Moon Hunt

by Kathleen O'Neal Gear

  Just beyond the little settlement, her escorting warriors had laid out a fortified camp, cooks immediately pitching in to build fires and unpack cooking pots, dried corn, and hickory oil to make stew.

  War Leader War Claw had orchestrated the entire thing—not missing a beat in seeing to Night Shadow Star’s comfort, even to the point of setting up a shelter for her.

  Now, having eaten and ordered the guards to stand to, she had walked out to stare up at the irregular and forested hills that rose like a rumpled black mass in the night.

  Crickets, night birds, and frogs chirped an irregular symphony, and wings hummed somewhere off to her left as she looked up at the starlit sky, its constellations pointing toward the North Star.

  Cool air flowed down Cave Creek’s valley, bathing her face and barely teasing her hair.

  Stilling her souls, she could feel the Power. There. Just up past the mouth of the shallow valley. Voices whispered in the dark air around her, sibilant, mostly unintelligible—only the occasional word or phrase distinguishable. Phantoms of shadow flickered at the edge of her vision.

  The Spirits were active this night. Faint laughter carried down from the stars above, issued from a hollow and nonhuman voice.

  This was a holy place, ancient. Guarded by Power.

  Tomorrow they would follow the pilgrims’ trail up the valley to where the Cave Watchers’ Society had their society house beside an ancient spring. Dedicated and small, the Watchers’ Society subsisted on the offerings of those seeking the cave—and allowed only those who possessed the authority or Power required to enter the portal.

  It was a journey not to be made lightly, for as one of the most sacred entrances to the Underworld, it was guarded by Horned Serpent himself, and Piasa was known to stalk its dark depths.

  Some said the cave served as Old-Woman-Who-Never-Dies’ vagina—the very route from which First Man had entered the world after Creation. That from here had come Corn Woman, who gave birth to the Hero Twins: the Morning Star and Thrown-Away Boy.

  But more than that, it was up this portal that the Morning Star was said to have carried his father’s head after defeating the Giants in that most deadly game of chunkey. According to legend, it was here—in this cave—that the Morning Star had brought his father, First Man, back to life.

  She inhaled deeply of the night, smelling the dry scents of grass and early autumn forest carried down from the uplands.

  “I can feel your worry,” Fire Cat said from behind her.

  “I was here once before. As a child. It was required of us. Part of our education as the heirs of the Morning Star House.”

  She tried to keep the tension from her voice.

  “And?” Fire Cat asked softly.

  “I was scared to death.” She rubbed the backs of her arms, as if to fight goose bumps. “The priests tell terrible stories about the darkness; about Horned Serpent guarding the mouth of the cave; about the foolish people, the unworthy ones, who wander in without protection and are eaten by the monsters.”

  She laughed humorlessly. “After having been devoured by Piasa, that holds nowhere near the terror it once did. Ironic, isn’t it? This place scared me down to my bones, and now I come back, a creature of the Underworld, a servant to one of its most terrifying lords.”

  “I’ve heard the stories.” Fire Cat stepped close behind her shoulder, following her gaze toward the dark valley. “I never really thought I’d ever be here, in this place.”

  “What if I can’t find him?”

  “You will.”

  “What if I can’t save him?”

  “If Chunkey Boy’s souls are in the Underworld, Piasa will lead you to them.”

  She smiled warily as an image tried to form out of the night, only to flicker into nothingness. The visions were worse than normal. What would it be like tomorrow, down in the darkness, once again in that place that had frightened her to the point of tears?

  “Chunkey Boy? You still cannot believe, can you?”

  “My beliefs do not matter. Whatever is required of me tomorrow, I shall stand behind you.”

  “Fire Cat?” She shook her head. “I should do this alone.”

