Trying to find the right words, he said, “I am part of this. A circle. A beginning that must become the end. Without me, I can sense that there will be a wrongness. Some part of this will be incomplete. I am part of the pattern drawn by Power. I must weave myself into the final fabric.” He paused. “Does that make sense?”
She nodded, a weary acceptance in her eyes. “Yes, yes. I know the ways of Power. Oh, do I ever. And I’m tired of it, Ripple. Tired of being at the center of great events. By Birdman’s sacred mace, I’d break free if I could. I want to go away somewhere, build a house by a stream and grow corn and squash. I want to lie with a man who won’t hurt me, and learn what love is. Can’t I be left alone, have the chance to conceive and have children? I want to watch them grow, and play, and smile at them as they sit by the fire. Why is it impossible for me?”
He stared down at his left hand where it rested in a mass of splints. The bones were itching, most of the swelling gone. Through gaps he could see scabs crusted and loose atop pink skin on what had once been knuckles.
“Answers are always hard to find,” he said mildly. “From the day I watched my mother and father die I have wanted nothing but the First People’s destruction. I had not thought to find anything I would want as much.” He smiled sadly. “I haven’t told you before, but Raven Hunter gave me a vision. In it, I saw your face.”
“Then don’t go.”
“I made a promise to Cold Bringing Woman.”
She said nothing. Perhaps Orenda of all people knew what came of breaking promises to the gods.
Oh, the gods, what capricious beings they are. As woven into the ways of Power as humans, but with the ability to use it for their own purposes. Once I feared the gods. That was such a long time ago, before I realized that they, too, were as mortal as I. True, the lives of gods are longer, and the Spirit World in which they live has more twists and turns than the earth that people walk; but in the end, they, too, shall die.
I have yet to truly understand how gods harness the Power they use. I think it resembles the whirlpools and eddies along one of the great eastern rivers. Power is the current, constantly flowing through time. Somehow the gods concentrate that current for their own, holding it for a time, using it for their petty aims. But in the end, they can no more hoard Power than any of us can hoard life. As a god’s Power drains away, he wilts, fades, and finally whimpers into a memory. Memory as we all know is ephemeral as a summer rain.
As I sit in my cage, I ponder the irony. In the beginning, people depend on gods for their survival; and in the end, it is the gods who desperately depend on people for theirs. Time will defeat them both.
I cock my head, listening. The faint whisper of the Tortoise Bundle carries from Webworm’s room. By now it is sending its tendrils down into his souls. What a fool he is, inviting Power into his Dreams.
All the while he carves another basilisk.
Meanwhile, I sit in my cage. I have heard them say I’m harmless.
Let them believe.
“Fool! Fool! You stupid fool!” What on earth had gotten into her? She’d told him things she’d never said to anyone. What was it about him that had conjured such idiocy?
Crow Woman trotted down the sinuous trail, winding her way between patches of pine and lodgepole. She had crossed the divide into the River of Souls Valley. The ford that would take her to Ironwood’s camp lay no more than three hands’ journey ahead. As she hurried along, her shield, bow, and arrows clattered on her back; with a willow switch she slashed angrily at the brown grass.
She had awakened in the night, morning still hands of time away. Shivering from the nightmares that had haunted her, she’d stared over to where he slept so peacefully. Regret, like a thing alive, had been twisting in her breast.
How would she dare face him in the morning? She’d never be able to look him in the eyes again, knowing that he knew! By letting her words run like a brook, she’d given him bits of her souls, pieces he could use against her.
And he would.
He was a man.
Maybe he wouldn’t.
She viciously squashed the voice that tried to wedge its way into her thoughts. Of course he would. What man hadn’t tried to harm her, humiliate her, bend her to his purpose?
The war chief.
Very well, there had been one. But his respect for her hadn’t been shared by his warriors. Her lip lifted in disgust as she remembered the night Whistle had caught her in the willows. How his hands had groped her breasts, how his hot breath had purled across her neck. Or the look of surprise on his face when she’d dimpled his throat with a deer-bone stiletto she used to pin her hair.