Star Path--People of Cahokia

by W. Michael Gear

Blue Heron glanced up, peered through the smoke. Could barely make out the face staring at her from the thatch at the top of her wall.

  “Thief?”

  “Hurry up. Both of you! It’s still dark on this side, but it won’t be for long. Climb up on the box there. Come on!”

  Blue Heron dragged Smooth Pebble to her feet, and together they staggered, coughing, gasping for breath, to climb up onto an ornately carved storage box.

  Seven Skull Shield reached a bruised and battered arm into the room, barely managed to pull Blue Heron up far enough that she could scramble over the mud-daubed wall, her ribs, belly, and hips complaining.

  Then she was out in the clear night air, the cool drafts filling her lungs. She broke into a coughing fit as Seven Skull Shield helped her down off a wooden stump and went back to reach inside for Smooth Pebble.

  She looked up, seeing the section of thatch drop like a trap door, as the thief literally yanked Smooth Pebble out of the room, thick curls of smoke billowing as she came.

  “There’s a hole in my roof,” she said through a fit of coughing.

  “Yeah. How did you think I always managed to show up in your bedroom without anyone seeing me?”

  “But I checked it. The wind would have lifted it.”

  “That’s why you tie these things down, Keeper.” He reached for her hand. “Come on. We’ve got to be out of sight by sunrise.”

  “The tonka’tzi’s, we’ve got to get to Wind.”

  “Not a chance. The Great Plaza’s crawling with warriors. Now, careful. Don’t want to fall getting down the mound side. There’s warriors out front. They catch sight of us, and it’s all over.”

  Blue Heron fought to keep from coughing. “Where do you think we should go?”

  “As far from here as we can get. We’ve only got until your palace burns down before they figure out you’re not in it.”

  Halfway across Four Winds Plaza, Blue Heron cried, “Wait!”

  She turned, watching the fountain of fire that rose from inside the walls of her palace. She felt as if something inside her had torn apart, and it hurt. It really hurt.

  “Keeper, you all right?” Seven Skull Shield had turned, his face concerned where it reflected the fire’s orange glow.

  “That’s my life,” she told him, eyes on the inferno. “The men I married, the ones I threw out. The place where I laughed. Where I plotted. That’s where I was most myself. Blood and spit, don’t you understand? I’m in there. I’m burning. Or, at least, a part of me is.”

  “You’ll build again,” Smooth Pebble said softly. “You’ll rise again.”

  Blue Heron closed her eyes. Nodded. But part of me is dying back there. That part of the soul that seeps into prized possessions, that becomes part of the floor, the walls, the benches.

  “Gone,” she whispered. “All … gone.”

  Seventy-seven

  They crossed the divide, dropping down the eastern side, following the tree-lined trail where it wound around stony outcrops; a trickling of stream led them downhill for more than a hand of time.

  Then the trail wove its way up a rocky slope, the outcrops lichen-covered and poking through the leaf mat, across a narrow ridge, and down to a small spring in a covelike hollow. Water trickled from cracks in moss-covered rocks and came welling up, clear and cool.

  The camp had been used for generations, as could be seen from the charcoal-rich soil, the occasional potsherd, glinting flakes of tool stone, and bits of soapstone that lay about on the trampled vegetation.

  Winder called a halt as dark clouds came rolling in from around the peaks to the west. Flickers of lightning, still so distant they remained silent, flashed in the western sky.

  Supper consisted of a quickly cooked corn gruel, sunflower seeds, and an unlucky box turtle they’d happened upon.

  Winder tied a couple of hides between the trees for a rain fly. At their fire, the Chalakee were also battening down for a wet and miserable night.

  “You can have the shelter,” Winder told her. “I’ll make do. There’s a good-sized pine back there with low-hanging branches.”

  She gave him a “you’ve-got-to-be-kidding” look. “There’s room for both of us. I think I know you well enough now that we understand each other.” She grinned. “Besides, if I discover your shaft trying to wiggle in where it shouldn’t I’ll whack it with my war club.”

