In the two moons since Salamander’s marriage to the Swamp Panther, Night Rain’s irritation had grown. Late summer light slanted through the trees. From where she lay in the hunting blind, Night Rain could look up and see sunshine reflecting from the glossy green leaves of the magnolia. Great white flowers, the last of the summer, still whispered their scent into the sultry air. To either side sassafras trees stood like resolute sentinels. The lobed leaves undulated on the late-afternoon breeze.
Deep Hunter stirred and shifted on the thin deer hide they lay upon. He propped himself on one arm, his appreciative dark eyes tracing the length of Night Rain’s young body. She could see the pattern her body had made on his; the grease had been smeared on his chest, belly, and thighs. His penis lay limp, the scrotum that had been so taut moments ago had descended, lax in the heat.
She sighed, the warm tingling still fading from her loins. Snakes! So that was what it was all about? No wonder people made such a fuss about coupling. A glow of satisfaction still traced fingers of delight through her hips.
“You are so beautiful,” he whispered.
She smiled as she studied the lines in his face. He might have been her grandfather, but his gnarly old body had surprised her. She hadn’t understood that coupling could proceed slowly, gently, like a long leisurely soak in a warm pond. Her previous experience with Salamander had reminded her of the rapid way camp dogs joined,
then faced away while locked, as if longing to be somewhere else.
“How do you feel?” he asked.
“Good.” She stretched, dreamy, aware that his eyes were fixed on her supple body. “I didn’t know it could be like that.”
“You have only had boys.” He yawned, smiling satisfaction. “And it pleases me that your Salamander is no better with his women than he is with his politics. Have you given any thought about what you will do when he’s broken and dismissed from the Council?”
“This will be soon?”
“No, not for a while. Maybe next summer. A great many people want Owl Clan broken, not merely wounded.”
She remembered her uncle’s admonitions: “Give him nothing but your body, Night Rain. This isn’t some dazzle-headed youth, but a skilled Speaker, crafty in the ways of intrigue. Say nothing that will give him any advantage.”
She told him offhand, “I don’t care. Just so long as he is out of my bed and gone for good. I have been told that if things are handled correctly, an alliance with Alligator Clan might be considered.” She lifted an eyebrow. “Currently you only have one wife.”
He chuckled. “Yes, and she is possessive. Trust me, you wouldn’t want to move into her house with me. We have been together for a great many turnings of the seasons. She has her own ways of doing things, and I daresay, the pot would boil over within the first hand of time. I wouldn’t want your tender flesh scalded by those waters.”
Despite the warnings from her uncle, she said, “You have others from your lineage. Let’s see, there’s Saw Back.”
“Yes, you’d think he was born of Owl Clan instead of mine.” His expression soured. “You would be interested in a stone-headed boy like that? I still can’t understand how anyone could fail in such an easy assignment. All he had to do was follow that murdering weasel into one of the channels and kill him! Jaguar Hide was alone, vulnerable. The added benefit was Owl Clan’s abortive protection! It was a way of striking two birds with one cast of the bola.”
Startled by his outburst, she placed a hand protectively on her breast. “But he was tricked!”
Deep Hunter’s eyes narrowed, expression changing as he studied her. “Is this another one of his pathetic games? Did he put you up to this, little temptress? Are you playing with me? Hmm?”
The afternoon’s warm delight had turned cold in her bones. Her uncle’s warnings were spinning about in her head like bees. “No, I swear!”
She tried to recover her shaken confidence, smiling in what she
hoped was a coquettish way. His continued silence, the chert-hard look in his eyes, indicated he was anything but fooled.
“You swear?” he finally said. “Really? That reassures me, little wren. So, did your uncle know that you were working for Saw Back when he mentioned this little tryst? Is he going to be happy when he discovers that you and Saw Back manipulated him like a leaf on the wind?”
“No!”
“And does your mother, the Clan Elder, know that you are using her position for your own scheming?”
“No!” Her desperation was growing.
“I think I shall have to extend Saw Back’s banishment for trying to trick me like this.”
She felt herself crumple inside, closing her eyes as she whispered, “No. It’s no scheme, I swear it.”
“Ah, swearing again? When I have caught you in the middle of a lie?”
“I’m not lying,” she declared, on the point of tears.
“Indeed you are,” he added smoothly, a glint in his eyes. “Either you are scheming with Saw Back, or you are scheming with me. If you weren’t in some sort of scheme, you would be home, tending your household and your duty to your clan.”
