Breath warmed his chest. He rocked back and forth, shivering.
Snow-covered rocks scattered the lakeshore. They were all dead Spirits. Cloaked in white burial blankets. But they shouted at him to run.
“No. Wren said morning.”
Her name tasted bright and shiny, like sparks.
He wanted her badly. The longing had turned to a great darkness.
He wished he could swallow her name into his aching stomach where the darkness breathed. Maybe the sparks would shoot out in all directions, and the darkness would leak from the holes, and drain away.
He tucked his hurt hands between his knees.
Wind Mother wiggled through the pine boughs and shoved Rumbler hard.
“No!” He swallowed his tears. “Wren said morning. She’ll be here in the morning!”
Twenty-Eight
Snow fluttered down around Elk Ivory, landing in the fire to spit and sizzle. She plucked another strip of dark meat from the duck Acorn had given her. He sat to her right, eating his own duck, his bristly hair glimmering orange. Buckeye squatted to her left. A giant of a man, he made two of Acorn, with bulging muscles stretching his hide pants and cape. He wore his black hair in two short braids.
Jumping Badger sat across the fire from them. He had four new stilettos tucked into his belt. The freshly ground tips gleamed, sharpened to deadly points. It did not require great ability to discern where he’d gotten them, but she wondered at their utility. Made from the frail leg bones of a child, they would snap instantly if plunged into a human enemy. What possible use …
A log broke in the fire, and light splashed the camp. Jumping Badger jerked and yipped as shadows fluttered through the trees.
Jumping Badger pointed, and whispered, “Do you see them?”
“I do not see anyone, War Leader,” she answered. “Whom do you see?”
His eyes narrowed. He clamped his jaw and turned to the staff with the masked head, two paces away. The crow’s beak shone orange. “I can kill them now!” he shouted at Lamedeer. “Tell them! You tell them, they’ll believe you!”
The mask seemed to be peering at the warriors wandering the camp. The eyeholes glimmered with hate.
Elk Ivory pulled off another greasy strip of duck and ate it. Lamedeer had every right to hate them tonight. They had brought him back to his old village, and slapped him in the face with the annihilation of his clan and those he loved. If a soul did inhabit that rotten head, it had undoubtedly been conversing with the unhappy ghosts that roamed these woods. She wouldn’t be surprised if the ghosts sneaked out of the forest tonight and sucked all of their souls out through their ears.
She glowered at Jumping Badger.
He apparently sensed her eyes upon him—he whirled and glowered back. Every day that passed, she longed more to kill him. Tonight, the urge nearly overwhelmed her.
Blue Raven lay curled beneath her buffalo coat. The feel of his blood-drenched hands gripping hers had been like a lance in her heart, twisting.
She looked over at Little Wren. Her hands and feet bound, the girl had slumped against an oak trunk. No sounds came from her, but Elk Ivory could see the sobs shaking her shoulders.
She tore off a chunk of duck with her teeth and ate it slowly, thinking about the girl. By stealing that wicked child, Wren had doomed the one person she loved more than any other in the world. How would she be able to live with that fact? That she had caused her uncle’s death? Despite Blue Raven’s assurances that it wasn’t Wren’s fault, surely the girl knew better.
Blessed Spirits, what an awful burden for a girl of twelve winters.
Someone laughed across the camp, and Elk Ivory looked up. Rides-the-Bear and Shield Maker had gotten into a playful shoving contest. The other warriors around the fire grinned.
She ate the last bite of meat from her duck and tossed the remains into the fire. Flames licked around the carcass, scorched the bones, and sent up an acrid black smoke.
Rides-the-Bear, a member of Beadfern’s longhouse, had watched Skullcap and Mossybill die. He hated Blue Raven for defending the False Face Child. But no Headman could be worshiped by every member of his clan. Headmen made decisions that benefited most of the people, most of the time. Which meant that a few people always stood on the fringes, grumbling.
Still … she didn’t know how anyone could laugh tonight, and she despised Rides-the-Bear, and his friends, for it.
Acorn nudged Elk Ivory with his elbow, and murmured, “Are you well?”
She shook her head. After giving Blue Raven her coat, she had pulled her extra buckskin shirt from her pack. Knee-length, with a band of yellow porcupine quillwork across the shoulders, it barely kept the cold at bay. She’d been on the verge of shivering for a hand of time. She knew she could rise, go over to her bedding and pull out a blanket to wrap her shoulders. But she needed to feel the cold and snow. On a night filled with death, it let her know she was alive.