People of the Longhouse(52)

Mother slings her bow and quiver over her left shoulder, picks up CorpseEye, and walks from the longhouse without a word.

When she’s gone, Father drops his head into his hands and quietly curses himself: “When did I turn into such a fool?”

As I pull up my deer hide and stare at him over the silken rim of tan hair, I wonder if he is a fool. Or if he’s right that Mother is the fool for believing that peace is possible between the Peoples who live south of Skanodario Lake.

Father stirs the pudding again, and I let my gaze drift around the longhouse. Along the walls, melon baskets make dark splotches. Before the frost, we dig up melon vines with unripe fruit, and replant them in baskets of sand. During the winter, the melons ripen. They are Healing plants. We keep them for the sick.

Father calls, “Are you still awake, Odion?”

“Yes, Father.”

He pulls a half-full ladle of pudding from the pot and blows on it. “Why don’t you come over and taste this for me? I think it needs more maple sugar. What do you think?”

I smile, throw off my hides, and run to taste the pudding. Father puts his arm around me and hugs me as he brings the ladle to my lips … .





Somewhere in the depths of my souls, I hear warriors moving around a camp, and know I am freezing cold.

I struggle not to wake.





Twenty-one

Two days later, Sindak knew for certain they had lost the trail. He floundered around, weaving back and forth through the falling snow, searching for the slightest hint that even one man had passed this way—let alone an entire war party herding a group of unwieldy children. Blessed Spirits, how had Gannajero managed to so conceal the trail? They had followed a wide swath of tracks until mid-morning; then a dozen trails had split off from the main one. They’d gone in every direction, as though men were abandoning the party, heading home to different villages. Gonda had argued vehemently for following one particular trail, and though Sindak had disagreed, Koracoo had ordered that they go with Gonda’s choice. Gradually it had narrowed to the width of one man’s path, and soon after vanished.

Sindak was not the only one frustrated and discouraged. Koracoo knelt at every snapped twig, picked it up and examined it, then gently placed it back exactly as she’d found it. In the rear, Gonda was down on his hands and knees, crawling with his nose practically touching the snow that filled in the trail; and to Sindak’s right, Towa stood beside a snow-rimed mountain laurel, studying it for broken branches, or the smallest fibers left from clothing.

When Towa glanced across the trail and found Sindak staring at him, his brows lifted. Sindak shook his head in answer to the unspoken question: Have you found anything?

Towa moved on to a thicket of dogwood.

White veils spun through the chestnuts and basswoods that lined the trail. Already the snow was over Sindak’s ankles, and growing deeper by the heartbeat.

Though he knew it was futile, Sindak started wading through the drifts again, searching. He spotted a few hickory nuts and tucked them in his belt pouch.

“I found something!” Gonda shouted. As he brushed at the trail, he called, “Koracoo? Come quickly.”

She worked her way back to him, carefully stepping in her own tracks so as not to disturb anything that might be hidden on the trail beneath the snow.

Sindak and Towa also walked toward him.

They all arrived at about the same time and stood in a triangle, looking down at Gonda. His forehead was furrowed, and deep lines engraved the corners of his brown eyes. He had his finger placed below a badly washed-out track.

Koracoo knelt and began brushing away the surrounding snow.

They all crouched and brushed at the thick coating of snow and leaves near the “track.” As he scooped away the snow, Sindak grimaced. Hundreds of might-be tracks dotted the frozen soil, but there was nothing that he would even remotely assess as being made by a man. He turned to stare at Towa. Towa shrugged and rose to his feet.

Koracoo spent a long time scrutinizing the indentation Gonda had found. All the while, Gonda watched her with desperation in his eyes, obviously praying that she would say it had been made by a child.

Koracoo expelled a breath, shook her head lightly, and got to her feet. “This is nothing, Gonda. We’ve lost the trail. We all know it.”

“But it’s the best track we’ve found,” Gonda objected. “We should break off branches and start sweeping every step of the ground.”

Sindak waited. Surely Koracoo knew Gonda’s suggestion was folly. They were all exhausted and hungry. It would be far better to make camp and start fresh in the morning after a good night’s sleep.

Koracoo looked up at the dim gray sky. Flakes swirled through the air. “We have perhaps a half-hand of light left. Let’s stop for the day.”