Wanderer trotted up behind her. "What really woiries me about the Dream, Lichen, was that the whole countryside had been set afire. If the crops and land bum, there wiU be no more us. Life is so precarious now that such a loss would be fatal."
"Did Wolf Slayer tell you how to stop it?"
Wanderer gazed down at her with so much worry in his eyes that her stomach muscles went tight. "Yes, my daughter. He told me to teach you that to step onto the path, you must leave it. Only the lost come to stand alone before the entrance to the Cave, and only the defenseless step over its threshold. Wolf Slayer said to tell you that in union you will find the light, though it appears as darkness, nakedness, nothingness. He said that if you can't enter the Cave, First Woman's wrath will sweep humans from the face of the land."
A prickle of panic climbed Lichen's spine. She shifted the weight of her pack, and the trap clunked against the hollow tube. "Wanderer, why me? Why does it have to be me? Why can't you do it? Or Nightshade? You've both been to the Underworld lots more than I have."
"Power makes its own choices. No one can fully understand its ways. I just wish I knew how much time I have left to teach you. I don't want to push you, but. Lichen—"
"We'd better do it. Wanderer." She bit her lip, recalling how the light had roasted her soul the last time he had pushed her. Could she stand that again? "It might take me longer to learn than we expect, so—"
"Oh!" Wanderer shouted. "There he is! Wait, Lichen! I've been trying all morning ..."
Wanderer thrashed his way through a brier of withered nettles. He jumped first to the right, tried to grab something off the ground, then jumped to the left and grumbled, "No, no, come here! I'm not going to hurt you!"
Lichen resignedly sank to the ground in the thin shadow of a buffalo-bean bush. Stems decked with long, hairy leaves and a few shriveled beans sprawled around her. She plucked one of the beans and popped it into her mouth. Sweet wateriness coated her tongue.
Wanderer dodged out of the thistle, hunched over and snatched at something in the weeds. "Ha!" he blurted in glee and tramped back to Lichen with a homed toad in his hand. The creature's throat puffed in and out angrily while Wanderer stroked its prickly head with a dirty thumb.
"There, there," Wanderer cooed. "It's all right. We just need your help for a little while." He dropped in the shadow beside Lichen and sat cross-legged. "Homed toads are very secretive. But they have remarkable eyesight."
"Better than Antelope?"
"Oh, yes. Much better."
"Is it going to tell you about something it saw?"
"I doubt it. They hate it when people do this to them."
Wanderer handed the toad to Lichen so he could tug a red thread from the sleeve of his shirt. Homed Toad gave her an evil look and started to slime her hand. She shifted him to her other hand and wiped her fingers on the grass but had to switch him back almost immediately.
"Wanderer ..."
**Hold on just a little longer, Lichen."
She lifted Homed Toad and squinted threateningly at him. He glared back, looking so mean that Lichen resignedly lowered him to her lap.
"All right. Lichen. Let me have him."
Homed Toad shot out of her hand like a slippery fish and into Wanderer's. Lichen mbbed her fingers in the dirt to clean them.
"Quiet, quiet," Wanderer cooed softly to Toad. "That's it. We're not going to hurt you. Wolf Slayer said that Badger-tail had left Cahokia yesterday and that Petaga would be waiting for him. We need to know where those warriors are now."
He stroked Toad's head until the creature calmed down and stopped sliming. Very gently. Wanderer set Homed Toad on the ground and tied one end of the red thread around Toad's throat the other end to the tip of his own first finger. Then he picked up Toad and started walking.
Lichen trotted behind. "Where are we going?**
"Up to that high point."
"What for?*'
Wanderer trudged up a small rise that overlooked the bottomland. Redweed Village sat at the base of the rocky outcrop to the southwest. Lichen joined him among the sunflowers. She thought she could see people moving in the fields along Pumpkin Creek, but the heat waves that rippled the distances could have transformed boulders into looking like humans. Still, her eyes lingered on those black dots.
Her chest tingled with sudden longing for her mother and Flycatcher. She had even missed Screechowl and Wart. Lichen had the urge to run all the way home—^until she imagined her mother's face when she told her that she had Water Snake's soul. But maybe she didn't have to tell her motiier right away. Maybe they could just sit around for a night . . .