“Pray?” she asked, confused.
His eyes widened. “Yes, you … you’re important. To me, and especially …” His excited voice stopped suddenly as though he’d been hushed by invisible Spirits.
“Yes, Ti-Bish?”
“You would …” He blinked his eyes, as though suddenly tortured. “I can’t lie with you.”
She sighed relief, ate another bite of fish, and swallowed. “We live in a terrible world, Ti-Bish. I’m sorry I—”
“Terrible?”
She blinked. “Filled with rape, sadness, and death. Suffering is the heart of everything.”
Ti-Bish pulled a long strip of crispy skin from his fish and ate it before he replied. “Fortunately there is darkness to kill that terrible light.”
She frowned. “What did you say?”
“Sadness and death … they are sharp daggers of light that blind the soul. Darkness eases the pain.” He spread his arms to the dark womb that held them. “Raven Hunter’s black wings make it go away.”
He inhaled the scents of the darkness as though they soothed him.
Skimmer finished her first fish and tossed the bones into the lake. An eerie glow expanded in its wake.
She watched it fade before she started on her second fish. “Do you actually see Raven Hunter?”
He smiled and bowed his head. “No one believes me. But, yes, of course I do.”
Fascinated, and frightened, she asked, “What does he tell you?”
“Oh, things I’m too stupid to understand. A few days ago, he told me that Wolf Dreamer has touched the Spiral and it’s twisting down into nothingness. Like a child’s top, winding down.”
Hesitantly, he reached over and caressed her hand. The warmth of his skin, the tenderness of his touch, made her turn her palm up so they could twine fingers. He gripped her hand tightly and heaved what sounded like a sigh of relief. Then he closed his eyes as though drowning in the feel of her flesh against his.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“I …” He lifted his gaze and shyly said, “I need to talk with you.”
“Then talk.”
He gazed at her through dark eyes that glowed with a haunted light. “Do you remember when I brought you the feather?”
“I remember.”
“You laughed, but you had tears in your eyes.” He hesitantly reached out and touched her hand where it rested in the sand, caressing her fingers. “I asked you why beauty made you cry.”
She didn’t remember any of this. “What did I say?”
For an instant, his heavily lidded eyes reminded her of deep dark holes. He dropped his gaze to examine the twig of driftwood. “You said that beauty died.”
“Why did my words about the feather bother you, Ti-Bish?”
“Because”—his voice sounded pained, unsure—“it has a bearing on our lives, doesn’t it? I mean, if you believe that all beauty dies, then you’re never happy.”
The hollowness in Skimmer’s breast seemed to boom. She said nothing.
He pressed. “Why do you think there’s so much suffering?”
“You’re the holy man. You tell me.”
Ripples undulated across the surface like swirls of luminous frost.
“I asked Raven Hunter.” He gazed up at her with childlike innocence, but his eyes seemed haunted. “He told me it’s the fault of the Sunpath People.”
“Our fault? Why?”
He tenderly stroked the long black hair that fell down her back. After the consternation her offer to bed him had caused, she allowed it. “Because you believe in Wolf Dreamer.”
“Well, the next time you see Raven Hunter, tell him there is one fewer believer.”
“You … you’ve stopped believing in Wolf Dreamer?”
“He’s just a story our Ancestors created to entertain children.”
Sounds from the lake drifted to them: a fish jumping, water dripping, the deep aching groans of the Ice Giants.
Ti-Bish looked at her through eyes filled with so much sorrow that she felt wounded. “Oh, no, he exists, Skimmer. He’s just wicked.”
A curiously empty sensation invaded her. “If he exists, I agree with you.” And there’s no sense in telling you what I think about Raven Hunter. Not after what I survived in the pen that night.
Ti-Bish reached around and pulled the basket onto his lap. As he unfolded the hide that had kept the fish warm, he said, “This is for you.”
He handed her a beautifully painted bundle.
Skimmer took it and examined the designs. The paintings looked ancient. In many places the colors had flaked off, leaving gaps in the picture, but she could still make out the two men hurling lightning bolts at each other. “Where did you get this? It’s very old.”