People of the Owl(3)

“Because these seeds are twice as big as ours.”

“If they’ll even grow here.” Yellow Spider smashed a mosquito that managed to penetrate the grease he’d smeared on his skin. “The dirt’s different.”

“Dirt’s dirt.”

“Shows what you know. And the seasons are different. It doesn’t get as cold here. Maybe those seeds are just like ours and … and it’s the cold that makes them get that big?”

“Trust me.”

Yellow Spider nodded in the shadowy half-light that penetrated the canopy of trees and filtered through the hanging moss and vines. “To be sure, Cousin. I’ve trusted you this far, and look where it has gotten me. I am coming home with the most successful Trading venture ever. Not just a canoeful of goods, but four! We own the world, Cousin!”

White Bird smiled into the increasing darkness. They did indeed own the world. No matter that the Wolf Traders considered half of their canoes’ contents to be theirs, the fact was, it would all end up being spread among the clans. The credit would be his. People would listen to him. His influence would maintain his clan’s position, and if anything, add to Owl Clan’s prestige. The seeds at his feet were the next step in changing the people, making them greater than they had ever been.

Suffused with the glow of success, he barely heard the whisper of wings in the darkness as an owl circled above, charting their progress.





Two

Jaguar Hide had come to his name from the spotted yellow hide he continually wore. He had been but a spare youth, running for his life, when he’d fled to the south. In a leaky canoe he had traveled along the coast, avoiding the grease-smeared tribesmen who lurked in the salt marshes. After being plagued by mosquitoes and saltcracked skin for several moons he had found safety in the tropical forests. There, attached to a small band of tribesmen—refugees like himself—he had lived for four long turning of seasons, learning their various languages and living hand to mouth.

The day he had tracked the great spotted cat had changed his Power, changed his life. That morning he’d followed the cat’s tracks, seeing where the pugs pressed so delicately into the mud. The forest had swallowed him as though to digest him in a universe of green. Water had dripped from the palmetto and mahogany.

He and the jaguar had seen each other at the same moment. In that instant of locked eyes, he had seen his death—and refused to meet it. As he extended his arm to cast, the jaguar leaped. The dart nocked in his atlatl might have been an extension of his Dream Soul so straight did it fly. He was still staring into those hard yellow eyes as the fletched dart drove half of its length into the great cat.

The animal’s flying impact sent him rolling across the forest litter, but the cat’s attention had centered on the stinging length of wood protruding from the base of its throat. The first swipe of its paws had snapped the shaft. Thereafter, the frantic clawing did nothing more than tear the splintered shaft sideways in the wound. Great gouts of blood pumped with each of the cat’s heartbeats.

When the jaguar finally flopped onto its side in the trail, their gazes remained joined. The cat’s strength drained with each bloody exhalation. To the end, the claws extended and retracted, as though in the cat’s brain, it was rending the man’s flesh. He watched the pupils enlarge as the cat’s raspy breathing slowed. He was still staring, partially panicked by fear, when the animal’s Dream Soul was exhaled through those blood-caked nostrils and, having nowhere else to go, entered his own body.

Later that night, in a rain-drenched camp, he had squatted under a palmetto lean-to and eaten the cat’s meat. He could remember the blue haze of rain-slashed smoke. He could still smell it, and taste the sweet meat in his mouth. Jaguar’s Power had penetrated his heart and wound its way around his souls.

The frightened youth he had been was eaten that night—consumed by the jaguar’s Power. The next morning he had stridden forth a different man, and begun the long journey north, alternately canoeing and portaging the sandbars that blocked the salt marshes. He had returned to his people, and with the Power of the jaguar in his blood, he had destroyed his old enemies, taken five wives, and closed his fingers around his people until they all fit within his callused grasp.

That had been tens of seasons ago. No longer young, he looked up at the soot-stained roof of the cramped house he now crouched in. Spiderwebs, like bits of moss, wavered in the heat waves rising from the low-banked fire. Before him on a cane mat lay his nephew, young Bowfin, wounded and dying as evil spirits ate his guts out. The boy’s sister, Anhinga, crouched beside him, and the mother, Jaguar Hide’s sister, Yellow Dye, balanced on her feet, her chin on her knees as she sobbed softy.