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

you.
    The momentous surrounds us. Stop and listen, learn, think, and see how decisions in the past fill the present and will forever change your future.
    Such is the story I will now tell.
    Makatok … .

Moon of the Angry Winds
    A harsh winter wind blew out of a midnight sky. It roared out of the frigid north and thrashed the brooding forest. The force of it bent trees, whipping their bare branches like angry lashes. Shrieking across the river, it drove a stiff chop against the shore. Curling waves sawed at the sandy beach, and spray whisked in gleaming droplets to soak the long dugout canoes pulled up on the bank. Racing up the bluff, the wind crested the heights and savaged the city.
    Gust after gust worried thatch roofing, shook the corn cribs and drying racks, and hammered relentlessly at the intricately carved clan poles. Fingers of wind rolled baskets, whirled away matting, and flung streamers of ash and bits of detritus into the air. The high palisade with its square bastions and archers’ platforms trembled under the gale; bits of clay cracked and fell from the weft of dried vines woven between the vertical logs.
    Perched atop its dominating mound, the high minko’s palace bore the worst of the storm’s brunt. Wind pulled at the tall building and ripped angrily at the tightly bundled thatch roof. It whistled against the ornate wooden statues of Eagle, Woodpecker, and Falcon that protruded from the peaked ridgepole.
    Despite being built of deeply set logs, the great building shook and creaked. Gusts slipped through gaps and doorways. Eddies and currents ghosted along dark hallways and danced around cane-mat walls. The draft teased fabric door hangings and shivered the sacred
masks hanging from their strings. It touched bare flesh with a chill kiss.
    The boys’ room opened off a central hallway. Embers cast a faint red glow from the puddled clay hearth. As the draft fluctuated, patterns shifted among the coals, gleaming and fading—like eyes staring from the Underworld.
    The twins huddled on their pole-frame bed, arms around each other, eyes on the capricious patterns traced in the hearth. For the moment the mighty wind was forgotten. Father’s angry shout carried down the hallway.
    Mother’s piteous “No” was followed by the meaty sound of a slap.
    The boys flinched, eyes widening as they glanced fearfully at the doorway. In the reflected hearth light they watched the dark door hanging. The fabric swayed ever so slightly, teased by the icy breeze.
    “Will he come?” one whispered.
    “Hush, Acorn,” the other barely mouthed. “Don’t even think about him. Your thoughts might touch one of his souls. Might bring him here.”
    Their twin faces made reddish disks in the dim light, eyes wide, dark, and liquid. Button noses over soft lips gave their expressions an impish quality added to by the tousled mats of their unkempt black hair. The blanket that hid their small bodies was intricately woven, covered with images of artistically rendered ducks and turtles. The bare poles beneath their bed frame gleamed like freshly skinned bone. Two toy bows, small quivers of arrows, and piles of rumpled clothing had been laid by the foot of the bed. On the wall behind them hung a magnificent wooden carving of Eagle Man. Each feather radiating from his wide-spread arms was intricately rendered. His nose became a curved beak, and twin rattlesnakes coiled in his hands. The gorget pendant on his breast was copper, as was the bilobed hairpiece with its distinctive arrow. The image wore a chief’s kilt, the long tail of it falling suggestively between his braced legs.
    “Foul camp bitch!” The words carried down the hallway. “I’ll make you spread your legs for me!”
    The boys cowered deeper into their blanket, Acorn closing his eyes as Mother screamed in response to a slapping blow.
    “Please, Breath Maker, make him stop,” Acorn pleaded, a tear escaping the corner of his eye.
    “Shhh!” Grape hissed. “If he