People of the Sea(130)
Tannin had been wondering the same thing, but he’d come up with no solution. He set his empty teacup on the grass beside him. “Only someone very brave.”
“Such people are becoming as rare as mammoth ivory.”
“Then what should we do?” Lambkill tossed the remainder of his tea into the fire and propped his hands on his hips to stare up at the Star People. In the strong silver gleam of the moonglow, they looked like faded reflections of themselves. “We must find the new Otter-Clan Village, my brother, before she does. That will give us time to talk to the village chief and explain our unpleasant chore. Then”—he laughed maliciously—“we’ll surprise Kestrel when she arrives.”
“What if the Otter Clan has already heard that she’s been seen with Sunchaser? We’ll face the same hostility that we found today in Staghorn.”
Lambkill filled his lungs with the sea-scented wind. “Then we’ll have to catch her before she arrives.”
“And just how will we do that?”
Lambkill looked up blandly, but he’d set his jaw. “My son has started to speak, Tannin. I didn’t tell you because I knew you wouldn’t believe me. But he has. He speaks as well as you or I. He’s been talking every night… and even during the day, he often whispers to me. Little Coyote will tell us about Kestrel when the time comes. We’ll catch her all right.”
“Horseweed! Horseweed, wake up!”
Horseweed roused from a deep, dreamless slumber and rolled to his back. Balsam knelt beside him, his young face wild with fear. In the starlight that streamed through the smoke hole in the roof, Balsam looked as white as snow. A thick dusting of something like pollen coated his pug nose and the shoulders of his buckskin coat. His two black braids had come half unraveled.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” Horseweed braced himself on one elbow.
Balsam glanced around the dark lodge, making certain that everyone else still slept. Seven adults and eight children crowded the rectangular structure, their piles of hides unmoving around the three fire hearths. People had hung their belongings, baskets, atlatls and quivers on the walls. Starlight glinted from the stone points of darts. Several men snored.
Balsam bent down and hissed, “Hurry! You must come with me. He’s in the meadow. I… I don’t know what he’s doing!”
“Who?” Horseweed whispered as he sat up and pulled on
his moccasins. He groped in the darkness to find his coat, shrugged it on, rose and followed Balsam across the hilltop and out into the forest.
Balsam waited until they were well away from the lodges before he spoke again. “It’s Catchstraw,” he said. “He’s up to something.”
“He’s always up to something. What do you mean?”
Balsam shook his head for silence and trotted down the slope to the trail that veered around the base of the hill and headed straight westward, toward Mother Ocean. They ran by an ancient oak. Lightning had riven the trunk at some time in the distant past, killing the tree, but its gnarled branches still reached upward, pleading mutely to Brother Sky for rain. An owl perched on the top branch. Its eyes glinted as it turned its head to watch them pass.
Night came earlier here in the mountains than it did on the coast. Unlike the Mother, whose face sparkled and glimmered all night long, even in the depths of storms, the oak forests held a nearly tangible gloom. Blackness filled the spaces between the trees and undulated in choppy swells of hills for as far as the eye could see.
Horseweed’s uneasiness had been growing for days, as if this alien darkness spawned unseen horrors. Balsam’s steps grew more cautious as they neared a broad meadow. The bright hues of the wildflowers had been washed silver by the light of the Star People, but the blossoms’ sweet scent filled the cold air. Balsam dodged behind a tree, and Horseweed crouched down on his hands and knees. Tall grass tickled his throat, and he knew now how Balsam had been covered with purple-nightshade pollen. The delicate little blossoms had sprouted everywhere. Out at the far edge of the meadow, near a copse of pines, movement stirred the shadows. A thin, high voice drifted on the wind.
Horseweed crawled over beside Balsam, rose to his feet again and stuck his head out on the other side of the thick trunk. He squinted and could tell that Catchstraw knelt on a broad, flat piece of sandstone. For decades, women had
been using the outcrop as a place to pulverize seeds and nuts, and small round grinding holes covered the stone. Only this morning Sumac had gone there to grind a basket of dried pine nuts, which she’d mixed with water and fresh onions and fried for breakfast. What could Catchstraw be doing out there? He seemed to be drawing something on the rock with a piece of charcoal.