On the Trail

I love this country. I am carried along what’s called The War Path between Cofitachequi and Joara. It’s an old route, used by Traders, travelers, war parties, and peace embassies for generations. In places the path is worn into the ground, in others it winds around sections where the rut grew too deep. Here and there it now makes detours around the corpses of huge fallen trees.

I love this forest, given that it’s filled with huge flocks of passenger pigeons that feed on the towering mulberry trees, the flocks of turkeys, the wary black bears, and the colorful tribes of parakeets. Topping a low ridge, we pass beneath the first great chestnut tree, its branches laden with flowers that—now at the end of their lives—drop a rain of petals upon us.

I can stare up by the hand of time as I am carried west through the vast immensity of forest. I never tire of the remarkable height. In some places, the lowest of the mighty branches are almost a bowshot above my head. The boles of the great black oak, hickory, ash, elms, and maples are so large a person could hollow them out to make a reasonable dwelling, provided he cared to invest the labor.

And then there are the vines, giant grapes, greenbrier, walking stick, honeysuckle, the list goes on. All of them, as ageless as the trees that support them. Huge, they twine up the bark, or hang free, like ropes for the gods dropped from high in the Sky World.

And up in those trees? A hundred hundred birds call, flit through the shadows, and dart from branch to branch. The squirrels mock us from above, barely visible as tiny darting shapes, so far are they above our heads.

The forest floor that we cross is knotted in places by great roots that trace lightning patterns across the ground. The leaf mat is thick, as deep as my arm where I tried to dig down through the black, molding compost. It gives the air a curious pungency that mixes with the scent of verdure and aerial flowers that floats down from above.

I don’t think I’ve ever known such forest. Even in the southern nations that surround the lower Father Water.

Here I am surrounded by a massive pulsing of life, as if the forest transpires an eternal Spirit that echoes the Beginning Times.

While I am carried away in poetic rapture, my porters are as skittish as barefoot Dancers in a storage cist full of water moccasins.

Last night an owl hooted. If I hadn’t already been on my feet and close to their fire, the whole lot of them might have bolted into the night before I could stop them.

My bellowed “Don’t you dare run!” barely held them in place. I had to stalk into the light of their fire and pin them, one by one, with my glare and threaten to maim their souls if they ever showed such cowardice again.

You see, I took something from each of them: a lock of hair, a bit of cloth, a personal token. Took it with the admonition that if they didn’t get me to Joara, I would wreak my revenge on their souls through that item. That they couldn’t run, couldn’t hide, and certainly couldn’t protect themselves as long as I held that Spiritual link to them.

Needless to say, we make excellent time on the trail. Not a single one of them cares to linger even a moment longer than need be to get me to Joara.

And I must get to Joara.

Night Shadow Star is coming. The lightning has told me.