Moon Hunt

by Kathleen O'Neal Gear

  She felt it as he shook his head before continuing. “It’s hazy and unreal in my memory: a hammering that vibrated the sand under my feet, blinding white heat, and some terrible conflict.”

  “Do you remember handing that copper spike to the Morning Star?”

  “Handing…” He stopped short, and she felt his unease like a tension winding through his body. “No. But there was something. Big. Beating at me…”

  “The moth?”

  Again he shook his head. She could almost feel him frowning, sense his struggle to search his memory.

  “So many odd … Oh, I don’t know. I’m confused.” He lifted an arm from her back to gesture at the surrounding darkness. “I don’t even know where we are, Lady. I carried you. Sort of. At least got us out of that narrow tunnel. For a while I couldn’t even figure out which way was up until I thought to lift one of the pebbles from the floor and drop it. It clicks when it hits bottom so I know that way is really down.”

  “You sound oddly resigned.”

  “I think we’re going to die in here. You thirsty?”

  “Very.”

  He shifted, arm extending to the side before it returned with her water bottle. Greedily she sucked down the cool liquid, refusing to completely slake her thirst. She handed the rest to him, only to feel him replacing it in what she assumed was her pack.

  “You aren’t going to drink?”

  “I’m not thirsty.”

  “Suffering on my account isn’t part of your oath to me.”

  “No, Lady, I suppose it is not. Down here, with nothing left, I think we’re way beyond oaths and other silliness. I wonder if Chunkey Boy survived the poison?”

  “You don’t remember the cavern? The fading glow? The Morning Star’s final words to me?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

  “We all would have died but for you. You carried the copper spike.”

  “What spike?”

  “The one that was left after your war club burned up. You went to fight the moth, to free the Morning Star, but it was too much to bear. At the last instant, before the moth could kill you, I saw you hand the spike to the Morning Star. With it he was able to stab the moth.”

  “Are you making this up?”

  She shifted, staring at him in the darkness, wishing she could see his eyes. “No. I’m not making it up.”

  “Then how did I get there?”

  “I carried you in my pack.”

  For a long moment he was silent. Then, as if talking to himself, he said, “Maybe it’s the datura. Causes visions.”

  She slapped him halfheartedly on the shoulder. “It doesn’t matter. I know what you did.”

  He tightened his grip on her, and she snuggled closer, placed her hand to his chest. Felt the steady beat of his heart. It wouldn’t be so bad. She could just stay this way, curled against his strong chest. Were she to go back, it would just be to pain, and fear, the voices and visions, the constant worry and periods of depression. She was tired of the endless—

  A flash of blue light flickered at the edge of her vision.

  “Touching. Don’t you two look cozy? Now, now, mustn’t get too comfortable.”

  “Piasa,” she said tensing. At the same time part of her wondered where the Tortoise Bundle was and why it wasn’t playing with her souls.

  “Where?” Fire Cat asked, shifting.

  The Spirit beast’s flickering glow drifted off to her right and then up.

  “Blood and spit,” she said wearily, disentangling herself from Fire Cat’s arms. “Come on, Red Wing.” She climbed to her feet.

  “Lady?” She heard the reserve in his tone. “There are pitfalls, cracks. I barely avoided death just getting us out of that narrow tunnel.”

  “I suspect my master won’t allow us any such easy escape as a simple maiming in the dark. Not when he can keep me alive and in his service.”

  “What a cheery thought.”

  “Come on. He’s waiting on us.”

  When they reached the surface—if they did—she would again be Night Shadow Star, and heir to all the trouble that entailed. Back in that world, she and Fire Cat would once again be master and servant, separated by the rules of her class and status. She would be required by oath to hold him at arm’s length—the price she’d paid to save her city.

  Piasa’s haunting laughter reverberated in the black confines of the cavern as he disappeared to leave Night Shadow Star and Fire Cat once again in darkness.

