Red Shoes brushed his fingers along the drying stalks of the corn hedging the trail. He let his gaze wander up the breadth of the fields that dotted the small prairie to the forested hills beyond, where plumes of smoke coiled cloudward.

“I feel like the ghost of myself,” he told the woman by his side.

“Why?” she asked, her dark eyes turning this way and that, perhaps trying to see what he saw.

“Because I'm home. Home is the only place that can put flesh on the bones of memory. The smell is different, somehow, the light. It reminds me of who I was when I was five, and twelve. And before I left the last time. All my old selves, all dead men, following me as ghosts.”

She didn't comment on his recitation but focused on the pragmatic. “This is your village?”

“It is. Kowi Chito.”

“‘Big Panther'?” she translated. Choctaw was still a new language for her, this beautiful and formidable woman of the high plains who called herself Grief.

He shook his head. “Kowi also means ‘a distance.’ What the French call a league. We named the village that because it is a league to walk around it. At least, that's what they say now. My great-granduncle once told me it was a lie.”

“Why lie about the name of a town?”

“There is a place a few days nearer the rising sun. It is a town of the dead now, almost forgotten, covered in trees. I went there once to seek visions. But once, in the Ancient Times, it was the most powerful town in all the land. Larger than even the cities of the Europeans, perhaps. A place of great warriors and magic makers. The people bred their children to the spirits, and grew stronger still. Finally they became so proud that they neglected the sacred fire, the eye of Hashtali, whose other eye is the Sun. Some say they even tried to kill Hashtali. I don't know how much is true. I only know that most of them are dead now. What my uncle told me is that some of them didn't die but settled here, and these were the people of the Panther god. He said people are too timid to talk about that now.”

“Why?”

“The Panther people were sorcerers, powerful, terrible— wicked. That sort of thing runs in the blood. Our town is the chiefest in the Choctaw nation. Some might claim we made ourselves so with witchcraft.” He smiled sardonically.

“That story must be true,” Grief said softly, “for surely you must be the greatest sorcerer there ever was.”

“Hopaye, in my language,” he said. “Grief, my people can't know how great my power has become. Not right away. Maybe never. They remember me as a formidable shaman; and many were suspicious of me even then, because power can always be used for good or ill. If they knew I had the might of the Antler Serpent in my blood, they might try to kill me. If they kill me, I can't save them.”

“Are they worth saving?”

“They are my people. That question isn't worth asking, as you ought to know.”

“I suppose.” Her voice grew chilly. Her own people had been slain by the army of the Sun Boy, whose scouts they had managed to escape only because of Red Shoes’ newfound power. Soon, the Choctaw would face the same foe.

“Though it's different,” Grief continued, “I lost my own kin—my mother, my brothers and sisters, my uncles. It's them I mourn.”

“It is different,” he admitted. “The Choctaw are not all kin. They aren't even all one people, not really. But they could be. They must be.”

“And what will I do?”

He stopped and touched her cheek, felt the blood beneath it, smelled it; and for a moment he saw her only with the cold eyes of the serpent, a thing like any other, another hated human being to be destroyed.

But then he saw her with eyes of Red Shoes, who loved her.

“You are with me,” he said. “You are part of me. As long as you want a place by my side, it is yours.”

She touched his face in turn. “You used to frighten me,” she said. “I can see the spirit you swallowed. It is still there, a poison in you. But I do not fear it any longer.”

“You should. I do. But I will not let it harm you, Grief.”

“I know. You may destroy the world—”

“Only to rebuild it as it should be. And I have not decided to do that.”

“Yes. I was saying you may destroy the world, but I truly believe I am safe with you. A strange thing.”

“Everything is strange. And I—”

An arrow thunked into Red Shoes’ back. He heard the nearby twang of the bow, this hiss of the shaft on a corn leaf, and was already dodging. Not quickly enough. He didn't feel any pain, just impact, but that was the way it was with arrows. A dull shock, like someone thumping you. He yanked his ax from his belt as he whirled, gathering his shadowchildren around him. He shouldn't have relaxed, not even here, not with the Sun Boy and his scalped men searching for him.

“I got him!” someone whooped, and a chorus of shrieks went up in the corn. Grief had drawn her kraftpistole— though it was empty of charges.

Someone in the corn started singing the war song. Red Shoes looked down. The arrow was a blunt piece of cane, lying harmless on the black earth.

A boy leapt out onto the path, his face smeared with red and black clay. He held a toy war club carved from a branch.

“Got you, Uncle!” the boy shouted. “Now your scalp is mine! My name shall be He-Killed-a-Wizard!”

“Chula?”

“Welcome home, Uncle.”

Red Shoes sighed and placed his ax back in his belt. “That was foolish, Chula. I might have killed you.”

“You never even heard me!”

“That's true. That—” He broke off, remembering himself as a boy. He smiled. “That was good, actually. I always said you would be a great warrior. Now I see some proof of it.”

“They said you were coming!” Chula said. “The old men foretold it. They said you were coming to lead us to war! Is it true?”

Red Shoes looked at the boy. No boy, really, but a lithe young man of fifteen, eager for war. But for the Choctaw, war usually meant a raid, two or three deaths, a scalp for a trophy and then months of bragging.

It did not mean facing an army as large as a plague of locusts, an army with artillery and airships, whose numbers were so great that the whole Choctaw nation could disappear into them like a drop of water into a sea.

And so it was with some pain he saw the joy on Chula's face when he said, “Yes, that is so.”

The boy whooped and shook his toy war club, and out in the corn, his friends answered.

