Four old men led the procession, laughing softly, telling stories about the day’s fishing. To the west, across the face of Lost Hill, remnants of sunlight gilded the bellies of the Cloud Giants, turning them a deep dark blue.
Old Bogbean and Loon trudged up the trail next. Wren couldn’t see their faces, but she knew their voices.
“You don’t have to tell me!” Bogbean whispered. “I sleep at his end of the longhouse. All night long, I have to listen to him whispering to that rotting head. It singes my backbone!”
“What does he say?” Loon asked.
“Mostly he makes threats. Can you imagine? Threatening a dead man?”
“Many of the men in my longhouse fear he’s lost his souls. They say that unless he has fifty warriors around him, he shrieks when a finch chirps.”
“He’s always been odd. When he was a child, he used to knock out his playmates’ teeth and carry them in his pocket, to gain power over their souls. Keeping this rotting head is probably the same …”
Their voices faded as they climbed higher up the hill.
Wren stood, barely breathing. The wavering gleam from Uncle Blue Raven’s fire had turned the shadows slippery and liquid. More people followed Bogbean and Loon, speaking quietly. It took forever for all of them to pass.
When the last one had climbed to the top of the hill, Wren leaned from behind the boulder, and looked around. She’d seen the bloody boy down here, and the darker it got, the more her fear increased. But she had to do this.
She ran down the trail toward the lake.
Uncle Blue Raven’s fire flared as he tossed another piece of wood onto the blaze. He yawned, and stretched out on his side, pillowing his head on his arm. His eyes fell closed almost immediately.
But Wren waited. Even if he woke, the flames should blind him to her movements, but she dared not take chances.
Wren laced her hood tightly beneath her chin, and started sliding across the snow. She could feel every hair on the inside of her wolfhide mittens. Like tiny fangs, they nipped at her fingers.
A hundred hands away, Rumbler lay on his back, gazing up at the Cloud Giants who hunted the darkening heavens. Their gleaming bodies billowed, changing shape, as they stalked the owls and other night birds.
Pipe Stem Lake had turned into a sea of winking silver eyes. Waves splashed the beach. Wren slid closer to Rumbler. When she got to within twenty hands, she whispered, “Rumbler?”
He lifted his head. “Wren?”
“Shh!”
Her white fox-fur cape made her almost invisible, but she glanced at her sleeping uncle, then back at the trail, before slithering toward Rumbler. “I’m sorry it took me so long, Rumbler. There were people fishing on the lake. I had to make sure no one saw me.” She opened her cape and drew out her pack.
The aroma of meat seemed to strike Rumbler like a physical blow. He trembled all over. “What did you b-bring me?”
Wren lifted out a thin slice of roasted goose and Rumbler opened his mouth. She fed him three slices, then rummaged in her pack for a skin bag. “Here,” she said as she tipped one corner to Rumbler’s lips, “this is snowberry leaf tea. It was hot when I left the longhouse.”
Rumbler drank the sweet liquid with his eyes closed. The faintest trace of warmth clung to the tea, and it steamed in the frigid air.
Chunks of ice dotted his chin-length hair. The snow must have melted on his head earlier in the day, and the water frozen as night deepened. His beautiful round face had gone hollow and clay-colored. His cheekbones stuck out like a corpse’s.
For a moment, her souls refused to see.
“Rumbler? Are you all right?” she asked as she tucked the empty bag beneath her cape.
Tears blurred his eyes, but he did not seem to have the strength to blink them away.
“All of my echoes have died,” he said. “All of them. My mother’s heartbeat, Grandmother Tail’s laughter, even S-Stonecoat’s bark, they are all gone. Wren, I—I have to catch a bird. Will you help me catch a bird?”
She studied his face. He couldn’t keep his eyes still, they kept sliding and jerking back, trying to stay on her. “I’ll help you, Rumbler.”
Wren spread one side of her fox cape over him, and hugged him against her. He shivered harder, his body twitching and jerking.
“Rumbler,” she said. “I’ve been looking for your mother. Every day, just as I promised. Either she hasn’t come, or she won’t show herself to me, but I haven’t given up. I—”
Rumbler’s mouth opened to the stars and night, and he cried, but no sounds came out.
“Maybe your mother’s echo is just so faint you can’t hear it over the wind, Rumbler. You know how loud Wind Mother’s been for the past quarter moon. All she does is howl through the forests.”