Sunchaser’s voice rasped as he asked, “Where is Good Plume, Steals Light People? Do you know?”
They seemed to be whispering; the Thunderbeing’s voice was especially loud. Thunderbeings looked like young children, but they had the shining, membranous wings of dragonflies. And talons grew where a human child would have had feet. As they soared through the clouds, their wings caused thunder to rumble across the sky. He couldn’t make out the Thunderbeing’s words. Or were those sounds only the passing of the mice? Sunchaser blinked to steady the
wavering focus of his eyes and fought the drifting sensation that possessed him.
Bright paintings lived over the heads of the figurines. On the long north wall, two zigzags of yellow lightning sliced a path through silver moons and blue stars and lodged in the heart of a crimson sun. The southern wall flamed with orange trees whose branches curled in and around to form the interlocking pathways of a labyrinth. Near the edges of the branches, dark swirls spiraled out, like tongues of black flame…. The Darkness that roasts the soul when it attempts to find the twisting road that leads to the Land of the Dead.
With all of his strength, Sunchaser rolled to his right side so he could extend a trembling hand and pull the door flap back. His clammy fingers could barely keep their grip on the leather, but he managed to hang the flap on its peg. As he did so, the hides slipped off his chest, exposing it to the cold wind that swept Brushnut Village. He relished the shiver that shook him. The crisp scent of pine flooded his hot nostrils and he inhaled deeply, seeking to fill his soul with the essence of the trees.
Outside the lodge, the green pines gradually darkened into charcoal spears. They stood like dark sentinels against the translucent rays of pale pink light that shot across the sky. Sunchaser could see no clouds, but flakes of snow pirouetted through the trees and landed on the frozen ground.
How long had he been ill? He couldn’t even recall when he had retreated to his aunt’s lodge to lie down. Where was ‘ she? Was the sickness still ravaging the village?
“They need you, you fool,” he murmured feebly. “Good Plume is old . ,. eighty summers. She can’t work all the Healings by herself. It will kill her. Get up. Get up before it’s too late and everyone that you care about is dead.”
He tried to sit up, but fell back to his hides, panting and trembling from the effort. The interior of the lodge swam around him in a blur of color. He felt sick to his stomach.
Sunchaser had been born here in the mountains at Brushnut Village twenty-five summers ago. He knew and loved each person in the village. How many of them had died since he’d fallen ill? Good Plume’s lodge nestled on the western side of the village, down the slope from the others. But he could hear the moans and cries of the sick.
“Blessed Spirits, what’s happening? How …”
Footsteps crunched on the frozen ground above the lodge, slow, methodic, as if each step required great care.
“Good Plume?” he called again.
“Yes, it’s me.”
She pushed her walking stick through the doorway before she ducked through herself. Snow frosted the fur of her heavy buffalo coat and glistened in the gray straggles of hair that had come undone from her short braid. Her face had a skeletal angularity; her sagging, wrinkled skin was the color of walnut oil.
Sunchaser closed his eyes for a moment.
Good Plume leaned her walking stick by the door and unhooked the door flap, letting it fall closed again. “Are you trying to kill yourself? Winter Boy is still out and about, looking for souls to eat.”
She bent down and covered Sunchaser with hides again, then went to the middle of the lodge, where she removed her coat and laid it by the fire to dry. Her thin arms stuck out from the sleeves of her doeskin dress. She kicked a stump of wood closer to the fire and sat down on it, the beaded hem of her skirt fanning around her feet. Her hands shook as she held them out to the flames. “When I get warm, I’ll heat up that raccoon soup we had for breakfast.”
Sunchaser wet his chapped lips. “Tell me … I have to know. What’s happening?”
“It will just worry you. You’ll use up your strength—”
“Tell me!”
Good Plume exhaled a heavy breath. “Flint Pond died today. Everyone in the village is going mad trying to figure out who should be the next chief.”
“What about Flint Pond’s son?”
Good Plume’s voice broke when she said, “Little Elk died this morning.”
Faint, wavering images of Little Elk’s face moved through Sunchaser’s thoughts, each like a knife in his heart. They’d laughed and played together as children. “And Little Elk’s wife?”