From across the yard, a voice sharp with disgust cried, “By Horned Serpent’s crystal eyes, will you shut up!”
At the interruption, Seven Skull Shield looked across the small garden plot toward the weaver’s workshop on the other side of Wooden Doll’s ramada. The old woman who leaned around the corner of the structure might have been in her fifties, with a face wrinkled like an over-dried plum.
“What’s the matter, don’t you like good music?”
“I’ve heard dying geese that sounded better than that squalling. And yes, that foul woman sells her body, and yes, I enjoyed a good coupling in my younger days. But that don’t mean I want to hear about it! Now shut up, or I’ll have the local Hawk Clan chief send his warriors to shut you up! He knows me. Don’t think he doesn’t.”
She was shaking her fist in anger, wild strands of gray hair floating about her head.
Seven Skull Shield looked down at Farts. “She knows the Hawk Clan chief in charge of this district. We quiver in terror.”
Farts cocked his head, his floppy ears at the best attention they could muster. His blue and brown eyes watched with absolute concentration.
“I drove it in tight, much to my delight.”
“Baa!” The crone reached down, straightened, and with all her might pitched a moldy squash rind in Seven Skull Shield’s direction. From the feeble throw, she wasn’t exactly going to make the opposing team tremble in a stickball match. Odd-shaped and curled as the rind was, it flew wide.
As if shot from a bow, Farts charged off to intercept it. Snatching the dried rind out of the air, he trotted back to Seven Skull Shield, flopped down on his belly, and began chewing the noxious thing into pieces. Pus and muck, the beast was going to have really hideous gas later in the day.
“Her eyes they went wide. In surprise she cried, ‘No man ever filled me so fully inside!’”
The split-plank door opened to Wooden Doll’s large house. A rather portly fellow—from somewhere down south if Seven Skull Shield was any judge of facial tattoos—gave him a disgusted look. As the man stepped out, he double-checked his breechcloth to make sure everything was tucked in. Reassured, he hurried off in the opposite direction from the weaver’s.
“As I swirled it around, and she made a cooing sound. She arched her back. She purred. And I swear she quacked!”
Wooden Doll appeared in her doorway, wearing only a fine fabric skirt that clung to her hips. She leaned against the wall, a muscular calf extended. Crossing her arms under her full breasts, she cocked her head and sent long black hair spilling down her back. Through half-lidded eyes she studied him. As always, just the sight of her caused Seven Skull Shield’s heart to do flip-flops.
“I swear”—he rose and lifted the box he’d been sitting on—“I thought that southerner was going to take all day. Funny thing, just this morning I was talking to a woman about how that muggy climate down there just wilts a man’s—”
“He’s a Pacaha subchief,” she told him somewhat crossly. “I did my best to keep him relaxed, but your caterwauling beyond my door just put the poor man’s nerves on edge.”
“How’d you know it was me?”
Expression flat, she barely raised an eyebrow.
“Well, all right. Not just everyone has the rich tone of voice, let alone the finely rendered lyrics that seem to be Power’s special gift.”
He stopped in front of her. At his side Farts was panting, bits of moldy squash rind dotting his lolling tongue.
She glanced at the box. “That’s a fine piece of work. Important?”
“Quiz Quiz War Medicine Bundle. The War Medicine.”
Her eyes widened as she stepped back. “Seriously?”
“Yep.”
“How’d you get it?”
“From the Quiz Quiz war chief.”
She immediately looked over his shoulder as if expecting the Quiz Quiz to appear from between the buildings, blood and rage in his eyes, anxious to murder anyone who had the gall to steal his people’s sacred medicine box.
“And where is this Quiz Quiz?”
“At Crazy Frog’s. Waiting to be carried to the Keeper’s where Blue Heron will doubtlessly ensure his few remaining days are most interesting and painful. The fool was sent here to steal one of the surveyors’ sacred measuring Bundles.” He jammed a thumb into his chest. “I got it back.”
She gave a slight nod, lips quirking. “Why bring me the War Medicine box?” Her expression began to strain. “Oh, no. You wouldn’t. Are you insane? You know the kind of Power invested in a thing like that?” She paused. “Male Power. Not the sort of thing a woman wants in her house.”
