I AM OFTEN AT THE CENTER OF ATTENTION. IT’S WHAT TRADERS DO: create attention. But for once I really wished I could have just faded into the wall matting and vanished. Every eye was upon me, expressions ranging from disbelief to amazement.
Pearl Hand’s eyebrow arched skeptically. Cafakke and A’atehkoci had adopted expressions of uneasy curiosity. Cafakke’s wives were looking at me as if I’d just peed in the fire.
Then Cafakke laughed. And laughed again, even harder. Through slowly ebbing chuckles, he finally said, “You don’t think he gets many invitations to social events? After what we just saw and heard, Trader, you may not either.”
I grunted, hoping for once that it might be true. Better to be out in the forest, hunting Kristianos.
Cafakke made a gesture with his shriveled hands, his dark eyes alight. “A man doesn’t speak lightly about being eaten by a Spirit Being, let alone Horned Serpent.” He paused, gaze going distant. In a lower voice he said, “Only the greatest survive such a thing.”
I adopted a pained expression and flipped my hand in a mild gesture, hoping to defuse the tension. “We live in perilous times. The monster de Soto has come to our world. It’s up to us to defeat him. If we can drive him off, broken and beaten like Narváez—or this Ayllόn who landed among the Chicora—the Kristianos may finally give up the idea of coming to kill and enslave us.”
Cafakke gave me a pensive look. Like I said, his body might have been a mess, but there was nothing wrong with his smarts. “As you point out, we drove off Narváez. But they keep coming back stronger, Black Shell. De Soto didn’t make the same mistakes Narváez did. If we beat him, what makes you think that my children won’t face an even larger force of three or four thousand? What if there is no end to them?”
I fingered my chin, pacing lightly across the cane-mat flooring. “Horned Serpent told me this is just the beginning, High Mikko. Prepare your children. Prepare your people.”
Pahlko snorted irritably. “We beat them before. I was a young woman at the time, nursing him.” She inclined her head toward Cafakke. “They didn’t impress me then, and they don’t now. They couldn’t even keep a crippled high mikko captive.”
With knobby knuckles she thumped her sternum. “Power hears our hearts and souls, it heeds our prayers, and it will lead us to destroy them again. They are an abomination in our world, and Breath Giver will call down the Winds. The Thunderers will smite them. Earth herself will rise against their polluted feet, sucking them down to suffocate in the very dirt.”
I met her angry gaze, reading defiance in her eyes. Of course she believed it. Way down in the bottom of my soul, I did, too. We’d been raised that way. People were part of Power, as much as the earth, wind, water, plants, animals, and rocks. Power flowed through everything, interacted with everything. It was revealed and acted through the forces around us, from sunlight and storm to the life of forests. It filled the air we breathed and surged when we fought, made love, ate dinner, danced, or sang . . . were born and died.
How, then, could Breath Giver tolerate a pollution like de Soto and his soldados and cabayeros? That the monster existed at all was counter to the underlying assumptions we all made about the universe. As a violation of those basic laws, why didn’t the universe rise up and destroy him?
“Nothing is as it was,” I whispered softly. “I’m sorry, Matron, but Power now looks to us. We must save our world.”
“And if we can’t?” Cafakke asked.
It was Pearl Hand who said, “Then there is only death, great lord. And abomination inherits the world.”
I emerged, emotionally exhausted, from Cafakke’s make-do palace and stared up at the evening sky. The clouds were scudding low, the breaks here and there cast in golden light from the slanting sun. Exhaling, I could see my breath.
I’d left Pearl Hand locked in conversation with Matron Pahlko. Me, I just wanted to get away. The interior of Cafakke’s refugee palace was suffocating with fumes of despair and hopelessness.
Instead I stood in the cool air, smelling the pungent odors of swamp mixed with hickory, pine, and cedar smoke. Someone was cooking hominy, and somewhere fish roasted over a bed of coals. The muffled sound of voices, the thunk-thunk of a woman pounding corn in a wooden mortar, and the distant chopping of wood with a stone ax were reassuring after Cafakke’s palace.
