Raven Mocker by Don Coldsmith Read Free Book Online

Chief, must be the one to call for the Council. It is a matter for Old Town, not for the War Chief. Let me inquire a little further. I will talk to you again before announcing the call to Council. Let me know if you learn anything.”
    “It is good,” said Log Roller as he rose to depart, then he chuckled. “Well, not really. The
plan
is good. Not the situation.”
    The Peace Chief smiled wryly. “Easy for you to say! But thank you again for your support, my friend. I will probably need it.”

7

    S nakewater knew that there was something going on. There was a feeling of excitement in the air. For some time she was inclined to attribute it to the season. Warm days, cool nights, the “second summer.” There had been a hint of frost a few days ago. Not a hard freeze, merely a rim of white along the edge of the river as they went to water.
    The geese were passing overhead, high in the clear blue …. Shining white lines of the birds made a yelping sound like a myriad of small dogs, as they headed south for the winter. She wondered where. She had always wondered that. It stirred a restlessness in her, and for some time she thought that the subdued excitement in the town was the same reaction in others.
    Odd, she thought,
they have never seemed to feel it before.
    Her questioning was partly answered by a conversation heard through the fence. It had been several days since the young girls had come to their secret place to hide, play, and visit. Snakewater had been dozing in the sun and was wakened by the voices.
    “ … and my mother says there will be a Council soon,” one was saying.
    Her nap interrupted, Snakewater almost drifted back into sleep. It was of no concern to her whether the chiefs called a Council. She seldom attended anyway. They would do what they decided. She knew that there was no majorthreat to the town from outside. If there were, she’d have heard, because there would have been much more excitement. That meant that it was some problem
within
the town. Maybe somebody wanted to marry, and the clan structure prohibited it, because a man must marry into a clan not his own …. Some other technicality. Such things were usually evaluated and decided by the women of the two clans involved. Never having been through a courtship, Snakewater had no such experience, the seeking of approval for the marriage. It might have been interesting. She wondered how it would have felt to be with a man. She used to dream sometimes, and that was good. Her body’s call to such contact was fainter and more seldom now.
    She wondered, too, how it might have been to bear a child, to hold and rock it and put it to breast. She loved children but had seldom had opportunity to hold one. Even then it was always because it was sick, and she picked it up as part of her ceremony. If it had been different, if her ties to family had been better, she could have held the babies of her sisters. But she hardly knew them, because of the enmity of their mother. And of course, they were of a different clan. Deer Clan, as nearly as she could remember. Her own was Paint Clan. It mattered little now. She drifted back to sleep.
    I t was a day or two later, as she returned from gathering wood for her cooking fire, that a man approached. His manner was serious, and it was apparent that he was seeking to talk to her. She recognized Three Fingers, the Peace Chief. She was glad to see him. It had been some time since anyone had requested her services. It was seldom, in fact, that she’d had to gather her own fuel. Those who had successfully sought her help kept her supplied. But not now.
    “
Osiyo!
How can I help you?” she asked cheerfully.
    There was a troubled look on his face. What could it be? Three Fingers appeared healthy enough. Maybe his wife was ill, or one of his children, although they were all grown. At least, she thought so.
    “You are Snakewater, of the Paint Clan?” he asked formally, without changing his stern expression.
    “Of