Moon Hunt

by Kathleen O'Neal Gear

  “Send them home as they are,” Rising Flame said thoughtfully.

  “What?” Columella cried. “Are you out of your mind? Didn’t you hear what I said? They took Blue Heron!”

  “They are Quiz Quiz,” Rising Flame added softly, gaze distant. “I’ve been downriver. Lived there. The Quiz Quiz live for a peculiar code of honor. Retaliation begets more retaliation.”

  Blue Heron countered, “But we can’t just let them go. They’d claim we were weak, afraid of retaliation.”

  “Yes, yes, but what happens,” Rising Flame suggested, “if we send them downriver bound, gagged, and helpless with some neutral Traders. Maybe Pacaha? And what if they were delivered to Quiz Quiz that way, dumped at the town gates still bound and gagged, with the message, ‘Here are your inept, foolish, and bumbling warriors. Their actions were so pathetic and amusing we couldn’t find it in ourselves to punish them, but have sent them back to you rather than see you further embarrassed by their failures.”

  For a long moment, Blue Heron let it run through her souls, a rising sense of delight brewing within. “That, Cousin, is a stroke of sheer genius. The Quiz Quiz will be humiliated to wit’s end, a laughingstock from one end of the river to the other; and our return of their warriors will be an honorable act, one that they cannot retaliate against without a further violation of their code.”

  Columella was grinning, as if seeing it in her head.

  Rising Flame said, “All but Sky Star, the Quiz Quiz who beat Blue Heron, and the river Trader, that one called Winder. Someone has to pay the price. Those are the three. Sky Star was the leader, the one taken from the surveyors’ square. The warrior called Moccasin would have beaten Blue Heron to death, which cannot be forgiven. As for the Trader? He was the brains behind it all, the mastermind who blatantly took Blue Heron right out from under Columella’s nose. Those three must die hard … and slow.”

  Blue Heron worked her jaw back and forth. That would break Seven Skull Shield’s heart, but she’d be double-rotted if she’d speak for clemency. The thief would just have to understand.

  “What about the Sky Hand and Albaamaha?” Columella asked. “That definitely deserves an army and a response.”

  “Then you are playing into the Albaamaha’s hands,” Blue Heron told her.

  “How do you know that?” Columella asked.

  “That girl, Whispering Dawn, she’s no assassin. Neither is High Minko White Water Moccasin. She was sent here to marry the Morning Star as punishment for humiliating her father. White Water Moccasin thought he’d teach his daughter a lesson at the same time he established a reciprocal alliance with Cahokia. Like bringing down two birds with one arrow. The thief knew she was being used by the Albaamaha, but just not how.”

  “Why didn’t you do something about it?” Rising Flame asked, a flare of anger behind her eyes.

  “Because I was dismissed,” Blue Heron said flatly. “As you may recall. Want me to repeat the exact language with which I was relieved of my responsibilities?”

  Rising Flame’s anger vanished as quickly as it had risen. “No need. I recall just fine, thank you. And when it comes to the girl and her real motive, I suppose we’ll never know. Five Fists scoured the city looking for her. She’s long gone. I doubt we’ll ever find her.”

  “Want to bet?” Blue Heron asked. Then she shouted, “Thief! Come in here.”

  As she’d known he would, Seven Skull Shield immediately popped in the door, followed by his mongrel monster of a dog. She winced as the beast lifted its leg on the doorframe before hurrying to catch up.

  To the stunned Rising Flame, she added, “You don’t think he’d miss so much as a heartbeat of this, do you?” To Seven Skull Shield she said, “Think you can find that Sky Hand girl? The rest of Cahokia seems stumped.”

  He gave Rising Flame a lascivious wink and added, “If she’s still here, I’ll see what I can turn up.” To the dog he said, “Farts, get your face out of the stewpot. We’ve got work to do.”

  “Oh, for the sake of…” Columella shook her head as the dog took a couple of loud slurps from the communal stewpot before turning and galloping after the thief. “That man, I swear.”

  “So much for the stew,” Rising Flame remarked.

  “Took Magnolia two days to make that.”

