People of the Weeping Eye (North America's Forgotten Past) (21 page)

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Authors: W. Michael Gear,Kathleen O'Neal Gear

BOOK: People of the Weeping Eye (North America's Forgotten Past)
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“Have you thought about asking him to divorce you?” Violet Bead asked dryly.
“Is it that obvious?”
Like most co-wives, they had never been particularly close, but they tolerated each other better than most.
Violet Bead glanced around to be sure they couldn’t be overheard. “I’ve been thinking about it myself. The father of my children was almost caught the other day. He was slipping himself inside some Fish Clan woman. Her husband went looking for her when his supper wasn’t cooked. He even looked in the granary where they were coupling. Fortunately, she’d been wise enough to pile the corn so he didn’t see them.”
“It will happen eventually. It always does.” The Sky Hand People vigorously punished loose behavior among married people. Men were merely humiliated until they outlived it; but women were disfigured, often outcast, and sometimes killed for infidelity. Heron Wing studied Violet Bead from the corner of her eye. The woman liked the trappings of wealth and status that came from being Smoke Shield’s wife, and having a house so close to the great mound. She also liked the affection and attention of men. More than once Heron Wing had observed shadowy male figures slipping into Violet Bead’s house late at night. Assuming she survived discovery, and could induce Smoke Shield to divorce her, what would she do? Heron Wing had little doubt that she would join the professional caste of women who freely sold their services. Even in their chaste society, such females enjoyed a certain stylish status, if not respect.
Violet Bead shot her a knowing look.
Heron Wing said softly, “One of the curses of being raised with everything is that you never understand that not everything can be yours.”
“Are you speaking of yourself, or him?”
Heron Wing ignored the slight, attempting to mislead Violet Bead’s thoughts. “Young and beautiful as you
are, it wouldn’t be long before someone was talking to your mother about another marriage.”
“So, why haven’t you pressed him to divorce you?”
Because I am a trophy more than a wife.
“There are benefits for my clan,” she lied.
“I hate politics.”
“Unfortunately it crawls into your bed along with your husband when you marry the man who will be high minko.”
Violet Bead asked, “Are you sure it’s just the prestige that keeps you together?”
“Meaning what?”
“Nothing.” Violet Bead was staring at the river, her beautiful face expressionless as a dance mask. “I have to get back. There are dishes to clean.”
Heron Wing watched the woman turn and head back through the crowd.
Divorce.
The word sounded so alien, so impossible.
Why had she ever married Smoke Shield? Ah, the foolish decisions of youth. When Green Snake left, she should have severed all ties with the Chief Clan. Better that Breath Giver had never blessed the young with passion. It led them to wrong choices.
Heron Wing bent down and collected Stone’s hand. Her son’s fingers were grimy with the black soil. Despite her reluctant hopes, the past continued to cling to her like old spiderwebs.
 
 
I
n the Dream, Old White stood before a burning building, flames racing into the sky. The fire roared, searing his face and hands. Step by step he backed away, turning to run into the night. At the sight that greeted his eyes, he stopped short, seeing the high Azteca temple. The firelight cast the great pyramid’s stone sides in a crimson light. Only as he looked closer could he tell that the
stones seemed to be moving, writhing and swaying in time to the leaping flames.
Not stone. Bodies. The whole thing was made of blood-smeared bodies. Each had a gaping chest that opened and closed like a bloody mouth. They turned horrified faces toward him and fixed agonized gazes on his.
Behind him the fire seemed to eat into his flesh, pushing him ever closer to the hideous temple. One by one, the bodies began to reach out, blood-caked fingers like claws in the night.
“No,” he whispered.
He tried to raise his hands, only to find them weighted. He gasped at the sight of his right hand. The war club it held was heavy stone, gleaming wetly with blood. Desperately he sought to loosen his grip, but the blood seemed to have welded it to him like glue.
He started to raise his left hand, to use it to pry the other free, and stared in horror at the beating heart it held.
“Gods!” He jerked awake, feeling the heat at his back. Scrambling away, he discovered that in his sleep he’d rolled next to Silver Loon’s fire. His blanket was smoldering.
Cursing, he flung it off, rose to his feet, and stomped the smoking fabric into submission.
“What’s all this?” Silver Loon asked, sitting up in her bed and blinking.
“Bad Dream.”
“Nothing new for you. In the old days, I actually stooped to drugging you when I wanted a full night’s sleep. A little crushed nightshade in your tea.”
Old White muttered and stared at his blackened blanket. Rays of light were streaming through gaps in the thatch. Morning had come.
“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.
“This is madness!”
“So her father believed.” Silver Loon lifted the garment from the trampled snow on the stairs.
“A young naked woman, walking into Black Tooth’s lair? Gods, we’ve got to hurry.”
Reaching the top, they found the gate unguarded. The palisade itself, imposing from so far below, was a rickety thing, braced by slanting poles where the bases of the walls had rotted out. The miracle was that the last storm hadn’t toppled it.
He might have been sick with worry, but he still marveled at the expanse of the high plaza before the brooding building. Old White hobbled desperately across the lower plaza, climbed the last set of steps, and entered the gate surrounding the three-story palace. This, too, was abandoned.
Gods, any sentries were probably waiting their turns at poor Two Petals. Somehow he managed to goad himself onward, approaching the palace itself. The building, despite dilapidation, was nevertheless impressive. Plaster had cracked off here and there, and he could see daylight through the upper-story logs. In places old cloth had been pressed into cracks to stop the draft.
The door was a thick wooden thing made of parallel poles. He muscled it to one side and led the way into the gloomy interior. No one seemed to notice. All attention was fixed on Two Petals as she stood before whatever kind of man Black Tooth had become. A roar of laughter broke from the men and women who crowded around. For her part, Two Petals seemed completely at ease. Her long hair hung down her slim back, reaching to her rounded bottom.
Old White took a quick glance around the room. Worn hides covered a floor where matting once would have lain. He could see more daylight through cracks in the walls. The hearth that should have held a grand fire cupped what would have served to cook a meager meal.
Black Tooth appeared fascinated. He sat jauntily on a three-legged stool like a high minko. The tripod, according to Cahokian legend, represented the three worlds—Sky, Earth, and Underground—all acting in support of the lord. The stool was draped with a silky black bear hide. The one that hung over Black Tooth’s shoulders was an equally prime specimen.
The man had aged, but his thick body still intimidated, and the red war shirt he wore did little to hide packed muscle. Scars crisscrossed the man’s wide face. Sometime in the past, a wicked blow had smashed his nose flat and crooked. For the moment, his head was back, laughter rolling up and out of his gut. Legs, corded with muscle, were as thick as logs. He held a stone mace chipped in the shape of a turkey tail clutched in his scarred hands. Two of his fingers were missing on the left.
“And what,” Black Tooth asked in a booming voice, “would possess me to do that?”
“The long life that stretches before you,” Two Petals said with an eerie certainty.
Again Black Tooth roared with delight, eliciting peals from the crowd. He said, “I will let you and the old man go? Just like that? Without paying tribute for passage
through my lands? What do you think I am? Some petty chief awed by the Seeker’s reputation?”
“No,” Two Petals replied, a tone of great wonder in her voice. “You are the greatest lord of Cahokia that has ever existed. A thousand years from now, your name will be on every tongue.”
This time he didn’t laugh, but cocked his head. “Ah yes, we will rebuild Cahokia.” He lifted the mace, symbol of rulership since the time Morning Star first cut the tail from Cannibal Turkey and placed it on his staff. “Once more, the great temples shall rise, and again, the rulers of all lands will flock here.”

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