This book was written in 1992 and was set in time between 800 and 1200 AD.

Forward
During the Archaic, 5000 years ago, people of the Eastern Woodlands were hunter-gatherers in small scattered villages. Corn was introduced around 1500 BC and changed the system. This discovery caused a complex religion, social stratification, etc., culminating in the Mississippian culture that flourished around 700-1500 AD. This involved mounds, towns of 10-12,000 people, chiefdoms, tribute to the Great Sun Chief, specialized labor, and trade routes spanning the continent.

From Archaic roots (Poverty Point site in Louisiana), the Mississippians inherited and improved upon a body of mathematical and astronomical knowledge that resulted in town planning with a standard unit of measurement, aligning of mounds according to solar/stellar positions.

This culture rose with the beginning of the Neo-Atlantic climactic episode—tropical air came into North America, extending the growing season and increasing the rains. The climate changed again around 1100. The Pacific climactic episode brought strong dry winds and drought from the west. This resulted in the people clearing more land, deforestation, erosion followed by flooding, malnutrition, more tooth loss, stunted growth, etc. Towns became palisaded because of attacks. Then people finally went to old ways of hunting and some horticulture. Society devolved.

This story is set near Cahokia in southern Illinois, at the peak of the crisis. No rains, no corn, people hungry, desperate.

Introduction
A farmer of today has a mound on his land and is told the mound could be on the National Register of Historic Places. The owner found a small black stone wolf with the skeleton of a woman with a hole drilled in her head, which leads into the tale told in this book.

Prologue
Talon Town is a pueblo in the southwest and the people are dancing the Spring Corn Dance. Four-year-old Nightshade is the daughter of Yarrow, the keeper of the Tortoise Bundle, but she is unable to communicate with it. Nightshade can communicate with the Spirits. The bundle is decorated with spirals and a red hand. They are attacked by Badgertail during the celebration. He came specifically to get Nightshade and the Tortoise Bundle, as predicted in the third book.

Characters
Lichen is a dreamer living in Redweed Village with her mother, Meadow Vole, who is the keeper of the black stone wolf that had been sent to Left Hand by Still Water (book 3). That would mean that it was at least 4000 years old at that time. Lichen is the direct descendent of Left Hand. Her mother cannot help her with her dreams so she goes to Wanderer, a crazy-seeming dreamer. Theron, living in Cahokia, is the Great Sun Chief, but is mad and twisted. Nightshade had lived in Cahokia as a young person, but Theron kicked her out and she went to River Mounds, but without the Tortoise Bundle. She had taught the Sunborn (aristocrats) to dive into the wellpots to reach the well of the Ancestors and pierce the layers of illusion spun by First Woman, who guards the Cave of the Tree. Theron, at the beginning of this story, had killed all of those able to do this.

The warriors are mixed, a Sunborn parent and a commoner parent. The commoners are of various clans and are matrilineal. The warriors include Badgertail, his brother Bobcat, and his cousin Locust (a woman). There were a number of women warriors. They usually took another woman as a wife (to take care of the home, work in the fields, etc.), who had children by selected individuals, but Locust’s wife Primrose is a berdache. The warriors used bows and arrows, which were invented sometime between 1000 B.C. and 900 A.D.

Background
Theron’s grandfather, Karon, had unified the mound builders and this encouraged extensive trading along the rivers. Goods came from as far as the Rockies, the southeastern ocean, Lake Superior, and the Gulf. Cahokia produced goods from raw materials gotten through trade. Their goods included shell beads, nets, fabric, dyed textiles, effigy pipes, and ceramics. However, Karon had decided to pillage the land, and that tipped the Spiral out of balance. Theron broke one the the people’s most sacred taboos (incest), and the Spiral flipped.

People slept on raised platforms at the intersection of the wall and roof. The gap allowed fresh air to come in.

Measurement of time and space was in hands and fingers, but no explanation is given of the meaning, in our terms, of this measurement.

In the past the tribute to the Great Sun Chief had been half the crop, and that worked, but now, with drought and small crops, people starved if they paid the tribute. Under instruction from Theron, warriors attacked villages not giving full tribute.

Mounds were built to bridge the gap between Mother Earth and the Sky. There are three kinds of mounds:

1. Platform: supported temples and houses of the elite (Sunborn)
2. Conical: where most important leaders and elite were buried
3. Ridge-top: markers for village boundaries, where great warriors were buried.

Evolution of Wolf-Slayer and Bird-Man story – To get to the land of the ancestors animals run the Road of Light but people must go down the Dark River. Bird-Man had been evil in life and condemned after death to help humans stay on the path of Light and Harmony. One duty was to carry messages between humans and sky gods and the underworld. The game of chunkey had ancient origins. It represents the ancient struggle between Wolf Slayer and Bird-Man. The chunkey stone represented monsters who had inhabited the world in the Beginning. The Players’ lances represented bolts of lightening the sacred brothers had thrown.

