People - People of the Wolf Part 38

Green Water picked her way through the darkness, hugging her husband.

"He's just come back." One Who Cries frowned, kicking a dog away from the meat. "Who?"

"Wolf Dreamer."

Singing Wolf stopped at the anxious tone in her voice. "Where? What's happened?"

In the darkness, he could see the familiar shrug of her shoulder.

"There. In Heron's shelter."

He could feel One Who Cries' eyes on him, waiting. "Jumping Hare. Keep the dogs out of the meat and see that it gets distributed." He started quickly for the shelter, One Who Cries on his heels as he walked the winding path along the pool.

"Wolf Dreamer? You there?" he called at the door. "Come."

He anxiously licked his lips before lifting the flap. Heron's shelter always p.r.i.c.kled his scalp. A Power place to begin with; something about the eyeless skulls, the intricate colorful drawings on the rock, the fetishes in niches, all left a man's gut rotating.

Singing Wolf blinked in the dim light of a fading fire, seeing Wolf Dreamer sitting up, hood thrown back. Then he stopped, One Who Cries pushing alongside, his flat face forward, peering.

But who was this man? His face, once smooth and young, looked pinched. A curious, knowing light burned in his black eyes. As if Runs In Light'sfeatures were possessed by someone else--someone different, strange.

"I .. . We were ..." Words stuck in his throat. "You're back."

Singing Wolf shifted uneasily, waiting for One Who Cries to speak.

Wolf Dreamer smiled wistfully, sensing their disquiet. "I crossed the Big Ice."

Stunned, Singing Wolf dropped to his knees. "You .. ."

Wolf Dreamer nodded serenely. "But the People won't be able to follow in my tracks. It's too dangerous. Lost both the dogs. To cross is, well, a nightmare worse than Crow Caller's threats."

Singing Wolf slumped, weariness flowing back through his exhausted body.

"Blessed Star People, that means things are bad."

"Bad?" Wolf Dreamer reached for one of the old sticks from the willow-wood pile and dropped it on the fire to a rising of sparks.

"Very bad," One Who Cries agreed. "In the three turnings of the moon that you've been gone, four camps of people have come over the hills to winter here. Beyond, down where the Big River flows out into the plains, the People find nothing but war. Our young men and the Others, they raid back and forth, moving constantly, striking each other. The old, the children, they can't travel constantly. Not in the Long Dark. So they come here to find peace."

"All but the young men and women?" Singing Wolf nodded uneasily. "Yes, how did you know? The youth find this new life exciting."

Wolf Dreamer's eyes watered. "But who tells them the winter stories? How is the lore of the People pa.s.sed on if all they do is run and fight? Who hunts for the old, the young?"

"Only our camp," Singing Wolf said softly.

One Who Cries sighed. "And the Others aren't leaving as Raven Hunter promised. The raids continue endlessly, back and forth. They're fighting through the Long Dark. Can you imagine that? What about the Soul Eaters?"

Singing Wolf added, "And our supplies are dwindling fast."

"What of the Others' supplies? Are they suffering--"

"They trade to different camps to the north and west along the salt water. They have plenty of food and new hides. They move their sick and old to camps farther up where meat has been taken and frozen. Then they send their young men to follow the Big River south, all carrying their weapons over their shoulders."

Wolf Dreamer's jaw muscles bunched under his cheeks. "And my brother?"

Singing Wolf lifted his hands. "He claims he's keeping the Others at bay. The People, at least the ones here--who don't count in the end--wonder. They see only disaster."

Wolf Dreamer nodded.One Who Cries lowered his eyes. "We had hoped the Wolf Dream .. . That there was a way across the Big Ice."

Wolf Dreamer looked up at them, eyes oddly lit. "Across the Big Ice? No, not for the People. Too many would die, slip, fall, be lost in creva.s.ses. There's no food up there. Only snow, and ice, and gravels melting out. I crossed the Big Ice in a month. Most of it without food."

