People of the Owl(9)

“Hides, tool stone, copper, buffalo meat and medicines, a great many things …” White Bird’s words carried through a lull in the conversation.

“Here comes Wing Heart!” Red Finger pointed up the hill.

The Owl Clan Elder was picking her way down the slope, two of her clan’s people, Water Petal and Bluefin, bearing torches to light her way. The yellow light reflected from her silver-streaked hair as if it had previously caught the sun’s rays and was now releasing them into the night. She wore a bearskin mantle pinned atop the left shoulder with a deer-bone skewer. Her right shoulder and breast were bare. Despite the late hour and the unexpected call, she wore a finely woven cloth kirtle. Spotless and white it swayed with each step she took. The preceding turning of seasons had been hard on her. Speaker Cloud Heron, her brother, had been slowly failing, his mind and health draining away like upland floodwaters. When White Bird had not returned last fall, she had taken it stoically, calmly stating that her son was detained. But the months had passed, and winter had dragged on, one grim gray day after another passing as her clan’s influence ebbed.

Now, here she came, looking to all the world as if it were just another day and not the salvation of her authority and prestige. The crisis of clan leadership had been delayed yet again, perhaps forever.

“You’d think she planned this from the very beginning,” Red Finger hissed irritably. Then he paused. “You don’t think she did, do you? Do you think that rascal son of hers has been hiding out in the swamp for months? Did she do this just to keep us off-balance? To make us show our hands?”

“What about these barbarians?” Mud Stalker twitched his lips in their direction. “Did she hide them in the swamps, too? And all the Trade things that I overhead White Bird say he brought? She might be a Powerful old hag, but she and White Bird didn’t just conjure Trade and barbarians from the mud and swamp moss. No, Cousin, he went north. Just as he said. We had better plan on how we are going to deal with that.”

“He was always a Powerful boy. Had a way about him.” Red Finger tapped his chin thoughtfully.

“We must take other steps, Cousin.”

Red Finger shot a sidelong glance at him, his eyes shadowed black in the torchlight. “Are you thinking what I think you are?”

“Perhaps. Let us be patient. We are descended from Snapping Turtle, Cousin. Like him, we must be prudent, silent, and crafty. Snapping Turtle always lies where you least expect to find him. He is a master of camouflage and stealth.” A pause. “And his bite can snap a man’s bones in two.”

Red Finger’s expression hardened. “We must be very very careful.”





The dark soil underfoot had turned treacherous. Evening mist had fallen, then hundreds of feet had churned it. The last thing Wing Heart would allow herself to do was to slip and take a tumble—not with half the town watching her. All of the terrible months of mixed hope, grief, and despair culminated here, now, at this moment and place: White Bird was home! She must use every sliver of advantage and opportunity.

Moccasin Leaf had been nipping at her heels, ready to slip Half Thorn into the Speaker’s position. Just that morning she had been contemplating whether any hope remained. The question had been: Would it be better to declare her son dead before her brother died, or after? Points could be made for either decision, but in the end it had been her Dream Soul rather than her Life Soul that had won out. She simply couldn’t stand to make a public admission of what she had come to believe in private. To do so would be too final, too void of even her thinly frayed hopes.

Then out of the darkness had come the word that White Bird had arrived. She was told that even as the runner spoke, her son was waiting in his canoe at the landing. She could hardly believe that he had brought not just himself and Yellow Spider, but three more canoes full of Trade paddled by barbarians!

She picked her way carefully in the flickering torchlight borne by her cousins. No trace of the rushing ecstasy in her heart betrayed itself on her stern face. She kept the fingers of her left hand tightly knotted in the silky bearskin she’d pinned over her shoulder. Aware that all eyes had turned her direction, she held her head high. That was it, let them all see. Owl Clan would remain the preeminent clan in Sun Town.

She cast a quick glance around as the land leveled. Of course Mud Stalker had beaten her here. Snapping Turtle Clan had been poised to move on her. She could practically see him choking on his disappointment as he fingered the scars on his ruined forearm. Too bad the alligator hadn’t taken the rest of him along with his stripped fingers and skin.