Sixty-eight

Where was Fire Cat? The question had begun to consume Night Shadow Star. Worse, as her worry about him increased, so, too, did the fleeting glimpses of Piasa as he flickered at the edge of her vision. And sometimes, at night, she’d see him stalking just beyond the light of the fires, or in the dim recesses when they stopped at one of the numerous villages that lined the upper Tenasee.

“We made a deal,” she whispered to the shadows as she stood on a rise overlooking the clear-flowing Wide Fast River and Chestnut Place village, a muddled collection of huts a day’s journey up from the confluence. The local Yuchi called the river the Wide Fast—a major tributary of the Tenasee that split off, headed southeast, deep into the mountains, and would eventually lead her to the final portage that would cross the divide into Cofitachequi.

“The price. He will come to you in Cofitachequi.”

She knotted her fists, hearing the breeze in the towering branches of the chestnut tree overhead. She’d never seen such impressive trees, giants that dominated the long ridges and thickly forested valleys she now traveled. Mixed with mighty black oaks and beeches, there were places where she walked in the shadow of the forest, looking up through a perpetual twilight at a canopy that stretched so far above she could have fit her entire palace beneath. Even the vines, thick as a man’s torso, defied her imagination with their dizzying heights as they rose to lofty branches above. Literally a Sky World.

Walking in their depths left her humbled, a mere midge in the presence of serene majesty. In Cahokia she might have been a force to be reckoned with. Here, she was nothing. A speck. A mote in an endless and incomprehensible realm of vast forest.

Ache as she did for Fire Cat. Dream of him, she might. But the forest, overwhelming in its Spiritual presence, made her needs seem small and petty. What was her love for a man compared to the Power of the land, to the evil that awaited her up the Wide Fast?

“Yes,” Piasa whispered from behind her ear.

She turned, expecting to see him there in the shadows cast by the great chestnut. Nothing moved, no form disturbed the thick carpet of leaf mat. Only the sound of birds and chirring insects filled the late afternoon.

In the village below, dogs barked; a child’s laughter carried on the lazy breeze. She could hear the sound of a pestle thudding into a log mortar as corn was pounded into meal.

Just beyond the village, the Wide Fast stretched across to the tree line on the opposite bank; the clear waters roiled, welled, and sucked, having a different soul and Power than did the Tenasee. From this bend where the village was situated she could see the mountains rising to the east, tall, mightier than anything she’d seen so far.

“We’ll have to take to the trails when we reach the narrows and the water runs fast,” Winder had told her. “From there it’s almost a straight shot east to the divide, and then down to Joara and Cofitachequi.”

She took a deep breath, filling her lungs with the scent of chestnut, forest, and river.

Fire Cat, I wish you were with me.

If she closed her eyes, she could almost feel his presence, reliable as hickory, that calm strength radiating from his posture, that ironic smile tugging at his lips. In her imagination she reached out to run a finger down the Red Wing tattoos on his cheeks.

How could she have taken him so for granted, come to rely on him with all of her being? He had become her strength, and while she had discovered a new self-reliance in the days since he’d disappeared, his absence remained an ache in her souls.

“You all right?” Winder called, climbing up into view from the village trail.

“No.”

“Want to explain?”

“The Spirit Beast that owns my soul is whispering in my ear. I broke a promise. The man I love may be lost to me forever. I am in a strange land, among strange people, headed for a confrontation with the most evil man I know. If I do not win it, I had better die in the process, because if he takes me alive…” She ended with a shiver.

Winder stopped just short of her, a serious expression on his square face, the directness of his gaze unnerving. “Then why are you rushing headlong? Slow down. We’ll stay a while here, at Chestnut. If Fire Cat’s coming, he’s coming through here.”

“You don’t understand.”

“What? That you’re rushing to face the Lightning Shell witch? Now, me, I’ve never seen him. He showed up after my time in Cofitachequi. Doesn’t mean I haven’t heard the stories. If even half of them are true, you don’t want anything to do with him.”

“You’ve always changed the subject. Found a way to keep from telling me these stories that are supposedly passing from mouth to mouth along the river.”

He shrugged dismissively. “You say he’s your brother. I don’t want to be gossiping about someone you’re—”

“Tell me. There’s nothing you could say that would enrage me. Well, unless you were to try to convince me that he’s a kind, caring, and compassionate human being. Tell me he’s the Spirit of light, a man whose souls draw butterflies and songbirds. That’s about the only tale you could spin that would be beyond belief.”

