“Age him, you mean.”
“Well … yes. Can such a man be trusted?”
Dust Moon pulled up one last handful of grass, stacked it atop the others, and rubbed her fingers on her cape. Arms piled high with wood, the Walksalong Headman had started back across the meadow. The lodges of the Night Walkers brightened the sky over his head.
Dust said, “I have been turning that question all day.”
Starlight gilded the curve of his hooked nose as he lifted his head. “Indeed?”
“Yes. If I wore his moccasins, I would feel trapped, Sparrow. He must take Rumbler back to Walksalong Village. As an offering to save his niece.”
Sparrow’s cheeks flushed. As dusk changed to night, his white hair took on the color of a mourning dove’s wings. “Ancestors Above. I can’t believe I didn’t see that. Of course he has to take Rumbler back. Thank the Spirits you are here.” Sparrow spontaneously reached for her hand.
Neither of them said anything. They twined fingers for a few instants, then Sparrow seemed to realize what he’d done, and let go.
Dust’s fingers tingled. It was the first time in almost two winters that they had touched without fear or anxiety, without demands, touched each other merely as old and trusted friends.
“Sparrow, I—”
“No, Dust.” He lifted a hand. “For the sake of the gods, don’t say anything. I can’t stand a lance in my heart.”
“I wasn’t going to—”
“Of course you were. You were about to say, ‘See, Sparrow, we can be allies, just not mates,’ and I don’t care to hear those words again.”
With injured dignity, she said, “I wish you wouldn’t pretend you can track my souls.”
“You mean that isn’t what you were going to say?”
“No, it isn’t,” she lied. More than anything else, she missed his friendship, the nights of whispering secrets snuggled together, of laughing as they watched the firelight on the ceiling. But she couldn’t risk her heart again. Not even if she wanted to. If she trusted him enough to share her heart and body with him, and then he shattered that trust by answering his Spirit Helper’s call when her world was shredding …
“Well,” Sparrow said. “I’m listening.”
Wind Mother had been tearing at Dust’s long silver braid all afternoon, tangling its loosened strands. She smoothed them with her fingers. “I was wondering how he plans on killing us.”
Sparrow propped his hands on his hips. “Now there’s something to make a man’s supper go down easier.”
“He seems to need us for the moment, and I’m not certain why.”
Sparrow lowered his voice. Blue Raven stood about eighty hands away. “Because he fears Rumbler’s Powers. With us along, he thinks he’ll be safe.”
“Or maybe he’s waiting for his cousin’s help. I suspect Jumping Badger would gladly exchange the children for you, Sparrow.”
His bushy gray brows plunged down over his hooked nose. “I’m not so …”
Blue Raven walked into camp, dumped his load of wood on the ground, and opened his elk-hide wrap to show a dead rabbit hung from his belt. Blood drained down its head. As he untied it, he said, “You have shared so much with me. I offer you something in return. This rabbit leaped from behind a tree, and stopped less than sixty hands away. I took him with a single arrow through the neck.”
Sparrow gave him a much friendlier smile than Dust would have thought possible. “You must have been listening to my stomach. It’s been screaming for meat for days.”
Dust Moon held out a hand to Blue Raven. “Let me clean it while you break those branches into shorter lengths.”
Blue Raven handed her the rabbit.
Their hands briefly touched in the transfer, and Dust Moon pulled away as if bitten. Blue Raven noticed, but didn’t seem offended. In fact, he stepped back and smiled as if apologizing for touching her.
“I—I’ll get started on the wood,” he said.
“And I’ll fix the fire,” Sparrow added. He glanced at Blue Raven, then Dust Moon, and when he’d satisfied himself that she was in no danger, he picked up a flat rock from the ground and began scooping a hole. He piled the dirt into a rough circle around the fire pit, to protect their fire from the wind, and the rest of the meadow from their fire.
Blue Raven broke a branch over his knee, and the crack echoed in the stillness. “How much farther to Paint Rock? We should arrive tomorrow, shouldn’t we?”
Sparrow filled the hole with the dry grass Dust Moon had plucked, and set his fireboard beside it. “Probably tomorrow night. If it’s as warm tomorrow as it was today, we’ll be struggling through knee-deep mud. It won’t be easy.”