One Who Cries looked nervously at Singing Wolf. "Then it looks like we'll have to take up Raven Hunter's way. Fight until--"

"No .. ." Wolf Dreamer whispered eerily. "My Dream is right."

"Right?"

Wolf Dreamer nodded. "I crossed the ice. Had to kill Grandfather White Bear up there. But I lived on his flesh." He extended a pouch. With trembling fingers, One Who Cries undid the binding, spilling out a wealth of claws. Singing Wolf swallowed and looked up.

"Grandfather White Bear? So far south? He eats seals, hunts the ice."

One Who Cries shook his head. "I don't understand."

"Bear Power," Singing Wolf added under his breath.

"No matter how he got there, he came, following my scent." Wolf Dreamer smiled at the memory. "I tried to run at first. Then I called him, like I did the caribou. Remember?" They both nodded nervously.

"I Dreamed him over the slabs of ice. The trail circled a slab thrust up by the ghosts below. There I waited, Dreaming him past, his nose to the snow. As he came, I rose on my toes, Dreaming my dart point to the place behind the shoulder, driving it with all my strength."

"Ahhhh!" One Who Cries sighed, eyes glowing.

"And the dart point you made went true." Wolf Dreamer patted One Who Cries' sleeve. "Grandfather White Bear whirled and twisted and snapped the shaft, but in doing so, sliced his heart in two."

"You did this alone?" Singing Wolf asked, mouth dry.

"Alone." He nodded wearily. "And Grandfather White Bear's blood, heart, and liver gave me strength. His flesh made me strong. His hide gave me warmth beyond my parka and long boots. I lived."

One Who Cries shook his head.

"Then I killed long-horned buffalo that ran free across the vast plains on the other side of the Big Ice. The game is tame. I walked up to animals. They simply looked at me, wary, walking off slowly, or coming close to smell. You see, they've never been hunted by men before."

Singing Wolf straightened slowly, holding his breath. Could it really be true? "No sign of men?" "None." "Only the Big Ice lies between us and this .. . wondrous place?" Wolf Dreamer nodded.

"But you crossed twice!" Singing Wolf cried. "Maybe just a few of us could build a trail? Find a way for the elders and the children?""Impossible," Wolf Dreamer told them, eyes seeing someplace far away.

"The ice shifts, blocks slide and crack. Any trail changes as it's made.

What was safe the first time will be death the second. Every step must be felt out. That I lived is a miracle. And no, I didn't cross twice.

Only once."

Singing Wolf shook his head. "You crossed twice, Wolf Dreamer. Or are you a spirit?" As soon as he said it, he regretted the words. This place of Heron's gave him fear nerves anyway. And if Wolf Dreamer were an apparition, his soul was already mostly sucked away.

Wolf Dreamer chuckled softly. "No, I'm no spirit, old friends. I only crossed the ice once. The way back"--he paused--"is much more frightening."

The hair on the back of Singing Wolf's neck p.r.i.c.kled. He looked sideways at One Who Cries, who looked back, mouth open, hesitation in his brown eyes.

Wolf Dreamer steepled his fingers. "The way is only open until the Long Light advances. When the warm breezes blow, it will close. We can only cross in the Long Dark."

"Cross? But you said--"

"A poor choice of words." He raised his hands. "Better had I said come through."

"Through?" One Who Cries looked his mystification at Singing Wolf.

"Underneath, actually." Wolf Dreamer's eyes glowed again. "The way is dark."

"The way?" Singing Wolf held his breath.

Wolf Dreamer nodded. "The way is alongside the Big River."

"Like Wolf showed you."

"Yes. When the water builds up in the Long Light, it flows through a second channel. For two days, a man must walk in total blackness, feeling his way."

"The hole."

One Who Cries started. "You walked into that? Under that? You're crazy!"

"Hush!" Singing Wolf chastised harshly. "What else, Wolf Dreamer?"

