People of the Owl(41)

“Oh?” White Bird asked, wondering what his mother’s old friend was hiding behind his bluff and glowing expression.

Clay Fat lowered his voice. “Well, perhaps we could have done so several moons ago, but we were waiting for a special event.” A pause. “Have a word with your mother, young man. I can’t think of a better match than the two of you.”

So, Mother is against a match with Spring Cypress? Why? What has happened since I have been gone? “I will speak to her as soon as I can.” He cast his eyes up the slope of the canoe landing, searching for some sign of the Owl Clan Elder.

“I think she’s detained. About your uncle, my deepest sympathies, White Bird. He was a great man.” Water ran from Clay Fat’s bark hat. It sat crooked on his ball-shaped head so that the runoff trickled onto the curve of his greased shoulder. The drips beaded and slid down his brown skin in silver trails.

“As are you, Speaker. You filled my thoughts the entire time I was upriver.”

“Better that you had spent your thoughts on Spring Cypress than me. That would have been a great deal more productive—not to mention more pleasant, eh?”

“We will talk more later, Speaker.” White Bird clapped him on the back, passing to face Thunder Tail and Stone Talon from the Eagle Clan as they took their place next in line.

“Greetings, young White Bird.” Aged Stone Talon offered her hand, birdlike under thin skin. As she balanced on rattly crutches, the top of her head barely reached the middle of his chest; the old woman seemed to have aged ten tens of turnings of seasons since he had seen her last. Her flesh reminded him of turkey wattle, loose and hanging from her bones. Hair that had been black a summer ago had gone as white as the northern snows. Her back had hunched and curled like a crawfish’s tail. But she looked up at him with the same predatory eyes that a robin used when it considered plucking an unlucky worm from the ground. “So, the barbarians and the monsters of the North didn’t get you?”

“No, Elder, they did not.” Instinct told him that no matter how her body had failed, her wits seemed as sharp as a banded-chert blade. The question was, which way would she cut? And which clan would drip blood when she was finished?

Her son, Thunder Tail, the Eagle Clan Speaker, cleared his throat. He wore a necklace made of split bear mandibles that hung like a breastplate. His weathered face reminded White Bird of a rosehip that had been kept in a pot for too many winters. His tattoos had faded through the turning of seasons, darkening and blurring until, like the patterns in his soul, they were hard to decipher. “Are we to call you Speaker, now?”

“Respectfully, I have no idea. I have just arrived.”

“Difficult, isn’t it?” Stone Talon gave him a toothless smile that rearranged her shriveled face. The thoughts behind her eyes, however, were anything but pleasant. “Having to face all of this when your souls are freshly plunged into grief.” She gestured toward the crowd that still awaited him. “Your uncle was a strong leader. Where will you find his like?”

“There is no one like him,” White Bird agreed easily. “My clan’s loss is indeed grievous, but it wounds us all. My uncle served all the people. Fortunately, Elder, I have four canoes to help lighten the People’s sadness. I have set aside some special presents for the two of you. As soon as I find a moment, be sure that I shall bring them to you personally.”

“Clever boy, that one,” he heard Stone Talon say as they passed on.

“At last!” Three Moss cried from where she waited impatiently. “Come, Mother. Let us greet White Bird.” Three Moss led Elder Cane Frog into White Bird’s presence. Her hand rested on her mother’s bare shoulder.

He reached out, taking the blind Elder’s frail hand and clasping it respectfully. “My souls are pleased to see you, Elder. I’m sure your daughter has told you about the Trade we have returned with.”

“She has.” Cane Frog smacked her lips, as if something distasteful clung to her pink gums. Her sightless right white eye wiggled and quivered, while dirt encrusted the empty orbit of her missing left. “She also told me you brought barbarians with you?”

“I did, Elder.” He laughed lightly. “There was no other way to carry so much Trade. It was that, or sink the canoe.”

“Never that,” Cane Frog agreed. “You know, I lost my oldest brother that way. Tragic. Such a Speaker he would have been for the clan. Best to be safe out on the water. Yes, always safe.”

“I agree, Elder.”

“Our hearts are wounded by the news of your uncle.” Three Moss was looking at him speculatively. Life had been unfair to her. Plain, thickset, and bland of feature, she didn’t have that spark of animation in her flat brown eyes. “We are, however, joyous at your safe return. So many had declared you dead. Most had lost hope.”