People of the Weeping Eye (North America's Forgotten Past) Read Online Free PDF Page A

Wind-blown flames fed on the roof thatch; tongues of yellow ate at the heavy log framework that supported the building. Across the distance, Acorn could hear jars of hickory and bear oil exploding and adding to the inferno. Even as he watched the raging fire consume his only home, he could imagine his bow and arrows, all of
his clothes, everything he had ever known, devoured by the intense heat.
    The fire’s gaudy yellow light illuminated the whole of Split Sky City; shadows leaped and wavered behind the mounds and buildings. They could see across the plaza—the chunkey and stickball grounds flat and barren. The tchkofa, the great Council House, looked like an odd, two-headed turtle behind its palisade. Houses, like little wedges, were scattered in a haphazard fashion under the far palisade. Distant people were already stepping out, braced against the wind, watching with horror.
    And Mother and Father? Were they still in there?
    Hickory? What of Hickory?
    As he watched, he longed desperately to see his older brother fleeing the flames, even if he had to roll down the sides of the high mound like a chunkey stone.
    Another violent gust of wind ripped away part of the thatch roof. The flaming mass spiraled through the air to fall near the base of the tchkofa’s oval-shaped mound. At that instant the remaining roof with its sculpted guardians dropped into the interior. A vomit of sparks and flame jetted up to twirl out over the city, dance, and die.
    “May the Sky Beings save us,” Kosi whispered.
    Another gust of wind hurled his words away as if they’d never been.

One
    T ime and the seasons had left the old woman’s face a ruin.
    Much like my own. The man called Old White reached up, running the tip of his finger along the wrinkles that ate into his brown skin. He traced them where they deepened around his mouth, followed their patterns as they mimicked the uncounted ghosts of smiles and frowns long past. His forehead was a mass of ripples, his cheeks loose like flaps. A lifetime of blazing suns and scorching heat alternating with periods of frost-dimmed and aching cold had left its mark on his skin.
    “What are you doing?” The old woman was watching him as he fingered his wattled chin. They sat in her thatch-roofed dwelling, high atop a long-abandoned earthen mound. Beyond the cane walls, he could hear the south wind in the trees as it blew up from the gulf. A fox squirrel chattered in one of the oaks.
    He shot the old woman a sidelong glance. “Comparing my face to yours.”
    “You always were a silly goose.” She sat across the fire from him, her bony butt on a tightly woven cattail mat. A worn fabric dress hung from her sunken shoulders. From a leather thong a pale shell gorget dangled below her withered neck. Long white hair was drawn into a bun behind her skull. Expressionless, she watched him with pensive eyes like polished pebbles; they seemed to read his souls. “There are no answers there, you know. A face is nothing more than a flawed mask. Ungovernable, it often hides
what you wish given away, and betrays that which you most wish to conceal.”
    “I was thinking of how beautiful you were the first time I ever saw you.” As clearly as if it were yesterday, he remembered the moment he’d laid eyes on her. She had been naked, bathing in a small pool in the creek that lay a short distance north of her house. He’d been fleeing down a forest trail, his pack on his back. At first glimpse of her, he had stopped in surprise, his form masked by a tangle of honeysuckle. He could still smell the flowers, hear the whizzing chirr of the insects, and sense the faint rustle of wind in the gum and hickory leaves.
    She had looked up, meeting his stare. To his surprise there had been no fear, no startled widening of the eyes. Instead she’d raised an eyebrow, demanding, “Are you going to stand there and gape, or will you come down and scrub my back?”
    Awkwardly he had stumbled down the leaf-matted slope, thick