Jaguar Hide ignored the stench. “He was just defending our territory. Remember that, girl. Remember what you see here.”
“Bowfin?” Anhinga cried as she turned away.
Jaguar Hide watched the girl’s muscles tense as she fought to control grief. She was twisting the knotted fringes of her short skirt, her beautiful face tortured.
He stood slowly, reached down, and pulled her to her feet. “We have tried to keep them away. It would seem as though their gods favor them, for they grow as numerous as the trees. Now they are building their huge earthworks, as if they are to become gods themselves.”
Through a grief-tightened throat, she choked out, “They are malignant spirits, Uncle. I would destroy them if I could.”
He studied her speculatively. The wound in her souls was raw and bleeding. Pain had mixed with anger, seething, burning, consuming. My, such passion for a woman just coming into her own.
“One day,” she continued, “I will become our leader, and when I do I will take war to the Sun People and destroy them.”
This brought a crooked smile to Jaguar’s old lips. “Do you think I didn’t try just that?”
“But this time—”
“You will be defeated, just as I was.”
“He was my brother.” She pointed at Bowfin’s corpse, ignoring the fact that his Dream Soul was still watching her from those wide, glassy eyes. “Uncle, we cannot allow this to happen. Not anymore. This is a disgrace! To Bowfin, to our clan, to you and me. All of us!”
“Yes. It is. But the Sun People cannot be defeated by war.”
“Then how?” she demanded. “You tell me, and by the Panther’s blood, I will destroy them!”
“Will you, girl?” The amused smile remained on his lips. He fought the urge to laugh aloud as she ducked under the low doorway and stomped off into the night.
Your mother is going to have her hands full controlling you. She was very different than her older brother, Striped Dart. She had never had the relationship with him that she’d had with the personable Bowfin. If any of Yellow Dye’s children had to die, too bad it couldn’t have been Striped Dart. When he heard about little Bowfin, he would posture, stomp, and curse, and do nothing. The fires of life hadn’t hardened him like it had others.
So, what are you going to do, old man? What will become of your people when you die and your nephew takes over?
In the darkness, he glimpsed the midnight-colored crow that circled on silent wings above him.
The clamor gave Mud Puppy his first hint that something was happening. He lay quietly on the cane mat, a small ceramic jar cupped upside down in his hand. The glow from the central hearth illuminated the inside of his house with a reddish hue, the light so dim that the cricket’s natural wariness should be lulled. The beast had been chirping under the split-cane floor matting. Rather than tear it up, it was much better to let the fire die down and coax the cricket into stepping out. Then he’d catch it.
Mud Puppy turned his head, listening to the calls on the still night. Excited, yes; panicked, no. Therefore, whatever it was, he would eventually hear about it. Everything came with time.
That attitude drove his mother to distraction. She was Wing Heart, the Clan Elder, or leader—the most important woman in the world. It wasn’t that he wanted to disappoint her, he just didn’t act the way she wanted him to. He couldn’t. That simple reality made her half-frantic with frustration. He suspected that she loved him in spite of the way he was.
“Just once can’t you be like your brother? White Bird is the kind of man our clan needs! And you, boy, what will you be? Just a thorn in his side? He is going to be a great leader, the best our clan has ever had, and you, you will be like a net sinker tied around his throat. Forever dragging him down.”
He wouldn’t be, of course. White Bird had his way, that was all. And yes, if he returned alive from the journey upriver, he would be a great man, a born leader for their clan. Owl knew, Uncle Cloud Heron was just hanging to life, the pain in his bones debilitating no matter how many times he sweated or that the old Serpent and his acolyte, Bobcat, sucked bits of evil out of his body with their copper lancets and stone sucking tubes.
Mud Puppy hunched his fifteen-winters-old body. People said he was skinny, just bones wrapped around an insatiable curiosity. He was short for his age, too. Shaggy black hair tumbled over his eyes as he grasped the ceramic cup in his hand. The cricket began singing its shrill music. How could such a little creature make such a noise? It pierced the ears like a lancet, almost painful.
He barely heard the continuing commotion outside. Someone shouted. Voices called in answer as a party trotted past his house, coming in from one of the outer ridges. “They’re back,” one of the voices called. “At last, they’re back!”