Mintikwa and the Underwater Panther Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Read more

  MINTIKWA AND THE UNDERWATER PANTHER

  J.R. Green

  MINTIKWA AND THE UNDERWATER PANTHER

  Copyright © 2021 J.R. Green

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except in the case of brief quotations. This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and places portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or put to fictitious use. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  1st Edition

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  CHAPTER ONE

  GOLDEN LIGHT SWEPT into the world from the horizon. It illuminated the hilltops and open meadows. It shimmered through the treetops, infused the deep ravines with a luminous radiance, and then scattered over the shallows of the burbling creeks that emptied into the people’s river. The sunlight winked between the chattering leaves on the eastern shore. It came sparkling across the water and into the eyes of Mintikwa.

  He breathed deeply, straightening his shoulders and letting the air fill his lungs. He soaked in the warmth of the sun’s return. An energetic gift to his fellow inhabitants, the sunlight warmed his heart as much as his arms and chest.

  He closed his eyes, smiled, and whispered a quick prayer to say thanks for the orb’s return from its journey through the core of the world.

  The forest around him awakened to greet the day. A mourning dove cooed from the ferns near the riverbank. A hungry woodpecker beat fiercely at deadwood.

  Uncle Saul shouted from his canoe, which drifted near the center of the river. “Little Bird!” he said, using a pet name for him.

  Mintikwa waved.

  Standing in his boat, his uncle cupped his mouth with both hands. “Get on with it!” he shouted, trying to coax his nephew into the water. “The fish are waiting for you.”

  “I do hope so,” Mintikwa replied, but they hadn’t had any luck yet.

  He stepped from the riverbank and waded into the water.

  The rounded stones which rested on the river bottom kneaded at the soles of his feet. The water crept up his legs as he walked, and soon the current was jostling at his waist.

  “We’ve been on the river two days,” Mintikwa said. “Will today be any different?”

  “This is our day! I can feel it. Down there,” his uncle motioned. “A catfish as big as you!”

  “Yes, Uncle Saul,” he agreed, summoning hope.

  Mintikwa was eager to get into the water, but it wasn’t fish he expected to see in truth.

  He threaded his net over his shoulder and tucked it close to his side. He drew in all the air he could and sunk beneath the surface.

  The water cut out the sounds of the forest above. The trilling and singing and pounding ended abruptly.

  He headed for the depths. Mintikwa drifted just above the rocky riverbed, stretching out his hands to feel for catfish, but only water rushed between his fingers.

  He glided through the depths, wishing to bump into the smooth flesh of one of the bottom-dwellers, but expected stone-like shells instead. He propelled himself forward, keeping to the bottom where the catfish usually rested. The riverbed stretched on before him, but it was empty.

  Mintikwa’s lungs pricked at his mind, reminding him of his need for air.

  As he shot for the surface, he saw his uncle’s reflection rippling from above. He was leaning over the edge of his canoe, anticipating his return.

  Mintikwa broke through the surface and drew in air.

  “Well?” his uncle asked impatiently.

  Mintikwa shook his head. “Nothing,” he said.

  Uncle Saul frowned. He lifted himself up and then stood in his canoe, scanning the river.

  “Let’s try the cove,” he said, changing tactics. He pointed to a confluence where a creek entered the river. Uncle Saul sat down and began to paddle.

  Mintikwa swam silently next to the boat.

  His uncle’s impatience was unusual. Typically he enjoyed the leisure of fishing from his canoe with a net or a ledge along the river, but a lot was riding on this day. If it proved as fruitless as the past few, they likely would head home, something the old man did not want. Neither did Mintikwa. He wanted to continue their journey north and see the town of his ancestors.

  They floated quietly, so they wouldn’t disturb any fish that might have retreated to the cove.

  Mintikwa held his breath and sunk into the depths.

  The water silenced the world above, but the brightening sky still illuminated the cove. It shimmered in shades of green and blue.

  He touched the sandy bottom with his toes, and then he rested on his knees. Mintikwa scanned the water column.

  It was empty of fish.

  Where were they? Had the People eaten them all? It was possible, Mintikwa supposed. Their village was full of hungry mouths, more than ever before.

  There were no fish, but there were plenty of mussels. Their tiny tubes poked out of the sand near his feet. With fish scarce, he spent most of his time gathering the poisonous creatures while the fishermen fretted over their lack of food.

  Here, before his eyes, the mussels blanketed the riverbed.

  Mintikwa didn’t want to come up empty-handed again, so he scooped at the sand, freeing the living stones from their burrows, and then deposited them in his net.

  For a moment, he imagined their soft innards would make an easy meal, but he abandoned the notion. It was forbidden to try and eat them.

  He didn’t want to leave the serene depths, but his lungs burned for air, so he tucked in his legs, pushed off the riverbed, and shot toward the sky. He breached the surface and then sucked in a breath, then he swam to his uncle’s boat.

  “Did you see catfish?”

  Mintikwa shook his head.

  “Bluegill?”

  “None,” he said.

  “Bass? Any fish at all?”

  “No, Uncle,” Mintikwa said, disappointed.

