“Did he tell you where they were?” Rumbler drew a spiral in the dirt with his mitten.
She shook her head. “No, but he asked me to come with him, and told me he couldn’t do it by himself.”
“Do what?”
“Warn people.” She pulled the laces on the water bag tight and retied it to her belt. “I told him the only place I was going was home. Then he really scared me, Rumbler. He told me he was sorry, but he couldn’t stop it now. He said, ‘You will come with me. Power has chosen.’”
Rumbler’s gaze darted around, touching on rocks and trees, and paw prints. After a short interval, he said, “The ways of Spirits are strange.”
“You don’t understand it, either?”
“No.”
Wren crossed her feet at the ankles and swung them while she thought, wondering about Spirits, and if she was on the journey the Bloody Boy had told her about and just didn’t know it. She didn’t like that idea.
“Rumbler, I’ve been thinking about what we’ll do when this is all over. How do you feel about maybe becoming Traders? You and me together. We could see strange new lands. I heard a Trader tell once of a western people who build mountains and put their houses on top. And he said that even farther west they make stone houses, one on top of the other, until they have palaces many stories high that climb into the heavens.” Wren turned and found Rumbler looking up at her with so much hope and love in his eyes that it almost hurt to look at. “Wouldn’t that be fun, Rumbler? We could be Traders.”
He smiled. “I would like that, Wren.”
She put an arm over his narrow shoulders. “Traders must have powerful Spirit Helpers, though. You already have one, but I’m going to need one, too. Uncle Blue Raven always promised that he would take me on a vision quest. But he never had the time.”
“I—I can take you, Wren! I have been many times.” Rumbler slid closer to her on the ledge, and put a mitten on her hand. “It’s very hard, but I will help you.”
She grinned. “Thanks, Rumbler. What’s it like having a Spirit Helper? You have had one since your fourth or fifth winter, haven’t you?”
Rumbler tipped his head back to look at the billowing Cloud Giants. They tumbled and played as they rushed westward. He kept his eyes on them a long time, and Wren wondered if maybe he wasn’t talking to his Helper right now. She squinted at the big gold cloud that hovered above them. The longer Rumbler gazed at it, the more it seemed to glow.
Rumbler said, “Sometimes having a Spirit Helper hurts, Wren. It feels like a stiletto in your heart, twisting. But then there are times when you feel good about it.”
Her grin drooped. “Maybe I don’t have to have one after all.”
Rumbler bit his lip, as if embarrassed. “Some people have pleasing Spirit Helpers, Wren. Their Helpers show them where to gather the best roots, and nuts, or maybe the best places to fish. Maybe you will get one of those.”
“Is yours mean because he’s so Powerful? Because you are the son of a Forest Spirit?”
Rumbler kicked his feet in time with hers. “I think so.”
Wren wiped her sand-coated hand on her torn pant leg. “Have you ever seen him? Your father?”
“Oh, yes,” Rumbler said and nodded. “When I was very small he used to come to me at night, to sing me to sleep. His voice sounded like death.”
Her scalp stung. “Death?”
“Well, yes, I mean, like the sound Grandmother Earth would make if all the trees, and birds, and animals died. If Wind Mother was gone, and the rivers dried up, and people disappeared.”
“That sounds like silence to me, Rumbler.”
He nodded. “Yes. Loud silence. I used to clamp my hands over my ears when my father sang, so it wouldn’t hurt so much.”
She frowned at Grandfather Day Maker. As he ascended through the Cloud Giants, bright sunlight flooded the forest. The mist suspended above the pond shredded into long yellow filaments, and began to vanish.
“You know something, Rumbler?”
“What?” He squinted up at her.
“Sometimes I don’t understand a word you say.”
He gently patted her arm with his mitten. “You just need to get to know me better. You are not as scared of me now, as you were, are you?”
“No. Have you been trying not to be scary?”
“Oh, yes, very hard.”
Wren smiled. “I’m not afraid any longer, Rumbler. There are moments when you still worry me … but … I …”
In the rapidly changing light, Wren thought she saw something, down the talus slope to her left—a line of shadows dotted the crumbling rock. She got on her knees, and shielded her eyes. Little piles of stones cast the shadows.