Down the slope in the village, a little girl let out a shriek, then broke into tears. Sacred Feathers whirled to look.
Windwolf followed his gaze. A girl, perhaps eight summers, ran up the trail, whimpering. Tears streamed down her face.
Sacred Feathers opened his arms, and the girl ran straight to him and climbed into his lap, sobbing, “Father, he hit me!”
Sacred Feathers examined the scrape on his daughter’s cheek. “Oh, Elk Leaf, what happened? Did you get into a fight?”
She nodded against his shoulder, trying to suppress her tears.
“You didn’t hit first, did you?”
“No, Father, no.”
“All right. Hush, now.” He stroked her back tenderly, and kissed her forehead. “Did you say something you didn’t mean and somebody—”
“No, I don’t know why Little Calf hit me! But Tusk Boy hit him back.”
“Good for Tusk Boy,” Drummer muttered furiously. His ancient face had taken on the alert, dangerous look of a wolf on the hunt.
Sacred Feathers glared at him. “Elk Leaf, next time Little Calf hits you, you just cover your head with your hands and tell him you’re sorry—even if you didn’t do anything. He’ll stop hitting you.”
“I will, Father,” she moaned and sniffed, burying her face in his shirt.
From the corner of his eye, Windwolf caught Drummer’s enraged expression.
“I love you, Elk Leaf,” Sacred Feathers said. “Are you better now?”
She sucked in a deep halting breath and looked up, giving him a frail little-girl smile. “A little.”
“Good. Why don’t you run down to Aunt Wren’s lodge. She made cattail root bread this morning.”
“Does she have any left?”
He winked at her excited expression and set her on the ground. “Go see for yourself.”
She smiled broadly and ran away down the trail.
Once Elk Leaf had vanished, Drummer violently shoved Sacred Feathers’ shoulder, swinging him around to face him. The old man’s cheeks blazed. “You want to get her killed?”
“No, I want to keep her safe!”
“You’re teaching her to be a mouse. You think she should get used to being a victim? That she should come to like it, maybe?”
Sacred Feathers met Drummer’s hot stare with one of his own. “Maybe being a victim isn’t as bad as being dead.”
The anger drained from Drummer’s face. He stood up and straightened to his full sapling-thin height. They stared at each other in silence.
Then Drummer’s hard eyes turned to Windwolf. “Tell him, will you? Tell my grandson that all the I’m sorry’s in the world won’t make murderers put down their clubs.”
Drummer turned and stamped away down the trail, following behind Elk Leaf.
Sacred Feathers had his eyes closed and his teeth gritted. “He’s old,” Sacred Feathers said. “He doesn’t think as well as he used to.”
“I’m afraid he’s right, Chief. When your enemy is bent on killing you and taking your lands, you must fight.”
“But that is Raven Hunter’s way!”
Ashes’ words from that morning echoed in his head. “I fear that we have lost our balance.”
Windwolf looked out at the village. Sunpath children played in the trees, chasing each other and laughing. Old men knapped out new stone tools in front of the lodges. One of the women sat weaving a basket from strips of tree root: a fine basket, the weave tight enough to hold water.
Windwolf said, “The search for the One does us no good if we Dream it as dead men.”
Sacred Feathers frowned at the Headswift Village rockshelters. “Well, you won’t have to worry about my people. We will start for the Tills today. And you don’t need to provide warriors.”
Fifty-two
“When you bore each of your children, Mother, it was a painful experience, wasn’t it?” Silvertip lay back on his thick mat of hides and stared at the firelight playing on the soot-coated rocks above. He could hear the din outside where warriors guarded the entrance to the great chamber. But for them, the room would have been chaos as people tried to get to him.
“Of course,” Dipper replied, stroking his hand with loving fingers. She glanced uneasily at Ashes, who squatted to his left, her war club perched on her lap.
“All that pain, and blood, and fluid.” He smiled. “In the end, was it worth it?”
“Of course, Silvertip! How can you even ask that?”
“So that you will know that creating a new life, be it a person, or calf, or chick … or even a people, is difficult and painful. For everything, Mother, there is a price.”