People - People of the Wolf Part 16

"No."A hand rested on his shoulder. "Tell me again of what you saw."

"I ... I pa.s.sed through a hole in the ice with Wolf. We climbed rocks.

There on the other side, a green valley opened as far as the eye could see. Caribou, elk, moose, mammoth, all kinds of animals were there. Then I had the Dream with the man. The Other you call my father."

"I knew you'd be a powerful Dreamer the first hour of your life."

He shook his head, doubt twisting his gut. "I'm no Dreamer."

The edge of hostility in her voice caught him by surprise. "You won't be if you keep that up. I guarantee that," she spat over her shoulder.

Runs In Light sighed with relief as her steps receded.

After a few moments of silence, Broken Branch's voice came from the darkness to his side. "What did she tell you?"

He blinked to make out her dark silhouette. "That I'm a Dreamer."

"Hardly news."

He shook his head. "I don't understand all this. That, and the man in my Dream."

"Man?"

He nodded. "Heron says Seal Paw wasn't my father."

"What else does she say?"

He heard the stiffness in her voice, felt the growing tension. He bit his lip. Tell her? "That my mother was raped. That I was born first and lay in a shaft of light. That Raven Hunter was born next. That he came out covered with blood. That it ran into his mouth as he was placed beside me. That a raven feather floated down and he grasped it."

"Hah-heeee," she gasped, placing a hand to her mouth. "Yes. Yes, I was there. I bit your cord in two myself. Where . where did your mother ..."

"On the beach, beside the salt water. Heron says she was collecting mussels."

Broken Branch slowly settled on a rock, eyes focused on the moon rising over the western horizon; it gilded the drifting clouds with silver.

"Yes, I heard the rumors." She looked up. "A Dreaming. And she saw you?"

Runs In Light nodded heavily. "Says I looked into her eyes."

"Hah-heeee, I knew it. Wolf Dreamer. Even then you were . different."

He got up and paced angrily. "I don't want to be different! I want to be a hunter! That's all!"

"What else did she tell you? About the People?"

"That we would be killed by the Others ... or taken in among them.

Soaked up like blood in fox fur."Broken Branch covered her head. "You would turn from your people?"

"I'm not the one!" He struggled to keep his voice down. "I went the wrong way! Crow Caller was right."

"We're not dead yet," Broken Branch mumbled to herself. She looked up.

"If not you .. . then who?"

He looked up at the geyser, hearing its roar, seeing the water flying high, sparkling white in the moonlight. "I don't know!" he shouted plaintively, squeezing his head between his hands. "I don't--"

"There's no one else."

"How do you know?"

"Who could it be?"

"I don't know! If the Other in my Dreams is my father, then maybe this Dreaming is in our blood!"

"What does that--"

"Maybe the savior is Raven Hunter!"

Broken Branch sat deathly still, eyes squinted in thought.

Chapter 18.

The caribou came, a black line out of the gray. From where he waited, Runs In Light watched, awed. Just like the old stories, they walked deliberately into the wide-spread wings of the drive line.

To his right, Heron sat in a blind, chanting and singing. To his left, Singing Wolf looked uneasily at the caribou coming steadily toward them.

Then his eyes shifted to Heron's blind, awed.

A strange warmth built in Runs In Light's chest, a feeling of tightness--of Power. On the wings of the drive line, the women crouched, their darts nocked in the hooks of their atlatls. A total silence descended, broken only by the haunting chant from Heron's blind.

Heart racing, Runs In Light watched the animals; ever closer they came, breath puffing up from their black noses, white beards waving, flanks gray against the snow. So many?

"Only kill thirty," Heron had warned, the glow of the Dream bright in her eyes. "That's what I've promised. Only thirty. Be quick, be merciful. They must not suffer."

"Only thirty," he whispered under his breath.

The lead cow was even with him now. She pulled up, head high, two streams of breath blowing from her nose before she stepped lightly forward, c.o.c.king her head at him.

Runs In Light picked up the chant, adding his admiration of her stately beauty, how he would sing her soul to the Blessed Star People.

"You will live through me," he promised. "Your life is our life. Share with us, brothers and sisters of the stars." A warm feeling spread in his breast as she stepped closer, one hoof held in the air, waiting.

