Lightning Shell--A People of Cahokia Novel, page 50
“What do you think, Farts?” Fire Cat asked, wryly amused that these days he sounded like the thief.
The big brindled dog looked up, his odd eyes alight, mouth agape and panting while the thick tail switched back and forth.
“Let’s get this over with.”
He had paused only long enough to recover his weapons and chunkey gear. A couple of changes of clothing and cold-weather dress given that they were into fall. Now the pack hung on his back. Everything he had left.
The palace door remained unguarded—a fact that sent a quiver through him. Inside the ornate Great Room, the eternal fire burned brightly, crackling and sending sparks toward the high ceiling.
Still smelling of death, his hair matted, the Trader’s shirt he wore bloodstained and spattered with fluids from his time in the charnel house, he walked up to the eternal fire and dropped his pack.
Farts entertained himself by gulping down a half a fish someone had left on a wooden trencher; then he commenced to lick the trencher spotless.
Atop the dais, Chunkey Boy sat. For the first time, Fire Cat saw him without makeup. The Four Winds Clan tattoos looked curiously out of place in the hollows of his sunken cheeks. No headdress covered his now-loose hair. The man only wore a simple breechcloth. His body was propped up by rolled buffalo hides; every bone was sticking out in his chest, ribs, and thin legs. The knee joints looked oversized given his emaciation. Now the deep-set eyes—as if they peered out of a skull—fixed on Fire Cat.
“Have you finally let her go?” Chunkey Boy asked in a weak voice.
Fire Cat touched his chest. “No. I’ll keep her here. With me. Until my souls find hers in the afterlife.”
He glanced around. The only other occupants of the room were Sun Wing—who was cradling the Tortoise Bundle—Rising Flame, Columella, Tonka’tzi Wind, Blue Heron, and Five Fists. They all watched with curious eyes, expressions worried, wary.
Doesn’t matter, he thought. And a sense of relief came with it. Knowledge that he no longer had a stake in the game.
After this, I’m gone.
Chunkey Boy seemed to read his thoughts and smiled knowingly before adding, “Not yet, Red Wing.”
“Oh, yes. My time here is up, Chunkey Boy.” He chuckled, reached down and scratched the dog’s head. “The man you knew as Fire Cat is dead. His only oath was to serve his lady. Beyond that, whoever I am now, I’m going Trading in the south.”
“Tell me what you saw on the Tenasee.” Chunkey Boy’s voice rasped like a faltering breath.
The order caught Fire Cat by surprise. It took him a moment to organize his thoughts. “Your expedition is proceeding. The colonies are thriving; by now you have control of the Tenasee all the way to the Wide Fast and then east to Cofitachequi. War Leader Tall Dancer is doing an excellent, if ruthless, job of managing such a huge operation. Your alliance with the Yuchi is intact, the smaller nations that have been colonized may not be happy about a Cahokian presence, but there’s not much they can do about it given Cahokian strength.”
He frowned. “I think Winder said it best: ‘The Tenasee is a Cahokian stream from the Wide Fast all the way to the Father Water.’”
Chunkey Boy studied him thoughtfully. “So, given your history as an enemy, tell me, Red Wing, do you think that’s good or bad?”
“A little of both, but given our experience in the Upper Tenasee, the areas controlled by Cahokia are safer for travel. For the subjugated peoples, ultimately it’s hard to say. They lose their autonomy; their stories and beliefs make way for Cahokia’s. They have a club to their heads when it comes to accepting whether or not to believe in Morning Star’s miraculous return from the heavens. And a square awaits those who choose to resist. Whatever happens, your empire is going to change the Southeast forever. The same with the new colonies you’re building in the north. It’s all being bound together by Trade and the Morning Star story. As a result, the chunkey courts are in a lot better shape in that part of the world.”
Chunkey Boy’s smile barely bent his lips. “And what happens if Morning Star goes back to the Sky World? If this palace at the center of it is occupied by, oh, say, High Chief Burned Bone from Evening Star House?”
Fire Cat glanced sidelong at Columella, seeing panic flash across her face. For whatever reason, the notion terrified her.
