Shaman Part 17

Still, he was angry with himself. How could he let someone slip up on him like that?

He turned. He looked into his mother's brown eyes, level with his. Not so long ago, he remembered, he had to look up to see into her eyes.

He saw pain tightening the muscles of her face. Her lips trembled as they parted. Only a few times had he seen her in such distress, and his heart beat harder. What was wrong?

"You must come back to Saukenuk, my son," she said.

"I have found my medicine stick, Mother. But now I must trim it here and peel the bark in the place where I found it. Owl Carver told me how it must be done."

She swept a hand across her body to say no to that. "It is Owl Carver who says you must come now. Leave the stick here. The spirits will protect it, and you can come back to it later. A man has come to our village. You must meet him."

Tears on her brown cheeks reflected the bright sun.

"What is wrong, Mother? Who is this man?"

Again the hand gesture, rejecting his question. "It is better you see for yourself."

"But you are sad, Mother. Why?"

She turned away, the fringe of her doeskin skirt swirling about her shins.

He laid the severed oak branch at the base of the tree he had cut it from, and with thanks to Grandfather Oak, turned away.

Baffled and apprehensive, he followed Sun Woman through the forest to the edge of the island, where he saw her small elm-bark canoe pulled up beside his.

Silently they paddled their canoes side by side upstream along the narrow stretch of black-green water that separated the island from the riverbank. The Rock River was in its spring flood. Paddling against the powerful current strained White Bear's muscles. He glanced over at his mother and saw with envy how easily she wielded her paddle. She seemed to know how to do everything well. But an expression of sorrow was frozen on her face.

They left the island behind, and soon White Bear saw the hundred lodges of Saukenuk through the weeping willows, hackberries, maples and oaks that grew along the riverbank.

They grounded their canoes on tree roots growing on the edge of the river. Sun Woman beckoned, turned her back on him abruptly and started walking through the woods by the riverbank. White Bear followed.

They pa.s.sed two newly made graves in the shelter of the trees, mounds of earth, each marked with a willow wand with a strip of deerskin attached to it. Coming out of the woods, they walked, amidst the band's grazing horses, through the blue-gra.s.s meadow surrounding the village. Beyond the meadows, as far up and down the river as White Bear could see, stretched stockade-fenced fields where the first shoots of corn, beans, squash and sweet potatoes dotted the freshly turned black earth like pale green stars in a night sky.

White Bear followed Sun Woman into the concentric rings of long lodges with peaked roofs, built of wooden poles and walled with bark sheets, laid out in the sacred circular pattern. Here the Sauk lived all summer, three or four families to a lodge. But today the outskirts of Saukenuk seemed empty. White Bear was surprised to see no one at the riverbank or about the lodges.

Sun Woman walked past the lodges with back straight, legs stiff, her arms rigid at her sides, her head high. Never once did she look back at him.

Reaching the heart of Saukenuk, he saw that all the people were gathered in the central clearing around Owl Carver's medicine lodge. As Sun Woman approached the crowd, a child spied her and tugged its mother's skirt.

The mother looked first at Sun Woman, then at White Bear, then whispered to another woman standing next to her. That woman turned, and then the whispers spread in every direction and more and more people looked. The crowd parted, making a path through which Sun Woman walked with her stiff stride. White Bear followed.

At the end of the pathway through the crowd sat Owl Carver and another man, side by side at the door of the sacred lodge. Owl Carver's long white hair spread like a snow-covered spruce tree. His chest was bare save for his necklace of megis sh.e.l.ls, and was painted with diagonal stripes of blue and green, the colors of hope and fear.

White Bear slowed his steps, studying the man seated beside Owl Carver.

His heart thumped hard when he saw who it was.

This was the man he had seen in his vision with the White Bear and the Turtle. He stood still, his mouth open.

The vision-man had black hair streaked with white, tied with a ribbon at the back. His face was dominated by a powerful beak of a nose. He must have spent much time in the sun; his skin was tan, though not as rich and dark as the skins of White Bear's people.

A beloved face caught White Bear's eye. Redbird was standing among the people, looking not at the stranger, but at White Bear. Their eyes met, and hers were wide with worry. He wanted to take Redbird's hand and run with her into the forest, away from all these people and from whatever made Redbird and his mother look so miserable.

And especially away from the thin, pale man who was now staring at him as intently as a hunter with drawn bow watches a stag.

And yet, the pale eyes stranger had been part of the vision that had given White Bear his new name and put him on the path to becoming a shaman.

_He must be a good man if he appeared to me with the White Bear and the Turtle. And he must be important to me._

"Sit here, White Bear," said Owl Carver, and White Bear walked slowly toward him. Owl Carver gestured that he was to sit beside the pale eyes.

White Bear felt his heart fluttering as he sat down. Owl Carver pointed to a place beside himself for Sun Woman. The four formed a semicircle, backs to the medicine lodge, faces toward the crowd of curious people.

As was the way of the Sauk, the four sat for a long time with no one speaking. White Bear's body grew colder and colder, and he had to fight to keep from trembling.

After a time, White Bear turned to the stranger and saw in the gaunt face a mixture of pain and joy. The man's pupils were a strange, almost frightening gray-blue color. From such eyes, White Bear knew, the Sauk took their name for this man's people.

As the man looked at White Bear and then over at Sun Woman, it seemed that his heart was glowing with happiness. But it was a happiness tinged by regret, the glow of a setting sun.

White Bear's inner sense told him that something was hurting more than the pale eye's spirit, was draining his life away. White Bear wished at once that he could work a healing of this good man's body.

But why was Sun Woman so unhappy? And why was Redbird frightened?

Owl Carver whispered to a small boy who stood beside him. The boy ran off.

Now the shaman sat nodding his head slowly. White Bear could see that Owl Carver stood at the branching of several paths and was trying to decide which one to take. White Bear's fear grew.

Owl Carver turned to White Bear. "This man is your father."

_Yes!_

Taught by Owl Carver that rather than puzzle over a vision it is best to let it reveal its meaning in its own time, White Bear had chosen months ago not to ponder who the pale eyes in the Turtle's lodge might be. Owl Carver must have known when White Bear described the vision to him, but thought it better not to tell him.

White Bear turned and looked again at the man seated beside him, who raised his arms tentatively, as if he wanted to reach out to him. White Bear kept his hands in his lap, and the man lowered his arms again.

White Bear felt a strangeness, such as he had never known before. This man looked at him with love. He was certain, now, that because this man had come today, everything was going to be changed.

"Your father is called Star Arrow," said Owl Carver. He turned to Star Arrow and said, "Your son is called White Bear."

"I greet you, White Bear," Star Arrow said. White Bear was glad to hear this man speaking the Sauk language.

"I greet you, Star Arrow, my father," White Bear said. The word _father_ felt strange on his tongue.

_Star Arrow._ He liked that name and wondered what it meant. _Father._ A shiver of joy went through him.

He spoke in the English Pere Isaac had taught him. "Good day to you, Father."

"My son," said Star Arrow in the same tongue. White Bear saw now that tears were running down his father's face, just as they had in the vision.

He heard a commotion at the back of the crowd. People were stepping aside.

A thrill went through White Bear as he saw that Black Hawk was coming toward them. The leader's careworn face glowed as if he were seeing a long-lost brother. He shifted his feather-adorned war club to his left hand and raised his empty right hand in greeting to Star Arrow. White Bear was amazed. He could not remember seeing Black Hawk smile so happily.