In that moment, their eyes met and a soft harmony possessed him, as if his soul drifted to touch hers. He reveled in it, a unity with all life, a weaving, dancing wholeness.

Awed, his heart bursting with love, he explained his need. "Please, Mother. The People need you. Hear our cries? I'm sorry to have to ask."

She stepped forward again, the Power of the Dreaming reaching her. He heard the snow crunch under her splay-toed feet, the huge hooves sinking down until the dewclaws locked in the ice. With her, he breathed the uneasy air. Her concern became his. They moved forward into the killing pen together--the old cow turning sideways.

Gripped by the Power flowing through his veins, Runs In Light stood, rock steady, every nerve humming. He cast, seeing the dart sink deeply into the cow's side, feeling the point angling forward into her vitals.

She stood as he nocked his second dart and pivoted, throwing with all his might, sending the dart home in the side of a young bull. The bone patches left by recently shed antlers gleamed white against the black of his fur.

The cow dropped to her knees, frothy blood at her mouth. Runs In Light continued to sing, soul-sharing the pain with the caribou. Tears filled his eyes, streaking his tanned cheeks. Vaguely, he could sense Singing Wolf on his feet, casting his darts. From the sides, the women ranforward, sending their darts true as the caribou milled. Green Water's arm whipped forward, burying a dart in a bull's shoulder. Laughing Sunshine rushed, her weight impelling the stone head of her lance into a young cow. Another and another went down.

"Enough!" Heron cried, standing, breaking the trance. Caribou turned on their heels, dashing through the ranks of the women, dark feet throwing spurts of snow into the air.

A wounded caribou hobbled to one side, circling to stand meekly before Heron. The old woman settled her dart, balancing the weapon, casting true. The young cow turned, reeling, and pitched on her side to kick futilely.

Only the rasping breath of dying beasts broke the silence.

Runs In Light gasped a deep breath, unaware of how he'd become so winded. Across the s.p.a.ce, Heron's eyes locked with his, probing.

"Did you know you did it?" she called. The words echoed in his mind.

He shook his head. "What?"

"You sang them the rest of the way in. You did."

Runs In Light eased down on a rock to stare dumbly at the b.l.o.o.d.y snow, the feel of the cow's pain still deep in his breast. "I'm sorry, Mother," he said in a wounded voice, gazing at the dead animal.

Chapter 19.

The Long Dark waned.

The spirits that haunted the eddies of Wind Woman's breath whimpered to the north while warmer winds circled up from the southwest, leaving the snow sodden and heavy. To the west, the mountains gleamed dazzlingly white on the few days when the sun shone in the sky. Water trickled from the knife-edged ridges. To the north, the huge braided river poured in torrents, white water shooting high as it bashed from rock to rock.

Time after time, the People hunted the caribou and--best of all--the small herds of musk oxen who foraged in the foothills. Musk ox's flesh had always been a favorite, rich, sweet, heavy with fat--even in this terrible year.

"Leave the mammoth alone," Heron warned, seeing the old bull entering the lower portion of the pool to soak his joints. "Sure, he's got cows and calves up there--but I know them. I won't Dream them in."

Nevertheless, the People grew strong, rendering the carca.s.ses of the kills, boiling fat from the bodies--poor though it might be after so much endless cold. Faces filled, limbs grew strong and hale.

One Who Cries laughed and sang, finding an outcrop of fine-grained quartzite from which to craft his long dart points. The finest flint knapper among the People, he studied the head-sized boulders, judging the stone with a practiced eye before driving off thick wedges of the rock. These primary flakes he quickly thinned with practiced strokes of his hammerstone "Good stuff!" he called to Singing Wolf. "Look, look how well the stone flakes, broad and flat with good control." "Such little things make you happy." Singing Wolf shook his head.

"Uh-huh." And he couldn't deny the truth of that. He pulled his caribou antler from the pack, feeling the use smoothed texture of the tool. He used it as a baton to shape a preform--a basic blank flaked off both sides into a thin lenticular shape. One Who Cries sang spirit songs as the baton snapped long thin flakes from the preform. One by one, he made a supply of preforms, most of which went into his pack for future use.

