“Lookingbill told me that his family is cursed. Apparently many of the women in his family have been murdered. Keep that in your heart when you speak with him. He’s worried sick about his last daughter, Dipper.”
What is one more dead woman? But she said, “I will.”
A gust of wind flapped the hem of his war shirt. “Lookingbill also told me that you had a plan to kill the Guide. Is it true?”
“Oh, yes.” Here finally was something to live for.
“How did you plan to do this?”
Do I trust him? She rubbed the back of her neck. “I’m too tired to think. I’ll tell you when we reach Headswift Village.”
He ground his teeth in frustration. “All right then, at least tell me why the Guide is so obsessed with you.”
“I was plotting to kill him. Isn’t that enough of a reason?”
“No,” he said softly. “Many of our people have tried to assassinate him. I just gave it up as a bad idea for a lone man. Outside of me, you’re the only one who is still alive. I find that interesting.”
Her laughter exploded from within, shaking her, maniacal. Peals of it rolled out of her chest, waking Ashes, who stared up at her in dismay.
Skimmer couldn’t stop. She laughed, and laughed some more, until the laughter mixed with tears, and tears into sobs that wrung her soul dry.
She was vaguely aware of Windwolf and Ashes. Their gazes locked and held, sharing some terrible communication.
Images flashed across her soul … the enclosure, the stone mauls sailing down from on high, the screams … the little girl dragging her sister …
In the end, she lay slumped wearily against the stone, her body trembling, chin on her filthy chest. Within her, only emptiness remained. Fear, hatred, horror—all of it had drained away, as exhausted as her cold flesh.
His gaze softened. “I would hear your story.”
“Kakala’s warriors came with the morning,” she began. She told the whole story: Words, with all the feeling of stone, seemed to tumble from her mouth. As if from a distance, she heard herself, wondering how she could tell it so flatly, without inflection or passion. But in the end, they were only words, fleeting things that died on the cold air.
Through blurred eyes she saw he sat stone still, hatred and grief flickering over his handsome face.
He took several long drinks from his water bag, but gripped it tightly, as though to wring the life from it. Ashes blinked, nodding on occasion. Sometimes she’d watch Skimmer, other times, Windwolf, perhaps to see if he understood.
When Skimmer had finished, the long silence was broken only by the red squirrels chattering and the wind in the trees.
Windwolf finally said, “We’ll kill him for what he did.”
Somehow she mustered the words: “Don’t make promises you can’t keep. I’ve been trying for three summers to kill him and haven’t—”
“We will get him.”
She turned dull eyes on his. “We?”
“You haven’t lost your fervor for battle, have you?”
“Fervor? What is fervor?”
She contemplated the dark circles beneath his eyes, the deep lines etching his forehead. What was he doing out here alone? Didn’t he know the Nightland clan Elders had offered safety in return for his dead body?
Windwolf said, “You don’t want to join the fight?”
Ti-Bish’s mad eyes stared out from the fabric of her soul. “I want a place where my little girl and I can live without worrying about being killed in our sleep.”
He rose to his feet again and frowned at the trail. “There is a price for such freedom.”
“I’ve already paid it.” A sob rose in her throat again. Her shoulders heaved, but she didn’t make a sound.
“Obviously you didn’t plan to kill the Guide by yourself. Did you have an organized group?”
She mustered enough strength to nod.
“How many?”
“Two tens.”
“How many of those were warriors?”
“They’re all dead. It doesn’t matter.”
“Did you see them killed, or is there a chance the warriors might have escaped? Can you send a runner to—”
“Stop it!” she cried. “Can’t you see how … how tired and … I want to be left alone!”
“We all do.” He studied her for several moments before asking, “Think you could sleep?”
She wiped her wet face on her sleeve. “Yes.”
“Good.”
Skimmer watched him nock a dart in his atlatl and prop it on his shoulder. She leaned her head back against the rock and stared up at the vast reddish orange heavens.
Even the sky is bleeding.
She closed her eyes, thinking to only nap.