Joara

The town sits on the banks of Joara Creek—a small stream that runs down from the high mountain pass that leads across the Blue Mountains. It’s a major Trading trail, a route that leads to one of the major tributaries of the Tenasee River.

The surrounding terrain is mixed, low ridges rise above fertile alluvial valleys, an area just east of the mountains where several creeks flow into the headwaters of the Cofitachequi River. It’s rich country, forested with mature chestnut, mulberry, hickory, walnut, several varieties of acorn, hazelnut, pawpaw, chinquapin, grapes, berries of all kinds, maygrass, little barley, and soil that will grow just about anything a family might want to plant.

It was here that Moon Blade established his headquarters when he first invaded Cofitachequi. Strategically located, the site itself has ample agricultural land, doesn’t flood like the lower areas, but still allows control of the Trade route leading to the divide and across to the Wide Fast River.

The day I arrive is sunny and hot—that sapping muggy summer heat that slicks the skin with sweat, and where, if a person makes a fist, he almost squeezes water from the very air. Even the birds had gone quiet for the most part, and the squirrels had retreated to the high shadows to pant in misery. Only the idiot insects seemed to be thriving, chirring, buzzing, and flitting about in the heavy and baking air.

My sweating, staggering porters flounder their way across the Joara ford, labor their way up the bank, past a line of crude dugout canoes, past the wilted-looking ramadas where people fan themselves in the shade and barely wave a greeting.

The town itself stretches east-west along the terrace on the south side of the creek. A low mound has been raised on the eastern end atop which Moon Blade built the peak-pitched palace overlooking the feeble excuse of a plaza. The palace is now occupied by his second son, Sharp Path, who was born of a Muskogee woman called Mica. The small plaza, with chunkey courts, World Tree pole of red cedar, and remarkably confined stickball ground, was surrounded by a Men’s House, Women’s House, a couple of Clan Houses, and on the other end, a temple dedicated to Old-Woman-Who-Never-Dies.

Behind them I can see a haphazard collection of both bent-pole and trench-wall houses, mud-daubed, their peaked roofs either grass-thatched, cattail-thatched, or made from split cane.

Given the heat, people are outside, living in the attached ramadas, or what they call summer houses. Granaries in Joara are the southern type, elevated high off the ground on four tall poles, the floors and sides made of interlaced branches that allow air to circulate and roofed with thatch or bark to shed rain.

In the background, beyond the forest, I can see the high, flat-topped mountain, and know that beyond that rises the bulk of the Blue Mountains. Not that they really are blue, mind you; the thick forests that cover them are all shades of green, but when seen from any kind of distance they appear shrouded in blue misty air.

I am carried summarily to the flat in front of the Mikko’s palace and carefully lowered to the ground. My porters step back as if a water moccasin is riding on the litter with me. Now they watch me, wide-eyed, as I stand, stretch, and take my bearings.

“Master,” one asks. “If it wouldn’t be taken wrong. Might we have our talismans?”

I consider, narrow an eye, which, if anything, makes the poor fool sweat even more. After just enough hesitation to rattle him to the bones, I toss him the sack in which I’d kept their personal items.

He snatches it out of the air, opens the drawstring with shaking fingers, and peers inside. “It’s here.”

They don’t even take the time to divvy up their bits and pieces, but leave at a run. I watch them pelt past the ramadas. Don’t even look back as they splash across the ford and disappear into the forest.

I would have thought they’d at least have found a meal, perhaps rested for a day or two. But then, who knows? Maybe there is something about the food in Joara?

“Who comes?” a voice asks behind me in rudely accented Muskogee.

I turn, see a young man dressed as a Cahokian lord. I place him as being close to thirty, and he moves with that athletic grace of a stickball player—complete with the scars to prove it marking his tanned and sweat-gleaming skin. He has that arrogant look to go along with his Four Winds Clan tattoos.

Something about that square face, the set of the jaw … Oh yes, now I recognize him: my cousin Fire Light. Out of Slick Rock’s lineage. Takes Blood and Eel Woman’s oldest son. As boys we used to practice chunkey and stickball.

I should wonder why he is here in Joara, but I’m sure I know the story. He was always a bitter young man, chafed at the fact that he wasn’t part of the privileged side of the family. As if, being a parallel cousin, he wasn’t one of the most important young men in the city. My bet? He made a play for the tonka’tzi’s chair, or involved himself in some other disruptive political shenanigans, and got himself exiled.

I study him thoughtfully.

Of course, he doesn’t recognize me. Not with the left side of my face ruined and scarred. His gaze is locked first on the damage, and then he takes in my light cloak, more of a net fabric woven from hanging moss, and the wrap of airy fabric at my waist.

Beyond lies the litter, my box and basket. He glances around, as if in search of the porters, and then, puzzled, back at my twisted smile.

I can see it as he places who I am. The frost of recognition cools behind his eyes, but I give him credit. He doesn’t slowly back up the low stairway to the safety of the palace mound.

“Greetings, Lord,” I tell him in Cahokian. “Have you a place where I can stay? I’d suggest the Clan House, such as it is. Don’t worry about moving the others out. For reasons that elude me, people seem to shun my presence. Not sure why, I wash with great regularity.”

“Lightning Shell. What are you doing here, witch?”

“I have business. Power is afoot in the land. Trouble comes this way.”

“Do I know you? Something about…?”

“Does anyone really know anyone else? Well, except for when you can slip your soul into another person’s body. Listen to their deepest, most secret thoughts?”

This time he does take a step back, heel striking the bottom stair. I can see the worry growing behind his eyes.

“Oh, relax, Fire Light. I’m not here for you. I’m laying my trap for another. And there’s plenty of time. Even for you. I can help you, you know.”

“Help? Me? How?”

“I can give you what you want more than anything else.”

“What’s that?”

“A way out of this desolate end of the world. A way back to Cahokia, back to the warm embrace of the Four Winds Clan.”

“How did you know I was Fire Light?”

“I know a great many things. Especially the hidden and secret ways of the heart. For instance, you’ve known for a moon now that your sister, Rising Flame, is the Four Winds Clan matron. And why are you here, in Joara? Because you’ve been waiting for a messenger who has never come. Irritated, tortured, you twist in your blankets at night, wondering why she hasn’t lifted your ban, sent for you to come paddling back to Cahokia as fast as the rivers can carry you.”

Center strike! I can see the truth of my words in the familiar tightening of his eyes, that pinching at the corner of his mouth.

Oh yes, I know you, cousin.

“You, a witch, can get me home?”

“What is the control of Power good for if you can’t use it?” I give him a lopsided grin, which is all I’m allowed given the scar tissue around my mouth. Then I add, “What would you give to go home? Take your place at the side of Morning Star’s high chair?”

I’ll say this for Fire Light. He’s a lot more careful than he was in his youth. Maybe the exile has been good for him, taught him to think things through.

“Anything!”

On the other hand, maybe it hasn’t.

“I need someone to carry these things to the Clan House. After that, I need food, some sassafras tea, water to wash with.”

“I will have to get the orata’s approval. He is currently—”

“Sharp Path is a smart man. He will have no objection. And if he does … Well, that’s silly. Like I said, he’s a smart man.”

With that, I turn on my heel, take two steps toward the Clan House where it sits diagonally across the plaza. Then I turn back.

Fire Light hasn’t moved.

I tell him, “Come tonight. After dark. There are some things I will need. If you can procure them, I would be most grateful.”

“Things? Like what?”

“A little girl. Two would be better.”

I see the color drain from his face.