Three Moons of the Shell People continued..
After the fish were cleaned and the traps reset, the family gathered under the awning to share the midday meal. The rain still fell in thin threads, soft and even, barely enough to wet the leaves, but it filled the air with the smell of warm stone and wet shell.
Suala served smoked gar slices with cattail hearts roasted in ash. The children pulled the flesh from the fish with their fingers, laughing when a piece slipped and fell to the mat. Tika swore the fish was trying to swim again.
Beside the fire, Natta unrolled a strip of leather and began repairing one of the paddle handles, tightening the grip with thin cords made from dried palm strands. He dipped the end in fish oil and twisted it slowly, murmuring to himself. Each paddle had its own voice, and Natta said this one was speaking too softly in recent storms.
Suala set a bowl of green mash near Paako’s side, made from swamp yam and wild onion. He scooped a bite and nodded, but said nothing. His hands were busy shaping a length of reed into a spiral, his eyes half-closed. He was making a rattle, the kind used for marking moon rites. Not for celebration, but for remembrance.
Tika sat cross-legged, picking apart a bundle of dried flowers. She sorted them into colors, yellow for sun, purple for water, red for dreams. She asked if she could burn them all at once.
“No,” Suala said, smiling. “They’ll argue in the smoke.”
Later, Kalo and Natta walked the narrow reed path to check for new nests in the marsh. They carried no tools, only their ears. The nesting birds changed with the wind. If the gallinules nested early, it meant the dry season would come soon. If the herons nested high, it meant more storms. Kalo stopped often, pressing his palm to the trunks of old trees.
“What are you doing?” Natta asked.
“Listening,” Kalo said. “To see if they remember the last flood.”
Back at the mound, Suala laid herbs to dry in a net above the smoke. She sprinkled salt ash over the hearth to keep it clean and whispered names of the plants aloud so the wind would carry them into the next season.
For a while, everything was quiet.
Just the lake, the fire, and the sound of people doing what they had always done.
The rain arrived before the sun.
It did not begin with thunder or wind. It began with silence. The frogs stopped calling. The birds flew lower. The reeds along the canal bowed, as if listening to something that hadn’t yet spoken. Then came the smell, wet clay, split bark, and the faint trace of fish rising toward the surface.
Suala woke before the others. Her body knew the rhythm of this season. She stepped into the warm dampness and stood still, eyes half-closed, listening to the earth sigh beneath the weight of returning water. Rain hissed on the fronds above her, dripping in slow patterns onto the shell-packed floor.
She bent and lit the fire from the coals she had banked the night before. Smoke rose quickly, curling around her face. She added bark from a fallen willow and a handful of river mint. The scent would carry, waking the rest of the mound.
Natta emerged next, silent and barefoot, holding his net bundle in one hand and a carved paddle in the other. He touched Suala’s shoulder in greeting, then moved down the slope toward the canoes. The rain soaked him in moments, but he did not rush. This water was not an enemy. It was a breath.
Below the mound, the canal had risen. It ran fast and dark, thick with leaves and drifting strands of duckweed. Natta pushed his canoe into the flow and poled quietly along the outer edge. His traps had been set the night before, simple funnel baskets weighted with clay. He watched for shifts in the water, for bubbles or swirls that meant the traps had filled.
At the center of the mound, Tika ran out from the shelter of her family’s hut, arms wide, spinning in the rain. Her hair stuck to her face and her feet slapped the wet shell floor. She shouted to the birds, laughed at a crab crawling along a post, and called to Kalo.
He did not answer.
Kalo sat alone at the edge of the canal, his knees drawn to his chest, eyes fixed on a turtle resting half-submerged on a branch. He had already returned from collecting fruit. His woven satchel sat nearby, filled with green figs and unripe bananas. But his thoughts were elsewhere.
The elders had begun to speak of his journey. The rite that would send him alone into the marsh, where he would find, or be found by, the thing that would mark him. A stone, a feather, a carved bone. The object didn’t matter as much as how it was chosen. He could not bring something he liked. It had to come to him in a way that made no sound. The lake would choose, not him.
