Pus and blood, what was he thinking? A soft and tender thing like Willow Blossom in Blue Heron’s household? With Smooth Pebble, Dancing Sky, White Rain, and Soft Moon? They’d eat her alive.
“Hey, don’t you worry. Not that I believe anything will happen to Night Shadow Star, but if it did, you’d always have a place with me.”
She squeezed his arm, looked up at him. Her smile wavered the slightest bit, her eyes didn’t have the dazzling warmth, but that was probably because he couldn’t see them in the dark.
And later, after the moon rose, the Dancing began. When feasting had filled people’s bellies, Seven Skull Shield led her back to Night Shadow Star’s palace.
Willow Blossom must have been tired, maybe a bit under the weather. Or maybe she’d just eaten too much. As they made love that night, she only seemed to be going through the motions. Her movements seemed lethargic, something forced about her little gasps and moans.
But it’s probably just me. Too many worries. Too long living on the run.
Forty
Fire Cat and Night Shadow Star spent that night of the lunar maximum rolled in a blanket somewhere in a freshly planted cornfield outside the Yuchi’s Rainbow Town. It would be the most memorable and wondrous night of his life.
Maybe it was the black drink that pounded in their veins, or the Power of the full moon beaming down from the northern sky, or maybe it was just that he had come to love her with all of his being. Whatever the reason, they consummated their relationship in every way. Nor did they finally succumb to sleep until the first rays of the sun were turning the forest behind them golden.
The sound of a stone ax striking wood brought Fire Cat awake when the sun was nearly two hands high. He and Night Shadow Star lay naked, her supple body teasing one memory after another from down between his souls. This morning he saw her as he’d never seen her before, knew her as he’d never known her.
Together they had broken Piasa’s deal, and who knew what that might entail? He tried to convince himself that it was all right, that they’d done it in the midst of a new-moon ceremony that celebrated the glory of the act.
He wondered if he was deluding himself.
Rising, he slipped into the forest to relieve himself, then walked back. Took a long moment to fix the sight of her perfect body in his memory. If he died this day, he wanted to take this image with him to the Underworld, or wherever his souls ended up.
Finally, he knelt, took her hand. “Lady, wake up. It’s full day. We need to get dressed, find some food, and be ready to meet the Traders at the canoe.”
She blinked, came awake, and fixed on him. A smile bent her lips. “When did waking stop and the dreams begin?”
“I don’t understand.”
“I was dreaming it just now. You and me, shaft and sheath. Still locked together. I don’t ever want to stop. Let’s just fade back into the forest, go find a meadow, and we’ll stay that way. Your shaft locked inside me from now on. Maybe I’ll draw you in. Shaft first, then your balls and legs, hips, your chest and arms, and finally your head.” She tapped over her heart. “I’ll keep you here where you can never be taken away.”
“I can think of worse fates.”
He took her hand, pulled her to her feet, and together they dressed, grabbed up their pack, and went in search of breakfast.
After they’d Traded an oyster-shell bead for a thick goosefoot-seed stew, they watched a makeup stickball match. Checked out the Trade before the gates, and finally wandered back down to the canoe landing, knowing they were about half a hand of time early.
Wading across the muck to Red Reed, they were able to drag the canoe over and beach it on the landing where enough vessels had left the celebration to make room. They washed the sticky mud off their feet as best they could and sat on the gunwale, toes in the water, watching the people coming and going.
The place was like a hive. Just about everyone looked tired, but happy. Well, all but the family of seven. Three of the little boys had done something so terrible their parents were absolutely enraged as they loaded kids and camp into the canoe and shoved out for home.
“You’ve been thoughtful,” Fire Cat noted. “More than once I’ve seen your gaze go vacant. What’s Piasa saying?”
“We’re bargaining.”
Fire Cat’s stomach dropped. “Over what?”
“My services.”
“And?”