  He erupted into entertained laughter, adding, “You know, Lady, I could really get to like you.”

  As the first gust of wind tore through the treetops, they took to the shelter.

  Lightning flashed, thunder boomed. As Night Shadow Star drifted off to sleep, the sound of rain filled the night around her. Part of her considered it a betrayal, another part of her felt relief that Winder’s big, warm, muscular body was pressed next to hers, reassurance that she wasn’t alone in the darkness, storm, and torment.

  And the Dream came …

  * * *

  In a pale darkness, Night Shadow Star sat beside the small spring, watching the water trickle up from the earth. She perched on her knees, hands forward and palms out. Movement down in the shadowed depths caught her attention. Bits of slithering color that shifted beneath the water’s surface.

  Of course they would be here. Springs were openings, portals to the Underworld. Recessed springs like this were among the favorite lairs of the Tie Snakes. These were the denizens of the Underworld. Servants to Old-Woman-Who-Never-Dies, guardians of springs, creeks, and the deep pools where rivers ran slowly.

  She could sense them here, in this place, their Power beginning to pulse. The triangular shape of a Tie Snake’s head could barely be made out as the creature swam its way up from below, broke the surface, and slipped across the rock in eerie silence. Scales in colorful diamond patterns gleamed as if lit from within. The Spirit creature gave her a knowing inspection, the forked tongue flicking as it tasted the air.

  Flowing out of the spring as if from a womb, the great snake might have been smoke, so quietly and effortlessly did it follow a circle around where she sat. Only when its triangular head reached the gourd-shaped rattles on the beast’s tail did it stop. The head rose, slitted black pupils in yellow-green eyes fixed on her. The tongue flicked and whipped.

  “Where’s your master?” Night Shadow Star asked.

  “He comes.”

  “And why are you here?”

  “Protection.”

  “He hardly needs protection from me,” she told him and added a derisive snort.

  “No. Protection for you.”

  And at that moment lightning flashed above, streaked down, blasted one of the oaks that spread its branches over the little cove.

  She glanced up, watched flames begin to dance along the bark where the bolt had struck.

  “Come.” Piasa’s voice took her by surprise.

  She turned, seeing her Lord where he perched at the edge of the spring. Not even a drop of water slicked his furred hide or beaded at the tips of his barred and spotted wings, let alone on the scarlet antlers rising from his cougar’s head.

  The hard yellow eyes watched her with curious intent as the beast extended a yellow eagle-clawed foot in her direction.

  She rose, felt her heart begin to hammer, and stepped forward. The Tie Snake pulled back both head and tail, creating an opening for her to pass.

  Reluctantly she placed her hand in Piasa’s taloned grip. Time seemed to smear, slowing, stretching. A haze blurred the edges of her vision while it sharpened to minute detail in the middle where Piasa’s depthless black pupils seemed to expand in their yellow irises. Her souls were being sucked into those stygian depths, drawn relentlessly into oblivion.

  She felt herself lifted, turned, and had but a fleeting sensation of being drawn down into the darkness. Water streamed around her, rushing along her skin, slipping through her long hair as she was pulled down, ever deeper into the Underworld. Her gaze remained locked with the Underwater Panther’s, the effect paralyzing, terrifying.

&nb
sp; It might have been eternity. It might have been an instant.

  Her thoughts, fears, longings, and desires rushed up, turned themselves inside out. Memories of her most private moments with Fire Cat, the physical sensations of his shaft moving inside her, the taste of catfish in White Chief village, her whimpering fear as the Casqui carried her from the Trade House, sunlight on the Tenasee, the aching in her souls for Fire Cat, everything, exposed, right down to the roots of her being.

  As quickly, it changed direction, shot back inside her, like vomit reversing in midstream and snapping back into place with a physical pain.

  Night Shadow Star staggered, suddenly turned loose of Piasa’s grasp, her gaze freed of his.

  “Why do you do that?” She gasped, sank down to the soft mud, disturbing a crawfish in the process. The little creature shot away, claws and antennae pointing to the rear.

  “To know who you are.”

  “You’re in my head all the time.”

