Faint images of fleeing people and charred houses flitted across the fabric of Blue Raven’s souls. His dreams last night had been tortured, filled with the screams of dying children.
He took a deep breath, and bulled forward.
Icy wind gusted up from Pipe Stem Lake, pungent with decaying leaves and wood. A light dusting of snow glistened on the winter-bare maples and birches. Blue Raven’s gaze clung to that beauty. Against the golden sky, the frosted branches etched a blinding filigree.
He reached the fork in the trail, and took the path down the hill toward the council house in the small grove of red cedars. One hundred twenty hands long, and sixty wide, the rounded roof stood fifty hands tall. The bark walls had grayed with moss. It resembled a giant shaggy beast.
Blue Raven slowed. What should he say to the boy? The Paint Rocks called him the False Face Child, but surely he must have a name. A boy’s name. His mother, the woman Briar, had supposedly borne him at thirteen winters, before her bleeding began. The Paint Rock elders whispered that Briar had mated with a Forest Spirit that resembled a withered tree. It had come to her for six nights in a row, to watch and court her. On the seventh night, they had coupled. The boy took after his father, the elders said, in both his frightening Powers, and his twisted appearance.
Blue Raven gazed at the council house. No sounds came from within. Curious. All captive children wept for home and lost family. Blue Raven had witnessed it a hundred times. Perhaps the clan matrons had gagged the child? Starflower could be practical to the point of cruelty.
He walked to the door, and stood outside the leather curtain. “Matron Starflower? I have come as you commanded.” He leaned closer. “Matron? It is Blue Raven. Would you have me wait outside?”
A hoarse voice whispered, “Enter. Hurry!”
Blue Raven threw the curtain back and lunged inside. As the curtain swayed behind him, light flashed over the gray heads of the clan matrons. Starflower stood with her back to him, facing the corner to his right, while Kit lay on her side forty hands to his left.
“What happened? Is Kit hurt?” He started across the floor for her.
“Stop!” Starflower ordered. “Stay where you are!”
Blue Raven halted, his fists clenching and unclenching. “Why?”
Fifty-nine winters old, Starflower had lips that sank in over toothless gums, making her narrow face appear shriveled at the center. She lifted a trembling chert knife and pointed, but the tip wavered, aiming at the ceiling, then the floor, then the ceiling again. “Do you see it?”
“See what?” he demanded. “Where is the boy?”
Starflower swung around with fiery eyes. “It is not a boy. It is the Disowned! Look!”
Blue Raven surveyed the room, scanning the brightly painted ceremonial masks that hung at regular intervals along the walls. His people rubbed them with sunflower oil to keep their skins shiny and soft. Pots sat on the floor to his right, along with a stack of deerhides used for seating, and a pile of chopped wood. The Disowned? It was a very old and tragic love story told around the winter fires. He had heard people whisper that the Disowned might be the boy’s true father, but not the boy himself.
“Matron,” Blue Raven said, “what has happened? I do not see the boy. Did he escape? Did you …”
Something skittered across the roof.
Blue Raven stumbled backward at the same time that his gaze shot up, his heart thundering.
The boy seemed wedded to the darkness, little more than a black spider among the roof poles of the house. His stunted arms were spread like wings. The feet below his stubby legs, bound with rawhide straps, rested upon an oak bole. He wore a black garment that glittered with what looked like quartz crystals.
Blue Raven stood there, breathing hard, fighting the sudden terror that perhaps the boy was a Spirit. He whispered, “How did he get up there? His feet are bound!”
“Old White Kit …” Starflower’s voice broke as she gestured to the matron curled on her side on the floor. “She felt sorry for him. The warriors had pulled his ropes until they’d rubbed bloody gashes in his ankles and wrists. Kit said, ‘He is the size of a four-winters-old boy. If we leave his feet tied he will be no trouble to us.’ She used her knife to cut his wrist bonds and the child … it struck without warning, Blue Raven! Like a serpent! It grabbed the knife and plunged it into Kit’s heart! Then …” She lifted her own knife again, pointing, and this time Blue Raven saw that blood streaked the white stone blade. “It killed Kit and flew up there. I swear! It flew up there like a wingless blackbird! I—I cut him as he leaped, but he—”