“I think I broke it. The Power, I mean. When I kicked the box over and scattered all the sacred bits and bones and stuff on the floor. It sure didn’t feel Powerful when I scooped up the pieces and tossed them back in the box.”
“Even assuming you did, what do you want me to do with it?”
“Keep it for me. I want to see what happens. See, the Quiz Quiz sent the War Medicine to ensure that Sky Star—he’s the war chief they picked—succeeded in stealing the Surveyors’ Bundle. But I sort of disrupted their victory ceremony, got the Bundle back, captured Sky Star, and lifted the Quiz Quiz War Medicine. Which leaves me curious.”
“You? Curious? Why does that worry me?” She made a face.
“So what are the Quiz Quiz going to do? Consider the War Medicine lost? Send a delegation to ask for it back? If they do, that’s a lot of lost face and a public admission that they are really nothing more than a bunch of petty thieves. Which brings us to the next alternative: Will they try to quietly steal it back? But how can you steal it if you don’t know where it is? Or, third, will they send an emissary to offer a ransom?”
“You still haven’t said why you want to leave it with me?”
“As of this moment, only two people know where the medicine box is: you and me.”
“I suppose you could stuff it back in storage in the hut out back. Pile blankets and robes on top of it.” She shot him a furtive glance. “What if they never come looking for it? Make a new War Medicine in the meantime?”
“Eventually you Trade it off to the highest bidder. Pacaha, Quigualtam, Casqui, Caddo—there’s a slew of Nations down south who’d bid a bundle for the Quiz Quiz’s old War Medicine. You’ll be rich.”
“I’m already rich. What do you get out of it?”
He gave her his best grin. “Why don’t we step inside, close the door behind us, and you drop that skirt while I try to figure out what I want in return?”
She blinked—as if to clear her thoughts—shook her head, and sighed. “I thought you had to get your captured Quiz Quiz to the Keeper?”
He glanced up at the sun. “I’ve got a little over a hand of time before Crazy Frog’s people will be ready to move him.”
“Skull, you absolutely amaze me.” She reached out and took him by the hand. Slamming the door in Farts’ face, she pulled the tie loose that let her skirt drop before he was halfway to her bed.
Six
The squadron second at the front of Night Shadow Star’s guard called, “Make way! Make way for Lady Night Shadow Star!” as her litter was carried down the avenue along the western side of the Great Plaza.
Dressed in a wood-and-leather cuirass, a hardened leather helmet on his head, copper-bitted war club in hand, Fire Cat strode along immediately behind his lady’s porters, guarding her back.
As they proceeded along the plaza’s margins, it was as if a wave of silence rolled along with them. People who had been chatting, playing flutes, thumping drums, or cheering the stickball game in progress on the plaza’s beaten grass went silent. They turned, watching in awe as Night Shadow Star’s party passed, some pointing, others whispering to their companions.
Fire Cat—having been one of the most renowned war chiefs in the north as well as a Red Wing noble—was used to being the center of attention. And Night Shadow Star, sister to the Morning Star, the tonka’tzi’s niece, was n
o less a spectacle. She had, after all, been married to the Itza lord known as Thirteen Sacred Jaguar, and claimed to be possessed by Piasa’s Spirit.
It left Fire Cat with a sour sensation in his gut that he’d created his own notoriety by winning one of the most contentious chunkey matches in Cahokian history. He had bet his life against that of a Natchez Little Sun. Not only had Fire Cat won by a point, but when he’d beheaded the Natchez chief, he’d won an incredible fortune that had been wagered on the game. Then he’d gone on to kill Thirteen Sacred Jaguar’s dreaded Itza warriors in individual combat—a feat from which he was still healing.
Things just go from complicated to ever more complex.
The thought wedged itself in between his souls as he shot wary glances at the throngs of people they passed. Traders and hawkers had come from all around Cahokia’s outlying areas—many having left home long before dawn to carry their goods to the Great Plaza in time to get a prime location.
