Salamander had spent the last week since the birth of Pine Drop’s daughter alternating back and forth between his two houses. On this night he lay in Night Rain’s arms. Their coupling had been like an intimate dance that led to a pulsing ecstasy that Night Rain shared as she absorbed his seed. Wrapped in each other’s arms they had fallen into an exhausted sleep.
Salamander didn’t hear the rasp of black feathers in the night. Above the house, midnight spirit wings enfolded his Dream Soul in downy softness.
The Dream, so vivid, captivated him: He was climbing the Bird’s Head. The day was one of those that came in late spring: bright, sunny, with a scattering of clouds in a light blue sky. Humidity had softened the air, its moist touch on the verdant growth.
Grass waved at his feet as Salamander climbed. Around him, the world seemed to glow with an emerald heartbeat. He could feel the earth, alive, breathing. Even the air seemed to swell in his nose and lungs.
His climb was effortless. He almost floated upward—a leaf borne upon the breeze.
At the top, a lone figure made a dark silhouette against the sky.
Salamander squinted against the glorious light, trying to identify the person. But no, not a person at all. Rather, it looked more birdlike, or was that just a black-feathered cape that hung from the figure’s shoulders? The head, when it turned, was indeed a giant
bird’s. A straight black beak protruded, shining like polished jet.
Salamander slowed, suddenly uncertain.
“Come, my friend!” the being called, waving a feather-laced arm. “It is time that we finally talked.”
Salamander trod the last couple of body lengths, studying the apparition. Long black feathers hung down from a cloak that covered the man’s arms. From behind a raven’s mask, two sharp brown eyes could be seen. A short tunic made of snakeskin ran down between the man’s legs to end in a rattlesnake’s tail.
“Bird Man?” Salamander gasped.
“I have come to see you, Salamander. Come to see who and what you are. There are things you have not been told. It wasn’t easy to reach you as it is. Masked Owl guards you well.”
“Why? What is he afraid of?”
“He fears that you might find all the pieces of your scattered visions. He fears that when you fit them together, you may choose a different path than the one he has been so carefully planning for you.”
“I don’t want to be in the middle of this!”
Bird Man extended a feathered finger to indicate the cross-shaped scar on his chest. “You have been marked with it, young Dreamer. Whatever you wished, Power has found itself at the center of those intersecting lines over your heart. Do you feel it?”
When Salamander lifted his fingers he detected the throbbing under the hard knot of scar tissue. Looking down, he could see a yellow glow at the center of his breastbone.
“Yes, there,” the gentle voice told him. “What an unlikely sort of hero you are. I can understand Masked Owl’s interest in you. He always seems drawn to the odd ones, to the deformed, or the naive.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I. He seems taken with that silly notion of looking for strength in weakness. You are his type, but what I really don’t understand is how you could have managed to involve the old woman. Mostly she huddles in her cave like an infant wrapped tight in the womb. She seems content to watch from afar.”
“What old woman? Do you mean one of the Clan Elders? Cane Frog, or …”
“No, young fool. I mean old Heron. For some reason—and it’s beyond me—she has taken a liking to you. It upsets things, you know. Any hint of predictability vanished the moment she saved you from dying from your stupidity.”
“Stupidity?”
“Taking those mushrooms you found in the Serpent’s lodge.
That first time the old man gave you just a taste. Only enough to allow your souls to drift up and glance the Spirit World. The second time, you ate too much. I thought all of our problems were over—and by your own hand, too.”
“Problems?”
“What did the old woman promise you? That you would become a great Dreamer? Is that what you intend to do? Just when everyone needs you the most, you are going to bundle yourself into a canoe, paddle off to some secluded isle, and Dream for the rest of your life?”
Salamander frowned. “The One calls to me.”
“It calls to everyone,” Bird Man said irritably. “Just because it has a certain lure, you’re set to abandon all of your responsibilities to your wives, your children, Water Petal and Yellow Spider, your lineage, and Owl Clan. How noble of you. You will spend the rest of your life eating bugs and leaves, trying to escape yourself in an attempt to find nothingness.”
“But to Dance with the One—”
“Means disappointing people who love you and depend on you.”
“Then why is it there?”
