People of the Longhouse(70)

Emotion rose up to choke him. She was right. Why hadn’t he thought of it himself? Gonda lifted a hand to touch her face, but halted, and let it hover awkwardly. If she would only take a step toward him. But she did not, and he clenched his hand into a fist and lowered it to his side.

“Let’s try it,” he said simply. “It’s a good idea.”

She held his gaze for far longer than she had since the attack. It was an instant of shared hope and pain, and he cherished it. He engraved her expression on his soul, so that he could pull it up again and again when he thought he could bear no more of the futility of the search.

“Koracoo, I wish that you and I …” Tears burned his eyes.

He clenched his jaw and looked away. She hated excessive emotion. She said it weakened everyone who witnessed it. He recalled once on a raid when a man had thrown himself over the body of his dead friend and begun wailing. The grief had spread like a contagion. Within ten heartbeats, every warrior was sobbing or sniffling. Koracoo’s response had been to walk straight to the man who’d started it and slap him senseless. Shocked, he’d looked up at her. She’d ordered, “Get up now or you’ll be joining your friend in the afterlife.”

Gonda blinked away his tears and shot a look at Towa and Sindak. They were carefully examining the bark on an oak tree, as though they’d found something. For the past hand of time, they’d been walking through gigantic oaks. A canopy of laced branches roofed the trails and cast brilliant geometric patterns across the acorn-covered ground.

“All right,” he said. “Here’s my advice: If we don’t find anything here, I think we should split up, send Towa and Sindak back to the place where we lost the trail, and let them cut for sign while you and I continue north and do the same thing.”

“When and where will we meet?”

“What about dusk south of Hawk Moth Village? You know the place where the main trail forks?”

They both watched Sindak. He’d climbed up into the oak and seemed to be examining the limbs. Below him, Towa was apparently asking questions—his mouth was moving.

“It’s risky. We’ll be on the border of Flint People lands. They might kill us just for daring to step into their country.”

“We were worried about the same thing with Atotarho. We survived.”

Wind blew her short hair around her face, spiking it up more than before. She faintly resembled a startled porcupine. In the old days, he would have told her that, and she’d have laughed. But there was no laughter between them now.

“All right. Let’s tell our allies the new plan.” Koracoo started back for Towa and Sindak.

Gonda followed her around the edge of the pond and back into the laced shadows cast by the heavy oak boughs. Even the small limbs were as wide across as his shoulders. These ancient giants must have seen hundreds of summers pass.

Sindak jumped down from the tree, and he and Towa watched their approach with narrowed eyes. Towa stood a head taller than Sindak. He’d braided and coiled his long hair into a bun, then pinned it at the back of his head with a rabbit-bone skewer. The style made his handsome oval face appear regal. Sindak, on the other hand, looked shaggy. His shoulder-length hair was disheveled and matted to his forehead by sweat. In the mottled light, his deeply sunken brown eyes resembled dark pits and his hooked nose cast a shadow.

“War Chief,” Sindak said. “We found something.”

Koracoo picked up her pace. “Show me.”

All four of them gathered around the base of the oak, and Sindak put his finger below a fresh scar on the bark. It was a lighter-colored patch, no bigger than a thumb.

Gonda examined it and said, “It might be a scar left by a buck. They sharpen and clean their antlers on the trees—but it’s small for an antler rub.”

“Or it could have been made by a flicker. They love to bury insects in cracks in the bark,” Koracoo added.

“That’s what we thought at first,” Sindak said. He shoved damp hair away from his homely face and continued, “But if you look at the rest of the tree, you’ll see more of them.”

Sindak climbed back up into the tree, and Gonda followed him. As they climbed higher, the rich fragrance of wet wood encircled them. Gonda breathed it in—a soothing scent that reminded him of his childhood, when he’d done a great deal of tree climbing.

Sindak stepped out onto the first major branch and bent down to show Gonda another bark scar. This one was even smaller than the first, but clearer. “If you climb higher, you’ll find these small scars on almost every branch.”

Gonda stared upward into the crooked sunlit limbs. A few old leaves and acorns clung to the highest branches. They swayed in the breeze. “Are the scars always right next to the trunk?”