People of the Masks(80)

Dust turned.

Out across the lake, a black wall of clouds rose over the water. As she watched, it rolled closer, the leading edge tumbling, blotting the stars as it came.

“Get up, Dust. Move. Hurry! Run for the trees.”

Sparrow grabbed his bedding, snatched his pack, and dashed up the slippery meadow for the pines.

Dust bent over to gather her blankets, but her eyes stayed on the storm. “What is that?”

“A storm!” he shouted, and violently waved an arm at her. “Come on!”

Cloud Giants sailed in from every part of the sky, huge giants, wispy giants, they all rushed to join the storm. As their bodies melded with the black wall, it billowed higher into the night sky.

“Blessed Grandfather Day Maker,” she whispered in awe. “It’s alive.”

By the time Dust had dragged her blankets into her arms, and slung her pack over her shoulder, the storm had swallowed half the sky.

“Come on, Dust!” Sparrow called from the hilltop. “It’s coming fast!”

She ran up the icy meadow toward the snowdrifts that ringed the pines, but before she made the trees, the wind struck her like the fist of the gods, slamming her sideways, knocking her off her feet and ripping her blankets from her arms. She tried to grab for them, but they whipped away, flying upward as if they’d sprouted wings.

“Dust!”

Sparrow ran for her, grabbed her, and pulled her to her feet.

“Hold on to me!” he yelled. “Don’t let go!”

Sparrow guided Dust into the lee of a large granite boulder, and forced her to crouch down behind it. The rock blocked some of the wind, but the storm ripped off a blizzard of pinecones and needles from the branches behind them and hurled them down.

Dust yipped sharply when a piece of gravel struck her cheek and drew blood.

“Get down!” Sparrow shoved her down flat, and covered her with his own body.

White hair streamed over his shoulders like the ghostly arms of a dancer. Through the veil, she glimpsed pine boughs lashing into each other as snow blasted from the sky.





Jumping Badger walked around Lamedeer’s head, his steps light. The firebow that draped his neck patted softly against his long beaverhide coat. He’d planted the staff, upon which the head rode, in the middle of Blue Raven’s trail. The traitor had pulled his canoe up on shore and camped here last night. The head stood as a reminder to anyone who doubted his abilities that he had sniffed out his cousin’s trail. Not that it had been difficult. Blue Raven had made no attempt to disguise the deep swaths his body had cut. Jumping Badger couldn’t decide why. Many winters ago, Blue Raven had been a renowned warrior. If he’d stolen the boy and meant to escape, why would he leave such an easy trail?

He kicked snow at Lamedeer’s head. “Eh?” he whispered. “You would cover your trail. So would I. Why didn’t he?”

A prickling started beneath Jumping Badger’s heart. He had learned to recognize Lamedeer’s ghostly laughter. He couldn’t hear it with his ears, but his body could. It was like being tickled with a bear’s claw, sharp, irritating.

He walked around Lamedeer again. Over the past hand of time, he’d worn a circular path in the snow.

Shadows danced across the snowdrifts as his warriors lifted their heads to watch him. They sat fifty hands away, huddled around the nightly fire. They moved uneasily, lifting a shoulder, toying with a piece of wood, shaking their heads. They spoke in hoarse whispers.

Behind them, at the edge of the fire’s halo, a dark shape floated through the trees. Burned. She had been burned blacker than the darkness, her body consumed. But not her eyes.

They lived. Bright and shining.

Those eyes peered at him from behind a tree trunk.

“Go away!” Jumping Badger shouted. “You can’t hurt me! I’m more powerful than you are! If you don’t leave me alone, I will cut your son into little pieces when I find him!”

The eyes died. The forest stilled.

Jumping Badger studied Lamedeer. The dead war leader’s face had changed. Most of his hair had fallen out, leaving huge bald spots on the crown and left side of his head. The few graying black locks that remained hung in filthy strands over the right eye. The other eye had sunken into the socket and formed a hard yellow crust, but Jumping Badger could feel it gazing at him—like a deer watching him through thick brush.

“You are strangely silent tonight,” Jumping Badger noted. “Have you given up trying to drive me mad with the echoes?”

When Lamedeer said nothing, Jumping Badger leaned down and shouted in his face, “Talk to me!”

Frightened murmurs rose from his warriors.

Jumping Badger whirled. “Be quiet! I can’t hear anything with your noise!”