  “What?” Blue Heron asked. “You’re gonna throw it out because of a couple of dog slurps? Bah! Give it a good boil and you’ll never know the difference.”

  “You actually encourage that man?” Rising Flame asked.

  “Let’s just call him an acquired taste.”

  “Yes. And a bad one. Like moldy acorns,” Columella muttered to herself.

  “So how is Wind doing?” Blue Heron asked.

  “She saved the city.” Rising Flame stared absently at the fire. “I misjudged you, Cousin. From the outside, all anyone sees is the heartless spider, the evil woman pulling the strands of her web as she ensnares the unwary. As was the case with my brother, Fire Light.”

  “Sorry about him.” Blue Heron shrugged. “We sent him off to the east to keep him out of trouble. Better than assassinating him.”

  Rising Flame took a deep breath. “But getting back to Cahokia: We almost lost everything, and I wonder how different things would have been if a strong Clan Keeper had been in your palace, keeping track of Albaamaha and Sky Hand, and North Star House and Green Chunkey. Would that girl have poisoned the Morning Star? Would the Houses be on the verge of open warfare?”

  “Matron, sometimes it’s hard to tell when you start asking ‘what if’ questions after the fact,” Columella said grimly.

  “Even if Tonka’tzi Wind hadn’t suggested that I come here today,” Rising Flame said with a grim smile, “I would have anyway, head bowed, to ask Blue Heron if she would once again serve her clan.” She swallowed hard. “Someone once told me, ‘Not all of governing is about show and spectacle.’ And after the last couple of days I have come to understand that very hard choices have to be made.”

  Blue Heron shifted, trying to ease the pain in her ribs. She glanced at Columella, watching the uncertainty in the Evening Star matron’s eyes shift to a sly victory.

  I’ve won.

  But at the last instant, ready to pounce, she hesitated. Some deep-seated instinct made her ask Columella, “That suggestion about sending the Quiz Quiz back as incompetent refuse. Would you have thought of that?”

  “I’m more of a slap-them-down-as-a-payback kind of woman. It wouldn’t have crossed my mind.”

  “I wouldn’t have thought of it. Wind surely wouldn’t have.”

  “Sometimes it helps to have new blood,” Columella added, apparently willing to follow Blue Heron’s lead. “I didn’t do everything right in the beginning either. Takes time. Also takes a really smart one to know when she’s made a mistake. Only the ones with guts admit it to others and ask how to fix it.”

  Rising Flame’s dark eyes betrayed the flash of victory her lips carefully hid.

  “Oh, pus and rot!” Blue Heron tilted her head back, staring disgustedly at the honey-colored posts holding up the ceiling. “It just means that the Morning Star knew what he was doing all along!”

  She would have laughed her frustration, but it would have hurt those broken ribs way too much.

  “Then you will serve your clan?” Rising Flame asked, her full lips pursing.

  “Of course. I’m happy to be the Clan Keeper and—”

  “I didn’t say that.” Rising Flame’s gaze hardened. “I am appointing Spotted Wrist as Clan Keeper. He has demanded that, along with some other rewards for his service against the Red Wing. What I’m asking is that you work with him, train him. Help him to—”

  “You want a new Keeper, Matron, let him figure it out himself,” Blue Heron growled, realizing she’d been played.

  Columella’s expression had pinched.

  “Then you won’t serve your clan?” Rising Flame gestured finality. “Very well. I was willing to allow you to remain in your palace, allow you to
keep some of the privileges and—”

  “Spotted Wrist!” Columella cried. “Pus and blood, why sacrifice Blue Heron’s years of experience when it comes to—”

  “Because someone will have to replace her!” Rising Flame shot back. “Maybe not now, not next year, but sometime. But for luck, the Quiz Quiz might have killed her when they abducted her. I want her to train a replacement.”

  Blue Heron fought for breath, one hand to her side. The loss of her palace? Just being another Four Winds woman? Did they think they would make a figurehead out of her? Or worse, discard her completely? Perhaps order her to move to one of the outlying Houses?

  Pus in a cup, think!

  “I’ll do it,” she heard herself whisper. “But I stay in my palace. Keep my spies and access to the Council House. And only if Spotted Wrist follows my orders for the first couple of years or so.” She glared her anger and outrage at Rising Flame. “Do you understand? I know how this all works, where the pitfalls are, what can go wrong.”

