Twenty-two

Two hard days on the river. Night Shadow Star had stepped out of one existence and into an entirely different one. She might have shed lives the way she did a change of clothing. But this new woman she sought to become was totally alien. Uncomfortable. She might have changed identities and at the same time become a stranger.

The transition from Lady Night Shadow Star of Cahokia into a common Trader had proved more than unsettling. It wasn’t just the way she now dressed and the hard labor with the paddle. It felt like part of her was fading away that she would never get back again.

Piasa’s ridiculing laughter, echoing from the air around her, only added to her discomfort and the deep-seated fear of some terrible thing hovering just over the horizon.

The only constant had been the rivers: alive, filled with the Power of the Creation and the Beginning Times. She could believe they were the Spirits of the magical Serpents of the Beginning Times, turned into water to forever flow from the highlands down to the sea.

Under her breath, she recited the myth to herself as she paddled. “Just after the Creation, Crawfish scooped mud from beneath the primordial waters and brought it to the surface to create the land. Vulture spread the land, contoured it with each beat of his mighty wings, lifting and dropping to shape mountains and valleys. From the heights, the Spirit Serpents crawled down through the lowest places, their bodies becoming the living waters, the rivers and streams.”

The very waters Red Reed skimmed across with such apparent ease, its bow and stern leaving V-shaped wakes to vanish in the wind-borne waves and swelling and eddying surface.

Despite living on the Father Water as she did, she’d never really understood the vibrant Power that flowed through the river’s soul. As Red Reed had proceeded, she had watched in wonder as the currents swirled and spun, how the little whirlpools had formed, and upwelling spread across the rippling surface, disrupting the waves.

Of course the river lived, filled as it was with Serpent Power that flexed beneath the canoe’s keel.

Bedazzled, she watched as the south wind stroked waves from the water’s surface, experienced the miracle of the waves marching against the current to create the illusion of the river running backward at the same time it bore them ever south. Were she to free her imagination, she might believe she was going in two directions at once.

“This is my world,” Piasa said from just behind her ear.

She whirled, expecting to see him crouched there on the canoe’s gunwale, only to find a startled Half Root who asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Just Piasa. He’s here. Pacing us.”

None of which had reassured the Traders.

“You get used to it,” Fire Cat had told the others reasonably.

The Traders’ wary glances back and forth, not to mention over the sides—as if they were looking for the Underwater Panther—hinted that they did not believe him for a moment.

The river: realm of the Tie Snakes, stalking ground of Piasa, of Snapping Turtle, and Horned Serpent. Her souls had walked in the Underworld, wrapped in the arms of Sister Datura. Now her body floated on that thin veneer of surface. Such a fragile boundary between worlds. One she could whisk her fingers through. Only Red Reed’s slim hull kept her separate from the Power that surged, eddied, and flowed beneath her.

That night she walked out from the little village called Fish-on-the-Bank. A couple of families of Illini had built it on the north bank of the Mother Water just above its confluence with the Father Water. Normally some distance from the river, the flooded lowlands now allowed Red Reed to beach where the water was lapping within a body length of the lowest pole-topped structure in the tiny hamlet.

White Mat had bargained off a small clam-shell bracelet in return for a night under a roof in one of the bent-pole houses. The place wasn’t much. A hovel. But after last night’s cold camp on the beach below The Chains on the Father Water, just having four walls and a roof felt like a luxury.

Supper had consisted of boiled catfish and the earliest spring greens. Not a feast fit for high chiefs, but filling.

Night Shadow Star rubbed her sore arms and shoulders, wincing in the night. Something deep within her souls—a realization that she had just begun to recognize—was pleased that she’d picked up a paddle and joined in the work.

She’d always had a firm grasp of teamwork after her years on the stickball court, but this tight-knit bond she was developing with the Traders was something new.

Why am I out here wandering in the night? I should be in an exhausted sleep.

Earlier, Piasa’s whispered voice had awakened Night Shadow Star from a sound sleep. Her thoughts wouldn’t leave her alone. Rising, she had walked out into the quiet village, her presence only noticed by the village dogs who’d approached, tails wagging, looking for some kind of treat.

Pulling her blanket tight, she took the trail down to the water’s edge beside the tied-off Red Reed and stared up at the night sky. The moon was almost dark, the heavens a mass of stars that reminded her of frost swirled across the blackness.

They had made good time. To her surprise, White Mat and Shedding Bird had acquiesced when she ordered them to travel late into the night and rise early before dawn to make additional use of the daylight hours.

“Happy to,” Made Man had told her. “Headed downstream? That’s the easy part. Find the river’s thread—or fastest current—and hold it, keep steerage, and we literally shoot downstream like an arrow.”

“Hard part,” Half Root rejoined from where she stroked her paddle in the stern, “comes when we reach the Mother Water and head east. That’s upstream, against the current. Then we have to read the river, stay as far from the thread as we can and paddle harder in the backwater and shallows, slip across the current as it twists back and forth. Then every bit of progress we make is paid for by muscle and sweat.”

