by Alan Smale
After the food some of his First Cahokian came by. Akecheta was the first to pay his respects, and then it became a steady stream; Takoda, Napayshni, Yahto. Mahkah jumped at Marcellinus from behind to surprise him, laughing a little drunkenly. Hanska arrived with Mikasi, and Marcellinus greeted them with interest, as he had not previously known the two warriors were lovers, had not, in fact, suspected that Hanska favored men at all. As the others had done, they said some words to him and then bowed and tactically retreated.
“You know many names now,” Nahimana said.
“I do,” he said.
“Your warriors are not just warriors to you.”
He looked askance at her, not sure how to respond, but was saved by the arrival of the younger crowd, a few children from the brickworks and his reading classes. Enopay arrived fortuitously at the same time as Hurit, meaning that when Tahtay immediately abandoned Kimimela to talk earnestly with the other girl, Kimimela could turn to Enopay for conversation.
“Why only one feast in winter?” Marcellinus waved around him.
“Only one midwinter,” Nahimana pointed out.
“Yes, yes. But. Why not do this once for each moon? Make everyone happy more often.”
Nahimana shrugged. Marcellinus changed the subject. With a captive audience, maybe he could learn something more interesting here. “I have many names,” he said.
“What?”
Marcellinus clapped to draw attention to himself, and the folk around him looked up from their conversation. “Tahtay say ‘Hotah.’ ” He pointed to himself and said it more loudly. “Hotah.” Nahimana smiled, and the others nearby looked mildly impressed and gave the sign for yes.
“Well?” he said. “Hotah means?”
Nahimana pointed to his arm and his leg and then around her. Sintikala’s belt was white, and Nahimana pointed at that as well. White.
“Aha,” Marcellinus said. “All right, then. And Kimimela and Great Sun Man say ‘Wanageeska.’ ” Again, he pointed at himself, and again they clapped; there was more pointing at the white salved areas of Marcellinus’s body, and some additional hand-talk revealed that Wanageeska meant “white spirit.”
Enopay was fidgeting, beginning to look nervous. Marcellinus skewered him with a look. “And Enopay? Enopay say ‘Eyanosa.’ ” He pointed at himself. “Eyanosa?”
At this, all of them within earshot broke down and laughed until they cried. Great Sun Man guffawed, and even his wife cracked a smile. And when Sintikala laughed, it changed the whole shape of her face; for the briefest of moments she was no longer a warrior but a young woman, sparkling and without cares, quite beautiful.
Marcellinus waited for the hubbub to die down, cheered to be the source of such merriment. “And ‘Eyanosa’ means?”
“Big,” said Nahimana.
“Big up, big out,” Kimimela offered.
“Means big in all directions!” Enopay clarified valiantly.
Marcellinus nodded and laughed. It was certainly true that he was taller and broader in the shoulder than everyone around him except Great Sun Man, though surely many of his warriors were nimbler and stronger.
“Ah, Enopay!” he said. “Enopay the Bold! Eyanosa will fight Enopay!” And much to the amusement of Great Sun Man and the other elders and the open-mouthed amazement of all present, Marcellinus got up and chased the happily shrieking child around and around the blanket.
Soon after this, the drumming began. As the throbbing beat started up in several areas of the crowded Great Plaza, Great Sun Man received a formal deputation of six well-muscled young men with exquisite body painting that must have taken all day to apply. Behind the men came women bearing their face masks of copper and wood, their feather cloaks and turtle-shell rattles, and all the other paraphernalia of Cahokian ritual.
Marcellinus stood. By day, Cahokians were the calmest and most pragmatic people he had ever lived among. By night they were either asleep or pagans; on special nights the deerskin drums and the flutes of cedar and walnut wood would come out and the sacred dancers would cavort in their masks and bright, extravagant clothing and headdresses, their deer antlers and eagle feathers and birdman outfits, their bodies artfully scarred and extravagantly painted. Sometimes the dances would be so sufficiently complex and well choreographed that they were a joy to watch even if their meaning was obscure. On other occasions the dancing would quickly devolve into chaos and bacchanalia with masked men and women cavorting in increasing abandon and disarray, often joined by the ordinary people of Cahokia. Although Marcellinus saw no overt sexual license at such events—for all their summer disdain of clothing, the Cahokians were straitlaced about public displays of affection—his military training and Stoic nature made him feel uncomfortable at their lack of self-control. After watching his warriors caper and pretend to be their totemic animals by night, he found it almost impossible to look them in the eye in training the next morning.
