Rumbler frowned at his right hand. His thumb and the first finger looked the same, but the tips of his second and third fingers had started to swell and turn dark purple. Two knuckles on his little finger had gone black. Every finger on his left hand had a swollen tip.
Wren sat on her knees in the rear of the canoe, paddling hard. Sweat beaded her brow. For four days, they had been going very fast, shooting along the shore like an arrow. Wren’s oar stroked the water on the left side of the boat, then the right. A long silver V spread out around them. Wren’s braid hung over her right shoulder. She had a face like a wood carving. Brown and cut sharply, the eyes big, like a flying squirrel’s.
But her soul was a wolf’s.
Sometimes the she-wolf looked out at Rumbler, and the air suddenly tasted like running over hills with the wind in his mouth, and the tang of freedom on his tongue. When that happened the whole world had the flavor of polished copper, bright and sour.
He had never known anyone with a wolf’s soul.
Rumbler let out a deep breath, and turned his head to the right, watching the wooded shore pass by. Tall beech and maple trees stretched their arms toward Grandfather Day Maker, offering their morning prayers. So far today, he’d seen four deer drinking from the lake.
Wind Mother ruffled Rumbler’s hair, Singing to him, her voice soft and pretty, trying to get Rumbler to go to sleep.
He yawned, and looked at Wren.
She shifted her oar to the other side of the canoe, and smiled at Rumbler.
The spaces in his heart where his blood lived swelled and ached. His throat went tight.
He swallowed, and smiled back.
Sixteen
Little Wren’s shadow moved over the shelter wall as she duckwalked to the fire pit, and checked the soup pot hanging from the tripod over the low flames. The scent of smoked turkey and onions filled her nostrils. “It’s not boiling yet, Rumbler, but it won’t be long now.”
He sat leaning against the massive trunk of an oak tree, wrapped in her foxhide cape. His chin-length black hair clung to his cheeks, framing his beautiful round face. He gazed at her through unwavering black eyes. He’d been looking at her like that since she’d first tied her cape around him, and dragged him off Lost Hill. He couldn’t walk. She hadn’t had any choice. Besides, she’d been plenty warm. She’d packed her deerhide cape earlier, thinking that Rumbler would need it. She’d ended up wearing it instead.
He couldn’t seem to stop shivering. It worried Wren. She’d seen people die from being out in the cold for too long. Even though people found them and brought them back to the longhouse, they’d gone to sleep and never awakened. Rumbler seemed to be getting stronger, though. He could lift his own teacup now. He could only hold it for a few instants before he had to set it down, but when she’d first handed him a cup, his fingers hadn’t worked at all. The wooden cup sat on the ground beside him.
“Do you need more tea?” Wren asked.
“No, I …” He looked into his cup. “I still have some.”
Wren’s pack rested near the woodpile, to the left of the fire pit. She dragged it over, found her wooden spoon, and stirred the soup. She’d packed enough food for five or six nights. After that, they would have to hunt.
She didn’t know what they would do or where they would go. But she knew she couldn’t go home.
Once, many winters ago, a girl named Caprock had taken one of the sacred masks from the council house, and run off with it. Wren had only seen four winters at the time, but she’d heard that Caprock had planned to sell the mask to a holy woman in a Bear-Turtle village. The war leader before Jumping Badger had hunted her down and dragged her back, screaming, to Walksalong Village.
Matron Starflower had ordered her to be burned alive.
Stealing a False Face Child was much worse than stealing a sacred mask.
Wren peered absently at the soup. It had started to bubble.
She laid down her spoon, and pulled a bag of cornmeal from her pack. After she’d added a handful to the soup, to thicken it, she folded the top over, and tied it again. They didn’t have enough to allow even a few grains to leak out.
“Just a little longer, Rumbler,” she said and sank down cross-legged beside the fire.
Their tiny shelter had warmed up. Wren just hoped the heat wasn’t melting the snow that mounded the deadfall, and hid it from view. She’d deliberately built a small fire—had considered not building one at all, but Rumbler had desperately needed warmth.
Grandmother Earth had made the shelter for them. Over the tree’s long life, limbs had died and piled up around the trunk. Then grape vines had grown over and through the pile, creating a sheltered hollow about two body lengths wide. The animals had discovered it first. Wren had been looking for a windbreak when she’d spooked a deer bedded down in this place. She’d dragged up a few more poles to close the opening to her left, then pried a hole in the roof to allow the smoke from their fire to escape, but the interior had already been carved out perfectly, the sharp twigs broken by the animals, the ground hard-packed.