I needed only look to the north. There, hidden by trees, swamp, hills, and distance, waited the monster and his army. I could feel them, like a malignant darkness eating at the soul of the land.
And one day, Black Shell, you will look de Soto in the eyes again. And when you do, life will stop for either you or him.
The dogs slept beneath one of the ramadas. The packs had been piled beside them, safely under their guard.
I took a moment to study them. Gnaw’s ribs swelled, then shuddered as he vented a sigh. Bark stretched out on his side, grunting as he tensed, then went limp.
As I approached, Squirm opened an eye, thumped his tail a couple of times, smacked his jaws, then went back to sleep. They weren’t concerned with Power, potential death, or impending doom.
Ah, dogs.
Turning to my familiar use-scarred packs, I pondered our situation. Cafakke wasn’t ready to let us go; he was waiting on Back-from-the-Dead. That and Tastanaki Fire Falcon was due back the following day with a report on the Kristianos—one I wanted to hear.
I propped a hand against the ramada pole, the wood smoothly polished and graying from exposure. Old cut marks indicated that the pole had served different purposes over the years and had been reused over and over. Now it had been carried here. End of the line. Was it the end for the Apalachee, too?
Desperate to engage in anything except reliving that confrontation with Back-from-the-Dead, I pulled my chunkey lances from inside the alligator quiver. From Skipper’s pack, I retrieved my chunkey stone. What was the point of Cafakke hauling all that clay in if not to provide me a place to play?
A chunkey stone—for those of you who grew up in impoverished cultures that lack truly inspiring games—is a disc. The sides, depending upon tradition, may be flat, vaguely convex, or, like mine, smoothly dished out. The diameter varies—again depending upon the people—but mine was shaped to fit snugly inside a cupped hand. Made from red granite, the concave sides were polished to a mirror sheen, the outer rim rounded and rough from rolling down countless chunkey courts.
I stepped to the head of the court and inspected my lances. Both were short specimens capable of easy transport. Most lances were longer than a man was tall and kept in the local temple, clan house, or palace. I preferred a longer lance but had grown proficient with my short ones. The wood was polished from years of handling, the points fire hardened and blunt.
From the rudimentary kukofa I could hear a roar of applause. Which one of the Timucua was finishing his story?
As I fingered the blunt tip of my lance, I gave Cafakke credit. Because he allowed the Timucua to tell their tales, Cafakke’s Apalachee were learning just how vicious de Soto’s Kristianos could be. The Apalachee would be wondering if the horrors of Napetuca could happen here.
I set the shorter lance to one side and hefted the remaining one in my left hand while bouncing the stone in my right. Then I slipped the lance under my armpit and seated the stone into the curve of my right hand. The familiar, cool weight felt reassuring. How many clay runways like this had I stood on during my life?
Uncle’s voice came from the past: Take your time, boy. Chunkey is won by those who allow the Power of the game to flow through them. Become one with the Power. Surrender to it. Shut the world from your thoughts and share the Spirit of the stone, the soul of the wood. Breathe deeply, and see it in your mind.
Choosing the Power I would play for, I prayed, “White Power, come and grant me serenity. Endow me with peace and harmony as I make this play.”
A feeling of ease and familiarity slipped through me like smoke on a still morning. Opening my eyes, I charged forward. My right arm went back, elbow straight, and I dropped my shoulder as I bowled the stone. It left my hand, gently kissing the ground, rolling forward like a shot.
Without missing a stride, I shifted the lance to my right hand, and two paces later, I whipped it forward, casting it after the rolling stone.
I pulled up with a slight hop at the mark and watched the lance arc up, spinning as it arrowed toward the slowing stone. Chunkey was about anticipation. A good player cast his lance, knowing full well where his stone was going to finally stop. Judgment and timing were everything.
Along with the quality of the court. My stone bounced on the uneven clay. As it slowed, it hit a final irregularity, curved to the right, and flopped onto its side as my lance impacted a body-length off to the left.
“Perhaps you should have called upon the red,” an eerily familiar voice said behind me.
