With a whoosh, one-half of the Serpent’s roof let go. People stepped back as sparks and bits of burning thatch began sprinkling down from the sky.
“Come,” Pine Drop said, tightening her grip on Salamander’s hand. “You are cold, Husband. You have been up caring for the Serpent for a night and a day without sleep. You have done your duty.”
“He’s here. See him flying? Right here around us.” Salamander raised his other hand, his finger pointing up into the rain. “Go in peace, my old friend.”
Pine Drop jerked him hard enough to pull him off-balance. It took all of her strength to keep him from falling into the mud. People were watching, curiosity in their somber black eyes.
“What’s wrong with you?” Pine Drop demanded as she tried to lead him away with some semblance of dignity.
“He was the only one who …” He caught himself, pinching his mouth closed.
“Who could understand?” she asked. “Is that what you were trying to say?”
He clamped his jaws, his huge glazed eyes looking back at the flames. Thunder! What was he seeing? Surely nothing of this world.
“Nothing of this world,” he whispered.
She tugged insistently on his arm, desperate to get him away as fast as his ill-balanced tottering feet would carry him. By force of will she overpowered his reluctance to leave.
“Salamander, I would talk to you.” She kept glancing around, trying to hide her fear, telling herself it was nothing. He was tired. That was all. Grief left him dazed, his souls crying for his lost teacher and friend.
Snakes help them if anyone heard his disjointed rambling!
“You have done enough! Come home. Anhinga and Night Rain have fixed something special.”
“There is no hurry. The buffalo tongue hasn’t baked all the way through yet.” He might have been talking to a shadow. “I just have to make sure that he knows …”
“He knows, Husband. You and Bobcat made sure.” She nearly jerked him off his feet again, aware of the stare that Clay Fat and Three Moss gave them. The latter had already leaned to whisper into Cane Frog’s ear. When the old woman died, would Three Moss continue leaning over to whisper, even if only the empty air heard?
“It is her way,” Salamander said simply.
The roar inside the Serpent’s house was dying as Pine Drop pulled him down the ridge, their feet slopping in the silt. As they passed, rain dribbled from house roofs to patter into ring-shaped puddles around the walls. Wet dogs lay in the scant shelter of the overhang before the house doors, looking cold, miserable, and starved.
“He told me so many things,” Salamander said half to himself. “He opened my eyes to the One.”
“The One?” He seemed to be half out of his head. Snakes, his souls weren’t coming loose like his mother’s, were they?
“The One,” he whispered in assent. “The Dance. The place where Dreams cross.” He smiled sadly. “What I would give! Oh, Pine Drop, I don’t want to die. If I could only rise and fly away from all this. Just spread my wings … and fly!”
“I think your souls are loose enough already.” She tightened her grip on his hand. She had to tug to keep him moving as they passed the head of the second ridge. His house huddled in the rain before them, faint threads of smoke lost in the downpour. She had kindled a fire there, just in case the rain stiffened. As it had.
She led him to the door and set it aside, ducked into the dark interior with him, and reset the cane door behind them. In the gloom she stepped over to the woodpile. Placing several lengths on the glowing coals, she made the awkward descent around her pregnant belly to blow the embers to life. As the flames licked the logs with yellow light, she looked up. His eyes were large and hollow, his expression vacant. Water dripped off him to spatter on the ash-stained floor in little round star bursts.
She grunted as she stood up. He seemed oblivious, so she took the rain hat off his head. “You are soaked clear through, Salamander.”
“His souls were loose,” he said in that oddly detached voice. “He didn’t know who we were. One minute he was fighting evil spirits, the next he was grinning, curing people long dead. He was talking to the Dream Souls of the Dead. I never really understood. They’re here, right in the air around us.”
She took the wet cloak from his shoulders, shocked by its sodden weight, and laid it next to the fire to dry. She plucked the knot loose on his breechcloth and pulled the wet fabric from between his legs. Setting it aside, she positioned him over the fire, where the warm heat and smoke rose along his shivering naked body. Trickles of water ran down his skin, reflecting like silver veins in the firelight. Droplets beaded silver in his pubic hair.
“Stand there while I find you dry things.” She waddled around to his bed and retrieved his buffalo hide. Wrapping it across his shoulders, she made sure the edges were well clear of the flames and backed onto the bench. Stripping off her own cloak, she realized she was as wet as he.
“Snakes, it feels good to be alone with you again.” She glanced at him. “What is happening to you? Salamander? Please, tell me.”
“You said Anhinga and Night Rain were expecting us?” At least that thought was lucid. Maybe his belly was eating through his grief.
“They are at my house. We thought it better. The food is there.” And I have you alone for the first time in weeks.