  Fifty-six

  Better, perhaps, than anyone in Cahokia, Tonka’tzi Wind understood the value inherent in making the right appearance. How to do that, however, was paramount. Nor did she have a clue about how to make a spectacular entrance as her porters carried her up the crowded Grand Staircase toward the Morning Star’s palace. Everything was in chaos. How did she assert her authority?

  She’d never seen the city like this. People, most of them Earth Clan nobles and some from the lower ranks of the Four Winds Clan, had to be displaced from the crowded steps just to allow passage. The men and women, mostly young, had stepped off and were clinging precariously to the steep mound sides.

  Many of them called, “Tonka’tzi, what news?”

  It was madness.

  She had been half asleep—cramped and aching from her continuing devotions at Old-Woman-Who-Never-Dies’ temple on the other side of the North Plaza. The only warning she had received of anything going even more wrong was when her servant charged in, declaring, “Tonka’tzi, Wolverine and Slender Fox are passing. They are being carried at the head of a full squadron!”

  She had stumbled to her feet, almost falling when her cramped legs wouldn’t hold her, and been half carried to the temple doors. The sight of passing warriors, fit for battle, had brought a palpitation to her heart.

  The route south from Serpent Woman Town veered around the string of old oxbow lakes and involved several creek crossings—or most of the journey could be made by canoe following the waterways.

  The squadron she had watched marching south along the avenue had apparently taken the land route. They had shields hung over their shoulders, bows and quivers poking out above their loosely tied armor. While stepping out in good time, they had that loose-limbed, swinging stride of men warmed to the routine of march.

  At the head of the squadrons—and atop two litters—rode Serpent Woman Town matron Slender Fox and High Chief Wolverine of North Star House. Wind had immediately called for her litter and had her people race in pursuit.

  Blocked by the North Star squadrons, she hadn’t been able to overtake the leaders. Had barely been able to force her way through the crowds surging around the base of the Morning Star’s mound.

  Now Slender Fox and Wolverine preceded her up the staircase, their warriors and functionaries haven taken position at the foot of the stairs. Swelling around the base of the great mound, the huge crowd still waited, ominous, like some lurking and formless monster.

  A rustle—the stir of conversation from a thousand lips—had run through them as she and the North Star House rulers had started up the steps. Oh, yes, the people knew something was happening, and she could feel the whetting of their interest, the building unease.

  She had seen crowds, and she’d seen mobs. This giant throng of massed humanity was something else entirely. Down deep inside of her souls she feared it. Its immense Power—like a barely contained thunder—chilled her like nothing she’d ever known, as though it could explode in a massive wave that would wash over and engulf her entire world. And when the last of it had ebbed away, only broken devastation and corpses would remain on a desolate and exhausted soil.

  All it would take would be a spark. A single wrong move. Then, heedless, mindless, the mass of humanity would react.

  Do you understand? She wanted to scream at Wolverine, shake her fist in Slender Fox’s face. We can’t make a mistake here.

  Unless—Hunga Ahuito forbid—they should reach the palace gate and learn that the Morning Sta
r had just died. What would the masses do then? Swarm the palace in a violent demonstration of their devotion? Go berserk in their grief? Rend the very fabric of their world the way a young and freshly made widow did her skirt?

  Today I could see the end of the world.

  Her heart was hammering as they were allowed through the high gate. The last thing she saw was a Horned Serpent House woman as she lost her footing on the loose mound side and went tumbling down the long slope to the accompaniment of cries and gasps from the spectators who’d regained the steps.

  Wind didn’t wait to see if she survived.

  Inside the high palisade the courtyard was packed. It was all Wolverine’s party could do to hammer people to the side and make a passage to the palace doors.

  Wind’s porters set her litter down, shoving people in the process, who shoved more people, all of them calling questions, shouting for news.

  Five Fists had managed to keep some semblance of order, his warriors—armed and panicked—standing just inside the doors.

  “What news?” Wolverine was demanding. “Is he still alive?”