“Cahokia will dry up and vanish within a generation,” Fire Cat told him. “The myth holds it together. But you, or your heirs, can always perform another Requickening ceremony. Just like last time, the masses will buy the whole charade. The pomp and ritual, the spectacle of a couple hundred young men and women being sacrificed and interred as you build a new ridge mound. All the Dancing and praying, the offerings burned. Morning Star’s Spirit can, what do you call it? Devour another young man’s souls and possess his body?”
Chunkey Boy’s half-lidded stare burned into Fire Cat’s. “I won’t do it again.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You’ve never believed, Red Wing.”
“If you’re worried about me heading south, preaching the heresy of the living god, don’t. People need to believe in the miracle. Black Tail changed the world with his hoax. His presence enticed countless towns and villages to come here, to make this giant city. First Morning Star changed Cahokia, now it’s changing the rest of our world.”
“What was my sister’s last wish, Red Wing? What did she ask of you?”
“To take care of you. To see you to the soul flier’s. To keep you from dying.”
“Will you still do that?”
“Take you to the soul flier’s? Of course. But after that—”
“Will you keep me from dying?”
Fire Cat laughed at the absurdity. “Me? How can I do that?”
Chunkey Boy studied his bone-thin hands as he raised them. “Night Shadow Star’s last command was that you keep Morning Star alive. Once, I told you that through the most cunning of means I was preparing you to do me some terrible service.” He chuckled hollowly. “Like my sister, I am asking you to keep Morning Star alive.”
The man’s gaze intensified, almost burning, and for the moment, Fire Cat could almost believe Chunkey Boy was indeed Morning Star.
In a weary voice, Chunkey Boy said, “I am not asking you to serve me. I’m asking you to serve Cahokia.”
“How?”
“Here, on this dais. For the sake of the city, I want you to take my place.”
Eighty-eight
At Morning Star’s announcement, Blue Heron could only gasp as she sat, paralyzed, on the sleeping bench. The first to react was Wind; the tonka’tzi scrambled to her feet, paced over to the dais where she gaped, first at Morning Star, and then the stunned Fire Cat.
“Are you out of your mind?” she asked, heedless of the effrontery.
“Impossible!” Five Fists declared, also stalking forward. “Lord, this man’s a heretic! He doesn’t believe you’re really you!”
Columella, too, had stood and headed over, which Blue Heron figured was her cue. If Morning Star was going to order any of them into the squares, it would be all of them.
“Would you rather have the thief?” Morning Star turned his head, a wan smile on his sallow face as he read their expressions. “The time has come to bring balance back to Creation.”
Columella cried, “What does the Red Wing have to do with it? Isn’t he a slave? A heretic? A … A…”
“An Unbeliever!” Five Fists finished. “He’s not even one of us.”
Fire Cat’s expression reminded Blue Heron of a man condemned as he watched the exchange with growing horror. “I’m going south to Trade.”
Morning Star raised a calming hand, saying, “Everything I have done was to prepare you for my return to the Sky World. I needed you to understand that the city is more than just Four Winds Clan and its trivial politics. Rising Flame is correct about unifying the city. But first, Spotted Wrist had to rise and then fall as a lesson about authority and ambition.”
“A lesson that almost devoured us, you mean,” Wind muttered.
“Those are the most Powerful of lessons,” Morning Star agreed. “But the Red Wing has paid the most, risked the most, and learned the most. All of you are here—knowing the truth—to help him govern when he takes the High Chair and becomes Morning Star.”
“Not a chance,” Fire Cat declared. “I’m leaving on the next canoe south.”
Sun Wing stepped up to him, staring into his eyes. “Are you the man my sister loved? That man served her, and she served Cahokia. She asked you to keep Morning Star alive. Will you turn your back on her now?”
Blue Heron watched the conflict play over the Red Wing’s face. Then, clamping his eyes shut, he shook his head. “Without my lady … I can’t stand the pain.”
And with that, he turned, hitched his pack on his back, and walked through the open doors and into the light beyond. The big brindled dog glanced sadly at Morning Star, uttered a sad whimper.