“They do not expect us yet. Night Rain has just stepped outside. She can see the smoke plume through the rain.”
“How do you know that? You can’t see through walls—let alone that far across the plaza.”
“She doesn’t think we’re coming yet. She’s ducking inside, telling Anhinga we will be longer.”
“Salamander, you are frightening me! It’s as if you can hear my thoughts. Talk to me. Are you well?” Just tell me that the spirits haven’t taken possession of your souls!
The corners of his lips curled, threads of smoke rising from the confines of the tentlike buffalo hide. “I am the only one in possession of my souls. They bind me like rawhide. They suffocate me. It is so hard to breathe.”
“What?” She placed a hand to her breast, searching his eyes for an answer.
“My souls are cages, like fish traps. I can’t get free of them.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You’ve never flown,” he whispered sadly, and closed his eyes.
“Flown?” she asked. “How did you fly?”
“Masked Owl comes. He shows me the way.” His eyes were still closed, expression turning blissful. “Why can’t I ever do it on my own? Why can’t I break the cages that surround my souls?”
“Because you’ll die,” she cried.
“Death is release.” He smiled. “I never understood until the Serpent told me.”
“You really did talk to his souls?”
“It isn’t like speaking, Pine Drop. It’s different. Dreaming. I Dreamed him. I Dreamed them all. Saw into their souls.”
“What do you mean, Dreamed them all? The other Speakers? The Clan Elders?”
“They are so bitter. Their souls taste like green walnut rind. They leave a yellow cast within me.”
She nodded. “So many hands are raised against you, and I never hear a cross word, never see your temper flash. And sometimes, like today, you are gone somewhere, flying on Masked Owl’s wings, I think.”
She saw his smile growing. Her words had touched him.
“Salamander? They are drawing the net around you. You know that, don’t you?”
He gave the barest nod.
“You can’t just let them trap you.”
“I am who I am.” He was talking to emptiness again, eyes still closed. “I learn, watch, and absorb the lessons. I am Salamander, the one never seen. I have Danced with the mushrooms. I am floating.”
“Mushrooms?” she asked, heart tapping hard against her breastbone. “What mushrooms?”
“I see your soul, Pine Drop. I see our daughter’s life, glowing like an ember inside you.”
You really are scaring me.
“I’m sorry. You have no reason to fear me.”
Are you a mystic, or an idiot?
“You must understand: I am caught between Masked Owl and Many Colored Crow. The Serpent told me the night he died. Masked Owl killed White Bird.”
“What?” She was suddenly oblivious to the water that ran down her forearms from the soggy fabric.
“He was warned, but his pride wouldn’t let him stop. The goosefoot seeds, they would have changed this place. Changed us as a
people. Masked Owl doesn’t think it’s time. So he killed White Bird.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The Brothers, the Hero Twins. Born of Light, Born of Dark. Wolf Dreamer, Raven Hunter: the Two who make One.”
“You see this in the Dream?”
“Yes.”
“You’re a Serpent?”
“No. I am the place where Dreams cross.” His smile seemed to cast a glow into the gloomy interior.
“But … but Masked Owl. He is your Spirit Helper,” she stammered, trying to understand. “And he killed your brother?”
“It is a battle for the souls of men. Just like the one being fought here. Between the clans. Power sways and rises, like mating copperheads, twining and spinning, Dancing, and pulling apart. Look at it! So very beautiful—and so deadly! We are all part of the One, forever split apart, lonely, yet united. I see now. I begin to understand.”
He spread his arms wide. The buffalo robe unfolded like huge wings.
She gasped at the sight of his naked body. Lit from below, his thighs, the tip of his penis, his bony rib cage, and his jaw glowed orange. Shadows were cast across the hollows of his hips, over the twin arcs of his breasts. His eyes were hidden in blackness atop his lighted cheeks, his brow golden under a dark forehead. A man of fire and shadow, he stood before her, and she felt Power swelling within him.
“Salamander?” she asked timidly.
“Summer,” he said suddenly. “I have until the solstice. They will move then.”
“How can you fight them?” She shook her head. “Salamander, they are suspicious of me, but even I know that every clan is being turned against you. Deep Hunter is rabid, especially after Anhinga wounded and scarred Saw Back.” She clenched her teeth. “The Speaker, my uncle, suspects you of murdering Eats Wood. The young man has disappeared, and no one knows where.”
She was watching his face, searching for any reaction as she asked, “Did you have words with him? Did he threaten you?”
“I said nothing to him.”
She heaved a sigh. “Snakes, I was worried.”
His head tilted, the birdlike image ever sharper. “You may have to choose: Light, or Dark. You may have to Dream with us.”
She closed her eyes, souls dulling. Blessed Sky Beings, what am I involved in here? “Don’t ask me to go against my clan, Salamander. Don’t put me in that position.”
