Night Shadow Star walked through shining darkness. Roots clung to the roof and walls of the cave. Knotted and twisted like an old woman’s joints they curled out from the limestone walls. Her feet barely dimpled the soft mud. The occasional crawfish or turtle scurried away, surprised by such an unusual and otherworldly visitor.
As she passed, the current stirred, lifting and feathering her long black hair until it floated behind her in an undulating wave.
“Why have you brought me here?” she asked the beastly Piasa, the Spirit creature that stalked silently beside her.
“You have been summoned.”
Piasa stared sidelong at her, its yellow eyes surrounded by the three-forked-eye pattern of the Underworld; the creature’s pupils might have been wells into a stygian eternity. The mysterious beast’s head was that of a cougar, its nose pink, the wiry whiskers spread as if seeking prey. From the beast’s back, mighty wings rose, the feathers patterned in rainbow colors that alternated with black bars and charcoal-dark circles. Rather than paws, Piasa’s cat legs ended in eagle’s feet: yellow and scaled with black talons. They barely stirred the mud as he paced beside her. The creature’s tail resembled that of a serpent: scaled, diamond-hatched, and tipped with parallel rows of squash-sized rattles.
She said, “You already whisper to my souls and stalk my dreams. Why summon me to the Underworld?”
“I was ordered.”
Fear sent its cold filaments along Night Shadow Star’s spine. She instinctively clenched her hands to fight an urge to shiver.
The cavern through which they walked had darkened. The roots winding down through the stalwart rock had a tortured appearance. From dark crevasses in the stone, she could sense eyes watching her, and the presence of wounded and hungry souls desperate to devour anyone who passed. Here, in this place, death and birth were locked in a mutual and terrifying Dance.
“She wishes to speak with you.”
“Why?” Night Shadow Star’s voice tightened. “What have I done?”
“I serve. I do not explain.”
The cavern narrowed and twisted as the muddy floor rose and fell. Piasa dropped behind until his warm breath tangled in her current-borne hair. Prickling unease worked its way into her bones.
In the weird half-light of the Underworld, she could see images carved and painted on the water-gray limestone: spirals, renditions of vulvas and phallic images—some combined in intercourse—flowers and seeds, skulls, hand and footprints, and zigzagging serpents.
A new sensation traced patterns across her skin: that of immense Power. The water around her had grown heavy from the crushing depth.
Rounding a bend, she discovered the way blocked by a tangle of roots. Before her eyes, the mass began to stir, bending and flowing out of her way as it created an opening through which a golden light poured.
Night Shadow Star stepped through and into a womb-like gallery. The roof consisted of writhing roots; the floor might have been a pool of old blood hardened into red granite. Along the walls, glistening images of spirals, sacred portals, vulvas, and phalluses were interspersed with skulls and bones: Birth and Death intertwined.
A lone figure, an impossibly ancient woman, sat upon a cushioning mound of green moss. Twelve brightly colored serpents—the Power-filled Tie Snakes—had woven themselves into and through the moss. Callers of rain and masters of water, springs, and rivers, the Tie Snakes now seemed to flex and bunch beneath the old woman.
Night Shadow Star stopped short, subtly aware that Piasa had advanced no closer than the grotto’s root-crowded entrance.
The old woman rested on her knees, a single thick-bodied Tie Snake coiled protectively around her. The serpent fixed its unwavering gaze on Night Shadow Star; its tongue flicked in and out.
Clutched in the old woman’s hands was a simple gray-chert hoe. She raised it, chopping down. The keen blade cut deeply into the serpent’s back. From the cut, a green sprout arose to join others that grew from the creature’s tortured flesh until squash vines and cornstalks curled around the old woman’s withered and bony legs. Her breasts hung like empty leather bags, the enlarged nipples as hard and round as walnuts. What white hair remained had been pulled into a bun at the top of a time-wizened skull. A basket brimming with corn and squash had been slung over one shoulder. Age had wasted the woman’s arms until the thinnest parchment of skin outlined the underlying bones and joints.
When Night Shadow Star met the old woman’s eyes, her balance wavered. Time and space stretched beneath that eternal gaze the way buffalo wool thinned as it was pulled through a tiny hole.
