Shaman Part 129

"You came to me while my spirit wandered on the prairie," he said.

"The Redbird guided me to you."

"Before you came I saw many things."

"What things?"

He said, "The pale eyes will spread across the Great River and even into the Great Desert. There will be no place left for our people."

"If we go far enough west--" she began.

"No," he said. "They will go as far as the western ocean. The Turtle warned me about this." He stroked her hair lightly, and she rested her head on his shoulder.

She had a heart-crus.h.i.+ng feeling that she would never lie like this with him again.

"You are so much better today," she said.

"You, too, know the way of the shaman now. You healed me."

She lifted her head and looked into his eyes. This was the moment when they must decide.

"I am the only shaman our people have now," she forced herself to say.

"The few who are left need me. I must go back to them."

His eyes shut tight suddenly, as if his wound was paining him.

"Stay here with me," he said.

His words struck her and tore through her, as his uncle's bullet had torn through him.

"I could never stay here. When you are well enough, will you not come back to your people?"

He shook his head. "We cannot fight the pale eyes and we cannot run from them. They will destroy us. Unless we learn to live as the pale eyes do."

"That destroys us too."

"That saves us!" His nostrils flared and his dark eyes glowed. "I can use the power this wealth and this land gives me to fight for our people. And you can do it with me. And Eagle Feather. I will show the people how to make use of pale eyes' ways. I will share my land with them."

Her heart felt as if it were being ground between stones. This, she understood, was what she must suffer because she had used her shaman's powers to hurt another. She was going to lose White Bear. She had saved him from death. He was going to live, but not with her.

The claws of that giant Bear that was his other self seemed to stab into her chest and tear her in two. She could not live with this pain. She must surrender to White Bear.

_Yes, I must stay with him. I cannot leave him. Eagle Feather needs him.

We will be safe here, and comfortable, and at peace._

She would send for Eagle Feather. The fat aunt and the grandfather would love them and care for them.

She tried to see herself living here with White Bear. For a moment the picture was clear in her mind. Then it dissolved in blackness as she realized that taking herself out of the Sauk tribe would be like pulling a medicine plant up by its roots without its consent.

She would die. It would be a slow death that would be worse than the pain she was suffering now.

And then another thought struck her.

_Children!_

Her heart felt heavy as a mountain.

She remembered how Owl Carver had said, after Eagle Feather smoked the peace pipe with the Winnebago, that he could be a greater shaman than any of them. But that would happen only if he was raised as a Sauk.

Floating Lily was dead. Redbird could not live with the people who had murdered her.

And--she touched her belly--this was not White Bear's child.

She began to cry aloud.

She sobbed till she thought her ribs would crack. Her throat burned; her voice rasped. She pressed her forehead against his chest. She heard him groan in pain, but he was hurting her more than she could ever hurt him.

"How can you ask me to stay where they killed Floating Lily? How can _you_ stay here?"

"What would you have me do?"

A sudden thought occurred to her. "The pale eyes give gold for land.

Take pale eyes gold for this land, and you can take the gold with you to the Ioway country and share it with our people."

"No, Redbird," he said sadly. "What could we do with gold, out there in Ioway? Sometimes the long knives have given our chiefs gold in return for land, yes. In no time the gold melted away. Gold by itself is like seed corn. Without the right ground to plant it in, it is soon used up and gone. The only way I can use the wealth my father Star Arrow left to me is to stay here and work with it."

She had stopped crying. This hurt too much for tears. Only when Floating Lily was killed had she felt more pain than this.

For a moment she could not bring herself to say the words she had to say.

From somewhere she summoned the strength to speak.

"Then I must leave you."

Each word, she felt, was an arrow fired into him.

His arms tightened around her. "I beg you to stay."

_Spirit of the Redbird, help me to do what I must._

It would hurt less if she acted at once. She pushed herself away from him. She stood up and crossed the room to the closed door.

"May you walk always in honor, White Bear."

"No, Redbird, no!" _He_ was crying bitterly now, and he rolled over and buried his head in his pillows, beating the bed with his clenched fists.

She could not bear to leave him weeping like this, like a child she was abandoning. She would rather see him angry.

Then the spirit Bird, whom she had called on for help, sent her a message. She saw Wolf Paw, as he had looked when he was proud and undefeated, with the red crest on his head, a red blanket wrapped around him and black paint around his eyes.