I turned to see Back-from-the-Dead.
Not you again!
His stony gaze was fixed on my lance where it had stuck in the ground at an angle. He carried a lance in one hand, a beautifully polished stone in the other. I’d figured he’d be back in the temple, casting bones, butternut seeds, or some such in an attempt to scry my true purpose here.
“The white suits me today,” I replied warily. He waited while I trotted down to recover my lance and stone. I could see the little lump of clay, clearly visible in the track my stone had made. With the ball of my foot, I mashed it flat, trying to smooth the track, before walking back.
“Might I join you?” His voice could have been a caress.
“More testing, Hilishaya?”
He gave me a humorless grin and surveyed the course. “When the older boys have time, the usinulo tries to get them to rake the clay.” His shoulder lifted. “Generally there are more important things to do.”
“With Kristianos tearing up the country, I can imagine.” I turned to watch him take his stance at the start of the course. His tattooed face lined with concentration as he hefted his stone. With a smooth stride he started forward, ducking, bowling his stone, and, two paces later, casting with good follow-through.
I cocked my head as the stone shot down the alley, Back-from-the-Dead’s lance seeking it like a thing alive. His stone jumped and hopped, deflected by the irregular clay. The lance impacted within an arm’s length as the stone toppled.
“Well done,” I remarked as he went to fetch his lance.
“Wager?” he called as he plucked up his pieces.
“I’d offer a small wooden carving of Eagle Man. One I picked up down south. Timucua made. After de Soto’s rampage, I’m not sure there are going to be any more. Not from the Ocale lands. Those the Kristianos didn’t enslave or kill are scattered like rabbits.”
His eyes expressed anything but understanding. “I would offer a pressed copper piece. A relief of Falcon . . . no longer than my hand. It polishes nicely, and a person can sense the metal’s Power when he rubs his fingers over it.”
“Done. Best out of twenty? Ten up, ten down? Isn’t that how you Apalachee play?” They scored chunkey by twisting a twig into the ground with each win up to ten. Then one was taken out with each point until none were left standing. The first person who ran out of sticks won.
“After you.” He gestured. “You have called white, I call red. May Power bless the player with truth in his heart.”
“If it’s truth over skill, you’ve just lost your copper.”
The look he gave me would have shriveled a water moccasin.
I stepped forward, gripping my stone, feeling the cool surface. How many games had I rolled with this stone? And for what stakes? When played as Back-from-the-Dead and I were now playing, chunkey became the living representation of the struggle between Powers, or the Hero Twins in the Beginning Times, or the forces of life and death; it settled questions of justice, disputes, or anything else that required the invocation of Spirit Power.
My hand hadn’t seriously touched my stone for over a year. To say I was mediocre during those first few throws would have been a kindness. Back-from-the-Dead easily took the first five, but I was starting to regain the feel. My body began to remember, and I loosened up, actually winning the sixth cast by little more than a finger’s length.
We’d played to ten; he was seven ahead. Then he stopped, fingering his lance, glancing down the court. “You do not have the manner of one who has been touched by Spirit Power, let alone devoured.”
“What manner is that?”
“Humbled, quiet, with a profound peace behind the eyes.”
“And what am I?”
“Bitter, possessed of an ironic sense of humor. When you should be on your knees with humility, you stand, hip cocked, making flippant comments. As with any trader, it is difficult to pin you down. You treat Power as if it were a bargaining trick, a way to bring you more pretty shells and copper.”
“Then maybe, Hilishaya, you read me wrong.”
I watched him cast, his lance landing close to the stone. I’d learned the court now, and a faint track marked the route of my previous releases. I bowled my stone down the same line I’d used before, took two paces, and released. My lance spiraled and arced, landing a hand’s width from my stone. My point.
He said, “Your trip to the Sky World has done little to dampen your arrogance.”
As we walked down I replied, “You mean trips. Four times I went to the Spirit World. The first I ended up at the edge of the world, along the trail of the dead, looking across the abyss at the Seeing Hand and wondering if I should jump. The West Wind turned me back.”