“Are you coming to Mother's house?” Chula asked, when he had started the war song again, forgotten the last part, and broken it off.

“If I'm welcome there.”

“Mother said you were.”

“Then come along,” he said, mussing his nephew's hair.

“Who is she?” Chula asked, gesturing at Grief.

“My wife,” Red Shoes replied.

“Your wife,” his sister said, voice flat. “You never took a

Choctaw woman, and yet now you bring this—what is she?”

“Awahi, a tribe far out on the high plains.”

His sister scowled, ruining what was usually a pretty face. “And where will you live? In her house on the plains? Has she any property? Do you expect to move in with me, or take a Choctaw wife, one with a house?”

Red Shoes smiled. “It's good to see you, Speckled Corn, little sister.”

She hesitated. She had probably sworn not to forgive him this time, for leaving for so long. She had done it before, in front of witnesses.

As before, she broke it. She threw herself into his arms, weeping. “Where have you been? Why do you do this? My boys need their uncle. Since our brother died, and 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?”

“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.”

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 the gathering outside his sister's house. “The old man, with the wreath of swan feathers on his head. That's Minko Chito.”

“That means ‘great chief‘?”

“Yes. Chief of all the Choctaw, though that doesn't mean much, really. He can't tell the district or village chiefs to do anything they don't really want to. But he's a great persuader. That thin fellow with the broken nose next to him, that's Tishu Minko, the assistant to the chief. The big warrior behind him is Bloody Child, a man who doesn't like me very much. The thin man with the snake tattoo is Paint Red. Red is a war title, a sort of captain.”

“Like Red Shoes?”

“Yes. ‘Red Shoes’ is usually a title for the war chief. Red Shoes walk the warpath.”

“Are you a war chief?”

“Of a sort. I took the title when my uncle was killed, be cause I was the only one to carry it. Everyone still calls me that—they say I'm the war leader against the spirit world. The Red Shoes of the nation is him, there, with the sun tattooed on his arm.”

“What was your name when you were a boy? Before the war name?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“I never knew the boy you were. At least I could know his name.”

Red Shoes shook his head. “As I said, the boy I was is dead. We don't speak the names of the dead.”

She rolled her eyes. “Who are all those other men?”

“Village and district chiefs. Shamans. Taken together, they are the leaders of the Choctaw.”

“Who are those four? With the black streaks around their eyes?”

“Ah, you notice them. They are rarely seen. Those are the Onkala priests from the House of Warriors, where the bones are kept. We also call them the Bone Men.” He reached for his loincloth and matchcoat. “They are the men I came to see.”

“Some of those men are from far off, yes? How did they know you were coming?”

“I made shadowchildren, each with the name of a chief or priest beneath its wings. Each carrying a vision of the Sun Boy and his army.” He fastened the breechcloth and shrugged the deerskin matchcoat over his shoulders. “Stay here with my sister.”

“I'm going with you.”

“You can't. Stay here.”

“And if you don't return?”

“Then I don't.”

She looked at him silently for a moment. “Return,” she said.

“Very well.” He kissed her, then went down to where the leaders of his people awaited.

They watched him descend in silence. When he stood facing them, Minko Chito clasped his hand.

“You've come. It's good.”

“I hope that it is,” Red Shoes replied, flicking his gaze across Bloody Child and Paint Red. The two brothers seemed to think his return was anything but good.

But no one had tried to kill him yet.

“Is it true?” the chief asked. “The dreams we've had? Did you send them?”

“I sent them, and they are true. With my own eyes I've seen the army. With my own hands I've fought against them.”

“He is a brother to the owls,” Bloody Child snarled. “Any dream he sends is a lie.”

“We've heard other things,” Tishu Minko said. “The Shawano trader who stayed with the Yellow Canes told of strange things beyond the Water Road. And what would it profit Red Shoes to make such a lie?”

“To lead us away from our villages, perhaps,” Bloody Child said. “To leave our women and old men defenseless against his English friends.”

The chief cleared his throat. “Red Shoes, why does he come, this Sun Boy? Why is he our enemy and not our friend? Many have joined him.”

“Yes. Those who join him become his warriors. Those who do not, die.”

“Why not join them, then,” Paint Red asked, “if they are so strong? We've fought for the French, when it was in our interest, and with the English as well. If he offers us glory and scalps, why spurn him, this child of the Sun?”

“He shines, but he is no child of the Sun,” Red Shoes said. “He is the black man, who lives in the West, the chief of the night-goers, the god of ruin. He is the serpent with wings of blood.”

“Perhaps you are the serpent with wings of blood,” Paint Red said. “Perhaps you are not who you say you are.”

“It is the danger of being a hopaye,” one of the Onkala priests said quite suddenly. “Sometimes they walk out into the woods human and return as—something else.” He turned to Minko Chito. “We cannot hold this council here, great chief. We must go where the truth lives, to the navel of the world.”

The chief nodded. “To Nanih Waiyah. Yes. We will go there now.”

An involuntary chill crept up Red Shoes’ back, the snake in him moving. For an instant, the winter rage came on him, and he knew he could kill them all, that perhaps he should. His sister's warning came back to him.

But if he killed them, he failed. And the Bone Men might surprise him. They remembered things no one else did. They might destroy him.

Besides, the rage wasn't his. The anger wasn't his. It was in him, but he did not have to accept it. Each time he used the snake's venom it became easier to swallow, and it tasted better.

He remembered the Wichita village, where he had killed everyone, from the smallest child to the oldest man. That could not happen here, even if it meant his own life.

“To Nanih Waiyah,” he said. “Let us go, then.”