“Would you chose the clan,” he asked, “or the People?”
“I am nothing without the clan. Kinship is who we are. Without it, we are lost. Nothing. Faceless and nameless.”
“Nothingness is all there is,” he told her sadly. “It is the One. You can only understand when you Dance with it. The clans, this struggle to dominate, it is all empty, Pine Drop. In the end, it is as bitter as a green nightshade stem. Illusion, spinning around us like a waterspout.”
“So you will just let them destroy you?”
“You stand at the center of the world, Pine Drop. When the time comes, you will reach out and pick a direction.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The navel,” he answered. “The place where life starts, and peoples are born. Something special is happening here. See it growing? Carried by the Trade, borne by the bonds we form. The future flows from within our ridges. Like that infant in your womb, Pine Drop, we have made the future. Sun Town is the starting point. The clans don’t understand. They are bound, circumscribed by their mighty mounds.”
“Is that bad?” she felt herself lost, adrift in the peculiar ideas spinning out of his Dream.
“When the time comes, you can reach out to them. Accept their canoes, and make the future.”
“I can reach out to whom? What are you talking about?”
“I can Dream the future, Pine Drop. You have to live it!”
Blessed Owl, tell me he is not insane!
As the words formed in her souls, he threw back his head and laughed.
Sick! So very sick! Salamander curled on his side, eyes closed against the violence in his aching head. He kept one arm on his stomach, feeling the painful knots that had tied themselves in his guts. Between breaths, they pulled tight, only to twist and then loosen. The watery tickle of vomit hung behind his palate.
“Salamander?” Anhinga’s voice came from far away. He barely felt her cool hand on his sweat-ridden forehead. “I went for help.”
Anhinga? Where had she come from? Where was he? Floating. Floating above a dark pool of death.
“How are you feeling?” Pine Drop asked, also from a distance.
“Can’t … Dance …” he whispered, and in his fractured souls, the images of what he had experienced tried to form. Like bent and distorted memories, they wavered and refused to coalesce. As if part of his souls could just reach out. There. In the red-black haze beyond his consciousness.
“Drink this.” The thick rim of a ceramic cup was placed to his lips.
He opened his eyes to slits. The misery of white light burned the backs of his eyeballs, searing his thoughts into charred meat. Cool liquid rolled around his tongue, only to make him gag as he tasted the bitterness. Nevertheless, he drank, each swallow knotted agony, until the cup was pulled away. He let his eyelids slide closed, accepting small relief in the hot acid darkness.
I am sick. Dying. The mushrooms are going to kill me, I wasn’t strong enough. Help me! Help! By all the Beings in the Sky and Earth, Help me!
His calls echoed away like thunder over a distant and dark land.
He felt himself turning, ever so slowly as his body slipped away. His souls had begun to float, carried on the waves of fever, spasms, and chill. A burning sensation, like half-dead embers, lay heavily on his gut.
A dull glow—like a forest burning in the distance shone crimson in the darkness.
Dying.
The glow continued to grow, filling the horizons of his consciousness.
Help!
“Help you with what?” a crone’s reedy voice asked.
Why are the mushrooms killing me this time?
“Because they want you to die.”
He focused the eye of his Dream Soul, and saw her—a shadow behind the red glow.
Who are you?
“I have been called differently by different Dreamers. In the beginning I was ‘Spirit Woman’ to some. ‘Witch’ to others. Wolf Dreamer knew me by the name of old Heron. Other names have come and gone through the passing of ages.”
What are you doing here?
“I heard you call, boy. It happens, with the ones who have Power.”
I called you?
“Not by name,” she told him.
He could see her now. She didn’t look like the old woman her voice suggested, but beautiful, with gleaming black eyes that danced with internal light. Sharp cheekbones made soft angles over her full mouth and delicate chin. Hair, in a raven wealth, tumbled from her head and pooled around her shoulders before spilling down to her waist. Her high breasts and narrow waist were partially hidden by a white bearhide that she draped around her naked flanks.
You are beautiful!
“Not as beautiful as Broken Branch was.” She smiled, and he felt his souls soaring. “I can appear as I please. For the moment, it pleases me to appear as I was, before I tripped over love and fell facefirst into the Dream.”
Are you one of the Sky Beings?
“Older.” She stepped closer in a fluid grace. “I was there at the beginning. I have been here since, tied to Power. I came before First Woman, before First Man. I was there before Runs In Light Dreamed the Wolf. I have Sung the Sacred Bundles, and watched the world change. I have seen the final Dance of the mammoth, mastodon, sloth, and short-faced bear. I have loved and cursed the People, and tricked and beguiled the Dreamers as they came and went. I have Danced between the Hero Twins.” She smiled, and the radiance of it melted his heart. “As you now Dance between them.”