  “Not like that. Not to know the depths of who you are, what you will do. On occasion, you still surprise me.”

  She glared up at him, watched the bristling whiskers spread on either side of the pink nose. She could just see the beast’s fangs, slightly exposed by what might have been a smile. Could remember the feel of them piercing her scalp, how they punched through her skull, into her brain, before the sharp molars sheared through bone to crush her head.

  “What did you find that you didn’t already know?”

  Piasa studied her, the eagle feet depressing the moss and silty sand. The beast’s serpent tail flipped back and forth, the rattles clacking hollowly. She saw no give in those stony yellow eyes as Piasa said, “I needed to know that you would still destroy your brother. That that, too, wasn’t a hollow promise.”

  “Fire Cat and I—”

  “Yes. Love. It was Old-Woman-Who-Never-Dies’ notion. Back in the Beginning Times. A way to give people passion, keep you together long enough to conceive and ultimately raise your young because you’re not responsible enough to complete the task on your own. The fear was that you would be far too concerned with your own selfish desires. That you’d birth the little animals and wander off to look for nuts in the forest or some such.”

  “What would you know about love?”

  “Nothing. A fact for which I’m eternally thankful, since it leaves me with a clear sense of purpose and the ability to concentrate on what must be done. A hope I’d had when it came to you and that abomination of a brother of yours.”

  “I’m here, aren’t I? Where’s Fire Cat?”

  “Not yet. After your brother is destroyed. I just had to endure a taste of your longing for him. I can’t take the risk.”

  “Risk of what?”

  “This love of yours. The knowledge that you would do anything for Fire Cat turns him into a weakness, a potential gaming piece Sky Power could use to manipulate you.”

  “Not true.”

  “Oh? If it came down to a choice between Fire Cat and sparing your brother’s life? Just walking away?”

  She ground her teeth, felt the tearing in her breast.

  Piasa laughed. “Yes, as I suspected.”

  “If I destroy Walking Smoke, I essentially change the balance in favor of the Underworld. But in the beginning, Hunga Ahuito created the worlds and Powers to be in constant struggle, while at the same time maintaining balance. You claimed me the moment Walking Smoke arrived in Cahokia. If I kill him, I become the imbalance. What happens to me?”

  Piasa’s black pupils expanded against the background of yellow. “You, too, would have to be destroyed.”

  As her heart skipped and her tongue knotted, he added, “Or I could release you. Set you free, Powerless, to become just another of these foolish breeders. Leave you be to mindlessly grow corn, cook food, worry about the weather, and grow old as your body wears out and your children have to assume the bother of caring for you until you die and are turned into fertilizer in the fields.”

  She closed her eyes. Fire Cat, do you hear? We have a chance.

  “I’ll take that option.”

  “You will no longer be Lady Night Shadow Star. You’ll have to give that up, be no one. What do you call them? A dirt farmer? A fitting if not flattering title.”

  She laughed, daring to be amused. “Master, sometimes you even trick yourself.”

  The question lay behind his midnight stare.

  She told him, “I have spent this entire trip learning to be no one. Learning to be a woman. Just … a woman. And all that means.”

  “If you destroy your brother.”

  “The story being told is that he is in Joara. It’s what? A day’s travel from here?”

  “It is.”

  “They say that most of the town has fled, that he’s become so terrifying that only some chief and his warriors are left.”

  “And?”

  She considered. “The last time I faced him, he didn’t understand. Thought I was the same woman he raped that day he was exiled. When I rolled that canoe on him, he was caught by total surprise. But for Sky Power rescuing him, he would have been yours. He’s not near water this time.”

  “And even if he were, the Thunderers wouldn’t allow me to get close. That is why this is up to you. He cannot die by water.”

  “Sneak close? Use a club?”

  “Risky. He is guarded by Power. The Thunderers watch over him.”

  “Word on the trail is that lightning has killed several who have tried to sneak up in the middle of the night and murder him.” She considered. “He knows I am coming. He won’t want the Thunderers to kill me. No, just the opposite. He wants me alive. Needs me alive. He will set his ambush inside his lair. Up close, so he can look me in the eyes as he springs his trap.”