Emotion surged in Night Shadow Star’s breast, encompassing her with its remarkable purity: grief, loss, and tragedy. Hollowed to the core, she gasped in the emptiness.
Only to tremble as incredible joy burned a radiant path through her veins.
A heartbeat later, despair, like a tangible blackness, sucked away even the faintest glimmer of hope.
Then, with the intensity of slaps to the face, emotions cascaded through her one after another, mixing, twisting. Seething rage knotted her muscles as an orgasmic climax pulsed in her pelvis. Fear’s brittle ice paralyzed her bones, and simultaneously vibrant triumph blazed a searing flame in her heart.
The next instant ecstasy exploded in her chest.
And as quickly, it was gone.
She staggered, dropping to the stone floor, gasping and reeling in the spinning aftereffects.
“I … What happened to me?”
“I shared the tiniest fraction of my being with you. A mere hint … the barest essence. The Power of Creation and Chaos. Everything that wisdom, order, and peace are not.”
“Why?”
“So you should understand.”
“I understand nothing.”
“Then you understand everything.”
Night Shadow Star blinked, confused. “Your words—”
“Are everything. The One, the Dance, the Spiral, the blinding darkness, the thunderous silence. Everything and … nothing.” She paused. “Look at me.”
The instant Night Shadow Star met the old woman’s gaze, the chaos of conflicting emotions blew through her again, exploding like a thousand stars.
When her wits returned, she lay gasping and exhausted, the cavern whirling around her until it slowed and she could draw a breath.
“Do you understand now?” the old woman asked flatly.
“Why are you doing this to me?”
“So that you understand what is at risk.”
“I … don’t…”
‘Not since young Lichen pleaded for my help have I given much thought to Cahokia or what it has become. Your brother Walking Smoke brought you to my attention. He would have caused me a great deal of trouble, but for you. Thankfully, your presence balances the influences of the Sky World. Therefore you’ve earned this warning.”
“Warning?”
“Reality is a shifting thing. It changes with time and the direction from which it is viewed. Everything you hold dear—your Cahokia, your very world—dangles from a thread. A man is traveling to Cahokia who understands the stakes. His goal is to change your world, redirect its reality.”
“Who?”
“An Itza lord from the distant south. A man of unbridled ambition and charisma.”
“You wish me to defeat him for you?”
“I care not, Night Shadow Star. You know me as Old-Woman-Who-Never-Dies, or as First Woman. In his world I am known as B’a Yal Na, which you would translate as First Mother. Because of his offerings, I have given him my protection. He thinks his divine mission is to return Cahokia to the True Belief. Therefore, if you would thwart him, it will require your cunning and skill. It is my order that neither you, nor your allies, take his life.”
“But if he—”
“Those are my terms, Night Shadow Star. He serves me, as do you. The battle for Cahokia is between the two of you. Beyond that, I shall not interfere.”
An instant later, as if the world had been jerked sideways and her souls had been squeezed by a mighty fist, Night Shadow Star found herself in the narrow passage outside Old-Woman-Who-Never-Dies’ root-choked grotto.
“You have heard.” Piasa’s whiskers bristled, and his yellow eyes were baleful. “But I will tell you this: the path to ultimate victory over the Itza will require that you surrender yourself to him, and that your Red Wing must be invincible in battle and sport.”
* * *
Exhausted, every muscle aching, Night Shadow Star blinked awake. She lay in her familiar bed, a blanket twisted around her. In the faint light cast by a hickory-oil lamp, she made out the furnishings of her private quarters: her storage boxes, folded blankets and robes, the altar, her beautifully engraved pole bed where it was built into the back wall.
In the silence she could hear her captive war chief, Fire Cat, breathing where he slept just outside her door.
She rubbed her eyes. Every muscle in her body ached as if from some terrible exertion. The Dream had been so real: Piasa, Old-Woman-Who-Never-Dies, the watery Underworld tunnel with its roots and limestone walls.
She shook her head in disbelief and sat up. As she did, the cold and heavy weight of her long hair fell over her shoulders. She grasped it and twisted. So soaked was her hair that water pattered on her floor like rain.