People of the Weeping Eye (North America's Forgotten Past) (29 page)

Read People of the Weeping Eye (North America's Forgotten Past) Online

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

BOOK: People of the Weeping Eye (North America's Forgotten Past)
4.4Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
Behind him, people were crowded at the door, watching with wide eyes. High Buffalo had managed to squeeze through the pack and stepped forward. All the time he was issuing instructions to his people. Many slipped away, leaving room for Three Bucks and his warriors to enter.
High Buffalo recovered quickly, bearing his long-stemmed pipe and taking a place on the bear rug behind the fire. He took a moment to drape his knee-length shirt, glanced thoughtfully at the pipe he held, and said, “Food is being prepared. We must attend to our victorious warriors, and then, Trader, we must hear the story you have to tell.”
Old White settled himself beside Two Petals. Her eyes were shining, a rapt smile on her face. She giggled as she watched the flat cougar hide, hearing some inaudible voice as the creature’s Spirit spoke to her. Her hands were fluttering, and she bubbled with an excitement beyond his comprehension. A sudden burst of laughter passed her lips.
So far, so good. But he fervently hoped that when the time came, no one would tell Two Petals to go outside to relieve herself.
 
 
S
plit Sky City had to be close. That morning the warriors had opened their packs and donned their finest regalia. They took time to paint their faces in red and black, to fix feathers and clean their weapons. Using grease, they glued swan’s down to their heads. Only when each was satisfied had they started the march.
Morning Dew had stumbled through most of the long miserable trip in shock. Her tumbling souls might have come adrift from her body. She had lost herself. Become some elemental animal. Each step she took was without thought, goaded on by the guards. From some distant place, she wondered how a human body could shiver so hard and still have the energy to continue. Her feet had lost feeling, so cold she could have been walking on clay.
Nothing seemed eternal but suffering—and the endless winding forest trails. Images, disjointed, like flashes
in nothingness, popped into focus, then as quickly were gone. She remembered scenes from her childhood: a cornshuck doll; a delicious odor rising from a warm bowl of food; glimpses of her comfortable house, firelight flickering; snatches of Song from a faceless elder. Each was nothing more than a fragment of a life that might have been a fevered Dream.
No matter how much she hurt, nothing could compare to what Screaming Falcon endured with his broken jaw, yet he stumbled on with stoicism that she was forced to emulate. When she would have given up, he sensed it, looking back with his hard eyes, slurring past his broken jaw, “We are Chahta. Remember that. We can only be better than these dogs by showing them how real men and women behave.”
And then, when she would have thrown herself down, weeping, waiting for the blow that killed her, his words had summoned courage from some unknown well.
Other times, like forest birds, fantasies had flitted through her head: White Arrow warriors were even now setting an ambush that would free them. Because of her status as a future matron, the Sky Hand would release her. Emissaries from her people would arrive moments after the war party reached Split Sky City with ransom. Some daring warrior would sneak into the city to rescue her.
Then the reality of her situation would come crashing down. Tears would streak her cheeks, and the rope would chafe where it rubbed raw flesh on her neck. Only Screaming Falcon’s whispered encouragement gave her the will to proceed.
As Morning Dew’s uncertain feet followed the trail, she forced herself to believe that Mother was only wounded, playing dead to avoid capture. Her spinning hopes fastened on the idea that Mother was already planning how best to effect her release. Then, in the cold wet night, when she shivered and curled into a ball for warmth, Mother was really dead. In those darkest hours,
while rain soaked her beautiful dress and trickled down her icy skin, her mother’s death couldn’t be denied.
I just want to die.
She blinked, coming back to herself. The forest was endless. The world had funneled down to the back of Screaming Falcon’s head; her link to it was the bobbing rope running from his neck to hers. She needed but to glance down to see her bound wrists. As she looked to the side, the line of warriors paralleling her was impossibly real.
