That night, Old Mother heard murmurs from the men’s circle, where the walls touched. The Speaker and his closest councilors were gathered there, and though she heard no words, the tones were dire. She knew her women had shared her own warnings, and could only presume that the Speaker’s Vision Moon had portended ominous warnings, similar to hers. The leaves on the tips of her fingers sprouted, deep green as mid-summer, before they darkened and crinkled into winter brown.
Her women attended her, and brought draught after draught of herbed decoctions, bone broth, and added mushrooms and onions when her cough worsened.
Dreams of blood and battle raged within her, guided by herbs and mushrooms. She woke fevered, her mind thoughts running with blood and the sound of battle cries. Her skin burned. Leaves and vines sprouted from her as her fever rose in the night. The women added her own leaves and theirs to the broths, and added the bone and flesh from the hunters’ offerings, feeding them to Old Mother. Three days passed in a haze of pain and fever, and the terror of war dreams.
On the fourth day, she began to improve, finding strength enough to relieve herself without help and to cleanse her own body. Her cough subsided, and her breath came easier. She asked her women, “Did you send for the Women of the Womb?”
“Yes, Old Mother of the Trees, Staff Bearer of the Women of the Womb. Your words have gone out.” But the woman’s tone did not bode well for the responses the runners had received. It was winter. Only Brings Stone Tribe traveled in winter. All the others traveled only in the solstices of the warmer seasons. Yet, they would come. This she knew. The Old Women would think on her words, consider her many years, and decide they needed to be present in case it was time for Old Mother to go to her tree. They would not miss a chance to move up in the hierarchy of the women, the opportunity to gain power.
“Has the Speaker of the Hunters and Warriors asked leave to parley with the women?” she asked the young girl who tended her fire.
“Yes, Old Mother. Do you have a reply?”
“Tell him to call his hunters and warriors.”
The young woman went silent, positioning a larger limb across the fire. When she had the broken end to her satisfaction, she risked a look up into the eyes of the Old Mother. “He has already sent word, Old Mother. He sent runners while you lay ill and we tended you.”
“Ahhh. His visions . . .”
“Yes, Old Mother. His visions were of darkness and evil upon the land.”
???
The new moon came, dark as death, and with it a bone-freezing cold and deep snow. It blanketed the earth, rested on the branches of the trees of the people, falling so hard and fast that it coated even the sharply pitched thatch of Old Mother’s circle. It lay across the entire land like the hide of the pink-eyed white deer.
But inside the Circle of the Womb, the fire and smoke kept her warm. She talked with her closest advisors, blessed the few babes born out of season, and instructed the young women in the preparation of hides and the methods of making them into clothing.
Against the back wall of her Womb Circle, she heard the Speaker teaching the young men how to knap spear heads, ax heads, and tools for skinning animals for the tribe. Later, she heard him and his oldest advisors as they instructed the mated hunter men on the proper ways to make thatch roofs, and howto create rope and tie knots. How to fish with nets. He taught the women hunters as well, and guided them in their own ceremonies.
Days passed. The earth stayed cold. Sleet and freezing rain coated the snow, hardening into a thick crust, freezing creeks and ponds and bringing death. Fevers were caught by the young. Babies died. Old men and women died and went to their trees.
Her own fever had passed, and her water ran clear again. But she did not rescind her calling for the Women of the Wombs from all the tribes. Old Mother knew her visions were true. Sheknew. . .
The day after the new moon, she woke to the tickling of small vines curling around her fingers. It was the earth speaking, warning of the arrival of the first of the tribes, the women coming early to take the best circles, closest to the Womb Circle, closest to the top of the hill. Voices came to her from outside her circle, and her women brought news, telling her who had arrived and how they had come.
“The snow came to their knees,” Woman Who Left Her Children’s Children to Make War, told her, “but though the way was long and hard, Wolf Tribe arrived first, as always. The Staff Bearer of Wolf Tribe is a young woman, strong in her loins, and though she carries a child within her, she ran with the fleetest of her women.”
“Wolf Tribe has always been the fastest,” Old Mother agreed. “What color are her leaves?”
“The evergreen of the Holly Tree.”
“This is auspicious.” Old Mother wondered if the Staff would choose such a strong woman to take her staff. “Who else?”
“The Women of the Womb of Autumn Harvest of Gourds.”
“A much longer journey and hard travel with babes at breast,” Woman Who Left Her Children’s Children to Make War said. “Old Wolf Mother and young Gourd Mother wait outside the passage with their women. May they enter?”
“Yes. But their staffs must remain outside.”
“But you are well now,” Make War said, shocked. “So their staffs will not contaminate—”
“I have spoken,” her voice snapped out, the sound of falling stones in the tone.
“Yes Old Mother,” Make War said.
Leaving their staffs in the cold, the women entered and sat at her fire. They gossiped about travel and bragged about the skills of their tribes. “We shared the weight and the nursing of the young, forcing the men to carry the trade goods,” Old Wolf Mother said. “They grumbled until I told them to be silent or I would cut out their foolish tongues.”
“She would do it too,” Autumn’s daughter said.
