Lightning Shell (North America's Forgotten Past) by W. Michael Gear & Kathleen O'Neal Gear

Author:W. Michael Gear & Kathleen O'Neal Gear [Gear, W. Michael]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781250767202
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2022-07-11T16:00:00+00:00

Canebrake

It is almost a half moon since we were pulled from the water, and we are making remarkably rapid progress down the Tenasee, but much of that is due to Canebrake, the squadron second. He is in charge of carrying a sack full of beaded messages and numerous verbal reports of the expedition’s progress up the Tenasee. The man is relentless, his picked warriors—all men of endurance and strength—claim to be hewn of hickory and bound with oak.

This night, we are camped beside the river. I sit beside the fire, wondering if I will ever be warm again. Doesn’t matter how hot the day gets, the chill remains. Even when I bake in the hot late-summer sun, and sweat trickles down my skin, I can feel the cold hovering down below my heart, in the center of my core. Ice in my stomach.

I study the warriors from my seat at the back of the ramada; a blanket wraps my shoulders despite the warm night. Crickets and insects fill the evening with Song, and I can hear people drumming and Singing in the village just back from us near the trees. In Trade for a couple of packets of yaupon, the local Yuchi have fed us a meal of baked turtle, boiled fish seasoned with sassafras, knotweed bread, and baked cattail pods.

We also get to sleep under the protection of the ramadas down by their canoe landing. Not that Canebrake’s warriors want anything to do with me. They are smarter than that. Most come from a mixture of Earth Clans and are leery of anything to do with either me or Fire Light.

Despite Fire Light’s fumbling attempts to strike up any kind of camaraderie with the warriors, he is tainted. First, he’s Four Winds Clan, and second, he is traveling in my company. Not only that, but since the Suck and Rage, he’s not been quite right in the head.

Smart warriors, these. They know instinctively that a vast gulf separates us. That we are nobles in Morning Star’s lineage, which places us at the pinnacle of the Four Winds Clan. Knowing that—even more than my scarred features or brooding disposition—causes them to keep their distance. I couldn’t be happier.

Like I said, High Chief Fire Light has changed. I watch him, studying him with narrowed eyes. He sits atop a wooden box of Trade that Canebrake uses to broker accommodations such as we enjoy tonight. The high chief’s gaze is distant, his expression what I’d call hollow. I think he had shivered so hard in the Suck and Rage that small parts of his souls broke loose and slipped away from his body. Maybe they mixed with the river water he sucked into his lungs, only to be coughed out and vanish during the several times he’d almost drowned.

And yes, he also smashed his head against a rock sometime in that melee of wild water. A blow like that can knock the life soul loose.

I look past the High Chief’s vacant eyes to what is inside.

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