Biloxi was pleading again, begging for mercy and freedom. “I’ll give you anything! Don’t you know who I am?”
Blinking, she wondered,
Is that really my brother?
Could the grand Biloxi Mankiller, high minko of the White Arrow, have become this groveling lump of a man? She barely recognized the naked man as her brother—not the Biloxi she knew. He wouldn’t be whimpering, seeking to curry favor from the guards, promising them women, wealth, lands, anything to let him loose. Then, later, his begging was for a drink, for food, or a wrap of cloth to warm himself in.
Better that Mother was dead. It would wound her souls to learn that Biloxi had become this broken creature. His three wives, including Water Lily with her broken arm, bore up with more grace and resolve.
“What’s going to happen to us?” she finally asked as they descended a slope. They passed through the last of the forest to enter a cornfield.
Screaming Falcon turned his head, a hard certainty in his eyes. “Blood Skull captured us. He will decide.” The words were slurred. She knew it hurt him to talk.
“He will give us away, won’t he?”
“It is … custom.” Screaming Falcon turned his eyes back to the path they followed around one of the cornfields.
The implications settled coldly around her heart. A warrior who captured an enemy traditionally made a
gift of the prisoner to another clan, thereby incurring that clan’s favor and obligation. No higher honor could be bestowed.
She closed her eyes, heart pounding. Prayed that Blood Skull offered her to any clan but Smoke Shield’s Chief Clan. The way the man looked at her sent a chill through her souls that was colder than the night rain.
“We may be all right,” she insisted, forcing herself to watch the trail. When one captive fell, he jerked the others down, choking them. Then came the warriors, wielding their clubs to get everyone up. It was an awkward process with bound arms.
The rope jerked, biting into her throat, causing her to stumble. She coughed, fought to keep her balance, and managed.
“Sorry,” Juggler managed hoarsely. “It was the
Alikchi Hopaii
. He tripped but didn’t fall.”
Still coughing, Morning Dew cast a glance behind her. Down the line she could see Dancing Star, the
Alikchi Hopaii,
the Spirit Healer, the greatest of their Priests, wobbling on his feet. His nephew, Daytime Owl, had rushed forward to steady the man.
“Keep the line,” one of the warriors barked from the side. The man pointed his war club.
“My uncle is weakening,” the young man explained.
“He doesn’t have far to go.” The warrior seemed to relent. “The way is flatter now.”
They took us all.
The lonely thought echoed between Morning Dew’s souls. In one daring blow, Smoke Shield had captured the high minko and his wives, taken her and Screaming Falcon, killed the Chief Clan matron, and captured the
Alikchi Hopaii.
Screaming Falcon’s young brother, a boy who would never see manhood, walked last in line. He claimed to have seen the tishu minko’s body outside his house. With Bow Mankiller’s death, White Arrow Town’s leadership was either dead or captive.
A shout caused her to raise her head. An Albaamo
farmer and his family stood beside their thatch-covered house. The man was waving, smiling. As the warriors passed, he ran out, offering each of them ears of corn. These the warriors accepted, but without the enthusiasm she would have expected.
The words of the Albaamo spy are ringing in their ears.
She swallowed hard, remembering the man’s unearthly shrieks as Smoke Shield alternately cut him apart and pressed burning branches to his naked, bound body.
She had tried to close her ears, but his screams had pierced the very bones in her head. “Paunch!” the man had cried. “Paunch sent me!”
Every time Smoke Shield had asked who else was involved, the young man had pleaded, sometimes in Albaamaha, sometimes in Mos’kogee, that he didn’t know. It always came back to the man called Paunch.
She had tried not to look as they passed the young man’s remains the following morning. But a quick glance had etched itself in her memory. Could that piece of charred and butchered meat have once been human?
The final leg of the journey passed in misery, more people crowding around, watching them pass. She flinched the first time someone threw wet garbage at her. After that, the periodic pelting of feces, urine, and turkey intestines became commonplace. So, too, did the Dancing Albaamaha. Several shouted, “This is for our kin, butchered at Alligator Town!”
