“And Blood Bear?"
“He'll believe it."
The stars hadn't passed a hand's breadth across the sky when a dark figure slipped from the menstrual lodge.
Within moments, Rattling Hooves ducked out behind her daughter. Thoughtfully she stared down the night-shadowed trail. Elk Charm would be starting to realize what she'd undertaken. Traveling alone through the middle of the night on an unfamiliar trail would daunt all but the most courageous of hunters. Elk Charm would brave the dark, and the possibility of ghosts, and perhaps even a fall-hungry grizzly. Anything would be better than Blood Bear.
Rattling Hooves walked wearily down toward the lodge. With Wet Rain playing sick, she'd have twice the chores to do. The lot of a second wife could be considerably worse than she got from One Cast and Wet Rain. Still, she'd always felt like an interloper, intruding on their happiness. One Cast and Wet Rain had never made her feel less than welcome, but she couldn't shake the subtle feeling of intruding. She would never share that intimacy they did. Some people just fit together like that. One Cast and Wet Rain might have been made as two pieces—male and female—of a unique whole.
Thinking about it, she experienced a pang of regret. She'd loved like that once. If only he hadn't gone traveling in the winter. The snow always became treacherous in spring. They hadn't found his body until almost midsummer. And the hole left by his death could never be filled.
She sent one last nervous look down the trail, heart-worried about her daughter. What a terrible way to come into womanhood.
* * *
'' Sometimes I wonder about your faith in the boy. He s wild, resentful."
"That's the strength of his father," Wolf Dreamer reminded him from within the translucent golden hues of the Spiral.
"I live with his father! Too much of his insolence has gone into the boy.
"Wolf Bundle, you yourself are created of disparate pieces. Each has its part in Power. Together we manipulated the Circles to get the boy. Did you complain then ?''
“My Power wasn't leaking away then. I didn't experience the sensation of my own slow death. We've taken a terrible risk. We seen the boy through the Watcher's eyes. You know we can't affect his will. He will be what he will be. And I see trouble."
"We never had any guarantees. The future is a murky-place."
"He fights the Dreams. He'll fight us just as vigorously."
Silence . . .
Chapter 12
Behind the boy, a nameless terror stalked the ridge, the fetid odor of its breath—that of a carrion-feeding bear—warm on the back of his neck. He tried to look, tried to glance over his shoulder to see the horror, but his balance fled at every attempt, leaving him flailing his arms to keep his precarious footing.
Death followed, snapping at his heels He could imagine the silver drool running in strands from the monster's teeth.
His only escape consisted of a dangerous path along a knife-edged ridge of sharp gray granite. Sheer wails tell off to either side, endless, dropping into a dizzying depth. Around him, the clouds scudded past, partially blotting the deep blue of the sky. Wind batted at him as he tried to keep his footing on the hazardous slope.
He jumped frantically from one rock to another, terror powering his leaps over infinity. There, ahead of him, his mother clung to the rock, blocking the way. She looked back at him with a sickening anguish in her face. Wind whipped her long black hair, partially obscuring her features as she blinked against the gale. Her fingers wove into the very rock, locking her in place.
"Hurry! It's too close. You've got to keep going, son." The wind ripped his mother's frantic cries away and hurled them into the vastness. "Go. Climb over me."
As he teetered, unwilling, her face grew ashen, her skin hard, turning to stone as he watched in horror.
"No!" he cried into the vastness. The whistling wind sought to knock him off. He could feel the thing behind him extend its neck and open its corrupt mouth to snap at him.
"Mother?" Desperate, he jumped, the rounded mass of her back taking his weight.
He could feel the presence of the nightmare thing behind him, looming up, reaching even as he scrambled to find footing on the rock that had once been his mother. As he changed his balance, the rock shifted, grating and vibrating.
Sobbing with fear, he looked down. The rock with his mother's face cascaded into the depths, debris falling to clatter against the cliff.
The unseen horror reached for him as he crabbed along the thin, friable rock. He jumped for a huge flat space that turned into Chokecherry's back as he landed. The old woman looked up at him, a crafty smile forming on her lips. But then she shifted, as if trying to pitch him off into the abyss.
Little Dancer braced his feet, grabbing for the ridge beyond. He caught a glimpse of Chokecherry's body solidifying into gray granite and plunging into the depths under his weight. His grip held as Chokecherry's rock crashed down the precipice in a shower of tumbling scree. Teeth chattering, he got his feet under him, pulling his body back onto the trail and grimacing as the rock cut into his flesh.