  Rising Flame countered. “A year. And then he takes over.”

  “And I keep my palace, my people, my access.”

  Rising Flame gave a shrug of the shoulders. “As Clan Keeper, Spotted Wrist can build his own palace wherever he wishes.”

  Blue Heron’s stomach turned, the nausea in her souls like a stone in her heart. With a sour taste in her mouth, she said, “Then we have a deal.”

  Sixty-one

  Reaching out, flailing, testing every step of the way, Fire Cat preceded Night Shadow Star. When the way suddenly dropped off, he would toss a pebble, listening to hear how far it fell. And in that manner, he had avoided several drops that would have ended in broken bones and miserable death in the cave’s near-solid blackness.

  Behind him, Night Shadow Star clung to his left hand, letting him lead, her fingers periodically tightening on his, as if she were clinging to the only reality that remained in such a dark emptiness of cold, hunger, and danger. He could sense her disappointment after her vision of the Morning Star vanishing into the surrounding rock. He was starting to imagine things himself.

  The dark, the silence, played tricks on him. He would think he saw light, sometimes like sparks, but when he concentrated, it was to realize that the blackness remained impenetrable.

  Sometimes he’d hear voices: his uncle, his mother, or some long-gone friend. Like snippets of conversation from the past. Some he attributed to the Dead as they flocked around him. But Mother’s words, knowing that she was alive, seemed to come from the past. Things she’d said, fragments of laughter.

  So that had to be his imagination, didn’t it?

  Did that mean the voices of the Dead were his imagination as well? Or was it just the hollow aftereffects of his Dance with Sister Datura? Was she loath to loosen her talons from his souls?

  Twice Fire Cat recoiled as his questing fingers encountered one of the burials, the body tightly bound, the head covered in cloth. From the feel, he could tell the cold, desiccated flesh was coated in mold.

  “Forgive me, Elder. We wish only to pass,” he would tell the restless and disturbed corpse, then carefully feel his way around the burial, leading Night Shadow Star wide.

  “The Morning Star has already freed them,” Night Shadow Star told him. “If we had light, you would see a drawing of the person above the body, one of the black ones. It acts like a portal through which his body-soul can travel back and forth between his physical body and the realms of the ancestral Dead.”

  “Who will draw our pictures if we die in here?”

  “We’re not going to die. There, just up ahead. Can’t you see it?”

  “See what? There is only black.”

  “Piasa’s glow.” She urged him forward with another squeeze of the hand. “Keep going.”

  “You sound remarkably calm. For all we know that glow you see could be leading us to some deeper dead end. And while we have a couple of hands full of ground corn left, we’re on the last of the water.”

  “It’s Piasa,” she replied. “Something’s changed. My souls are more at peace.”

  “Changed? How?”

  “The Tortoise Bundle has abandoned me. The Morning Star has become something different. As does a butterfly from a cocoon.”

  “That’s … um, bad, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know. Like I said, something’s different. Something in Cahokia.”

  “You think the Morning Star’s Spirit vanished into the rock forever? Or maybe he died and the whole city is up in arms. Maybe they think you’re dead. Maybe the reason you don’t feel the Tortoise Bundle is because they’ve burned your palace to the ground in mourning?”

  He paused. “Not that that would be so bad.”

  “Are you insane? Think of how Wind and Blue Heron, not to mention so many others, are feeling.”

  He smiled into the darkness, giving her hand a reassuring press. “If they think we’re dead, we can sneak out of the cave late at night. Make our way to the river, steal a canoe. We can be gone, with no one the wiser. Make our way south, find a place where no one knows us.”

  She sighed wistfully. “We could live like normal people. Maybe have a small farmstead. I’ve Dreamed that, you know.”

  “You have?”

  “We have children, a nice house, good garden, and you hunt. So it’s someplace off the beaten path. Away from a town. Quiet. And we are happy there.”

  “Children,” he said, wistful on his own account, the memory of his own dead children so fresh after he’d visited with them. And if he and Night Shadow Star had children, then that meant that they were sleeping in the same …

  He shook his head.

