People of the River(9)
In return, the artisans of Cahokia worked the raw materials, creating stunning shell beads, nets, fabrics from bass-wood and Cottonwood bark. From weed stems they created silky, soft textiles, dyeing them in colors as brilliant as the rainbow itself. Effigy pipes and delicate ceramics were produced to repay the surrounding chiefdoms with luxury and status goods.
So much had been gained from Keran's vision. Is it all to come to an end now? Could Badgertail run away? Desert great Keran's grandson in this terrible time of failed harvests?
Paddles splashed around them, timed to the lilting wail of a flute. The notes gained a ghostly resonance as they traveled over the expanse of water. A few of his warriors Sang, their voices rising and falling in a haunting melody that echoed from the towering banks.
We pray for victory, Thunderbird. Give us victory,
victory, victory. Let us die and be reborn at will,
as lightning is. Against the great darkness, we are falling, into its
center, falling. Let us drive our arrows into our enemies' hearts as
you drive lightning into the breast of Mother
Earth. Give us victory, Thunderbird, victory, victory . . .
The words touched Badgertail with the strength of rosin weed, clinging powerfully to his thoughts. Victory? Over what? Over whom? He frowned. Ahead, still out of sight, lay the thatched houses in the village of River Mounds. People there would be waking, cooking meals, saying prayers to the rising face of Father Sun.
Bobcat is right. How can you do this when you know it's wrong? These are not enemies! What has happened that we've come to attacking our own people?
Badgertail and Bobcat had relatives in River Mounds— members of their Squash Blossom Clan. Perhaps even a niece or nephew. Their great-grandmother had been bom in River Mounds.
He turned to glance at those who rowed behind him and caught Locust's stare on him: hard, unforgiving. Thirty-four summers old, she had a face like a field mouse, narrow and pointed, with black, glistening eyes. She had cut her black hair so that it brushed the shoulders of her warshirt. They had grown up together, witnessed their families killed, their homes ravaged, in the last days before Keran's vision of peace had been fulfilled. Locust knew Badgertail better than he himself did. Long ago, when they'd both been young and rash, he had wanted to marry her. Probably he still did somewhere deep inside, although it had been twenty-two long cycles since that day. They were cousins—each of the Squash Blossom Clan—and such a marriage was taboo. Forbidden.
Since then. Locust had taken a wife, as was customary for a warrior of her status. To have taken a husband would have demeaned her and forced her into the traditional role of a woman, that of cooking, cleaning, and bearing children.
As in all things, the clan ruled. Just as they made decisions about what to plant and who would tend the fields, so did the old women decide when a man should marry. Noticing Badgertail's attraction to his cousin, his grandmother had taken matters into her own hands. He had been forced to marry a woman of the Deer Bone Rattle Clan named Two Tassels. His marriage had been arranged by his grandmother and great-aunt, each powerful in clan politics at the time. Since Badgertail had built a reputation as a warrior, and since the Squash Blossom Clan had desired a trading relationship with Flying Woman Mounds, to the east on the Moon Water, they had arranged the union .
The memory prickled in Badgertail's thoughts the way wild rose scratched the skin. Accompanied by some of his kin, he had ridden one of the bulky trade canoes down to the mouth of the Moon Water, then pitched in, rowing the heavy Cottonwood canoe for two weeks upriver to Flying Woman Mounds, the bride price stacked behind him.
He could still picture Two Tassels' face: sullen, distrustful, annoyed at having to marry an ugly warrior like him, when her heart yearned for another. Nevertheless, Badgertail had fulfilled his duties; he had labored for a season in her fields, lived in her house, and cared for her young son.
And then I left. He dug deeply with his painted oar, driving the war canoe forward. The dull, traditional life at Flying Woman Mounds was not for him. Not after the excitement of bustling Cahokia. A year after he'd returned, word had come through a young man of the Deer Bone Rattle Clan that Badgertail was divorced—but to maintain the kinship relation so important to the clans, the young man would "adopt" Badgertail as his brother.
Everyone had ended up content, but Badgertail had never quite accepted Locust's marriage. Oh, it comforted him that she was happy, but she'd taken a berdache wife: a woman in a man's body. Physically, Primrose was a man, but his soul was female, and therefore he wore his hair long and braided, like a woman, and adopted female dress, going about in a skirt. Primrose cared for Locust's house, tended the fields with the other women, and served as her lover . . . though in the fifteen cycles that Locust and Primrose had been married, Primirose had planted no children in Locust's womb.