  The old man peered across the water, staring at nothing in particular. “We will find them,” he said with determination, though his voice betrayed a hint of weakening resolve.

  Mintikwa’s net still lay just below the surface, growing heavier by the moment. When he discovered the shells last summer, he thought they were stones resting on the riverbed in patterns of earthy reds, purples, yellows, and greens. It wasn’t until they burrowed into the sand and sucked at the water that he realized they were alive. The inside of the shell was a rosy color and smooth to the touch.

  Mintikwa brightened. “There are a lot of mussels,” he said, hoping that his catch might cheer up his uncle. Using the boat’s hull as leverage, he heaved them out of the water and tossed the net into the boat.

  His uncle only frowned at the wet mess.

  Mintikwa immediately realized that Uncle Saul was in no mood for his collecting today. “Sorry,” he said. “I’ll get them out.”

  Saul shook his head. He stared at the net, seemingly transfixed. Would he dump it into the river? The old man reached into his canoe. Singling out a small clam, he lifted it carefully between finger and thumb and examined its surface.

  “This one is colorful,” he said finally, his attitude the opposite of what Mintikwa was expecting.

  He breathed a sigh of relief. Then he pulle
d himself up against the boat to see it more closely. Flecks of purple reflected from the surface of the shell, hinting at what lay hidden inside.

  Indeed, it was pretty.

  He held it higher, and then he winked at his nephew. “This would make a good necklace for Willow.”

  Mintikwa laughed, but then he shook his head. “No,” he said, his smile disappearing as he thought of the last time he and Willow had played together. “We don’t hang out that much anymore.”

  “So what?” Uncle Saul pressed.

  “So,” Mintikwa explained. “Giving her something now would feel weird.”

  “Bah,” he retorted. “A gift is a great way to get reacquainted with an old friend.”

  “A shell wouldn’t work with Willow,” Mintikwa said. “Anyway, she’s with Sharp Knife these days, training to fight the Soulless.”

  Uncle Saul nodded silently for a moment, and then he said, “I always did like Willow. You two were a good pair.”

  His uncle was ignoring the fact that Sharp Knife was the fiercest fighter in the village.

  “You know how her father feels about me,” Mintikwa said. “About my grandfather.”

  “Yes,” he said disapprovingly and shook his head.

  For a moment, his uncle looked as if he might question Mintikwa further about Willow, but then he turned back to his canoe.

  “Anyway, your trinkets are fine. You can use my boat for your shells,” he said. “But let’s not give up on the fish yet.”

  Mintikwa nodded. He let go of the boat, turned, and dove again. A few moments later, he came back with another net full of mussels.

  The day wore on. The sun climbed higher. The fish remained elusive, but the mussels just kept coming.

  Uncle Saul stared at the floor of his canoe. Dozens of multicolored clams shifted around the bottom of his boat like lethargic skipping stones. He put up his hands. “That’s enough,” he said, glancing about to see if the other fishers saw what they were putting in the boat. The mussels were taboo, mainly because they were poisonous. Mintikwa followed his uncle’s gaze. A couple of fishers were close by, but they focused on their tasks at hand and overlooked Mintikwa’s efforts.

  It was late morning. Sitting down, Uncle Saul sighed. He wiped the sweat from his brow. His shoulders slumped. His darkening mood threatened to get worse, but just when hope seemed dim, he chuckled instead. He shook his head, but he was smiling now. “That’s enough clams for today,” he said more calmly.

  “Let me ask you something,” he said. “What do you want with so many mussels?” He seemed genuinely curious.

  “Sorry,” Mintikwa apologized. “I love collecting them, I guess.”

  “That you do,” his uncle said. “You hardly notice anything else when you’re after them.”

  “I don’t know what comes over me,” Mintikwa said. “I can’t stop myself.”

  “You should hold off for a couple of days,” his uncle suggested.

  Mintikwa nodded. “Okay,” he agreed.

  “Perhaps you’ll find new ones to collect when we reach the old town,” Uncle Saul offered.

  The old town was called At the Whirlpool. It was a village of the fifth age, the place of their emergence into this world, though no one had visited it in the generations since. Mintikwa peered upriver as if he might catch a glimpse of it. “How much farther?”

  “Two days,” his uncle answered. “Perhaps three.”

  Mintikwa began to imagine shells with strange new patterns and textures. “Most likely, they’ll be different colors,” he supposed. “Perhaps of a kind never seen before.”

  Suddenly, water lapped against the hull of a boat, interrupting his contemplations. A curious fisher had approached quietly, catching them unaware. “How have you fared?” he asked. “You seem busy with the net. Are you keeping the good fishing spots from the rest of us?” He joked.

  Uncle Saul kept quiet. Caught off-guard, he wasn’t sure what to say.

  The fisher skirted by their canoe and peered into the boat. His hopeful expression quickly turned sour when he saw the mussels.

  The fisher cringed at the sight of the poisonous bottom-dwellers. “I should have known,” he said, looking at Mintikwa. Disgusted, he paddled away as quickly as he had come.

  “Don’t mind him,” Uncle Saul said.