Some displayed their wares on spread blankets; others had small stalls or ramadas beneath which tables had been placed. Every item under Cahokia’s sun could be found: bread, soups, and baked fish; bundles of wood, planks, shocks of thatch, and beams; shell, wood, and ceramic beads; raw copper nuggets; wooden statuary; ceramic pots, bowls, and vessels; sacks of corn, beans, and squash; bows, arrows, paddles; marine and freshwater shells; chert hoes, nodules of chert and quartzite; textiles of all weaves and colors; feathers from the far south; furs from the far north, and every other conceivable thing.
Even the stickball game had slowed to a stop, the players panting as trickles of sweat ran down their hot skin. The look in their eyes was sobering, awe-filled, faces awash with wonder.
“Cahokia!” one of the stickball players shouted, raising his fist in salute.
“Cahokia! Cahokia! Cahokia!” the rest of the players began to chant, only to have the crowd take it up.
In her litter, Night Shadow Star sat up straighter; her head was regal given the way her long black hair was pinned with a polished copper headpiece. She turned, her gaze taking in the players. Then, raising her muscular arm, she knotted her fist and cried, “Cahokia!”
The crowd burst into cheers.
Where he marched behind, Fire Cat allowed himself a slight smile. The city hadn’t been this unified since old Black Tail first bilked the people into believing he was the Morning Star incarnate. And even then there had been doubters.
It wouldn’t last. Even as the crowds shouted, the Four Winds Clan leaders were locked head-to-head in a battle of wits and backstabbing while they sought to agree on a new clan matron. As in all of politics, there would be winners and losers, the latter smarting and vowing to wreak havoc on those who had thwarted their ambitions.
“Make way!” the squadron second continued to call as they rounded the plaza’s southwestern corner and turned east. After passing the tall, conical Earth Clans burial mound, the escorting warriors cleared away the crowd that had gathered before Rides-the-Lightning’s high temple.
Night Shadow Star’s porters lowered her litter, stepping back to allow Fire Cat to offer her his hand. Not that she needed help getting to her feet, but it was one of the few times he was allowed to touch her.
As she rose, she met his eyes, smiling, as if in conspiratorial understanding. She was a tall woman, full-busted, muscular from her addiction to stickball, and supple. In defiance of her clan, she’d painted a three-forked design around her eyes to denote her allegiance to her Underworld master. A black skirt embroidered with interlaced white Tie Snakes hung from her waist, and she’d tied a cardinal-and-bunting feather cloak at her throat.
“Lady? Are you all right?” He could see the worry behind her dark eyes. In her other hand she carried the sack-wrapped Bundle.
“I’ll know soon, won’t I, Red Wing?” And with that she lifted her chin and turned to the long stairway that led up to Rides-the-Lightning’s temple.
Fire Cat took a final quick look, seeing the people who now gathered to watch from behind the score of warriors. They kept calling out greetings and questions, and some were whistling.
Fire Cat placed his sandaled feet on the steps and trotted up after Night Shadow Star.
At the top he nodded respectfully to the two-headed Eagle guardian posts meant to invoke Hunga Ahuito’s Power and protection.
The temple that covered the mound’s flat top was large, its walls plastered and painted, the bottom half red, the top white. A high-peaked thatch roof shot up like a wedge, its ridge pole adorned with carvings of Raccoon, Spider, and Buzzard, the couriers of souls to the Afterlife.
At the door stood the ancient Earth Clan’s shaman called Rides-the-Lightning: a Spirit elder known to send his souls out of body and into the Land of the Dead in search of the lost and forlorn. The old soul flier stood with his back bent, limbs withered. Face, arms, chest, and stomach, his skin was a mass of wrinkles. Long-faded tattoos defied identification. Fleshy and round, the man’s nose suggested a mushroom stuck to his face. The wispy thin hair on his head was the same white as his opaque and blind eyes.
Behind him stood four of his acolytes—all younger men in their forties and fifties. In any other company they would have looked old themselves, but in contrast to Rides-the-Lightning they appeared positively youthful.
“Lady Night Shadow Star,” he greeted with a slight, toothless lisp. “What brings you to my door?”
“I would speak with you, Elder. Hear your counsel.”
“Ah, enter. I have black drink ready.” He turned, leading the way from long familiarity.
