People of the Weeping Eye (North America's Forgotten Past) (26 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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As she made her way through the bodies—many of them crudely scalped—it began to dawn on her: mostly children, women, and the elderly. The ones who couldn’t run fast. With few exceptions, they had been shot in the back or clubbed from behind. Some still lived, writhing and groaning, the barbed shafts protruding from guts, chests, or thighs. The lucky ones had been hit in the heart or lungs, or subsequently had their heads caved in with a war club.
At the palisade gate, she found a nightmare. This had been the goal of the drive. Here people had crowded together before spilling out the gate, and the enemy archers had closed the circle. From the look of it, they couldn’t miss. A pile of dead, three deep in places, lay in a ring, many bristling with three or four arrows. Some still writhed and moaned; the sight of the moving dead numbed her souls.
She dropped to her knees, staring in horror. Her eyes refused to recognize the warriors, picking their way through the piled limbs, heads, and torsos before charging into the burning town in search of a vanished enemy. Instead she stared at the dead, who watched her from drying eyes, expressions slack, mouths hung wide. And in the pile, the dying writhed, groaned, and twitched, their bodies intertwined with the dead.
The odd question formed: Why are so many killed with our own arrows?
But then, where else would the enemy resupply but by robbing the houses before they fired them?
Later she remembered disembodied voices saying, “They came from the river. Swam in.” “They’ve taken
our canoes.” “At least eight prisoners, probably a lot more.”
Someone else told her, “No one has seen the high minko or Screaming Falcon.”
When they came with questions, she just waved them off, saying, “You decide.”
The rest of the day became a walking Dream—like looking at the carnage through rippling water. Somewhere in that glassy quivering memory, she found Sweet Smoke’s body. Half charred by the heat from her burning house and clothing, she looked like clay—and with her coating of gray ash, not quite real.
Is this how the world ends?
A
fit of shivering brought young Crabapple awake. In the name of the Ancestors, had he ever been so cold? He groaned, teeth chattering, as he sat up. Most of the leaves he’d piled over him the night before fell away; the rest, brown and crackling, stuck in his hair, and some slipped down his collar, scratching his goosefleshed skin.
Around him, the forest was waking, birds chirping, squirrels chattering. He could hear the breeze whispering in the trees overhead. The morning looked gray and cold, though the sun was casting its light through the high lacework of branches.
He stood, relieved himself, and scratched at the bug bites that had raised welts on his skin. His urine steamed as it spattered on the leaf mat. Dropping his shirt, he studied his hands, crisscrossed now with red scratches; they were mud-caked from where he’d floundered through streams. His feet, clad in sandals, were black and swollen. What had once been a clean brown hunting shirt had been turned into a pattern of smudges, mud spatters, and holes where thorns had ripped the fabric. He’d watched his mother weave the material. She’d spent a fortune—two sacks of corn—for the silky hemp fibers. Now the garment looked like something the Chikosi had thrown away.
When Paunch had asked him to make this trip, he’d dressed his best, determined to make a good impression on the Chahta. Now, when he arrived,
if
he arrived, he’d look like an escaped slave.
Hugging his arms to warm himself, he listened to his belly growl angrily. The last of the food he’d packed—enough for three days—had been breakfast two mornings past. Fallen nuts, dried rosehips, and withered plums had made for poor trail fare. How could things have gone so wrong? He stared around at the trees, thankful for once that he knew where east was.
“Stay off the main trails,”
Paunch had told him.
“You don’t want to run smack into Smoke Shield’s war party. But if that should happen, you tell him you’re lost. Do you understand?”
He’d stayed off the trails, all right. Then, somehow, in the rain, clouds covering the sky, he’d gotten turned around. Following a creek down from the ridges, he’d found himself right back on the Black Warrior River. Retracing his path, he’d become confused among the interlacing valleys.
“I’m a farmer, not a hunter,” he muttered under his breath just one more time. But the sun came up in the east. White Arrow Town was west. For the moment, his direction was clear. He worked his mouth, anxious for a drink of water. Five days! Who knew how long it would take Smoke Shield’s war party to reach White Arrow Town?
