They Don’t Understand

It amazes me. One would think they would learn. Especially after all the times they’ve tried before. But they don’t. It is a particularly baffling aspect of how their thoughts and souls work.

I come awake in darkness. I am in my bed, the fire burned down to low coals. I know it is the middle of the night, and we’re in the dark of the moon. The only sound is the harmonic of a thousand crickets, then the plaintive call of an owl out in the forest.

I rise, my hand going instinctively to my war club. I can sense his presence. Call it an awareness of the proximity of a living being. It’s the beating of his heart, the pulsing of blood in the veins. If I close my eyes I can almost hear the breath sucking in and pushing out of his lungs. Feel his building fear and desperation.

Turning, I stretch my senses, let them drift out and … yes, there. He’s just on the other side of the wall, slipping along. I follow as he reaches the front corner, hesitates.

I imagine him peeking around the corner, searching the pitch-black veranda, afraid that I am hiding there. The image fills my souls of an insect who knows a wolf spider is lurking nearby, hidden in its den.

Oh, yes, come closer, my prey.

He rounds the corner, and cocking my head, I can hear his slow and fumbling approach as he feels his way along the veranda. Reaches the door.

I smile as I consider his problem. The door is closed. What does he do? Try to lift it out of the way? Is it latched from the inside? Will it make noise? And if it does, will it bring me fully awake and cognizant of his stealthy approach?

I am aware of a fast, rhythmic thumping and am surprised to realize I’m hearing the sound of his frantic heart. He is scared half to death. Nevertheless, he demonstrates courage. His fingers give off the slightest rasp as they trace the planks, and he fastidiously lifts my door, swinging it to one side.

I see the faintest outline of his shape against the darkness beyond. He is a big man, thick-shouldered, and I just make out his hair style: Muskogean.

The faint movement of his arm is that of a man pulling a war club from its thong. Despite the darkness, I know he’s got it raised, a bony fist gripping the handle.

He feels his way forward with a hesitant foot, the pounding of his heart ever more rapid, his breath loud now. I can almost feel the electric tingle of fear as it traces patterns across his skin. I can smell him, his odor thick with terror.

One step, two, and he’s craning his neck, searching frantically in the faint glow from the hearth to discover which bunk I might be asleep in.

I let him take another step, then ghost up behind him.

As boys, my brother and I were trained in the war club by the best warriors in Cahokia. Being the sons of Red Warrior Mankiller, we had the benefit of learning where to strike by practicing on prisoners. Mostly those captured in war.

I position myself, get my feet just so. And swing with all my might.

My club makes a sodden and meaty sound as it thuds into the back of the man’s spine just at the base of the neck. One heartbeat he’s standing, the next he’s on the ground with no feeling in the rest of his body.

Pulling his limp legs around, I quickly bind them, shove him onto his belly, and tie his hands behind his back. Only then do I throw wood on the fire. I study him as the flames rise around the knots of oak and hickory.

As the light flickers on my face, he gasps, and a whimper dies in his throat. I see tears begin to leak from his eyes. They trickle down around his nose like pearls of light and drip onto the matting beneath his head.

“I see by your tattoos that you are local,” I tell him. “What possessed you to try to kill me? Let alone in the middle of the night?”

“My two little girls,” he manages through sobs.

But how would he know that they ended up…? Well, doesn’t matter.

“Looks like Power just isn’t on your side, but it does run in your blood. At least, as much as can be attributed to the father. Your little girls granted me the Power to see across a great distance. Though I would much rather have the girls’ mother—more Power is transferred through the womb than from a drop of semen, you know—it will be an experiment. I’ll be fascinated to discover how far your blood and entrails will allow me to see.”

The fire is now leaping high enough to fill the room with light. More than enough to allow me to be about my work.

Following me with his panicked eyes, he throws his head back, a terrible scream almost ripping his vocal cords from his throat.

Yes, he’s figured out what I’m going to do with my long, intricately flaked chert knife.

He screams again when I sever the thong that holds his breechcloth in place. Got to hand it to the man, I would have thought his vocal cords would have given out long before I finally got around to slicing the thin muscle of the diaphragm loose from his rib cage to expose his heart. The thing was beating so fast you’d have thought it was a terrified rodent huddling between those deflating lungs.

But that was at the end, after I’d studied the patterns in his living intestines as I lifted them from the man’s gut cavity and spilled them on the matting.

Raising a burning brand from the fire, I then studied the blood pooling on either side of his spine, seeing the image they reflected in the dancing light.

I can see Night Shadow Star there. She is on the river. Coming closer by the day. The Casqui, the storm, both have failed me.

I consider the problem as I peel the Muskogee man’s skin from his limbs; the firelight flickers on his still-twitching muscles. Remarkable things, muscles. Half of the duality of movement. The other being bone. Bones do no good without muscles, and muscles are worthless unless attached to bone.

There should be a lesson in that when it comes to my problem with Night Shadow Star, assuming I can figure it out.

I finish with my work as the first streaks of dawn find their way across the treetops and into Joara. The framework I have made of sticks isn’t the best workmanship I am capable of, but it will do until I can craft something better.

I am out digging a hole as the full force of the sun finally illuminates the plaza and casts a long shadow from the mikko’s pitch-roofed palace. That done, I lift my framework and set it in the hole. My Muskogee would-be assailant’s skin hangs wet and loose, but it will tighten with the sunlight and breeze to dry it.

I look around, take in the town, hoping to share my sense of satisfaction. But for the small knot of warriors at the palace where Fire Light now dwells, I see no one. It strikes me that Joara is oddly quiet. I hear no calling children, no smacking of stone axes on wood or the thumping of pestles in log mortars. People should be out and about, calling greetings to each other.

Nor is the priest in his usual place down at the temple on the west side of town.

Only that one old woman without relations, who lives at the far end, too crippled to hardly move, is standing at the edge of the plaza, watching me with worried brown eyes.

She shouldn’t. True Power lies in the blood of the young.

Have I missed something? Perhaps a holiday? Is it summer solstice? Surely it can’t be the Green Corn Ceremony. And the lunar maximum was long ago.

So, where is everyone?

“Well, no matter,” I tell myself. “I have plenty of firewood, the fields outside of town are full of growing corn, beans, and squash, and as of last night, there’s plenty of fresh meat for breakfast.”

I shall spend the rest of the day smoking my Muskogean friend for future meals. And who knows, perhaps his wife will come along, and I can see if her blood and body have more Power for clearer visions than her husband’s did.

That would be most helpful as I plan my trap for Night Shadow Star.

“You just keep right on coming, sister,” I whisper.

But next, I must talk with Fire Light.

Poor man.