“Having met you, I’m surprised the West Wind didn’t just knock you over the edge instead.”
I ignored the sarcasm. “The second time I wandered up a ravine to a hidden spring guarded by a tie snake. That time I ended up in the Underworld. That’s when the Piasa thought he got the better of me.”
“You’re telling me you passed a tie snake? How?”
“I climbed over his scaled body, and as he began to swallow his tail I fell into the spring he was guarding.”
“You could have heard that story from any holy person who made the trip.”
“If I’m a liar, Power will make me lose this game.” I met his glare with my own.
“And the third time?”
“That time I found myself by a great river and walked to Old-Woman-Who-Never-Dies’s house. She fed me, cured me of the Kristiano disease that was killing me. Old-Woman-Who-Never-Dies explained the threat we face and how it has to be fought. If you don’t like it that this has to be fought out by men, take it up with her.”
“And that was all? She just told you that men must decide the future? Nothing else?”
“I met Corn Woman, her daughter. She delighted me right down to my bones, so to speak.” I grimaced. “Just before she scared the liver out of me.”
“So, you are arrogant because you are scared?”
I glanced at him as I plucked my lance from the ground. “If I’m arrogant, it’s only when I’m in the company of men who do not understand the stakes.”
“And you think I don’t?”
I sighed. “Hilishaya, in your place, not knowing what I know now, I’d be clinging to the old ways, too.”
Back-from-the-Dead gestured that I should cast. I couldn’t read the expression on his face.
I took my mark, cleared my head, and sent my stone down the track. I followed it with a good cast, the lance impacting no more than the length of my forearm beyond.
Back-from-the-Dead flexed his legs, rolled his shoulders, and sprinted forward. I watched him bowl his stone, shift his lance, and launch it. The man had good form, but without the second nature that comes of endless practice. His lance stopped a pace beyond and to the right of his stone. My point.
We started down the track and he asked, “What do you get in return for fighting Kristianos? Status among these Timucua? Is that what Power promised you? The Timucua will make you a chief?”
“I get the satisfaction of killing Kristianos.”
His lips bent skeptically. “You expect me to believe that? You fight them . . . expecting no reward?”
I gave him a disgusted look. “This isn’t about status or prestige. It’s not about advantage or advancement. It’s not about Timucua, or Apalachee, or Tuskaloosa, or Chicaza. It’s about saving our world. If we don’t destroy the monster his kind of Power will overwhelm our own. Do you understand?”
For long moments we stood, gazes locked: I to make him comprehend, he to divine my hidden purpose.
Finally he asked, “What induced you to accept this challenge, Trader?”
“Hilishaya, until they make you prisoner—clap that collar around your neck—you cannot understand. I survived the horrors of Napetuca.”
“Kristianos are still men.”
I gestured with my stone. “It doesn’t matter if a person is Yuchi, Apalachee, Chicaza, Cherokee, or Timucua, we share the rules of behavior given us by Power. Everyone honors the Power of trade and understands that when a person is taken as a slave, it’s because Power deserted them for its own reasons. When we fight, it is with the knowledge that we are extensions of Power, that ultimately we are balancing the red and white, chaos and order. Are we brutal at times? Yes. Because the red Power demands it. Do we take captives and torture them to death as a means of testing their courage? Yes. Those who bear up and demonstrate fearless resolve are often released. Slaves are often adopted or allowed to buy their freedom.”
“Yes, yes, and the sky is blue,” he growled. “What is your point? For all the ways we have of making war, of feeding the red Power, we have just as many, or more, for promoting the white: making peace, trade, alliances, and harmony.”
“That is my point! Kristianos have nothing in common. They come from a different Creation, a different Beginning Time, one governed by greed, lust, and murder.”
His eyes narrowed. “I have traveled to the Sky World, to the Underworld . . . sent my souls to the Land of the Dead, sought out and retrieved the lost souls of others. I have stared down from the sky and looked upon this land. I have flown over it with Eagle Man. I would have seen these Kristianos. One of the Winds, or the tie snakes, or the Little People would have told me about them.”
