People of the Weeping Eye(47)

“I seem to have that gift.”

She squatted by the fire, pressing her reed-thin hands to her ears, as if blocking out the noise that only Two Petals seemed to hear. “Power has always crackled around you like lighting on a summer night. What are you calling yourself these days?”

“Old White.”

She lifted a suspicious eyebrow. “The Seeker?”

“Some have called me that.”

For the first time, a faint smile bent her lips. “I should have kept you. Together, you and I would have remade the world.”

“As I recall, it was my decision to leave.”

She grunted under her breath. “You have no idea how well I recall that morning. I woke up to find you missing from my bed. I had no idea what you’d done. Not until later that morning when I found the goose you’d drawn in the dirt outside my door.” She closed her eyes, expression pained. “I loved you. Loved you as no man I have ever known.” She swallowed hard. “And you didn’t even have the guts to tell me you were leaving.”

“I was younger then. Once, long ago, I set fire to my souls. It was consuming them, burning me from the inside out.”

“Is that what drove you from my bed? A fire in your souls?”

“It would seem that it has driven me to the ends of the earth.”

“And what did you find, Seeker, that I could not have given you?”

He frowned, meeting her hot glare. “The telling of it would take a lifetime.”

“And are you still burning?”

“For a while yet, yes.”

She snorted derisively, jerking her head toward Two Petals, who seemed frozen, her head tilted, eyes squinted as if against pain. “And what of her? Do you expect her to douse your flames?”

“I do not yet understand the role that she will play. I suspect, however, that it will be most interesting.”

Silver Loon took a deep breath. “Well, come. Sit here and share the fire while the meal cooks. If I couldn’t understand you as a young man, why should I expect to now, after all these years?”

He turned, placing a hand on Two Petals’ shoulder. “Come, girl. You’re chilled to the bone. Warm yourself. Then, later, you can tell Silver Loon about the voices you hear.”

He pressed her down, and she sank like a green plant whose stems resisted bending. Old White then shrugged out of his cedar-wood pack and lowered his stone-weighted bag to the floor.

Silver Loon indicated the latter. “I see that you still carry that. I would have thought by now you’d have Traded it off, or buried it somewhere.”

“I am bound to it by blood.”

“You carry more burdens than most, Lost Man.”

He extended his hands to the warmth. “It has been a long time since I’ve gone by that name.”

“Then perhaps we aren’t so different, you and I.”





Ten

With the coming of the storm, Trader fought the current to nose his canoe into a small creek that fed the Father Water. Swimmer perched at the bow, sniffing and switching his tail in lazy expectation. The narrow stream was deeply incised, exposing yellow silt, the trees almost touching overhead. At a trail crossing, he paused long enough to land, walk into the trees, and bury his copper. Thus reassured, he and Swimmer had paddled another half-hand’s journey up the creek to a village euphemistically called Sun Pearl. Though, in all of his previous stays, he had never understood what could have fostered such an optimistic title for such a pitiful bunch of thatch and bark houses behind a flimsy palisade.

What Sun Pearl Village did have, however, was a hot fire, a dry bed, and a warm woman by the name of Fox Squirrel. For a trinket, she would take a lonely Trader in for the night, feed him a cooked meal of pumpkin, boiled sunflower seeds, corn cakes, and whatever sweets she had on hand.

While the villagers were Dehegiha—allegedly descended from one of the towns north of Cahokia Creek—they now lived as mere shadows of the high chiefs who had sat at the Great Sun’s court high atop Cahokia.

Fox Squirrel, however, came from a different background. She called herself Dené, and claimed to be from a people in the far northwest. Stolen as a child, she had passed from people to people, working her way down the western rivers to end up here. Rumor had it that more than one Trader had offered to take her away, but for reasons of her own, she stayed in Sun Pearl Village. There, over the years, she had amassed quite a bit of wealth, everything from pots of yaupon, sharks’ teeth, conch and whelk shell, strings of beads, jars full of olivella shells, flats of copper, and a luxurious supply of finely tanned furs.

For the moment, Trader was thoroughly enjoying one of those selfsame furs—in this instance, a softly tanned cougar hide on which he lay, naked, while cracking hazelnuts between a stone pestle and mortar. Every other one, he shared with Fox Squirrel, who lay just as naked, her warm skin pressed against his.