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People of the Owl(37)

By:W. Michael Gear


“Nice work, Mist Finger.” Right Talon couldn’t keep the gloating out of his voice. “That’s one person less the rest of us have to worry about.”

The canoe rocked as someone in the darkness ahead of her slapped a paddle on the water, spraying the front of the boat where Mist Finger sat. Laughter followed.

“Stop that!” Anhinga ordered. “You want to know who I’ll marry? Very well, I’ll marry the man who kills the most Sun People.” There, that ought to set them straight.

“Is that a promise?” Slit Nose asked.

“It is. My uncle might be willing to remain at the Panther’s Bones and talk about revenge,” she told him. “I intend on doing something about it. If I do nothing else in my life, I will see to it that the Sun People finally pay for the wrongs they have committed against us. On that, I give my promise. By the life of my souls, and before Panther Above, I swear I will harm them as they have never been harmed before.”

“No matter what?” Right Talon asked.

“No matter what,” she insisted hotly. “So there. If you’ve come to impress me, do it by killing Sun People.”

Out in the blackness of the swamp, the hollow hoot of the great horned owl sent a shiver down her soul. It was as if the death bird heard, and had taken her vow.





Nine

Lightning flashed in the night. The wind continued to gust up from the south. Atop the Bird’s Head, Mud Puppy pulled his ragged shawl about his shoulders and huddled in the wind-whipped darkness. He had removed the little red chert flake from his belt pouch and clutched it tightly in his right fist while he rubbed his temples with nervous fingers.

Sick. I feel sick. His stomach had knotted around the bits of mushroom that he had swallowed. Now it cramped and squirmed, while the tickle at the back of his throat tightened and saliva seeped loosely around his tongue.

Please, I don’t want to … The urge barely gave him warning as his stomach pumped. Time after time, Mud Puppy’s body bucked as he heaved up his meager supper; and then came slime until finally a bitter and painful rasping was all his wracked body could produce.

Coughing, he gasped for breath. When had he fallen onto his side? Cool dirt pressed against his fevered cheek. Hawking, he tried to spit the burning bile from his windpipe. Vomit ate painfully into the back of his nose. Tears dripped in liquid misery from his eyes, coursing across the bridge of his nose and slipping insolently down the side of his face.

Had he ever felt this miserable? When he blinked his eyes, odd streaks of color—smeared yellow, sparkling purple, smudges of blue and green—belied the blackness of the night. His body seemed to pulse, his flesh curiously distant from his stumbling thoughts. Waves, timed to the beat of his heart, rocked him. Yes, floating, as if on undulating darkness. He had felt this way in water. Water. The notion possessed him, and for a moment he forgot where he lay, so high on the Bird’s Head.

“Hold on to your souls,” he reminded himself, and when he swallowed, his body turned itself inside out.

What is happening to me? The words scampered around his tortured brain, echoing with an odd hollowness.

“Are you afraid?” The voice startled him.

“Who spoke?”

“I did.”

“Where are you?”

“In your hand.”

Mud Puppy tried to swallow the bitterness in his throat again and felt his flesh rippling like saturated mud. Raising his hand, he opened it, staring at his palm, nothing more than a smear in the darkness. The flake! That tiny little bit of stone that had winked at him in the sunlight.

“You can talk?”

“Only to those who dare listen.”

Mud Puppy blinked his eyes, his body seeming to swell and float. Bits of colored light, like streamers, continued to flicker across his vision. “Do you see them?”

“See what?” the flake asked.

“The lights.” Mud Puppy told him in amazement. “Colors, like bits of rainbow broken loose and wavering.”

“You’re seeing through the mushroom’s eyes,” the flake said.

“How?”

“The world is a magical place. An old place, one in which so many things have become hidden. The simple has become ever more complex. Creatures come and go along with the land, growing and shrinking, mountains rising and being worn away. Shapes shift. Forms flow.”

“How do you know these things?”

“I am old, boy. So old you cannot imagine. Carried across this world from my familiar soil, I am left here, separated from the rest of myself.”

“Do you grieve?”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

“Then I do, too.”

“I don’t understand.”