Sparrow squinted, thinking, then headed back for Dust.
By the time he reached her, the snow had diminished to a few big flakes.
Dust stood up, her face shining within the frame of her hood. “Rumbler wasn’t there?” Disappointment laced her voice.
“No, Dust, but I found this.” He pointed to the pack. “And I think I know what happened to Rumbler.”
Dust clenched her jaw, as if steeling herself. “What?”
“There were two openings in their shelter. One on this side, the one we saw Wren dash out of, and one on the opposite side of the shelter. I think Rumbler went out that one right after Wren caught our attention.”
She searched his face. “But where did he go?”
“As best I can figure, up the hill.”
Dust turned and looked, then started back up the trail they’d come down. Sparrow followed her in silence.
When they had cleared the drifts and reemerged on the hilltop a short distance from where they’d slept, Dust stopped and tried to catch her breath.
“Do you think,” she asked, “that they talked about a meeting place?”
“I don’t know. They didn’t have much time after we found them. But they might have. Little Wren must be a smart girl. They managed to avoid the war party longer than most adults would have.”
Dust touched the pack. “This must have belonged to her. It’s too big for Rumbler to carry.”
Sparrow nodded, and let his eyes trace the undulating line of the hill to the spot where he thought the trail from the boulder might come out. “Do you see that grove of pines to the northeast? Down near the water’s edge?”
Dust looked into the wind. Gusts flapped her hood around her face. “What about it?”
“The trail I told you about? The one I think Rumbler may have taken? It would come out on the hilltop just above that grove of pines.”
Moonlight shot through a gap in the lines of the marching Cloud Giants, and ignited the snow. It blazed like blue-white fire.
“Do you think he’s hiding there somewhere?” Dust asked. “Waiting for Wren?”
Sparrow gripped her hand, and led her down the hill. “Let’s find out.”
Freezing, her dark blue shirt and pants soaked with melted snow, Wren leaned against the oak tree, staring at Uncle Blue Raven. He lay on his back twenty hands away, his eyes half-open.
She kept expecting to see him move.
To take a breath.
For a full hand of time after Acorn had found him, and said he was dead, Uncle Blue Raven had moved. His fingers had clenched. His feet had jerked.
A disoriented numbness filled Wren. He must be dead. Everyone said so. But …
She clutched the rawhide strip on her belt.
Elk Ivory sat on a stump a short distance away, a blanket around her shoulders, and her bow across her lap. Wren didn’t know where Acorn had gone. The other warriors, including her cousin Jumping Badger, lay rolled in their blankets, snoring.
She had to think. She knew it. But her brain had stopped working.
Elk Ivory stood up, stretched her back, and walked toward Wren. “Are you cold?”
Wren nodded. She didn’t want to open her mouth. Her teeth had been chattering uncontrollably. She tried to remember to keep her jaw clenched, but sometimes she forgot, and her mangled tongue filled her mouth with blood.
Elk Ivory draped her blanket around Wren’s shoulders, and the warmth struck her like a splash of boiling water. She shivered wildly.
Elk Ivory knelt beside Wren. “You should try to sleep.”
“Elk I-Ivory,” she stammered. “Is—is h-he dead?”
She frowned. “Yes, Wren.”
“But he m-moved. After you s-said he was.”
Elk Ivory sighed. “Sometimes the body doesn’t know it’s dead. It fights. I have seen men’s legs try to run after they’ve fallen. I have seen dead hands reach for bows. But there is no thought behind the movements, Wren.”
“His afterlife s-soul is gone?”
“Yes. I give you my pledge that it is.”
Wren gazed at her uncle, afraid to take her eyes from him for fear that he might blink, or sit up, and prove Elk Ivory wrong.
“Can I go … t-to him?”
Elk Ivory put a hand on Wren’s shoulder. “Wren, he is gone. Do you hear me? It happened very quickly.”
Wren tightened her hold on Trickster’s rawhide toy. “C-can I go to him?”
Elk Ivory looked away and shook her head. Then she rose to her feet, took her knife out, slit Wren’s ankle bindings, and hauled her to her feet. Gripping Wren’s elbow, Elk Ivory led her to Uncle Blue Raven.
Wren looked down.
She saw the gashes in his pants, the blood soaking the snow in an enormous circle around his legs.