“Grandmother,” Rumbler said, and glanced uncertainly at the people standing around. “Wren and I, we want to go find my father.”
Wren held his little hand tighter, and nodded. “He needs to find his father. If he doesn’t go now, he may never have another chance.”
Dust smiled, but uncertainty invaded her chest. She turned around. “Cornhusk, have you ever been to the far northern islands? A place called the Cove Meadows?”
“Why, yes!” Cornhusk said. “I’ve been there once. There isn’t really much there. Why?”
Dust tenderly tucked Sparrow’s blood-spattered hair behind his ears, and gazed up at him with her whole heart in her eyes. She said, “We have a message we want you to carry to a man there, named Bull Killer.”
Thirty-Seven
Grandfather Day Maker had not yet risen, but a golden gleam arched over the eastern horizon. The tufts of mist glimmered in the treetops, and drifted along the lakeshore. A cool fish-scented wind tousled Wren’s long hair around her face.
Wren took a breath and winced. She sat cross-legged before the plaza fire, her hands braced on her knees, while Matron Dust Moon wrapped her chest with bandages. Rumbler sat beside her, holding tight to her pant leg, but his dark eyes studied the movements of the warriors in the plaza. His plump cheeks and chin-length black hair gleamed from the thorough scrubbing Dust Moon had given him a hand of time ago.
Dust Moon ripped the ends of the strip of fabric and knotted it. “Now take a deep breath, Wren. Can you feel your ribs shifting?”
Wren cautiously obeyed, filling her lungs. Tendrils of pain flashed across her chest, but nothing like the fiery lances that had tormented her throughout the night. “No. They feel better. Thank you, Dust Moon.”
“Good, let’s slip on your shirt.”
Wren squinted against the pain as she lifted her arms, and allowed Dust Moon to pull her blue shirt on. Then Dust Moon draped a red blanket over Wren’s shoulders, and said, “I was thinking I’d comb your hair for you.”
Wren turned to peer up at her kind, deep-wrinkled face, and the golden fleck just beneath the pupil of her left eye. She wore her hair in a long gray braid. “Yes,” Wren said and gave her a tremulous smile. “I’d like that.”
Dust Moon smiled, and pulled a wooden comb from the open pack beside her. As she started gently running the comb through Wren’s hair, Wren sighed. No one had combed her hair since her mother’s death. Warmth grew in Wren’s heart and filtered out through her tired body.
Rumbler shifted beside her, and Wren turned. He frowned at the ring of prisoners who sat twenty paces to his right, their hands and feet bound. Many had untended wounds. Elk Ivory lay curled on her side next to Acorn. She had yet to sit up this morning, and after the blow she’d taken to the skull, Wren suspected she wouldn’t until someone forced her to. She probably felt violently ill. Turtle Nation warriors surrounded them, their expressions grim. Occasionally one of the Silent Crow warriors would kick one of the Walksalong Village warriors. It hurt to watch.
Silver Sparrow stood near the prisoners, talking to Spotted Frog and Hungry Owl. They made a strange sight, Silver Sparrow with his wrinkled face and long white hair, beside the young dark-haired Hungry Owl. Both men towered over Spotted Frog. The patron of Silent Crow Village stood with his hands laced over his large belly, and his head bowed. He wore his black hair in a series of intricate braids, coiled on top of his head, and pinned with a shell comb. He kept nodding at Silver Sparrow’s soft words.
Finally, Spotted Frog said, “No, it’s too dangerous. Who is to say what will happen if we let them go?”
Hungry Owl said, “I agree. They may decide to attack other Turtle Nation villages on their way back to Walksalong Village.” His eyes narrowed as he scanned the burned lodges, and the dead bodies that lay in a row at the edge of the trees. “I don’t want to see other villages slaughtered the way we were.”
Spotted Frog nodded. “I think it would be best if we just killed them here and now. It would certainly send a scare into the Walksalong matrons—”
Sparrow interrupted, saying, “Or maybe make them decide to dispatch the rest of their warriors for Silent Crow Village, Spotted Frog.”
In a forlorn voice, Rumbler whispered, “I can’t stand to see anybody else die, Wren.”
She clamped her jaw. Tears had sprung to Rumbler’s eyes.
Silver Sparrow said, “Listen to me, please. This insanity has to stop somewhere. I—”
“It could stop,” Wren said in a strong voice, “if we established an alliance.”