  “I have sworn to—”

  “You don’t understand. I’ve been there. In that cave. This isn’t a Spirit Dream. It’s an opening to the Underworld. It is guarded by Horned Serpent … and believe me, he is not to be trifled with. Piasa prowls the darkness on his taloned feet. Images are drawn on the walls, and while at first they appear as drawings, they act as links to the Spirit itself. The drawing can be inhabited by Horned Serpent. One instant you perceive a picture of black on stone. The next it thickens, shifts, and molds itself around the Spirit Beast, giving the creature form and substance. Before you can scream you are in those terrible jaws.”

  She blinked, seeing the teeth, smelling Piasa’s foul breath. “They close around your head in a flash; the teeth, like spikes, rip along your scalp.”

  Her hands were clenched. “It’s the snapping and crushing of your skull that’s the worst. You feel it and hear it as the bone breaks. Then the pain slices through your head. Blasting pillars of agony that sear through you like white fire…”

  She fought for breath, the memory paralyzing, her heart pounding.

  “I was chosen, Lady.” His firm words poured through her trembling souls like a tonic. “It was Piasa, after all, who ordered you to cut me down that night. Later, I saw his blue haze in the river that day I pulled you back into this world. He let you talk to me while your souls were in the Underworld.”

  His tone turned wry. “No Underworld Spirit Beast will devour me as long as I am faithfully standing at your side. That, you see, is what determines if I am worthy or not.”

  At the courage in his voice, her panic receded. “It will not be like fighting Tula or Itza warriors. What I have to do, it will be in black darkness, surrounded by the souls of the Dead. There will be nothing for you to fight, Fire Cat. No physical enemies to slay.”

  “Then I shall be bored, Lady.”

  She turned then, studying his night-black face. “Have you no fear of what we’re about to do?”

  She could just make out his faint smile before he said, “Actually going into the Underworld? It frightens me to my bones, Lady. On the other hand, if I am devoured by a monster in the Underworld it will be a fate preferable to having to live in the same house where you are married to Spotted Wrist.”

  At the tone in his voice, the last of her fear drained away. Clasping him close, she laid her face in the angle of his neck and laughed away the last of her panic.

  After all, if they survived this, Spotted Wrist would be waiting.

  Yes, she could face anything with Fire Cat behind her.

  Out in the darkness, Piasa chuckled maniacally.

  Forty-two

  On the high corner of Columella’s palace mound, where it rose above Evening Star Town, Seven Skull Shield stood with his thumbs tucked into his rope belt. The heights gave him a good view of the wide river, the canoe landing, River Mounds City, Marsh Elder Lake, and the clustered buildings around the Avenue of the Sun as it made its way east toward the Morning Star’s mound.

  He wondered how Blue Heron was doing. She had taken a turn for the worse, her souls having fled her body. Perhaps the bruises and broken bones had been too much for her to bear for the time being. Just the sight of her wounds enraged him.

  The man who had inflicted that hurt was out there. Somewhere. Hiding.

  The entire city might have taken a pause, its termite-hive activity slowed to a crawl. The effect was as if the whole of it was holding its breath, waiting, unsure. Word of the Morning Star’s state had spread to even the lowliest of dirt farmers. People by the thousands were flocking to the temples, making offerings to Old-Woman-Who-Never-Dies, or to the Morning Star himself. A sense of near-panic hung like a low cloud over the city.

  Flat Stone Pipe’s spies had been trickling in all day. Word was that thousands had gathered in the Gr
eat Plaza—heedless of the chunkey courts, blocking the avenues with their throngs, surrounding the great mound. They stood, faces lifted toward the high palace where the living god’s human body lay at the edge of life.

  Word had also come that Night Shadow Star had been dispatched to bring the Morning Star’s Spirit back to Chunkey Boy’s host body. However that worked.

  Seven Skull Shield made a face. He had actually watched her flotilla of canoes as it pulled out from the canoe landing and paddled north. If the stories were true she was going to the resurrection cave—the place where legend said that the Morning Star had brought his father’s head back to life in the Beginning Times. There Night Shadow Star would descend into the Underworld and bring the living god home.

  “Best of luck with that, Lady,” he whispered, sending a small prayer her way. Without a doubt, she was one of the spookiest people he’d ever known, but she’d stood up for him—and done it at a time when she shouldn’t have had a thought in the world but for herself.