  Mintikwa and his uncle chose to ignore the man’s contempt, but the absence of fish today probably meant a quick end for their scouting. More than anything, Mintikwa hoped to see the old abandoned town to the north, but it was likely too far for a scouting party with dashed hopes. Worse than not seeing the ancient village, no fish probably meant they were headed for a conflict with the tribe to the south.

  Coming up from a dive and bouncing on tiptoes, Mintikwa stood buoyantly in neck-deep water.

  The sun rose high above the river. Cicadas trilled from the oak, maple, and redbud trees. No shadows cast shade across the water, and all the fishers had obviously retreated to the riverbank, though he didn’t know where.

  He searched for his uncle.

  A sycamore leaned over the river. Its shadow stretched over the sandbar, cooling the earth. The fishers were gathered together under it. His uncle was there too. They had grown weary of the heat and so had gathered on a sandbar nearby, leaving Mintikwa behind.

  He hoisted the net of mussels over his shoulder and waded from the water onto the sand. He felt awkward coming out of the water and standing in the open air. His legs seemingly wobbled beneath him. After spending the morning in the river, he had trouble steadying himself on dry land. He knelt for a moment to get his footing.

  The fishers laughed in the distance.

  Had they seen him leaving the water? Were they laughing at him? He peered ahead into the shadows of the tree.

  They were huddled facing each other. One was standing and gesturing. The others sat with rapt attention, seemingly listening to a story. They weren’t laughing at Mintikwa and his weak legs. Instead, they had forgotten him for the moment. The source of the amusement was likely an inside joke, a common occurrence where Mintikwa was concerned. He was an outsider, and he knew it for many reasons. Among the reasons was the odd way he fished, collecting forbidden mussels, and his awkward questions. But more profound, something about his family had driven a wedge between himself and any sense of belonging. People whispered close to each other and away from his burning ears. He had only a vague sense of what they said about him. For some, anger simmered just below the surface, not at Mintikwa. He served only as a living reminder. Instead, they directed their hatred at his late grandfather. His uncle knew the truth, but he was just as closed-mouthed about it as the others. Mintikwa was too young to know such things, he would say.

  His muscles ached, and he was starving. He gathered himself and walked gingerly toward the fishers.

  “What’s in the net?” a fisher asked as Mintikwa appeared next to his uncle.

  He lowered it so that the fisher could see.

  “What is it?” another asked.

  The first fisher scowled. “Mussels,” he said disdainfully.

  Others also muttered their disapproval.

  Mintikwa tried to ignore them, wishing only to relay information he thought was important. “The river here is full of them,” he said. “Much more than home.”

  Another fisher spoke up. “When I was a boy, we rarely saw them,” he said, more neutrally. “It is strange to see so many.”

  “What do you think it means?” another asked.

  Uncle Saul said, “It means that Raccoon and Otter will grow fat!”

  Some of the men chuckled.

  Another fisher spoke up. “It is forbidden to eat them,” he said. He was Sandhill Crane. “So many mussels surely must be a bad sign.”

  If ever there was a curmudgeon among them, it was Crane.

  “Rest,” Uncle said to Mintikwa, choosing to direct the subject away from his nephew’s dearest pastime. He didn’t like where it was leading them, likely back home. “Eat,” Uncle s
aid and tossed Mintikwa a pear.

  To catch the fruit, Mintikwa hastily dropped the dripping net to the ground, which struck the leg of a fisher as he sat in the sand.

  He recoiled. “Keep those filthy things off me,” he snarled.

  Mintikwa pulled them away and quickly apologized.

  The fisher shook his head. “If you’d spend more time above the water than below, we’d have more fish,” he complained as he brushed the mud from his leg. “Worthless poisonous creatures!”

  Mintikwa dropped his pear into the hands of the fisher whose leg he muddied.

  His uncle quickly tossed him another, and then with a sweeping hand, he proclaimed, “All is forgiven.”

  The muddied fisher took a quick bite of the fruit and then nodded in agreement.

  “They do make good necklaces,” Uncle said, arguing for his nephew’s interests.

  A few of the men laughed.

  “The people need fish. Not trinkets,” another said.

  “He will be a boy only a little longer,” Uncle told the other fishers. “Why not let him have his fun?”

  They only frowned. The fishers were in no mood for talk of play while there was work to be done. Yesterday spent the evening repairing an old weir by adding wooden stakes in the shallows. They hoped to trap fish overnight, but alas, it was empty at dawn. The morning was spent trying to find fish to drive into the trap. They fared about the same as Mintikwa and his uncle, not one fish all morning.

  Uncle cleared his throat. “The people will split again, as we did in the fifth world. Then we’ll have two towns, our old summer camp, and then a settlement at the ancient village.”

  “I am not as confident as you,” Sandhill Crane said. “As we’ve seen today, it’s no better here.”

  “Eddytown is four days journey upriver,” Uncle said, defending his position.

  “Yes, from our village, but we are now only two days away from the old town. Fish are just as scarce. Do you think it will be any better there?”

  “If we don’t find fish in the north, the council may decide to go to war with our enemy,” Uncle said.