Wolf Dreamer spread his hands again. "That's not the worst. The ghosts are there, watching a man move in the darkness below."

One Who Cries propped his chin in his hands. "Under the Big Ice? After all the stories Crow Caller told? And you can hear the ghosts?" Singing Wolf frowned at his cousin. "Would you rather have the ghosts or the Others?"

"Give me the Others!"

Singing Wolf dismissed him with the wave of a hand, forehead lining inconcentration. "We could make a fire to carry. Render a lot of fat.

Maybe make lines that people could hold."

One Who Cries shook his head. "But if we get lost in there, our souls will be trapped forever in darkness!"

Wolf Dreamer's eyes glazed, his mouth slackening as though on the verge of a Dream. His cousins hushed, studying the faraway gaze.

"The ice is melting," the Dreamer whispered hoa.r.s.ely. "Someday it will all melt off and people will cross on land, in the light of Father Sun."

"Can we wait--"

"No." Wolf Dreamer smiled. "It won't happen in this lifetime. We must go now, through the hole, before it's too late."

"Too late?"

"Yes, before the salt water rushes down from the north to flood all the land and the hole closes up again."

Chapter 45.

Dancing Fox grimaced as she hobbled along the pool, thick streamers of white steam rising into the gray mist overhead. A dull pain still grated in her ankle. That she'd broken the thin bone along the outside of the calf was apparent, but it seemed to be healing all right--even if it left a lump. Too long Green Water had made her lie on her back.

She'd put off this meeting. Put it off in the hopes he'd come to her. In the long days since he'd returned, she hadn't parted Green Water's shelter flap, waiting in an agony of indecision.

As if by magic, Green Water appeared at her side. "Going to see him?"

Dancing Fox swallowed and nodded, perhaps too curtly. "What should I say to him? Start out with, "My heart is glad to see you again'? Or how about, "Your cursed Wolf Dream ruined my life. What're you going to do about it?" "

Green Water's kind eyes chided. "I don't think the last will help the situation any."

Fox shook her head. "I know. I'm confused. I've been scared to death ever since he returned. One minute I was afraid he'd show up and crawl into my robes. I'd close my eyes and hope, imagining how it would be.

The next, I hated the very thought of seeing his face." She shifted off her healing foot, wincing in the process. "Everyone's in awe of him.

It's a scary thing. Do I even know him now?"

Green Water crossed her arms, staring thoughtfully at the gravel underfoot. "I don't know, but you've changed as much as he has. No one knows either of you anymore. Perhaps you've both taken the responsibilities of leaders."

"They'd never let a cursed woman be a leader," she scoffed.

"A lot of people respect what you did out there, the way you handled Raven Hunter. They talk of the honor you showed by staying with Talon and how you traveled so far with a broken ankle. Some are even whispering that you have Power. That you can hunt on your own, maybe even Dream in animals the way Heron did."

"That's because they didn't see me eating rancid bone marrow, or shivering in my parkas, drenched with fear sweat that Grandfather Brown Bear would find me."

"You were scared when you stayed with Talon?" Green Water's benign eyes didn't waver.

Dancing Fox looked away, memories of the old woman's death too tender to deal with. "Terrified. She was my friend-my teacher. I'll always be frightened to tackle life without her."

"But you will." "Of course." She glanced apprehensively at Heron's shelter. "You've heard enough from me. Go and see Wolf Dreamer. He'll help you find out what you want next." Green Water nodded encouragingly and walked off about her business, humming under her breath.

Dancing Fox sucked in a deep and anxious breath, then strode hurriedly, stopping before the door flap. Clearing her throat, she called, "Runs InLight? You in there?"

"I've been expecting you."

The familiar voice touched her, while some subtle quality set her on guard. She ducked through the caribou-hide hanging, looking around, seeing him on folded wolf skins, a white bear hide pillowed behind him.