wish to challenge his Power as a spirit warrior.”

“I wouldn’t challenge him … alive or dead,” Jackdaw muttered in his own language. “Isn’t he just the ugliest old man you’ve ever seen?”

Hazel Fire and the others had laughed at that, and White Bird couldn’t find it in himself to disagree. The Serpent had passed more than five tens of winters. His hair had gone white and thin. Now it waved about his head like a wreath of water grass in a changing current. The old man’s face might have been trod upon, so flat was it. The nose looked as if it had been mashed into his features, the sharp brown eyes staring out of thick folds of flesh. Skin hung like dead bark from the Serpent’s frame, and through the wrinkles one could see patterns of snake tattoos that had faded into blue-black smears. He looked more like a walking skeleton, his ribs sticking out, the knobby joints of his knees thicker than his thin thighs.

Not even a finger of time had passed from the moment they had drunk the Serpent’s concoction before the first of them had bent double and thrown up.

White Bird’s stomach wrenched again. He cramped with the dry heaves.

“We’re poisoned!” Hazel Fire cried between gasps. The Wolf Traders were clustered around, some on hands and knees as they wretched and groaned.

“No!” White Bird made a face at the vile taste in his mouth. “Trust me. This is good for us. It’s driving any illness or sorcery out of our bodies. I swear, you’re not poisoned. It’s just …” His stomach knotted, and he doubled up again as his gut tried to turn him inside out.

When the spell passed, he rolled over to seat himself on the damp soil. A shadow blocked the sun as the Serpent bent, mumbling to himself as he inspected the goo White Bird had deposited on the ground. The old man used a blue-painted stick to prod the watery mess.