I shrugged, taking my place, setting my feet. “Kristianos are from another world, a place beyond our ability to comprehend.” I took a deep breath, charging forward, bowling my stone. At the release, I shifted the lance, balanced, and cast. It felt perfect, and I watched my stone slow, the lance slamming into the clay just ahead of it. The stone rolled just to the right and flopped on its side. Again, my point.
As we walked to retrieve our pieces, Back-from-the-Dead seemed oblivious, lips pursed, dark eyes in turmoil. “Another world? Where? Why can’t I see it from the sky?”
“I don’t know.”
“You expect me to believe that these Kristianos are not subject to the laws of Power when such laws permeate all of Creation? You tell me they come from another world—one that not even the Spirit Beings know? All this from you, an outcast trader? An akeohoosa?”
“Fine. Maybe I’m a fraud.” I tapped my medicine pouch. “Perhaps I stole the sepaya. Just understand the stakes for which we fight.”
“Yes, yes, the end of our world. What gave you such an insight?”
I took my mark, grip firm on the stone. I had my rhythm now: two steps, bowl; two steps, cast. I finished with a flourish just shy of the penalty mark. My lance, almost anticipating the stone, thudded to a stop a hand’s distance to the left.
“They have a translator: Ortiz. You may have heard of him. He spoke Uzita but learned bits of a Timucua dialect. When they captured me, he chained me to a post. I kept telling him over and over that I came under the Power of trade. Can you get any more basic than that?”
Back-from-the-Dead frowned. “Everyone knows the Power of trade.”
“Ortiz looked at me with blank eyes. I might have told him that I came under the Power of dust.”
“That’s nonsense.”
“And the Power of trade was nonsense to Ortiz. So were the offers of peace, made under the White Arrow, by the Uzachile prior to Napetuca. At the peace council, Pearl Hand overheard the Kristiano chiefs talking about how best to use the Power of peace to capture Holata Uzachile. To us, treachery under the White Arrow is an affront to Power. Kristianos spit on the notion.”
Back-from-the-Dead cast, his lance landing a full pace beyond his stone. My point. We were tied.
“You make dangerous accusations, Trader. Power brought the Kristianos here for a purpose. Perhaps we have offended Power through even the simplest of things, like eating the wrong food, or touching a woman’s menstrual possessions, or mixing fire and water? The Timucua are a lesser people. Perhaps Power sent the Kristianos to destroy them?”
I gave him a disbelieving stare as we retrieved our pieces. “Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said? Stop looking at this through the eyes of an Apalachee. Stop telling yourself ‘Of course the Timucua were crushed. They didn’t have the right Power. But the Apalachee do, and we’ll win in the end.’” I gestured futility. “The problem is, priest, that we’re playing chunkey as refugees within one of the most powerful of Nations. The monster de Soto is sleeping in Cafakke’s palace, and his soldados travel where they wish. Why? Because this has nothing to do with the inherent superiority of any people—or their humble piety. It’s about military might and nothing else.”
“Power will favor those who surrender to it.”
“Then”—I poked a finger at his breastbone—“as the matron asked inside: Why hasn’t Power already struck them dead?”
He was fuming as I took my mark, feeling the Power run through me. I charged forward, bowled my stone, cast, and pulled up, watching my lance spear the earth a hand’s width from the stone. Beat that!
He cast, his lance going wide. Maybe Power was trying to tell him something?
“So I am to believe that you, Trader, know something that all the generations of hilishaya do not? Horned Serpent gave you this great revelation just before he ate you?”
I pulled my lance from beside my stone. “Kristianos have their own form of Power. It’s something alien, given to them by a god they call dios.” I shook my head, fingering my stone. “Kristianos believe that the soul—they have only one—goes to a place called paraíso. There are no dogs, deer, birds, or other creatures. No plants. Just Kristianos serving other Kristianos . . . Oh, and they sing.”
“Animals and plants”—the look Back-from-the-Dead gave me might have been reserved for the insane—“we are all one. All part of Breath Giver’s Creation. Everything, even the rocks and air, shares Spirit Power.”
