Ashes sat down cross-legged on his bedding hides, and scrutinized him as though he were a nasty bug. “Why would he want to talk to you? You’re just a boy.”
Silvertip lowered his gaze and brushed at a piece of gravel on the bear hide. “When the Bundle talks to me, Wolf Dreamer says that no one can hear him but me.”
“I was watching you. You looked scared.”
“I was scared.”
Many times in the past Grandfather had playfully held the bundle to his ear, and he’d felt a prickle like sticky insect feet at the back of his neck. Tonight had been different. The deep voice had been soft and kind.
“Wolf Dreamer told you to pick up the bundle?” Ashes gave him a mean look.
“I don’t know why … he just did.”
“My father once told me a story about the Exile. He said that in the Long Dark there were many Spirit bundles, and each one had a voice that helped to guide the people. But right after the emergence from the hole in the ice, the People of the Nightland stole all the bundles, so they were the only ones who could hear the voices.” Her brows lifted. “If they stole them all, how did you get the Wolf Bundle?”
“It has always belonged to my clan. Foxfire, Wolf Dreamer’s half brother, gave it to his son, and he gave it to his son, on down to my grandfather. When I become a man, it will belong to me.”
“Wolf Dreamer is your ancestor?”
He nodded.
“Since he was the good twin, I guess that’s all right.”
“Yes, he was good, and Raven Hunter was bad. Wherever Wolf Dreamer goes, people are happy. Wherever Raven Hunter goes, there is war and suffering.”
She exhaled and looked around the rockshelter at the sleeping people. “What did your mother mean when she said, ‘Blessed Ancestors, not my son’?”
Silvertip wet his lips, and remembered what Wolf had told him in the Dream. I have to die. To Ashes, he said, “The prophecies say that when Raven Hunter sneaks into our world again, Wolf Dreamer will send a new Dreamer to save us. He will come from Foxfire’s family line, my family. I think Mother is afraid it might be me.”
“Would that be bad?”
He stammered, “It’s just that being a Dreamer is very hard, and they’re usually k-killed in awful ways.”
She glared at the Wolf Bundle. “Why would Wolf Dreamer let his chosen Dreamer be killed?”
Silvertip sat up in his hides and reached for the Wolf Bundle. When his fingers touched it, a tingle ran up his arms and flared in his chest. “Here,” he said, handing the bundle to Ashes. “Ask him.”
She scrambled backward. “I don’t want to talk to him!”
“Then stop asking me silly questions.” He drew the bundle back and tucked it under the bear hide next to him.
As though frightened, she remained silent for a long time. Finally, she whispered, “If you’re a Dreamer, have you had any Spirit Dreams?”
Was Wolf telling him he had to die in a Spirit Dream? “I’m not sure what a Spirit Dream is. I … I did have a strange Dream the night before Aunt Mossy was killed.”
“What was it about?”
He patted the Wolf Bundle, and felt better, as though the bundle had given him courage. “It started out with horrible thunder … like the world was shaking apart. Then I saw Raven Hunter swooping down over Headswift Village. He was huge and flying very fast. His black wings filled all of Blue Sky Man. When he flew right over me, I looked up and his wings turned into a terrible wind. I’ve never felt anything like it before: black, howling, bringing a black darkness like death.”
“Did it blow you away?”
“I don’t know. I woke up. But I kept hearing a name in the wind’s roar.”
“What name?”
“Keresa. I don’t know who that is.”
Ashes got to her feet and gave him a scorching look. Like she didn’t believe him. They stared at each other for ten heartbeats before she said, “Keresa is a terrible Nightland warrior. She’s killed lots of boys like you.”
Without another word she went back to her hides.
Silvertip lay down and petted the bundle. It felt suddenly warm. He lifted the bear hide to look at it. “Wolf Dreamer, are you in there?”
A mournful sound, like Wind Woman roaming the forests in winter, whispered from the bundle. As it did, he felt a sucking, as if it were trying to pull his soul out of his body.
Silvertip pressed his ear against the soft hide and yawned. “If I have to die to become a Dreamer, it’s all right.”
But down around his frantically beating heart, he was very much afraid.
Twenty-seven
A bitter wind roared out of the northwest. It ripped at clothing, clawed at the mossy tundra, and sent men staggering.