She shot him a sidelong glance, a steely brightness in her dark eyes. “The world changed last night. It’s not the same place it was. Every time I took you inside me. Every time you cried out as you shot your seed. Every time I gasped with the fire of delight running through my body, we changed the world. Drove it further and further from the way it was into something different.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“In return for my city and people I gave up any chance to share my life with you as a woman does with a man, and I did it again in exchange for Morning Star’s soul in the Underworld. That was Piasa’s price. Last night, you and I joined our bodies under the light of the reborn moon. That’s Sky Power. Things are different. Unfamiliar voices are talking in my head.”
Fire Cat looked out over the river; he counted fifteen canoes coming and going at the landing.
She said, “I have given him my word that I will deal with Walking Smoke. If I do that, Piasa and I start from somewhere different. Go from there.”
“He won’t just leave?”
She tapped the side of her head. “He’s in here, Fire Cat. He devoured my souls in the Underworld. He made me part of him, and he will be part of me for the rest of my life. It’s just how it is.”
“I’m still worried about this bargain.”
“My decision to lock hips with you last night was made with the understanding that Piasa might very well kill me. I offered him my life in exchange for what we did. But what good does it do the Lord of the Underworld if he kills me? Alive, I still serve him. So, I’ll go kill Walking Smoke, and by doing so, he’ll keep you alive.”
“Let him kill me.” Fire Cat gave her a brave smile. “For last night? It was worth it.”
She took his hand, gave it a squeeze. “That’s a negotiating point. If you are dead, I have no reason to live.” A pause as her gaze went unfocused again. “Funny, isn’t it?”
“What’s that?”
“I would have never found this courage or freedom if we’d stayed in Cahokia. I would have been Night Shadow Star forever. Here, on the river, I can finally see and understand. It’s as if my world has been covered with a thick black smoke that obscured so many simple truths. If having you in my bed means I have to pay with death, I am ready to die.”
“Lady, don’t speak flippantly, not where Power can hear.”
She shook her head sadly. “Without you, I have nothing.”
“You have me. In your bed or not. I’d already made my peace.”
“That’s one of the reasons I made the decision I did. How can I live with any man after living with you? It’s you and me. Or nothing.”
“Let’s just hope that Piasa knows how far we’ll go to keep his … Wait, what’s this?”
Fire Cat fixed on the big war canoe that appeared from behind the mat of vegetation downstream from the canoe landing. It cut the water, gliding gracefully across the murky surface of the river. Lines of paddlers were driving it for the landing with rhythmic strokes. Two men, dressed in war regalia, were perched in the high bow.
Fire Cat’s heart sank, and he reached for his sacked weapons where they lay in the bottom of the canoe.
“Wait,” Night Shadow Star told him, placing her hand on his arm. “We’re not undone yet. Sit here, like we are. Our faces are painted, we’re Traders.”
“As long as Blood Talon doesn’t walk right up and look me in the eyes.” Fire Cat took a calming breath, his heart beginning to pound. “If he does, Lady, I’m going to kill him first thing.” And with that, he slid his copper-bitted war club from its sack.
Forty-one
Night Shadow Star watched the Cahokian war canoe slide up on the beach not twenty paces down from where she and Fire Cat sat on Red Reed’s gunwale, their feet dangling in the water.
Fire Cat was as tense as a bent sapling, his hand resting just above his war club where it lay hidden by the hull.
Since waking that morning, she had been living a confusion of thoughts and hearing strange disembodied voices—though she’d struggled mightily to pass herself off as unconcerned about her nightlong need to fill herself with Fire Cat’s body.
The voices had been howling, especially Piasa’s, and she kept seeing flickers of movements, flashes of light at the corner of her vision. Her thoughts had been scattered, her memory replaying one particular copulation: She’d leaped on Fire Cat with a shrill yip, bit him on the shoulder. The coupling had been wild as she hammered her body against his. Then burst into a climax like she’d never known. Over and over the memory repeated, as if her souls couldn’t recall the other times, but had fixed on that one explosive event.
Each time it replayed down in her souls, she could feel Piasa’s rage. Hear his sibilant hiss as it mixed with the sound of people and the clamor of the celebration.