  “What?” she asked, having felt it through his hand.

  “Just that if we…”

  “That happens between normal people. People who aren’t bound by station, rank, and service to an Underworld lord. There are times…”

  “I know,” he told her when she couldn’t finish. “We are who we are. Chosen by Power.”

  He blinked, swearing that he could actually make out an angular block of stone that jutted at an angle. Feeling for it, his fingers encountered cold sandstone. “We’re getting closer to the entrance. There. Up ahead.”

  “Where it’s glowing blue? Or is that just Piasa?”

  Fire Cat saw no blue, just a lighter darkness, and what looked like a path between the stones.

  Yes, he could indeed make out the narrow maw-like entrance. That meant that Horned Serpent’s effigy was just there to his right, the snarling mouth gaping wide, the eerie round eyes burning into Fire Cat’s souls.

  Then you’d better get me now, beast. That or let me pass.

  Apparently the antlered serpent judged him worthy, for Fire Cat felt his way to the opening, adding, “Watch your head, Lady.”

  And then they were in the larger, brighter cavern, a faint light casting the shadowy floor in relief. Fire Cat could pick his way now, tightening his grip on Night Shadow Star’s hand.

  But just before the opening, she whispered, “Wait,” and pulled him back.

  “Yes, Lady?”

  “They’ll be out there. The priests. My escort.”

  “No escape, then?”

  He could see her shake her head, and then she stepped into his arms, molding herself to his body. The hug she gave him would have cracked ribs on a lesser man. Her lips, next to his ear, whispered, “Once we step back into our world … Well, I need you to know. I could not have done this without you. If there were only some way…”

  She tensed, gave an irritated shake of her head, muttering, “I know, Master. It was the price. Pus and blood, can’t you leave me alone long enough to say what I—”

  The Spirit beast had obviously interrupted her again.

  “It is all right, Lady.” He gently disengaged himself, raising her hands to his lips in the process. He wished he could tell her all the longings in his heart.

  “Lady? Is that you?” a voice called from just outside.

&n
bsp; The flickering of a torch cast its first shadows as it was carried hurriedly forward.

  By the time the priests stopped at the entrance, Night Shadow Star was composed, striding confidently forward, head high. “What news of the Morning Star?” she asked. “Did his souls return to my brother’s body?”

  “Yes, Lady!” The society priest dropped to a knee, touching his forehead as he bowed. “The runner just came! We were preparing to go in search of you. But … where is your torch?”

  Fire Cat, marching respectfully a step behind, came to a stop as Night Shadow Star told them, “The torch? I suppose it’s down there, somewhere. Red Wing? Where did we leave the torch?”

  “Down where we left our bodies, Lady. In that narrow tunnel.”

  He heard the gasps and saw how it affected them. Mud and rot, did that torch have to be so bright? He lifted a hand to shield his eyes. Looking out, he could see it was the middle of the night.

  “But no one has ever returned alive from the depths before.” The priest gulped, eyes growing round and large.

  Night Shadow Star glanced sidelong at Fire Cat. “For part of the journey, I had the Red Wing to guide me. Piasa led for the rest of the way. Now, alert my escort that I have returned. The Red Wing and I need to purify ourselves, and food and drink would be appreciated.”

  “Yes, Lady!” the awed priest cried. “An entire feast has been prepared. It was brought by Squadron First War Claw upon Clan Keeper Spotted Wrist’s orders! So has an entire flotilla of canoes to escort you back to Cahokia.”

  In the leaping torchlight, Fire Cat saw Night Shadow Star stiffen, as if suddenly ill.

  As they stepped out into the cold night, he shot a longing glance back over his shoulder at the dark opening into the earth. Would that they had never stepped out of there, that they had remained, locked away in the womb of the Underworld.

  I shall hold those moments with her close to my heart forever. In such a place of terror? Who would have thought?

  Solitude

  As dusk falls, I sit in the growing dark. Two Sticks’ corpse remains on the bed. He still talks to me, his body periodically gurgling, sighing as gas escapes his anus or throat. When he does, I nod in sympathy. I figure he is telling me how sorry he is, or expressing his regret over the turn of events.