Wreaths and streamers of rain cascaded from the low bank of afternoon clouds as Pine Drop, Night Rain, and Mud Stalker stood on the high embankment above the canoe landing. In silence they watched the Wolf Traders lean into their paddles, pushing their heavily laden canoes toward the channel that would take them east to the Father Water.
Yellow Spider accompanied them in his empty canoe, leading the way lest they get lost in the backswamps.
A number of people had come to wish the Traders off on their long journey homeward. The three Wolf canoes bulged with goods produced in Sun Town: woodwork, rope, netting, black drink, smoke-cured alligator meat, red snapper, black drum, smoked conch, and other delicacies from the gulf that were Traded through Sun Town via its extended clans.
“I wish it was Yellow Spider that we were going to marry,” Night Rain whispered. “He’s a handsome young man. He’s been to the north and has prospects for a great future.”
“That is precisely why Salamander is the one you must marry,” Mud Stalker replied. “I could not have planned better myself. You should have seen the young fool. He had half the Men’s House in a panic before his initiation was complete. Even the Serpent, who believes in the young fool, was driven away by the rantings.”
“Your words don’t inspire us with confidence,” Pine Drop noted sourly.
“You don’t need confidence,” Mud Stalker added in a precise tone. “All you need is to think of your future, and the clan’s.”
“How long will we have to endure this?” Night Rain asked.
“Just until Owl Clan is discredited,” Mud Stalker replied. “And, given the anger growing between Wing Heart and Moccasin Leaf, that may not be as long as I had originally thought.”
“So when do we marry this half-wit?” Pine Drop had crossed her arms under her pointed breasts.
“Today, if you’d like.” Mud Stalker turned to study his young kin. At the expression of dismay on their faces, he burst into laughter.
The forest rose tall and green. Interlocking branches heavy with the bright growth of spring leaves cast a perpetual gloom over the leaf-matted earth. Wraiths of mist, like ghost fingers, wove their way between moss-encrusted trunks whose thick girths were wrapped and wound with vines. Mushrooms poked colorful heads from the moldy soil and broke through the thick and spongy layer of leaf mat. Water dripped from above, pattering here and there. Occasional patches of heartleaf, mayapple, and native pipe lived in the gloom. Dead saplings, their battle for the light long lost, and rotting corpses of long-felled giants scattered the forest floor.
Salamander slipped silently through the trackless depths. The few sounds of his passing were immediately masked by the endless noises of living forest. Birds sang in a melodic cacophony. The chirring of insects and the chattering of the squirrels fought in direct competition with the rustle of the highest leaves. Occasional discarded flower petals came drifting down from the gum, ash, and maple as new seeds were born in swelling green pods.
Salamander stepped carefully, his bare feet rising and falling with the grace of a cat’s. He tightened his grip on his atlatl where it rested in his right hand. He wasn’t particularly good with the weapon, but only a fool wandered the forest unarmed. The danger posed by the occasional black bear or cougar, though slight, was not to be discounted; but nothing could make a young man feel more like an idiot than to watch a deer, raccoon, or porcupine walk out, present a perfect target, then fade away into the forest. Meat was forever at a premium.
He slowed, bending his head back to stare up at the high canopy. Sunlight filtered through layers of green, speckles of light but mere
pinpricks that glittered in the heights. The branches were interwoven with vines of honeysuckle, cross and trumpet vine, fox grape, and greenbrier until they resembled webs. Filling his lungs, Salamander took in the scents of the forest, damp, sweet, and perfumed.
No one would find him here. Salamander allowed his souls to relax and enjoy the solitude of the forest. In the dense isolation of the endless trees, he had time to sort out the painful vortex of the last few weeks.
Masked Owl and Many Colored Crow? I am caught between warring Powers. The Serpent had as much as told him so when he incised that painful and deep cross in Salamander’s chest. Why did they choose me? What do they want of me? Why do they call on a mere boy?
