People of the Sea(18)

“And it’s going to get much colder,” she said, bolstering her courage as she studied the wide, silt-laden river that rushed and foamed where the cleft joined the sandy shore below. Runoff from the heavy rains had caused the water to overflow its banks. Along the shore, a thick layer of dirty froth had accumulated. Reeds, which usually stood at the edge of the water, were visible twenty hands into the current; they poked ragged tips through the surface as if desperate for the sun’s warm touch.

“Go on. Hurry, Kestrel. Move… move!”

She had to force her exhausted legs to carry her the rest of the way down the narrow defile. Lightning flashed through the clouds, followed by bellows of thunder. Beyond the bluff on the opposite shore, the broken land began its rise toward the Mammoth Mountains, whose deep-blue peaks raked the bellies of the distant clouds. Kestrel gazed at the white mist of snow that shrouded the foothills and wanted to weep. She would be safe there. But she couldn’t go. Not yet. Not until the baby came.

She had to find shelter.

That truth terrified her. How long would the baby take to arrive? In the menstrual hut, she’d listened intently when the old women had recounted stories of births that lasted for days and nearly drove the pregnant women mad from pain. She remembered one tale about a woman who gave birth to triplets. The children had been born dead but the woman’s screams had gone on for four days.

Days!

And every moment that Kestrel delayed, Lambkill would be closing in. She’d tried to stay on the rocks, where her moccasins would leave no

prints, but she’d had almost no sleep in three days and a foggy euphoria had begun to possess her. Sometimes she forgot where she was, why she was running. She kept making mistakes—leaving a heel print here, a snapped twig there. Once, when she’d been hiking uphill, she’d had to grab onto a sagebrush to keep from toppling into the mud. She’d stripped the leaves from the branches…

Her trail would be clear to him.

Another contraction bent her double, and she couldn’t suppress the sharp cry that tore from her throat. “No! Oh, no, not now!”

She squatted on the bank and propped her hands on the ground between her spread knees, letting the pain have its way. When it ended, she couldn’t stop trembling.

Kestrel rose and plodded northward along the Big Spoonwood River. She’d been here as a child, and she remembered that the people had built rafts and gathered near a fist-shaped boulder that marked the narrowest stretch of the river. Where was the boulder? She squinted, but she couldn’t see it. Around the southern bend in the shoreline? Even at the age of six summers, the raft trip had seemed to take forever.

The river isn’t as wide as it looks. Remember? It took no more than two hands of time to cross. But that was in late summer. The water was warm. No, Kestrel, don’t think about that! You… you must put the river between yourself and Lambkill.

Scents of fish and rain-soaked earth filled the air as Kestrel waded into the frigid water. Her teeth started to chatter immediately. She took two steps and staggered when she saw her shattered reflection staring back at her. Her body felt suddenly too tired, too wounded, to continue. Massive bruises covered her face, rising to frame the knife gash that slanted across her forehead. Her left eye had swollen almost shut.

“Someday I’ll find him vulnerable,” she whispered. “I swear it.”

She clamped her jaw and slogged downstream, doubling back to the south, passing the opening to the stone cleft that



she had descended earlier. The swirling current would wash away most of her tracks. Perhaps the rain would cover the rest of them. The Thunderbeings had slit open the bellies of the clouds with their wings, and rain now poured down on Sister Earth. If she could get to the rocky terrace that jutted into the river in the distance, she would leave no tracks. She might be able to confuse Lambkill for a short time and stall his progress. As she rounded the curve in the shore, the fist-shaped boulder loomed into view.

Kestrel started to run, splashing through the water, panting. Where the river curved back to the west ahead, the shore vanished. The water had risen so much that it crashed into the bluff and threw foamy lances twenty hands high. Dozens of the tiny round caves that speckled the limestone had been sloshed full of water. Like huge tear-filled eyes, they seemed to watch her as she ran toward the fist-shaped boulder.

When the first squeezing of the next contraction began, Kestrel veered out of the river and headed straight toward one of the caves that gouged the bluff above the waterline. She followed a slender ledge, a deer trail, that ran in front of the caves and eventually led to the crest of the bluff. Along the way, she pulled two handfuls of fresh grass and picked up a small dry stick of choke cherry. The ledge dropped away to a bastion of rocks where water roared as it attacked the stones. Perhaps its fury would cover the sound of her cries. When she reached the entry, she fell to her knees and crawled inside.