Helper peered at him across the dead fire. The dog blended with the darkness; only the pale fur around his eyes showed.
“Good morning, Helper. Where’s Kestrel?”
The dog propped his chin on his paws.
“Did I hurt her last night, Helper? Where is she? I—I didn’t mean to. I just felt so desperate.”
Sunchaser sat up and tugged his clothes out from beneath Helper, slipped his shirt over his head and pulled on his pants. His nerves had begun to tingle as if they’d been flayed. Using a stick from the pile of firewood, he rolled together a few red coals and steepled several dry twigs over the top of them. Flames danced to life. In the tawny gleam, he noticed that Kestrel had taken Cloud Girl with her. She often took her daughter, so she could talk to her while she combed the shore. But her pack and a single deer hide were also missing from their place in the back corner.
Sunchaser hesitated, a thoughtful gaze on the spot where Cloud Girl had been. No, she wouldn’t… He hurriedly tied on his moccasins and lunged to his feet, shoved the door flap aside and trotted across the sand toward the mammoth cow and her calf. They watched him quietly, unmoving.
“Kestrel?” he called. “Kestrel!”
He headed north toward the shallow inlet. The eastern foothills rose like dark swells of water. Above them, the faint bluish gleam of-Dawn Child lit the heavens, dimming the twinkle of the Star People. The trail that led to the new Otter Clan Village shone clearly, a pale streak through the black trees. She wouldn’t have gone on without him, would she? It was too dangerous.
“Kestrel!”
He ran beside the ebbing water until he panted, but no human form showed in the false dawn. The retreating surf flooded the shore and contracted into the whispering waves. He turned back and sprinted southward. His moccasins left pockmarks in the damp sand.
She’d tensed when he’d taken her last night. In his desperation, he hadn’t cared that she’d gone rigid. Only later had she responded to his movements.
You’re no better than Lamhkill! The thought burned within him. Lambkill had probably treated her that way—frantic about his own needs, unconcerned with hers.
As he neared Whalebeard Village, he saw a man standing alone by the central fire pit. Low flames leaped and crackled in the cold breeze. A faint voice called, “Sunchaser?”
“Woodtick?” He trotted toward the fire pit.
The chief’s white hair hung loose, blowing in the wind. He wore a tattered camel hide coat, grimy and darkened with soot. Only his pale face gleamed in the light of the flames.
“She’s gone, Sunchaser.”
His steps faltered. “Gone? When?”
“I couldn’t sleep. I saw her walking down by the shore, maybe seven or eight hands of time ago.”
“She left in the middle of the night? Where did she go? Which direction?”
Woodtick folded his arms and let out a tense breath. “Northward. That’s all I know.” He paused. “Sunchaser, I must tell you something. I don’t know if she’s the same Kestrel, but—”
“What do you mean, ‘the same Kestrel’?”
Woodtick canted his head sympathetically. “For one thing, days ago two men stopped here. I waved them away, but not before they asked me about a woman named Kestrel. The gray-haired man, a Trader called Lambkill, said she was his wife and that she was traveling with a newborn baby. He asked if we’d seen her. When I answered ‘no,” he asked
for directions to the new Otter Clan Village. I gave them to him.”
“What…” Sunchaser swallowed his terror. “What else?”
Woodtick gestured aimlessly. “Four hunters from the Blackwater Draw Clan came through. They said that Trader Lambkill might be following them and that we should beware because he was crazy. They said he carried a dead baby in the pack on his back and claimed that it spoke to him…. They said they also were hunting this Kestrel because she had killed their brother, driven a tapir-bone stiletto through his heart. Then when -you arrived and I heard the name of your companion, I couldn’t believe she could be the same woman. Especially not when I saw how much you cared for her. But now … is she the same?”
“Yes,” he answered, “though I don’t know whether the things you were told are true.” Kestrel had killed a man?
Woodtick examined Sunchaser’s face, his rigid stance. “Don’t leave us, Sunchaser. We need you. I know you must be worried about Kestrel, but we’re desperate. Our needs are so great. You see that, don’t you? She is one woman. Ten of my relatives are sick.”
Misery, like tiny splinters of obsidian, shot through Sunchaser’s veins. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t think, without agony. A voice in his soul whispered, You’re a Dreamer. Your duty is here.