“What do you think, dog?” Seven Skull Shield asked his new companion as they walked through the crowd gathering around the plaza. People were coming from all directions, Cahokia’s great avenues thronging like rivers of human beings that flowed toward central Cahokia. A festive feeling seemed to carry on the very air.
The locals—anyone with a cooking pot, dried meat or fish, corn or nut breads—were looking for a good day’s Trade. Others were already hawking beaded jewelry; some dangled crude statues of the Itza, hastily carved and painted. To Seven Skull Shield’s way of thinking, the images didn’t look anything like the Itza. The green dye, made from hastily rubbed grass blades, wasn’t going to last out the week, but the hawkers were still asking a string of shell beads in Trade.
And often getting it.
On the southern end of the plaza, the first of the stickball teams had assembled. Wearing bright yellow girdles with trailing bustles, the young men were loosening up, passing deerhide balls back and forth. The old referees with their colored sticks were chasing up and down the sides, motioning people back in an attempt to keep the field clear.
The dog ambled happily at Seven Skull Shield’s side, tongue already hanging from the side of his bear-like jaws. The beast’s tail cut lazy arcs in the air, his oversized paws padding on the packed ground. Each time Seven Skull Shield addressed him, he looked up with his oddly colored eyes sparkling in wordless response.
“Quite the crowd,” Seven Skull Shield noted, thrusting his thumbs into the rope that belted his ratty-looking hunting shirt at his waist.
To his relief, Keeper Blue Heron had offered him one of the beds outside her door. Partly he supposed his presence added to her sense of security; partly it was no doubt that she was so exhausted she wasn’t thinking straight. But he hadn’t had to sleep on someone’s ramada mat and face discovery in the middle of the night, or the endless clouds of mosquitoes.
The early-rising Smooth Pebble had seen to it that he got a good breakfast, and the berdache had disdainfully tossed a loaf of stale acorn bread to the dog. Fortunately she’d been looking the other way when the brindle beast squatted in puppy fashion and peed on the new matting.
When Blue Heron had appeared in her doorway, he’d used the distraction to cover the wet spot with a handy seed jar. Maybe in the predawn rush no one would move the pot until after it dried.
“Dog?”
The beast looked up, tail swiping a bigger arc.
“You’re either going to figure out where and when you can pee, or I’m not going to be able to save you from the stew pot.”
On the eastern side of the plaza he slowed as he approached the Four Winds Men’s House. A seething mass of people surrounded it, the strongest shouldering in to get a peek, and then shouldering back out to tell companions what they’d seen.
“You wouldn’t believe it!” a Hawk Clan man told his friend. “The Itza was there at dawn. Praying. As the sun crested the horizon, he slit open his shaft! A fountain of blood shot out. And he burned it in offering!”
“He burned his penis?”
“No. He burned the blood!”
“How’s Lady Night Shadow Star going to like that? Her husband comes to her marriage bed with a bleeding rod? Any pleasure she’s going to get tonight will be stoked by her own fingers.”
“What kind of fool slices his penis on his wedding day?” another wondered.
“Maybe Itza can magically heal themselves?” The Hawk Clan man shrugged. “Who knows what foreign and exotic Power he controls? Undoubtedly it’s a great magic, given that he comes from the other side of the world.”
“Next thing, you’ll tell me he has a second shaft? Like those stories they tell out west about Coyote?”
Seven Skull Shield stopped the man. “Did you see this? He truly cut his shaft and burned the blood?”
“Indeed! Think of the Power! Penis blood, carrying the essence of a man’s prayer. He sent it to the Sky World the way we do tobacco smoke. I tell you, he has Powerful gods.”
Seven Skull Shield raised an eyebrow. “That … or very dangerous witchery.”
“Huh?”
He pointed to his own crotch, saying loudly, “Think about it. If you split your penis on your wedding day, how long do you think it would take you to recover … if ever? And what kind of evil Power would it take to mend a man’s shaft back whole again?”
He left them staring suspiciously at each other, the others who’d overheard muttering under their breaths.
It was a small barb in the body of retribution, but who knew where the battle might end up, or what slight margin the Keeper might need to garner a victory?
He passed a knot of dirt farmers, their hair coiffed in an odd fashion, their language unintelligible. Given the delight in their eyes, the coming of the Itza might have been like a second resurrection. One man pointed at his crotch before gesturing with animation and fluttering his fingers toward the sky.
The story about the Itza’s morning ritual was spreading like a wildfire.
Seven Skull Shield glanced down at the dog. “You know what I think? Maybe the Itza believes this nonsense. Or maybe it was a trick. But whatever it was, the people are eating it up like honeysuckle nectar on blueberries.”
The dog’s ears pricked as if fascinated by every word.
“Yeah, I’m glad that you agree. But I think it’s going to be trouble in the end.”
As he said it, he heard someone say, “There you are.”
He turned to see Slick Rock, his face battered and bruised. A war club—pogamoggan style, the kind with the rounded wooden ball on the end—hung from his scabbed-over hand.
“How’d you get away from the Bear Clan?” Seven Skull Shield asked reasonably.
“You’re going to pay.” Slick Rock swung his club.
Instinctively Seven Skull Shield grabbed the dirt farmer who’d been marveling at the Itza’s split penis and yanked him sideways into the blow. At the smacking thump, the dirt farmer shrieked in surprise and pain.
Before Seven Skull Shield whirled to run, he glimpsed the consternation on the faces of the farmer’s friends. For a heartbeat they stood frozen in disbelief; then with a chorus of howls, they leaped. As Slick Rock disappeared under the avalanche of bodies, Seven Skull Shield was slipping artfully into the press, the brindle dog bounding gleefully behind.