People of the Longhouse Read Free

floor where supernatural creatures lived; or he would crouch in the underbrush for days, his eyes wide, sniffing the wind for that otherworldly scent he knew would someday be there. Listening. Always listening for that mysterious voice that called him by name, filling him with wild desires and a vague sweet gladness.
    His obsession frightened his children and grandchildren. His clan had begun to say that he was insane, that he was chasing his own afterlife soul that had wandered away into the forest and become lost. None of that mattered. He knew he had to find the caller and look him in the eyes.
    Sky Messenger stopped to take a breath and looked up into the overarching branches of a hickory tree. He especially enjoyed these rare autumn evenings when he could stand beneath the trees and hear them snapping and cracking as the night cooled.
    The Voice faded.
    Sky Messenger propped his walking stick and held his breath, listening. In the moonlight, the snow-coated trees had a bluish gleam that seemed to radiate outward into the air, turning it liquid and faintly silver. Deep autumn leaves rustled around his moccasins as he cupped a hand to his mouth and called, “Where are you?”
    He searched the forest until he spied movement among the shadows. Concentrating, he thought he saw a black silhouette, standing tall and straight, its arms open to the night sky. Heat flushed his face. Was it real? Was it a … a man? Or did it have wings? Black wings that sleeked down its back? Or perhaps the hump was just a bulky Trader’s pack?
    He slowly moved toward it. He was afraid of falling. His old bones had grown brittle, and he knew that a simple broken arm might kill him. As he sneaked closer, the Voice lowered its arms and turned toward him.
    Odion. Are you coming?
    For the first time since he’d seen eleven summers he was looking into the dark holes of its eyes. Terror made his hands tremble.
    “Th-that was my childhood name. They call me Sky Messenger now.”
    Hunched over, he limped toward the Forest Spirit, his ancient body aching. Every step was at once a threat and a gesture of love and need. The Voice seemed to sense it. Like all predators, they feared each other. It cocked its head, and its eyes caught the starlight and shimmered as though dusted with quartz crystals.
    A fleeting instant later, it dashed out into the trees with twigs cracking in its wake.
    “No, wait! Come back!”
    Sky Messenger stumbled after it, thrashing wildly through the brush, trying to catch up. He chased it straight into a meadow where the starlight reflected so brilliantly from the snow that the Voice’s dark silhouette seemed to be floating above the ground.
    “What do you want? Why do you keep calling me? You’ve been calling me for sixty-five summers.”
    The creature growled like a cornered wolf, its arms extended as though preparing to take flight.
    In a motion as old as predators themselves, Sky Messenger took a step backward, yielding the moment to his opponent, and slowly began to circle around the tree-lined edge of the meadow. He poked at rocks with his walking stick, and sniffed damp tree bark, precisely like the demented old man people claimed him to be. The Spirit kept cocking its head, watching curiously, and after a time it quieted and lowered its arms. But its quartz-dust eyes remained focused on Sky Messenger, charting his methodical progress around the meadow.
    It stunned him that the Spirit seemed suspicious and afraid. What could an old man do to harm a Spirit? Then again, maybe it wasn’t harm the Spirit feared. Perhaps it was just the way of the chase. Run and feint. Let your prey catch up, then whirl around and snap at it, keep it at bay until the final moment. The final lunge for the throat.
    Sky Messenger saw his chance and dashed out into the meadow, heading directly for the Voice … and the chase resumed.
    Time and again he cornered the creature and tried to force it to answer his questions before it darted away. He