People of the Sea(26)

While many members of the clan, especially those whose fortunes had suffered, stared at him with resentful eyes, Catchstraw didn’t mind. Such actions set him apart, distinct from the rest of his society. Dreamers were always different from ordinary people. His lodge was arranged exactly to his liking. Brightly painted parfleches filled with exotic stones, carved ivory effigies and sacred plants sat atop the two logs that held down either side of the hide lodge cover. Eight baskets of nuts hung from the ridgepole at evenly spaced intervals. Both the whale-rib frame and the baskets had a single purpose: to prevent rot. The wet air on the coast encouraged decay. Seeds and nuts mildewed quickly in hide sacks, and sapling lodge frames lasted no more than a few cycles before they had to be replaced.

Catchstraw angrily jerked a piece of pine from the woodpile to his left and threw it on the fire in the middle of the floor. Flames leaped and danced. His rage with Oxbalm had yet to fade. “More of my Dreams will have to come true, eh, Oxbalm? Old fool. What do you know? It’s not my fault that Dreaming is so hard.”



For over a hand of time, Catchstraw had been staring at the irregular piece of deer hide spread across his lap. The supple hide had been tanned to a pale eggshell color, which made the black lines of Sunchaser’s maze stand out; they meandered across the surface, weaving drunkenly in and around the center.

Catchstraw had drawn the maze himself, had copied it exactly from Sunchaser’s own. In the flickering light, the lines seemed to move, eddying back and forth in the manner of a den of newborn snakes. Catchstraw struggled to concentrate on them, but his attention wandered like the flight of a bee through a field of wildflowers. Everything distracted him: the blue and red designs on the parfleches, the sound of the wind fluttering his door flap, the curls of smoke that drifted toward the smoke hole in the roof. Over the long cycles, a thick patina of soot had coated the hide walls and the ribs of the frame, turning them as black and as shining as obsidian. The rich scent of creosote and burning pine surrounded him.

“This maze is meaningless, Sunchaser!” Roughly, he flipped the hide onto the hard-packed dirt floor and rubbed his eyes. “The only thing it’s done for my Dreaming is to give me headaches.”

For two cycles now, he had been trying to use the maze but had not been able to. Sunchaser claimed that the maze described the twists and turns of the road that led to the Land of the Dead. Catchstraw had never even been able to glimpse the road, let alone worry about its twists and turns.

Besides, his Dreaming had been deepening without the maze. In the past five moons, he’d made monumental strides. Odd that the Dreams began only after Sunchaser started missing Dances and staying away from the seacoast. Perhaps Sunchaser had been doing something to hinder Catchstraw’s progress? Anger seethed in his breast. Regardless, Catchstraw had learned to quiet his talkative soul, to relax his taut body.

But he still felt confused and angry most of the time. He had never come close to understanding the things the Great Dreamers proclaimed to be true. Sunchaser, for example, said that Father Sun’s Light penetrated all things, even the darkest lava tubes that wound through the belly of Sister Earth… and that anyone could learn to close his eyes and see it. Like the wind, Sunchaser said, the Light moved through every grain of sand on the beach, through every speck of dirt, every rock in the mountains, through humans, and through animals. He said that strands of that Light connected humans to all things so that every thought, every act, affected the whole. “Pure gibberish. Sunchaser just says those things to drive people crazy.” Catchstraw’s bushy gray brows drew down over his hooked nose. He remembered one bright day when the Steals Light People had been playing, acting fickle. Spring Girl would breathe warmth, then the Thunderbeings would gather and make it rain while they rumbled their amusement. Showers had come on after another throughout the morning, and by noon, runoff water had inundated the village. He’d kicked one of the miserable dogs that had decided to dig a hole beneath the wall of his lodge and let the water flood in. He’d launched the beast twelve hands high and clapped in delight when the dog yelped and landed rolling and scrambling. Sunchaser had been standing a few hands away, talking with Oxbalm, and had turned and frowned.

“Ah, Catchstraw,” he’d said in that curiously deep, soft voice of his, “by that act, you just weakened the stitching in the hides of your lodge. I pity you the next time it rains. If I were you, I’d rub those lodge seams with a thick coating of fat.” “What are you talking about? I didn’t touch my lodge.” “No,” Sunchaser said, “but the dog’s cry did.” The news had spread like wildfire, and, the next time it rained, people gathered around Catchstraw’s lodge and pointed and laughed as they watched it leak like a loosely woven net. The village children had run circles around his lodge, screaming and chanting offensive songs, while their despicable dogs barked in glee.