“An accident of the Creation. You answered your Serpent’s question, didn’t you? When the sky was separated from the land it was to create duality, otherness. Opposites, if you will. Do you really think a young man like you can Dream them back together? What you feel, fool, is the hole that was left, and it’s trying to pull you in.”
“It is?”
Bird Man cocked his head. “Think about it, Salamander. I remember my idiot brother trying to tell me once, long ago, that I was unschooled, but that I could still find a way to the Dream.” His lips quirked behind the mask. “Now, having been part of the Spirit World for so long, I can tell you that the One isn’t all that there is.”
“It’s not?”
Bird Man spread his feather-clad arm to take in the huge vista of Sun Town. “Look down there, Salamander. Do you realize the majesty of this place? Nothing else like it exists in our world. It is from here that the vision will spread. You and your brother have spurred it. Hazel Fire and his companions have taken the bait! So, too, have so many of the others. You have set fire to their imaginations, like blowing on a dying coal. Even Striped Dart is beguiled. Your impulses are correct, Salamander. You can grasp the future!”
“As my brother did with his seeds?”
“Yes, my friend.” A thoughtful brown eye studied him. “I could do nothing to save him.”
“Masked Owl killed him.” Salamander frowned. “I don’t understand it. White Bird would have made a brilliant Speaker, the greatest ever.”
“You are wrong.”
“I am?”
“You could make an even greater Speaker, Salamander.” Those piercing brown eyes were taking his measure. “That is one of the things Masked Owl doesn’t want you to know. As Speaker you can change the People forever. You can start them on a path of greatness that will rival anything in the world.”
Bird Man smiled at Salamander’s surprise, and said, “Salamander, you have been agonizing over your visions of the future. You caught glimpses, but not a full picture. You saw the grand ruler, high above the river. Do you remember?”
“Yes.”
With a swirl of his feathers, Bird Man outlined a burning circle against the sky. Within its ring Salamander could see pointed pyramids of stone, people beyond count laboring in fertile fields alongside a winding brown river. Giant stone buildings stood above the sun-baked shores. Square stone spears thrust into the sky like giant awls.
“They are already building marvels over there,” Bird Man whispered.
“Where is that?” Salamander gasped, trying to understand the scale of the buildings and pyramids. Was it his imagination, or did they dwarf Sun Town?
“In another world, my friend. Far to the east, across a huge ocean of water.” Bird Man shrugged.
“We could do that? Here?” Salamander marveled. “We don’t have the stone!”
Bird Man laughed again. “Just because you live on a low ridge of windblown silt, do not worry about stone. I can teach you to think in grander terms. I can help you to break the petty politics of the clans. Smash them once and for all. You can begin the process of molding the People into a new direction. You can do it the same way you shape your little red owls. It won’t be easy, it won’t be painless. But you could do it! You could sit atop this mound and control this entire river! Generations of your descendants will speak your name with awe as they rule from on high.”
Salamander shook his head in disbelief, thunderstruck by the images
that formed within Bird Man’s fiery circle: Scenes of people in huge canoes that crested tremendous ocean waves. Cities of stone and wood. A literal flood of people tending fields where plants grew. Others, warriors bedecked with plumes of colored feathers, marched in thick rows and carried weapons of shining silver metal.
“It is illusion!” Salamander cried.
“A possible future,” Bird Man corrected. “A shining vision of what could be. Provided, of course, that you have the courage and commitment to see it come true. That, or we can fulfill my brother’s vision. You could turn the People into nothing more than scattered bands of Dreamers, lost in the mystical, empty-eyed and wandering the forests, ever tied to the One.”
“I could make that kind of difference?”
Bird Man smiled in a beguiling way. “Somehow, my young friend, it has come down to you. Sun Town, at this time and place, can change the future of the People. Choose one way, and you, and this place, will be remembered forever. Choose another, and you, and the greatness that is Sun Town, will vanish from the People’s memory.”
“I would have to give up the One?”
“It would seem a small sacrifice, Salamander. In return you get to live your life, watch your children grow. You saw yourself in old age, surrounded by your wives and basking in contentment from having served your people. In doing so, new earthworks will rise. Trade will expand from ocean to ocean. In your lifetime you will see cities founded across your world. You will make the Dream live.”
“And if I choose Masked Owl’s way?”
