Silver Water glances at her mother, then at Tall Man. Neither of them seems to see it.
Slithery waves of heat radiate from its faint shadows. She can feel them tingling on her arms and face. The worst thing would be if the beak opens and tears them to pieces. She flinches, wishing she could take back the thought and stuff it into the corners of her soul, where she couldn’t see it. But then it would just peek out at her—like the tens of tens of starlit eyes.
As they get closer, the black beak parts, and Silver Water tips her chin up to look down the Spirit creature’s throat.
All she sees is smoke, spiraling away into nothingness, but she can /eel the creature’s warm -breath. It smells like hickory and maple.
“I have friends here, Tall Man,” her mother says. “Will I ever come back?”
“I cannot answer that. Not yet._Not until we see which way Power wants to take us.”
Silver Water thinks about that. About Power.
She turns to look over her shoulder at the forbidden clan house. She is being dragged along by her mother, and she cranes her neck. Her feet slip and slide on the ice, but her mother doesn’t seem to notice. A pale green glow oozes from the pores of the roof, and she thinks she sees her father’s hands reaching out of the green, clawing at the freedom beyond the imprisoning thatch … Power took her father. It took him and blew him around just like a dandelion seed in a cyclone.
Silver Water bites her lip and turns to concentrate on the pack that rides Tall Man’s hunched back. The Mask is whispering in the dwarf’s ear, threatening, laughing, sobbing … She doesn’t know if the dwarf hears, but she does. The waves of despair and anger are enough to make Silver Water lag as far behind as she can. The sadness is the worst. It stalks about with the stealth of Wolf on a blood trail, hunting, hunting desperately for someone, anyone, who will listen.
She wants to listen. But she is too afraid.
Lifting a hand, she tucks a finger into her mouth and quietly sucks on it while she watches the toes of her moccasins appear and disappear.
Somewhere deep down in her soul, she hears her father crying.
Crying and crying, as if he can’t get enough air.
Eleven
Four Kills could feel the excitement. People stood about the fires in knots, their frosty breaths spinning in the cold air as they discussed the day’s events and speculated on what they meant for the future. Overhead, stars shimmered and danced on a soot-black sky. Firelight wavered in golden patterns on thatched house walls to accent the shaggy, scalloped effect of the grass bundles lashed to the frames.
He sensed a gravity beneath the facade of excitement. Awed looks kept being cast in the direction of the Clan Elders. The four old men sat illuminated by the fire that had been built in front of Grandmother’s house. Grandmother and Blue Jar sat to either side of the Elders, nodding occasionally as something was said. From Grandmother’s relaxed posture, she was clearly oblivious to the unease.
Four Kills shook himself. Trouble is waiting somewhere .
the shadows. Someone will get hurt before this is over. Images of the Dream kept replaying in his memory. Otter’s dead body continued to swirl in the foam-topped green water. His brother’s face, so familiar, mocked him with its agony.
Don’t do this, Otter. Don’t go.
Four Kills placed a hand to his stomach, as if the action would still the churning. Perhaps if he hadn’t married Red Moccasins?
Would that have made a difference? Guilt wedged into his soul with the sure chill of a polished ax head. He’d felt Otter’s loss; it was pervasive, as deep and wounding as it would have been for him. We share too much, brother. In finding my happiness, I have cursed you.
Had Red Moccasins found Otter? What would come of that meeting? Could she make a peace? Or would she surrender to him for one last time?
The problem with loving two people that you knew so intimately was that you couldn’t condemn either of them.
Maybe we’re like the Hero Twins. We both want the same woman. Unlike the Hero Twins, however, Four Kills and Otter would never go to war with each other.
To keep his mind from images of Red Moccasins and Otter— and of what they might be doing together out in the night— Four Kills studied Grandmother’s house through slitted eyes.
The Contrary sat within, locked away, doing whatever it was that Contraries did when alone.
What was it like? How did a man who did everything backward feel? Or even think? Did he have to concentrate all the time, always on guard against making a slip and acting like a real person? Or did the touch of Power simply alter him, turn him into something not quite human? In the plaza earlier, Black Skull had reacted as though the latter were the case. The warrior’s expression had been the same as if he’d been ordered to travel with a water moccasin for a companion.