“This is my duty to my clan!”
“Then supposing we accept your desperate protestations and believe that you are not here for Saw Back’s benefit. That would mean that Mud Stalker had an ulterior motive when he mentioned that I might meet you here. I wonder what that could be? Hmm? Care to share it with me?”
“I don’t know,” she pleaded, rising, frantic to escape as his hand clamped on her wrist.
“No, stay. I’m not finished yet.” He nodded in triumph, a slow smile spreading on his lips. “You have made a mess of your seduction, my little wren. I have caught you in a botched attempt to wiggle your canoe around Alligator Clan’s internal business.” Satisfaction gleamed behind his veiled brown eyes. “What a story this will make in the Men’s House. Every lip will be telling of how Night Rain will part her legs for those who can do her a favor. The young men are going to be snickering and offering favors every time you walk past.”
“Dear Sky Beings,” she cried, bolting up. “You wouldn’t!”
He continued watching her, spiderlike in his intensity. “Wouldn’t what? Make you a laughingstock? It would depend. You know, don’t you, that you are already suspect in most people’s eyes. You’re
married to that idiot Speaker. What would a little push do to you? Send you right over the canoe’s side, that’s what. I suppose I should tell you, the water is deep and cold.”
“Why?” she cried, hearing fear in her voice. “I am the daughter of Sweet Root, the Elder of—”
“I know who are,” he snapped. “That’s what makes you even more vulnerable. Don’t tell me you hadn’t figured that out on your own.” He raised one hand in a calming motion. “But it doesn’t have to work that way, you know.”
She swallowed hard, her thoughts scattered like a flock of frightened bobwhite. She could feel the tangling of his web around her.
“Let us say that what happened here today could stay between the two of us,” he mused, releasing his hold on her wrist. “There is no reason to destroy you, Night Rain. It would be unnecessarily cruel. All that talk, people laughing every time you passed. You’ve seen other women like that, living in constant shame, afraid to be seen in public. I can only imagine what the whisperings would be like in the Women’s House.”
Her breath shortened. It would be horrible. She was an Elder’s daughter. Her uncle was the Clan Speaker. All of Sun Town would delight in tearing her down like an old ramada.
“What do you want?” she asked with a shallow voice.
“Oh, let’s play this charade for a while.” His smile broadened, rearranging the lines in his old face. “I rather enjoy teaching you the arts of your body.” He ran his fingers down her side, along the curve of her hip and over the top of her thigh. “But don’t think I would be ungrateful for your cooperation. Quite the contrary, actually.” He studied her, seeing right through the front she put up, reading her souls. “What do you really want, Night Rain? Tell me the truth. I will know if you are lying.”
She swallowed hard, thoroughly defeated. “I want to be somebody. Not a second wife to an idiot. Not a younger sister to Pine Drop. Everyone knows that Pine Drop is going to be Clan Elder someday. Snakes, she already acts like she is! You should see her. The way she orders me around. She treats me like a slave taken in war rather than a sister.”
His knowing eyes had narrowed, watching her the way a hawk did a swamp cottontail. “Ah, honesty at last.” He twisted a long lock of her hair around his finger. “Nothing is beyond attaining, Night Rain. Not if you ally yourself with the right accomplices. What you become, who you become, depends on you, on what you are willing to do to make your dreams come true.”
She bit her lip, saying nothing.
He made a calming gesture. “You must understand, these things take time. They take compromise and dedication. Sometimes you must make difficult choices, decisions that place you in uncomfortable positions with your clan, and even your lineage.” He shrugged. “You are here, coupling with me. That proves that those decisions are not difficult for you.”
“You want me to work against my clan?”
He studied her, expression neutral. “Would you be Clan Elder one day? All you need tell me is a simple yes, or no.”
Her heart sank in her chest. “Do I have any choice?”
“Oh, there is always a choice, little wren. I can tell that you enjoyed coupling with me. I can teach you more ways of kindling that fire within your hips. And, as an added benefit, I might be persuaded to send for Saw Back. If you are good, I might even allow the two of you to dally here in secret occasionally.” His eyes narrowed. “I am told that Saw Back has come to absolutely hate your husband. He blames him for his misfortunes.”
Night Rain’s heart was pounding. Deep Hunter noticed, reaching out to place his fingers against the pulse in her neck. “Relax, little wren. In life there is punishment and reward. If you help me, I will see that everything you want comes to you.” He paused, searching her eyes. “Clan Elder?”
