People of the Fire(39)

But a person never knew when a party of hunters might return, or when an accident might happen to disclose him.

In the shade of a lodge, one of the dogs shifted, sighed, and rolled on its side, legs out. As the dog's breathing deepened, the eyes closed.

A fly buzzed in the afternoon. The cottonwood leaves overhead barely rustled.

A stillness settled over the drowsy camp.

Sage Root bent to do Chokecherry's bidding even though her mind knotted with other preoccupations. She drank her fill of the gritty water, enjoying the mineral aftertaste for the first time. Around her, the world seemed so bright, so clear and warm—unlike the chill inside.

She ran a loving hand over her son's head, following Chokecherry as she led the way up the path. Sage Root blinked, trying to clear her oddly dulled mind. Her thoughts blurred, as if her head had been stuffed with fur—or the cottony seeds of milkweed. She couldn't think with as much clarity as before.

As she walked, she couldn't help but look to Heavy Beaver's lodge, seeing the sticks, feeling the malevolence of their presence. Something in her soul whimpered.

“Come on," Chokecherry insisted, gripping her by the hand and pulling her down and into the amber-lit insides of the lodge. "Sit."

She went where Chokecherry pointed, dropping herself onto a roll of elk hide, propping her back on one of the willow backrests. Little Dancer settled beside her, staring around, one hand tucked reassuringly in hers.

Chokecherry's lodge—like most of the People's—had a shabby look. Overhead the cover shaded from buff to gray to black with soot from so many fires. Peeled poles formed a base three paces across and rose to a tall man's height. A thicker center pole supported the whole, the tops of all soot-blackened. Chokecherry set about rolling up the bottoms of the lodge to allow the breeze to blow through.

Here and there, parfleches lay about the perimeter and one of Chokecherry's old dogs stared at her from the side. A big beast, it carried most of Chokecherry's possessions when the band traveled to new camps. Even the dogs looked worn these days; their gaunt sides had gone slat-ribbed. The barking and howling normal to the village pack seemed subdued. But then, so many of the pups had been clunked in the head and thrown into stew that she couldn't blame them. The People had grown irritable. Fighting dogs pushed them past the tolerance point.

Chokecherry wiped her hands, satisfied with the fire. She bent to the fire pit, stirring the ashes, blowing a coal alive as she fed it shredded sagebrush bark, adding bits of cotton-wood branch until she had a crackling blaze. Then she piled rocks to heat in the center, digging ornately carved spoon bowls out of a parfleche.

Another time, Sage Root might have stopped to marvel at the pieces. Each had been carved from the boss of a mountain-sheep-horn sheath. The rich mottled brown and tan had been polished with fine sand until it glistened. The forms of buffalo, elk, deer, and antelope had been most carefully engraved on the sides while hunters surrounded the whole, darts flying.

"Now, tell me. Did you sit there all night looking at those sticks?"

Sage Root closed her eyes, nodding. By the Hero Twins, she'd hated herself for it. Through the long hours of night, as the filling moon traced its way across the heavens, she'd watched, seeing the angle of the shadows cast by the sticks slowly creeping across the ground. The chill in her soul had grown, eating away at the very warmth of her body until she sat like ice, feeling each beat of her heart. Time had begun to drag, slowing, becoming less and less real. The world had changed subtly, becoming an eerie place.

Not even the gentle breathing of her son beside her had affected the chill.

"Sage Root, listen to me. You're doing this to yourself. Do you understand?" Chokecherry hunched over, staring into her eyes.

For a moment, Sage Root let herself surrender to those warm brown depths, let herself believe the sincerity she saw there. Chokecherry caught that flicker of acknowledgment and smiled warmly.

"Now, you've got to pull yourself together and think. Heavy Beaver wants you to stare at those sticks. He wants you to feel them in your very soul. If you let yourself do that, if you let yourself play into his hands, you'll will yourself to die."

“But he's a Spirit Dreamer."

"I don't believe that. And I don't think you do either. After you let your imagination play with your head all night, you're not sure. That's the part of you he's betting on, preying on-like some sort of parasite. Sage Root, look at me. He's got his claws into you. Are you going to let him wiggle in the rest of the way?"

She dropped her head in her hands, feeling her son's grip tightening on her skirt. "I don't know."

"The other night, you chose to eat the meat. You knew he'd do this, yet you still chose. Why?"