As evening blanketed the forest, dove-colored and iridescent, patches of snow became radiant, turning the air liquid and faintly blue, and shivering light upon the delicate ferns that hid between the rocks. The ache in her heart had become too much to bear.
Baji had to squeeze her eyes closed against it. What is that unearthly crying?
Against her leg, Gitchi’s tail wagged.
She opened her eyes. In the small clearing surrounded by fire cherries and pawpaws, she caught movement. She kept her eyes on it. When she could make out darkness rippling around a black cape, she quickly called, “I don’t need you! Leave.”
No sound. No response.
The quiet of evening seemed to intensify. The call faded, leaving behind a huge maw of silence.
As he started to turn, to leave, she swallowed hard. “No, wait. Just tell me one thing.”
He turned back to stare at her. Obviously trying not to frighten her, he slowly walked closer. Dark sad eyes glinted in the frame of his hood. He stopped three paces away, folded his arms beneath his cape, and gently asked, “What do you need to know?”
“Tell me why I feel so alive?”
He blinked, and his gaze shifted. He seemed to be staring over her shoulder, seeing something far away. “It’s part of preparing.”
“Preparing?”
He nodded. “Yes. You’re at a place where every step you take is illuminated by the Road of Light.” He glanced up at the twilight sky where the brightest campfires of the dead had just begun to shine. The contours of the Road were dimly visible. “It wakes a person up, and that’s necessary, because to live your dying fully you must wake up.”
To live my dying fully …
She braced her feet. “So I’m dying?”
A faint smile turned his lips. “That’s all any of us ever do, Baji. When the deer come for you, if you let them, you will understand that the Road is all there is. We set foot upon it long before we’re born.”
Gitchi slid around her leg and went to stand in front of Shago-niyoh, looking up with loving eyes. When Shago-niyoh smiled down at him, the wolf stretched and wagged his tail again.
“All right,” Baji said as though dismissing a war council. “You can go now.”
He hesitated. “Don’t you want to ask me about the strange many-voiced cry?”
Her heart stuttered. She took a quick step toward him, breathlessly asking, “What is it? Do you hear it? Is it human?”
He cocked his head in a curious birdlike manner, examining her with only one shining eye. “They stand at the foot of the bridge. They start calling very early, when we are children. Their Song changes over the summers, as more and more come and lie down, to wait. They’re trying to guide you to them so you won’t get lost on the way. If you find them, they will protect you as you cross to the other side.”
The animals who wait at the bridge that spans the dark abyss …
Her eyes burned. She wiped them on her sleeve. “So, I’m still alive?”
He stood for a long time, gazing up at the evening sky. Wind waffled his black hood around his face and sent icy fingers probing beneath her cape. When she shivered, he looked back at her.
Baji said, “I’m not sure anymore. I was when I started, but … I’m not sure now. Tell me.”
Shago-niyoh waited for a time, staring at her with kind eyes, then he turned and walked away into the deepening shadows with his cape swaying about his long legs.
She watched until he disappeared. “He knows, Gitchi. Why won’t he tell me? I’d still be doing exactly what I am. It wouldn’t change a thing.”
The wolf stayed very close to her side as they walked through the old leaves, listening to the wavering moans and sobs that seemed to flutter in the air around them. The cry grew fainter with each step, until it thinned to nothingness across the distances, and the forest felt suddenly hollow beyond words.
Forty-three
Sky Messenger
As twilight settles over the forest, I hike up the steep trail behind Hiyawento, heading toward the crest of the hill where I know Baji and Gitchi wait. My friend’s broad back sways with his long stride. He has his war club clenched in his fist. Each time he glances over his shoulder at the rumbling crowd that trails behind us like a great thunderstorm, worry and near-panic fill his face. We move rapidly, trying to lose them. The camps surrounding Shookas Village emptied out as we wound our way between the fires, coalescing into a ragged horde of six or seven hundred people. They follow like walking skeletons. Enormous sunken eyes ringed with black circles peer at me from inside ragged hoods.
Hiyawento’s nerves are fraying. He keeps looking back, his jaw grinding. His beaked nose glistens with sweat. He doesn’t like this any more than I do. Crowds are unpredictable, and none of us is certain why they follow us.