What have I done? Who have I become?
Her thoughts were reeling, confused. One part of her reveled in her mating with Fire Cat. She had relieved a suffocating weight that threatened to crush her. Another part of her experienced a sense of fulfillment as a woman—that she had finally been able to express the love she felt, that even if they died within the next moments, Fire Cat had shared her heart and soul. Then, an instant later, she was consumed by a sucking sense of guilt. That she’d somehow betrayed herself and Fire Cat, that her selfish actions would destroy them both.
That, in turn, led to panic.
How could a person be so torn inside?
“Because now there is no way out for you,” Piasa hissed from the air above her head.
She kept thinking: I’ve doomed myself … and him.
And all the while, she’d been bargaining with Piasa, whispering, “I know what I promised. But I’m not sorry. I will bring Walking Smoke down. If you must punish, take it out on me. Not Fire Cat.”
“And if I do?”
She glanced at the flicker of light at the edge of her vision, whispering, “Then I will never serve you again.”
“I could devour your souls.”
“Without Fire Cat, I have no use for them.”
With all her might, she concentrated, imagining ways she could kill herself. Insisting that her threat was no bluff.
She needed only to stare into Fire Cat’s eyes, send him that shy and intimate smile, and watch the light of love fill his eyes. When she did, she knew she had the courage to defy her lord.
Life without this man was simply not worth living.
“You try me.”
“Then pick a more compliant woman next time, Lord,” she growled under her breath as the Cahokian warriors leaped over the sides of their canoe and pulled it up onto the ash-stained sand of the canoe landing.
“Easy,” she told Fire Cat as his fingers strayed toward the war club. “We’re just harmless Traders. Remember?”
“You would have made a good war chief,” he told her, sticking to Trade pidgin.
“How’s my face paint?”
“A little smudged, but the tattoos are still illegible. And you have grass in your hair.”
She laughed at that. “You look like you spent all night copulating with a bobcat yourself. But then, that’s half the town.”
Blood Talon and Nutcracker were issuing orders, the squadron leader surveying the landing, hands on his hips. With barely a flicker, his gaze traveled over Red Reed where Fire Cat and Night Shadow Star remained seated. They were just a couple among the fifty or so people thronging the hundreds of other canoes. Some were loading packs and pushing out. Others just came to retrieve something from the boats.
“Bring the packs and that Trade,” Nutcracker called. “Take your weapons. Let’s make a good show of it, but I want bows and quivers slung, war clubs on your belts.”
“Old Scar, Whistle Hand, you stay and watch the canoe.” Blood Talon pointed at two of the warriors.
“All right, Piasa,” Night Shadow Star whispered under her breath, “let’s see if we have a deal.”
“What are you doing?” Fire Cat demanded.
She dragged a blanket out and draped it over his battle-scarred legs. That, if anything, would give him away upon close scrutiny. “Stay here. I have to find out something. Trust me.”
She pushed off Red Reed’s side, reached for her small pack of Trade, and started for the warriors. She gave a slight, saucy swing to her hips, head back so that her long hair spilled down her back, her chin up.
“Hey, warriors,” she called in Trade pidgin. “We’ve got Trade. Where you from?”
Blood Talon and Nutcracker stopped short, giving her appreciative glances.
“Now that’s a nice sight,” Nutcracker told his commander in Cahokian. “Too bad she isn’t in my bed on these lonely nights. Hope that Trader over there knows what he’s got.”
Blood Talon shrugged. “Too much muscle for my taste. I like more cushion. Still, I’d Trade a shell gorget for a chance to slip my spear into this one.”
“Hey,” Night Shadow Star continued as she stepped up to them, fully aware the rest of the warriors were gathering around. She kept her smile in place, ignoring the comments they were making about how they’d do what and where in her body. “Where you from? What language is that?”
“Cahokian,” Nutcracker told her in pidgin, cocking his head and smiling. “We’re from Cahokia. Under direct orders from the Morning Star. We’re looking for a woman.”
