“Come home when you are hungry,” she says. “If you wish to bring your friends, they will be welcome. There will be plenty of food.”

“Wado,” I call back over my shoulder as I trot down the road.

CHAPTER 9

At the Town House

I am standing partway behind a big sassafras tree that rises out of an area of woods and brush at the edge of the field by the town house. I am not moving and because I am so well concealed I am sure no one has seen me.

Our town house is the most important building in Willstown. It is made of logs, like our other structures, but it is larger. In the old days such town houses always stood in the center of our villages, although then they had lower log walls with no windows and much taller roofs that were thatched with bundles of grass.

Near the town house is the ball field where our town teams play stickball against each other or teams from other villages. Those ball games are always exciting. First one side and then the other gains the ball with their double rackets, catching it in the leather webbing fastened to the end of their ball sticks. Then they try to throw or carry the ball between the standing poles that mark the goals at each side of the field, passing it back and forth, striking at one another with their sticks, blocking and tackling, attempting to trip their opponents. Only war is fiercer than our stickball games. Waheh!

Stickball is a game that everyone loves. The women play it as well as the men—although most men are not foolish enough to try to play the game against our Tsalagi women. Not unless they wish to lose much blood and also get their heads broken. There is no way I would ever play stickball against a group of Tsalagi women! I value my life too much. Our women are even fiercer than the men when they play stickball.

But I do enjoy playing it with other boys or even against the grown men. I have been told by some of the men that I am fairly good at playing stickball. My own two ball sticks hang on the wall above my bed. They were made by Old Turkey, the best stick maker in our town, if not the whole of our Tsalagi nation.

“My sticks have eyes,” he says. “They always see the ball. All you have to do is listen to what they tell you and follow their directions.”

Stickball, though, is not a game that you play every day. You need larger teams to play it. Also when a game of stickball is played, everyone in the village wants to be able to watch it. And most days there are other things that need doing. So special occasions such as festivals are when the game is played or when a team from another village is coming to challenge.