  That kind of character deserved loyalty.

  He narrowed an eye, returning his attention to the long sprawl of River Mounds City, where its buildings clustered atop the high ground along the old levee.

  He couldn’t get Blue Heron’s battered face out of his thoughts. The facial bruises had mostly turned purple, as had her swollen-closed eye. The black-and-blue ribs, the scabs where ropes had cut into her wrists and ankles, and the wheezing that came with each of her labored breaths hung full and heavy in his souls.

  Of course Flat Stone Pipe’s warriors had found nothing when they raided the farmstead where Blue Heron had been held. Winder was much too quick for that.

  “So where are you, old friend?” Seven Skull Shield carefully studied the city across the river. As his gaze searched, he pictured the warehouses, the narrow passages, the workshops, society houses, and temples. Where would Winder seek to hide?

  During Walking Smoke’s terror, the exiled lord had rented warehouses on both sides of the river to conceal his Tula warriors and captives. Even then the fiend had needed inside help from Columella’s brother to get away with it. Did Winder have such an ally in War Duck’s House?

  “You think that’s where they are hiding?” Flat Stone Pipe’s voice surprised Seven Skull Shield.

  He looked down to where the dwarf had appeared beside his right leg. “Good work, little man. You can move silently when you want to.”

  “When one’s legs are as short as mine, one learns alternatives to running. Stealth and small stature seem to be amicable companions.”

  “How’s the Keeper?”

  “Still unconscious. My lady is worried. Blue Heron’s souls should have returned to her by now. We’ve considered sending her to Rides-the-Lightning, but he’s busy with the Morning Star.”

  “If she dies…” Seven Skull Shield knotted a fist as he studied the vista. Well, it would tear something apart deep down inside him. Hard to believe that she’d become so dear to him, as different as they were from each other.

  The little man, too, was staring fixedly at River Mounds City’s sinuous sprawl. “You think he’s there?”

  “I do.” Seven Skull Shield rubbed his jaw. “Winder told me he’d become an influential Trader. Said he had wives all over on the southern rivers. He was obviously famous enough to be hired by the Quiz Quiz as the person to help pull off their most daring exploit. And he almost did it. Would have but for a chance remark that took me to a frustrated woman.”

  “I’ve seen you hung in a square, seen you emerge from fire and smoke and death. But I’ve never seen you look so grim,” Flat Stone Pipe observed, and tilted his head to indicate the palace. “It’s a wonder the beating didn’t kill her outright.”

  Seven Skull Shield nodded and ground his jaws. “She said it wasn’t Winder—that he stopped it. But what’s bothersome is that he allowed it to happen in the first place.”

  The little man gave him a grin. “You care for her. Most don’t.”

  “Let’s just say that the Keeper is an acquired taste. Curious as it may seem, we actually see eye to eye on a lot of things.”

  “What about this Winder? You’ve been closemouthed about him.”

  “Think of him like my older brother. Always the smart one, the fast one. He took care of me the way an older brother does. Kept the other boys from ganging up on me. Made sure I had something to eat, even if it meant he went short. He was there to share his blanket when we were sleeping in the snow.”

  Seven Skull Shield smiled wistfully. “People don’t think of orphans in Cahokia. Everything is clan, lineage, and family. With no one to speak for us, protect us, or feed us, we rely on each other.” He paused. “Make our own rules, laws, and ways.”

  “It’s a miracle you weren’t whacked in the head.”

  “We were fair game, all right. Some of those we ran with met that very end. More than once it was just dumb luck that saved us. Had we been anywhere but Cahokia…”

  He shook his head, remembering the times they’d careened through the back ways, running flat out from angry men with clubs. Theft—even of a few morsels of food—was a killing offense. But he and Winder, they’d known the holes, the gaps, and dark recesses where two desperate boys could dodge and hide.

