People of the Lakes(91)
Why don’t we just let Robin have the Mask? Then I’ll take Silver Water and run away. Get as far from the Blue Duck Clan and the Moonshell valley as we can.
Star Shell concentrated on placing one foot ahead of the other as white breath twined from her nose and mouth. Frost had formed around the blanket that covered her head. The chill had eaten into her feet, and snow crusted her moccasins. She’d never be warm again.
“I’m hungry, Mama,” Silver Water said in the tone that proclaimed want and worry.
“We’ll eat soon.” But what? They’d left without thinking to take rations. Everything had been so hurried, so desperate.
Despite the silence of the night, she could hear the creaking sound. Would she ever close her eyes and not see that gruesome corpse twisting slowly in the air? No, that sight would always slip into her dreams, stalking the peace she craved.
Knowing that his soul still cleaved to Sun Mounds, she could not look back lest the tenuous link between them might be strengthened. Lest somehow his diseased ghost might find the courage to brave the warding posts and pursue her across this frozen land.
Tomorrow, with sunrise, it would be better. She would know then that they had fired the clan house and that the flames had licked up around that hanging horror.
Her imagination played with her, conjuring the flames from the floor matting. They leaped along the walls and blackened the wooden posts before roaring through the cattail matting and bursting violently through the roof thatch to shoot into the sky.
In tongues of yellow, they curled around her husband’s feet and caught new life. Spirals of heat worked up his legs. She could see his face now, shining in the dancing light. The flames jumped and cavorted, casting their crystalline reflections in his bugged-out eyes. Then his hair burst into a headdress of writhing fire, sparks spinning away to vanish like teardrops from memory.
Star Shell stumbled, her feet unsteady.
“Mama?” Silver Water cried.
Trembling, Star Shell dropped to her knees, heedless of her daughter’s clinging hand. She bowed her head and broke into uncontrolled sobbing.
“Mama? What’s wrong?” Silver Water shrilled before she too surrendered to frightened tears.
Star Shell pulled her daughter to her. Together, they cried, each lost in her own sorrow. It’s all right! By tomorrow, his flesh will be reduced to ashes. The rope will be nothing but charred fibers that fray and break to spill those wretched bones onto the fiery floor. The cold biting into her knees brought Star Shell back to the night, back to the road.
She wiped the tears from her eyes and stared at her daughter.
Silver Water looked as fragile as the starlight that shone on her small face. Her big eyes were as dark as her long black hair that spilled out from under the disheveled blanket.
“Are you all right, baby?”
“I’m cold, Mama. I want to go home. I want to get warm.
Please? Can we go home now?”
“I’m sorry, Silver Water. We can’t. Not for a long time.” if ever.
A gentle hand settled on Star Shell’s shoulder. Tall Man patted her softly. “Sometimes wrongs get passed down from one generation to the next. I wish this hadn’t had to happen to you.” Star Shell said bitterly, “Yes, I know. But it doesn’t look like we have any choice, does it?”
His gaze grew remote, as if seeing into another time and place. “No. The only choice is atonement. Someone must pay for the mistakes of the past.”
“Mama? Why do we have to go away?” Silver Water looked hesitantly from Star Shell to Tall Man.
Star Shell struggled to her feet and paused only long enough to wipe the tears from her shivering daughter’s face. “Come on, sweetheart, let’s go. We’ll be warmer when we’re walking.”
“Mama, I don’t want to—”
“Hush, baby. We must be brave now. And strong.”
Relying on willpower, Star Shell tugged her daughter along.
One step ahead of the other. If she concentrated on that, she might be able to suppress both memories and imagination.
Otter fed sticks into a cheerful fire that crackled and spit sparks.
A second fire, built earlier, had burned down to glowing red coals that shimmered with the breeze off the river.
They had camped on a damp beach, half mud and half sand.
Behind them, the forest rose in a tangle of interlocked branches and sullen trunks wrapped in tendons of bare vines. Thick clouds had darkened overhead, a promise of the blackest of winter nights. Nevertheless, the river corded and flowed, its pulse mixing with Otter’s own.
He scented the musky air, drinking the river’s Power into his soul to buoy his damp spirits. The heady excitement engendered by a new voyage should have been bursting within, but a subtle foreboding ate at his soul.