Besides, the meanings of Cahokian ceremonies and festivities were lost on him. Cahokia had a pantheon of gods just as bewildering as the Roman collection, which had been assembled painstakingly over the centuries from a wide variety of other cultures. In Cahokia, Marcellinus had heard tell at various times of the Corn Mother; the Evening Star (who may or may not have been the same deity as the Morning Star); Keshari or sometimes Heyoka, the sacred clown; and especially Red Horn, a mighty mythical warrior who wore human heads as earrings. Oddly, it was a representation of Red Horn’s head with his large nose that Great Sun Man wore in his ear spools at various ceremonies. Marcellinus perceived something of an impiety about this, but he knew that in religious matters logic often took a seat at the back of the temple.
“Thank you,” he said to Nahimana as the dancers donned their finery.
“What?” she mouthed. Even before the dancing had begun, the drumming had built to fever pitch. Perhaps it was a good way to keep warm.
He hand-talked Thank you, and she replied, Why? For talk me, he gestured. For us company, here.
The dancers started to caper, snorting. They rocked back and forth to the drumbeat, bending so low that their heads almost touched the ground. Around him Cahokians were singing. He understood none of the words, could not tell what animals the dancers were supposed to be, if they were even mimicking animals.
Great Sun Man and Sintikala were on their feet, swaying in time to the drums. Tahtay and Hurit, with breathless youthful daring, were holding hands. Enopay was nowhere to be seen, and Kimimela was gone, too.
Marcellinus looked around, seeking her, but she had vanished into the Cahokian night.
Her mother danced, and Marcellinus could watch no more. He stalked from the plaza and went to bed.
Marcellinus slipped twice on the steps of the mound. The sun was still low on the horizon and had done little to warm the ground or disturb the layer of ice above it. To either side of him the grass was frozen and brittle. Off to his right, within the palisade, he could see the foundations for the new brick armory they were building to store all the Roman weapons.
Nobody stopped him from climbing the mound, and he saw no one on the plateau at the top. He walked to the door of the Longhouse of the Wings. “Sintikala!”
No reply. He was reluctant to enter unbidden. Instead, he walked around the outside of the building and peered down toward the Longhouse of the Thunderbirds. “Sintikala!”
As he did so, she walked out of the back door of the Longhouse of the Wings. “I hear you,” she said. “Up here, no shout. What you want?”
“I look for Kimimela.”
Sintikala looked surprised. “Kimimela not here.”
“I know. I just left her with Nahimana.”
She shook her head. “I not understand.”
“Sintikala, why is your daughter not with you? Why is your daughter never with you?”
Turning on her heel, she walked back into the Longhouse of the Wings. Marcellinus followed. “Sintikala!”
The giant forms of the Hawk wings swayed above them. Sintika
la hissed: “Shut up! No shout here! I have spoken this to you already two times.”
“You did not speak me why your daughter is not with you.”
“That is not for you to know.”
None of Marcellinus’s business? Well, that might be so, and it might not be.
“Sintikala, if you do not want Kimimela as your daughter, then I will take care of her as my own.”
Her mouth dropped open. She gaped as if he had lost his mind.
But these were not words spoken impetuously. Marcellinus had thought about this long and hard. Kimimela had been Marcellinus’s guide for many months; she had a lively mind and a strong heart, and the thought of her being shunned by her own mother and orphaned in her own city was unbearable to him. He could not stand idle while Kimi was neglected in the same way he once had neglected a daughter of his own.
But now Sintikala strode toward him, fury rippling across her face, fists raised.
