“I’ve no interest in your body, Two Petals. Power sent me to you.” Old White stroked with his paddle and used the blade to steer. “Were I to untie you, would you try and leap out of the boat?”
She turned her shining eyes on him. Her voice dropped, as if straining from the effort to focus. Her face contorted as if with great effort. “What do you want, old man? Why did you come for me?”
“I’m headed south,” he replied wearily. “I have something to do before I die. Somehow, I think it’s time to see to the ashes.”
She nodded, eyes losing their focus, a frown dancing lightly across her forehead. “Turn me loose, I’ll be over the side in a heartbeat. Treat me kindly, and I’ll be gone like a shot arrow. Give me pain, and I’ll stick by you until you begin to think we’re joined in one body. I promise none of these things.”
Old White pursed his lips, lowering his chin onto his chest. “I have no idea what Power wants with the two of us. For all these years, my travels have been alone. Why I should need you is beyond me.”
“That’s all right, little boy, I know everything!” she chirped excitedly; then her expression dropped to one of confusion, the frown in her forehead deepening. “No. That’s not right. I know I know everything.”
“You’re sure you won’t run away first chance you get?”
“First chance? On my word, I’ll run like a deer.”
He chuckled under his breath, and balancing, leaned forward, untying the knots that bound her so tightly. “Just don’t capsize us when you wiggle free. The water’s cold, and I don’t swim so well these days.”
“I’ll do my best to tip us over, for sure,” she agreed solicitously as she began tossing off the binding ropes. “And if I went over the side, I’d flounder and sink like a rock.”
A faint smile bent his old lips. “We’ll make quite a pair, you and me.”
“Just us, just us,” she chortled, making a face as circulation began to pain parts of her limbs. “Boring, boring, boring. He’ll never find us now.”
He’ll never find us? “Who? Who is he?”
She cried out as she rubbed the blood back into her arms. “That feels so good! Like the caress of a lover!”
“Who will never find us?” he demanded in frustration.
“No one,” she answered simply, as if it were all forgotten. She had shifted, gasping as she bent her legs and arms. With a deep sigh, she flipped over onto her stomach atop his packs, and hung her head over the gunwale. “Look, I can see through the air!”
Old White lifted his eyes to the heavens, where yet another V could be seen high in the sky. This time the faint tooting sounds told him the migrants were blue herons headed south. “Why me?” he wondered.
“Because of the future,” Two Petals whispered. “It’s completely forgotten about you.”
It was said that in the beginning times only water and sky existed. Crawfish brought mud up from the depths to establish the first land. A great buzzard had flown over the muddy mass, its huge wings beating down the valleys and raising the mountains with each stroke. And then the great serpents emerged from the Underworld.
Snakes were water beings. They called the rains and clustered around springs, passing between the worlds. Like all waterways, the Horned Serpent River had been created when giant serpents crawled down from the heights, their bellies dredging the channels. To this day, the water flowed, its movements mimicking the motions of those great serpents. One need but watch the river to see the coiling of its muscular currents and catch the shimmering of waves that caught the sunlight like scales.
Over the years, the Horned Serpent’s channel had cut its southerly path through rolling hills covered with pine and hardwoods. Its tributaries flowed past broken beds of sandstone and limestone that grayed and weathered in the sun. Below the forested ridges and hills, terraces protruded into the river’s course, forming flat promontories around which sluggish swamp waters had to pass. It was to these farmlands overlooking the floodplain’s rich soils that the ancestors of the Chahta People had come.
Like all Mos’kogee people, the Chahta divided themselves into moieties: the White Arrow and Red Arrow. In their movement east from the Father Water, they had established holdings along the Pearl River before moving into the Horned River Valley. The hills and valleys of the Horned Serpent were occupied by scattered groups of hunters and farmers. These loosely related villagers called themselves the Biloxi.
Working feverishly, the Chahta had ringed the old-growth forest trees, allowing them to die. During the dry days of fall they set fire to the dead trees. The following spring they labored amidst the blackened stumps, hoeing, tilling the ash-rich soil, and planting fields of corn, beans, and squash. In smaller gardens they grew tobacco, mandrake, ground potatoes, datura, and rattlesnake master.