“Apparently you’re very good at your jobs. You’ve found one. Cahokian, huh? You know the living god?”
Nutcracker jerked a thumb at Blood Talon. “The squadron first here, he sits at the living god’s right hand. We’re his finest warriors.”
“Then you’ll have his finest Trade.” She arched a challenging eyebrow. “I have spoonbill feathers, stingray spines, yaupon, even southeastern copper”—she pulled out a nugget—“which is worth ten times what that poor stuff from up north is worth.”
“What about for you?” Nutcracker asked, lips breaking into a knowing leer. “Say, you and me, for a hand of time? That brush over there would have some nice secluded spots.”
She tossed her head toward where Fire Cat waited. “My man might take offense. Now, if you’d been here last night … Well, you know how it is when the moon rises on the night of the lunar maximum. We were both a little wild last night. Today? Sure, but I’d want your canoe in exchange.”
“Our canoe? Just to slip my shaft into your sheath?” Nutcracker laughed. “What do you want for that piece of copper? The Morning Star’s palace?”
“Sure. You got a deal,” she told him with a disarming smile.
“How about some information?” Blood Talon asked, clearly irritated to be delayed. “We’re looking for a Cahokian woman, travels with a warrior. She’s Four Winds Clan. You know who they are? She has spirals tattooed on her cheeks. They’d treat her specially, and her slave looks like a battle-hardened warrior. Tough man. Pretty scarred up. Traveling with five Traders, we think the Traders might be Yuchi.”
“Lot of Yuchi Traders, look around,” she rejoined. “You, war chief, you sure—”
“Squadron first,” Blood Talon interrupted.
“—you don’t want to Trade for this copper? Since you don’t have the Morning Star’s palace with you, you got art? Maybe a gorget? Some of those remarkable Cahokian fabrics?”
“This woman we’re looking for,” Blood Talon insisted. “She’s called Night Shadow Star. Her slave is Fire Cat, he’s a Red Wing. Y
ou tell me where I can find them, I might just be tempted to Trade you this canoe.”
“You serious? You’d Trade that canoe for this woman?”
In Cahokian, Blood Talon told Nutcracker, “We can always get another canoe.” In Trade pidgin, he told her. “Find me the woman, the canoe is yours.”
She cocked her head, narrowed her eyes. “The living god must want them pretty bad if you’d Trade a big bald-cypress canoe like that. How long will you be here in Rainbow Town?”
“Overnight. We’re headed upriver in the morning. Put the word out. I mean it. You find Night Shadow Star for me, I’ll make you one of the richest women on the Tenasee. Now, nice talking with you, but we have to be on with our duties.”
As he turned away, Blood Talon added in Cahokian, “As if you could find Night Shadow Star, you southern swamp slut.”
The rest of the warriors laughed, winking, shooting her lascivious grins. Nutcracker was bold enough to reach out and cup his hand around her right buttock before giving it a squeeze. Her startled reaction brought more jeers from the rest of them as they filed past.
How dare a common warrior take such a …
Her reaction was instinctive. She barely stopped herself from ordering him back, telling Blood Talon exactly who she was, and demanding the second’s death on the spot.
“Careful,” Piasa’s voice whispered.
“Close. Too close.” She had to bury the part of her that was still Night Shadow Star. She was a Trader. Only a Trader. She forced her heart to slow, made her expression blank. Got her breathing under control.
As the Cahokian warriors headed up the slope, Old Scar, one of the guards, walked up, saying slyly in pidgin, “I’d Trade. I’ve got a string of shell beads here, given to me by the Morning Star himself. Now, we’d have to be discreet, but you could have these for a couple of fingers of time over in those bushes.”
He pulled a sweat-stained necklace from under his war shirt.
She gave him a bitter chuckle. “Those are freshwater clamshells. Not even cut round. The way I hear it? The Morning Star only wears necklaces made from perfectly cut shell Traded all the way up from the Gulf.”
Star Path--People of Cahokia Page 26