  “I can grant you one gift, empower whatever weapon you decide to use to destroy him. Made lethal so that with one strike it can release Underworld Power. Perhaps your knife? Your war club? Some poison? You need only dip it in the spring water before leaving this place.”

  She considered, frowned, stared at the gnarled roots that clung to the cavern walls. Thought she saw Snapping Turtle back in the shadows of a stony gallery that emptied off the main passageway.

  Why in the shadows? But then, Snapping Turtle had never approved of her. Wouldn’t be here if there wasn’t a chance …

  She felt her heart sink. “That charming tale about just being a woman when this is all over. That was a lie, wasn’t it? Separating me from Fire Cat, that wasn’t just because of love, was it? You didn’t have to let that Cahokian canoe catch us. They were on the river, your domain. You could have delayed them by any of several means. You wanted them to catch up. Knew that Fire Cat would do anything to keep me out of their clutches.”

  Piasa hissed, the sound chilling to her souls.

  Night Shadow Star closed her eyes, the sinking sensation filling her. “That’s why I know he’s not dead. He’s following, closely. You want him here to make sure, don’t you?”

  Piasa’s yellow eyes had narrowed to slits, a low growl deep in the beast’s throat.

  Night Shadow Star put the pieces together. “When Walking Smoke kills me, the balance will change. The Thunderers will have no use for anyone as disruptive and violent as my brother. They’ll withdraw their protection.”

  She laughed aloud at the audacity of it. “You never thought I’d kill Walking Smoke. But you knew Fire Cat would do whatever it took, just as he’s always done. Like with the Itza, and Morning Star’s souls in the Underworld. After Walking Smoke kills me, if Fire Cat has to use his last breath to do it, he will end his days standing over my brother’s dead body.”

  She felt herself lifted, the force of it compacting her body, but she was hurled upward and out. Her vision blurred, and in an instant, she …

  * * *

  … Awakened in the night as rain pelted down and thunder boomed and echoed from the high mountains.

  Fragments of Dream filled her head. And through them, she could see
Walking Smoke’s dark eyes, hear his laughter, mocking and hollow.

  He was behind her, his penis, hard and insistent, prodding her from the rear.

  She blinked, coming fully awake. Fear, liquid and paralyzing, shot through her. His arm was around her, heavy, restraining.

  He moved, his pressing penis causing her anus to tighten.

  “No!” she screamed. Batted the arm to one side. Felt him jerk, gasp. And then she was out of the blankets, scrambling out into the rain and mud.

  “What the … What’s wrong?” The voice wasn’t Walking Smoke’s but deeper, familiar.

  “Winder?” She gasped, still trying to catch her breath.

  “Lady?” She could see his dark head poke out past the rain fly. “You all right?”

  “Your…” She swallowed. “Your … What were you trying to do?”

  He hesitated, head cocked. “Well, I was absolutely sound asleep, and having the most delicious Dream about Amber Flower. Not that you need to know the details, but she was bent over, casting enticing glances over her shoulder as I … Well, she has the most charming and rounded … Oh, you know.”

  “Who is Amber Flower?”

  “I married her down among the Pacaha. Charming young thing with the most incredible appetite for just about any kind of activity a man might care to indulge in when it comes to … well, you know.”

  She sucked the cold damp air into her lungs, finally managing to slow her heart.

  “Nightmare?” he asked gently.

  “Let’s just say that your most pleasant Dream and my most horrible one fit together in a most uncomfortable way.”

  “My most sincere apologies.” A beat. “Not that I mind Dreaming of you in that most pleasant of ways. But I think perhaps I should make my way up to that pine we discussed earlier so you can sleep in peace.”

  “No.” She thrust an arm out to stop him. “The storm’s mostly passed. I’m going to sit by the spring for a time. I need to think. Go back to sleep. I’ll be back to my blankets soon. Maybe a finger of time.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Go. Sleep, my friend. In the morning, well, it will be a new day. We can plan over breakfast.”