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mother, who is there?”
    “I’m sorry, little sister. You know how it is. I must do what Hashtali has allotted me.”
    “You should do what a man is supposed to do. Hunt. Teach his nephews to hunt. Why did you have to be born this way?”
    “Someone must. Without a few like me, what defense would we have against the accursed beings? Especially now.”
    “Yes.” She stepped back and wiped at her eyes. “I’ve heard the talk. So has Chula.” Her voice softened. “What are you going to tell the old men, Red Shoes? What will you tell Minko Chito?”
    “They already know what I’m going to say.”
    “If they do, they don’t like it. There was some talk of killing you before you reached town. Did you know that? They tried to keep it from me, but if a flea speaks in this town, I hear it.”
    “Who wants me dead?”
    “Bloody Child and his friends, of course. But the Holata Red agreed, and the Mortar. Why, Brother? What do you have to say that could make them so fearful?”
    “That which comes is very bad. Worse than the smallpox, the black cough, worse than a five-year drought. It is the worst thing we have ever faced, and I imagine there are those trying not to face it.”
    “Don’t go with them when they come for you. They may kill you yet. They may try to lull you into relaxing.”
    “Don’t worry about me, little sister.”
    “Who else will?”

    THE SHADOWS OF GOD
    “I have a wife for that now.”
    Speckled Corn glanced out the low, narrow doorway of her house to where Grief stood on the bare ground before it. A number of people had stopped to stare at the stranger, some merely curious, others with undisguised hostility.
    “She doesn’t look right,” Speckled Corn complained.
    “Nevertheless, she is my wife.”
    His sister nodded, then set her jaw and walked outside. “Why are all of you staring at my house and my guests?” she shouted. “This is my brother’s wife, and she is welcome here, and it is no one’s business until I say it is. Now go, all of you!”
    They went, some grumbling, most averting their eyes, knowing they had been rude.
    But all of them had something to gossip about now. By nightfall, every Choctaw house and village within walking distance would know that the sorcerer had returned with a foreign witch wife.
    “Home.” He sighed to himself.
    “Corncrib,” Red Shoes repeated.
    Grief actually giggled. “We have them, too, but ours aren’t big enough for this .”
    He lowered himself down on her again, and the ears of dry, shucked corn beneath Grief shifted as the weight of his body came down. Back and forth, she rolled, as he continued.
    “That feels good,” she said.
    “Thank you.”
    “I meant the corn rolling under my back.”

    THE SHADOWS OF GOD
    Later, they lay panting in the smoky comfort of the place. The corncrib was like a little house, raised well above the ground on stilts, with a narrow ladder leading up to it. It was one of the few places two people could actually get privacy. Red Shoes’ first taste of a woman had been in a corncrib, and he had led Grief here, once the sun was down and Chula was asleep.
    “Lots of corn in here,” Grief observed. “Your people are rich. No two houses had this much corn amongst my people.”
    “We are rich,” Red Shoes acknowledged. “And while that is good, it also means others will want what we have. Especially our corn.”
    “You mean the army of the Sun Boy. The iron people.”
    “Yes. Even they need to eat.”
    “You will defeat them.”
    “I hope so.”
    “No. You will. Because you promised me you would.”
    “So I did,” he said, and kissed her.
    “Strange, this white man custom, kissing,” she said, “but nice.”
    They slept there, and in the morning Red Shoes heard voices, lots of them. He peered down from the corncrib.
    “Ah,” he said. “They’ve come.”
    “Who?”
    He pointed to gathering outside his sister’s house. “The old man, with the wreath of swan feathers on his head. That’s