People of the Weeping Eye(3)
“Go to her,” the old woman said. “I can see her in your eyes. Powerful, this one. So very Powerful.”
“She has called me from across half a world. Will she kill me?” he wondered. “Is that why I Dream the fire in her eyes? Will she burn me to restore the balance?”
The old woman lifted her shoulder in a careless shrug.
How characteristic of her. The Forest Witch had never hidden the truth or played games with him, never smoothed the rough edges of life. Not even back then, when he’d been frightened, lonely, and horrified. Now, as he looked at her age-ravaged face, sadness filled his breast.
“What are you thinking?” she asked.
“That I would make you beautiful again. That I would go back to that morning I found you by the stream, and we would live it all over again.”
“And that you would never leave?”
He nodded.
“I thought you had ceased to delude yourself with foolishness. Wasn’t it doing ‘what had to be done’ that got you into this in the first place?”
He stared at her over the roasting ducks.
“Of course it was,” she answered for him. “We’re both beings of Power, you and I, so let’s stop wishing for what never could have been and eat these ducks. Then, tomorrow, fool-who-loved-me, you can be on your way north.”
“North? Upriver? But she points south in the Dream.”
“You say that she touches you with fire, but it freezes your flesh?”
He nodded.
“She points south, but you can only see north? Upriver?”
“Confusing, isn’t it?”
“Contraries generally are.”
He shot a quizzical glance her way, then felt the certainty of it. “I should have known.”
“Oh, I think you did. Coming here was a way of admitting what you already knew. You’re bringing the circle full. What was begun must be ended.” She paused. “Wait, I have something for you.” She pulled at the grease-black leather thong around her neck. From inside her dress came a small hide bag closed with a drawstring. This she opened, fishing out a little red stone object.
He looked down after she placed it in his hand. The small potbellied owl with its cocked head and masked eyes rested warmly against his skin. The circle come fully closed. Beginning and ending.
“Perhaps, when this is done …” He couldn’t finish.
She extended her withered arm across the hearth to place a finger on his lips. “A lie is as venomous when told to yourself as it is when told to others. Tomorrow, go. And never come back here, my vanished love.”
“Is that all that is left to us?”
“The only reason you ever came to me was to leave.” She smiled wearily as she used a stick to turn the ducks where they roasted among the embers. “Go, find this woman of fire who freezes in your Dreams. I have given you all that I can. With the return of that little owl, we owe nothing more to each other.”
The Copper Lands lay along the rocky western shores of the great lakes. Some called them the Freshwater Seas. For generations local peoples had mined sacred copper from the green-crusted rocks. Copper was Traded the length and breadth of the great rivers. Beaten flat, sculpted into images of gods, heroes, and sacred shapes, it was prized by the great lords of the south for its polished beauty. Shaped into ax heads, maces, and jewelry, the mere possession of it demonstrated a man’s authority, wealth, and status. Ownership of copper was the province of chiefs and chieftesses, of Priests, Dreamers, and great warriors. The mighty and influential adorned their bodies and buildings with it, and the lucky few carried it with them to their graves.
A small nugget of copper was worth a man’s life. Empires had risen and fallen over its control. While occasional small nuggets had been found in the southeastern mountains, the finest copper came from around the great freshwater lakes. Mostly the locals mined it, hammered it into shape, and Traded it downriver. But on occasion, a willing individual with more than his fair share of ambition dickered with the local tribes for the right to mine his own.
The man known as Trader wiped a gritty sleeve across his sweat-streaked face and looked up at the gray scudding clouds. They came in low over the choppy waters of the great lake, driven by a wet and pregnant north wind. Trader could smell the moisture, cool, promising rain and dreary skies.
For three days he had worked in this hole. Spoil dirt from generations of previous excavators had trickled down the steep slope. From the lip of the hole, Trader had a good view of the river valley below, where Snow Otter’s village—a cluster of bark-sided lodges—stood on a knoll above the sandy beach. Canoes, looking like dark sticks from this distance, were pulled up on the bank. Smoke puffed from the lodges in blue wreaths.