The snow had taken on a bluish glow that washed the cleared fields beyond the low embankments that marked the Holy Road. Dark patches of trees blotted the flat bottoms of the Moonshell-valley. The distant hills lay like pale, sleeping monsters, furred with trees. They cast mounded silhouettes against the sooty distance of the night sky. Despite the fresh chill of the clear air stinging her nose, the odor of death remained in her nostrils.
Star Shell glanced down at her daughter. Silver Water clutched her hand tightly, and her little legs pumped to keep pace.
“Are you all right, baby?”
“Cold, Mama. And I’m scared.”
From behind them, Tall Man said sympathetically, “I’m sorry, Silver Water. It will be cold tonight—and probably for a long time afterward. But you had to come with us.”
The Magician plodded along on his short, bowed legs. The pack with the Mask perched like an awkward hump on his back, while the smaller bag, adorned by the wolf’s head, swung under his left arm. Star Shell wondered—: didn’t he ever feel the exhaustion that sapped her to the bone?
“Why?” she demanded. “What does a little girl have to do with this?” “Her father killed himself,” Tall Man said gravely. “Do you think the Shining Bird Clan would ever forget? Do you want her growing up with the likes of Fat Lips constantly reminding her?” He added sadly, “How ironic. Power works across generations.
Some saved … some condemned.”
What was that haunted look in his depthless eyes? Star Shell bit back the urge to shiver and studied the little man. “Is everything ruined?”
“No, young Star Shell.” She could make out his grin in the
cold darkness. “Not as long as you and Silver Water are alive and well, and we have the Mask. As long as that is the case, everything is saved.”
Ill at ease, she turned her attention northward to study the trace of the Holy Road. Here the clans had built parallel earthworks to either side of the beaten track to mark the route. Over the years, the entire road would be contained within the straight banks of dirt. Someday a person would be able to walk the whole way from Sun Mounds to Starsky, bounded by the earthworks –like the walls of the tunnel through which First Man had led the people into this world.
“Where are we going, Mama?” Silver Water asked.
“Away, baby. Far away, where we will be safe. We’ll go to Starsky and you’ll meet my father. You’ll be warm then.” But could she believe that? The prickling presence of the Mask lay just behind her. How did the Magician muster the strength to carry it, to be that close to it?
She caught the faint outline of an owl as it glided silently across a fallow field to her right. The domed farmstead sat quiet, abandoned, buried under mounds of white. It would be another two, maybe three, moons before the owners returned and began the ritual of planting, caring, and watering.
Star Shell slipped on a slick spot, caught her balance, and paid more attention to the uneven track. Her feet had begun to ache from the cold. “Do you seriously believe for a moment that Robin won’t guess we went north? He knows I’m Starsky.
He’ll immediately think I ran to my birth clan.”
“I’m counting on that.” Tall Man seemed unconcerned.
“That’s where we’re headed, isn’t it?”
“What made you think that?”
“We’re on the Holy Road. We have to take the Mask north to the Roaring Water. Wouldn’t we go to Starsky, recruit aid, and travel on to Buckeye clan grounds and then onward?”
“In the middle of the winter? Think, Star Shell. News of your husband will travel faster than sunlight at dawn. It won’t take Robin long to figure out that we’re running. You don’t believe that a woman, a little girl, and a short Elder could outrun warriors, do you?”
“Then why are we on the Holy Road?”
“But only for the moment, young Star Shell. We must hurry for the time being, true, but I have a destination in mind. We’ll be well into Blue Duck territory by morning. After that, we can rest for a couple of days and recover our strength at a farmstead I know of.”
~“A High Head holding?” Star Shell flinched as the owl hooted in the night. “Robin will look there, too.”
“But will he know which farmstead to investigate?” The Magician strode along in his rolling walk, seemingly as fresh as when they’d started from Starsky so many days ago.
Everything had happened so quickly. Finding her husband, the meeting in the Potters’ Society house, fleeing into the night.
Now, realizing the extent of their plight, things began to look ever more hopeless.