“Mud Stalker and Deep Hunter will destroy the magic of Sun Town. The clans will be at war within a turning of the seasons.” Bird Man flashed his feathered arm in a circle, and Sun Town appeared. Houses were blackened and burned. Wreckage lay scattered about. Among the weeds and seedling trees growing along the ridges lay the rotting bodies of dead people. “Masked Owl didn’t show you that, did he?”
Salamander stared at the half-rotted corpses. “Mud Stalker and Deep Hunter will cause this?”
“Along with the allies they convince to side with them. Despite public appearances, in their hearts they hate each other. They will do anything to place their respective clans in the void left by Wing Heart’s madness. In their rush to rid themselves of you, they will set in motion the seeds of their destruction. Lies will lead to betrayal and murder. Yours first, and then Thunder Tail’s, and Clay Fat’s and Half Thorn’s. They have already forgotten their obligations.
Honor will be next. Their actions will split the People down the middle. You and I, however, can prevent this.”
“This is the result of my choice?”
“You must choose the future, Salamander.” He added softly, “Choose well.”
With that, Bird Man spread his arms and leaped into the sunlit sky. His cloaked arms flattened, becoming black wings that shone in the sunlight. With each changing position they blazed in blue, red, orange, and green.
Salamander jerked upright in his bed, stunned. “Many Colored Crow!”
Night Rain cried, “Ouch! You smacked me with your elbow!”
Salamander blinked in the darkness of Pine Drop’s house. A faint glow marked the fire pit. Coals still smoldered among the branches of green wood they had left to smudge the mosquitoes.
“A Dream,” he murmured. “A Dream unlike any other.”
“What are you talking about?” Night Rain repositioned herself, one hand on his shoulder.
“The future, Night Rain. Giant cities like Sun Town up and down the river. Warriors beyond count, marching in lines. Huge canoes that can cross oceans of salt water.”
“You saw this?” she asked.
“That, and war between the clans. Sun Town deserted and burned. Many Colored Crow showed me. He was dressed as Bird Man. He said I could save Sun Town. All I had to do was choose it.”
“You will do this thing, won’t you?” Night Rain’s voice pinched with excitement.
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know? You could be the greatest Speaker ever! You would have Many Colored Crow as a Spirit Helper! No one could stand against you.”
Then Heron’s words echoed in his memory. “Everything comes at a price.”
The day had turned out clear but humid. Sunlight touched the leaves with a green that almost wounded the eyes. Brightly colored
birds flitted among the trees. Thick curls of vines bloomed, the colored flowers at odds with the tiny green blossoms on the tupelo.
“I just can’t believe Deep Hunter and Mud Stalker would start a war between the clans! Would they really stoop to murdering their rivals?” Salamander cried as he helped Anhinga bait and drop one of the fish traps into the current. He played out the thin cord that tied it to a wooden float with its identifying owl carved in the weathered wood.
Their canoe sat in the middle of one of the winding channels, riding on smooth chocolate waters. The spring flood was marching across the bottoms, carrying silt and water into the backswamps. With it came fish, eager to feed in the newly created shallows, to breed and lay their eggs. Life was coming to the bottomland swamp.
In the rear of the canoe, Water Petal watched him with uneasy eyes. “There are stories of witchcraft circulating about you, Cousin. If they will lie to get you murdered, why not someone else?” When she used the paddle to drive them forward, smooth muscles made her greased skin shine.
“He is no witch!” Anhinga declared, then glanced suspiciously at Salamander. “Are you?”
“No.”
“Did you bury one of those little statues under Pine Drop’s bed?” Anhinga was watching him with hard eyes. “I saw where the dirt had been disturbed.”
“Yes.”
“Did you dispose of it?” She glanced thoughtfully back at her baby where it rode in the cane cradleboard.
“I did. Just as the Serpent told me to.”
“What is this?” Water Petal asked.
“I wanted my wives to have healthy deliveries. Relax, Cousin. It was the Serpent’s charm, not something from the dark side of Power.”
“You worry me,” Water Petal told him.
He chuckled uncomfortably. “You have no idea what worry is. One night I Dream and I fly with Masked Owl, knowing he drove a lightning bolt through White Bird. The next, it is Many Colored Crow who comes to talk to me in my sleep. Each wants me to choose his way.” He dared not mention Heron. She was the most enigmatic of all. “I just don’t know what the right choice is. Everything is coming together here, and I am right in the middle of it.”
