As Sky Messenger listened, the nostrils of his slender nose flared in and out, and the lines around his wide mouth went hard. He must be fighting the battle in his mind, trying to see what she had seen.
“And then?”
Baji struggled to remember. “I don’t remember anything else.”
“You were completely surrounded. You were hurt. Cord was injured. You must have fought back or run.”
“Probably both … but I recall none of it.”
Gitchi must have heard the tension in her voice. He trotted over and lay down at Baji’s side. As he propped his big muzzle in her lap, he looked up at her with loving yellow eyes—as though he thought she needed comforting. She petted his soft back.
Sky Messenger said, “What’s the next thing you remember after you escaped?”
Out in the trees, two deer slipped through the shadows, a buck and a doe. Their thick winter coats had a pearlescent ash-colored sheen. Quietly, she said, “There’s dinner.”
Sky Messenger turned. “I have plenty of food in my pack. Let them go. I’d rather hear your story.”
The doe lifted her head at his voice and sniffed the air, startled that she hadn’t scented them before, then she followed the buck onto the trail, and their hooves kicked up snow as they bounded away, heading down into the sunlit valley far below.
“Odd that they didn’t scent us, or Gitchi, or the campfire.”
“The wind must have been wrong.”
Sky Messenger squinted down the trail for several long moments, before he repeated, “What’s the next thing you remember?”
Her head had started to pound again, and with it nausea welled. She put a hand to her belly. “I don’t remember a place as much as a feeling of pure panic. I knew I had to find you, to protect you. The need was overwhelming.” She hesitated and watched the steam rising from the teapot. Behind her eyes she glimpsed trees passing, enormous chestnuts, hills in front of her that seemed to roll on forever. “Then I found myself running. That’s the next thing I recall. Running as hard as I could … at the very edge of my endurance, my lungs bursting. I think I must have collapsed or fainted. I woke up in the middle of the night … on this trail.” Nausea tickled the back of her throat. She squeezed her eyes closed, trying to force it away.
Softly, he said, “All right. That’s enough for now.”
“I think I need to eat something.”
“I’ll fill your bowl this instant.”
As he went about filling their bowls and dipping cups of tea, Baji continued stroking Gitchi’s thick fur. Why had she only told him about Shago-niyoh finding her on the trail, and not the details of their conversation?
Because I’m afraid to.
Twenty-one
As High Matron Kittle stalked in front of her fire in the Deer Clan longhouse, her many shell rings and bracelets clicked musically. Even through the walls and the three rings of palisades, she could hear the enemy calling taunts from the catwalks of Yellowtail Village. All day long both sides had been urinating off the palisades, yelling, shaking their penises at each other, and firing arrows smeared with feces. A combination of terror and indignation tormented her. She’d barely looked at the four women who sat around her fire, drinking cups of rosehip tea. Kittle had been an utter fool. She should have listened to Jigonsaseh. Because she hadn’t, innocent people had died.
The Deer Clan longhouse was smaller than the longhouses in other nations, stretching only five hundred hands long. Twenty-five fires burned down the central aisle. People stood around each blaze, their faces firelit, engaged in barely audible conversations that mostly dealt with the probable extinction of the Standing Stone nation. The hum of voices carried the low dire quality of defeat.
Since the attack, people had begun looking longingly at the corn, bean, squash, and sunflower plants that draped from the roof poles. Kittle wondered how long it would be before desperate parents started stealing them to feed their hungry children. She’d ordered all baskets of food and water pots kept in a single storehouse under heavy guard, but had not had time yet to pull down the whole plants from the roof poles. She must attend to that immediately.
Kittle swung around to glare at the other matrons. “Well? The enemy has just stuffed our kirtles down our throats. What are we going to do about it?”
She folded her arms over her knee-length dress, and waited for someone to answer. Instead, the matrons fell into a soft discussion, which Kittle found annoying. At least one of them should have shouted or raged. She wished they would. It would help relieve her tension.
Jigonsaseh of the Bear Clan sat across the fire, her smooth oval face impassive, the silver in her black hair shimmering in the firelight. To Jigonsaseh’s left, Matron Dehot of the Wolf Clan hunched. She’d seen forty-five summers and had a gaunt face and black-streaked gray hair. White wolf tracks decorated her blue cape. Beside her, Matron Sihata of the Hawk Clan fiddled with her white hair, twisting it nervously. She’d seen sixty summers. Her deeply wrinkled face resembled a shriveled plum. To Jigonsaseh’s right sat Matron Daga, formerly of White Dog Village, now a refugee. Her toothless mouth kept trembling, as though she couldn’t keep it still.