Rumbler leaned forward to put his left hand on the flat surface. The blackened fingertips looked grotesque against the sparkling gray and white background. “I’m ready, Wren,” he repeated.
She reached for her white chert blade and the fire-hardened wooden bowl. “How long will the numbness last, Rumbler?”
“Two hands of time.”
Wren sucked in a breath. Before she began, she reached beneath her deerhide cape and patted the chewed strip of rawhide hanging from her belt. Help me to do this right, Trickster. I’m really afraid.
Her hand wavered when she picked up the sharp blade.
“It’s all right, Wren,” Rumbler said and spread his fingers as wide as he could. “You can do it. You have to.”
She put her left hand over the top of Rumbler’s, to hold it still, and had started to lower the blade, when the goshawk that had been circling high above sailed down, and silently alighted on one of the sassafras branches over Rumbler’s head. Wren blinked, startled.
A white weasel stood up on its hind legs to her right, its dark eyes glinting as it watched them. Then a flock of over a hundred finches swooped into the trees, and burst into song. Their clear trilling notes lilted through the forest.
Rumbler leaned his head back, and gazed up at them.
Wren whispered, “They’re certainly curious today,” but the beautiful songs eased some of her dread.
Rumbler smiled. “My father sent them.”
“To make sure I don’t hurt you?”
“No,” Rumbler said. “To give you their Power. Can’t you feel it? It’s like sugar maple sap in my veins.”
Wren did feel something, but she wasn’t sure it was Power. It felt more like terror. She itched all over. “I’m going to start, Rumbler, all right?”
“Yes.”
Wren clamped her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering, and got on her knees. She lowered the blade to the second joint of his little finger, and swiftly started sawing, heedless of the blood that gushed and flowed down over the granite. When the bone grated beneath her blade, she sliced around it, severing the tendons and ligaments, then pressed down hard to cut through the middle of the joint. The fingertip popped loose and rolled across the spall. Trembling, Wren set it on the ground, and quickly began work on the next finger. When she had finished the left hand, Wren threw her blade down and grabbed a stick. She scooped hot coals from the fire into the wooden bowl, set it on the granite spall, and lifted Rumbler’s left hand, preparing to plunge the bleeding fingers into the bowl. But hesitated. Tears came to her eyes. Oh, Trickster, please …
“Rumbler, I … I can’t …”
He pulled his hand from hers and, like a butterfly landing on a flower, lowered his fingertips to the coals.
“That’s long enough!” she cried when she could smell the meat cooking. Wren jerked his left hand from the bowl. The scent of burned flesh filled the air.
Rumbler placed his right hand on the stone and spread his fingers.
Wren hurried, sawing, slicing, and moving on as rapidly as she could.
When the last digit came off, she took his right hand, and swiftly touched each fingertip to the coals, just long enough to stop the blood, then she let go and collapsed in a heap.
Smoke billowed from the charring bowl. Wren didn’t have the strength to pour the coals back into the fire pit. She lay on her side in the dirt, panting, and listening to the cacophony of birdsong. Finches fluttered through the branches, hopping lower as if to get a good look at Rumbler. They cocked their heads first one way and then another. Blood had spattered the white fox-fur cape he wore, and speckled his round face.
Rumbler wiggled the stubs of his fingers. His expression was one of curiosity as he bent forward to examine the black bloody joints that lay on and around the spall.
Suddenly, he lifted his head. His gaze fixed on nothing.
Wren sat up. “Rumbler? What—”
“My eyes … they … they’re flying, Wren. Flying far away.”
Wren folded her arms beneath her cape and hunched forward to halt her shivers. “Where are they? What do you see?”
His mouth opened, but he didn’t answer for a time. His black eyes widened until they seemed to fill half his face. He murmured, “We can’t follow the regular trails any longer, Wren. That’s where people will be looking for us. There … there is a new way. The animals are making it for us.”
“Will we …”
Rumbler’s eyes closed and he crumpled onto his side.
Wren gasped and scrambled toward him, but his chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm. She sank to her knees. “Blessed ancestors, Rumbler,” she whispered. “I thought you were dead.”