People of the Lakes(79)

From the frightened looks that Star Shell saw, there would be no disobedience. People stood and walked hurriedly toward the doorway.

Old Slate stopped before Tall Man. “Thank you, Elder, for your kind advice.” Her eyes glinted. “However, I must say that I, too, find it curious that you would arrive at just this time.”

“Power sent me, wise Old Slate. To tell the truth, I would rather have stayed next to a warm fire in my own clan house.”

Old Slate managed a faint smile, and left. Only. Fat Lips hesitated, a look of distrust in his eyes. Then he too ducked out into the night.

Tall Man reached up to pat Star Shell on the arm. “Come, you and I must take a walk. We have things to discuss.”

Star Shell gave him a worried look, then glanced at Silver Water.

“Bring your daughter. She’s coming with us.”

“What? Why? What if … if his ghost has managed to—”

“Shh!” The Magician glanced back and forth furtively as he led Star Shell and Silver Water out into the frigid night. The sky was frosted with stars. The clan grounds could be seen clearly in the snow.

Tall Man pointed to the ominous, dark clan house. “His ghost is safely contained. But we must hurry. I must get the Mask and we must be gone from this place!”

“Gone?” Star Shell tensed.

Silver Water looked up, her face panicked. “Mama? What?”

“Gone,” the Magician insisted. “And by tomorrow night, we’ll be far north of here.”

“But you said—” “I said I’d give them a way out. Keep Many Colored Crow’s wrath from falling on the Shining Bird Clan. They’ll understand by tomorrow night. By the night after that, so will Robin, the Blue Duck, and any other clan with desires to obtain the Mask.” He smiled ironically. “I’m a Magician … and I’m about to make the Mask disappear. However, the fact remains that we must be far from here when they make that discovery.”

“But I don’t understand!” Tall Man paused in the night, looking at her with sober eyes.

“Then you had better start to. I have made my bargain with Power. I mean to do everything within my ability to save you and Silver Water. A great many people will do anything to get the Mask. They will kill you, your daughter, or me for it. They will stop at nothing, Star Shell.”

Silver Water walks beside her mother on the icy path. The earthworks cast long, cold shadows that eat at her skin and make her shiver. Tall Man is taking them away, far away.

Silver Water swallows hard. A big black bubble is swelling up in her throat, choking her. She feels sick. What will Little Fern do without her? Fern’s father hurts his daughter … worse, even, than Silver Water’s father used to hurt her. Fern and Silver Water have always held each other when things got really bad.

They’ve sneaked out of their blankets and run to the other’s lineage house, where they whispered through the night. Who will hold Fern now? Will she be all alone?

Silver Water blinks back her tears and looks around. Starlit eyes study her. Tens of tens of them. They stare from holes in the ground, holes in the rocks—holes in the world.

Tall Man sees them, too. Silver Water can tell. He stares right at them.

Silver Water clutches her mother’s hand so hard that her own fingers ache. Her heart is pounding. She struggles to put each of her moccasins on the least shiny spots, to avoid the ice in the path, and listens to the sounds of night.

The worst sound comes from the darkness; it breathes, in and out, huge shuddering gasps like the lungs of a dying Spirit creature.

They must be walking inside the creature, through the middle of its chest. Silver Water’s eyes widen. If she looks hard, she can see the blacker-than-black outline of the creature’s body; it lies all around her. In the manner of a mother grouse protecting its young, its vast wings snug down over Sun Mounds.

Warm. Clear as a quartz crystal, but there. The stars gleam fuzzily through dim feathers.

Softly, her mother says, “I can feel them, Tall Man.”

“Who?”

“The ghosts who roam these grounds. They’re saying goodbye.

It’s almost as though I can see them watching us,”

“Oh, yes, they are. Most of them are hiding tonight, tucked away in any hollow they can find. They’re more frightened than we are.”

“No one could be more frightened than I am.”

Silver Water can taste her mother’s words on the back of her tongue—cold and bitter—as if she’s eaten poison seeds that have been buried from the beginning of time.

Up ahead, two society houses sit side by side, and she wonders what will happen when they reach the enormous black beak that hangs down between the houses, the tip touching the ground. The path leads directly to it. Smoke rises from the houses’ s’moke holes, and the beak wavers—almost as though it floats on that thin, blue-gray layer.