Blue Heron sipped her cup of rosehip tea, the red liquid sweet on her tongue. The midmorning sun had just cleared the Women’s House roof, and the day was already too warm. She lowered the cup as Night Shadow Star emerged from the hump-shaped sweat lodge: a low dome-shaped structure sealed with an earthen roof. A gush of escaping steam swirled around her naked body as though in a caress, then rose toward the light blue morning sky
Blue Heron had been attending her niece since she’d collected her just before dawn. As Night Shadow Star’s closest female relative, it was traditional. Tonka’tzi Wind should have shared the duties, but had her hands full with the last of the wedding preparations. Not that Blue Heron was doing such a good job with her niece.
Certain behaviors were expected of a woman before her marriage.
Night Shadow Star had summarily refused to participate in most them.
The common belief was that to omit such important personal and spiritual preparations brought bad luck to a marriage.
Hence Blue Heron’s insistence that Night Shadow Star at least accompany her to the Four Winds Clan Women’s House to ritually bathe, cleanse, and purify her body before the late afternoon ceremony.
Night Shadow Star straightened to her full height and tossed damp black hair over her shoulders. She tilted her head back in what must have felt like delightfully cool air after the steam’s sweltering and hot sting.
Blue Heron smiled at the sight. Night Shadow Star gleamed, her skin luminous as perspiration pooled in the hollows created by her collarbones and broad shoulders. The light seemed to mold itself to the woman’s muscular arms and runner’s thighs. Her high breasts—brown nipples hard—arched as she filled her lungs. The action emphasized her narrow waist and the swell of her hips. She had a flat belly and muscular abdomen that culminated in the water-beaded mat of pubic hair.
First Woman must have looked like this in the Beginning Times, Blue Heron thought. If ever there were a perfect image of a female in her prime, it was her niece, here, at this moment.
“Come. Let me rinse you off.” Blue Heron reached for the heavy pot of water, climbed up on a stump, and carefully sluiced the contents over Night Shadow Star’s head and hair. Measuring her pour, she let the cool water run in sheets down Night Shadow Star’s smooth skin.
“Feel better?” Blue Heron asked as she climbed down and placed the empty pot on the ground.
Scrubbing water from her eyes with both knuckles, Night Shadow Star blinked. “Well, that sets the blood running.”
“The sweat lodge cleanses the body as well as the souls. You don’t do it enough. Honestly, niece, you worry me.”
Night Shadow Star shot her a mocking dark-eyed glance. The tiny beads of water on her lashes resembled little sparkles. “Be glad you don’t share the terrors swirling around my souls. You’d be as tempted as I am to sink myself in the river and let Piasa devour my drowned and lifeless corpse.”
Blue Heron said nothing, reading the truth of it in Night Shadow Star’s eyes.
“Then perhaps a stricter adherence to the rituals might lessen the effects of—”
“Spirit possession comes with a price, Aunt.” Night Shadow Star fixed her gaze on the empty water pot. “Holy men spend their lives seeking the ways of Power, crying out to be filled with it. When I first came back from the Underworld after being consumed by Piasa, Rides-the-Lightning placed a Piasa cloak over my shoulders and invoked the water panther’s essence inside me.” She smiled wistfully. “If I could shift Piasa’s presence, like that cloak, to another’s shoulders, I would do so in an instant.”
“And then what?”
“I would laugh, Aunt. I would Dance, and run, and fling my arms about. I would be light, and free, and bursting with joy. Happy tears would slip from my eyes, and my souls would float like cattail down on a warm summer day. Beyond that, honestly, nothing would matter but freedom from the whispers, fears, and terrors in the night. I just want to be left alone to live without the hissing voices in my head. As it is, each breath I draw is taken in fear.” She swallowed hard, adding, “And it’s never going to end.”
“Is that why you’re sabotaging your marriage? Failing to observe the rituals? We do these things to ensure fertility, happiness, and ask Old-Woman-Who-Never-Dies and the Powers of the Earth to bless a union. Good marriages strengthen the clan. They provide us with a foundation from which—”
“You, Aunt? Of all people? With your string of discarded men behind you? Lecture me on good marriages?” Her laughter dripped with ridicule. “I had the perfect marriage. I loved my husband so much that I wrapped him in my souls. Even after what the Morning Star and my brother did to me, I healed, surrendered myself to one remarkable man.” She knotted her fists, face strained. “And then Power took him away from me.”
“Niece, it’s not like—”
“Oh, yes it is, Aunt. Those parts of me that didn’t die with Makes Three were crushed between Piasa’s jaws, pierced by his sharp teeth. They were chewed, and swallowed, and digested. What he vomited back into the world was reborn as Piasa’s creature. Piasa’s thing. I do his bidding, exist in his shadow.”
Blue Heron shivered despite the rising heat. “Why, then, are you marrying this Itza? You could have refused. Was it Piasa’s order? Some game that Power is playing between our peoples?”
“The Itza brings the first roots of a new Power to Cahokia. It comes hidden beneath the wonders and potentials for stupendous Trade and exotic goods. But in the end, unchecked, it will change who we are and how we serve Power.”
“Hunga Ahuito and Old-Woman-Who-Never-Dies will allow this?”
“The Itza has Old-Woman-Who-Never-Dies’ protection. She has ordered me not to kill him.”
“Let me get this straight: you want to kill him, but you can’t. So … you’re going to marry him?”
The smile that bent Night Shadow Star’s lips hinted of madness. “It’s the only way to destroy him.”
“That makes no sense, girl.”
“It makes all the sense in the world.”
“Dense wood that I am, could you explain?”
“If I can’t kill him, I have to convince him to destroy himself. Break him in a way that convinces him he’s lost. Failed. Somehow I have to shatter his faith in his personal Power. Send him fleeing in defeat.”
Blue Heron gestured toward the sweat lodge. “While you were in there, Smooth Pebble sent a runner. The story is that the Itza split his penis down the middle at sunrise. Then he burned the blood that jetted from the wound.” She shook her head. “I have no idea what madness would possess him to mutilate himself so, but apparently you won’t revel in the joys of his shaft this night.” She winced. “Or perhaps any other.”
Night Shadow Star’s expression hardened. “Stories, like penises, grow on their own, Aunt. No doubt by sunset it will be told that he castrated himself. The Itza might have drawn a blood offering for the Powers of the Sky, but I suspect that he will be functional tonight. If anything, he will be hoping that his wound opens during our joining … a blood offering to mix with and empower his semen.”
Blue Heron read the disdain and resolve behind her niece’s expression. “Any chance it will take root?”
“From the feeling in my loins, my heat has passed for this moon.” She smiled warily. “Assuming, despite his offering and prayer, that his Power to impregnate is no more potent than mine to remain barren. And if I’m lucky, by the time my cycle is full again, he’ll be dead.”
Blue Heron shook her head. “You’re taking a man into your bed to destroy him? It’s an odd way to fight for Cahokia’s future.”
Night Shadow Star’s eyes were fixed on a distance only she could see. “I thought Fire Cat could save me. Why do women do that? Look to others? Now I fear this is the only chance we have left.” She shot Blue Heron a fragile look. “If I fail, Thirteen Sacred Jaguar and his rogue god win.”