People of the Raven(36)

When Pitch screamed, he caught the hazy image of the Noisy Ones. The misshapen spirits looked like ugly children, whirling each other around, flying into the sky while snow drifted down behind them.

Pitch gasped, bent double, and threw up. His gut wrenched once, twice, a third time. Then he collapsed to the blood-spattered snow, panting. Hot blood soaked his shirt and cape. He had no idea how long he lay there, soaking cool relief from the snow. His arm moved as Dzoo bound it, feeling numb, oddly removed from his body.

“Come on. We have to get out of here.” Dzoo pulled his good arm over her shoulders and dragged him to his feet. Pitch threw up again, vomit burning his throat.

“Go ahead,” he whispered. “Get away while you can.”

“It is already too late for that, Pitch. He knows I will be his in the end. It is only a matter of how.”

She propped his good arm over her shoulder, and together they staggered down the trail toward Sandy Point Village.





Thirteen

The Dreams were terrible as they wrapped around Tsauz’s soul in those last chaotic moments before wakefulness … .





He fell through images of fire and lightning. A dreadful emptiness filled him, knotting at the bottom of his throat. As he fell, the sick sensation of weightlessness grew in his gut. Flashes of light lit the sky around him.

He screamed, having never felt this terror before—not even that terrible night he had almost burned to death.

Fire flared yellow in the sky, but this time, it did not sear his flesh. He screamed again, venting his soul into the rushing air.

“It is your decision to fall, Tsauz. Reach out! Grab the wind! Clutch it to you, and save yourself!” A voice boomed in time with the thunder.

Tsauz reached out, seeing his hands, fingers grasping for a bruised and wounded sky. He could feel the air tearing through his fingers. As he closed them, the rushing air screamed in agony, a loud whistling wail that sent shivers through him. He could feel the pain.

Crying in terror, he let go, his body spiraling, falling, falling …





Tsauz bolted awake, blinking in the darkness. His body shivered; the pit of his stomach still tingled with the sensation of his weightless plummet through space. The roaring sound was gone with the Dream, replaced by the hollow clunking of wooden bowls and the murmurs of the warriors beyond the walls of his lodge.

Tsauz clutched his knotted blanket and pulled it up to his chest, sniffing the familiar scent of the fabric. Mother had given the blanket to him. He remembered what it looked like: the chocolate brown of woven buffalo hair with dyed porcupine quill decorations done in chevrons over one side.

With one hand he reached down to where Runner, his little puppy and only friend in the world, shifted and began scratching behind his ear. Tsauz could tell by the flapping sound the puppy’s ear made.

“Bad Dreams, Runner,” he whispered as the puppy licked his hand.

Mother, dead. Afterimages of her blistered and peeling face, her melted hair like wet leather against her scalp, lingered as his last memory of sight. He sniffed his blanket again, using its odor to blank the stench of fire.

In the Dream, he had fallen through fire. And the voice had called out to him: Reach out! Grab the wind! But whose voice had that been, booming even louder than the thunder?

He cocked his head, as if the echoes of it lingered somewhere above.

A worried voice from beyond caught his attention. Then came the familiar strains of a baritone voice. Yes! That was Father! He was back.

Tsauz pressed his ear close to the leather door hanging, trying to hear what Father was saying to the warriors assembled around the morning fire outside. Father spoke softly. He’d been gone for several days, and it surprised Tsauz to hear his voice.

“How many made it to Sandy Point Village?” Father asked.

War Chief White Stone answered, “More than we thought. Perhaps ten tens.”

Red Dog’s gruff voice added, “They ran like wood rats through the brush, Starwatcher. Some we ran down and dispatched; others, well, had they gone in a group, we could have killed more.”

Father said something Tsauz couldn’t make out, but the tone frightened him. He was used to hearing Father shout in rage when angry; this quiet, seething fury made Tsauz’s heart race. Sometimes when father spoke like this, it was because someone had been bad. When Tsauz was bad, Father had to hit him. It was for his own good. Father said so.

He fingered the tender bruises left from when Father had taken a piece of firewood to him several days ago. He’d been bad, slipping out of the tent one night when he was supposed to stay inside. It had been so hard to know what was right. There had been whimpering sounds, like someone in trouble would make. Tsauz had crept out into the night and felt his way to the sounds. He’d found blankets and had heard a woman’s voice whimpering “No” over and over as the blankets moved and Father grunted, as if in pain. He’d asked Father if he was all right. He could hardly remember what had come next. Only the sound of the blows, and the crying woman, mixed with the guilt because he’d been bad.