A Tedious Predictability

One would think that warriors, of all people, would have an oaklike grain of fortitude within their flinty hides. After all, they march out, blood in their hearts, death in their eyes, as they form up behind their shields to face the arrows and war clubs of the enemy. These are the wielders of pain and death. Not the sort to give in to night terrors or show the slightest squeamish side of their natures.

The Joara Clan House, hardly to my surprise, was vacated within moments of my arrival. Seriously, I just entered the place, picked a sleeping bench in the back, and had Fire Light’s runners place my box and basket. The other five occupants whispered, “Lightning Shell!” back and forth a few times as they hastily threw their things together and rushed for the door. One—apparently bunked next to me—didn’t even bother to pick up his blankets. He just hurried out. Made warding signs with his fingers the entire time. Must have had a guilty conscience.

I spent that first night pleasantly alone, listening to the warriors singing over at the Men’s House a couple of structures to the east. They were involved in some kind of ritual. Along with the drumming and flute music one had a particularly fine baritone voice.

I found it irritating, therefore, that the following night, the Men’s House was dark. That it remained that way thereafter. I asked Fire Light about it, and he told me that though there was no threat in the country thereabout, the war leader had taken his squadron for a “patrol of the mountains,” whatever that meant.

Which brings me back to Fire Light.

He only shows up after dark. On this, the fifth night, he comes in the company of a large-boned and rather scurrilous-looking fellow with a sack of something over his shoulder. At the door, he calls a cautious, “Soul Flier? Hello?”

Indeed. Soul Flier? At first, I’m puzzled and amused, but when I think about it, does he really want to stand at the door and call, “Hello? Witch? Are you there?”

Not that I think of myself as a witch. I’ve always considered witches to be those narrow self-serving individuals who are bent on creating havoc, seeking to fulfill only their personal lust for aggrandizement, authority, and personal gain.

I don’t need aggrandizement. I already know I am born to a higher calling: that of remaking the world.

For the sake of the moment, I slip my shell mask over my face. The mask is made from a large half of a whelk shell. Triangular in shape, it has eye holes, an incised nose, and a round hole for a mouth. It hangs on my head by means of a thong over the top and another around the sides. Wearing it gives my face a ghostly, pale look, and I have carved the zigzag symbols of lightning under the eyes and down the cheeks. It almost resembles the scar patterns.

I toss another couple of branches onto the fire and take a position behind it. Only when I have my cloak hanging just so with the flames casting dancing light over my body do I say, “Enter!”

Fire Light comes first, and behind him, nervous to the bones, comes the burly fellow. Maybe a Trader, but certainly not a warrior. He has the kind of crude face that could be fashioned out of a stump. The forehead sort of slopes into the cheeks—a broad face, with almost no setback for the eyes. His nose is a flat and wide thing like a rolled-on triangle, nostrils are two round holes. Jaw and chin made to match.

His eyes flick back and forth, going everywhere but in my direction. He stoops and lays a large thick-weave burlap sack on the floor. As soon as he does, he touches the top of his forehead and he’s gone. Big feet thumping on the matting as he rushes out the door and into the night.

On the floor, the bag is shifting and squirming, muffled whimpers and cries coming from within.

“Two,” Fire Light announces. “As you asked.”

He pauses, looks slightly sick. “It wouldn’t do to have them talking. I mean, you know, shouting for help. Calling for their parents. That sort of thing.”

I can tell that my mask, my silence, is really eating into him. Like when he was a boy, Fire Light can be read the way a recorder can read a string of beads.

In a detached voice, I say, “I don’t think that will be a problem.”

“Good.” He claps his hands together. “Now, I’ve taken your word that you can get me back to Cahokia. If it turned out … Well, you know. It wouldn’t make me happy. Especially after going to such lengths. Taking the kind of risks involved in … Well, you know.” He gestures toward the squirming sack on the floor.

What sounds like weeping can be heard through the coarsely woven cloth.

I ignore his words, stepping over for my little-girl’s-skull cup. Retrieving it, I bend down by the fire and dip it into the pot that contains steaming sassafras tea. This I offer to Fire Light. “Drink?”

He is staring wide-eyed at the cup, cut halfway through the eye sockets as it is. The dull ivory color of the bone looks almost ruddy in the firelight.

“No, thank you, Soul Flier.”