Following at Night Shadow Star’s back, Fire Cat stepped into the warm interior. As he did, one of the priests closed the carved plank door, shutting out the light.
A fire crackled and snapped in the large central hearth, and as Fire Cat’s eyes adjusted, he could see the intricately carved sleeping benches along the walls. In the rear hung a remarkable carving of the Morning Star in the Beginning Times; it depicted the hero as he carried his father’s head away from the fabled Underworld courts where the giants once played chunkey.
Net bags filled with herbs and Power plants dangled from the willow-staves and soot-stained rafters. On the walls above the benches, masks had been hung depicting Spirit Wolf, Bear, Falcon, Ivory-billed Woodpecker, Antlered Deer, Buffalo Above, and Panther. They seemed to stare at Fire Cat through their hollow black eyes, as though judging the value of his souls.
The space beneath the sleeping benches was crammed tight with carved wooden boxes, intricately woven baskets, folded fabrics, and large engraved ceramic pots.
A shiver ran across Fire Cat’s shoulders. The place reeked of barely contained Power, and he wasn’t sure that Night Shadow Star wasn’t feeling something in response. She held the leather sack with the Tortoise Bundle farther and farther from her body, as though the sack contained something increasingly hot and dangerous.
Rides-the-Lightning seated himself on a wooden box to one side of the fire and gestured to the mat-covered floor.
Night Shadow Star carefully seated herself, taking special care of the Bundle. Fire Cat dropped to a crouch behind her, wary eyes on the priests as they retreated to the corners of the room. A young boy carefully dipped sacred black drink from a steaming pot behind the fire. He offered it first to Rides-the-Lightning, who drank, and then passed the large shell cup to Night Shadow Star.
After she had chugged down a goodly portion, she handed the cup to Fire Cat. He placed the rim to his lips and drained the last of the black drink, surprised that she’d included him.
Through it all Rides-the-Lightning sat motionless, his white-blind eyes fixed on a distance only his souls could see.
As Fire Cat handed the empty cup to the youth, the old soul flier said, “I had hoped you would come to see me. The Tortoise Bundle is a Powerful being, is it not? I’ve barely had a night’s peace since Lichen gave it to you.”
“The voices, the images, peculiar visions … They jumble in my head the moment I close my ey
es. Strange places. Sometimes desolate and rocky. Other times jagged high mountains. Fields of snow and odd-looking people.” She shook her head. “Why are you not sleeping, Elder?”
“I can hear the racket all the way over here, girl. Whisperings, laughter, warnings called out. Threats and pleas. And those visions? They’re memories. Things the Bundle and its keepers have seen. No wonder Piasa is irritated—the Bundle is getting in his way.”
“But they are both tied to the Underworld. To Old-Woman-Who-Never-Dies. Her Power.”
A faint smile exposed his pink gums. “Does Evening Star House not feud with Horned Serpent House? Or River House with North Star House? Yet they are all Four Winds Clan.”
“But…”
“Lady, Bundles are beings. They live their own lives, with their own personalities. Have their own Power. Bundles are collections of diverse and unique objects, each with its own character, that create a greater personality. A concentration of Spiritual essences that interact in a way that serves some particular purpose. A way of modifying, and to some extent controlling, the Spiritual world around us.”
Fire Cat noticed the tightening at the corners of Night Shadow Star’s lips before she said, “I know that, Elder.”
“Ah, but do you understand that which you claim to know? For example, did you know that one of the reasons the Tortoise Bundle is upset is because it needs to be fed?”
Fire Cat glanced down at the sack in which the Bundle now rested. Somehow he’d never considered the ritual care of a Bundle to be “feeding.”
“I gave it its own place of honor, a shelf opposite my well pot.” Night Shadow Star, too, was now fixed on the sack.
“Have you smoked it in sweetgrass and sage? Offered it corn or meat? Treated it as if it were alive? Like a valued companion?”
“I’ve shown it great respect.”
Rides-the-Lightning said dryly, “For that, at least, it is thankful.”
“All right, I will do better.” She placed hands to the sides of her head, eyes pinched closed. “If it will just let me sleep!”
Moon Hunt Page 6