People of the Owl(58)

She turned and walked to a low-smoking fire before reaching out to take a smoldering stick. White Bird stepped forward, his face a mask against the pain in his freshly tattooed chest. He placed his hand around his mother’s where she grasped the smoldering stick. Together they touched it to a corner of the thatch. White Bird had to lean forward, blowing the glowing end until the thatch caught and the first flickers of fire began climbing the dry grass.

“I see things inside,” Gray Fox said as the fire illuminated the interior of the house. “A man’s atlatl, a bundle of darts, and isn’t that a pile of folded clothing?”

Yellow Spider whispered, “Good-bye, Speaker. I will see you soon.” Then, after a pause, he said in a louder voice, “Those are the Speaker’s personal belongings. He cannot take them to the Land of the Dead in their present form. They, too, must be transformed into their spirit selves in order for him to use them in the afterlife.”

As they watched, the Serpent cavorted and shook his turtle shell rattle. His reedy voice rose and fell as he Sang in words Yellow Spider couldn’t understand. The flames spread through the roofing. Thick white smoke curled through the tightly bound shocks of grass before being whipped up into the sunset sky.





Thirteen

White Bird stepped back, an arm raised to protect himself from the violent heat radiating from his uncle’s house. There, just within the doorway, he could see his uncle’s bones laid in a careful bundle on the rick of hickory and maple wood. In the midst of the bonfire the skull charred and blackened, grease sizzling as the rounded bone split, steamed, and oozed. The long bones had been tied in a tight bundle that now spilled down into the crackling logs. One by one they popped as the marrow began to boil inside.

White Bird backed up another step to where his mother stood, arms at her sides, a grim expression on her drawn face. He flinched at the heat, amazed that she could stand it, and struggled with the desire to step back even farther to where the crowd had gathered on the other side of the borrow ditch.

“Farewell, Brother,” she said in a voice mostly drowned by the fire’s roar. Clay began to flake off the walls as the cane-and-pole substructure began to burn. A wreath of black rose in a pillar, bearing the smoke of a dead life to the Sky World. Mother Sun sank below the horizon beyond the Bird’s Head, the sky uncharacteristically blue and cloudless.

White Bird might have been able to stand it, but the dull smarting on his chest where the Serpent had tattooed the red pattern of dots became unbearable. The design marked him as a blooded warrior and a leader worthy of respect. He unwillingly took his mother’s hand and half dragged her back.

The look she shot him was nearly as frightening as the searing heat. Grief lay behind her eyes, grief so powerful it sucked at his souls. And then, as if he truly saw her for the first time, he cataloged her face: Threads of white streaked her hair where she’d pulled it back and pinned it into a severe bun. Deep wrinkles hatched her hollow cheeks, and her mouth had thinned. When had her angular nose gone to extra flesh? He had never noticed that the smooth skin of her forehead had hardened and lined. Her throat, once so fine, now wattled and bagged like an elderly man’s scrotum.

She’s so old! He stood stunned, trying to fathom what it all meant. The popping of his uncle’s bones, his mother’s old age, the pain of his new tattoos. As of that morning the world might have been dislocated, shifted somehow as it floated on the endless seas. From this day onward nothing would ever be the same. His life might have ended and begun anew.

Even the mysterious nighttime escape of his captive seemed somehow of lesser import—though he’d vowed to find the culprit who had sawed her ropes in two. Protestations aside, he was sure it had something to do with Snapping Turtle Clan, and perhaps Eats Wood and his preoccupation with sticking his penis into anything female.

“Are you all right?” he asked as he leaned close to his mother’s ear.

For several heartbeats she stared blankly at the fire, then his words seemed to penetrate. She swallowed hard, the loose flesh at her throat working. “Yes. Part of me is in there with him. I am burning, White Bird. My souls are becoming ashes.”

“He was a great Speaker for our clan,” White Bird replied as he turned his attention back to the flame-engulfed structure. “I am honored to bear his legacy.”

“Honored enough to take the responsibilities of the clan over your own desires?”

“Of course.” He pointed at the blackened bones now half-hidden in an inky veil of smoke. “He taught me that. My first duty is to my clan.”