“I am not a soul flier. That’s for the likes of those who can send their souls into the Underworld, or up into the Sky World in search of the Spirits. Me, I have only ridden the lightning.”

I reach up and touch the zigzagging lines on the cheek of my mask. “It left me marked, you see. Imbued with its Power. It speaks to me. Tells me things from around the world.

“For example—and the reason behind why I needed your help procuring the little darlings in that sack—someone is coming to Cofitachequi. Someone Powerful, filled with Underworld Spirit. She is coming for me. Thinks she’s going to destroy me, pull my corpse down into the Underworld where Piasa can rip me limb from limb, tear my stomach open and devour my intestines like a robin sucks a worm from damp soil.”

Fire Light swallows hard. “I see.”

“No, you don’t. I hope to keep her from making it this far.”

“Her?”

“What makes you think that only males are gifted with Power?”

“I, uh…”

“When you take your report back to Sharp Path, tell the orata that I am in the process of doing everything in my Power to keep this woman from arriving here. I have no desire to fight this out in Joara, especially if I can destroy her on the way.”

This is all a lie, of course. I would love nothing better than to get Night Shadow Star here, alone, and defenseless. She and I have unfinished business from those last moments in the canoe. I feel my penis harden at the mere thought of her.

“How can you do that, Soul … er, Lord?”

I gesture to the sack that is bunching, shifting, and twisting on the floor. “There are ways of striking across distance, just as there are ways of seeing. Power, however, needs to be fed. Life is filled with Spirit, and that energy can be harnessed to a purpose. I can’t conjure something from nothing.”

I pause, knowing full well how to torment my dear cousin. “Understand. If I lose this, you have a long and happy life to look forward to right here in Cofitachequi. It’s not that bad of a place. I’ve traveled most of it. In the event I fail, you should consider it not an exile, but a remarkable opportunity that…” I tilt my head curiously. “What? I see that expression on your face.”

He struggles, futilely, to hide his horror. “Let’s just see that you win then, Lord.”

“Help me, and I will accompany you back to Cahokia. Personally take you with me. You will walk at my side as we ascend the Grand Staircase to the Morning Star’s palace.”

He is about as keen to share my company as he would be to clutch a full-grown water moccasin to his breast. But he hides it well, even plastering a cheery smile onto his face. It doesn’t go all the way to his eyes.

“Anything I can do to help, please call on me.”

I incline my head. “We sit right on the Trade route from the sea to the head of the Wide Fast, the Tenasee, and the whole of the world.”

“Yes.”

“If you should happen to stumble across some Traders? You know, the kind who really don’t spend their nights agonizing over the Power of Trade? You might send them to me. I would be willing to make them rich, drowning-in-copper-shell-and-property rich. But they have to be the right kind of men. Um, not the sort you would invite into your palace, but the kind who still know the river. Maybe the sort who are traveling to this part of the world because they can’t stay back in theirs. You see what I mean?”

Fire Light chews on his lips for a moment, a churning behind his eyes. “I think I do, Lord.”

“Last offer of a drink.” I extend the cup his way again.

“No, thank you, Lord. Um, I should be going. Thank you again.”

And with that he turns, doing his best to pretend he isn’t hurrying for the door.

After he leaves, I lift my shell mask, take a drink of sassafras tea and let the taste, sweetened with honeysuckle nectar, run over my tongue. What a remarkably refreshing drink. And it always puts me into a good mood.

Then, lowering my mask again, I step over, drag the bag back past the fire, and untie the knot.

The fabric falls away from two little girls, maybe four and five, their hair mussed. They look like sisters. Their eyes are huge, dark pupils overwhelming the brown irises. Both are gagged with knots of cloth, and the cords eat deeply into their round cheeks.

At the sight of me, they try to scream into their gags. It sounds like rabbits being crushed under a too-large boulder.

I pull the older of the two up onto her feet, bound as they are at the ankles. The knot that holds her skirt up surrenders to my first tug and the slip of home-woven fabric falls away to leave her naked and terrified. Her squealing into the gag is almost comical.

“Well, dear one. You need not fear. I have yet to meet a people who don’t believe that everyone who has a name also has a soul. And everyone knows the soul continues after death. So, whatever happens tonight, it’s not like you will cease to be.”

With that said, I reach for my knife.

The muffled squealing gets louder and louder.