A thought startled him. Why owls? He had been carving them ever since he had been a child. Had it been happenstance that he had settled on the form, or was there more to it? Something he knew down in his souls but had ignored on a higher level? He glanced up at the green canopy again.
How long have you been talking to me in my Dreams, Masked Owl? Have I only now started to remember?
No answer came to him, but he felt the short hairs on his neck prickling. Yes, he had been having Dreams, hadn’t he? Dreams he couldn’t quite remember during the waking moments.
Layers upon layers, deceit and guile, death and life, and him right in the middle of it—without a clue as to why, or what he was supposed to do. A sick feeling ate at his stomach. Was he, too, destined to be a pile of bones within a couple of weeks? Were his muscles, skin, and organs to be stripped away by the Serpent’s sharp chert knife and carried out beyond the ridges for the scavengers?
He could imagine his bones: red, raw, and bloody, with bits of tissue clinging to them. In the shadowed depths of the hut, they looked dark where they rested on the broken branches and other lengths of firewood. The thought amused him that his lineage within Owl Clan was running out of houses to burn. Only Water Petal’s remained, and she would need it when the baby came.
The whirring of the forest almost swallowed the knock of wood on wood. Salamander froze, his eyes searching the shadowed forest around him.
There, the faintest trace of movement! He barely caught a glimpse through the trees. Something moved on the trail he had just come up. With cautious hands he retrieved his atlatl and fingered a dart into the hook.
Bits of color and movement flickered between the boles, and then she stepped into the clear. Young, a newly made woman’s kirtle swaying at her hips, she plodded steadily forward, eyes on the trail before her. A tumpline crossed her forehead, the thick straps leading to a heavy pack that centered on her hips just above the buttocks. She poked at the ground with a walking stick in her right hand, her left swinging in time to her gait. Long black hair had been braided and curled at the side of her head, held in place with a striking blue feather from a jay’s tail. In the dim light, grease made her rounded breasts shine, the brown nipples conelike. Her pretty face expressed sadness and desperation.
“Spring Cypress?” Salamander asked softly.
She stopped short, eyes flashing this way and that until she discerned his form on the half-rotten log. “Mud Puppy?”
“It’s Salamander now,” he told her wearily. “They made me a man.” He indicated her kirtle. “And I see that you have just been released from the Women’s House.”
Her lips wiggled as if words were running in her head that she refused to say. In the end, looking wary, she asked, “What are you doing out here?”
“Escaping.”
A weight might have lifted from her, relief rising to be mimicked in a smile. “You, too? I’m so glad to hear that.” She swung the heavy pack down and walked over to him, her shining eyes on his. “We could go together. Anywhere. I thought I’d go north. Follow the White Mud River up into the mountains. I don’t know what we’d do there, but I’m sure we could find a valley, someplace out of the way where the hunting was good and enough plants grew that we could feed ourselves.”
Salamander blinked hard, trying to fathom what she was saying. “You mean, you’re running away? Leaving Sun Town? For good?”
Her mouth hung open for a moment, the words forgotten, then she blurted, “You said you were escaping!”
“I am. But just for the day. I needed to get away! My chest hurts, my brother and uncle are dead, and everyone wants to marry me off to those horrible Snapping Turtle women.”
A sudden fear brightened her eyes. “I just told you where I was going.”
Salamander sighed and returned to his work on the little red owl. He had the head mostly right. The two triangular ears, the round eyes and pinched beak were visible. From the neck down, however, the wings and protruding belly were owl-like only if the viewer had a good imagination.
“You’ll tell!” Spring Cypress looked crestfallen. “It means I have to go somewhere else.”
“People are going to be very concerned about you. What about Clay Fat and Graywood Snake? They are your relatives. If you just up and disappear, they’ll be worried sick.”
The way her probing brown eyes were watching him made him nervous. “Mud Puppy?”
“Salamander.”
“Salamander? Would you come with me?”
“Why?”
“They want me to marry Copperhead.”
“He’s a cruel old man!”