Blue Heron would have sworn some subtle communication passed between them; Morning Star flicked his hand in a dismissive gesture, and the dog—head and tail drooping—walked wearily from the room.
“What now?” Rising Flame asked.
“Eventually,” Sun Wing told her, “the city dies. The people leave. Everything you know will be gone. Grass and trees will grow on the mounds. Where children now play, and people laugh, only the wind will blow. The Dead will sleep, and even memories will fade and vanish.”
Eighty-nine
Of all the impossible, outlandish, and insane ideas Fire Cat had ever heard, nothing had prepared him for the shock. As he strode out the carved double doors and into the plaza, he glanced back over his shoulder at Morning Star’s great palace.
“Don’t you know who I am? I’m the last Red Wing. My people never believed.”
He stomped harder as he passed the soaring World Tree Pole, refusing to glance at the spot where Night Shadow Star died. Looked instead at the heights where the lightning had blasted the pale scar through the intricately carved story of Morning Star’s life.
That brought a chuckle to Fire Cat’s lips. Looked to him like the Sky World, too, rejected the whole absurd farce. The heretics in Red Wing Town had been right from the beginning.
But what a price to pay for vindication.
On a whim, he dropped his pack, crossed over to the bastion on the southwest corner of the palisade, and climbed the ladder. There—on the heights from which Morning Star used to gaze out at the city—Fire Cat braced his hands on the clay-plastered wall. Rain had damaged it. Something that would need to be fixed.
And then he looked out at the city, stunned by the enormity of it. From this height, he could see distant Evening Star Town, the urban sprawl that followed the Avenue of the Sun from River City Mounds, past Black Tail’s tomb. The circle of the Great Observatory was perfectly clear from this height. As was Four Winds Plaza, and of course, Night Shadow Star’s palace with its Piasa and Horned Serpent guardian posts.
For a long time, he gazed at her palace. Remembered his first night there, his only wish having been to die. So many memories. He and his lady. The shared pain and challenge, how their desperate hatred had faded into an equally desperate love.
Just follow my orders.
As the words rolled around in his head, he let his gaze wander over the great city. “No matter how preposterous they may sound.”
His gaze returned to the west, past Black Tail’s tomb, to the distant River City Mounds. There, behind that cluster of buildings, temples, and palaces, Winder would be preparing to head south. To follow the river.
“I can be finished with the pain, the heartache.” He closed his eyes, imagining the river, the surface roiling, sucking, flowing ever south toward a new life. His paddle dipping into the murky water and propelling the canoe—like a thing alive—across the smooth surface.
With the memory of Night Shadow Star’s smile breaking his heart, he climbed down. Farts was standing before the palace door, head up, expression anxious as if waiting for his decision. The tail switched back and forth, the dog’s eyes pleading.
“Sorry, old friend. Some wounds are just too deep to heal.”
Picking up his pack, he walked through the palisade gate and started down the steps to where Blood Talon waited.
By this time tomorrow, he would be on the river. Headed south in search of a way to forget that he would never love again.
Ninety
Fire Cat tilted his head back, letting the sun bathe his face. In the cool fall air the warmth was a relief. Maybe even a reminder that something might be worth living for somewhere in the south. Downriver. In some as yet undiscovered place.
He sat on the Trade canoe’s gunwale. The story was that the vessel was called Water Strider, and that it had been one of Spotted Wrist’s “lost” canoes. Winder, eyes averted, voice low, had hinted that where the deeply carved image of a water strider was now incised in the bow, a Fish Clan insignia had once been.
Winder had just slapped Seven Skull Shield on the back, had said his goodbyes and watched as the thief went stalking up toward the warehouses on the levee. Said he needed to collect on a basket of whelk shells from some bead carvers. The big dog, Farts, had given Fire Cat one last, longing look, then reluctantly followed the thief until he disappeared among the ramadas and stalls.
“Spirit dog,” Fire Cat whispered, and wondered how he could have made it through those first wretched days when his souls had died and his heart had beat with nothing but loss.
