“I saw some women unload a basket of fish from a canoe as we were leaving,” Trader said. “But no, you’d think with that many people, some man would have come in with a deer, opossum, turkeys, or what have you.”
“So, where are the men?” Old White blew another cloud of smoke up at the mosquitoes.
“And why is Old Woman Fox so insistent that we get her granddaughter out of Split Sky City before the first new moon after the equinox?” Trader shot him a clever look, answering his own question. “Because Great Cougar did his cunning best to mislead us. But the Sky Hand have scouts everywhere, enough so that they are exchanging jabs with the Chahta scouts. Each side knows the other is watching vigilantly.”
“My guess,” Old White mused, “is that Great Cougar is somehow counting on that.”
“He plans to use the large number of Chikosi scouts against the Sky Hand?” Trader looked up at the sky, now clouded over. Around them, the forest was dark. Somewhere in the river, a fish splashed, and an owl hooted in the trees behind them. “He could make a feint. Display a mass of warriors in the south, draw the Sky Hand strength in that direction.”
“Possible.”
“Or he could send a large band through the forest, looping around the rough country to the north, bypassing most of the scouts.”
“Also possible.”
Trader looked at Two Petals. “What is our future, Contrary? Are we the deciding factor? What does Power want us to do?”
Her hands were fluttering in that odd way of hers. “The current is strong, isn’t it? Traveling like this, paddle, paddle. This is your river, Trader; only you can ascend it.” She paused before adding, “She knows you’re coming. Her heart is torn.”
“Who knows? She who?” Trader asked. Gods, you ask her one question, only to receive a different answer.
“Why, both of them, of course,” Two Petals stated positively, as if only a fool wouldn’t understand what she was talking about.
“Well,” Old White mused as he knocked his pipe out and pulled his fabric bag close, “we’ve time to think about it.” He glanced at Paunch. “I just wish he was younger. It would be nice if he could paddle like a youth instead of just splashing water about.”
Trader knocked out his own pipe. “Maybe that’s all any of us are doing, Seeker. Just splashing aimlessly toward something we can’t even imagine.”
“Finally,” Two Petals said with relief. “I wondered why it was taking you so long.”
Trader rolled out his bedding, climbing beneath the thick blanket into relative protection from the swarm of mosquitoes. He lay there, aware of the dying fire and the night sounds in the forest. A fox yipped and squealed somewhere. He could hear a beaver gnawing on one of the cottonwoods at the water’s edge.
Ever since nosing into the Black Warrior’s waters, he’d been on edge, his nerves pulled tight. I am going home. For the first time it was real.
He tried to imagine what it would be like to land below the city. A disturbing mixture of anticipation mixed with dread in his breast. Images replayed of that last night, of running from the Men’s House in a blind panic, how he’d stolen a canoe, pushing it off into the waters of this same river. That time he’d gone north; now he returned from the south: full circle. Headed back to the place his Dreams had died.
I am not the youth who fled. I return a different man. But was he? Had all those years on the rivers made him into someone he hadn’t been that night when he struck down his brother?
He swallowed hard, clamping his eyes shut at the wheeling images. After losing everything, what kind of fool ever believed he could get any of it back? Would he have to look into Flying Hawk’s eyes, see the censure for becoming what his uncle had insisted that he not be?
And Heron Wing? What would her reaction be? How did he tell her what he had gone through? How did he tell another man’s wife that he was sorry?
He heard the rustle of fabric and looked up. Two Petals stood over his bed, her face turned down, hair spilling around her. She dropped to her knees, pulling her dress up over her head.
“What are you doing?” Trader whispered, uncomfortably aware of her naked body as she reached for his blanket.
“I don’t understand,” she said, sliding in beside him and tugging on his shirt. “This would feel better sleeping by itself tonight.”
He grudgingly pulled his shirt off, feeling her cool skin next to his. “Two Petals, are you sure this is a good idea?”
She ran her hands over his chest, tracing the lines of rib and muscle. One by one, she rolled his nipples under her fingers. The effect was electric. “There is no such thing as a good idea. They fly like birds, lighting here and there.” Her fingers slipped down across the ripple of his belly, twining in his pubic hair before tracing around his tightening scrotum. He drew a deep breath, tensing.