People - People of the Wolf Part 5

"Too many."Singing Wolf expertly bent his fingers around the burin as it scritched on the flat bone he held.

"Throwing Bones went out and found Grandfather White Bear," Green Water reminded him evenly.

"And that's another thing," One Who Cries continued. "Who ever heard of Grandfather White Bear this far south? Some spirit wants us out of here." One Who Cries sniffed at the cold and ran his thumb along the edge of the broken point he'd removed from the dart shaft. "I'll have to resharpen this. Good tool stone is getting scarce this far south. Maybe we'd find some obsidian on the other side of the Big Ice, huh? Or some fine quartzite? Maybe those lost dead of Crow Caller's will point the way? You think?"

Laughing Suns.h.i.+ne spoke softly. "How much bad could come of eating spirit meat?"

Singing Wolf sighed confusion. "If I have to choose between Spirit Dreams, I choose Runs In Light. He--"

"He's barely a man." "Crow Caller's been right in the past," Green Water reminded them, fumbling with a fold in her hide robe.

"Two rights?" One Who Cries wondered. "Each going a different direction?

There isn't enough of me to keep two Dreamers happy! I can't split down the middle!"

"But did you see the look in Runs In Light's eyes?"

"I think I'll starve before letting my stomach turn inside out. You remember that time Crow Caller cursed Seal Paw? All his teeth fell out."

One Who. Cries shuffled through his pouch, finding his fine-point antler tine and a thick square of rawhide with a hole cut for the thumb. In the red haze of the fire, he studied the damaged point and grunted. From long practice, he settled the stone in the leather where it would protect his hand. Squinting down his flat nose, he placed the antler tip against the edge of the tool and pressed, snapping a long pressure flake off the stone. "Hey!" Singing Wolf growled. "Do that outside. I get those sharp little flakes stuck in my hands every time I sit down. They go all over ... get in the food and stuff."

"So? We leave here tomorrow. You think wolf will mind when he snuffles around looking for something we missed? Unlike you, he can tell sharp stone from ice."

Green Water sighed irritably and bent her efforts to mending a long boot bottom, driving a bone awl through thick leather. She scowled at the men from the corner of her eye.

The click-snapping of the resharpening continued as Singing Wolf carved on the mammoth bone in his hand, turning it occasionally to study the image in the red glow. "Broken Branch says Crow Caller's Power is gone.

Crow Caller says Light is just a boy playing at being a shaman."

"Huh!" One Who Cries snorted. "Go north and we're right in the lodge doors of those Others. You know they killed most of Geyser's band--took a lot of the women and destroyed the camp. Those who lived and got away barely stayed ahead of them last Long Light. Those Others, they're bad men. Got sick spirits.""Raven Hunter wants to kill them," Singing Wolf mused. "He thinks there's a way to drive them back. Get them to leave us alone. I wonder if maybe he isn't right? I wonder if we couldn't--"

"Raven Hunter wants status," One Who Cries snapped. His thoughts drifted to years before. Runs In Light and Raven Hunter were always fighting, the latter always winning. "Let him go die. There are better places for darts than my belly." He tested the knife edge against the callused pad of his thumb. "I'm going to eat the meat. Wolf wouldn't let Crow Caller torment us. That's not His way."

"Crow Caller is afraid of the south," Green Water added, eyes s.h.i.+fting back and forth between the men. Her gentle expression urged them to think. Green Water had that manner about her, strong yet sensitive, thoughtful, and composed.

"Yeah," Singing Wolf agreed, licking his lips. "What scares a man with Spirit Power like his?"

"Ghosts," One Who Cries said. He looked steadily at Singing Wolf, waggling the resharpened dart point as he talked. "If he has any Power."

"Runs In Light is unafraid."

"Uh-huh. Fools are like that."

The burin in Singing Wolf's fingers scritched hollowly on the bone. The flint caught the faint gleam of light from the fire as it turned in his strong fingers. "Now me, I wouldn't look cross-eyed at Crow Caller. Next time I needed to hide from Grandfather White Bear, Wind Woman would blow my stink right up his nose because Crow Caller killed my medicine."

"Don't worry. With your stink, Grandfather White Bear would probably run the other way anyhow."

Singing Wolf gave him a disgusted look. "Be serious. I don't care what Broken Branch says, that old man has Power. And Runs In Light didn't even blink when Crow Caller called down his spirit magic. Didn't even blink!" He looked over to where Laughing Suns.h.i.+ne hunched, eyes on the meat, sorrow creasing her expression.

He lowered his eyes, pursing his lips. The little bundle on the snowdrift weighed on his mind, too--heavy like an old bull's ivory tusk.

"So? What are you going to do?"

