People of the Black Sun(121)

Tutelo had shaken her head vehemently. “I don’t like that. What if somebody thinks he’s an evil Spirit? If somebody’s having a bad day, that name could cost him his life.”

“Well … then think of something else,” Odion had said.

Baji smiled at the memories.

Gitchi.

Yes, Gitchi. Baji had named him those many summers ago. Gitchi Manitou were words she’d heard from a Trader who’d come from north of Skanodario Lake. She had no idea what it meant, but she’d always liked it.

She lowered her hand to stroke his sore foreleg and Gitchi licked her fingers with his eyes half-closed in gratitude.

Gitchi had grown up on the war trail, and his white face testified that he was far older than the number of breaths he had drawn, or the long winter nights he’d slept curled beside Dekanawida. When Baji looked at him an old, old soul looked back, one that had witnessed far too much, and loved too deeply to ever be quite ordinary again.

Odion had been right. Gitchi did have a special power. She thought that maybe her souls, and his, were intertwined. Baji had been born Wolf Clan. Though Cord had adopted her into the Turtle Clan when she’d seen twelve summers, some part of her still heard the wolf songs that seeped up from the primeval darkness between her souls. Often, she wondered if Gitchi could hear them, too. It was a strange thing. There had been many nights last summer when she’d been lying in Dekanawida’s arms, blinking dreamily into Gitchi’s eyes, and she swore they had both drifted out of this world to somewhere beyond. Perhaps they’d sat together beside one of the campfires of the dead? She knew only that he was there with her, standing guard, keeping her safe. They’d scented the wind together, shared blankets, and listened to that far-off cry that Baji swore was the same cry she heard tonight. His devotion, in this life and the life beyond, was both wonderful and wrenching.

Last summer, she’d seen the effects firsthand when two Flint warriors, Ogwed and Yondwi, had gotten into a fight on the war trail. Baji had been a deputy war chief. She’d stepped between them to shove them apart and started shouting at them to stop. Gitchi, as usual, was curled up on the ground at Dekanawida’s feet ten paces away, but he’d been watching. Ignoring Baji, Ogwed had swung a fist into his opponent’s temple, and Yondwi responded by grabbing Baji’s shoulders and hurling her aside like a cornhusk doll so he could get to Ogwed. She’d hit the ground so hard it had knocked the wind from her lungs.

The other warriors standing around watching the fight heard neither snarl nor growl, but a sound that more closely resembled a soul-chilling bellow, and they’d seen Gitchi’s gray body streak across the ten paces and become airborne, launched straight at Yondwi. Yondwi had been in the process of drawing back his arm to throw another punch, when Gitchi slammed into the chest, toppled him backward to the ground, and grabbed him by the throat. Yondwi lived only because Dekanawida had shouted, “Gitchi, no!”

While friends rushed to Yondwi’s side to examine his bleeding neck, Gitchi had run circles around them, his fangs slathering foam, snarling ferociously. Every hair on his body had stood straight up. The threat had been clear: Don’t you ever touch Baji again.

The story had traveled through every camp, up and down the war trails even into enemy villages where Gitchi’s name was whispered in the same breath as Oki and Witch Dog. Gitchi had become legend. No man or woman dared lay a hand on Baji if Gitchi was in sight.

“Maybe I should have named you Oki after all,” she murmured to him.

Gitchi wagged his tail and propped his muzzle on her blanket so that his black nose almost touched Baji’s. For a long time, they breathed each other’s souls. In his yellow eyes she saw stars reflecting, one in particular, bright and faintly reddish.

When the mournful many-voiced cry blared again, Gitchi pricked his ears to listen, but his gaze remained fixed upon her. She felt strangely certain that he was convinced she could not possibly leave him as long as he could see her with his own eyes.

Baji gently slid forward to hug him. His thick fur smelled of old leaves and campfires. “You’re a good friend,” she whispered.

Gitchi licked her shoulder and vented a deep sigh.

In a sleepy voice, Dekanawida whispered, “Are you awake?”

“Yes, but you should sleep.”

As she lay down again, he shifted to cup his body against her, bringing his knees up behind hers, and encircling her with his muscular arms.

“Why are you awake?” he murmured. “What are you thinking about?”

Baji’s gaze drifted upward to the Road of Light glittering across the belly of Brother Sky. “I was looking at the fork in the trail.”