Now that Redbird was ready for sleep, the baby within her woke up, and its kicking, along with burning feelings that rose from her stomach to her throat, kept her awake.
The stillness was disturbed only by the chirping of countless frogs.
Where were those frogs today when we were looking for food? We must ask the Frog spirit to let us catch some of them.
Then she heard another movement. Someone was crawling across the reed-covered floor of the wickiup. She caught her breath. Yellow Hair's sleeping place was on the side opposite White Bear's, and the movement was unmistakably from her bed to his.
A little later she heard other sounds that were also easy to recognize—the crackling of a bed's reed matting, whispers, little gasps and groans, loud, fast breathing.
Yellow Hair's cry of pain sounded as if it had come through clenched teeth. She still did not want anyone to know. Redbird smiled to herself.
As she listened to White Bear's heavy panting, Redbird remembered the sharp pain inside her when she first received him on the island near Saukenuk.
White Bear sighed loudly, and then everything was still for a time, and Redbird heard the frogs once more. They were probably mating too. How wise of Earthmaker to make his creatures into woman and man, so they could give each other such wonderful pleasure. Earthmaker knew everything, but it was hard to see how he could have invented man and woman without having seen something that gave him the idea.
Him? Redbird had always pictured Earthmaker as a man, a giant warrior, but now she wondered whether the spirit that gave life to the world and all things in it might be a she. Or, better yet, maybe there were two Earthmakers, a he and a she.
As she had so many times before, she wished now that the tribe's custom would permit her to become a shaman, so that she might see into these mysteries with her own eyes, as White Bear and Owl Carver had.