Indecision weighed on Trader like a great stone. Frozen, he tried to comprehend what was happening. Adding to his confusion, Two Petals stood and pointed between her breasts. “Right here, that’s where you’ll shoot me.” Then she walked calmly past him, Swimmer bouncing at her heels, tail wagging.
Trader shook his head as if to dislodge a swarm of insects and realized he was standing in the darkness, his bow at full draw, pointed at nothing.
He sighed, allowing the arrow to slowly slide between his fingers. When he stepped around the house wall, it was to find the Seeker inspecting his precious copper. Two Petals and Swimmer were just as engrossed with his roasting duck.
“No wonder you were wary,” the Seeker said, looking up in amazement. “You could buy an entire town with that.”
“Where … Where did you come from?” was all he could ask.
“I never had a mother,” Two Petals replied. “This duck is little more than charred ash.”
He glanced at the duck, still only lightly browned. The inside would still be raw.
“It’s not even warm inside.”
“I know,” the Seeker said. “You get used it.” A pause. “I think.”
Trader still had wits enough to note the wooden pack that the Seeker had lowered to the floor. Atop it lay a cloth bag, something heavy inside. The other pack that the old man had placed on the ground lay partially open, a stack of something that looked like acorn bread inside.
“This is a Dream,” Trader told himself.
“We should be so lucky,” the Seeker muttered, straightening from the copper.
“Why are you here?” he insisted. “How did you find this place?”
“Ask her.” The Seeker jutted a thumb in Two Petals’ direction. “Had it been up to me, I’d have made camp upriver just before dark.” He glanced around. “But not as nice a one as this.”
“That’s right,” Two Petals insisted as she turned the duck on its spit. “No secrets between us. All is as clear as the night sky.”
Trader looked up, seeing that clouds had covered the last of the stars.
“Yes.” The Seeker turned speculative eyes on Trader. “That’s the question, isn’t it? Why would Two Petals lead me up some obscure stream in the darkness to a young Trader with a fortune in copper?”
“I have no idea,” Two Petals insisted. Her tongue protruded from the side of her mouth, a dedicated expression fixed on the cooking duck. “The notion would never have lodged in my souls, that’s for sure.”
“Are you both crazier than head-struck geese?” Trader demanded.
“After two days in a canoe with her,” the Seeker noted, “it might be a relief to find out I was.”
“Acorn cakes would be terrible with this duck,” Two Petals insisted. “I’d rather eat mud.”
“Tomorrow, I say we all go our separate ways,” Trader insisted, knowing full well he wasn’t going to get a wink of sleep that night. His war club was going to be ready in his hands. At the first hostile move, he’d spring to his feet and brain them both.
“Separate ways,” Two Petals agreed. “Three is too many. Never make it to Split Sky City that way.”
“Split Sky City?” A cold shiver ran down Trader’s back. “What do you know about Split Sky City?”
“Been there a lot,” she said. “And I never saw you try to kill any man there.”
The old man was watching Trader the way an osprey might a sunning fish. “You look like you’ve just seen a ghost, Trader.”
Fourteen
In all of her life, Morning Dew had seen nothing to match the day of her marriage. The night before, she had stood at the high gate atop the palace mound. Despite the light rain that fell, she could see a sea of campfires out beyond the palisade. That entire day had been a confusion of introductions. She had met the chiefs from this village and that, the clan leaders, two chiefs, and no less than five subchiefs of the Natchez. All of the Chahta lineages had sent either their leaders or distinguished representatives.
Through it all, she had sat beside her mother just to the right of Biloxi’s panther-hide-covered tripod in the great hall. Behind her had been the huge wooden carving of Falcon, his wings spread, talons wide as if to grasp prey. The great bird’s mouth gaped, its tongue protruding the way it would in a terrifying scream.
She had been dressed in her finery, as befitted the daughter of Sweet Smoke, matron of the Chief Clan, and the sister of Biloxi Mankiller, high minko of the Chahta. Through it all, she had acted with the modesty and decorum expected of so exalted a woman. She had seen approval in Old Woman Fox’s dignified nods.