“Got to hurry,” he muttered. “If I don’t get to White Arrow Town, Smoke Shield will have the place turned to ash before I get there.”
He made ten paces before a warrior stepped out from behind a tree. In fluent Albaamaha, he asked, “But what will you do if Smoke Shield has already burned it?”
Crabapple turned to run. He made it five whole paces back the way he’d come before a war club smacked him in the spine. He felt the blinding pain; then his lower body went limp, tumbling him facefirst into the leaf mat.
For the moment, he could only gasp, his legs tingling. He blinked at the leaves, so close to his face. Then the warrior leaned into his field of vision, asking, “So, who
are you? And why would you want to get to White Arrow Town before Smoke Shield burned it?”
“Now,” another voice—this one Chikosi—stated, “there is a good question.”
“I’m a farmer,” Crabapple gasped, rolling painfully onto his side. “I got lost.” He looked up, and his souls froze. Coming through the trees was a large party of warriors. He knew them for Chikosi by the white swans’ feathers they had tied to their arms and run through their hair. All carried weapons, while the grisly pelts hanging from their belts were easily recognizable as scalps. Behind them, flanked on both sides, came a line of captives in single file, their arms bound; a rope ran from neck to neck, looped about each.
“We don’t have time to dally,” Smoke Shield said, staring down at him with a terrible interest. “Bring him.”
The warrior who’d captured him dragged him to his feet. Crabapple wobbled, but managed to keep from falling.
The warrior pushed him to the rear of the line, saying, “You’re going to join the rest. If you fall, you’ll get a taste of this.” He lifted a blood-caked war club in front of Crabapple’s nose.
By the time they’d bound his hands and roped him into the procession, enough feeling returned to his legs that he could stagger along behind the other captives.
His hot tears quickly cooled as they rolled down his dirty cheeks.
 
 
T
rader sat in a backwater and scowled. Swimmer rested on his fabric bed and watched him with questioning eyes. His black dot of a nose rested between his paws.
“What?” Trader asked, then stared out at the water. He needed time to think. Gods, how had this happened to him? Behind the willows where he sat in his gently
rocking canoe, thick trees betrayed the location of the bank. Like gray fuzz, their winter branches mixed with the cloudy sky. Somewhere a crow called, and a squirrel chattered in return.
Long before dawn, Trader had slipped from his bedding, rolled it, and packed it to his canoe. Then he had taken his packs, one by one, walking on tiptoes as Swimmer followed him curiously. Finally he had lifted his heavy copper and turned to leave.
The voice from the shadows had startled him. Two Petals—eerie creature that she was—said softly, “Never see you again.”
And he had left, picking his way, had loaded his copper, and after gesturing Swimmer into the canoe, had pushed off into the creek.
Now, a day later, the words burrowed like beetles through his souls.
“No matter who you’ve killed, that piece of copper will buy you forgiveness.”
“No, you don’t want to go back. Not Trader. He’s happy traveling alone, with no name, and no place to call home.”
But the words that stung like cactus thorns were,
“She never thinks of you. You are gone from her memory. The wistful smiles she has in the quiet moments are for someone else.”
“She can’t know that. Contrary, or not, no one could know what an unknown woman, half a world away, thinks and feels.” He knotted his fist, watching the tendons in the back of his hand. After all these winters, her memory still clung to him. How could any man love a woman that much?
“That piece of copper will buy you forgiveness.”
Could it? How could his uncle ever forgive? Sure, the clan would forgive him, happy to make a place for a murderer who handed over so much wealth to pay for redemption. How did
she
forgive what he’d done? He could see her eyes. They’d pin him like a bug on a bone awl.
You killed your brother.
That fact could never be
burned away, not even by the reflected glare of sunlight off copper.
How do I forgive myself?
He stared numbly at the water. Sticks and bits of flotsam bobbed on the waves. Overhead a bald eagle wheeled, searching for fish. Filling his nostrils, Trader took in the smells of the river: water, mud, the vegetation. If he did return home, would this ever be far from his blood?
