Read Online People of the Owl: A Novel of Prehistoric North America (North America's Forgotten Past) by W. Michael Gear, Kathleen O'Neal Gear - Free Book Online Page A

lay thick, light from Father Moon and the myriads of stars blotted by the mass of clouds that alternately drizzled rain on the land.
    As the Dream slipped its hazy fingers around Mud Puppy’s souls, Owl wings sailed silently through the falling tendrils of misty rain and over the arched ridges of Sun Town. The great bird circled slowly above a single dwelling on the eastern end of the first ridge.
    The oval-shaped house had been built of saplings driven into the ground, woven together with vines, and plastered with clay. Sheaves of grass formed a thick thatch that was bound to the cane roof stringers by wraps of stout cord. The tight thatch shed the rain, letting it drip just beyond the clay walls to pool in the rich soil.
    The door was an oblong hole in the wall covered with a hempfabric hanging just thick enough to block most of the chill. Around the top, and along the overhang of thatch, smoke drifted out, carrying with it the odor of hickory and maple.
    Inside, a cane-pole bench that served as seating and bedding had been built into the wall circumference. The woman slept fitfully on the western side, her aging body covered with a fine deerskin blanket. The boy, in his bed on the eastern side, lay lost in dreams, his
body covered with a worn fabric. He had curled on his right side, the rounded angles of his face visible in the reddish glow cast by the coals in the central hearth. His eyes flicked and wiggled under tightly closed lids.
    The Dream knotted itself in Mud Puppy’s souls, wrapping around them, spinning and cavorting.
    He sat at the top of a high mound, the ground warm under his buttocks and thighs. He reached down and raked the earth into his hands. Holding it to his nose, he sniffed the pungent musk, drawing it into his body and souls. After it became one with him, he pinched the dark silty soil into shapes with his fingers. The moist earth seemed to flow as though of its own accord, forming at his very thoughts, the image perfectly rendered by his supple brown fingers.
    First he sculpted the body, rotund, with a protruding belly. Then he shaped a round head, his thumbs curving up and around the face to reveal a hooked beak between two broadly recessed eyes. With thumb and forefinger he pinched out the ears, pointed and high. Using a fingernail he circled the large eyes—and when he lifted his hand, they blinked at him, bright yellow with gleaming black pupils.
    Along either side of the rotund body he shaped the wings, outlining the feathers with his nails. From the bottom of the torso he pulled out the feet, his thumbnail tracing the individual toes and talons.
    “You have done well,” the mud sculpture told him. “But you have to learn to fly before you can learn to Dance.”
    Mud Puppy stared at the owl, aware that it was changing, that its beak had turned yellow, feathers softening around the ears, but the face, he realized, looked fake. A mask! He’s wearing a mask! “You are Masked Owl!”
    “Yes, I am.” Masked Owl chuckled at that. “And what is a mask, boy?”
    “A covering.”
    “Is it?”
    “Of course. Just like at the ceremonies when the deer dancers come in. It’s to make them look like deer.”
    Masked Owl cocked his head. “In so many ways you remind me of Bad Belly.”
    “Who?”
    “A young man I once knew, one carried away by the world. Like you, he saw wonder in everything. It comes of an innocence of the soul. I cannot tell you how precious that is.”
    “What happened to him?”
    “Oh, he became a hero in spite of himself.”
    “He didn’t want to be?”
    Owl’s head tilted again. “Have you ever been a hero?”
    “No.” Mud Puppy frowned down at his dirty hands. “But my brother is.”
    Masked Owl considered this. “Then you do not know what it costs to be a hero. The price is high, as your brother is about to find out.”
    “Is he—”
    “Why are you called Mud Puppy?”
    “I—I had one. A mud puppy, I mean.” He looked down at his hands again. As he