"I get harassed plenty." His grin faded. "People have just been wondering about how you were getting along, like I said. We've-"
"Everyone's all right? No one's sick or hurt? You didn't come for help to heal?"
"No, everyone's fine. But we'd started to worry about you. The idea came up more than once to send someone up to see how you were doing." A twinkle came to his eye as he added, "Maybe make sure you weren't going to freeze."
"Bah! That'll be the day!"
Ignoring her outburst, he continued, "I just sort of volunteered."
She perked up at that. "Volunteered? You? I thought you didn't like me." And you're hiding something. No, there's more to this. What?
He avoided her eyes. "It's not that I don't like you. It's just that you kept pushing me about Power. You always seemed to know I'd Dreamed. You always knew everything. You wanted me to be more than I wanted to be. That's all. I didn't hate you or anything."
Liar! The old keenness had returned. "Then why did you decide to come? The Dreams still bothering you?" Ah, that's it! Look at him squirm like a packrat in a snake's hole!
He nodded, rubbing his hands together, suddenly nervous. "Look, I'm not your Dreamer. I don't want to get all tangled up in that again."
"Well, quit worrying. You're not my Dreamer." She shifted the moccasins on the rock, watching the steam rise from the warm hides.
"Good."
"But it's the Dreams, isn't it? That's why you came all the way up here."
He stared silently into the fire, a faint puckering visible about his lips, lines forming in his brow.
Dropping her voice, she added gently, "I won't push you about it. I . . . well, I made a mistake. Handled the whole thing poorly. I learned that day Blood Bear came down here and tried to start a war. That's when it all came clear." She made a gesture as if to wave it all away. "So just talk. I'll help any way I can. I'll just listen if you want."
He hesitated, seemed to stumble, then said: "It's the Dreams. I'm making everyone but Two Smokes crazy. Hungry Bull says it's like being on a peak in a lightning storm, you don't know when to jump."
"Power does that."
"Anyway, the Dreams come and go . . . more so lately. I get one that comes back time after time. I'm alone in the middle of a forest fire. And a Spirit Wolf walks through the flames and turns into a man. When he talks to me, he talks in riddles I can't understand, about being everything and nothing at the same time. I get the shakes for days.
"Then I've had other things happen . . . like a living Dream. One time we'd gone to trap mountain sheep and I . . . lost myself in the sheep, I guess you'd say." He swallowed hard, changing the subject. "Two Smokes and Elk Charm are worried. I guess everyone's worried. I see it in their eyes. They know I have Dreams—but they don't understand. Makes Fun and Meadowlark, they're nervous about their children. Don't know what I'll do to them. Elk Charm and Two Smokes thought I should come see you."
She lifted an eyebrow. "Elk Charm?"
He began to fidget. "We're married."
She sighed and rubbed her forehead where the tumpline had bitten so deeply. Her dry laughter surprised him. "Circles, boy." She shook her head. "Married, eh? Well, I wish you better luck with it than I had."
"I'm happy. She knows I have trouble with the Dreams."
"Good, it makes things easier to explain." She reached into a pouch and pulled out a stick of dried sego-lily bread and tossed it to him. "I hope Elk Charm understands what she's gotten herself into. Don't look at me like that. I know what I'm talking about. I inflicted myself on both Big Fox and Cut Feather. Well, thinking about it, I didn't know what I was doing when I married Big Fox. That was the first time. I was young—well, not so young as you—but young. Thought I could simply settle down and live like a real person. Thought I could deny the Dreams."
"And it didn't work?" He chewed the breadstick absently, jaws working under smooth skin. Unconsciously, his eyes kept straying to the spiral pecked in the back wall where the sunlight illuminated it.
"No. It never worked." She laughed at the idea. "There's something about the way a human is put together. We're no different than the rest of the animals, I suppose. I mean, take a beaver. It doesn't matter that he's got a dammed-up pool full of willow twigs all cut and stuck down there in the mud. He's still got to crawl out and chew down trees—even spruce trees if they're the only ones available. I guess you'd say that's the way the Wise One Above made him. With humans, well, we have the need to be with each other, and when men and women are together, the robes get parted and what makes men men and women women meets. I had all those urges and I thought coupling would overpower the Dreams."