Black Skull shrugged, scooping sand with his foot to fling it in a wide arc. Individual grains stippled the water. “Maybe I’ll take up catching skunks for a living.”
“Yes, well, you do have a talent for it.”
Black Skull squinted into the sun’s red glare as the first arc crept over the flat horizon and set the water on fire. “Trader, I think I’ve begun to understand what it is about this life that possesses you. Once you break free, travel beyond your clan, you can never return again. What will I tell them?” He gestured to the east. ‘ ‘ watching the sun rise out of the Fresh Water Sea?-Will they believe that? About the storm whipping the water into waves as tall as a clan house? About these wild lands, where men haven’t heard the word of Many Colored Crow? They’d just stare at me with blank eyes.”
“But you can grow tired of it after many voyages.” Otter skipped yet another pebble, the stone spatting off the surface in a trail of rings. “Uncle did, and he wanted tego home, to marry and have a family. If Pearl and I can find our way together, we’ll want to raise a family someday.” He cocked his head seriously. “You know, ‘ Frog’ can’t do that on the water.”
Black Skull chuckled. “All these worries—and we’re not even to the Roaring Water yet. Forget them, Trader. If Many Colored Crow is generous, you’ll have time to consider these things. But for now, there are more important things to think about.”
“You mean the Badger people?” Otter glanced at the dunes, glowing red-orange in the morning light.
“They are the least of our worries. Back there, somewhere behind us, the Khota are still following—or do you foolishly believe that they all drowned? Meanwhile, ahead of us, unknown challenges wait. This fine beach Pearl found us last night is but a reprieve, a small gift from Power so that we might build up our strength again.”
“You’re right. We may all be dead before this is through.”
Otter glanced at the bedrolls up the beach. “If I could keep her . safe
… “
“You can’t. You don’t have the right to. She’s part of this journey.”
“But what if something happens to her?”
“What if something happens to you? What of it? You think her heart won’t break? You need to talk to the Contrary about that habit of blaming yourself for everything. If she dies, Otter, you’ll mourn her, I’ll mourn her, and I think the fool will mourn her. The same if you die. You’ll put a hole in all of our souls.
But then, that’s the way life is, isn’t it?”
“It is, but I don’t have to like it, do I?”
Black Skull eyed his friend. “So why are you down here walking around” instead of up there in Pearl’s blankets?”
“We haven’t found the right time for that yet. This is the first time we’ve made shore since leaving Trout’s camp. She was dead tired. I couldn’t sleep. And to be honest, we’re not safe yet.”
‘ ‘ could just come out and say that you’re both still scared of each other.”
“Well, yes, I could … but I’m not going to.”
Black Skull smiled. “You’d better go up and get some sleep.
I’ll keep guard in the meantime. When the sun reaches its highest, we’ll start south again.”
On the north side of their camp, Green Spider was running down the beach behind a group of seagulls, flapping his skinny arms like wings, unable to get off the ground. Finally, he fell over, and across the distance, Black Skull could hear his cackling laughter.
Otter glanced at the sun, now hanging redly over the horizon.
“I’d like to come back someday, travel these shores when it isn’t a race.”
“A race,” Black Skull said slowly, following his gaze. “A warrior develops a sense for things like this. Wolf of the Dead is still coming—and ever more desperate to catch us.”
Forty-two
To doubt a Spirit Helper requires at once valor and despair.
They are immortal, after all.
Yet I have found they are also imperfect—or perhaps perfectly blind, each in his own way.
Neither First Man nor Many Colored Crow sees the whole.
That is why they are locked in constant struggle and the world rocks back and forth in a heroic lullaby of tragedy and ecstasy.
Light and Dark.
Their war is everlasting.
Perhaps that is the only unalterable Truth.
But I keep thinking, praying, that a bridge must exist. A bridge that stretches above the war and allows mortal Dreamers to traverse the battlefield without being captured by either side.
A Contrary is the embodiment of those eternal opposites. But opposites crossed. I stand at the middle point between the two, which allows me to see both sides. And I do see both. But I don’t see a bridge. Just the relentless conflict.