From the lenticular shape, he could produce a variety of styles of tool including sc.r.a.pers, knives, bur ins and gravers, or dart points as the need arose.

"Nice to see you working again." Singing Wolf settled himself to watch.

One Who Cries whistled loudly, feeling his soul swell. "A person's spirit goes into the stone, you know. There's wonder in that. Good tool stone, like this quartzite, or a fine chert, well, it takes soul better."

Having achieved the basic shape, One Who Cries used his antler and leather to carefully thin the point. He ground the sharp edges down with sandstone, preparing a platform--a purchase surface--for the antler tine. Doing so allowed him more control as he snapped long thin flakes from the point. When he finished, he had produced a parallel-sided point with a needle-sharp tip that just covered the breadth of his hand. He gave the base of the point a final grinding with the sandstone to keep the keen edges from severing the binding sinew when he hafted it to a fore shaft"Now there," he whispered in awe, "is a real beauty."

"And here's the shaft that will hold it." Singing Wolf raised a section of birch sapling to the sky, sighting along it for irregularities.

Having collected three dozen, he laid them aside to prepare his tools.

He re-formed thin sections of a waste flake from the pile at One Who Cries' feet, using an antler tine to create a steep-angled cutting edge along one margin of the stone. With that, he carefully peeled the bark from the shafts, smoothing the knots, using a bone-shaft wrench to straighten the rods over a low fire. The best of the specimens he split to hold One Who Cries' expertly crafted points.

"You know, for a while there, I thought we'd never have the chance to do this again." One Who Cries stared at the wood, thoughtfully slipping his dart point into the groove.

"Wolf Dream, huh?"

One Who Cries grinned. "We're not dead yet, cousin."

Green Water, Laughing Sunshine, and the other women spent the growing days measuring hides carefully against the bodies of the People, sewing the closely tailored garments to fit. In a careful st.i.tch, they closed the seams, leaving the hair inside to provide insulation and circulation to carry away deadly sweat.

"Now, you've got to do this right," Green Water explained to Red Star.

"These are just outer parkas?" Her eyes grew big.

"That's right. Undergarments, the ones that fit next to the skin, we'll have to wait and make from caribou fawn. But for these heavy cold-weather parkas, we have to use winter hides. See? The hair has to be tight. If we killed any later in the season, the hair would slip, fall out."

"So we have two parkas," Red Star observed soberly. "The outer parka goes with the hair out .. . and the under parka from the fawn hide goes hair in!"

Green Water reached over to ruffle her hair. "You're going to make the best of all, huh?"

"Yes!" Red Star giggled. "They're like shelters for each person. That's why they hang down almost to the knees, it makes a tent around you and the long boots come way up high inside."

"You won't freeze," Laughing Sunshine called, inspecting the parka she'd just finished. In all, the complete suit weighed just over ten pounds and could keep a human from freezing even in the deepest biting cold of the Long Dark when a man's spit froze before it hit the ground.

"I'll be the best!" Red Star promised. "You'll see."

Green Water smiled, eyes closed to feel the sun on her face. "Yes, we'll see. Thanks to Wolf Dreamer."

Broken Branch waddled around, enjoying moments of delight as she floated in the hot pool or picked at the curious yellow crust that formed wherethe water lapped at the rocks.

From the rocks--exposed by the retreating drifts--moss, lichen, and over wintered leaves were gathered to make the strong black tea. As the thick brambles of blueberry, bearberry, and cranberry melted out, fat berries remained, preserved through the Long Dark, sweet and succulent as their juices melted in the mouth.

The children ran, laughed, and played, splashing in the warm waters, eyes twinkling.

Standing a hundred yards from Heron's cave, One Who Cries, Jumping Hare, and Singing Wolf watched the water from the hot pool rise in twining wreaths, casting occasional glances to where Runs In Light stood talking to the old Dreamer. Heron's cackle rent the air like a knife.

One Who Cries stood tall, filling his lungs with crisp spring-scented air as he studied flights of ravens coming up from the south. A flock of scavenger gulls wheeled to the west. "Caribou," he mumbled. "There must be a herd coming."