Oh, yes, there were the dangers. Old White hadn’t lied when he talked about the snags, driftwood rafts, and bobbing trees that could capsize a canoe and drown a man.
Nor had he lied about the chieftains up and down the river. The Power of Trade was waning. Stories trickled up and down the river about how some chiefs had seized loads, killed Traders, and quietly set their canoes adrift on the current.
For the most part, he’d dismissed them. But the fact was, he had never carried such goods as the ones in his canoe now. And the lesson taught by Snow Otter remained fresh in his mind. Sometimes he tried to talk himself into believing that Snow Otter hadn’t meant him harm, but the man’s entire nature had changed after seeing that copper. And just why would a fellow who had guarded his daughter’s virginity with a war ax insist on sticking her in a stranger’s bed? Nor had the expression on Snow Otter’s wife’s face given him any cause to think otherwise. She had been clearly alarmed that night, shooting uneasy glances at her too-jovial husband.
No, the old world was breaking down. The lords of Cahokia, with their insistence on the safe passage of Traders, were long vanished, like smoke on the wind.
He considered the route downriver. South of the Mother River’s mouth, the Michigamea had built several fortified towns in the west-bank lowlands as well as a high city on the east bank where they could watch all travel. He had been stopped every time he made the trip,
offered food and drink in return for Trade. While he had always complied, the demands had been ever greater, sometimes to the point of being uncomfortable.
“The plan,” he told Swimmer, “was to pass in the darkness. To time it so that I would be downriver by sunrise.”
Swimmer thumped his tail.
“But what if I run into a group of warriors traveling on the river?” More than once just such a party had insisted that he return with them to their town. And there were so many towns. Most, of necessity, were built on high ground, back from the floodwaters. But even those sent out fishing, war, and Trading parties. Figuring that on average he passed three towns a day headed downriver, even if he eluded the surly Michigamea, somewhere the odds would overtake him.
“So what was I thinking?”
Unbidden, he could imagine Old White saying,
“You were living in the Dream of wealth.”
That bothered him. He liked to believe he was the canniest Trader on the river. For the most part, he got away with it. Discretion being the smartest way of living, there were times he lost a nice shell or bag of medicine herbs in return for a nondescript pot that nobody would want. But other Trades made up for it. Part of the art was knowing who desired what along the river.
Everyone craves copper.
His scowl deepened.
Home. The word popped between his souls like a turtle rising from the deep. In that moment, he could see the green grass, hear the songs of the Albaamaha as they worked in the fields. Images of the Green Corn Busk crowded each other in the eyes of his souls. He could almost feel the stamping feet of the Dancers, smell the feast cooking on the smoke-scented air.
Her
eyes gleamed, a smile lighting her lips.
Then came the memory of his war club, its copper-sheathed blade whistling as it dove toward his brother’s head.
“Gods,” he whispered.
Swimmer, sensing his upset, rose stiffly, stretched, and prodded his hand with a cool nose. The soft tongue licked tentatively at his hand.
“In all the world,” he said gently, taking the dog in his lap, “you’re the only friend I have.”
“Trader,”
the Contrary’s voice haunted.
“He’s happy traveling alone, with no name, and no place to call home.”
Somehow, he had thought he was, until she had said that. Now an uncertain and dark future opened before him.
Swimmer remained happily in his lap, licking his hand in reassurance as Trader petted him. Two lost beings, they had only each other and impossible Dreams.
 
 
F
or generations, peoples had congregated around Cahokia. Far from discouraging it, the lords of Cahokia had enticed people to settle in their environs. They pointed out where fertile soils could be had, and extended their knowledge of planting, field management, and crop production. Then, as the soils slowly exhausted themselves and harvests grew ever smaller, the Power of Cahokia and its lords had dimmed.
That same mismatched stew of peoples who had once flocked into the countryside surrounding Cahokia and adopted its ways began to trickle outward.
The territory around the confluence of the Mother Water with the Father Water was dotted with towns. The Michigamea held the lands to the west, and High Town on the bluff overlooking the river. The Illinois Confederacy held the river’s north bank, while the Miami resided farther east, controlling the confluence of the Sister River, as they called the Tenasee.

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