Blessed Mother Ocean, I’ll do anything you want! Just protect my baby.
Kestrel released Sunchaser’s sleeve so she could clutch the hook of her atlatl. She would heed Horseweed’s words and would not pull it unless she had to. But it comforted her just to feel the smooth wood beneath her fingers.
Horseweed halted before the crest of the hill, breathing hard. He glanced at her over his shoulder, firelight gleaming on his sweaty face. “Ready?”
Kestrel could see the leaping flames now, and Lambkill.
He stood next to Tannin beside the fire. He had his chin thrust out, and his jowls were mottled with crimson. On his back, he wore a small pack. Is that where he keep? the dead baby? That beautiful dead baby boy…
Something in the way Lambkill waved his arms caused a black bubble to begin swelling in Kestrel’s breast, swelling until she feared she might be sick.
“Yes. I’m ready.”
Forty-one
Dust sparkled faintly in the gleam of firelight, st’ ired up by the feet of the people who milled nervously in the plaza, their braids frizzy as though they’d been driven from their sleeping robes with no warning. Kestrel watched, her soul panicked, as she and Horseweel crested the hill. She glanced at the youth.
His stumbling pace had slowed while he examined the scene. The elders sat in a ring around the fire, their hides pulled over their shoulders. The rest of the village crowded around behind them, murmuring, shouldering one another aside to see better. “If that’s my daughter,” Lambkill shouted, “you have no right to keep her from me!”
Kestrel leaned to the side to see Lambkill. He stood between Tannin and the man with the red shirt, his fists c’enched, his body stiff. His violent glare was directed across the fire at an elderly man and woman. The quartz crystal that hung from the braided mammoth hide around LambkilFs neck glinted wildly. He yelled, “Give me that baby!” The old woman Kestrel had seen earlier—the one who
had looked down at her from the hilltop—stood up from her crouch beside a young woman feeding a baby … Cloud Girl!
Kestrel couldn’t take her eyes from her baby. Cloud Girl nursed quietly. She seemed well. Contented. Kestrel wanted to weep. Her breasts began to ache and her milk flowed, warm against the hide of her dress.
As she stood there staring at Cloud Girl, she heard the labored breathing of the crowd, the shuffling of many feet and the constant hooting of owls hunting the forests for mice and rabbits. Iceplant? Can you see your daughter? She’s here with your family. Just like you wanted her to be. A hard knot grew in Kestrel’s chest, as though all of her fear and desperation had frozen around her heart.
The old woman cleared her throat to gain attention and said, “We don’t know whose baby this is. It may belong to your wife, Lambkill, but it may not. And anyway, I thought you said your wife’s children came from incest. Are you telling us now that you claim her children as your own?”
“If that baby is hers, it belongs to me!” He stabbed a dirty thumb into his chest.
The old man across the fire from Lambkill shifted and narrowed his eyes, and the villagers hushed one another in anticipation of his words. He said, “Not according to our clan laws. Not even if you are the father, Lambkill—and you’ve yet to say you are. The Otter Clan considers all children the property of their mothers.”
Lambkill hissed, “Are you begging me to kill you? Don’t you know what will happen if you don’t turn my family over to me? It will be war! The Bear-Looks-Back Clan and the Blackwater Draw Clan will band together to wipe the Otter Clan from the face of the earth!” He shook his fists in rage. “Do you hear me, Oxbalm?”
“Yes, I do,” the old man responded, a fierce glint in his eye. “And so do my warriors. I wouldn’t say that again if I were you.” The name made Kestrel’s heart pound. She mouthed it like
a ceremonial prayer, Oxoalm. Chief of the Otter Clan. Was the woman to his left Sumac, then?
Horseweed had stiffened as he listened.
Lambkill didn’t move a muscle, but his gaze swept the faces in the crowd as though he’d forgotten that so many watched. All around him, men and women fidgeted with atlatls and bone stilettos. Half of them looked angry enough to dart Lambkill if Oxbalm so much as pointed at him. Children hunched in a line outside the nearest long lodge, clutching their dogs by the scruffs of their necks. The animals had their ears up, and low growls rumbled in their throats. They didn’t like Lambkill either.
The argument had grown so intense that no one even noticed Horseweed and Kestrel until Horseweed accidentally dragged the travois over a rock that hid in a thick patch of grass. Kestrel let out a small cry when the travois bounced and Sunchaser almost slid off.