Trader scratched the back of his neck. Not for the first time did it strike him as strange that a person could get used to such talk. “I suppose I’d better go over and kick Paunch awake.”
Old White nodded. “I’m wondering if it wouldn’t have been better if he’d run away with his granddaughter. At least then we wouldn’t have to feed him.”
“Away? Oh, no. She’s running straight toward us,” Two Petals said thoughtfully. “Running forward, running, running, right into the future.”
A shiver traced down Trader’s spine. He had an image: an almost mythical female, bathed in moonlight, rising and falling, a look of wonder on her face as she rode his hard shaft. Even now he wasn’t sure that it hadn’t been a Dream.
Trader asked, “You think we should have gone after her?”
Old White shrugged. “Ask the Contrary. She was the one who told me to let her go.”
“You should have run her down,” Two Petals agreed. “That way you could have stopped the future. Chopped it off clean, like a root from a seedling.” She glanced at Trader. “What Power you wield, Trader.”
He barely kept himself from cringing at her tone. “I’m just me.”
“Isn’t that what I said?”
To change the subject, he picked up his pack, walked over, and nudged Paunch awake. “Can you carry our packs down to the canoes?”
“Of course, young master,” Paunch said with a yawn. “I guess I must have dozed off.”
“We would never have guessed.” Trader dropped his pack and went back to where Old White was lacing his closed.
They watched as Paunch began picking up their Trade, ready to follow him back down the path to the landing, when a boy ran up, his hair tangled, skin smudged with soot.
“You are the Traders?” he asked, as if there were any others in the town.
“We are,” Old White said easily. “And who might you be?”
“I am White Cricket!” The boy tapped his skinny chest proudly. “The old matron would like to see you.”
Two Petals laughed to herself. “Let us pull another thread tightly into place. Can’t they see how this fabric is forming?”
Trader shared Old White’s mystified look.
“Very well,” the Seeker said, and followed in the boy’s wake.
Trader ambled along behind, passing the corner of the high minko’s mound. The lad led them to a newly constructed house, its walls freshly plastered; the thatch roofing looked ratty. Normally grass was cut in the summer when it was lush and green, allowed to sun dry, and then bundled into shocks before being tied to the roof poles. Winter grasses were brittle, did not compress well, and barely lasted a season. This had been a rush job, just enough to keep the occupants sheltered until summer, when the place could be reroofed.
“Aunt?” the boy called at the door. “I’ve brought them.”
“Let them enter,” a reedy voice called.
Trader followed Old White into the house, Two Petals coming behind.
The room was barely furnished, the poles for the roof and bed freshly cut. No matting lay on the beaten-dirt floor. A puddle-clay hearth contained a small fire. Blue smoke rose to pool under the roof and leak out the eaves. A single wooden box rested just this side of the hearth, its carved sides decorated with the cross-in-circle emblem of the sacred fire. Pearls had been inset into the design, and sections of shell gleamed whitely where they had been inlaid into the dark wood.
An old woman sat on one of the benches, her gray hair pulled up and pinned in place with eagle feathers. She had a bearskin cape over her shoulders, and wore nothing but a long skirt that hung down just past her knees. Too many summers had withered her flesh, stooped her shoulders, and left her breasts sagging like empty sacks. Her eyes, however, ensured she wouldn’t be mistaken for an empty husk—they burned with a fevered intensity, as though fiery souls inhabited the used-up flesh.
“Greetings,” Old White said. “I am known as the Seeker.”
“So I have heard.” She gave him a thoughtful scrutiny. “I knew you, once, long ago. You shared the Great Sun’s fire among the Natchez. I was at that feast. Twenty, perhaps twenty-five winters past? You had come from the far southeast, telling tales of Traders from the islands out in the gulf. As I recall you brought a wonderful tobacco that you Traded. You said you were headed west.”
Old White smiled. “I remember that night. People wouldn’t let me sit down. They wanted to hear more. I had to answer question after question.”
Trader gave him a dull look. When was that ever not the case?
“And now you are here,” the old woman mused. “I am called Old Woman Fox now.”