“Yes, I think—”
My gaze lands on Chipmunk as she moves to kneel beside Hehaka. She speaks softly to him. Hehaka nods, as though whatever she said soothed him. As Chipmunk rises, she takes a deep breath, fixes her gaze on me, and walks forward. Her mourning hair clings to her round face in irregular locks.
Wrass sees her and frowns. “What’s she doing?”
“Coming over here.”
When she gets close, she bows her head so it’s impossible to see her lips move, and whispers, “I can h-help. I know Healing plants.”
“What do you mean you can help?” Wrass asks. “You mean you can help heal Hehaka and Baji?”
The girl nervously licks her lips. She’s so scared she looks like she might faint. “No, I—I mean if you can get me close, I c-can …” She swallows hard, waiting for us to fill in the rest of the sentence.
In a stunning moment of understanding, I say, “Blessed gods, yes.”
“What?” Wrass sounds annoyed.
I grab his arm and pull him very close to hiss, “We can fight them. With her help, we can escape!”
He glares at me like I’ve lost my senses and opens his mouth to say something unpleasant, but before he does, understanding widens his eyes. He stands perfectly still for a moment, staring at me. Then he glances between us, and in a dire voice says, “If we do this, we’ll only have one chance. We have to do it right.”
I turn to the girl. “What’s your name?”
She swallows hard before she stutters, “Z-Zateri.”
Twenty-five
“Find anything?” Towa called from the edge of the meadow to Sindak’s left.
Tree-covered mountains rolled like storm-heaved waves across the land, rising and falling in breathtaking swaths of autumn color. High above, unmoving Cloud People seemed to be planted in the blue sky.
Sindak lifted his head from where he’d been concentrating on patterns in the frozen leaves. Towa had plaited his long black hair and tucked the braid into the back of his cape. Standing in the snow-frosted grass with two gigantic pines behind him made him seem taller and thinner. As Elder Brother Sun continued his journey to the west, afternoon light streamed between the pine boughs and landed across the meadow like dropped scarves of pure gold.
“No. You?”
Towa shook his head.
Sindak propped his war club on his shoulder and squinted at Koracoo. She was far ahead, walking through a grove of beech trees. He turned around and glimpsed Gonda bent over, searching what appeared to be a rivulet of snow melt.
Sindak called, “I don’t understand it. The morning went so well. What happened? Where did we lose it?”
“In that elderberry thicket.”
Sindak sighed and propped his hands on his hips. They’d found the trail at dawn, and been able to follow it for a full three hands of time; then it had vanished in the middle of an elderberry thicket. It was as though the children had been lifted straight up off the earth and flown away to the Spirits only knew where. Since the thicket, they’d been floundering, going in circles, finding nothing.
Sindak went back to searching. He carefully stepped through the snow-crusted leaves that lined the shadowed west side of the meadow. There was something here, but he wasn’t sure what yet. The afternoon warmth had melted out patches of leaves and grass, but he felt certain he was seeing more than that. Here and there, leaves appeared to have been turned over, as though they’d stuck to the bottom of a moccasin and been flipped as the man passed. Unfortunately, the pattern wasn’t regular—as a man’s steps would be. He stretched his taut back muscles and stared upward. The shadows cast by the branches kept changing as Elder Brother Sun descended toward the western horizon. Each moment, the meadow looked different.
Towa let out a frustrated breath and walked over to Sindak. “I’m starting to feel like we’re chasing our tails. As I suggested at noon, we should return to the thicket and start over.”
Sindak’s bushy eyebrows drew together. “Koracoo is sure we’re on the right trail.”
“Yes, but why? We haven’t found any sign in over four hands of time.”
As they walked, Sindak said, “It’s that club of hers.”
Suspiciously, Towa said, “CorpseEye?”
“Yes. It’s alive.”
Towa laughed disdainfully.
Frozen leaves crackled beneath their moccasins as they walked around a boulder and onto a trail that fringed the trees. Deer tracks cut perfect hearts in the mud. Ahead of them, a rocky granite slope two hundred hands across covered the hillside.
Sindak continued, “Laugh all you want, but you know that trail we were on at dawn? CorpseEye found it.”