“Word is that he strips the flesh from living young girls. Consumes it in front of them. Uses them in the conjuring of some sort of terrible witchery. That he bathes himself in the blood of children. And that those who have tried to kill him are dead. Either by his hand, or lightning. That the Powers of the Sky World protect him.”

She nodded, frowning.

He said, “You don’t seem surprised.”

“The last time I faced Walking Smoke, it was over the murdered, dismembered body of my sister, Lace, and pieces of the baby she’d been carrying in her womb. The flesh-eating is new. But certainly not out of the question. He has always been preoccupied by souls and how to possess them. Probably because of what happened to Chunkey Boy. Requickening—that is, reincarnating the Dead—obsesses him. Maybe he thinks that by eating and digesting people he can make them one with him.”

Winder’s gaze, if anything, had grown more intent.

She gave him a humorless smile. “What? Surprised that I’m not shocked, or are you just rethinking if you really want to be part of this madness? It’s all right. Get me to Joara, or wherever my brother is in Cofitachequi, and you’re free to flee as fast as you can back to that cute and willing wife you left in Big Cane Town.”

He huffed a sigh, stepped up beside her, and turned his attention to the peaceful Yuchi village below. “All the more reason to stop here for a while. I can rent that hut we’re in for a moon or two. Give you some time to wait for Fire Cat to catch up. And, who knows, in the meantime maybe news will come from the other side of the mountains informing us that the Lightning Shell witch has been killed. If he’s as evil as they say, it wouldn’t surprise me. I’ve been up and down the rivers, around plenty of places to know. Terrify enough people, and, well, it’s pretty much guaranteed to get your head bashed in from behind when you least expect it.”

“Not Walking Smoke.”

“Even Walking Smoke.”

Again, she gave him the humorless smile. “It’s not some wild story: He is protected by Sky Power. I don’t doubt that people have tried to take him down. That they’ve been struck down by lightning at the last moment when it seemed they would succeed.”

“What possible use would Sky Power have to keep a monster like that alive? I mean, he’s evil, right? Mucking around with souls and perversion and abomination. Are you trying to tell me that Sky Power is inherently evil?”

“It’s not about good or evil. It’s about balance, the eternal war between Sky and Underworld. Walking Smoke became a pawn in the game when he tried to open a portal to the Underworld, to free Piasa’s soul into our world and allow it to devour his own. I took him to my master, sank Walking Smoke in the river for Piasa to destroy. The Thunderers took that opportunity to try to kill Piasa. Blasted the river with lightning. Piasa escaped, and the Thunderers saved Walking Smoke.”

“So? What does that have to do with you?”

“Morning Star, Piasa, and I are in this together. Born into an unholy triangle. Morning Star is Sky Power living in Chunkey Boy’s body. Because of that, Walking Smoke hates him. Enough so that eventually he will try and kill him again.

“Morning Star wants Walking Smoke dead. Piasa wants him destroyed because he’s a threat to the Underworld. The Thunderers want him alive, committing atrocities, because doing so makes it even more important that I kill him.”

Winder blinked, looking confused.

“Don’t you see, Winder? He’s bait to get me to Cofitachequi. Piasa devoured my souls, so we’re linked. The Thunderers hope to get at Piasa through me. They’re luring me to Cofitachequi so they can strike when he’s vulnerable.”

“That’s…”

“Insane?” She laughed. “Welcome to my world.”

“Pus in a bucket, Lady, why don’t you run? Go back. If you can’t find Fire Cat, I’ll make you a place where—”

“You don’t understand.” She tapped the side of her head. “Piasa is in here, part of me. I belong to him. I can no more run away from him than you could run away from your arms, your testicles, or your liver.”

“It seems that the Morning Star, if he really cared if you win or not, should have sent you with an army instead of all by yourself.”

“He tried. Doesn’t matter, it will still come down to just him and me. Face-to-face. And afterward, only one of us will walk away.”

“But why you? Oh, I heard all that business about Power. Why you, personally?”

“Just as he is driven to murder the living god as a means of getting back at Chunkey Boy, he is obsessed with possessing me.”

“By possessing…?”

“Oh yes. In all the appallingly perverted and taboo ways you’re thinking. But what he’d do to my body is nothing compared to what he’d do to my souls.”