Blue Raven nodded. “Yes. Good. Good girl. Now … come here.”
Wren leaned closer, her face a handbreath from his. She bit her lip to keep her tears at bay.
Blue Raven said, “I love you. Go home. Become clan matron”—he smiled—“and make me proud of you.”
Tears streamed down her cheeks. “I love you, Uncle. I wish I could go back—”
“You can’t,” he said. “None of us can. We can only go forward. I want you … to look ahead. Never—never back. Wren, if you … if you start looking back, it is all you will ever be able to do. The past can swallow you whole. Don’t let it. Remember that I—I said this to you.”
“I will, Uncle. I will remember everything you’ve ever taught—”
“Quiet!” Elk Ivory turned suddenly. “I think he’s coming back to camp.”
Elk Ivory threw her coat over Blue Raven, jerked Wren to her feet, and dragged her stumbling back to her place twenty hands away. She shoved Wren down, retied her feet, and stalked across camp … but it was not Jumping Badger. Shield Maker walked out of the forest.
Blue Raven could hear Wren crying, but some of his fear had gone. She would be all right now.
He fumbled his shaking hands around until he could grasp one of the chert flakes that lay shining in the moonlight. About the size of his index finger, it had one sharp translucent edge.
He did it quickly, slicing his hide pants, then cutting deeply through the big arteries that ran along the insides of his thighs.
He looked up at the sky. Snow fluttered down, swaying and spinning.
Another spasm gripped him, clawing at his internal organs.
… But he could stand it now.
As his blood pumped out onto the frozen ground, a peaceful sensation came over him.
Jumping Badger would not have the pleasure of watching him die. Of torturing him in front of Wren.
Hot blood soaked the lower half of his body. He counted his heartbeats. When he reached one hundred, the pain started to dim. At two hundred, it vanished, and relief flooded him, leaving him light-headed. He could no longer move his hands. A smile brushed his lips.
So this is what it feels like.
He closed his eyes, and let go …
… and he found himself back in Walksalong Village. Dawn streamed through the trees, dappling the plaza with bright yellow. The scent of roasting fish and wild rice filled the air. Joy expanded his chest. He heard Skybow laugh, and turned to see the little boy running across the plaza with Trickster barking at his heels. His sister trotted behind Skybow. When she saw Blue Raven, she stopped, and smiled. She looked so much like Wren, her face slender, her eyes large and dark. Long hair draped the shoulders of her fringed doeskin dress.
“Well?” she said. “Are you coming?”
Blue Raven took a deep breath. “Yes,” he said, and walked toward her. “I’m coming.”
While Elk Ivory tended her dying lover, Jumping Badger searched the scattered remains of the dead children. The bodies had been ravaged by animals. He kicked the chewed head of a little boy. It tumbled over the snow, and stopped, the face up, peering at him through hollow eye sockets.
Shadows flittered in the trees to his left. He jerked to look. Ghosts pranced and spun, their dark willowy arms up, their hair flying.
The Death Dance! They were doing the Death Dance! For him.
He could feel their presences. Heavy, and cold, like slabs of granite piled on his chest. He couldn’t breathe.
If he didn’t do something quickly they would kill him! He had to kneel and put a hand on the ground to steady his shaking legs.
And there, beside his spread fingers, lay the gnawed bones of a baby girl. A tiny ground-stone bracelet encircled her wrist.
He pretended to examine it while he glanced at his warriors. Occupied with unrolling hides, building fires, and muttering about the day’s events, no one paid him much attention.
He looked at Elk Ivory again. She had her back to him, bent over Blue Raven.
Jumping Badger grabbed the foot of the little girl, tucked her chewed body inside his beaver-hide coat, and ran into the depths of the forest.
I’ll be safe if I stay at the edge of the light. They can’t reach for me if I’m in the light!
But they crowded around him, whispering and swaying as he crouched to build a fire.
Rumbler tugged up his hood, and huddled inside the fox-fur cape. He had crawled into a cocoon of low-hanging pine boughs. Through the cracks in the branches, he could see waves lapping the shore, and beyond them water and more water.
He was too afraid to sleep. As he’d climbed the hill, he’d heard shouts and a scream.
The trees shrieked at him and flung their arms.
“No,” he whispered, and tucked the lower half of his face inside the cape.