His niece, Little Wren, gazed at him in awe. Twelve winters old, Wren had a slender angular face, as if carved from a fine golden-brown wood. She wore her long hair in a single braid which fell over her left shoulder. Her parents and younger brother had died in a canoeing accident eight moons ago. Their bodies had never been found. Since then, Wren had grown unruly and bold. She had been averaging one nasty fistfight each moon. Perhaps even worse, certainly more dangerous, Wren was absolutely fearless. She might chase a wolf into the forest just to watch its fur shine. Blue Raven never knew what the gangly girl might say or do next.
Wren set her teacup on the floor and leaned forward to whisper, “The False Face Child is here? Truly?”
As he swung his beaver-hide cape around his broad shoulders, Blue Raven said, “Did you doubt your cousin’s abilities as war leader, Wren?”
“Yes,” she answered blithely, and her frankness made him suppress a smile. “And I thought the child had more Power than to let himself be caught,” she added. “May I go see the boy, Uncle? Just to look? I don’t have to touch him, I just wish to—”
“No!” Plume threw the curtain aside, leaped into the house like a small ferocious bear, and blurted, “Matron Starflower told me that only Blue Raven could come!”
Blue Raven patted his niece on the head. “I thought you were going to visit Trickster today?”
“Oh, yes, I must. I promised him I would.” Wren’s hand dropped to touch the knotted strip of rawhide that hung from her cord belt. One end showed teeth marks. She petted the toy as if it soothed her. “But Trickster will understand, Uncle, if I go to visit him after I see the Power child.”
“I know, but not now, Wren. Later.”
Wren scowled at Plume, and the boy grinned.
“And I had best not discover you sneaking through the brush after me, Wren,” Blue Raven warned.
She blinked owlishly, trying to convey innocence. “You won’t, Uncle.”
Blue Raven gave her a skeptical look. “If I see you, I’ll turn you over to Starflower.”
Matron Starflower showed disobedient children no mercy. She forced them to fetch water, grind corn, and carry wood, until they pleaded for pardon.
Wren slumped dejectedly. “I will remain here, Uncle. You have my oath.”
The longhouse seemed to stir to life. Murmuring broke out. As people shifted, their brilliantly colored clothing became a sea of rich reds, greens, yellows, and the palest of blues. Shell earrings danced. Though hides covered the hard-packed dirt floor, it required four evenly spaced fires to heat the longhouse. The orange light from the flames flickered over the baskets, bows, and lances that hung along the bark walls, and played among the dried vegetables suspended from the high arching ceiling. After moons of hanging in the rising smoke, the corn, beans, squash, sunflowers, and other plants had obtained a shiny patina of black creosote.
“What will you do, Blue Raven?” a man from the opposite end of the longhouse called. “Will you bring the child here? To live among us?”
“I will make no decisions until I see him.”
Red porcupine-quill chevrons ran down the sleeves of his cape. They flashed as he rose from his place by the fire.
People stared, their apprehension palpable.
“Continue eating,” he said calmly. “The worst is done. We have stolen the child.”
Frost-in-the-Willows pursed her withered lips, but did not comment.
“Mother,” he said. “I will return soon. Don’t fret about me.”
As she tipped her brown face up, firelight flowed like honey into her deep wrinkles, making her seem a thousand winters old. Her white hair gleamed. “It is very dangerous, my son.”
“He is nine winters old, Mother.”
“It is an abomination!”
Blue Raven knotted the laces of his cape. “Perhaps. I will wait to judge.”
“Why is he an abomination?” Wren asked. She balanced on her knees as if preparing to spring into a run. “I thought he was a Power child?”
“He is,” Blue Raven said. “For now, that is all we know.”
Frost-in-the-Willows lifted a thin white brow. “You would call the Paint Rock elders liars? They say it is very dangerous.”
“Yes, and their words have kept us frightened, haven’t they, Mother? Just as they planned.”
Frost-in-the-Willows used the authoritative tone that had trembled Blue Raven’s heart as a child. “Those elders say that by the time the False Face Child could run, it was hunting, not little birds and chipmunks, like other boys its age, but wolves and bobcats. At the age of four, it no longer needed a bow or arrows. It could kill by calling out to an animal in its own tongue. Old Silver Sparrow has seen it sit upon a rock all day long, as if deaf and blind, and when he asked what it had been doing, the boy answered, ‘Listening to my father’s people talk.’”