He looked at his mittens. “I want to go home, Wren. I want to go home and crawl under my hides in my mother’s lodge, and sleep until she wakes me for supper.”
Wren nodded.
Sometimes she dreamed that she’d just awakened, and could hear her mother moving around the longhouse, whispering to her father and little Skybow. The smell of breakfast filled the air. Trickster lay on her feet, his body warming her toes, and she didn’t want to move, or breathe, because she knew the dream would fade.
She put a hand on Rumbler’s shoulder. “Stop worrying, Rumbler. It doesn’t do any good. Besides, I’m thirsty, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
Wren sat down and swung her feet over the edge. “Sit beside me, Rumbler.”
Rumbler sat down, but his gaze rested on the horizon. “I’m s-sorry, Wren. I don’t know what happened.”
As dawn approached, the sky gleamed like polished amethyst.
Wren untied the water bag from her belt, and took a long drink, then handed it to Rumbler. He clasped it between the palms of his mittens, and drank.
“Do you think your Spirit Helper is tricking you? To teach you a lesson? I’ve heard that happens to Dreamers.”
Rumbler lowered the bag to his lap, and blinked at the fine braided leather ties. “My mother used to say that ‘a person who finds a Spirit Helper will never have peace, and a person who loses a Spirit Helper will never have purpose.’ I don’t know what the second part means, but I understand the first part. My souls are twisted up today, like a ball of twine tossed around by children. I don’t think my Helper is tricking me, but … he might be.”
“Your Dreams don’t have to be right all the time, Rumbler. Not for me anyway.”
He peered at the jumbled gray rocks piled in the ravine far below.
“What is it, Rumbler?”
“I’ve been wrong before, Wren.” His face contorted as he fought not to cry.
“ …When?”
“The day of the battle. I had a vision.” He closed his mouth slowly and swallowed. “I—I told the elders there would be no attack. I told them Paint Rock Village was safe.”
Wren took the water bag back, and gulped two more swallows. “Is that why you didn’t blast Jumping Badger when you first saw him?”
“No, I … something happens, Wren, when I’m really scared. I—I can’t move or think. I can’t even scream. My body feels like a punky log.”
Shame reddened his cheeks, and he fiddled with his hands, rubbing dirt from his cape, brushing at the ledge.
“It wasn’t your fault, Rumbler. Your Spirit Helper told you Paint Rock was safe. How were you supposed to know it wasn’t?”
Rumbler used his mitten to wipe his nose. “He wasn’t my Helper, but he was a very Powerful Spirit.”
Some bad Spirits were renowned for tricking shamans, but they showed up in known forms. “Did the Spirit come to you as an old woman with a long crooked walking stick?”
“No. It wasn’t Falling Woman.”
“A wolf with human arms and legs?”
“I would recognize Sky Holder, Wren. This Spirit came to me as a boy. A little boy with glowing yellow eyes.”
“A … boy.” Wren clutched the water bag harder. “Did he have cuts all over him? Was he covered with blood?”
Rumbler jerked around to look at her. “Do you know him? Was he your Spirit Helper, Wren?”
She could see the thoughts building behind his black eyes, like thunderheads in the north fit to blast the world to dust. If the Bloody Boy were Wren’s Spirit Helper, and he had deliberately tricked Rumbler so that Jumping Badger could attack and slaughter Paint Rock Village, then perhaps Wren could not be trusted, either.
“I don’t have a Spirit Helper, Rumbler,” she answered. “I’ve never even been on a vision quest. My grandmother says I’m too young.”
Rumbler inclined his head slightly, gazing at her through one eye. “Then how do you know about the boy?”
“Well.” She gestured with the water bag. “He came to me the night before the council where you were condemned. I was down by Pipe Stem Lake, filling water bags, and I heard laughter. I turned and there he was.” Remembering sent a shiver up her spine.
“Did he speak?”
“Oh, yes,” she said with an exaggerated nod. “But I didn’t understand anything he said. He asked me if I knew why ghosts built houses.”
“Ghosts don’t live in houses, Wren. Not on earth. They live in feathered lodges in the Up-Above-World, but—”
“That’s what I told him, but the Bloody Boy told me they built houses because they were afraid of us. He said the ghosts knew they didn’t have enough lightning arrows. Then he told me that our world was about to end, and I had to see the houses for myself—”