People of the Owl(89)
He shrugged. “Maybe. Yes, that’s it.” But he dare not tell just what he was afraid of. “And besides, you don’t want me, Cypress. Not really.”
“Then why am I lying here on my back?” She spread her hands in frustration and sat up, irritation replaced with exhaustion. “I would have taken you, Mud—Salamander. I’ve never lain with a man before.”
“You’re not thinking well.”
“And you are? They say that you giggled and saw things during your initiation. They say you’re a half-wit. Given what just happened here, I’m not so sure they aren’t right.”
“You didn’t want me just now.”
“Then what did I want?” She was glaring at him.
“A dream, Spring Cypress. You were desperate for a dream. The trouble is, dreams don’t come that easy.”
She was frowning at him the way she might if his words made no sense to her. “So, what? Are you going back to tell Uncle Clay Fat that I’m running?”
He shook his head, an unexplained sadness rising to replace the desire his manhood had pumped through his body. “No. I’m giving you this.” He bent down and picked up the partially carved owl from the moss-spotted log. “I wasn’t finished with it yet, but you can tell what it is.”
She took the stone figure and held it between thumb and forefinger as she inspected it. “An owl,” she noted. “Yes, I can see that. What is it for?”
“For you.” He tried to shrug off the confusion that clouded his ability to think. “Unfinished. Just like you are.” He waved. “Go on, Spring Cypress. If anyone asks—which they won’t—I’ll tell them I haven’t seen you since the night my brother was married.”
She stood, reached down, and whipped her kirtle up with a fluid motion. He watched as she wrapped it about her hips and cinched the cords that held it in place. With slender hands she rearranged her hair, flicking bits of leaf from the glossy black braid before repinning it with the blue jay feather. “You’re a strange one, Mud Puppy.”
“Salamander.”
A smile bent her full lips. “Salamander. Odd that they’d name you that.”
“People underestimate salamanders.”
She considered that as she walked back and picked up her pack. Before slinging it onto her back and fixing the tump line, she placed the little red owl carving into a pocket. “I’ve heard that some salamanders can change their colors.”
“I’ve heard that, too.”
She smiled wearily at him. “Good luck with your colors, Salamander. I thank you for this thing you’re going to do for me. If you ever need me, I’ll be in the mountains up in the northwest. When you find your way, come looking for me.”
“I will.”
He watched as she recovered her stick and started off again. She never turned, never looked back, just walked onward until her form was hidden by the endless trees.
“Watch over her, Masked Owl.” He fought the terrible desire to pick up his weapons and run after her.
Maybe I just don’t have that kind of courage.
The Serpent
Courage?
Why is it that humans think bravery is either leaping into a fight or running away from everything that comforts them? The most courageous act a human being can perform is to truly love another person.
There are those who would have us believe that love is easy, that it comes childlike from our hearts and floods out as effortlessly as rain falls from the fingers of the Sky Beings.
That is just foolishness.
Love is standing guard all the time. It is becoming a world to yourself for another’s sake, and learning to share its most intimate corners. There is nothing more courageous than that. And nothing more achingly beautiful.
But I am an old man. I have failed at truly loving another person so many times that I know the misery of cowardice.
This boy is just about to find out.
Twenty-one
Pine Drop watched the gentle rain fall and tried not to think about what was happening. People stood in a ring just across the borrow pit from her house. Most wore flat bark hats that shed the rain. In her damp hands she held the offerings of food and turned toward Salamander. His gaze was fixed on the people as though they were a writhing den of water moccasins instead of his kin and hers. A swamp rabbit caught in a snare might look like that. Panic bulged behind his round brown eyes as he took the wooden platter from her hands. He raised the plate that carried the first meal he would eat as a married man. “By accepting this meal … I tie my life … with that of Pine Drop … and … and …”
“Night Rain,” Pine Drop growled.