Thirty-seven

It took Red Reed a quarter moon to make the distance upriver that separated the Sand River from the River of Ducks. Most of the distance was made after dark, under the cover of night as White Mat and Shedding Bird, in the bow, felt their way upstream. Often it was done at a snail’s pace, literally pulling the canoe along the shore by grasping overhanging branches and tugging themselves forward.

Other times they proceeded by wading through marshy shallows on the inside bends, one hand grasping the gunwales, the other casting about for balance as they sloshed, stumbled, and dunked themselves in hidden holes.

When the waxing moon was at the right angle, they paddled across the backwaters. More than once, disaster was averted by mere seconds when Piasa whispered some warning in Night Shadow Star’s ear, urging her to order the canoe left or right, or to beach. Sometimes it was because of an approaching canoe, or a spinning log that came spiraling down on the current. A couple of times it was floating rafts of driftwood broken loose from some lodging upriver.

During the day, they hid wherever the opportunity presented. Several times, they slept uncomfortably in the canoe, propped on the packs, chewed on by biting flies, gnats, and, of course, by the plagues of mosquitoes that hummed about them at dusk and dawn.

But as the near-full moon shone from the night sky, they paddled past the mouth of the River of Ducks and, hopefully, any alert pursuit.

That night, on a sand spit just above Fire Oak village—the northernmost Yuchi settlement—Night Shadow Star crawled, aching, sore, and bug-bitten, into her blankets. To Fire Cat, who lay just across from her, she said, “I never knew that humans could work this hard. What kind of people are these Traders? It seems that anything we, or the river, throw at them, they just grit their teeth, put their heads down, and work their way through it.”

“Seriously? You have to ask?” Fire Cat shifted in his blankets, where they were thrown out under the spreading branches of a sassafras tree. Exhausted as they were, they’d chopped into one of the roots to taste the sweetness, taken bark to boil down for mosquito repellent.

“I’m just trying to understand,” she answered, hearing Piasa laughing in the shadows of an oak that stood to one side. She could feel the beast’s disdainful humor.

“The answer lies inside you. Tell me. You’re dog-weary, you’re scratched, covered with welts, half devoured by mosquitoes and biting flies. You beat a cottonmouth to death with a paddle today, and you’re absolutely filthy and sun-browned. But you’ve outsmarted a renowned war chief, worked your way up a hostile river undetected, and are in the middle of an epic journey. So, given all that, how do you feel about yourself?”

“Proud. A kind of pride I’ve never felt before. It’s a particularly rewarding feeling. Not like winning a stickball championship, or some race, or a noted clan coup, but deeper. A fierce sense that I have accomplished something miraculous.”

“Now, put yourself in the Traders’ moccasins. They’re escorting the Cahokian Lady Night Shadow Star on an epic quest. They’re doing something mythic. As if they’ve been chosen out of all the Traders in the world because they are the best. If they can do this thing, it will be the greatest accomplishment of their lives, and they’ll push themselves past the limits of endurance.”

“Their limits exceed mine. They keep going when I’m too exhausted to lift the paddle for another stroke.”

“That’s one of the reasons they do it, you know. Because they’ve watched you give everything you’ve got, then pull up more from some deep part of yourself. Because you might be one of the most highborn women in the world, but you work in the mud and the cold side by side with them.”

He paused. “Though, I have to admit, having Piasa whispering in your ear, watching you lose yourself to the visions, that hasn’t hurt, either.”

“I don’t understand why that would be. I’m scared, right down to the bottom of my souls. And the visions…” She clamped her eyes shut, as if to forever blot them out.

“It adds to the sense of Power that you radiate like a white-hot stone. Remember when I said mythic? Knowing that Piasa talks to you makes you even more special.”

“I don’t feel special. I don’t know who I am anymore. This new me is nameless, clanless, and all of my existence is focused on the river, on reaching Cofitachequi. On finding out who the woman will be who finally gets this body. She frightens me. And most of all, I worry that Piasa isn’t going to like her.”

“Why is that?”

“Because I no longer know if I can trust this new woman to serve him as he wishes to be served. I’m just not sure if I care what the consequences would be.”

“There is always a price,” Piasa’s voice whispered from the night air.

“Yes,” she told the beast. “I’m just tired of paying it.”

“What’s he saying?” Fire Cat asked.

To change the subject, she asked, “We can’t forget that Blood Talon is behind us. He’s not to be underestimated.”

“By now he’s frantic, wondering if he made the right decision. If I were him, I’d be terrified that we turned and paddled flat-out down the Tenasee to the Mother River, maybe cut east to the mouth of the Southern Shawnee. I hear it’s only a hard day’s paddle to the confluence. We might have headed upstream for the Southern Shawnee’s source. From there we could take the trails cross-country to the divide with the upper Tenasee.”

“That, or he knows we’ve managed to get ahead of him again.”

“In which case, he will be coming. Maybe sending scouts in search of us. It all depends on what he could force or cajole the high chief at Red Bluff Town to do.”

“Remember, a whole string of Cahokian colonies lie farther up the Tenasee as far as the Mussel Shallows,” she reminded, fixing the image of the map she’d seen in the Recorders’ Society House as she was preparing to leave. “And many of the local towns, especially the Yuchi ones, are friendly to Cahokia’s colonies. They’d be willing to turn us over in hopes of currying favor.”

“Only if they knew who you were.”

She stared thoughtfully across the gap between their beds. “I don’t even know who I am.”

“You just said you were no longer Night Shadow Star. You most assuredly don’t look like her. Well, but for the Four Winds Clan tattoos on your cheeks. You could cover them with paint. Maybe a red circle?”

“And be who?”

“A Trader. You look like one wearing your hair like that, with your arms and shoulders packed with smooth muscle and your skin tanned the color of old leather. You’ve perfected your pronunciation of Trade pidgin. As long as you kept track of your tongue, said nothing in Cahokian that would betray your accent, who’d know?”

Again, Piasa was laughing from the shadows.

I could do this.

But doing so would be letting loose of yet another piece of who she had once been. Cast her further adrift in the gray haze of oblivion. The notion both frightened and excited her.

She lay there for the next few fingers of time, head pillowed on her hands, staring thoughtfully across the narrow space where Fire Cat’s deep breathing indicated he’d fallen into sleep.

“It was Night Shadow Star who promised that she would not share her body with the Red Wing. If I were someone else, a simple Trader…”

Piasa hissed a subtle warning from the darkness behind the sassafras tree.

If only I dared.