He glanced at Tika, dancing and singing to a broken reed. She did not worry about signs or silence. Her time had not yet come. She still lived in the world as it was.
By late morning, Natta returned with full traps. Suala had already prepared the hearth, adding sliced yucca root and wild greens to the clay cooking bowl. They worked without speech, cleaning fish, sorting shells, boiling water. Tika stirred the pot with both hands, her lips moving in a soft chant she had learned from Elder Paako. He said it brought balance to flavors. She just liked the way it felt in her mouth.
That afternoon, the rain softened. It became mist, clinging to skin and hair. The frogs returned, cautious at first, then loud and pulsing. Their voices were a map of the water’s edge. You could hear which ones sat near deep pools and which ones had climbed the trees. You could hear the hunger in the calls of the young males and the stillness of the old ones.
Suala walked out into the shallows to gather flowering reeds. The heads were just opening, pale yellow with tiny red veins. She carried a clay jar on her hip, already filled with bits of bark and seed pods. When the rain touched the inside of the flowers, they released a scent that reminded her of her mother’s voice. She picked carefully, leaving two plants for every one she took.
Kalo followed at a distance. He carried nothing. He wanted to ask Suala what she had seen before her own rite, but the words remained trapped behind his teeth. Instead, he watched the way her feet moved between mud patches, how her eyes read the reeds like a text.
“Do you feel it?” she asked, not turning.
He blinked. “The rain?”
“No. The change.”
He hesitated, then nodded. “I hear it at night.”
She smiled at that, and said nothing more.
That evening, they ate well. Tika announced that she would name the turtle near the canal and asked Elder Paako what name was best for a slow listener. Paako thought for a long time, then said, “Call it Afterthought.” Tika beamed.
The firelight flickered as Paako carved and spoke. He told of the fish who became cloud, and the owl who swallowed lightning. The others listened, even if they had heard the stories before. The story changed each time, just like the lake.
Then came the canoe.
It slid silently from the dark water, no torch, no call. Just the soft splash of paddle and the glint of wet wood. By the time Natta stood at the shore, the vessel had already reached the shallows.
Two figures stepped onto the mound’s lower path. One was cloaked in sea-oat fibers, soaked but dignified. The other, older, wore a bone necklace and carried nothing at all.
They were traders. This much was clear from the copper rings on their fingers and the bundles of dried fish and obsidian knives they carried. They came from the lower coast, from one of the salt-edge villages near the rising stone markers.
They bowed in greeting. Suala stepped forward and offered a basket of dried fruit. The strangers accepted, then sat cross-legged by the fire.
“We came upriver,” the younger one said. Her voice was calm, but her eyes never stopped moving. “We bring items, but we also bring news.”
No one spoke. Paako stared into the fire.
“There are boats,” the woman said, “larger than anything made of dugout or shell. Boats that sit higher than a mound and carry men with no hair on their faces, and voices like breaking wood.”
Tika opened her mouth to ask a question, but Suala placed a hand on her arm.
“They came from the far edge,” the trader continued, “beyond the salt. They do not speak our tongue. They do not eat our food. They wear stone over their chests, and their canoes spit fire.”
No one moved. No one stirred the fire.
“One village tried to greet them,” she said. “It is now silent.”
Kalo looked at Elder Paako. The old man had not spoken, but his carving had stopped. He raised his head and said softly, “The eel has turned in its sleep.”
The wind changed then, blowing smoke toward the east.
The traders stayed one night. They left just before dawn, vanishing into the mist as if the lake had swallowed them whole.
Kalo could not sleep. He walked to the water’s edge and sat in the mud, knees drawn tight. The turtle had not moved. It watched him with eyes that reflected nothing.
In the weeks that followed, the rains deepened. The paths vanished under brown water. The reeds bent in waves. Fish overflowed the traps. Tika began to dream of a white bird with no wings, one that swam instead of flew.
One morning, Suala announced that the moon would turn soon. Kalo would begin his rite within days.
That night, lightning flashed far off in the distance. Elder Paako placed a carved feather in Kalo’s palm and said, “Do not carry it with you. Let it carry you.”