“Well, I should thank my lucky stones that you didn’t bear a grudge. Who knows what sort of—” He stopped short. Two Petals’ bed was empty, the blankets rumpled. “Two Petals?” he called out, stepping to the rear and staring into the back room. Only more jars, boxes, and piled hides met his gaze. “Where is she?”
“Perhaps she awakened and stepped outside to relieve herself. It’s been two days. Her insides had to be full.”
He hurried to the door and looked out at the snow. No more than a finger of it covered the ground. Outside was a maze of tracks: his, the locals’, Silver Loon’s. He walked out to the edge of the mound, staring down the steep stairs. At the bottom, the tracks went this way and that. Two Petals was nowhere to be seen on the flat mound top.
“There she is,” Silver Loon said, pointing as she stepped out the doorway.
Old White followed her finger across the plaza to the distant figure climbing the stairs on the great mound.
“Rot and pus,” Old White muttered. “What does she think she’s doing? The last thing she needs is to set that Black Tooth off.”
He ran for his coat, grabbing up his packs and shrugging them on. He plucked his Trader’s staff from where it rested against the wall. Silver Loon pulled on tall moccasins, then wrapped a wolf hide around her shoulders. “This is not good,” she muttered as she followed Old White out. “Watch your step! The stairs are icy. We’ll do the girl no good if you fall and break your foolish old head!”
Despite several near missteps, Old White made it to the bottom. He took Silver Loon’s hand, helping her down the last steps and over an icy patch.
Halfway across the plaza, he was breathless. “Not as young as I used to be.”
“None of us are,” she panted. “Did you really once chase me for miles through the woods?”
“Caught you, too. And some race it was. Never knew a woman who could run like you.”
She jabbed at him. “I’m glad you remember.”
“It was a memorable event.”
“Thought you’d be too winded for anything else. Surprised me, you did.”
“That was the time you scratched my back into shreds.”
“It was a passionate night.”
He forced the image of moonlight gleaming on her naked body from his souls, and put his energy into running, or whatever it was his flaccid muscles and creaking bones were doing. From a distance it would have looked more like a hobbling skip. With each step his stone-weighted fabric pack bounced painfully against his upper thigh.
They gasped and wheezed up to the foot of the great mound stairway.
“Gods, is that really that high?” he asked.
“Higher. Wait until you’re halfway up,” she managed, and started up the ice-clad steps. “Be extra careful. You slip on these, you’ll be dead pulp by the time you hit the bottom.”
He couldn’t help it. He had to stop and catch his breath. Not once, but time after time. His legs throbbed and ached; his lungs burned. Feeling light-headed, he had to steady himself just to get his balance back.
Two steps higher, they found the moccasin. “It’s Two Petals’,” Old White said, picking it up. “But I don’t understand. It’s been untied.”
“Perhaps Sister Datura still Dances with her.”
As he looked up, worry spurred him on. He’d met Black Tooth once, when the Dehegiha had been a young man, blustery and devoted to warfare and raiding. Back then, he’d been a mountain of muscle, scarred from battles, with more of a reputation as a thief and raider than as a war chief.
“Why is he up here?” Old White asked as they stopped for air. “How come … no one’s … driven him … off?”
“Mostly,” she puffed, “no one cares.”
The lords of Cahokia must have been stewing in the Afterworld. But when he looked around from the heights, Old White could understand. A handful of small farmsteads stood here and there, and one small village was nestled among the abandoned earthworks. Was this all that was left of Cahokia’s greatness? The thin fuzz of tree patches that had sprung up like mold was proof that the forest had begun the process of reclaiming the land.
The next moccasin lay abandoned five steps up.
“What’s she doing?” Silver Loon asked. “Her feet will freeze.”
Old White plucked up the second moccasin, running his fingers over the soft leather.
Worry burned bright inside him when he found the blue dress Silver Loon had been making for Two Petals. Cold sunlight sparkled on the patterns of shells sewn into the fabric where it draped over three of the stairs.