Badgertail leads warriors to attack River Mounds to kill the Moon Chief, Jenos, and capture Nightshade. He kills Jenos, takes his head, and makes Petaga, Jenos’ son, the new Moon Chief. Petaga was expected to kill his mother to accompany Jenos to the afterlife, but Hailcloud, his warrior chief, did it for him. They plan on organizing other villages that had been ravaged by Theron’s warriors into an army to attack Cahokia.

Nightshade wasn’t there; she was mourning the loss of her husband. After six days of mourning she was able to use datura seeds (from the islands in the ocean far to the southeast) to reach the spirits, specifically Brother Mudhead (from her origins) who told her that humans had thrown the world out of balance and nothing would be as it had been. The story of the hero twins was still told (white/black, light/darkness). Badgertail goes to find Nightshade and she comes to him; she is able to communicate with his brother Bobcat who had died in the fight for River Mounds.

In Cahokia Green Ash, Primrose’s sister, is very pregnant and suffering. Checkerberry, head of the clan, predicts evil (no fish, corn, etc.) because of misuse of the earth.

Lichen can communicate with prey her need for food. She is supposed to unite the worlds of Snake, Bird, and Human to enter the cave of First Woman. When Lichen was learning to dream from Wanderer, she discovered that Wanderer is her father. In her dream she talked with Wolf-Slayer who said that she and Wanderer must go to Cahokia to help Nightshade. If Lichen could not enter the Cave, First Woman’s wrath would sweep humans from the land. Wanderer dreams that he is in the land of the long dark where he meets Wolf-Slayer (Wolf Dreamer). He dreams of the burning of Cahokia. When Lichen’s mother realized that Lichen was a true dreamer, she gave her the black stone wolf to wear around her neck. That is when Badgertail attacked Redweed Village.

When Nightshade came to Cahokia and met Theron she knew he had poisoned Marmot, the former dreamer as Marmot’s power bundle told her. Theron was using ground galena in tea. Galena is a mixture of silver and lead, and it was making him insane although he thought it was medicine. Usually ground galena was used for pottery and dyes. Nightshade brought the Tortoise Bundle back to power, cleansing it in a sweat lodge in the historic way. It contained the mammoth hunter dart point, some bone from the Spirit Wolf, a fossilized shark’s tooth that had belonged to Still Water, a tortoise shell gorgette with the face of Thunderbird, and the head of a rattlesnake. She feels something is missing (the black stone wolf). She placed her turquoise pendant that she had since her pueblo childhood in the bundle before closing it.

When Badgertail attacks Redweed Village to discipline them for going along with Petaga and to get the stone wolf, Lichen goes into hiding. Wanderer, who Nightshade has asked Badgertail to bring back, also manages to save Lichen’s mother. While in hiding Lichen dreams of Foxfire, who is the son of Dancing Fox and Ice Fire, Wolf Dreamer’s father (Book 1). Foxfire shows Lichen her place in history, and shows what happens when a dreamer fails (shows the death of the last mammoth). A living dreamer (not one who has died) must set the spiral right and if he or she fails, Power seeks out those willing to sacrifice themselves so nature is in balance. Power cannot know for certain who will succeed and who will fail. Foxfire makes two power bundles, one of Light, the Wolf Bundle that they call the Tortoise Bundle, and one of Dark, the Raven Bundle, which lives along the Atlantic shore. Some dreamers are strengthened by fire (Fire-Dancer), some by water (White Ash), and some have to drown in blood before they unite the worlds in themselves, like Foxfire and Lichen. She must go to Cahokia by herself.

When Lichen gets to Cahokia, Theron tries to rape her but she is saved by Orenda, Theron’s daughter who had dreamed of Lichen before she came. Just before Lichen came Theron had tortured Primrose and cut off his testicles. Nightshade had helped lead Lichen through the well on her way to the cave of First Woman. Lichen was unconscious after the attempted rape and the dream, and Wanderer knew he had to drill a hole in her skull to let out the evil. When he picked her up the black wolf fell out of Lichen’s dress to swing from its thong. A beam shot between the Tortoise Bundle and the wolf and a creature was born of this union. It told Nightshade that the seed of her soul “has struck earth and brought forth fruit.” It told her to go home with the monster twins (Green Ash, Primrose’s sister’s children). The thlatsina (a tall creature with deformed animal face, from her pueblo home) would show the way.

Badgertail sacrificed himself to save others. When Lichen got the First Woman to agree to letting the people live, it rained. Orenda was supposed to be killed to cleanse her of the evil of incest (being raped by her father), but Nightshade got Petaga to agree to let her, Badgertail, Orenda, and the deformed twins go to the Forbidden Lands of the Palace Builders (her home). Lichen would be the new priestess/dreamer. First Woman gave her a white bear claw to remind her of the glacier Wolf-Slayer had to cross and what he had to go through to find the hole in the ice.

Nightshade marries Badgertail. The twins are Born-of-Water, an albino with a face that looks like a wolf, and Home-Going Boy, who has almost no arms. They both have great power.