He still had trouble thinking of himself as a man. The name Salamander echoed oddly in his ears—but he still held hopes that one day the Earth Being might deign to become his Spirit Helper.
In the midst of horrific events young Mud Puppy had been plucked from obscurity by both the forces of Power and the dealings of the clans, and in one fell swoop thrust from a boy’s preoccupations into the role of an authoritative man. All this while Spirit Power loomed ever larger in his life.
Why, for instance, had he been given the vision of the Swamp Panther raid? Why had he been told to free the captive girl? Why had Mud Stalker insisted on becoming his mentor—and worse, remained intent on seeing him married to his brother’s widows? The sensation was similar to being held by the wrists and spun around so fast that his feet had flown off the ground. He was being spun faster and faster until the world was a blur and his arms were aching from the tug.
What if the Powers that held him suddenly let go? Would he fly off like a cast dart to land who knew where?
He swallowed hard, the fingers of his left hand prodding tenderly at the scabs on his chest. Where the wounds were swollen and inflamed, his touch produced yellow pus and a sting.
He took the faint trail down an embankment, crossed a sluggish creek, and climbed the other side. Figuring himself to be deep enough in the forest that no one would stumble upon him, he seated himself on a fallen beech tree, laid his weapons to one side, and removed a bit of red stone from his pouch. Using a chert flake he began the laborious process of carving the round body of another of his endless line of owls.
A thought startled him. Why owls? He had been carving them ever since he had been a child. Had it been happenstance that he had settled on the form, or was there more to it? Something he knew
down in his souls but had ignored on a higher level? He glanced up at the green canopy again.
How long have you been talking to me in my Dreams, Masked Owl? Have I only now started to remember?
No answer came to him, but he felt the short hairs on his neck prickling. Yes, he had been having Dreams, hadn’t he? Dreams he couldn’t quite remember during the waking moments.
Layers upon layers, deceit and guile, death and life, and him right in the middle of it—without a clue as to why, or what he was supposed to do. A sick feeling ate at his stomach. Was he, too, destined to be a pile of bones within a couple of weeks? Were his muscles, skin, and organs to be stripped away by the Serpent’s sharp chert knife and carried out beyond the ridges for the scavengers?
He could imagine his bones: red, raw, and bloody, with bits of tissue clinging to them. In the shadowed depths of the hut, they looked dark where they rested on the broken branches and other lengths of firewood. The thought amused him that his lineage within Owl Clan was running out of houses to burn. Only Water Petal’s remained, and she would need it when the baby came.
The whirring of the forest almost swallowed the knock of wood on wood. Salamander froze, his eyes searching the shadowed forest around him.
There, the faintest trace of movement! He barely caught a glimpse through the trees. Something moved on the trail he had just come up. With cautious hands he retrieved his atlatl and fingered a dart into the hook.
Bits of color and movement flickered between the boles, and then she stepped into the clear. Young, a newly made woman’s kirtle swaying at her hips, she plodded steadily forward, eyes on the trail before her. A tumpline crossed her forehead, the thick straps leading to a heavy pack that centered on her hips just above the buttocks. She poked at the ground with a walking stick in her right hand, her left swinging in time to her gait. Long black hair had been braided and curled at the side of her head, held in place with a striking blue feather from a jay’s tail. In the dim light, grease made her rounded breasts shine, the brown nipples conelike. Her pretty face expressed sadness and desperation.
“Spring Cypress?” Salamander asked softly.
She stopped short, eyes flashing this way and that until she discerned his form on the half-rotten log. “Mud Puppy?”
“It’s Salamander now,” he told her wearily. “They made me a man.” He indicated her kirtle. “And I see that you have just been released from the Women’s House.”
Her lips wiggled as if words were running in her head that she refused to say. In the end, looking wary, she asked, “What are you doing out here?”
“Escaping.”
A weight might have lifted from her, relief rising to be mimicked in a smile. “You, too? I’m so glad to hear that.” She swung the heavy pack down and walked over to him, her shining eyes on his. “We could go together. Anywhere. I thought I’d go north. Follow the White Mud River up into the mountains. I don’t know what we’d do there, but I’m sure we could find a valley, someplace out of the way where the hunting was good and enough plants grew that we could feed ourselves.”