“That is an understatement.” Water Petal sent them deeper into the channel, her face marked with unhappiness.
Salamander took the moment to study Anhinga. She, too, looked uneasy. A tension lay behind her pretty face; something smoldered behind her eyes. With the sunlight glistening in her raven black hair, she looked dangerous yet vulnerable. An irresistible combination. He stifled the sudden urge to reach out and run his fingers down her muscular thigh. Since giving birth, both she and Pine Drop seemed oblivious to his sexual desires. Water Petal had told him that would pass with time.
“I feel trapped,” he said. “Whatever decision I make, I will offend one or the other.”
“I’d keep an eye on the clans, Cousin,” Water Petal retorted. “Within a moon, they will act to remove you from the Council. You know that threat is coming. What about the ones that are being planned in secret? Who can tell when someone might call you a witch and use that excuse to sneak up behind you and smack your skull in two!”
He gave her a wry smile. “I should be worried about a simple smack from behind when a lightning bolt might explode my head the way it did White Bird’s? Somehow, upsetting Masked Owl or Many Colored Crow is a little different than worrying about Mud Stalker and Deep Hunter.”
“You could leave,” Anhinga told him. Her dark eyes burned. “You don’t have to stay here. You could come with me. We could go to the Panther’s Bones, and you could leave these people who do not appreciate you.”
He reached out and took her hand, beguiled by her desperation. “I thank you for that, Wife. Your offer means more to me than I can ever tell you. As much as I would like to have that freedom, it wouldn’t solve my trouble here.”
“It would take you away from Sun People who want to murder you!”
“Masked Owl could drop a tree on me down at the Panther’s Bones just as well as he could here. Spirit Helpers aren’t bound by human territories.”
“As you described it, Many Colored Crow would make us great,” Water Petal said thoughtfully. “Our clan would become preeminent. No one could challenge us. Imagine that, Salamander. Owl Clan would be forever. Everyone else would be obliged to us. The uncertainty would be gone. We would lead the Council.”
“At a price, Cousin.” He reached for another piece of bait and dropped it into the next fish trap. “Power doesn’t promise these things freely. You speak of obligation? What would we owe Many
Colored Crow?” He shook his head. “The Hero Twins are just like us—like our clans. If you just choose one, the balance will be ruined. The harmony that we have tried so hard to maintain will be broken.”
Anhinga was weighing his words, a frown on her smooth face as she played out the cord while the trap sank in the murky water.
“Did we do so badly?” Water Petal asked. “Has Thunder Tail been a better leader in the Council than Wing Heart? What of Mud Stalker if he is chosen for the leadership? Would Deep Hunter have been better than Cloud Heron over the turnings of the seasons? Or, Snakes help us, Cane Frog? Could she have done the things your mother and uncle did? Our lineage has been good for Sun Town, Salamander. Look at the building we have done! The ridges are finished. People live in constant protection from the forces of the North and West. We are Trading with peoples we have never heard of before. Life is good.”
He nodded, unable to argue with her. “That might have been luck.”
“Luck?” Water Petal asked.
Anhinga raised a questioning eyebrow.
“What if Mother hadn’t been chosen to follow Grandmother? What if Moccasin Leaf had been chosen Clan Elder instead? Would life still be good?”
Water Petal’s eyes hardened.
“This talk is helpful, but it doesn’t dig down under the guts where the real question lies.” He dropped a square of fish meat into the next trap and with Anhinga’s help, lowered it over the side. The marker float bobbed in the current as Water Petal steered them down the channel.
“And just what do you think lies under the guts?” Anhinga asked.
“Doing what is right,” he answered. “Not just for us, not just for Sun Town, but for everyone.”
“Right? By the Panther’s blood, what is right?” Anhinga’s frown deepened. “What is right for Sun Town will not be right for my people. Even your own clans have different ideas about what is right.”
“That, Anhinga, is my problem,” he told her. “How I can choose what is best for everyone?”
Water Petal cocked her head. “Salamander, why should you have to?”
“What?”
“Why should you have to do this? Why not someone else? Why did Power choose you?”
He shook his head sadly. “I don’t know, Cousin. All I can tell you is that if I don’t choose correctly, I just know something bad is going to happen.”
