Mud Puppy bolted into a sitting position, pointing up at the charred rafters. “There!”
“What?” The Serpent stumbled backward, clawed for balance, and craned his thin neck to peer up at the smoke-hazed ceiling of the Men’s House. The clacking music died along with the chanting on everyone’s lips. Heads craned, wide eyes fixed on the ceiling.
“A big black crow!” Mud Puppy blinked, his chest pulsing with agony. He could feel blood trickling down the sides of his ribs as he searched the ceiling. “Up there,” he sputtered lamely. “Dark, and … smelling of death.”
In the deepening silence, only the crackle of logs in the fire could be heard.
“Yes, I feel him up there.” The Serpent drew a wary breath, letting it out as a hiss. “Leave here!” He pointed a finger at the dark roof. “This place is not for you. This boy is not for you! Go back! Back to the darkness of the West and your lair of corruption.”
Mud Puppy could feel the rising tension in the room. He was acutely aware of the stares going from him, to the ceiling, to the Serpent, and back to the ceiling again.
Mud Stalker broke the silence, hardly masking his impatience. “I don’t see anything.”
“You wouldn’t,” the Serpent replied softly, his eyes still fixed above.
Mud Puppy cocked his head. “Did you hear that?”
The Serpent frowned. “What?”
“Giant wings beating the air,” Mud Puppy told him. “Like the whistling a crow makes when it takes off fast.”
The Serpent nodded, as if this made perfect sense.
“What is going on here?” Mud Stalker demanded, stepping forward. “Is this the way a man is made?”
“It is tonight.” The Serpent shot him a hot glance. “Power is loose! It is shifting and curling, surrounding us—held back only by these four walls!” Silence filled the room. “Now, watch, you men. Study this boy! Your futures are borne upon his blood!”
The Serpent slipped a hand into the sack hanging from his waist thong and removed a sliver of milky gray chert. “This stone comes from the far north. There, the Earth Beings deposited their semen and it hardened, became this stone.” He straddled Mud Puppy’s legs, pushed him flat again, and squatted. In two quick motions, the old man slashed a deep cross on the middle of Mud Puppy’s breastbone over his heart. “With it, I mark you.”
Mud Puppy’s souls twisted, and his lungs jumped and pulled at the bottom on his throat. Tears silvered the edges of his vision.
The Serpent raised the bloody flake of stone for all to see, and cried, “Know all, that this man, whom I today name Salamander, is marked with two crossing lines. The cross on his chest reminds us of the four directions. It is the place where things come together, an intersection between Power and the world. From now on, when you see this man, you will think of things coming together, crossing.”
“This isn’t right,” Clay Fat muttered from his clan seat along the south wall.
“No, it isn’t,” Deep Hunter agreed. “This boy isn’t acting right.”
The Serpent stalked forward; his hard eyes challenged the Speakers. “It is very right. More right than you could know. What has happened here tonight isn’t about you, or your scheming clans. This new man, this place where we live, is caught between warring Powers. I will tell you this thing once, knowing you will not understand or heed my warning. This man we have made tonight, Salamander, will have to fight for you all. He will have to do it alone, for most of you will betray him!”
Mud Puppy blinked against the tears and tried to understand the seemingly insane words the Serpent spoke. The slit skin oozed and pulsed in red—the flow of it down into his navel frightening and terrible. He barely registered the looks of uncertainty that passed from man to man, or comprehended how individuals were shifting warily, jaws working. The room roiled like water about to erupt into steam.
The Serpent pointed a gnarly blood-caked finger at Mud Puppy, and cried, “I give you Salamander, son of Wing Heart, of the Owl Clan! Nephew to the great Cloud Heron, brother to the late Speaker, White Bird. Greet him and praise him.”
With that, the Serpent pitched the bloody flake into the fire and strode toward the doorway. He walked as though possessed of a terrible purpose; then his thin body vanished into the night beyond the Men’s House.
Salamander. I am now called Salamander. That is my man’s name.
Through the agony in his chest, Mud Puppy was aware of one or two muttered greetings. One by one, the men seemed to shuffle to their feet, easing away as if they were tendrils of smoke. He barely noticed, his blurring vision fixed on blood that had begun to mat and dry on his chest. The throbbing pain was growing worse, and he could do nothing about it but endure.