“There is no war between you and me, Ta-Kumsaw.”

“Can you change the color of your skin? Can I change mine?”

“It isn't our skin, but our hearts–”

“When we stand with all the Red men on one side of the field, and all the White men on the other side of the field, where will you stand?”

“In the middle, pleading with both sides to–”

“You will stand with your people, and I will stand with mine.”

How could Taleswapper argue with him? Perhaps he would have the courage to refuse such a choice. Perhaps not. “Pray God it never comes to such a pass.”

“It already has, Taleswapper.” Ta-Kumsaw nodded. “From this day's work, I will have no trouble gathering my army of Red men at last.”

The words leapt from Taleswapper before he could stop them: “Then it's a terrible work you've chosen, if the death of so many good folk helps it along!”

Ta-Kumsaw answered with a roar, springing on Taleswapper all at once, knocking him back, flat on the grass of the meadow. Ta-Kumsaw's right hand clutched Taleswapper's hair; his left pressed against Taleswapper's throat. “All White men will die, all who don't escape across the sea!”

Yet it was not murder he intended. Even in his rage, Ta-Kumsaw did not press so hard as to strangle Taleswapper. After a moment the Red man pushed off and rolled away, burying his face in the grass, his arms and legs spread out to touch the earth with as much of his body as he could.

“I'm sorry,” Taleswapper whispered. “I was wrong to say that.”

“Lolla-Wossiky!” cried Ta-Kumsaw. “I did not want to be right, my brother!”

“Is he alive?” asked Taleswapper.

“I don't know,” said Ta-Kumsaw. He turned his head to press his cheek against the grass; his eyes, though, bored at Taleswapper as if to kill him with a look. “Taleswapper, the words you were saying. What did they mean? What did you see?”

“I saw nothing,” said Taleswapper. And then, though he only learned the truth as the words came out, he said, “It was Alvin's vision I was speaking. It's what he saw. My brothers and father march before. The heavens drop with human gore. His vision, my poem.”

“And where is the boy?” asked Ta-Kumsaw. “All night on that Mound, and where is he now?” Ta-Kumsaw jumped to his feet, orienting himself toward Eight-Face Mound, toward the very center of it. “No one stays there through the whole night, and now the sun is rising and he hasn't come.” Ta-Kumsaw abruptly turned to face Taleswapper. “He can't come down.”

“What do you mean?”

“He needs me,” said Ta-Kumsaw. “I can feel it. A terrible wound is in him. All his strength is bleeding into the earth.”

“What's on that hill! What wounded him?”

“Who knows what a White boy finds inside?” said Ta-Kumsaw. Then he turned to face the Mound again, as if he had felt a new summoning. “Yes,” he said, then walked quickly toward the Mound.

Taleswapper followed, saying nothing about the incongruity– Ta-Kumsaw vowing to make war against Whites until all were dead or gone from this land, and yet hurrying back to Eight-Face Mound to save a White boy.

They stood together at the place where Alvin climbed.

“Can you see the place?” asked Taleswapper.

“There is no path,” said Ta-Kumsaw.

“But you saw it yesterday,” said Taleswapper.

“Yesterday there was a path.”

“Then some other way,” said Taleswapper. “Your own way onto the Mound.”

“Another way would not take me to the same place.”

“Come now, Ta-Kumsaw, the Mound is big, but not so big you can't find someone up there in an hour of looking.”

Ta-Kumsaw gazed disdainfully at Taleswapper.

Abashed, Taleswapper spoke less confidently. “So you have to take the same path to reach the same place?”

“How do I know?” asked Ta-Kumsaw. “I never heard of one going up the Mound, and another following by the same path.”

“Don't you ever go here in twos or threes?”

“This is the place where the land speaks to all creatures who live here. The speech of the land is grass and trees; the adornment is beasts and birds.”

Taleswapper noted that when he wished to, Ta-Kumsaw could speak the English language like any White man. No: like a well-educated White man. Adornment. Where in the Hio country could he learn a word like that? “So we can't get in?”

Ta-Kumsaw's face showed no expression.

“Well, I say we go up anyway. We know the road he took– let's take it, whether we can see it or not.”

Ta-Kumsaw said nothing.

“Are you just going to stand here, then, and let him die up there?”

In answer, Ta-Kumsaw took a single step that brought him face to face– no, breast to breast– with Taleswapper. Ta-Kumsaw gripped his hand, threw his other arm around Taleswapper, held him close. Their legs were tangled; Taleswapper for a moment imagined how they must look, if there had been anyone to see them– whether someone would know which leg belonged to which man, they were so close together. He felt the Red man's heart beating, its rhythm more commanding within Taleswapper's body than the unsensed beat of his own hot pulse. “We are not two men,” whispered Ta-Kumsaw. “Not Red and White men here, with blood between us. We are one man with two souls, a Red soul and a White soul, one man.”

“All right,” said Taleswapper. “Let it be as you say.”

Still holding Taleswapper tightly, Ta-Kumsaw turned within the embrace; their heads pressed against each other, their ears so close-joined Taleswapper could hear nothing but Ta-Kumsaw's pulse like the pounding of ocean waves inside his ear. But now, their bodies so tightly joined that they seemed to have a single heartbeat, Taleswapper could see a clear path leading up the face of the Mound.

“Do you–” began Ta-Kumsaw.

“I see it,” said Taleswapper.

"Stay this close to me," said Ta-Kumsaw. "Now we are like Alvin– a Red soul and a White soul in a single body.

It was awkward, even ridiculous, to attempt to climb the Mound this way. Yet when their movement up the path jostled them apart, even the tiniest fraction, the path seemed to grow more difficult, hidden behind an errant growth of some vine, some bush, some dangling limb. So Taleswapper clung to Ta-Kumsaw as tightly as the Red man clung to him, and together they made their difficult way up the hill.

At the top Taleswapper was astonished to see that instead of a single Mound, they were at the crest of a ring of eight separate Mounds, with an octagonal valley between them. More important, Ta-Kurnsaw was also surprised. He seemed uncertain; his grip on Taleswapper was not as tight; he was no longer in control.

“Where does a White man go in this place?” asked Ta-Kumsaw.

“Down, of course,” said Taleswapper. “When a White man sees a valley, he goes down into it, to find what's there.”

“Is this how it always is for you?” asked Ta-Kumsaw. “Not knowing where you are, where anything is?”

Only then did Taleswapper realize that Ta-Kumsaw lacked his land-sense here. He was as blind as a White man in this place.

“Let's go down,” said Taleswapper. “And look– we don't have to cling so tightly now. It's a grassy hill, and we don't need a path.”

They crossed a stream and found him in a meadow, with a mist low on the ground around them. Alvin was not injured, but he lay trembling– as if fevered, though his brow was cool– and his breathing was shallow and quick. As Ta-Kumsaw had said: dying.

Taleswapper touched him, caressed him, then shook him, trying to wake the boy. Alvin showed no sign that he was aware of them. Ta-Kumsaw was no help. He sat beside the boy, holding his hand, whining so softly that Taleswapper doubted he knew he was making a sound.

But Taleswapper was not one to give in to despair, if in fact that was what Ta-Kumsaw was feeling. He looked around. Nearby was a tree, looking like spring, its leaves so yellow-green that in the light of dawn they might have been made of thin-hammered gold. Hanging from the tree was a light-colored fruit. No, a white fruit. And suddenly, as soon as he saw it, Taleswapper smelled it, pungent and sweet, so that he could almost taste it.