A shaft of ocher light bored through the Dream, as though barely penetrating a midnight gloom. Anhinga stood passively—partially hidden. She could barely discern the grim surroundings. Darkness swirled at the edges, as if smoke choked the air and devoured the reddish light that illuminated the place. Dark shadows, beings of some sort, flickered and twisted at the sides of her vision. She could barely make them out—only that they were whip-thin, quick, and dangerous. In the center, the bloody light bathed five somber young men.
Mist Finger stood at the head of the group. His arms were raised high, like a bird preparing to leap into flight. Behind him Cooter, Spider Fire, Right Talon, and Slit Nose followed his lead, lifting their arms at angles. About them, the eerie figures detached from the darkness, lunged, struck, and withdrew. The attackers were menacing, vaguely human, thin as whips, and so incredibly fast. They struck with blurred movement, and each touch of their sharp arms sliced skin on one of the youths. Each feint, each stroke, came with the rapidity of a snake’s lightning tongue.
Anhinga watched in horror as her friends’ bodies writhed in pain. Their faces twisted in terror. Why didn’t they run? Why didn’t they act to protect themselves? She found her voice, calling out, “Mist Finger?”
He turned terror-bright eyes on hers, his face contorted, the black hole of his mouth open in agony. “Dead,” she heard him say.
“Get away!” she cried. “All of you, flee! Run! Escape!”
Yet they stood, arms lifted, heads rolling as they flinched from each blow given them by the darting wraiths. Their bodies shone red as blood slicked their quivering skin in sheets. Each gaping cut hung open, and beneath the cleanly sliced skin she could see exposed muscles straining and jumping like knotted ropes.
The darting manlike shadows continued their dance, flitting, slashing with pointed hands. Anhinga stifled a cry as patches of skin began to hang, draping like soggy cloth. Her friends opened their mouths and shrieked—but she heard only silence.
“Run!” she pleaded, clasping her hands in front of her as she sank to her knees. “In Panther’s name, run!”
Cold stone ate into her knees as tears streaked down her cheeks.
The shadowy apparitions ducked, whirled, and lanced out with greater frenzy.
Anhinga saw sections of muscle sliced away, bloody bone exposed here, entrails dropping out of gut cavities there. And still the screams her ears could not hear shattered her souls.
Bit by bit their guts came tumbling out, falling past their savaged crotches to puddle in a slippery mess at their feet. It didn’t end as bits of their bodies were flayed away. It didn’t even end when only crimson skeletons stood teetering in the gaudy light, bits of sinew hanging like web from the brutalized bone.
The darting wraiths continued to collect in the smoky shadows only to strike repeatedly. Now each flashing stab of arm or leg neatly severed a bone from the wavering remains.
One last strike snapped Mist Finger’s blood-matted skull from his neck, sending it tumbling down. Like a gourd, it spattered into the steaming viscera, and rolled down to rock on its side no more than an arm’s length before Anhinga’s face.
Wide-eyed, she stared into that grisly visage. Where once Mist Finger’s dark brown eyes had rested, now raw hollows rimmed with torn tissue gaped. Blood caked the skull’s teeth as it gave her a thin grin.
“What can I do, Mist Finger?” she wailed, sagging further toward the cold stone floor.
The voice, lonely, as dismembered as the corpse before her, hissed, “Kill them, Anhinga. Kill them for all of us. It is time! Send our souls some relief. Make them pay … for us!”
Jerking awake, she bolted upright, surprised at the vividness of the Dream. Cool air washed over her sweat-slick skin. Her daughter was crying in the darkness, disturbed by her thrashing.
A Dream! Blessed Panther, only a Dream. She closed her eyes, seeing that blood-smeared skull staring back from her memory. So real, as if Mist Finger’s Dream Soul had been wrapped around hers.
She rubbed a nervous hand over her damp face. Tangles of hair clung to her clammy cheeks.
“It is time, Anhinga,” she whispered to herself. “It is time to do what you came here to do.”
She reached out, feeling the bed where Salamander usually lay. Empty. He was at Pine Drop’s on this night.
Her fingers caressed his bedding, tracing the memory of his face. She could see his worried eyes, sense the tension in the set of his lips. If she tried, she could imagine the beating of his heart.