People of the River(18)

Nightshade reverently kissed the Mudhead Bundle and unlaced the leather ties. Father Sun had risen higher. His rays no longer struck her in the face. They penetrated the lodge in a thousand places, streaming down to speckle her tangled hair like copper dust. She cautiously pulled a small basket and a black bowl from the Bundle. She set them gently on the floor before kissing the Bundle again, then setting it aside.

"I'm coming, First Woman. Help me, help me."

She picked up the basket, surveyed its faded red swirls, and removed the woven lid. A gray smudge of powder smeared the bottom. Nightshade offered a small prayer of thanks to Sister Datura. Traders brought the precious seeds up from islands in the Great Salt Water far to the southeast. The seeds cost a fortune, but two of her bowls could purchase enough of them to last her a lifetime. She reached for her water jar and splashed a meager amount of water into the powdered seeds, then half-filled her black Wellpot.

Nightshade took a deep breath. The damp morning air felt sharp in her lungs. She forced her soul into calm patterns before she dipped her fmger into the gray paste in her Power basket and began massaging it into her temples.

"I am coming, Bird-Man. Help me. Help me. Help me."

When she let her hand fall to pick up her Wellpot, a gust of wind teased her long hair. Not until the breeze had wandered through her dwelling and scampered away did Nightshade dare turn her eyes to the water in the Wellpot.

Her reflection transfixed her. Midnight snarls of hair framed her face, accentuating the purple circles around her eyes. Her full lips and tumed-up nose looked pinched, as though she battled to keep something locked inside that bronze prison of skin. As she stared into the water, she felt Sister Datura seeping into her bones, catching hold of her soul with a granite hand to shake her fears out . . . or to kill her because of them.

Nightshade shuddered when the sickness started. Her soul reeled as she began the Dance of Death with her Sister. They twined souls like lovers, rocking, fighting, delighting and terrifying each other as they Danced over the deadly gate that led to the Well of the Ancestors. Nightshade pirouetted carefully over that bottomless pit, following Datura's lead through the darkness. When the nausea swelled. Nightshade battled it by chanting, chanting with all of her strength, into the Wellpot, praying for help and guidance from Bird-Man and Brother Mudhead.

. . . And at last her soul cut loose from her body. She felt it spiral out through her navel and ooze into the Wellpot like wispy threads of azure light.

I am coming, Mudhead. I am coming. Bulrush, can you hear me?

Sister Datura released her hold, and Nightshade melted into the water. Her reflection wavered around her, cool and caressing. She could look upward at her own face, though it appeared blurred through the water, and downward. Down, down through the gate, into the brilliant darkness of the Well of the Ancestors. She prepared herself and dove, scattering the colors of her reflection like leaves in warm autumn winds.



Lichen woke with a start, staring wide-eyed at the golden veil of light that fell over her room.

"Dawn," she whispered.

She had been dreaming of playing ring-and-pin—a game that consisted of flipping a perforated bone up in the air and skewering it with a sharpened stick—with Flycatcher, when an unknown woman had shouted her name. It had been so loud that Lichen imagined it had come from this world.

But only the far-off mournful howls of a coyote disturbed the morning's quiet.

She snuggled deeper into her precious buffalo robe—her mother had received it as a gift from a trader after having performed a healing ceremony—and blinked at the chestnut poles that formed the ceiling of her room. The pole on the far right, the one over her head, had a large knot in it that thrust out into the next row of poles, slightly skewing the whole roof. Clusters of eagle feathers dangled here and there, each a prayer for someone sick or gone hunting. They twirled in the cool breeze that roamed the room.

Lichen yawned, a wide, lazy yawn. Who could have called her? Her gaze drifted over the interconnected line of painted yellow spiders that crawled around the clay-washed walls. Their red eyes glowed in the light spilling through the window. She hadn't recognized the voice. That had scared her. And she had the vague feeling that the voice had come from far away.

Lichen followed the spiders from one to another until she came to the wall niche that gouged the plaster at the foot of her mother's bed. The Stone Wolf stared at her. Black, tiny, it glimmered like a speck of molten obsidian.

She scooted deeper beneath her robe and peered at the wolf through a kinky horizon of black buffalo ftir. Should she try talking to it? Wanderer had told her to.

But the Stone Wolf terrified her. Her mother forbade her to touch it because, she said, the Power in the wolf could kill Lichen, though Lichen thought that maybe it could do that without being touched. She could feel its Power radiating all the way across the room, like the prickly feel of a cricket's legs on her arm.