Dawn’s pale purple gleam dyed the tops of the tallest trees, but most of the shore remained cloaked in slate-colored shadows. High above Blue Raven only the brightest of the Night Walkers’ lodges twinkled. The rest had succumbed to the waking of Dawn Woman.
Blue Raven studied the shore as he paddled by. Yesterday, in the middle of the day, he’d seen a trail leading from the water to the tree line, but it had been so faint, it might have been made by anything, deer, wolves, or people. He’d paddled on by … but the image had nagged him, keeping him awake. He’d risen around midnight, gotten into his canoe, and started paddling back toward this stretch of beach, hoping to take a closer look.
After six days in a canoe, eating only what he could collect from the forest when he stopped at night, Blue Raven paddled like an old man. The way it tugged at his shoulder muscles, the oar might have been made from granite, instead of wood.
He had seen no signs of a pursuing war party. But they were there. They had to be. He knew the souls of the Walksalong matrons.
He’d found only one of Wren’s camps, the one she’d made on the first night of her journey. It had been snowing. When she’d packed the canoe in the morning, she hadn’t covered her trail from the shore to the water. Perhaps she’d been frightened, and rushing. Or maybe she’d thought the snow would fill in her footprints. Whatever the reasons for her carelessness then, from that point onward she had covered her trail like a wounded warrior who knew he was being followed.
Blue Raven’s brows lowered. A strip of deeper shadows ran straight up from the lake to the rocky shore. He dipped his paddle into the calm green water, and slowed. He couldn’t be sure from this distance, but the shadow looked like a trail … . Not the one he’d seen yesterday. This was much clearer. More recently made.
As he neared the trail, he noticed a glint of white in the brush at the edge at the water. He steered closer. The painted bow of a canoe, almost hidden, peeked from the tangle of vines. The trail led up to it, then veered away, into the forest.
Blue Raven’s heart pounded. He paddled hard for the shore, leaping out in knee-deep water. He dragged the canoe up onto the sand, and went to study the tracks.
The trail had been made by people.
Two people.
Eighteen
The nagging pain in his arm woke Sparrow. He opened his eyes, and saw that Dust lay curled against him, her head pillowed on his arm. Despite the pain, he didn’t move. He would give almost anything to awaken with her in his arms every morning. He inhaled the delicate scent that clung to her hair, and slowly let the breath out. It floated away in a white cloud.
After her blankets had blown away, she’d been forced to choose between freezing to death or sharing his elkhide. To his irritation, it had taken her over a finger of time, and a good deal of pacing back and forth, to decide. When she’d finally crawled under the hide, she’d ordered him not to touch her, and vowed she wouldn’t touch him.
Sparrow smiled. Dawn Woman’s pearlescent gleam fell through the trees, dappling Dust’s beautiful face with lavender light. Sometime during the long cold night, her body had won the battle with her pride and she’d snuggled as closely to him as she could.
He silently reached out and touched the long silver hair that spread over his arm. The softness consoled him.
Groggily, Dust whispered, “Stop that.”.
He roughly pulled his arm from beneath her head, and it thumped the ground. “You’re the one who decided we were friends again. I woke up with you glued to my side tighter than pine pitch.”
Dust opened her eyes. “That’s because you slipped your arms around me in the middle of the night, and pulled me against you, Sparrow. I was just too tired to resist.”
Momentarily stunned, Sparrow didn’t know what to say. A thousand times in the past two winters he’d dreamed of doing exactly that. So … he probably had.
“Well,” he said as he shoved out from under the hide and stood up. “Forgive me. My arms didn’t know any better. After thirty-five winters, they thought that was where they were supposed to be.”
His moccasins squealed on the snow as he plodded away from camp, and into a thick grove of maples. As he emptied his night water, he saw Dust sit up. Her hair swung around her like a moonlit mantle.
Something about the morning light. He couldn’t take his eyes from her. She rolled their hides, then stood up and, like a cat stretching in the sun, lifted her arms over her head while she arched her back. Dressed in plain knee-length moccasins, a doehide dress, and buckskin cape, she did not look like a powerful clan matron. She looked delicate and young, reminding him of the weedy girl he’d started to love in his fourteenth winter. He’d had to wait twenty moons before he could even ask her father if he could court her. But it had been worth it. He’d been forced to admire her from afar, like now, and it did something to a man’s souls, transforming ordinary yearning into a hallowed sensation.