The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [498]
The women spent the day in plucking, roasting, smoking, and preserving the pigeons with wood-ash; the air was filled with drifting down and the scent of grilled pigeon livers was thick in the air, as the whole village gorged on this delicacy. For my part, I helped with the pigeons, interspersing this work with entertaining conversation and profitable barter, only pausing now and then to look toward the mountain where the hunters had gone, and say a brief silent prayer for their well-being—and Roger’s.
I had brought twenty-five gallons of honey with me, as well as some of the imported European herbs and seeds from Wilmington. Trade was brisk, and by the evening, I had exchanged my stocks for quantities of wild ginseng, cohosh, and—a real rarity—a chaga. This item, a huge warty fungus that grows from ancient birch trees, had a reputation—or so I was told—for the cure of cancer, tuberculosis, and ulcers. A useful item for any physician to have on hand, I thought.
As for the honey, I had traded that straight across, for twenty-five gallons of sunflower oil. This was provided in bulging skin bags, which were piled up under the eaves of the house where we were staying, like a small heap of cannon balls. I paused to look at them with satisfaction whenever I went outside, envisioning the soft, fragrant soap to be made from the oil—no more hands reeking of dead pig fat! And with luck, I could sell the bulk of it for a high enough price to make up the next chunk of Laoghaire’s blood money, damn her eyes.
The next day was spent in the orchards with my hostess, another of Tsatsa’wi’s sisters, named Sungi. A tall, sweet-faced woman of thirty or so, she had a few words of English, but some of her friends had slightly more—and a good thing, my own Cherokee being so far limited to “Hello,” “Good,” and “More.”
In spite of the Indian ladies’ increased fluency, I had some difficulty in making out exactly what “Sungi” meant—depending upon whom I was talking to, it seemed to mean either “onion,” “mint,” or—confusingly—“mink.” After a certain amount of cross talk and sorting out, I got it established that the word seemed to mean none of these things precisely, but rather to indicate a strong scent of some kind.
The apple trees in the orchard were young, still slender, but bearing decently, providing a small yellowish-green fruit that wouldn’t have impressed Luther Burbank, but which did have a nice crunchy texture and a tart flavor—an excellent antidote to the greasy taste of pigeon livers. It was a dry year, Sungi said, frowning critically at the trees; not so much fruit as the year before, and the corn was not so good, either.
Sungi put her two young daughters in charge of Jemmy, obviously warning them to be careful, with much pointing toward the wood.
“Is good the Bear-Killer come,” she said, turning back to me, apple basket on her hip. “This bear not-bear; is not speak us.”
“Oh, ah,” I said, nodding intelligently. One of the other ladies helpfully amplified this idea, explaining that a reasonable bear would pay attention to the shaman’s invocation, which called upon the bear-spirit, so that hunters and bears would meet appropriately. Given the color of this bear, as well as its stubborn and malicious behavior, it was apparent that it was not a real bear, but rather some malign spirit that had decided to manifest itself as a bear.
“Ah,” I said, somewhat more intelligently. “Jackson mentioned ‘the Ancient White’—was it the bear he meant?” Surely Peter had said that white was one of the favorable colors, though.
Another lady—who had given me her English name of Anna, rather than try to explain what her Cherokee name meant—laughed in shock at that.
“No, no! Ancient White, he the fire.” Other ladies chipping in here, I finally gathered that the fire, while obviously powerful and to be treated with deep respect, was a beneficial entity. Thus the atrociousness of the bear’s conduct; white animals normally were accorded respect and considered to be carriers of messages from the otherworld—here one or two of the ladies glanced sideways