People of the Masks(87)

Even now, after all the children she had borne him, he looked at her and felt reverence.

Dust rummaged in her pack, drew out cooking pots, bowls, and horn spoons, then stood and walked behind a boulder.

Sparrow started breaking off the dead lower branches of the maples. He moved from tree to tree until he could carry no more, then returned to the camp, dropped his wood near the rolled hides, and picked up his bowl. He began to scoop a hole in the snow. Just as he finished, Grandfather Day Maker crested the eastern horizon. Brilliant daggers of light shot across the sky, lancing the drifting Cloud Giants, and spilling yellow across the rolling hills. The snow glimmered, and sparkled.

Sparrow stopped to enjoy the moment.

Crows cawed in the distance, their voices joyful, as if greeting Grandfather Day Maker.

“You think he’s going to Paint Rock, don’t you?” Dust asked as she walked from behind the boulder.

“Yes,” Sparrow said.

He started cracking twigs from the branches he’d collected and dropped them into the hole.

“But why, Sparrow? There’s nothing there for him.”

“Wouldn’t you go home, Dust?” He reached for his pack, and drew out his fireboard, his drill, and the small wooden box of charred fabric. He carefully arranged the blackened threads atop the twigs, and moved his fireboard into position over the tinder. “Even if you’d been told that your village was gone, and everyone you loved was dead, wouldn’t hope drive you back?”

She sat on the rolled hides and leaned forward. “Perhaps, but I know the horrors of life. I’ve spent fifty winters learning to see them without seeing them. He’s seen nine winters. His eyes only know how to see.”

Sparrow fumbled with his fireboard and drill. “I’m afraid for him, too, Dust.”

She shoved her hands into her pockets and heaved a breath. “All of his life he’s been protected. People have treated him like a rare and precious trade pot. During the Paint Rock battle, the pot was dropped. I fear he’ll shatter if he has to stand over the dead bodies of his family.”

“Dust …” Sparrow propped his fireboard on the ground. “He may have already shattered. He’s been through a terrible ordeal.”

“Let’s just try to reach him as soon as we can, Sparrow. If his souls are—not right—maybe I can help him.”

“We’re trying, Dust.”

Sparrow got down on his right knee, and placed his left foot on the fireboard to hold it in place. He inserted his drill, a stick about as long as his arm, into a prepared hole in the flat fireboard. Ordinarily it took about ten heartbeats to get a spark, but on very cold days it always seemed to take longer. He vigorously spun the drill between his palms. After thirty heartbeats the friction of the hardwood drill against the soft fireboard produced smoke. Sparrow pressed down harder, and spun the drill as fast as he could. Finally red sparks glowed to life in the drill hole. He laid his drill aside and carefully dumped the sparks into the nest of charred fabric. As he blew on them, the charred threads began to burn, and fell into the bed of twigs, igniting the bark. A tiny flame licked up, then the twigs caught, and fire danced to life. Sparrow pulled larger sticks from the woodpile, and gradually added them until he had a decent blaze going.

Dust extended her hands to the flames. “Sparrow? Do you think … I mean … Rumbler must be hoping that Briar is alive.”

“I’m sure he is.”

“If what we’ve heard is true, he’s going to go home and find her … you know what Cornhusk said about how she … she was clubbed. The wolves and hawks may have been at her.” Dust shook her head, unable to finish the sentence. “I’m afraid of what Rumbler might do, Sparrow.”

“I know what I’d do.” A bed of coals had formed in the fire pit. Sparrow used a stick to pull some of them to the side, then packed snow into the teapot and set it on the coals to heat. “If I came home and found your body lying in a burned heap of timbers, I’d go mad, Dust. Completely mad. I would use every vestige of Power I could pull from the earth and sky to punish those who’d hurt you.”

At the emotion in his voice, her extended hands turned to fists. “I’d feel the same way if I found Planter or … or my grandchildren murdered.”

Sparrow smiled sadly at the list, but said, “Yes, I know you would.”

“Rumbler is Powerful, Sparrow. What if he does something foolish?”

“Like call out to the Up-Above-World for huge rocks to rain from the skies? Well, the Walksalong Clan will be pummeled to mush. But I doubt that will happen. Power lives in Rumbler’s body, true, but he can’t control it yet. At least, I don’t think he can.”