Fire Cat ran a thoughtful finger across the long scabs on his wrists. Wondered if it wouldn’t have been better to have died in that charnel house. He’d used an obsidian blade. Looking back now, he wondered if he’d been the one to stop just short of severing the arteries and tendons, or if it had been Night Shadow Star’s hand reaching out from the Spirit World to restrain him.
Funny thing about grief. It would have been so much easier to have died. Living the rest of his life, thinking of her every day, aching over her death, and wishing he’d stayed to keep her safe would be a relentless torture.
“My penance for failing her,” he told himself. The longer he lived, the longer he had to mourn and grieve. Maybe that was the balance.
Up and down the canoe landing, life went on. Traders coming and going, farmers in dugouts paddling in from outlying farmsteads, arriving with canoes piled high with harvested corn, beans and squash and sacks of goosefoot, knotweed, little barley, and maygrass. The nut harvest was in full swing upriver. So was the fall hunt; the loads of smoked and jerked meat were arriving by the boatload. So, too, were rafts of bark, thatch, cane, firewood, and other forest products. Cahokia’s insatiable needs were being met.
The canoe landing reminded him of a hive.
Fire Cat looked up as Winder tossed a heavy pack of Trade into Water Strider’s midsection. There it lay, the last of the load, filling the last hole in the packs.
“You ready?” The big Trader was rubbing the backs of his muscular arms. Staring thoughtfully up to where the new roof was being raised over River House palace. Across the distance, the Earth Clans workers looked like ants as they swarmed the pole frame that would support the thatch.
Fire Cat stood, took a deep breath as he gave the place one last inspection. “I have nothing left here.” He glanced at Blood Talon. “What about you, Squadron First?”
The fire-scarred warrior gave him a crooked smile. “Me? I’ve done what my honor demanded of me. As you served your lady I will serve you, War Leader. Wherever you go, whatever you do, I’ll have your back.”
The way Winder kept looking at them, it was as if he were expecting something.
Fire Cat asked, “Got something on your mind, Trader?”
“You think you’ll ever come back?” Winder’s gaze had narrowed.
“Too much pain here,” Fire Cat told him. “What about you?”
“I’ve made my peace with Keeper Blue Heron, had my laughs with Skull, and seen our lady laid to rest. It’s time for me to go visit my wives. Make the most of my newfound fame before the world forgets.” Winder glanced around. “But Cahokia’s the center of the world. I’ll always return.”
Fire Cat slapped the man on the back. “Then let’s be about it.”
Winder, Fire Cat, Blood Talon, and the two other Traders they’d joined bent to the task of shoving and dragging Water Strider out into the river, each leaping aboard and grabbing their paddles.
As they turned the long canoe to ride the current’s thread, Fire Cat threw a last look over his shoulder at the canoe landing and River City Mounds.
In the clouds hanging over Cahokia’s haze, he thought he could see Night Shadow Star’s smile: sad, as if her heart were breaking. He’d seen that look the day she had retrieved his clothing from the Natchez.
“Bless you, Lady,” he whispered. “I wish I…”
He blinked away a tear, reached for his paddle, and drove it deep into the roiling water.
With each stroke, the ache in his heart grew stronger, more painful.
He wouldn’t look back.
He couldn’t.
Ahead, somewhere down that immense and Powerful river, lay the future.
Ninety-one
The earthly body that held Morning Star’s Spirit only lasted a day after the Red Wing walked out through the palace doors. The moment Chunkey Boy’s body died, Blue Heron saw the shaft of light—as if the sun burned down through the high thatch roof for just an instant. And in the aftermath, only a wasted corpse remained; limp and lifeless meat and bone slumped on the panther hide–covered litter.
“He’s gone,” Sun Wing called softly, her dark gaze emotionless. She lifted her finger from where she’d been monitoring the living god’s breathing. “Morning Star has returned to his place in the sky.”
When Morning Star’s Spirit left, it took the last of Blue Heron’s hope. Now what? She looked around the room. The only occupants were Five Fists, Columella, Rising Flame, Wind, and—as incongruous as could be—Seven Skull Shield and his big brindled dog. The thief had come to report that Fire Cat, true to his word, was headed south on a Trade canoe.