Laughing Suns.h.i.+ne interrupted, "When there is no game, no chance of finding food, what does anyone do? The question is to go south, or back the way we came. We don't know what can be found in the hills to the south. Maybe over wintered berries exposed by Wind Woman, if nothing else."

"And how long will those last? What if Runs In Light is wrong? What if his Dream was nothing more than a kid's imagination?" Singing Wolf asked harshly.

One Who Cries squinted at the floor. "Well, then, we can always come back. The Renewal meets in the same place every year. If Light is wrong and there's no hole in the ice, we can join up with Buffalo Back's clan at Renewal. He'll take us."Singing Wolf swallowed and stopped his carving, looking down at the splinter of flint he held. "My child starved to death." He flipped the flat piece of bone in the air. One Who Cries caught it deftly and turned it to the light.

Singing Wolf looked quickly to Laughing Suns.h.i.+ne as he bent over the rear quarters of wolf that lay near the smoldering red eye of flame.

In the dull glow of the fire, One Who Cries stared at the bone while Green Water crawled to the meat. The best artist in the band, Singing Wolf had carved a four-legged beast with a long snout and pointed ears.

The etching might have lacked distinction--it might have been a fox or dog. But it wasn't.

"Wolf meat?" One Who Cries grimaced. "That's like eating someone's old sweaty moccasins .. . but moccasins taste better!" Reluctantly, he crawled over next to Singing Wolf, using his new knife to cut long slices of rich dark meat from the haunch. With a weak smile, he handed slices to Laughing Suns.h.i.+ne and Green Water as they moved to join him.

The two old women sat close, the deep folds in their wrinkled faces glistening with smeared fat in the light of the fire. Long shadows stretched across the warm shelter to climb the opposite wall.

With skilled hands Broken Branch cracked the thighbone down the middle, exposing pink marrow. Using a long curled thumbnail, she neatly scooped the channel clear. Twisting the marrow in half, she handed a portion to Gray Rock.

"So much for spirit meat, eh?" Broken Branch grinned wickedly.

Gray Rock licked her fingers. "Curses scare me less than starvation."

"I always knew you were a smart old witch."

"No, you didn't. You've told me a hundred times--"

"Well, forget what I've told you before. I changed my mind."

Gray Rock smiled, chewing more of the fat. "Such a pity. You've finally come to your senses, and I won't have a chance to enjoy it."

"Come with us. Ha-heee, there's Power in the south! I feel it deep in my heart." Broken Branch used a bone sliver to pick at the spongy joint area, heedless of the sharp flakes in the whitish pink paste she spooned into her mouth. "One advantage of not having teeth," she mumbled with a grin. "There's nothing for the bone to stick in."

"Uh-huh," Gray Rock growled. "It'll just scour your old b.u.t.t good and raw when it comes out the other end."

"At least it'll come out. Your problem is you plug up. Affects your disposition. Makes you cranky like you ain't had a man in a year or so."

Gray Rock waved her away with a desultory hand. "Who needs a man? All they do is moan and groan and you spend nine months packing theirget--and that's the easy part."

"Come south with us," Broken Branch pleaded, looking up from beneath stubby gray lashes. "I need you. I'll be stuck with these kids. No one sane to talk to. Come. It'll be--"

"The farther south you go, the rougher the country gets. More piles of rock to climb over--and I'm not as nimble as I used to be." She bowed her head in thought, throwing tender glances at her friend. "Besides, I owe Crow Caller. He saved my life that time I got fevered."

"That was then. His Power's all gone now. Been gone for years."

"I don't know." Gray Rock pulled her legs under her, wincing at the pain in her swollen joints. "Remember when my last tooth rotted? Whole side of my face swelled up from the poison."

Broken Branch cackled, bobbing her head at the memory. "Your face looked like a blowed-up walrus bladder ... all pooched out and skintight!

Ha-heeee!"

"Yes, and you remember what Crow Caller did?"

"Don't glower at me like that, you old hag. Of course I do. How could I forget you howling like a wolf with his nose caught in a clamsh.e.l.l?"

Broken Branch slapped her leg, chuckling dryly. "It took how many hunters to hold you down while old One Eye worked his healing? Five?

Ten?"

"That's not the point!" Gray Rock bristled, wrinkles pulling tight as she hissed, "The point is, he saved my life."

"Bah!" Broken Branch smacked her lips. "He drilled a hole through your cheek with a big bone awl. I could've done that. And just as good!"

Gray Rock pouted before adding sullenly, "Still, he saved my life." She paused. "I'm going north."

Broken Branch carefully scooped the last of the marrow from the bone.

She licked the s.h.i.+ne of the fatty material from her fingers and the fractured bone before pocketing the fragments to boil later for whatever grease she could render.