You mean Masked Owl and Many Colored Crow?
“They, too, have had many names.” She cocked her head, exposing her perfect throat. “Who are you, boy?”
Salamander.
“You are aptly named.” Her dark gaze sharpened like obsidian. “Powerful, boy. The golden haze of the mushrooms surrounds you. Dangerous things, mushrooms. They live off Death, grow out of rot and corruption. They are rebirth, Salamander. Treat them with respect. Never toy with them. The most Powerful Dreaming of all comes of Dancing with the mushrooms. Unless you become the One, they will kill you.”
Sick. So sick. Pain is tying knots in my body. My bones and muscles ache. My souls … they are floating up into Death.
“Why did you wish to Dance with brother mushroom? What were you trying to do, Salamander?”
I wanted to Dream. To fly on Masked Owl’s wings. I wanted a vision! To see the channels of the future. I must know why Masked Owl gave me such gifts—and killed my brother. Why did Many Colored Crow warn
me? What does Power want of me? How can I do what is right when I don’t know what Power wants?
She was so close now, he could almost reach out and touch her. He had never seen skin so beautiful, soft, and sleek. Her perfect round breasts rose and fell behind the white bear’s hide. “Do you ask for yourself, for your own gain? Is it glory you seek? Fame? Authority or prestige?”
I just need to understand, Heron! That is all. I want to know what to do. What is right. For everyone.
“My poor young Dreamer, are you truly so naive? People are good and evil at the same time, in the same breath, in a single heartbeat. Justice for one is injustice for another.”
Would you help me?
“What would you give for my help?” She gave him a predatory stare.
Fear stabbed through him. Whatever you asked.
“Would you give your life? Would you let me destroy you? What if I say I will help, and let brother mushroom take you here, now? Alone? Will you give me your souls here, in the darkness?”
How did he answer that? How could he do the right thing if he were dead? How could he make things better if he didn’t understand? How could he find the One?
“Ah, the One? That is a different matter entirely.” She laughed, the sound so musical his souls ached at the beauty. “You are not even close to finding the One, Salamander. You have a long, long way to go.” Her expression saddened. “And no one among your people to teach you. Like me, you must find it on your own.”
Grief stung him.
Heron’s gleaming eyes ate through his souls, turning him inside out, seeing into the corners, behind his thoughts. Fear paralyzed him, and he cried out. In that instant, he felt himself vanishing, burning away under the heat of her blazing dark eyes.
She’s eating me! She is devouring my souls. Terror, horrible engulfing terror, filled him as she violated every corner of his souls, eviscerated his memories and thoughts, and inspected his most private fantasies. Bit by bit she tore pieces out of him the way a fisherman plucked guts from a catfish’s belly.
It seemed an eternity before she backed away, leaving him whimpering and weak like a wounded puppy. Her chin was down, brow furrowed. This time her eyes didn’t violate him, but simply watched in a passive stare.
After an eternity she said, “You are an unusual young man, Salamander.” She paused. “You would have made a great Dreamer.”
I won’t be a Dreamer? Nothing had prepared him for the sense of loss that washed atop his fear.
She smiled then, an expression of pity on her perfect lips. “Nothing comes without a price.”
A feeling of despair washed through him. How did he chose between Dreaming and helping his people? How did he know what was right. It would be easier to let brother mushroom kill me.
“It would.” Her smile challenged him. “Is that your choice?”
No. I will live.
“Once upon a time, I, too, followed the path you have taken. Brother mushroom can show you a great many things, but unless you are trained, it is illusion. Not to be taken lightly.”
I know.
“I will help you Dance with brother mushroom’s Power. We will have to do this together, you, and I, and brother mushroom.”
Thank you!
“Do not thank me, Salamander. My help will rouse jealousies. Wolf Dreamer and Raven Hunter rarely join forces, but my interference could be enough to ally them against you.”
Who?
“You know them as Masked Owl and Many Colored Crow. They are the Hero Twins, the brothers of Light and Dark. Terrible things happen when opposites are crossed.”
She reached out, her slim fingers tracing his cheek. Waves of cool relief washed through him. Had he ever felt such pleasure?
“You cannot escape brother mushroom by yourself, Salamander.” She stepped closer, her ethereal body a hand’s breadth from his. Her dark eyes sucked at his souls. “You do not know the way to the One. I will have to Dance it with you. In the process, you can see the channels of the future. I warn you now, it will come at a price, young Salamander. Will you pay it?”
Yes.
He was aware of the white bearhide as she wrapped it around them, pulling his souls against hers, locking them together. He opened his mouth to cry out.
And then … ecstasy!