Salamander blinked hard, trying to fathom what she was saying. “You mean, you’re running away? Leaving Sun Town? For good?”
Her mouth hung open for a moment, the words forgotten, then she blurted, “You said you were escaping!”
“I am. But just for the day. I needed to get away! My chest hurts, my brother and uncle are dead, and everyone wants to marry me off to those horrible Snapping Turtle women.”
A sudden fear brightened her eyes. “I just told you where I was going.”
Salamander sighed and returned to his work on the little red owl. He had the head mostly right. The two triangular ears, the round eyes and pinched beak were visible. From the neck down, however, the wings and protruding belly were owl-like only if the viewer had a good imagination.
“You’ll tell!” Spring Cypress looked crestfallen. “It means I have to go somewhere else.”
“People are going to be very concerned about you. What about Clay Fat and Graywood Snake? They are your relatives. If you just up and disappear, they’ll be worried sick.”
The way her probing brown eyes were watching him made him nervous. “Mud Puppy?”
“Salamander.”
“Salamander? Would you come with me?”
“Why?”
“They want me to marry Copperhead.”
“He’s a cruel old man!”
“I don’t want to marry anyone! I wanted to marry White Bird. I loved him!” Her fists were knotted, her pretty face strained as tears edged her eyes.
“Tell them no.”
“I can’t! My uncle, Clay Fat, has made some kind of agreement
with Mud Stalker. The Elder, my grandmother, has agreed.” She shook her head, staring down at the damp carpet of fallen leaves under her small brown feet. “My life is ruined, Mu—Salamander. First the Snapping Turtle Clan took White Bird from me, then the lightning made it final.”
“You’re not the only one who lost him.”
She sniffed and squared her shoulders as she looked at him. “I couldn’t stand it the night he was married.”
“I saw you paddle off in your canoe.”
She nodded. “I went away, out into the swamp. I just wanted to be alone. I stayed away all night, but the cramps started at dawn, so I came back. Announced myself, and Aunt Turtle Mist took me straightaway to the Women’s House until my moon passed. That’s where they told me that I would marry Copperhead. Tonight.”
Salamander shifted uneasily, wondering what to say, what to do to help her. Snakes, a young man didn’t just interfere with another clan’s internal affairs. Worse, when he looked up at her, something deep in his souls was terribly aware of her slim body and the way her woman’s kirtle hung slightly askew below the indent of her navel. Even when he looked away the eyes of his souls retraced her thin waist and shapely stomach. The curve of her firm breasts gleamed in the light.
“I’ll do anything if you’ll go with me.” Her words were spoken softly, and he could sense her presence as she stepped to him. The faint odor of her carried on the warm moist air. His heart began to quicken.
“What?” He looked right up into her large brown eyes. He might have been paralyzed, pinned in place by the mixture of longing and desperation there.
“Anything.” Her fingers were plucking at the knots that held her kirtle in place, and before Salamander could understand, the pale fabric loosened and slipped down the round curve of her hips. “I’m a woman, now. You are a man.”
He caught the falling of his jaw in time to keep from gaping like an idiot, his gaze stopped short on the black triangle of her pubic hair. It glistened, cupped in that Y of soft brown flesh. He found himself unaccountably short of breath.
She began gently stroking the sides of his face, her fingertips dancing lightly on his skin. Had anything ever stoked such a fire within him before? Dream-like, she bent until her face was but a handbreadth from his. His souls were falling into her, drawn into that brown magical stare. Tremors ran down his arms and legs.
“Lie with me, Salamander.” She was pulling him down onto the
folds of the kirtle. An excitement, half fear, half anticipation had begun to pound with each beat of his heart. He shivered as her strong fingers pulled the restraining breechcloth away from his hardened penis. A gasp escaped his lips as she wrapped her fingers around his tingling shaft.
