People of the Masks(98)

Wren touched his damp hair gently. She had come to care for him very much in the last half moon—almost like a brother.

The finches burst from the trees and sailed up and away, winging eastward.

Cautiously, she looked for the weasel and the hawk. She didn’t see the hawk anywhere, but tiny paw prints marked the path the weasel had taken through the patchy snow west of the grove.

Wren stared at them. Had Rumbler’s father, the wicked Forest Spirit, truly sent the animals, or had they just been drawn by the smell of a human camp? Finches and jays often flocked to people, hoping for handouts. And the weasel and hawk … well, they were predators. Perhaps the smell of Rumbler’s rotting fingers, or the food in her pack, had lured them.

Wren picked up her bowl. One of the coals had burned through the bottom, leaving a smoking hole. She grimaced and tossed the bowl into the fire. Her cup would be good enough. She could eat and drink from it.

Flames licked around the edges of the bowl, and shot through the hole, then the whole thing blazed.

Wren looked at Rumbler again, at his mangled hands. A trickle of blood oozed from the third finger on his right hand. It would probably stop by itself. He’d lost the top joint of every finger on his left hand, and two joints from his little finger. On his right hand, he’d lost the top joints of every finger except his first. He must have kept it tucked beneath his thumb to protect it.

Wren shook her head, surprised that she’d been able to do it at all.

As she stooped over and started picking up the blood-soaked fingertips, a shudder went through her. They felt oddly inhuman, cold and bloated. But she held them tightly. Letting blood was a holy act. It fed Grandmother Earth, and the creatures she loved. Women, especially, were responsible for blood. Each moon they saved their bleeding cloths, wrung them out, and carried the blood to the fields, where they poured it upon the ground. The Sacred Sisters, corn, beans, and pumpkins, used this blood to nourish their children, which resulted in strong and plentiful crops for the people. Wren’s mother had told her that everything worked in circles. Circles within circles. “That’s what life is all about, my daughter.”

Wren solemnly carried the severed joints to the edge of the sassafras grove and dug a hole in the dry forest duff. As she placed the offerings in the hole, she thought about her mother. She would have been proud of Wren today.

The thought made her smile.

Wren pushed soil over the joints and sat quietly for a time. Sunlight dappled the ground around her, shining on old leaves and twigs. She thought about the family she had lost. About her clan, and Uncle Blue Raven. He must be frantic by now. Both about her disappearance, and the possibility that Jumping Badger would find her and drag her back to Walksalong Village.

Wren looked up and as her gaze drifted through the unfamiliar forest, and the unknown hills in the distance, she longed so for home that she thought she would die of the longing.

Weakly, she lay down, and pillowed her cheek on the soft fragrant earth. Memories dove at her, clawing and pecking. She couldn’t stop them. She’d been holding them back for days, and now they were wild to get at her.

She lay still, her face in the dirt, the sunlight streaming down around her, remembering people who were dead, and warm longhouses she would never see again, feeling her heart being torn to pieces inside her chest.

When at last she sat up, she found Rumbler staring at her.

He lay curled on his side, his black eyes glistening with firelight.

“I’ll be your family, Wren,” he said softly. “I promise.”

Skybow’s face appeared on her souls, and desperation spread through Wren. Like the waves that eddied outward from a rock thrown into a pond, it ran along her bones, and lapped at her fingers and toes, and the top of her head.

“I’m just scared, Rumbler,” she replied and brushed dirt from her cheek.

“I won’t let anyone hurt you, Wren, so long as I am alive.”

She gave him a wan smile, and got to her feet. “How do you feel? Are your eyes still flying?”

He shook his head. “No, they’re back. Let me show you the trail I saw. Sometimes, after the Spirit of the papaw seeds leaves my body, I forget things.”

Wren trotted to his side.

Rumbler used his one good finger to draw in the dirt. “It starts just up ahead by a lightning-struck spruce. There’s a scooped-out place where a wolf likes to sleep …”





Jumping Badger lay in his blankets by the fire, the woodpile an arm’s length away. He constantly added branches to keep the flames going throughout the night. It meant he could never allow himself to fall into a deep sleep, and that fact had begun to show. The black circles beneath his eyes had turned to bruises, and his hands shook constantly.