I shrugged, taking my mark. “One more time, Hilishaya: Kristianos come from a different Creation. Their Power is in that long-tailed cross they leave everywhere.”
My cast was good but not great.
He cast, pulling his release, his stone hitting another of the lumps of clay and veering right. That put me two ahead.
“Who told you these things?”
“We took a Kristiano, Antonio, captive. The way Antonio explained it, paraíso is about as featureless as the inside of a brownware bowl. They don’t even get to take all the gold they are so desperate to find here.”
“Then what’s the purpose of living?” Back-from-the-Dead sounded confused instead of hostile.
I glanced over at where my dogs were sleeping. “Who’d want to spend eternity without animals?”
“What do they eat in this paraíso?”
“Antonio told us there is no food in paraíso. Maybe they don’t have bodies? No bodies, no need to hunt in the afterlife?”
He gave me a pensive look. “No feasting with ancestors and friends? No hunting? No animals? Just a soul in a brownware bowl? For eternity?”
“And endless Kristianos,” I said, reminding him. “None of whom have the faintest idea of how to behave politely, respectfully, or peacefully.”
“Do they lay with their women in paraíso?”
“Surely they must lie with their women. Without feasting, hunting, pets, and the other things, coupling would almost make up for it. Maybe in paraíso a man’s shaft never softens, and his seed is endless.” He nodded, as if in understanding. “We know they have a huge appetite for women. Those of ours who have been captured and escaped tell how they were chained and served a line of men for most of the night.”
I fingered my stone. Endless coupling? That could make up for so many other deprivations. “Wait. If they don’t have bodies, how can a man’s shaft . . . ?”
“Oh, come, Trader! Surely a man like you has sent his souls dreaming beyond the body. And somewhere in your dreams, you’ve slipped your shaft into a voluptuous and willing woman.”
I cast. My stone bobbled at the last moment as it veered slightly wide of its track and hit a lump. I looked at the priest. “I may have only dreamed it, but the evidence was plain in the morning.”
Back-from-the-Dead took his mark. He was preoccupied with the conversation; I beat him by half of a hand’s distance.
Retrieving our pieces, I said, “Antonio was fixed on Pearl Hand when we had him captive. He kept staring at her breasts as if he’d never seen a woman before. At the time I thought it was odd, but now, well, you might have finally discovered why Kristianos follow dios. Perhaps, once dead, he supplies unlimited women?”
I plucked up my stone, adding, “When you think about it, that giant wooden cross they set up is sexual. The long end is the hard penis driven into Mother Earth. The cross piece represents the testicles.”
It explained why they didn’t have bodies in paraíso. I’d seen a naked Kristiano. He was anything but attractive, having dead-corpse-white skin and patches of thick black hair. No doubt that’s why they insisted on covering their bodies from head to toe.
Back-from-the-Dead won the next cast, and I took the following, leaving me two ahead.
He stated, “You seem very sure of yourself, Trader.”
I cast, satisfied with the lance’s impact beside my stone. “I learned the hard way. In the end, we kill them. Or they kill us.”
“Power will not abandon us, Trader.”
I took down a peg with my eleventh point. “Let me ask you this: You’re the greatest of the Apalachee hilishaya, right? Since the arrival of de Soto, you and the others have been making medicine, channeling Power against them. Perhaps you are even consorting with witches and sorcerers . . . anything to harm them. But your most virulent charms, curses, and witchery remain ineffective. Why?”
He expressed a scathing mix of irritated frustration and downright loathing. “That is not a trader’s concern.”
“I’m not your enemy.”
“Then what are you? A sorcerer possessed of some Power I cannot perceive? Is that why our Spirit attacks against the Kristianos don’t work?”
“Forget it,” I muttered. “Let Power decide. Here, with this game. I’m playing for white. If I’m deceitful, Power will ensure that I lose.”
I won by four. But somehow, looking into his seething eyes, I didn’t think Back-from-the-Dead was convinced.