Mistrusting, Night Rain stared at him. “You could really do that?”
He nodded, so assured of himself that she couldn’t help but believe him. “Of course. But only with the right accomplice.” He leaned back, drawing her down beside him. “Tell me, Night Rain, are you that accomplice? Can you become my ally, knowing that with a little discretion, you can have everything?”
Her souls were trembling, but she hesitated. In that instant the memory of Pine Drop slapping her in front of Salamander flashed before her. She spoke almost without volition. “Yes, Speaker.”
“Good,” he whispered, bending close to brush his lips across hers. “Now, let me show you some new ways to throw tinder on a man’s fire.”
Water dripped in a line of rings as Green Crane, Trader of the Wash’ta People, lifted his paddle for another bite in the murky brown swamp. He had begun to question the wisdom of this journey southward to find the People of the Sun.
The canoe he and Always Fat paddled, slipped forward, powered by their muscular strokes as he glanced uneasily around him. Everywhere he looked, an endless pattern of green masked the trees. Through the few breaks in the foliage he could glimpse a dim world of black tree trunks wound with vines. The forest seemed to stretch on forever.
Ahead of them, the channel narrowed, ending in a verdant mat of reeds, duckweed, and flowering vines that swarmed over the fallen carcass of a bald cypress. The rotting trunk lay square across the passage, blocking any travel. The baleful eyes of a medium-sized alligator glared out at them from the scummy green surface. Turtles wearing forest-dark shells slipped from the protruding branches where they had been sunning themselves.
Green Crane shipped his paddle and looked back at his skinny companion. “We are lost.”
“Good!” Always Fat made a face. His name was a jest. Always Fat looked like a walking skeleton. His ribs made a cage of his chest. Stringy arms held the paddle, and his knees looked like knobs in the middle of thick cane stalks. Mild resignation filled his long face. “I’m so glad you don’t leave me baffled with hidden meanings. It pleases me that you can be so blunt when all I’d like to hear is something hopeful. Like, ‘It must just be around the next bend.’”
Green Crane rubbed the back of his muscular neck as the canoe drifted forward. He and Always Fat were opposites, as well as inseparable companions. They had been planning this journey for a whole turning of the seasons, content to leave it hovering at the edge of imagination until Spring Cypress had arrived in their little village. Green Crane had been smitten at the sight of her. His attraction had only grown as he came to know her.
She was an enigma: A woman from Sun Town, that’s all she would say. In the days it had taken to woo her, he had learned little more about her. He knew that she had come to his bed as a virgin, that she had left Sun Town of her own will over a broken love, and little else. One of the other Traders in his village thought he might have seen her before, and that she might have been Rattlesnake Clan; but he couldn’t be sure of it, nor would Spring Cypress confirm the story. She had just smiled sadly, and told him, “That life is dead.”
Green Crane, however, wished to start a life of his own, one in which she figured not only as his lover, but as his wife. Among his Wash’ta people, a woman came to a man’s clan with a dowry. Spring Cypress had arrived with nothing but a fabric bag slung over her back and her incredible beauty. Before his clan would allow him to
marry, a payment had to be made. Her subsequent status within both clan and village would be dictated by the value of that payment.
The hide-covered load behind him consisted of an entire turning of the seasons’ worth of Trading, dickering, hunting, and collecting. The bulk of the goods were from buffalo: finely tanned winter hides, smoked and dried meat, carved and polished horn implements. In addition, they carried lumps of silvery galena for ornamentation, different mineral pigments, raw hematite, and large quartz crystals, all of which brought a premium at Sun Town.
“I shall ensure that you come to me as no woman has come to this clan in living memory,” he had promised.
In that brief moment, her eyes had shone and she had thrown her arms around his neck, hugging her slim body to his. “I cannot go with you, Green Crane. I cannot step into that place again. Not as I am now, a failure and a fugitive. My clan could reclaim me, hold me. I will not be their prisoner again.”
So he had come here, paddling down the White Mud River from his Wash’ta Mountain homelands. But somehow, along the way, he had become lost in the winding channels that led into narrow distributaries, dead ends, and ever-circling swamps of cypress and tupleo.
“How do people live in this mess?” Always Fat wondered.
“They must know the ways like we do the valleys of our home. I’ve heard of flatlanders getting lost, not being able to tell one valley from another.”
