Other frightening things had been happening. Several times last winter Father Sun had risen as red as blood and had no light.
Omens. Signs and portents. He’d asked Raven Hunter what they meant. His eerie answer: “The end of the world is almost upon you … .”
Ti-Bish walked around the curve of the Thunder Sea and saw four women kneeling around a crying infant. The boy seemed to be sick. One woman was holding his head up, letting him drink from a shell cup, while the others Sang and fanned him with eagle feathers.
Ti-Bish walked forward. The boy’s soul was hovering above his body. As Ti-Bish approached, one of the women looked up, worry bright in her eyes. It took a moment before she recognized him. She gasped, slapped one of the other women on the shoulder, and said, “It’s him. It’s the Guide!”
All four women jerked around to look with startled eyes.
“A pleasant morning to you,” Ti-Bish said as he knelt beside the boy. “How old is he?”
The woman who held the boy’s head, replied, “Two moons, Blessed Guide.”
“How long has he been ill?”
“Since the day he was born.” She looked up at Ti-Bish with moist eyes. The young woman was pretty, perhaps ten and five summers, with long black hair. “I’ve tried everything to Heal him, Blessed Guide. Nothing has worked. Every day his fever gets higher.”
Ti-Bish reached out. He touched the pale blue soul hovering just above the small body. Slowly, carefully, he pressed the soul down until he could feel it enter the infant’s body.
“There, little one. That’s your home now.”
The baby’s cries stopped, and he blinked his eyes open, brown and soft. A drooly smile curled his tiny pink lips.
The women watched in stunned silence.
Ti-Bish said, “The child’s soul is invisibly linked to an object in the Spirit World. I must cut the cord that connects him to it.” He closed his eyes and concentrated on the silver filament that stretched up from the child’s blue soul. He could sense it, long and thin before it disappeared high in the air. He used both hands to tug it apart.
The boy let out a sharp cry, then blinked and peered up at Ti-Bish with wide eyes.
Ti-Bish smiled and rose to his feet. “He’ll be all right now. But for four days you must Sing frog songs over him. Frogs travel through the Spirit worlds all the time. If you pray to them they will send his soul home the next time they see it hovering over his body.”
The young mother blinked, tears of relief welling in her eyes. “Thank you, Blessed Guide.”
Cries erupted when the women washing clothes realized who he was. In mere heartbeats the shore came alive with running people. A man shouted, “He’s Healing!” and people dropped what they’d been doing to hurry toward him.
A weeping woman in a torn, bloodstained cape grabbed his hand. “Guide, I beg you! My husband was wounded in the fighting. Come and Heal him. Be merciful. Heal him. Please! He fought for you.”
“Bring him to my chamber tonight at sunset. I will tell the guards to let you in.”
She dropped to her knees and kissed his moccasins. “Thank you! Thank you!”
From behind, an old man jerked the hem of Ti-Bish’s robe so forcefully, he stumbled backward.
“Guide!” the man cried. “My daughter was drowned out on the water. Bring her back to life. I can’t live without her!”
“I can’t make the dead live again. Forgive me.”
“But people have seen you do it! Why can’t you do it for me?”
The crowd kept growing. There were so many. He staggered, helpless and frail beneath the weight of their needs.
“Raven Hunter?” he called over their heads. “Raven Hunter, I beg you: Help these people.”
“Guide!” a filthy woman in ragged hides shrieked, shoving against him. She fairly threw her child into his arms. “Guide, cure my little girl next. Please, she’s—”
“No, my son is sicker!” A dark-haired crone crowded into the circle.
From every corner, every lodge, they came, shouting, pleading, shoving him.
He looked down at the girl. Her battered head lolled limply. “What happened to her?”
“She was climbing the rocks this morning and fell. She hit her head many times.”
Ti-Bish brushed her dark hair away from her face. “Raven Hunter? Heal this child?”
Behind him, a clamor of voices rose, fiery and indignant. He didn’t understand the sudden enmity until he heard Nashat’s voice ordering, “Get back! Back away!”
The woman shouted, “No, don’t take him from us!”
Nashat strode up surrounded by guards, grabbed the girl from Ti-Bish’s arms, and thrust her at her mother. “Take her home. The Blessed Guide has done all he can.”