  Five Fists ignored both him and Slender Fox, and used an arm to shove them aside. “Tonka’tzi, I don’t know what to tell you. Rides-the-Lightning and Matron Rising Flame are with him, but his breathing has slowed. His heartbeat…” He made a face. “It beats, then skips, and a breath later, beats again.”

  “What does that mean?” Slender Fox demanded, refusing to be put off.

  “I don’t know, Matron,” Five Fists thundered.

  “You will know,” Wolverine bellowed back, “or I will order my squadron to clear this palace and this mound if I have to throw every man, woman, and child down the slopes to do it.”

  Around her, filling the room, were most of the other Four Winds Clan leaders. Green Chunkey now came waddling toward her, his corpulent belly preceding him like a battering ram, calling, “You’ll do no such thing, Cousin.”

  Wind shouted, “Stop it! All of you.” But she might have been whispering into a gale. And that left her with her original problem: Appearance was everything in leadership, so how did she reassert the tonka’tzi’s authority?

  As the press of shouting nobles broke into bickering and shoving, she retreated back into the room—glanced around at the grand palace and its furnishings. Walking over to the fire, she noticed it was down to coals. It took a snap of her fingers, and one of the cowed boys who had been literally hiding back in the corner came warily forward.

  “The fire needs wood, boy.”

  “But…”

  “No buts. If this fire goes out, you will be skinned alive and left for the ravens to pluck your lidless eyeballs from your head. So build it up to a roaring blaze.”

  And so saying, she walked back into sacred space, picked up the conch-shell horn, and stopped before the Morning Star’s high dais. Standing before it, she lifted the horn to her lips and blew.

  At the horn’s ringing clarity, the room went silent, all eyes turned her way.

  Holding the horn as if it were a talisman of office, she climbed onto the forbidden dais and seated herself in the Morning Star’s panther-hide chair.

  Yes, this is the way. Either that, or I’ve just consigned myself to the square.

  One wrong word, and they’d kill her for blasphemy.

  Fifty-seven

  With trembling fingers, Night Shadow Star reached out into the thick blackness. She felt her way forward in a universe devoid of light, a totality of near-liquid black that seemed to run between her fingers. With a tentative foot, she tapped the soft footing ahead, wary of a drop-off, or crack. Each contraction of her heart beat like a pestle in her chest. Panic lay just at the edge of her being, and as long as she wasn’t listening for it, the whispering of the Dead distracted her.

  The moment that she stopped, cocked her head, and struggled to hear what they were saying, however, they vanished into the silent dark like a snap of the fingers.

  And silent it was. Like a weight. Pressing around her. As if all sound had been absorbed by the darkness, stone, and cool air.

  “Lady?” Fire Cat asked from behind her. “Are you sure your master has abandoned you?”

  She swallowed hard, wishing for water. The knowledge that a remnant sloshed back and forth in the bottle that Fire Cat carried almost drove her mad. He was saving it for her. Suffering his thirst that she might finally swig down that last precious couple of swallows. Which was all the more reason she would die before she’d drink it.

  “Nothing,” she told him, gesturing her futility—as if he could see anything, let alone her expressive gesture. Filling her lungs, she called, “Master?”

  The cool silence mocked her as she stared around, desperate for even a vestige of Piasa’s eerie blue glow.

  Nothing.

  Only the eternal blackness returned her gaze.

  “Lord, why have you left us?” she demanded of the invisible air.

  She could hear Fire Cat’s breathing, his growing fear audible as he drew each worried breath. She’d heard men pant in terror. Knew that cadence: the slight gasping intake and frantic exhalation.

  “It is all right,” Fire Cat told her. Then he swallowed hard, perhaps from fear, or maybe because of his thirst.

  “He would not have left us without a reason,” she forced herself to say reasonably.

  “You are too important to him.” Fire Cat sounded like he was trying to reassure himself.

  Why? she asked herself. He led us this far, to this place, only to dwindle into nothingness.

  Through an act of will she calmed herself, paced her breathing with deep and rhythmic breaths, and managed to slow her pounding heart.

