People of the River(26)
"Well," Primrose said with a long exhalation, "I don't like it, but I'll be standing in line tomorrow morning waiting for our share of com." He bent to the fishing net, testing the tension, looking to see if any fish had swum into the deadly weave. The water rippled in colliding silver rings.
"So will I," Nettle agreed, twining his fingers in the weave to help Primrose.
Green Ash awkwardly knelt beside Nettle. Her belly protmded so far now that she couldn't see her toes over the bulk. Among her people, a woman could not become pledged to a man until she was pregnant and had proven her worth—unless she were berdache, like Primrose.
She gripped the edge of the net to help tug. Primrose had always been odd, touched with Spirit Dreams, and much too gentle for this harsh world. Some of her earliest memories were of Primrose crouching down and covering his head to shield himself against the beatings of the village children, who were terrified by his strange ways. Green Ash had been his protector. More than once she had gotten in trouble for using her fists to drive away Primrose's tormentors.
"I don't feel anything," she admitted apprehensively to Primrose.
"Let's bring it all the way in and see."
They dragged the net, hand over hand, until it lay in a knotted web on the sandy bank. Empty. Again.
"Mother Earth hates us. She's trying to kill us for the way we've treated her," old Checkerberry mumbled. Her wrinkles had pulled as tight as a fresh rabbit hide drying in the sun. "We need to play net-stick and ball ... to heal the Earth. A big game with a hundred warriors on each side. Play to twenty." The old woman smacked her lips. "We need to call a powerful shaman from one of the small villages. Forget these elite Starbom priests and priestesses ... bet all the clan fields . . . everything we own. If we don't . . . starvation! War! Disease!"
Nettle glanced at Checkerberry, then quickly looked away. Primrose drew magical signs in the air to ward off the ghastly prophecy.
Green Ash's gaze drifted over the stark hills, seeing the deep gashes cut by ordinary rainstorms. No trees remained to slow the runoff, and the water rushed down the hills in torrents, taking the soil and crops with it. Cycles ago, Cahokians had started trading with the Lakes People far to the north for hickory oil, sugar-maple sap, linden sap, and sacred red cedar—not to mention hides of all kinds, for when the trees went, the animals had not been far behind. The elk had been gone for so long that children under fifteen summers couldn't even describe one.
Green Ash exchanged a consoling look with Primrose before her eyes again sought the smoke spiraling in the distance.
Five
Lichen hunched behind a limestone boulder, peering around it at Wanderer, who was sneaking through the tawny remains of last cycle's cornfield. His shrill whistle carried, a shree-shree like the triumph call of Hawk after he'd caught Ground Squirrel. Wanderer moved cautiously, slapping the dead stalks with his stick.
Summer Girl had roused a little from her nine-moon slumber and sent a breath of warmth over the land. That happened occasionally during the Moon-When-Thunder-Walks, but this spell had lasted for three wonderful days. Lichen tipped her face to the sun and basked in the splendor. A bead of sweat had formed under her left arm, and now it trickled coolly down her bare side to soak into the waistband of her yellow skirt. She had gone bare-chested yesterday, too, letting the warmth prick at her bones.
Not a single cloud adorned Father Sky's bosom. An unending blanket of pale blue arced across the world, melting into the spaces between the buttes, outlining the tufts of trees on the crests. Down in the river bottom, the barest hint of green whiskered the banks of the river. First Woman had begun to tend the land again.
Lichen smiled and started to suck in a deep breath of the damp, earth-scented air, but she stopped when she caught a hint of movement near the edge of the cornfield—just a flicker of leaves moving where they shouldn't have. She slowly lifted her bow, nocked her arrow, and sighted it in.
Wanderer kept walking and whistling, his gray hair swimming around his head like handfuls of frosty twigs. He wore only a breechclout. Lichen thought his tall, lanky body looked poorly after the long winter. Knobby ribs stuck out from his chest, and he'd been acting strangely. She couldn't quite figure it out. Worry lined his forehead and ate into his gaunt cheeks. He kept turning to look over his shoulder, as though he expected to see some monster rise up from the crevices in the weathered limestone. He had spoken little since she arrived, asking her only if she would help him hunt for dinner. Absently, he had told her where to sit in the garden of boulders, patting her head and then ambling off to find a stick to beat against the stalks.