People of the Weeping Eye(112)

“The last thing I need to think of tonight are my darling wives.” He threw the empty bowl across the room. The wood split when it hit the wall.

He narrowed an eye, belched, and took a drink of water. She set her plate down when he gestured to her. She stood, stepping around the food bowls, and lowered herself to her knees where he indicated.

What is happening behind those half-lidded eyes? What twisted thoughts are lodged there?

His hand settled lightly on her arm. She flinched, then said, “I’m sorry. This will be difficult for me, but I will do my best.”

He traced a finger down from her shoulder to the tip of her breast. He was watching the leaping pulse in her neck.

The corner of his lip quivered as he grasped the neckline of her dress with both hands. Muscles bulged as he strained against the fabric. It gave with a loud rip, pearls pattering off like raindrops. Then he was on his feet, lifting her, spilling her out of the ruined dress. She flopped on the floor, naked and frightened.

She lay panting, staring up. Her wits had scattered like quail before a hunter. His smile victorious, he reached down and untied his apron, letting it fall away. Unable to help herself, she fixed on his penis, watching it rise and stiffen.

Submit! Heron Wing’s voice seemed to call from the very air.

This is it. Taking a deep breath, Morning Dew lay back, spreading her legs among the overturned dishes. Warm food slipped beneath her skin. She fixed her eyes on the soot-stained ceiling, fully aware that he had dropped to his knees between her legs. His hands stroked down the length of her thighs. The shudder that ran through her body was involuntary, and she tried to breathe deeply.

Think! What do you do next? “I’m sorry, War Chief. I’ll be dry.”

“Oh, I’ll fix that,” he told her hoarsely.

She stiffened when his finger speared into her, probing.

It’s only my body. He’s doing nothing that Screaming Falcon has not done before.

She pulled her head to the side and concentrated on one of the knots in the logs overhead, centering the eye of her souls on it as he settled his weight onto her. He drove himself into her as though trying to hammer her hips through the floor.

The knot. All that exists is the knot. She imagined the branch that had once grown from that dark eye, willed her souls into it the way an Alikchi Hopaii sent his souls through portals into other worlds. The branch was firm, the leaves it sprouted green, full with life and sap.

She was still lost in the knot when he gasped, moaned, and went limp. From under his stifling weight, she stared vacantly upward, wondering if laughter still lived anywhere on earth.





Two Petals sat backward in Old White’s canoe, her stumbling thoughts spinning like a whirwind. The river flowed around her, buoying her weight, spilling over her fingers when she reached over the side. Even the chilly breeze slipped effortlessly around her, as though in reluctant avoidance.

Why do I feel so desperate? Something terrible was coming. The Watcher loomed somewhere over the horizon. She could feel him, looking in her direction. A great black void was opening, lost somewhere in the days upriver.

The time Two Petals had spent in seclusion during her moon had been refreshing. For those precious moments she had sat in the dim interior of the abandoned house, bothered only by the voices and the disembodied Spirits that came to visit. The visions from her Dance with Sister Datura played between her souls in glowing images of light and color. The voices that whispered in the air around her were calm. And best of all, the world was no longer moving. Not like now. Not like on the river.

Movement made her ill. Her senses would swim, and she could feel herself becoming one with the current. Water was alive. It always sought to move. In growing desperation, she had tried to feel it, sense it, the way she would an animal. But no matter how she extended her senses, she couldn’t seem to reach the spirit of the water. When she called out to it from the canoe, she would catch Old White’s curious gaze on her as he paddled laboriously upstream. That he seemed to accept her eccentricities didn’t lessen the effect his evaluative stare had on her wobbling peace of mind.

At times she would feel the Watcher. She wasn’t sure who he was, only that he was aware of her. Sometimes, in the twilight, she’d catch a glimpse of his crystalline eyes. From the shadows, they’d stare at her, glittering and transparent. When they did, she could sense his curiosity and concern.

“Where are you?” she asked more than once, but the phantom image remained mute.

She had first seen him while Dancing with Sister Datura. From a whirlwind, she had looked down upon his wrapped face. He had glanced up in surprise, gazing at her through the cloth that covered his quartz eyes. Uttering a cry in a strange language, he had clutched at a shell gorget on his chest and held it up. She’d seen the design, three spinning triangles in the center surrounded by concentric circles, and a lobed margin that reminded her of flower petals.