"Well .. go." She shook her finger at Gray Rock. "See what his Power brings you. You'll turn south soon enough-if one of them Others don't stick your guts with a dart."

Gray Rock worked her tongue over empty gums as she studied her friend.

"Darts may be better than the ghosts of the Big Ice." "What would they want with an old hag like you anyway? You'd be nothing but trouble for them--get in their way. Foul up their ghosting or something."

Gray Rock smiled weakly. "I told Jumping Hare to go with Runs In Light."

"You what? That's not right!" she gasped. "Your son should stay with you. Singing Wolf and that 'yes-no' One Who Cries are going with Light.

Crow Caller's band won't have enough hunters. If you're thinking that going south is really right, why don't--"

"Raven Hunter will be enough." "Bah! He'll get you in trouble with thoseOthers. Young idiot! All he wants is war. Something bad in his blood. I remember when he was born. Blood .. . bad blood."

Gray Rock looked through the crack in the hide door to see how much time remained. Dawn light grayed the sky. "They're getting ready to go. I hear them." Almost as an afterthought, she asked, "Do you really think Heron went that way?"

"I know she did. I saw her leave."

"Most people think she's a myth, that she never really--"

"Only the old ones still remember."

Gray Rock frowned uneasily. "The stories tell how wicked she was, how she consorted with the Powers of the Long Dark. Why'd she go? Did the clan drive her off?"

Broken Branch shook her head awkwardly. "No. She left on her own. Needed to be alone, she said." Guilt tinged the old woman's voice, guilt and remorse.

Gray Rock eyed her downcast face seriously. "What'd you do? Kill Heron's mother? That look on your--"

"Quit asking things that are none of your--"

"All right," Gray Rock said wearily. "I was just making talk."

Broken Branch rose slowly to her feet, offering a hand to her crippled friend, who struggled vainly to rise. "You're walking to find another clan of the People? You can't even stand up!" "Oh, shut up, you old bear bait," Gray Rock spat. But she took the hand, bones crackling and straining as she fought to stand. "Once I'm up, I do fine. Get me started and I don't stop. It's what all them oversized kids did to my hips that keeps me down!"

In an uncharacteristically gentle voice Broken Branch added, "Well, don't sit down, then. I won't be there to pick you up."

Gray Rock nodded, hobbling to the flap and ducking under it. In the faint light, she looked back toward Crow Caller where he gathered the People going with him. "See you among the stars," she whispered, wrinkling her antique face in one last wink before she tottered off toward the old shaman.

Broken Branch watched her go, a familiar pain of loss smoldering around her heart.

Chapter 6.

"Wolf Dreamer?"

Runs In Light turned, seeing Jumping Hare walking up behind him. They called him that now--at least the ones who accepted the Dream did. The others, well .. . Raven Hunter called him child. Nothing new in that.

They'd been at each other's throats since they were boys--for reasons he'd never understood. Still, it hurt.

"I think everything's packed," Jumping Hare said. "People are ready. We don't have much time. The light is so short."

"I know." Runs In Light's eyes wouldn't stay away from where Crow Caller a.s.sembled his group. So many friends stood there including Dancing Fox.

Pain constricted in a tight band around his heart. "I'm ready."

Following his gaze, Jumping Hare frowned. "You can't do anything. She's his. Her father gave her away to pay for healings. She owes him. It's just the way." "I know. Only I feel this is my last chance. That if I don't go and take her from him--"

"It always seems that way. Me, I lived through it when my first love married another. Now, I've made a name. I'll find a wife at the next Renewal. You'll see. Wait until Renewal." Jumping Hare clapped him on the shoulder and turned away, walking back to duck into a shelter.

Runs In Light felt a growing urge to be alone. He trudged over the drift, out of sight of the camp. Fear tormented his gut, setting it to writhing like the tangle of bott-fly maggots he'd once cut from a dead caribou's throat. All his life, unfamiliar faces and voices had haunted his sleep, calling to him from some echoing cavern in his mind. One voice in particular rang out above the others, a woman's. He felt oddly as if he were going in search of her now. It frightened him.

Fantasy or reality ? Am I taking my people on a Dream Walk or leading them to their deaths? Wolf had come to him; he knew that. Yet some unspoken doubt lurked, whispers of trickery or magic barely audible beneath his faith. Had that Dream-walking man of the Others cursed him?

Sent him this manner of destruction?

Pulling the sinew strings of his hood tight, he gazed wearily out over the vast wilderness. Snow crawled like fog close to the ground, stirred by the glacial breeze. Ravens soared in the white glaring sky, sunlight flas.h.i.+ng silver from their midnight wings.

"Wolf?" he called softly. The fur of his robe ruffled in the breeze.

"Don't leave me alone out there. Help me--"