He stood his ground. “Sinti—”
His back slammed into the floor. Almost quicker than a thought, she had hooked her bare foot behind his ankle and shoved, felling him instantly. It was quite a trick for someone barely two-thirds his size, but before Marcellinus could react she was on top of him, punching the air from his lungs. Pain flared in his chest; she had not rebroken his snapped rib, but she had come close.
She knelt with all her weight on him, and her hand slipped into his shirt like an eel. Snatching his pugio out of his tunic, she held it to his throat. The cutting edge pressed against the main artery of his neck rather than the windpipe. Sintikala knew how to kill quickly. Marcellinus froze, very aware of the blade’s sharpness.
“Oh, you do not fight now?” she said.
“I do not fight Cahokians. I told you.”
“You come just to shout?”
“I came to talk.”
“No. You come to take my daughter. You come to insult me.”
She jerked the pugio away from his throat and pressed it against his hairline. Once again Marcellinus was in danger of being scalped with his own weapon.
“You say you have a daughter?” he said. “Really? Then why—”
The blade was back at his throat, biting into the flesh. “No speak.”
Marcellinus said nothing. She leaned closer and looked into his face, studying his eyes, his nose, his lips. Over her shoulder the brooding Hawk wings rocked in the air, wide and alien. She was breathing heavily, and her breath warmed his cheek.
Again she jabbed the pugio blade into his skin. “Eyes to me!”
Reluctantly Marcellinus met her acid stare. She looked deep into his soul once more. His heart jumped.
Sintikala rolled off him and stood, leaving his pugio resting on his breastbone. He sucked in a long, painful breath.
“Go now,” she said. “Do not talk of this again. I have spoken. Yes?”
He struggled to sit up.
She surged toward him dangerously. “Wanageeska! Yes?”
“Yes. Yes.”
She stalked away, out the back door of the longhouse, and Marcellinus did not follow her.
“And now I am nine winters,” Kimimela concluded.
“And I am seven winters!” said Enopay.
Nahimana looked at him skeptically. “Yes? You sure?”
“Winter only half done,” Marcellinus objected. It was the day after his confrontation with Sintikala and still only two days after the Midwinter Feast; he wasn’t sure this counted as living through a winter.
“And you are a hundred winters, Eyanosa!” Enopay said.
“Beat the child for me,” Marcellinus said to Nahimana, and Enopay screeched cheerfully.
Lessons had restarted after the midwinter break. Today the four of them were writing together; Tahtay was off bossing around the other boys and girls at the brickworks.
Marcellinus considered. Everyone was in a good mood, and he was not going to wait forever. Now was as good a time as any.
“Kimimela?”
“Yes?”
“Where is your mother?”
She shook her head. “At the Great Mound? I not know.”
The resentment welled up inside him again. “And why is your mother not a mother to you?”
“Gaius.” Nahimana leaned over Enopay, guiding his hand as he smeared charcoal over bark. His early proficiency with writing had faltered a little; learning the alphabet was one thing, but spoken Cahokian was light on some consonant sounds, R, B, and V for three, and sounds that Enopay didn’t recognize well with his ears he forgot to write with his fingers.
Kimimela shook her head.
“Kimi, where is your father?”
Nahimana stood, thunder on her face, charcoal clutched tightly in her hand, and Marcellinus was sure that if the children hadn’t been present, she would have thrown it at him.
Good. He must be on the right track.
“My father killed by Iroqua,” said Kimimela. She said it quietly and almost formally, as if still reciting a lesson, but her eyes were suddenly hooded and tired.
He thought about it. “Were you there when he died?”
“No.”
“Was Sintikala?”
“I not know.”
“How old were you?”
“Two winters. Three.”
“So, Sintikala could not … blame you?”
“Gaius,” Nahimana said.
“No.”
“But, perhaps you look like him?” Marcellinus said. “Or Sintikala was protecting you when … it happened?”
“I not know. How I know that?”
Nahimana stepped up, inserting herself between him and the girl, eyes flaring. “Yes, Gaius. Yes. Kimi look like him. Now shut up.”
