People of the Owl(56)

She gasped as her legs came free and rolled loosely apart. They, too, might have been wood for all she could feel.

“There,” the boy said. “You can go now.”

“I can’t,” she hissed, fear trying to strangle her. “My legs … I need a while. Time for them to come alive again.”

At this the dark form above her seemed to hesitate. She wiggled sideways enough to see him as he peered owlishly into the dark. The dying fire barely cast a red glow onto his round face. She could see his profile, a stub of nose, thin cheeks, and thatch of black hair. More than a boy, he was less than a man. As he stared around the movements were furtive, frightened.

“Why are you doing this? Are you one of my people? A lost relative taken as a slave? Do you want me to take you home, is that it?”

“No. I’m Owl Clan.”

She shook her head, face contorting as blood pouring into her arms began to ache and pulsate. She tried to remain still, the slightest movement shooting fire along her limbs.

“No one can know I did this,” the boy continued. “They wouldn’t understand. I’m already in enough trouble.”

She couldn’t stifle a gasp as he reached down and began massaging her leg. “No! That hurts!”

“But it will be gone sooner.” He sounded so sure of himself. “We don’t have time. He told me to be fast.”

“Who?” she gritted through clenched teeth, as his hands ran waves of agony through her legs. She might have been floating on a flood of biting ants.

“He said you had to live,” was the simple answer.

Whining, she managed to pull her arms up and blasted her souls numb when she bent her knee. Movement was coming back. No, she wasn’t paralyzed. Blessed Panther, she had to get up.

An eternity passed before she could prop herself on all fours, and, one arm around the boy’s neck, stagger to her feet.

“Come on,” he hissed, as they wobbled off into the darkness. “It’s this way.”

“What is?”

“The canoe landing. But maybe you could be so kind as to take one of the Snapping Turtle Clan’s boats? They don’t like us anyway.”

“Sure, boy. Anything you want. I owe you.”





Mud Puppy stood with his feet sunk in the black mud of the canoe landing and looked out into the darkness. The dugout canoe faded into the night, a dark streak on midnight waters. He could hear the faint gurgle of water as she stroked, droplets tinkling as she raised the paddle.

It didn’t make any sense. Why let her go? What could Masked Owl have in mind? She hated them, he had felt it rising off of her like the stench of waste she had been coated with.

A shiver ran down his back as he turned and trudged wearily up the incline above the canoe landing. White Bird would never forgive him if he found out. And Red Finger would slit his throat if he ever learned that Mud Puppy had fingered his canoe for the Panther woman to steal.





“What is going on?” Hazel Fire asked, as he and Yellow Spider joined the growing crowd. They stood on the far northeastern corner of the plaza. At their feet the marshy borrow pit separated them from the first ridge. Atop that, Wing Heart and White Bird watched as the Serpent chanted and reached into a small clay bowl of black drink. This he cast from his fingertips onto the walls of the second house in the line that stretched ever westward in the long arc of the Northern Moiety.

“That is the house where Speaker Cloud Heron lived.” Yellow Spider’s expression betrayed his inner feelings: sorrow, grief, and a curious sort of expectation.

“Ah, yes.” Gray Fox came to stand beside them. “He was White Bird’s uncle, yes? The one who died just after our arrival?”

“He was my cousin,” Yellow Spider replied. “In many ways he was my teacher as well as White Bird’s. Snakes, I could tell you some stories. Once, when I was much younger, he caught me handling his atlatl. It was his most sacred possession. He was subtle, our Speaker; instead of beating me to within a hairbreadth of my life he made me eat raw fish guts for a whole moon.”

“You did that?” Hazel Fire asked incredulously.

“Everyone knew that I had done something terrible. The Speaker never told people what. And you can wager that I never did, either. But it was so humiliating and vile that I never broke one of his rules again.”

“I’d have sneaked something cooked when no one was looking,” Gray Fox muttered uneasily.

“I wouldn’t,” Yellow Spider declared. “Trust me, the Speaker would have known. He would have seen it reflected from my souls.”

“He was part sorcerer then?” Hazel Fire asked, his eyes focused on the house. Perhaps he thought some smoky spirit was going to rise from the door and cast enchantments around and about.