Baji smiled and gestured to the trail. “Stop stalling. I’ll be waiting right over there in the trees, watching for you.”
Dekanawida backed away and his eyes narrowed. “Gitchi, stay. Guard Baji.”
The wolf trotted over to Baji’s side and stood looking up at her. She scratched his head.
As Dekanawida trotted away, Gitchi’s big front paws nervously kneaded the ground, as though eager to run after his best friend.
Baji looked down at him. As he leaned against her leg, she said, “He’s afraid to lose you, too, you know?”
Gitchi’s ears pricked, listening attentively. She petted the wolf’s neck for a long time, letting his soft warmth seep into her, before she walked off the trail through the frozen brown leaves to stand beneath the arching branches of a beech tree.
She braced her shoulder against the smooth gray bark and gazed upward at the crows sailing through the sky with their ebony wings flashing in the sunlight. Gitchi stood beside her, his nose up, sniffing for danger.
Baji tingled. She didn’t understand it, but every time she got off the trail and stole cat-footed into the forest shadows, a supernatural vitality filled her. Life seemed to rear up and charge through her veins with such exquisite freedom she felt she would burst with the sheer ecstasy of it.
I feel so alive.
Her entire life, in one form or another, she had existed in perpetual fear of things seen or unseen. Now all that was gone. Like white water rushing away down a river, it had receded into the far country.
Gitchi whimpered.
She lowered her fingers to absently stroke his head. As though the wolf understood more than she did, he whimpered again.
Baji looked down. His yellow eyes had a tight look, as though he sensed her leaving him, and didn’t want her to go.
“I’m still here, fool,” she teased.
Gitchi gently licked her hand.
Forty-one
When they reached the eastern-most periphery of the camps, Towa slowed to a walk and lifted his hand to every person he saw. Almost everyone recognized him and smiled in return. Hiyawento carefully examined them. These people’s capes hung about them in shreds, and their moccasins and leggings were a patchwork of sewn-up holes. No jewelry clicked or glinted.
Towa whispered, “Let’s just walk along the edge of the camps. That will look perfectly normal to the warriors on the palisades.”
“I understand.”
As they passed each fire, Hiyawento tried to identify the thin soups that filled the supper pots: dried milkweed and ferns were the main ingredients, but occasionally he caught sight of mushrooms or chunks of desiccated grasshoppers.
Hiyawento said, “They have no meat? No corn, beans, or squash? No sunflowers?”
Towa shook his head as he weaved between two huts. Four women sat outside, talking, using bone awls threaded with cordage to sew up the holes in badly worn hides—hides anyone else would have thrown away.
“A pleasant afternoon to you,” Towa said warmly.
One of the women lifted a hand, and they fell back into their conversation, barely glancing up at Towa and Hiyawento as they casually walked by.
“A little rude,” Hiyawento murmured.
“Don’t blame them. They have nothing to Trade. My presence just reminds them of how poor they are.”
The remnants of last autumn’s cornfields stood along the river bank. The stalks—hacked off at the ground—had barely grown to the size of Hiyawento’s little finger. They’d obviously gotten no corn from these fields. They’d cut the stalks to weave into mats, baskets, dolls, ropes, or sandals, maybe even boiled them to extract what little nutrients they contained, but they hadn’t fed many people, if any.
A group of five boys walked by, and Hiyawento stared at their bulging eyes. Their heads appeared huge, wobbling on bony necks. When Towa noticed Hiyawento’s undue attention, he whispered, “Take a good look. The next time you think your people are hungry, remember these children.”
Hiyawento swallowed hard. “No wonder the Mountain People have been hitting them so hard.”
Every nation was struggling to survive, so they viewed the troubles of others as opportunities. Any village that was sick or starving became a target. Their neighbors waited until they were too weak to fight back, then they attacked, ransacked the food stores, and killed their enemies.
A memory slipped from the locked door where Hiyawento kept it buried … last spring … boiling maple sap with my three daughters … pouring the syrup into wooden molds … waiting until it hardened and turned to sugar … sweet treats and laughter … so much love in their eyes …
His steps faltered as he forced their smiling faces away. Jimer and Catta had been so beautiful.