  “When River Mounds got too dangerous, we’d scurry over to Horned Serpent Town. As soon as the people there started to get wise, we’d slip up to Morning Star House and lift things from Traders around the Grand Plaza. When word began to circulate there, it was up to Serpent Woman Town. When that went bad we’d finagle a way to Evening Star Town, and by the time they started hunting us, we’d cage a ride back across the river to the canoe landing and start all over.”

  He couldn’t help but grin. “Winder really was the sharp one. It was his idea to paint different clan markings on our cheeks after a successful robbery. Taught me how to change my hair. You should have seen the sparkle in his eyes when we’d lift a nice piece, or the feeling of victory when we passed ourselves off as people we weren’t.”

  “Best of friends?”

  “Inseparable.” Seven Skull Shield chuckled at the memory. “He and I shared our souls, our hopes, our dreams. I remember how his face would light up as he talked about the grand things we would do. We were both going to be chiefs, marry beautiful women, found our own clans.”

  Seven Skull Shield paused. “Funny thing is, he actually succeeded. Became a rich Trader. A man with a lot of wives scattered across the Nations, which is as good as founding his clan. He’s wealthy, respected.”

  And what have I become?

  A sensation of loneliness grew in his breast. Nothing had really changed for him, had it? He was still a man without family—a homeless vagabond drifting from bed to bed.

  In those days, he and Winder were family. Each was willing to sacrifice himself for the other. “How did we lose ourselves?” he asked the wind.

  A vision of Wooden Doll’s smile, of her warm body as she extended her arms to enfold him in a hug, filled the eye of his souls.

  I fell in love.

  Again he saw that last day as Winder’s canoe pushed out from the shore. Winder stood in the bow, shouting across the years, “You sure she’s worth it?”

  What would have been different if, at the last moment, Seven Skull Shield had called, “Wait! I’m going with you!”

  Instead he’d waved, feeling as if his heart were breaking. After watching Winder’s canoe disappear downriver, he’d walked back to the dwelling he’d vowed to share with Wooden Doll. There, in those walls, “forever” had lasted less than a moon.

  “I can sense your melancholy, thief.” Flat Stone Pipe reached out to slap Seven Skull Shield on the thigh. “Time changes people.… Alliances shift.”

  “He’s my best friend, little man.”

  “Look at me, thief.”

  Seven Skull Shield glanced down to see the dwarf’s earnest expression as the little man said, “He might have been your best friend. A man like a brother to you. Once. Y
ou also told me that you met him in front of the Surveyors’ Society House … that you explained to him that the Quiz Quiz was not to be touched.” A pause. “And he freed the captive despite that.”

  “It was his obligation.”

  “Would he have acted in such a contrary manner to your interests when you were youths? Ah, I can see the answer in your eyes. He would not. And had the roles been reversed? If he had asked you not to interfere with his business, would you have gone ahead and disregarded his wishes?”

  “No.”

  “Then do not blame yourself, Seven Skull Shield. He is no longer worthy of your friendship. A true friend is someone who will do for you what you, in turn, would do for them.”

  “Perhaps. Doesn’t make it any easier, knowing I have to hunt him down. Don’t know what I’ll do if it comes down to a decision between catching him, and watching him hang in a square.”

  “The debts of the past are now weighed against the faith of those who depend upon you in the present. I don’t envy you the choice, my friend.”

  “You call me friend?” Seven Skull Shield whispered. “Someone who will do for you what you will do for them? Or is it more? Or perhaps less? What does that word really mean, little man?”

  “A great many things, thief. If you ever figure it out, let me know. I’ve wondered about it myself.”

  Fugitive

  I wonder if there is any greater terror than to be a young woman alone. Especially in Cahokia with its masses of people. I am faceless. Without title or authority. I am not High Minko White Water Moccasin’s daughter, born of the Chief Clan of the Sky Hand Muskogee. I am not the Morning Star’s wife. To claim either of the above is a death sentence.

  My only worth, I am quick to discover, is what my body can provide in the way of labor or sex. That revelation is gut wrenching. Inconceivable.