Locked in Sister Datura’s deadly arms, Night Shadow Star’s body floated down to settle on the soft mud. Around her a twisting warren of dark caverns converged in the grotto where she stood. Roots clung to the limestone overhead; green fingers of moss streamed out in the slow-moving current.
She knew this place with all of its terrors and promise. Was it a measure of her desperation that it now felt like a refuge?
“A refuge? Do you think you can escape here, Lady of Cahokia?”
She turned. The giant snapping turtle lifted itself from the bottom; sand and streamers of moss traced patterns as they flowed down the horny plates of shell. Immense, huge, the great reptile extended a boulder-sized head, worked its jaws, and stared at her with a round and alien eye. The bluntly pointed nose ended with two nostrils that extended her way as the creature took in her scent.
She froze, having forgotten how terrifying the Spirit Beast was, or the horror of being eaten alive by the dark denizens of the Underworld.
“Do you think we care how many males mount you, or whose semen settles in your loins? We couldn’t care less who you are, who you love, or what you hope. Your existence is fleeting, woman. Meaningless to the process of life unless your womb produces another life, which in turn produces another in the endless propagation of life itself. Think of yourself as a two-legged womb … the males as nothing more than mobile penises. In the grand scheme of things neither you, nor they, have any other purpose than breeding. Once you accept that, your sordid and inconsequential existence will be much easier to bear.”
“What if I refuse?”
“Refuse all you like. Protest it to all of Creation.” Snapping Turtle studied her with a cold eye, then cocked its head. “I listen, and hear nothing but silence from the universe. Not so much as a ripple of sympathy emanates from the timeless harmony of the Spiral. There is your illumination. Your answer. You have discovered your true place and where you fit into your world. Now leave. Begone. And stop disturbing my realm.”
Night Shadow Star stiffened, back arching, muscles knotted as she shook her head. “I refuse.”
Snapping Turtle shifted and dislodged swirls of mud. Now both eyes fixed on her, cold, predatory, the pupils like black dots of frigid emptiness. The great head pulled back, jaws gaping as a snapping turtle’s was wont to do before striking. “You refuse? A fleeting and insignificant bit of blood, meat, and bone denies me?”
“I deserve more.”
Snapping Turtle snapped at her, its jaws shearing empty space within a finger length of her nose.
Night Shadow Star’s terror left her trembling. She forced herself to glare into the angry Spirit Beast’s baleful black eyes.
“Go ahead.” Her voice broke. “Strike. But I will not back down. I will be more than a meaningless breeder in an endless line of breeders. I will be more.”
“She certainly isn’t a coward,” a soft contralto said from behind.
Night Shadow Star turned, startled to see a slender black-haired woman, perhaps twenty, with large dark eyes. The woman seemed to hover above the soft mud, her dress an ethereal fabric, her hair undulating with the current.
Even as Night Shadow Star watched, the woman’s form seemed to flow, appearing slightly older, a tinge of gray in her hair, faint lines in her age-hardening face.
Or was that a trick of the light? Didn’t she appear younger now, flushed with the energy of youth?
“I would have expected Horned Serpent,” Night Shadow Star whispered to herself.
“He rises each night in the southern sky, guarding the entrance to the Road of Souls.” Snapping Turtle sounded sullen, and the great beast shifted, silt billowing as it settled deeper in the mud. To the woman he asked, “Why are you here?”
When Night Shadow Star turned her attention back to the woman, it was with shock that she found a little girl, perhaps three or four summers old. Surely that couldn’t be the same …
“We are one and many,” the little girl’s voice piped. “Since you balanced the Power and saved the boundaries between worlds, we have wondered about you.”
“Who is we?”
“She knows nothing.” Snapping Turtle sounded brittle. “Why Piasa wastes time with her is beyond understanding.”
Night Shadow Star wasn’t sure that she actually saw the little girl’s image waver, but an old woman—jaw undershot, face a mass of wrinkles, her hair but thin white wisps—was studying her through those same large dark eyes. Yes, the eyes, the only constant as the woman’s image kept shifting, aging, growing younger, never seeming to fix.
“She may be the one,” the woman said, her body momentarily that of a matron.
“She may indeed,” Piasa announced, his form blurring into existence as if materializing from one of the tunnels. “But she is already mine. Why should I share her?”
The woman, now barely a teen, with budding breasts, smiled beguilingly. “Nothing is forever, Lord. Not even Spirit Beasts, as someday you shall learn. Bundles know these things. Our Power rises when humans care for and nurture us—and declines subject to their neglect. Given the time we have remaining, we would see the Itza Dream fail. As you would.”
Piasa spread his barred and spotted wings, yellow eyes thinning to slits, the whiskers bristling around its pink nose. “Nothing given comes without a price.”
“She says she would be something besides a meaningless breeder.” Snapping Turtle sounded surly as he bit off the words.
The old woman stepped forward, extending an age-gnarled hand. “So far the Itza has taken everything from you. The man you love, your possessions, your body, your home, and he’s on the verge of taking your people. The choice is yours: Do you want to fight him? Even if it comes at the cost of one of your Dreams?”
Night Shadow Star glanced warily at the hand, and then at Piasa. The underwater panther was panting softly, long white fangs exposed as the pink tongue curled with each hot breath. The beast’s yellow glare burned into her very souls.
“Lord?” she asked.
“The battle is joined, woman. The War Serpent’s Power, what they call ch’ulel, has taken us by surprise. We have a chance, but only if you take the Bundle’s hand. If you do, it will come at a cost.”
Snapping Turtle hissed in disgust. “Are you a fool? She will choose to remain here, with us, in the safety of our protective tunnels. Here she will no longer feel, no longer ache, suffer, hunger, or hurt. She’s not stupid, only ignorant and weak.”
Night Shadow Star shot a sideling glance at Snapping Turtle, then reached out and took the old woman’s hand, but in grasping it, realized it now belonged to a young girl.
In that instant, she saw the chunkey courts, the crowds, and Swirling Cloud with his lance. Fire Cat had that pinched look he got at moments of great stress; he grasped Makes Three’s old lance and positioned himself. Swirling Cat was on the verge of bowling his stone.
“What do I have to do?”
“It comes down to a single throw of a chunkey lance. We will get one chance, and after that, Waxaklahun Kan will turn his full wrath upon us. To save the people, you will have to condemn the man you love. Are you willing to make that sacrifice?”