Sun Born by Kathleen O'Neal Gear

Author:Kathleen O'Neal Gear
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

Fifty-three

“What do you think, dog?” Seven Skull Shield asked his new companion as they walked through the crowd gathering around the plaza. People were coming from all directions, Cahokia’s great avenues thronging like rivers of human beings that flowed toward central Cahokia. A festive feeling seemed to carry on the very air.

The locals—anyone with a cooking pot, dried meat or fish, corn or nut breads—were looking for a good day’s Trade. Others were already hawking beaded jewelry; some dangled crude statues of the Itza, hastily carved and painted. To Seven Skull Shield’s way of thinking, the images didn’t look anything like the Itza. The green dye, made from hastily rubbed grass blades, wasn’t going to last out the week, but the hawkers were still asking a string of shell beads in Trade.

And often getting it.

On the southern end of the plaza, the first of the stickball teams had assembled. Wearing bright yellow girdles with trailing bustles, the young men were loosening up, passing deerhide balls back and forth. The old referees with their colored sticks were chasing up and down the sides, motioning people back in an attempt to keep the field clear.

The dog ambled happily at Seven Skull Shield’s side, tongue already hanging from the side of his bear-like jaws. The beast’s tail cut lazy arcs in the air, his oversized paws padding on the packed ground. Each time Seven Skull Shield addressed him, he looked up with his oddly colored eyes sparkling in wordless response.

“Quite the crowd,” Seven Skull Shield noted, thrusting his thumbs into the rope that belted his ratty-looking hunting shirt at his waist.

To his relief, Keeper Blue Heron had offered him one of the beds outside her door. Partly he supposed his presence added to her sense of security; partly it was no doubt that she was so exhausted she wasn’t thinking straight. But he hadn’t had to sleep on someone’s ramada mat and face discovery in the middle of the night, or the endless clouds of mosquitoes.

The early-rising Smooth Pebble had seen to it that he got a good breakfast, and the berdache had disdainfully tossed a loaf of stale acorn bread to the dog. Fortunately she’d been looking the other way when the brindle beast squatted in puppy fashion and peed on the new matting.

When Blue Heron had appeared in her doorway, he’d used the distraction to cover the wet spot with a handy seed jar. Maybe in the predawn rush no one would move the pot until after it dried.

“Dog?”

The beast looked up, tail swiping a bigger arc.

“You’re either going to figure out where and when you can pee, or I’m not going to be able to save you from the stew pot.”

On the eastern side of the plaza he slowed as he approached the Four Winds Men’s House. A seething mass of people surrounded it, the strongest shouldering in to get a peek, and then shouldering back out to tell companions what they’d seen.

“You wouldn’t believe it!” a Hawk Clan man told his friend.

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