The Rift Read Free Page A

Ahead. “Is there some kind of sickness among them?”
    “Perhaps there is a cougar upwind,” said Calls the Deer.
    The Sun Man raised his face to the sky. He felt no wind on either cheek. The air was utterly still.
    And still the dogs howled.
    “If the Divine Sun wishes,” Calls the Deer said, “I will order men out to look for a cougar.”
    “Yes,” the Sun Man said. “That would be best. But come back after giving the order— I may have another errand for you.” Carrying the declaration of war to the war chief. He turned to He Who Leaps Ahead. “You may go to breakfast, old friend. I won’t need you till my afternoon audience.”
    “As the Divine Sun wishes,” Leaps Ahead said.
    After the two chief attendants prostrated themselves before the Sun Man and then made their way down the mound, the Sun Man dismissed his other attendants as well. He wanted to be alone to consult the Sun concerning this weighty matter of war.
    Beneath the sky’s canopy of divine blue, the Sun Man could see the waking city spread out before him. Below the two giant mounds were lesser earthworks, peaked burial mounds and the ridged mounds that supported the homes of the nobles. Below these lived the commoners in mud-and-wicker buildings with peaked grass roofs. Round granaries were set on stilts to keep animals from plundering them. Smoke rose from breakfast fires, staining the air. Children played ball games in the plaza, women knelt in the open before their homes and ground corn for breakfast, craftsmen sat in the open working with flint or basketry. Fertile cornfields, the source of the Sun People’s wealth, stretched out flat almost to the horizon, the young corn turning the red-brown soil to a sea of green.
    To the west was the creek that supplied the town with its water. To the east was Grandfather River, the huge brown expanse, over a mile wide, that wound its serpentine way to the Gulf of Mexico far to the south. The City of the Sun was set a respectful distance from the Grandfather River, which usually overflowed its banks twice a year, and in fact sometimes flooded the city itself, forcing its population onto the mounds for protection.
    Grandfather River was hidden along almost all its length by the tangle of cottonwood and cypress that lined its banks, but the Sun People had long ago cut all the nearby timber for building and for firewood, and now fields traveled down almost to the water’s edge. Crops were planted there following the spring flood. On the water’s edge were stacks of wood, lumber rafts that had been floated down Grandfather River and then broken up to provide the city’s firewood.
    The land, the crops, and the firewood were all owned by women, and descent and ownership traced through the female line— this was why the Sun Man’s successor would not be a child of his body, but rather the eldest son of his eldest sister. The Sun Man could not but approve of this arrangement— freed from the distractions of property, economics, and agriculture, the men were able to concentrate on more important matters, like hunting, diplomacy, religion, and war.
    War. It would be his decision, taken in consultation with his brother, the Sun. No mortal being had the right to interfere. What he planned to do now was to enter the temple alone, feed the temple’s eternal fire with willow bark and tobacco to summon the god, and then explain the problem to his brother. Only then could harmony be achieved and the correct decision made.
    But harmony was going to be difficult to achieve, even in the Sun Man’s mind. The wailing dogs unsettled his thoughts. Their cries reached a kind of crescendo now, an eerie chorus that sent a shiver of fear up the Sun Man’s back. What is going on? he wondered. What is happening?
    And then the Earth flung him off its back. He landed on the turf with a cry, the wind going out of him. His swan-feather headdress fell from his head and rolled away. The mound throbbed beneath his belly, as if a