"Be serious! If I can sneak up on a deer, where's the stupid Short Buffalo man who can catch me? You've heard the stories about how they stumble around in the trees. They don't know the trails. No one knows the trails like me."
"Except Ramshorn and Never Sweat and Tall Fir and—"
"But I know most of them. And by the time I'm a full woman, I'll know them all. You watch."
Elk Charm sat in silence for a moment, face puckered in a frown. "Why are you like that? Why are you always trying to be different from everyone else?"
Tanager shrugged, genuinely baffled herself. "I don't know. It's like something in the trees whispers to me. Maybe it's like when you go with your family to collect berries and you want to go home, to be back in your lodge where you know where you are. You know that feeling? It's just that I feel the same way about being out in timber and climbing the rocks."
"You ought to be a boy."
"Maybe, but I don't know any boys that run as fast as I do. And I've had Snaps Horn and Warm Wind try and follow me. They slip off the logs and break branches and trip a lot. Not only that, I can throw rocks straighten"
"You can't outwrestle them."
Tanager grinned. "No, but if I trip them first, they can't catch me!"
Sage Root drank the last of the cold stew. She'd sent Little Dancer and Two Smokes up to eat with Chokecherry. She had no desire to cook anymore. She didn't want Two Smokes bustling around doing things that intruded on her thoughts. She didn't even care about the lumps of hard grease that floated in the tepid water.
Something black and ominous rose from Heavy Beaver's lodge. Sage Root gasped, clapping a hand to her mouth. She shook her head, blinking, feeling the icy chill in her soul. Peering fearfully up at the stars, she found no sign of the black thing. Raven's spirit? Had Heavy Beaver promised her to Raven Above in return for spiritual help?
She clamped her eyes shut, experiencing the reeling sensation of lost balance. She was passing through life as if it were a dream. Images shimmered and went glassy until she couldn't trust her eyesight. Sounds seemed to become disjointed. Voices whispered out of the air. Nothing seemed real except the cold in her soul, and fear.
"I'm not me anymore." And the chill ate at her, increasing with each beat of her heart. How could she deny his power when so many strange things happened? As the sun set, she'd seen the trunks of the trees waver and dance to the thump of Heavy Beaver's drum.
She shivered uncontrollably, stomach spasming. Not that, please, not again. Every time she'd eaten or drunk, her nervous stomach pumped it back up.
Sage Root sat in the rear of the lodge, fingers idly tracing the ruins of the bedroll where Hungry Bull had so tenderly held her. Here, in the confines of this very lodge, she'd borne her sons. Here, she'd nursed them all, hugged and loved them. Two of them had died in her lodge, their bodies cleaned and prepared to be taken and placed on a high ridge, where their souls could climb to the Starweb.
Here she'd laughed at Hungry Bull's stories, scolded him when he needed it, and smiled her love into his warm brown eyes.
The lodge looked dingy and ragged, the skirts of the heavy hide cover tattered, rot-brittle around the edges. As the cover had disintegrated, so had the poles been worn away as they moved from camp to camp. What had once been a grand lodge, requiring ten dogs to transport, now could be carried by five. Like the rest of her life, even this, her home, hung frayed and stained.
A humming filled her ears with the sound of a million bumblebees. Groaning, she pounded at the side of her head As quickly, the noise stopped, leaving a slight ring from the battering she'd given herself.
Heedless, she sat in the ashes of her life, fingers absently tracing the holes burned through her belongings.
She couldn't bear to look at the dirt out front. Horrified, she'd watched as Heavy Beaver had walked out and drawn a series of lines into the earth.
"I could save you." He'd looked at her through heavy half-lidded eyes and cocked his head. "You need only admit your guilt. Bind yourself to me for purification."
The cry of horror had strangled in her throat as she shook her head frantically.
He'd smiled, chanted some more, and walked away into the twilight.
Fear had pumped like sparks through her veins as she scrambled madly to wipe away the patterns of lines, scratching at the dirt until her fingernails bled. Then she'd huddled into a ball and sobbed until Little Dancer came to hold her. Two Smokes had picked her up and carried her inside. Now the two of them slept like a guard before the door.
Hungry Bull is far away. I'll be dead before he comes back. What then?
"Stop it," she whispered to herself. "Got to believe it's a lie. Heavy Beaver can't Dance fire. He can't Sing the stars. He's trying to scare me. That's all. Just trying to scare me."