“Why did the Great Mystery rip the Sky away from the Earth?” the Serpent’s voice reminded.
Mud Puppy raised his head to stare at the glowing clouds, backlit by the dying sun as they scurried northward. Here, so high above the Earth, the southern wind tugged at him as it rushed up from the gulf, the smell of forest, swamp, damp earth, and spring flowers carried on its warm caress.
“Because the Great Mystery didn’t like it that way?” Mud Puppy guessed.
“And why would that be?” The Serpent bent down, his eyes prying away at Mud Puppy’s.
“Because a question is always hidden inside another question,” Mud Puppy whispered, and instantly winced, afraid that the Serpent would hiss and strike—lash his frightened souls right out of his terrified body.
Instead, the terrible black eyes softened. The old man nodded, which made the wattles on his neck shake. “You are smarter than your brother was when he was your age.” The Serpent arched a grizzled eyebrow. “Yes, there is always another question inside a question. But for the moment, I need an answer for this one. And, boy, I do not expect you to give me the answer right now. Indeed, I expect you to think about it, to study it. The answer isn’t what you would expect. Certainly not one to be given off the tip of your tongue like an insult or a compliment. Think, boy. Consider it long and hard.”
The old man abruptly turned, faced the east, and used one knobby hand to spin Mud Puppy around so that he looked out over Sun Town. The effect took his breath away. In the growing twilight the arcs of concentric ridges spread out to the left and right in a huge curve. Houses, like warts, might have been marching away along the length of the ridges. The immensity of it—coupled with the perfect symmetry of those nested curves sculpted so artistically onto the plain—left him awed.
As he looked down the long eastern slope the Bird’s Head fell away from his toes in a broad ramp that widened as it fanned out like the spread tail feathers of a great hawk. At the base of the tail the huge clan grounds created a gigantic half oval transected along its midline by the steep bluff running north-south above Morning Lake.
Two large poles, one for the Northern Moiety, one for the Southern Moiety, marked the geometric centers of the offset circles. The six rows of ridges were in turn interrupted by breaks that separated the clans. In the north, Mud Puppy’s Owl Clan occupied the easternmost ridges, Alligator Clan lay in the middle, and the Frog Clan’s ridges ran right to the base of the Bird’s Head on the west. A use-beaten avenue that ran due east-west through the town separated the moieties’ plazas north from south. The westernmost ridges on the south belonged to Rattlesnake Clan. Another gap on the southwest separated them from Eagle Clan.
Unique to Eagle Clan’s territory, a narrow earthen causeway led straight as a stretched cord for three dart casts beyond the city to the southwest. There the Dying Sun Mound rose above the plain in a flat-topped oval. Yet another gap separated the Eagle and Snapping Turtle Clans. The latter occupied the far southern course of the ridges.
Two small mounds lay within the plaza area. The Mother Mound was situated at the edge of the eastern drop-off. A two-tiered earthwork, its flattened southern side supported the Women’s House: the large menstrual lodge where women resided during their moontied cycles. The fact that a woman’s cycle was tied to the moon had provoked considerable speculation. The moon, after all, was a masculine being. But then, without male involvement, a woman was incapable of bearing children. In the end, the location of the Mother Mound had been chosen by sighting from the center of Sun Town to the northernmost point where the moon rose on the eastern horizon at the end of its eighteen-and-one-half-turning-of-seasons migration across the sky.
On the south lay the Father Mound, with its gaudily painted wooden-and-thatch Men’s House. The rites of war, of the hunt, and Trade were conducted there. Mud Puppy had never seen the inside of the Men’s House. Boys weren’t allowed. But someday, when he was admitted into manhood, he would. Terrifying stories circulated among boys of his age, tales of the curious ceremonies and bloody initiations that occurred behind those secretive walls. Similar to its maternal opposite to the north, Father Mound had an odd relationship to Mother Sun. When sighting southeast, the Father Mound was in line of sight of the point on the horizon where the sun rose on the shortest day of the turning of seasons—another oddity, but one that made sense when placed in context of the People’s struggle to achieve unity and harmony. Opposites crossed, brought into balance, that was the central spiritual force that bound the People together.