“White Bird has only been married for three moons,” Wing Heart answered absently.
Both Salamander and Water Petal flinched at the use of her dead son’s name. Oblivious, she continued, “I’d been married for six before Black Lightning planted White Bird in my belly. And, if memory serves, Pine Drop’s mother, Sweet Root, took nearly a year to catch.” Wing Heart turned and settled herself at her loom. A half-finished kirtle hung there, the center decoration consisting of a bird woven out of the whitest hemp thread she could find. Her fingers rose like thin brown spiders to the warp and began plucking the threads.
Water Petal turned her attention to Salamander. “You are lying with them, aren’t you?”
“Of course.” Great joy that it was. He looked out at the night with a bitter feeling in his breast. In addition to the worry over his mother’s frequent lapses and odd snatches of conversation with dead people, his nights with his wives bore down on him like rough sandstone on soft wood. The memory of Spring Cypress pulled at his souls like a tightening cord. He could feel his heart hammering, the blood running hot in his veins. Snakes, he had wanted her with a desire that had burned him. Why wasn’t it that way with Pine Drop and Night Rain? Both women had bodies every bit as well shaped as Spring Cypress’s.
“Salamander?” Water Petal’s voice dropped. “How often do you mount your wives?”
He shifted uncomfortably. “When they tell me to.” The admission felt like drawing a rose stem through an open wound.
“Snakes!” Water Petal cried, startling the baby, who spat out her nipple and gave a lusty bawl. She maneuvered his mouth back into place and resettled his fabric-wrapped body into a more comfortable position. “I suppose each time they let you exercise your rights as a husband, it is a week just before or just after they’ve been in the Women’s House?”
He nodded, wishing they could talk about something else.
“Salamander,” Water Petal’s voice dropped, her eyes taking Wing Heart’s measure as she asked, “is it fun? Do you enjoy coupling with them? Or have they turned it into work, a thing that must be endured?”
“Endured.” He ground his teeth, taking his own suspicious glance at his mother. “It wasn’t as if our marriage was something any of us looked forward to.”
“Salamander, there is talk that you may not have heard. Moccasin Leaf overheard it in the Women’s House. It seems that …” She winced as if her teeth hurt.
“That Pine Drop is bedding that Frog Clan man, Three Stomachs.” He finished for her. “How did he get that name, anyway?”
“From the way he eats. What would fill three men barely lasts him until his next meal. But that’s not the point. Is it true?”
He nodded. “I have seen them. One of the advantages to being invisible is that it’s easy to pass unnoticed. They plan meetings any chance they get.” He paused. “At least she enjoys coupling with him.”
“Rot her crotch away,” Water Petal hissed. “You know what she’s doing by putting you off, don’t you?”
“Yes, Cousin. She is avoiding having my child. Though why she would mate with Three Stomachs is beyond me. None of his children have lived. His wife, that Rattlesnake Clan woman, has borne him five stillborns.”
“Of course,” Water Petal noted, putting the pieces together. “If she does have a child by him, and it’s stillborn, it reflects on you.” She shook her head. “Do they hate us that much?”
“More, I’d say.” Salamander reached out, fingering the polished wood in the ramada’s support pole. “But do not concern yourself.”
“Indeed?” Acid, like cactus juice, laced Water Petal’s voice. “Do not concern myself about the woman who seeks to insult my cousin, not to mention the Speaker of my clan?”
“It is not time yet,” Salamander told her. “She isn’t conceiving any child by Three Stomachs.”
“Snakes and Lightning, Salamander! It’s his seed he’s planting inside her slippery tube!”
“Please lower your voice.” Salamander shot her a hard look. “Not everyone in Sun Town need be part of this discussion.”
“And how do you know that his seed is not already growing in your wife’s womb?”
“I have my ways.” He watched his mother as he spoke, but Wing Heart seemed oblivious, a slight smile on her lips as she worked the loom. This world might have been but a shadow of the world she saw. “You must trust me, Cousin. She will not conceive, and she suffers as a result of her roaming.”