“No, this was a long time ago, right after you were born.”
He pulled back and frowned. “After I was born?”
“Yes.” Dust smiled at the memory. “I had just cleaned you up, and wrapped you in a blanket, and your mother looked at me and said, ‘Dust, if anything ever happens to me, I want you to take Rumbler. Promise me you will take him and raise him as your own son.’”
Rumbler toyed with the fringes on her cape, flipping them. “What did you say, Grandmother?”
“I told her that I could think of nothing more wonderful than having you as my own son.”
For a moment, the joy of being loved and wanted seemed so great that he couldn’t answer. His throat worked, and he tugged at Dust’s fringes. “I love you, Grandmother.”
“We love you, too. Very much. Sparrow and I want you to live with us. If you want to. You know you have other relatives, third and fourth cousins in Flowering Tree Village—”
“But Grandmother, first … I—I want to find my father.”
“Your father?”
“Yes. Wren and I?” he said in a desperate voice. “We were on our way when her uncle came. But now you could go with us! You and Grandfather.” He smiled as though she’d just answered a silent prayer. “If you were with us, we wouldn’t have to be scared.”
The shock coalesced into a hard knot beneath Dust Moon’s ribs. “Rumbler … your father … I don’t know where he is.”
“But I heard my mother tell you! She told you my father had gone north to the Picture Rocks.”
Dust felt as if a bolt of lightning had just struck her. Every nerve hummed. She remembered that conversation as if it had taken place yesterday. She and Briar had been huddled together in the lodge, whispering, trying not to wake Rumbler who slept in the back. He couldn’t have been more than two winters old.
Dust said, “Blessed gods, you remember that?”
“Yes, Grandmother. My mother said that after my father discovered she was heavy with child, he decided to go far away. To the Picture Rocks. Don’t you remember?”
“Well, yes, I do, but …”
Sparrow walked out of the elm trees that lined the shore, carrying a cleaned, plucked grouse in his left hand. Wind Mother had snarled his waist-length white hair into a mass of tangles. Damp curls bordered his cheeks, and draped the front of his elk-hide coat.
As he neared the camp, he held up the grouse and smiled. “It’s not much, but it should put some fire back in our bellies.”
The newborn light shadowed the hollows of his wrinkled cheeks and temples, making his dark eyes, and beaked nose, seem to jut from his face.
Dust gave Rumbler a serious look, and said, “Let’s eat, then we’ll talk more, all right?”
He nodded, but he didn’t look overjoyed with the idea of waiting.
Dust kissed his forehead and said, “Sit down and I’ll get you a cup of hot tea.”
Rumbler stepped back, and sank to the sand.
Dust dipped up a cup of tea for him. “Don’t worry, Rumbler.” She handed him the cup. “Here, this should warm you up inside.”
He took the cup in silence and balanced it on his knee.
Sparrow knelt at Dust’s side and glanced between them. “You two look like somebody put water hemlock in your tea. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, Sparrow. That grouse looks wonderful. Instead of boiling that bird, why don’t we cut it into quarters, and roast it?”
Sparrow grinned. “I like that idea.”
He removed his knife from his belt, slit the bird around the middle, then cracked the spine in two. Next, he sawed along the backbone, splitting the two pieces into four, and handed them to Dust.
She pulled sticks from the woodpile, skewered the pieces, and stuck the sticks into the wet sand. Then she tilted the sticks to lean the grouse quarters over the flames to cook.
In only moments the sweet aroma of roasting meat filled the cold morning air.
Dust dipped up two more cups of tea and handed one to Sparrow. Their fingers brushed as he took it, and he seemed to feel her tension.
“Are you going to tell me,” he asked, “or do I have to guess?”
Dust sipped her own tea. The tart flavor of the pine needles enlivened her flagging souls, and gave her the strength to pull the memories from the dark corners where she kept them. I have held this secret in my heart for ten winters. Can I talk about it? Even with Briar dead? I gave her my promise I would never speak of it again.
She looked up and found Sparrow staring at her intently.
Dust said, “Rumbler wants us to help him find his father.”
“His father? You mean the Forest Spirit? The Disowned?”