Kimimela’s father, Sisika’s husband, killed by the Iroqua. And the daughter reminded Sisika too much of the father. The older Kimimela got, the more she would resemble him. A constant reminder. Could that really be all it was?
“Damn it,” Marcellinus said. “The Iroqua. Always the damned Iroqua.”
“No, no,” said Kimi. “Gaius, not be angry, please …”
“I am not angry with you, Kimimela.”
“Not be angry with Iroqua,” she said unexpectedly.
“Please,” Marcellinus said, and Nahimana stepped aside.
Marcellinus sat down next to Kimimela. She dropped her gaze, and he put his hand under her chin, gently raising her head to look in her eyes as Cahokian women had so often done to him. “No?”
“No. Do not join the Mourning War.”
He did not understand. Had he not already killed scores of Iroqua? “Too late. I already joined.”
“But do not be angry,” she said in a voice he could barely hear. “Do not be killed by Iroqua, Gaius.”
“… Oh.” His mind stalled.
Nahimana cleared her throat. She was looking past him. He turned, and there she stood in the doorway to his hut: Sintikala.
In his mind she would always have two names. Marcellinus could certainly address her as Sintikala, the warrior, a daughter of a chieftain and the leader of the Catanwakuwa clan, but part of her would always be Sisika to him.
Even if Sintikala hated Marcellinus forever, he would still owe a debt of feeling to Sisika.
Kimimela did not react to her mother’s presence. Looking down, she again calmly started work on her writing.
From the doorway, Sintikala stared long and hard at Marcellinus. The fur-lined cloak she was wrapped in made her look small, but Marcellinus could still feel the abrasion at his throat where she had forced his own pugio against his skin, the commanding strength with which she had trapped him on the floor of the longhouse.
“Yes?” Marcellinus said.
Sintikala looked at her daughter. “I came to speak with Kimimela.”
“Really?”
Sintikala’s eyes narrowed. “Really.”
He could not read her intent. He hardly ever could. Kimimela’s face was similarly unreadable. “Kimi? Is it all right?”
�
�Yes,” the girl said almost inaudibly.
For the first time, Marcellinus realized it was entirely within Sintikala’s power to ensure that he never saw Kimimela again.
He swallowed and stood. “Fine. Enopay! Come. We must check the heating in the Big Warm House. Make sure we do not cook any elders.”
The boy did not laugh; the tension in the room was high enough to quench even Enopay’s natural exuberance. Soberly, he stood and followed Marcellinus out into the sharp, icy light of the day.
Nahimana moved to leave, too, but Sintikala held up her hand, and Nahimana stayed. For that, at least, Marcellinus was grateful.
“Here it is like sweat lodge, always,” said Ohanzee the warrior to Marcellinus via Enopay, a sneer on his face showing his contempt. “Make men weak.”
“Wait till you old,” retorted Howahkan, one of the elders of Cahokia, with white hair and a face like leather. “You strong now, nothing harm you. You make many winters, then we see what you say.”
“Huh,” said the brave, and pointed at Marcellinus. “You don’t fool me, Wanageeska.” And with that, he stalked off toward Cahokia Creek.
Howahkan hobbled around the Big Warm House with Marcellinus, watching him raise his hand up to the bricks, searching for cracks in the mud-and-clay mortar where heat might escape. “You don’t fool me, Wanageeska,” he mimicked, and cackled.
“He was certainly in there a long time, making sure the house was so terrible,” Marcellinus said, and had to wait for the belated laugh once Enopay translated.
“Yes. He is a careful fighter, Ohanzee is. Studies his enemy long and hard.”
“Is that one my enemy?” Marcellinus was constantly surprised at how few enemies he seemed to have. In his first few days in Cahokia the animosity toward him had been so great, he had felt like he was swimming through it, but those days were long behind him. Today, many grumbled about the pace of change, many made sarcastic comments, and occasionally people asked him painfully pointed questions about his past. But with the possible exception of Sintikala, none were so genuinely antagonistic that Marcellinus felt he needed to guard his back.
“Ohanzee talks only. He will not become one of your ass-licking warrior boys, but neither will he harm you or plot against you.”