People of the Weeping Eye(44)

“Her name is Lichen. She lives here.”

“Who?”

“Lichen,” she told him crossly. “This woman walking along with us.”

Old White followed her pointing finger, seeing nothing but trampled grass beside the trail.

Two Petals had gone back to listening, saying, “Yes, I’ll be careful.”

“Careful of what?” Old White asked.

“Black Tooth.”

He grunted. Everyone was careful of Black Tooth. Word must have traveled as far north as her village. “What else does this Lichen tell you?”

“Oh, about when evil Tharon lived here.”

“You’ve heard of him?” He shot her a glance, happy that she was having a good day. He had been worried that she’d float away to wherever her Contrary soul went. For the moment, her imaginary friend and the giant building atop its brown grass-clad mound filled her world.

“They burned him as a witch. Lichen says that he broke Cahokia’s power. That after that, in the reign of Petaga, a great war broke out.”

“There has always been war,” he grumbled. “It runs in our veins like fire. It is the heat that warms our flesh.”

She said nothing as they started up the winding trail from Cahokia Creek landing. Old White dedicated himself to the climb. He made the first switchback and stopped, puffing to catch his breath. “The first time I came here, I trotted up this like a yearling deer. Age is an inevitable curse.”

“Curses are never inevitable,” she murmured. Her hands were moving in a sort of fluttering agitation that he’d grown accustomed to. Sometimes she’d tap her fingers in a perfect synchrony.

He turned his attention to the city. Gods, even in his lifetime he had watched Cahokia deteriorate. How many times had armies sacked this place since the days of Tharon and Petaga? How many peoples had conquered the once capital, thinking that they would restore the Power here?

“Once Power is gone,” Two Petals said, “it flies like the birds. North and south, settling here and there. You’d think there would be droppings under the branches.”

“Do you hear my thoughts?”

“Never.”

He gave her a worried glance and attacked the last of the trail. Stopping at the top, he stared. Old sections of palisade had fallen, the wood rotting. On the flat before him, grass waved in the wind where it hadn’t been beaten flat. Small copses of trees had sprung up between the tall square mounds. Had he not been here before, he would have thought the landscape hilly, but each hillock had once supported a grand building. Only a few temples remained standing; most mounds were topped with low piles of debris, their fallen structures looted of logs for building materials or firewood. Occasional patches of brown corn stalks rattled in the wind, but even they looked ratty, many having been taken for fuel.

“It’s huge,” Two Petals announced. “See the people! Hear the Singing?” Then she pirouetted around in a circle, her arms spread wide. “So many people. All Singing. The world is alive with Song.”

He shook his head, seeing the vacancy that now filled her eyes. A shiver prickled along his skin, more than just the cold wind with its threat of rain. The change came on her so quickly.

“Look at this,” she chimed, clambering over the rotting logs of the fallen palisade. “It’s all green and alive.” They were passing between the great mound and a line of four smaller mounds capped with saplings that grew out of the debris. “Who is playing chunkey over there?” She pointed at a forlorn cornfield. “Look how he’s dressed. Have you ever seen such colorful feathers? He could be made of living copper.”

If a chunkey court had once existed there, it was long gone. “You’re seeing ghosts, Two Petals.”

“They glow,” she said, rapt in wonder. “I think they’re made of sunlight.”

He glanced up at the skulking clouds. A little sunlight would be nice. He led the way forward, glancing down to see a partial human skeleton eroding out of a hole where a badger had disturbed the soil. The brown bones were flaking away, the skull crushed, dark orbits flattened, yellowed teeth like sordid pearls in the broken jaws.

Had the great lords ever dreamed their grand city would come to this? He looked up at the sparse palisade surrounding the temple atop the great mound. Black Tooth, the chief who lived there, belonged to one of the Dehegihan tribes, but most of his people were farther to the west now, living on the prairie edge of the Great Plains. The man was reputed to be something of a madman, but he still organized a Trade fair here every summer solstice, as if living on the legends of the past. Most of his energies went into maintaining the tall building atop the mound, as if that grandeur alone could maintain the Power of Cahokia.