“Mountains make sense,” Always Fat reminded. “They have ups and downs. This place just has around and around.”
Green Crane shook his head. He pointed a finger at the tiny patch of open sky over their heads. “Up!” He turned his finger toward the calm water. “Down!”
Always Fat pointed a finger over his shoulder. “Back.”
They turned the canoe around and began paddling the way they had come.
After a hand of time they had retraced their way to the branch they had last taken. There, the canoe bobbing, Green Crane bent over, his hand cupping water as he slaked his thirst. “Tastes like tree roots and mud,” he muttered.
“It could be worse.” Always Fat pointed at the yellow lotus flowers in the shallows. “At least there’s always something to eat here. Out in the western plains you can die of thirst and starve to death.”
Green Crane glanced up at the sky, seeing the angle of the sun. By the Striking Eagle, had another day gone? “Well, from the sun, that way is west.” He pointed.
“Hooraw! Saved.” Always Fat lifted a mocking eyebrow. “Which way is Sun Town? For that matter, which way is anything?”
Green Crane considered the webwork of waterways around him. The hanging moss draping the low branches reminded him of green buffalo beards. Gaudy birds chattered and sang as they flew past. Two anhingas perched on a protruding log, unconcerned by a human presence as they sunned their wet wings in the afternoon.
“I don’t think we could retrace our path even if we tried.” Always Fat tapped his fingertips on his paddle. “So, we take the little channel, there.”
“Why would that little channel take us through when the wide one we just tried wouldn’t?”
“Because it’s a way we haven’t tried yet,” Always Fat reminded. “If it turns bad, we’ll come back and try something else.”
Green Crane smiled as he shrugged, lifted his paddle, and drove them into the narrow channel. Many of his friends didn’t appreciate Always Fat. But in the turnings of the seasons that they had passed together, Green Crane had come to value his companion’s ever-present good humor. What a gift the gods had given him. No matter what the trial, Always Fat could only see the bright side.
The trees closed in, arching over their heads as they guided their slim canoe between the narrowing banks. Light dimmed; the canopy overhead turned opaque. Green Crane ducked vines, batting away spiderwebs. “Are you sure about this?”
“No. But our canoe isn’t stuck in the mud yet.”
Tufts of leaves began brushing his elbows as he used the point of his paddle to push them along. The forest sounds tightened, bearing down on him. Gods, this was getting narrower.
He ducked a low branch, its bark scaly with moss and algae. What he thought was a vine turned out to be a green snake that slithered away within inches of his eyes. He caught his breath, placing a hand to his heart.
“You all right?” Always Fat whispered.
“What if that had been a water moccasin?”
“We would have apologized when it bent its fangs on your tough hide.”
At the sound of their voices, a dark shadow shifted in the Y of a tree. The panther cast a yellow-eyed glance their way, then leaped to the packed leaf mat, vanishing like a silent shadow into the gloom.
“Gods, that was a big cat!” Green Crane felt for his atlatl and darts. The fine white chert points had been chipped to an edge sharp enough to cut, but would he have time to prepare before some swamp monster plucked him from the canoe?
Always Fat swatted something off his head. “A centipede,” he muttered. “I swear it dropped right on top of me.”
“Precious Striking Eagle, just get me through this and I’ll stay home, love my wife, and treasure my children.”
“You haven’t got a wife,” Always Fat reminded. “Just the promise of a wife. Until you pay for her, you can’t have children. You can’t pay until you trade all this stuff with the Sun People for exotic goods we can’t get at home.”
“Must you be so cursedly pragmatic.” He craned his neck, gaze following the winding vegetation up into the murky heights of the trees. Had there ever been a sky up there?
“I think it’s a little brighter up ahead.” Even as he spoke the watercourse widened. Within moments they were pushing the pointed bow of their canoe through a tangle of marsh ferns and out into the light.
“Pumpkin soup!” Always Fat cried. “Now where are we?”
Green Crane noted the shadows. “That way is west.”
“Which way is Sun Town?”
“I have no idea.”
“We could figure out where up and down are again.”
“You think that would help?”
“Did it help last time? Wait. Who’s this?”
Green Crane turned his head seeing a low-slung dugout canoe heading his way. The center was heaped with long pointed baskets that he recognized as fish traps. A skinny youth sat in the rear, his hair parted in the middle. His greased skin caught the light as he paddled steadily toward them.