People of the Moon(189)

Wrapped Wrist kept his attention on his cooking, wondering all the while what Ironwood’s handful of warriors could do against the might of Flowing Waters Town.

To change the subject, he said, “I was thinking of what a good worker Yellow Petal is. She’s always after Spots to do this, or do that. Fortunately for us, she’s laid in a goodly supply of everything we need.”

“I’d say she’s going to skin a piece out of your hide if you don’t replace what we use,” Orenda told him. Too worried to simply sit, she pushed him out of the way, busying herself with the corrugated cooking pot on the coals.

“I wish she were here,” Wrapped Wrist replied as he sat back. He was aware of Crow Woman. She’d been watching him with a peculiar intensity all day long. Whatever motivated the penetrating interest in her eyes, Wrapped Wrist was sure it boded him no good. He’d probably said something during the last day that she’d been stewing on. The thing was, she didn’t look mad at him. And twice, he’d swear she’d been on the verge of smiling at him.

“Stop that!” Crow Woman snapped as he started to pick at the cactus thorns holding his cheek together. It itched like a thousand lice were under his skin.

“Sorry.” He lowered his hand, unsettled by the concerned look that Crow Woman gave him. “I’d sure like to know what’s happened here since we left.”

“Tomorrow,” Orenda said, “I can go around and ask. No one will recognize me. To them I’ll appear as another pilgrim.”

They ate in silence, but Wrapped Wrist was acutely aware of Crow Woman. She was watching him, a veiled speculation in her eyes. Whatever it was, he tried to avoid her as he attended to the task of filling his belly. Odd, though, that she hadn’t just lit into him with her usual vigor.

After they had cleaned the pots, Wrapped Wrist retired to Spots’s room. There, to his satisfaction, a bundle of darts had been stacked. He fingered each of the long shafts and wondered where Spots was, and how he was faring. Wherever he was, Wrapped Wrist figured Spots wouldn’t begrudge him this cache of desperately needed darts. Given the change in affairs, he swore he wasn’t going to be unarmed again if he could help it.

He flopped out on Spots’s bed, careful to lie on his back so as not to snag his stitches. What an odd sensation to be home, safe for the night in a kinswoman’s house. As he thought about it, the last half moon might have been lived inside a whirlwind.

I killed four men. And after what he’d seen at Ironwood’s village, he’d have no hesitation to kill more.

Who have I become? Until this one moment of peace, he hadn’t had time to ask.

As the fire died, he watched the light fade, then heard Orenda’s deep breathing. Well, at least one of them was sleeping well.

Then the wind began to blow. He heard it whistle around the ladder uprights, felt it stirring inside the house as it sucked through the ventilator shaft.

Crow Woman surprised him when she slipped through the entry and carefully sat on the bedding beside him.

“What’s wrong?” he whispered.

“Nothing.” A pause. “Everything.”

He waited.

“Wrapped Wrist, I have a sense … a premonition.”

“Good or bad?”

“Bad. Is there any other kind these days?”

He remembered the mutilated bodies in Ironwood’s camp, the look of fear in Night Sun’s eyes as she was borne past their hiding place.

He started when she lay down beside him, and was surprised when she placed a hand on his chest to push him back down.

“Can you hold me tonight?” she asked.

“What’s wrong?”

“I think I’m going to die soon. It would be nice, just once … Rot and blood, how do I say this? I’ve been alone all of my life. And then, for the last quarter moon …”

“I know. Sometimes it’s hard to remember what life was like before you started to make me miserable.”

“I’m sorry. I’ll go now.”

He tightened his arm around her shoulders. “Don’t. Maybe it turns out I like having you make me miserable.”

“That day I was captured?”

“Yes.”

“They caught me because I was thinking about you. I was imagining …”

He waited. “You seem to have trouble finishing phrases.”

She sighed in frustration. “Look, I don’t know if I’d be any good at this. I’d never be a normal wife. Nothing like your adored kinswoman, Yellow Petal. Snake’s blood, I don’t even know what you want in a woman.”

He smiled, feeling the tightness in his stitched face. “How about a simple friend and companion?”