They skirted the last cornfield, winding down to the Black Warrior River. There, for the first time, she glanced up, seeing the high palaces atop the bluff opposite them. She stared for a moment, openly amazed. “Mother, you never told me.”
But she had. So had Old Woman Fox. From the size of the city and the huge crowd on the opposite bank, she began to realize the folly she and Screaming Falcon had proposed. Not even her marriage had drawn such a crowd. The Sky Hand and their Albaamaha allies were like the leaves of the forest.
Canoes were waiting at the river’s edge. Still more people crowded around them; the shouts and whoops must have shaken the sky, but when she looked up, it was to see the endless blue unmoved.
The rope binding them was cut, other warriors holding the crowd at bay. She tried to understand the scope of the people’s joy.
How can so many Dance, smile, and shout when we are so miserable?
Smoke Shield seemed to swell, his face painted in triumphal red. His white swan feathers waved with the breeze. She fixed on the nasty scar that marred the side of his face. Then he turned, eyes fixing on hers. He smiled, and it hinted at things too terrible to believe.
“Into the boats! Now, you filthy Chahta!”
One by one they clambered into the canoes, taking seats as warriors piled in behind them. She felt the craft pushed off, watched paddles flashing in the sunlight as they were borne swiftly across the river.
I could jump.
The thought came from nowhere.
Down there, in the depths, I could suck water into my lungs. I would die before they pulled me out.
But she didn’t—wondering if she was a coward, or a fool, to hope for a better fate. Then it was too late; the canoe speared onto the black beach—just one among tens of others.
Hard hands pulled her out. With smacks of the war club, the prisoners were lined out, and Smoke Shield—the wooden war medicine on his back—raised his hands and shouted, “Yo hey hey!”
The warriors broke out with cries of, “Wah! Wah!”
“We bring the White Arrow war medicine!” Blood Skull shouted, lifting the ornately carved box high over his head.
The crowd went wild, screaming until the veins stood out in their necks, faces contorted with the effort as their hands clapped and feet stamped.
The warrior called Fast Legs raised a pine branch cut from along the trail. A second warrior raised another.
Both were bent from the drying scalps of her people. The roar bellowing from the crowd deafened her. She flinched from the sound of it, and would have taken a step back but for Biloxi crowding behind her, attempting to be as small as he could.
Then the procession started forward, the warriors Singing “Yo hey hey!”—the time-honored call of victory for the Sky Hand People.
Fear, like a thing alive, twisted around her souls. Despite her raging thirst, sweat broke out on her skin. On trembling legs, she made the climb from the landing up the long ridge inside the high palisade. From the archers’ platforms, children watched, waving cloth, shaking small bows. Around her, the crowd surged along, Singing, Dancing, clapping their hands. Like a flood, the people washed around houses, the press of their bodies shaking ramadas, feet overturning baskets and boxes.
Above it all, Morning Dew could see the high palaces, buildings that made her own small and shabby in comparison. Then they spilled out into the plaza. Smoke Shield, war medicine on his back, led the way to the tchkofa. At the northern extent of the mound, he circled to the right, opposite the path of the sun.
Morning Dew shot panicked glances at the faces in the crowd, seeing the mixture of exultant joy and downright elation. Distinct in the jumble of sound, she heard them talking of their Power, of the might of their warriors, how not even the lords of Cahokia had lived through a day like this. Through it all, the warriors’ shouts of, “Yo hey hey,” were answered by chants of, “Wah! Wah!”
She staggered, terror sapping her legs, as she was prodded around the circumference of the tchkofa. Then they headed north past the red-and-white Tree of Life. The crowd parted. There the towering high minko’s palace stood atop a mound that scraped the sky. Then she saw the bare frames of the squares: one each for Screaming Falcon, Biloxi, Dancing Star, Juggler, and Daytime
Owl. Facing them were tall wooden poles, each topped by a carving of an animal representing the captor’s clan.

Other books

The Spirit Wood by Robert Masello
Come Morning by Pat Warren
Beach Rental by Greene, Grace
Things We Never Say by Sheila O'Flanagan
The Forgotten Ones by Pittacus Lore