“Fire Cat and I will do our share,” she’d told the woman.

“Don’t push yourself too hard. We don’t expect you to give up being a Cahokian lady the first day,” White Mat had remarked skeptically.

“And since when can’t a Cahokian lady do a full day’s work?”

They’d laughed, and truth be told, she hadn’t come close to contributing a full day’s work. Night Shadow Star had thought herself fit, hardened by her dedication to stickball and running. Paddling, however, exercised muscles in her arms and shoulders she hadn’t used in years.

“It’s all right,” Half Root had told her after a couple of fingers of time. “You’re used up. Take a break. You’re causing us more work missing strokes and dragging your blade than you help.”

“Ease into it,” White Mat had insisted. “It will take a couple of days to harden your body and hands. Bleeding blisters aren’t worth it in the end, not when you can take the time and grow the calluses slowly.”

The Trader had been right. Every muscle in Night Shadow Star’s shoulders, arms, and back ached and burned. She massaged them as she strode along the bank. The night, so close to equinox, seemed particularly thick. The feeling was of eyes watching her from out in the flooded forest.

The Mother Water’s black water pooled around the spring-heavy trees in the floodplain. The smell of mud and damp vegetation hung like a pungent perfume in the night. The water lapping at the bank mixed with the sounds of frogs and the first beetles. A fish splashed out in the dark water, and a night bird called.

She thought she caught a flicker of movement out in the flooded trees as Piasa slipped through the shadows. She could feel the beast, watching, biding his time, knowing how she chafed at his ever-present interference with her life.

Worse, she had to sit through the day, her body brushing Fire Cat’s, aware of his presence, catching whiffs of his musky perspiration. Sharing his company, seeing his smile, watching his hands move on the paddle, added to the agony come night when she had to bed down across from him. To listen to his soft breathing, and know that she’d destroy them both if she slipped over to his bed and crawled under his blanket.

“We have a chance at the end of this journey,” she told the night, knowing that Piasa was listening.

And, though it tortured her to avoid his touch, at least she could revel in his humor, his strength and honor. Having half of the man she loved was better than having none of him at all.

“You all right?” Fire Cat asked from the darkness behind her. Figured he’d have noticed her absence.

“Piasa was whispering into my ear. Words I could barely hear. Besides, I needed to walk. My legs are cramped. Sitting all day, every day. How do they do it?”

“Traders get used to it. You can stop, you know. Rest. They work for us, after all. We don’t have to push this hard.”

“Yes, you do,” Piasa whispered in her ear.

“I’ll pay that price.”

“Why?”

“Piasa says we have to.”

She turned, seeing Fire Cat’s night-shadowed form in the trees. “We’re in the middle. Caught between two traps.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Something coming from behind. Something awaiting us ahead. Both of them terrifying, both bringing pain and trouble.”

“All right, we know that Walking Smoke is awaiting us in Cofitachequi, but what’s behind us?”

“Who do you think?”

“The expedition? That mass of people, canoes, and supplies couldn’t possibly make the kind of time we are. They have to unload, set up camp, build fires, cook food enough for an army.”

“Spotted Wrist.”

“You’re sure? Piasa tells you this?”

“He does. But more, I can feel it.”

“What does he want? Pay you back for outsmarting him?”

“He’s not used to losing. At anything. I embarrassed him. Made him look weak. How can he be the Keeper, ferreting out threats to the Four Winds Clan, when he can’t even compel me to marry him after the clan matron herself ordered it? That can’t be allowed to stand.”

“He can’t leave Cahokia.”

“It will be a party of his warriors. He won’t rest until I’m in his bed.”

“Won’t that be a slap to the Morning Star’s face? Chunkey Boy wants you to kill Walking Smoke. Probably hasn’t forgotten how close Walking Smoke’s assassin came to cutting his throat. Keeping you from taking out his rival in Cofitachequi? It’s not healthy to enrage your brother. He holds a grudge.”

“Spotted Wrist will have a plan, some way to soften the blow. Probably something with Rising Flame’s blessing. After all, she appointed him. His failure makes her look bad as well.”

“But you said that rushing ahead is just as threatening.”

“Walking Smoke knows we’re coming.”

“Yes,” Piasa whispered from somewhere behind her ear.

“Ominous, indeed.” Fire Cat bent his head back to stare up at the cloud-thick sky.

“And the jaws will be ready to snap shut around us the moment we are within reach.” She tried to imagine what sort of trap her brother would set. Something intricate to pay her back for her part in ruining his murderous spree in Cahokia.

Chunkey Boy wasn’t the only brother she had who carried a grudge. Even before the Morning Star’s Spirit had devoured Chunkey Boy’s souls, it had been Walking Smoke who was the most devious, and ultimately, entirely evil.