As Kestrel knelt in the cool shadows of the aspens, filling her gut bag from the spring that bubbled up clear and cold through a crevice in the rock, she saw Woodtick coming. Young aspens, willows and an array of ferns and mint clustered thickly around her. She had yet to slip Cloud Girl’s sack from her back, and her daughter piped shrilly at the sight of the old man running across the sand. Back at the camp, Helper barked and wagged his tail. But he stayed there, on guard, as Kestrel had told him to.
“Shh,” Kestrel said to Cloud Girl. Reaching around and gripping her daughter’s tiny hand, she stood up. Cloud Girl hushed, and Kestrel tightened the strings on the water bag, then draped it over her right forearm.
The chief trudged wearily toward her, panting, his elderly face running with sweat, and she could see the bloodstains on his doeskin shirt.
“Kestrel?” he called. “Sunchaser…” he breathed hard “.. . he needs you to gather fever plants for him!”
Her brows drew together. She trotted forward. “Which fever plants?”
“No, stop!” Woodtick ordered, throwing out a hand. “Don’t get close to me. Please. I may carry the Evil Spirits of the sickness.” He bent forward and propped his hands on his knees to take several deep breaths. His gray braid fell forward, partly obscuring his wrinkled face.
“Which fever plants, Woodtick?”
He straightened up. “Poplar buds and willow bark. If you can gather them and leave them near the plaza fire pit—” he flung out his skinny old arm to point “—I’ll get them and put them in the boiling bag.”
“Yes. All right,” she replied. “I’ll hurry!”
Woodtick’s frightened face slackened when Kestrel immediately hung her water bag on an aspen branch and fell to her knees before a thick tangle of willow. She drew her chert scraper from the pack around her waist and began sawing the red stems in two.
Woodtick’s faint smile contained more gratitude than Kestrel had ever received in her life. She hastily gathered the willow stems and ran around the spring to a cluster of young aspen saplings. She trimmed off several of the newest buds. She didn’t know why, but aspen, willow and poplar seemed to have the same ability to bring down fever.
Woodtick cupped a hand to his mouth and shouted, “I’ll wait for you by the fire pit!”
“I’ll be there soon!”
He nodded and trotted unsteadily back toward the village. His aged legs wobbled with fatigue, and perhaps with the stress of tending ill relatives.
Kestrel turned back to the saplings. “Oh, Cloud Girl, I wonder how much Sunchaser needs. From the number of lodges, there must be thirty or forty people who live here. But not all of them will be sick—and I don’t know how long the illness has been going on.” She frowned. “I’ll assume that he needs at least enough for twenty people tonight. Then I’ll gather more tomorrow morning.”
When she’d trimmed off enough aspen buds, she stuffed them into her pack and returned to their camp in the tall
grove. White trunks created a dense fortress around her. Over her head, the triangular leaves trembled and rustled. She sat cross-legged by the pile of hides and pulled out her chert scraper to strip the willow stems. She peeled off the red outer bark and isolated the white strips of fibrous inner bark.
Cloud Girl cooed and blew bubbles over Kestrel’s shoulder. She twisted to look at her daughter, and Cloud Girl smiled broadly.
“How lucky you are to be a baby,” Kestrel told her. “You don’t understand how sad being here is. These people are desperate. Did you see the way Woodtick grabbed Sunchaser? He looked as though he’d just seen his Spirit Helper in the flesh. But everyone feels that way about Sunchaser. He’s the only man in the world who gives every ounce of his soul to everyone who needs him. I don’t think he can say ‘no.” Not when he knows people need him.”
Kestrel’s brows drew together as she emptied her pack on the sand and filled it with the strips of willow bark and the aspen buds.
Helper sat on the other side of the pile of hides, watching her. His warm brown eyes glowed.
“I’ll be back in a little while, Helper. Stay and guard.”
She rose and trotted across the deep sand, sinking up to her ankles. Shimmering grains flooded over the tops of her moccasins and ate their way down inside to grate against the pads of her toes. If she’d been running on hard dirt or stone, it would have hurt. But in the sand, the grains only irritated her sweaty feet.
When she ran past the first lodge, she could hear cries and coughs … and Sunchaser’s deep voice. He was chanting the Healing Song. The lilting notes floated above the sounds of suffering like bright jewels suspended on a warm breeze.