It wasn’t reassuring to watch Wrapped Wrist’s face go pale.
Twenty-two
STARLIGHT
Few people know the Dead. Most of the time I wish I didn’t. They come and whisper secrets to me. Things that often would have been better unsaid. To truly know the way of things is to live with constant fear. The end is coming. Will I be able to bear it? I have borne so many endings. How can I stand this last one?
Perhaps that was why the Tortoise Bundle caused me to be stolen away those many sun cycles ago. I was destined to be taken, carried away into the distant east by my captor, and lover, Badgertail. Power wanted me to learn the ways of the Dead, of suffering and injustice. Sister Datura wanted to seduce my Souls with the Dance. She and Power sought to prepare me for horror.
Sometimes, across the distance of a world, I hear Tharon’s angry scream of disbelief and rage echoing into the afterworlds. Let him cry out. Evil chose him for its own ends. But evil, like good, is always defeated by time.
I sit here now, high atop this ridge where Badgertail’s mortal remains lie. His body is buried in a log tomb, piled with rock and covered with dirt. It is a small monument to a great man. His ancestors were buried beneath huge mounds of earth cut from the fertile floodplains beside the great rivers that wind through their eastern woodlands. Here, my lover, my husband, lies alone, barely covered by a mound not even chest high to an old woman like me. Already the dirt is washing away, poorly held by the few scrawny high-country grasses that have grown here. I can see one of the logs, exposed and rotting.
Pine makes a poor tomb.
My lover, however, is from another time, another life. I live in constant amazement at the lives I have been chosen to lead. In my first I was a girl in Talon Town—last daughter of the Hollow Hoof Clan, Keeper of the Tortoise Bundle. They expected me to be a great Dreamer, to bear enough children to rejuvenate the clan. Little did they know who I would turn out to be.
Brother Mud Head had plans for me, he and Long Horn, the god some now call a thlatsina.
They reached across the land and spun the Dream around old Marmot’s soul—told him that he should send his warriors to find me and the Tortoise Bundle. Oh, and find me they did, in a raid that was only eclipsed by Jay Bird’s stunning strike. My second life began that night when Badgertail carried me off to the east. There, in the land of Cahokia, I learned the true nature of Power, of authority, and of empire. In those years I first heard the call of Sister Datura, and Danced in her arms. There I courted Death, wound my arms around it and stroked it with a lover’s touch. I was witness to the fall of mighty Cahokia, and saw her Power broken.
Compared to Cahokia with her god-kings, the Straight Path Nation is but a petty chieftainship, its great houses no more than minor vassals. Despite their notions of grandeur, the relentless tide of time is about to sweep them away as if they had never been. Where the singing of slaves now echoes, soon only the wind will moan.
Whistle stopped, staring at the two faint game trails that disappeared into the timber. Around them, towering spruce and fir shadowed the ground, dulling the tones of duff, deadfall, and moldering cones from seasons long past.
“Which way do we go?” Bad Cast asked Whistle as he studied the two diverging trails. “Ripple was always the better hunter. He’d know which way to go. He could track a butterfly across a grassy field.”
“To the right. It’s the most direct route.”
“How do you know that?”
“We’re headed for Ironwood’s camp, correct?”
“If that’s where the Mountain Witch is.”
“She’s there.” Whistle started forward, his muscular legs bunching with each step as he climbed. Bad Cast saved his breath, ducking under low-hanging boughs, stepping over deadfall, and concentrating on the footing. Places where an elk traveled easily threatened a man with constant danger of falling, tripping, or just breaking a leg. On this steep slope, in this thicket of black timber, it would be nearly impossible for Whistle to carry him out.
Within a hand of time, Whistle led the way out onto a narrow crest. They stopped where an old fir tree had been lightning-riven. Blown into slivers, pieces of the tree lay strewn about the forest floor—yellow and stark against the dark needle mat.
“You’ve been to the Mountain Witch’s camp?” Bad Cast asked as he looked down into the black mat of timber that dropped away to either side.
“I serve Ironwood.”
“I thought you served your clan?”
“Them, too.”
“You actually know Ironwood?” Bad Cast couldn’t keep the skepticism out of his voice.
“I’m alive because of him. Every breath I draw is a gift he gave me. Every sunrise I see I owe to him.”