She was smiling now, eyes fixed on the distance in her souls. “Uncle, I am strong enough to do this thing. He will never know until it is too late. On the souls of my dead friends, I swear it.”
The thing that horrified Mud Puppy the most was his brother’s head. The lightning bolt had split the skull, popping it open like the husk surrounding a chinquapin seed. Both of White Bird’s eyes protruded, pushed out from inside. No amount of pressing could return them to the sockets so the corpse just stared in a gray-filmed, crabeyed amazement. The Serpent had managed to wipe the white foam from his lips and press the tongue back in. He had wound the head tight with a length of cord to keep the gaping mouth shut. A seared streak ran from under the jaw, along the side of the throat, across the right chest and stomach to follow the inside of the thigh down through the heel.
White Bird lay on his back, arms thrust out, legs stiff as logs. A faint gurgling could be heard from inside his gut. The way the firelight from the central hearth flickered over the smooth and tight skin teased Mud Puppy’s imagination. Unwilling to dwell on the horrifying corpse, Mud Puppy kept staring up at the sooty rafters, searching in vain for any sight of his brother’s souls. They should be hovering up there, twirling around in the haze of smoke, watching, exploring what it meant to be freshly dead and talking with all the other relatives who had preceded him. Mud Puppy saw nothing in the haze that reminded him of White Bird’s souls.
The Serpent rocked on his heels, chanting the familiar Death Song that reassured the Dead that they were still cherished members of the lineage and clan. In the rear, Wing Heart was racked in sobs. She lay on her bed, cramped on her side, prostrate in a way that Mud Puppy had never seen before. Water Petal sat beside her, holding one hand, her face streaked by tears. Outside, voices could be heard periodically as kinspeople, friends, and well-wishers dropped by to leave gifts of food, or express their shock and grief at the young Speaker’s sudden death.
It can’t be true! The words kept repeating in a Dream-like resonance inside Mud Puppy’s head. But all he had to do was look at the body an arm’s length from his nose, and there was the terrible reality. White Bird was dead. In one instant he was alive, levering soil from the ground, and in the next, his blasted body lay straightlimbed in death.
Mud Puppy swallowed hard. I told him not to plant the seeds.
He could sense the Serpent’s wary hesitance to work on White Bird. Yes, Power lay all over the body like a glittering spiderweb, shimmering and bright one moment, invisible the next. It radiated like heat from glowing cooking clays.
His mother broke into another violent fit of sobbing, her body writhing on the bedding. Water Petal tried to soothe her, failing miserably.
“My son,” his mother’s voice rose in a reedy wail.
“Shshsh!” Water Petal smoothed Wing Heart’s damp hair. “He’s gone, Elder. It just happened. It’s no one’s fault.”
But Mud Puppy knew that it was.
“He’s all I had left!” the Elder moaned, her voice breaking as she choked. “All … I had … left!”
The wound in Mud Puppy’s breast lay open and jagged. He had loved White Bird, had admired him as the most marvelous of big brothers. It was all right that his mother cried. He wished he could, too, but instead he just sat there, empty-gutted, unable to do more than stare at the ruined body in disbelief.
The Serpent turned, his eyes intent, knowing, as he studied Mud Puppy. That look by itself was more frightening than death.
The unbidden voice inside said, You are the Speaker now!
The Serpent smiled absently, as if he, too, had heard.
Eighteen
The fire burned hot and yellow, Mud Stalker adding branches anytime it seemed to slow. It was extravagant to burn a fire this hot and large, but it was a night to celebrate.
To Mud Stalker’s right sat Red Finger, to his left, on the sleeping bench, Elder Back Scratch hunched, a shawl around her age-bowed shoulders. Young Pine Drop and her sister, Night Rain, sat across from him, their backs to the door as they glanced uneasily back and forth. They looked, and no doubt felt, out of place. Alas, given the status of their birth, the frail innocence of youth had been pulled back to reveal their future in clan leadership and responsibility.
“You are thinking you should be with your husband’s body,” Mud Stalker said as he fixed them one by one. “Well, he’s over in Wing Heart’s house. Let them care for him. I’ve taken the liberty of having White Bird’s possessions sent there, with the offer that we will support whatever decision Wing Heart makes about the treatment and disposal of the body.”