  Something. There must be something.

  Fragments of conversation—bits of sentences—tried to pop out of the air around her. Like the visions, the Spirit voices hovering in the air were worse when she was frightened or worried.

  “Leave me in peace,” she pleaded. “Let me listen.”

  Cackling laughter answered from just over her head.

  She sensed rather than saw or felt Fire Cat as he tensed.

  “Not you,” she whispered. “The voices. Don’t you hear?”

  “No, Lady. But I never do.”

  She wanted to bend double with that bitter laughter of frustration and despair. If she did, it would mean surrender, a broken admission of defeat that would leave her hollow and supine on chilly cavern floor.

  You will be lost.

  Closing her eyes—as if that made any difference—she stilled herself. Drove the voices into silence by straining to hear them, and slowly exhaled a deep breath.

  Then she carefully opened her eyes and began searching the darkness. Timing herself by the beating of her heart, she scanned the ink-thick blackness.

  There!

  Just a faint golden flicker. It seemed to sway, to strengthen and then diminish. But what was it? Certainly nothing that hinted of Piasa and his eerie blue.

  She reached back—fumbled for Fire Cat’s hand—and felt her way forward and slightly to the right. Whatever happened, she couldn’t lose sight of that lazy waving filament of illumination.

  “Lady, do you—”

  “Shhh.”

  Fumbling about with her toe, she made one slow step after another, the faint golden glow ever brighter as she felt her way over a chunk of angular roof fall. Rounding another such block, she finally stared up, standing just beneath the slowly waving light.

  She could make out golden filaments, just out of reach. Fragments. Threads similar to torn cloth, that when they twisted, glowed on one side, and were black on the other. She stared, trying to place the familiar …

  “Part of a cocoon,” she whispered.

  “Lady?”

  “In the cavern. After you handed the spike to the Morning Star. He was fading, being cocooned in darkness.”

  “I don’t remember any of that.”

  “You were dead,” she told him thoughtfully.

 
“So you say, but I…”

  She stilled his outburst with a squeeze of her hand, adding, “It’s all right. We’re on the right path.”

  “How can you say that? I can’t see the nose on my face, let alone any cocoon.”

  She smiled at the frustration in his voice, tugging him forward as she picked out another filament of black-backed golden cocoon just ahead. Even as she passed beneath it, the first remnants of cocoon faded into nonexistence. “The Morning Star went this way.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She led him with greater confidence now, feeling her way with her feet.

  One after another, the bits of cocoon drew her onward, hope springing in her chest until, as she stepped into one of the narrow chambers, a golden glow illuminated both the pictographs and the cloth-wrapped bodies of the Dead where they were propped beneath the drawings.

  And there walked the Morning Star, illuminated by an interior glow. On taloned eagle feet, he strode carefully along on the rock-strewn floor. Feathered wings extended from his arms. His antlered headdress with its raccoon hide and arrow-studded crest cast shadows on the irregular ceiling.

  Stunned, Night Shadow Star watched as the Morning Star’s fingers flicked lightly over the bent heads of the Dead where they had been propped against the walls. Wrapped as they were in fabrics, they might have been supplicants seeking his blessing.

  As his fingers traced across the bowed heads, bits of soul flickered and darted from the bodies. Like wingless birds they rose to the charcoaled figures drawn on the stone over each. Upon reaching that portal, the souls sank into the stone, the drawings momentarily alive as they expanded, raised their arms, or Danced on agile legs. A breath of time later they faded back to charcoal, immovable and again lifeless as the freed souls followed their path to the Underworld.

  Night Shadow Star watched in wonder as the Morning Star made his way to the far end of the cavern; the drawings on the walls animated, Dancing, the occasional red lines, circles, and dots burning as crimson as a winter sunrise.

  The Morning Star seemed to hesitate at the end of the room, then glanced over his shoulder, meeting Night Shadow Star’s gaze. With a curious smile on his lips, he gave the slightest nod of recognition.