Fifty

The island was a long ridge of stony ground, tree-covered where angular bedrock didn’t protrude from the soil. It stuck up from the middle of the Tenasee like the elongated back of a snapping turtle. Roiling floodwaters, muddy brown in color, bearing floating yellow foam, sticks, and debris broke at the island’s upstream point and rolled down the sides in rippling currents.

Fire Cat’s log had grounded at the tip, twisted along the rocky bottom, and spun away along the river’s southern channel. In that time, Fire Cat had grabbed his bag, picked his way through the accumulated driftwood that was still piling up on the rocks, and slogged his way ashore.

Cold and shivering, wet to the bone, he’d stared glumly around as rain hammered on his head, ran down his face, and streams of muddy water drained from his long shirt. Then he’d upended his war bag and poured the river out. No sense in trying to deal with his bow, arrows, armor, or chunkey lance.

The first thing was to find some kind of shelter.

A bolt of lightning cracked over his head, so close the bang almost made him jump out of his skin. But then he’d been terrified of the Thunderbirds ever since they’d blasted four lightning bolts around him that day up on the Father Water.

Old sun-bleached driftwood, laced and woven through the brush, gave him some idea of where high water had crested in the past. Taking his time, he studied the river, searching to see if any survivors from the war canoe were bobbing in the water. Perhaps headed his way. That was when his eye spotted the fish trap. The pointed end now stuck up from the water. He clambered over a mat of interwoven branches, twigs, and what looked like old roots to the trap. Woven from willow staves, tied to a float, it had washed loose in the flood and landed here. And, best of all, a good-sized catfish was desperately thrashing in the wide end as Fire Cat tried to pull it free from the tangle.

Ultimately, he had to break it apart, grab the fish, and sling it up onto the bank. Clambering his precarious way over the debris, he pulled out his war club, brained the fish, and strung it on his bow string—the sinew cord being much too wet to serve any other purpose for the moment.

His war club in hand lest he encounter any Cahokian survivors, Fire Cat found a trail leading to higher ground and followed it up the island’s spine.

He remembered the island. They’d paddled along its length that very morning. What looked like a fisherman’s hut had been perched on one of the high points on the downstream end. Toward that, he made his way. All the time wary, searching the rain-battered leaves, looking for any sign of Blood Talon’s men. Not that he thought there was much chance that any had made it this far, but it just wouldn’t do to stumble upon a couple of them who’d somehow managed to avoid drowning.

As the shivers racked his body, he wondered if he could even fight them, cold as he was, almost stumbling and brain fogged. Just walking took all his concentration. Thank the Spirits for Uncle, who’d trained him to take the cold. Had taught him to reach down inside and find that hidden reserve.

Two whitetail deer broke cover as he wound through a patch of brush and young oak and hickory. The deer crashed their way through the wet vegetation, stopped at the river, hooked back, and circled behind him. Good to know, if he ever dried out, got his bow string back in working condition.

The storm continued to rage, rain falling endlessly. Thunder boomed and roared. Teeth chattering so hard his vision blurred, shivering so hard he could barely walk, it was all he could do to keep from tripping over his own feet. Maybe he’d been colder, sometime, probably up in one of the northern winters. Thick as his thoughts were, he just couldn’t remember. And that was back then. This was now.

In the end, Fire Cat located the hut, stumbled his way inside, and let his eyes adjust to the gloom. Water pattered from a leak in the roof, but it looked mostly sound. Barely two paces across, it wasn’t roomy. He identified what appeared to be drying racks stacked against one wall. A brownware ceramic jar with a lid stood in the rear behind a firepit. To Fire Cat’s delight it contained a small fire bow, dowel, and starter stick as well as kindling.

With a distinct sensation of guilt, he broke the drying racks apart. Struggled to control his shivering muscles, and somehow managed to assemble the fire bow, fit the dowel into the starter stick, and began sawing back and forth. As the first tendrils of smoke rose, the shakes made it almost impossible to nudge the tinder into place. Took him five tries, but finally he was able to coax a flame.

Bit by bit, he added tinder, then a couple of twigs he found back in the corners. Discovered some old leaves that had blown in and wedged against the wall. Those he fed to the mix. And finally, a couple of the smaller lengths from the broken drying racks.

Sighing, he extended his hands to the crackling flames. Pulling his shirt over his head, he stepped outside to wring the water from it, decided it was raining so hard it wet the fabric as fast as he squeezed the water out. He compromised by crouching in the doorway and twisting the garment. Using three of the thickest lengths of the old racks, he made a tipi of the poles and draped his shirt over the fire to dry.

He lost any track of time, numb, shivering, feeding bits and pieces of the broken racks into the fire. As his brain began to work again, he used the sharp edge of his copper-bitted war club to cut the catfish apart, hung small pieces over the fire to cook, and wolfed them down as they browned.

Lightning continued to flash. Thunder rolled endlessly down the valley, and on occasion a bolt would hammer the sky just overhead with enough force to shake the hut.

He hoped that Night Shadow Star wasn’t as miserable as he was. Winder should have found her some sort of shelter by now. Given the number of camps, villages, and towns they’d passed to this point, nothing had indicated that they were close to the end of habitation on the Tenasee River. Surely, they’d come to some place where they could get in out of the rain, Trade for a warm meal and a dry place to lay out their beds.

“Not that I trust that two-footed weasel, Winder,” Fire Cat told the flames. “But Blood Talon and his little band of warriors won’t be dogging Night Shadow Star’s trail.”

That had worked out a whole lot better than Fire Cat had anticipated. All he’d hoped to do was slow them down. Buy some time. The idea that he’d destroyed the lot of them was just beginning to filter through his cold-numbed head. He’d either had a hand in, or watched, the drowning of the entire party.

“Piasa? Were you down there in the depths, tugging them down, one by one?”

As if in response, the Thunderbirds unleashed a maelstrom of lightning that flashed white light through the hut door. Immediately it was followed by a fierce crackling and banging of thunder, as if the mighty Sky beasts were hammering at the very fabric of existence.

Fire Cat smiled in weary triumph.

Odd how the circle of events went around. He’d just killed warriors who had sacked Red Wing Town. Men who had murdered his children, uncle, so many of his kin. Among the men were those who had raped his wives, violated his little daughters. Some might have been among the ones who had carried him, bound and struggling, to be tossed in the canoe that had taken him, his mother, and sisters to captivity in Cahokia.

They had chased him to this far-off stretch of distant southern river, only to leave their corpses in Piasa’s watery realm. The place to which they had consigned Fire Cat’s children and relatives. Different river, same Underworld.

What kind of symmetry was that?

He plucked another piece of fish from where it roasted above the fire, let it cool to just bearable, and chewed the tasty meat. Hot food had an amazing ability to restore the body and souls.

“But I still have a problem,” he told the leaping flames. “I’ve solved the problem of Blood Talon and his warriors, but Night Shadow Star is alone with that slippery Winder. Now they’re headed upriver in a fast canoe, and I’m stuck on an island, in the middle of a flood, with a swamp on either side. Every day that passes while I’m stuck here, they’re traveling farther upriver. Stretching the distance between us.”

And that, he realized, was the terrible cost he’d paid to save her from Blood Talon.

Another bolt of lightning shot blinding light through the hut, the crack of thunder deafening, as if the Thunderbirds were laughing.