She was drawing him onto her as she lay back on the crumpled kirtle and the cushion of leaf mat. A flood of energy bore him along.
He would never know whether it was the sting in his abused chest or the pain deep within her eyes that stopped him. He winced as he pulled back and shook his head. “No.”
She propped herself on her elbows, staring at him like he’d just lost every wit in his body. “What do you mean, no? Do you know how many men would give anything to lie with me?”
Salamander scrambled backward, awkwardly shoving his throbbing penis behind his breechcloth. “It’s not that. I mean, you’re beautiful.”
Her expression collapsed, soft sobs causing her breasts to heave in a way that completely unsettled Salamander. “Then you’ll tell on me?”
“No.” In defeat he rose and walked in an aimless circle, shaking out his arms and hands the way a runner did when he needed to shed excess energy. “Go on, run away. I’ll tell no one where you’re going.”
“Why?” Even wounded she remained suspicious.
“Because I wish I could go with you.”
“Then why don’t you?” she demanded. “That way I wouldn’t have to go alone.”
He closed his eyes, a terrible longing growing inside him. “I can’t.”
“Why?”
He looked at her, still achingly aware of her gorgeous body, so young and bursting with charms. She had been forever beyond him, the woman his brother would marry. “I cannot explain it. I just can’t go with you, that’s all.”
“Afraid?” She cocked her head, those glistening dark eyes trying to read behind his souls.
He shrugged. “Maybe. Yes, that’s it.” But he dare not tell just what he was afraid of. “And besides, you don’t want me, Cypress. Not really.”
“Then why am I lying here on my back?” She spread her hands in frustration and sat up, irritation replaced with exhaustion. “I would have taken you, Mud—Salamander. I’ve never lain with a man before.”
“You’re not thinking well.”
“And you are? They say that you giggled and saw things during your initiation. They say you’re a half-wit. Given what just happened here, I’m not so sure they aren’t right.”
“You didn’t want me just now.”
“Then what did I want?” She was glaring at him.
“A dream, Spring Cypress. You were desperate for a dream. The trouble is, dreams don’t come that easy.”
She was frowning at him the way she might if his words made no sense to her. “So, what? Are you going back to tell Uncle Clay Fat that I’m running?”
He shook his head, an unexplained sadness rising to replace the desire his manhood had pumped through his body. “No. I’m giving you this.” He bent down and picked up the partially carved owl from the moss-spotted log. “I wasn’t finished with it yet, but you can tell what it is.”
She took the stone figure and held it between thumb and forefinger as she inspected it. “An owl,” she noted. “Yes, I can see that. What is it for?”
“For you.” He tried to shrug off the confusion that clouded his ability to think. “Unfinished. Just like you are.” He waved. “Go on, Spring Cypress. If anyone asks—which they won’t—I’ll tell them I haven’t seen you since the night my brother was married.”
She stood, reached down, and whipped her kirtle up with a fluid motion. He watched as she wrapped it about her hips and cinched the cords that held it in place. With slender hands she rearranged her hair, flicking bits of leaf from the glossy black braid before repinning it with the blue jay feather. “You’re a strange one, Mud Puppy.”
“Salamander.”
A smile bent her full lips. “Salamander. Odd that they’d name you that.”
“People underestimate salamanders.”
She considered that as she walked back and picked up her pack. Before slinging it onto her back and fixing the tump line, she placed the little red owl carving into a pocket. “I’ve heard that some salamanders can change their colors.”
“I’ve heard that, too.”
She smiled wearily at him. “Good luck with your colors, Salamander. I thank you for this thing you’re going to do for me. If you ever need me, I’ll be in the mountains up in the northwest. When you find your way, come looking for me.”
“I will.”
He watched as she recovered her stick and started off again. She never turned, never looked back, just walked onward until her form was hidden by the endless trees.
“Watch over her, Masked Owl.” He fought the terrible desire to pick up his weapons and run after her.
Maybe I just don’t have that kind of courage.