Good Plume had to tilt her head far back to look up at him, her sun-blackened face lifting to the light. She had no more room for wrinkles. Her head tottered on her frail old neck. Three white eyes with zigzags of lightning for pupils adorned Good Plume’s chin, a sign of her leadership of the Talth. Like real lightning, the yellow slashes seemed to move as she worked her lips over her toothless gums. She remained silent for a time, studying his face. Finally she said, “Go and get some sleep before you fall over dead. You’re not fully well yet.”
“I’m well enough.”
“You’ll be of no use to anyone but the coyotes, ravens and maggots as a corpse,” Good Plume noted.
“Standing Moon begged me to come and Heal her sister. I must go.”
“How long has her sister been ill?”
“For three days.”
Good Plume’s withered face pulled taut. “Three. That’s when most die. Her fever is bad?”
“Very bad. Standing Moon came to me a hand of time ago to say that Wooden Cup had stopped moving last night. She’d been thrashing around, shifting from burning hot to freezing cold, like the others. Until she went still.”
“You must hurry, then. But first, tell me quickly about Cedar Branch’s three little boys. All night long, you—”
“They died. Good Plume. I… I couldn’t do anything for them.”
Good Plume’s old” face pinched with grief. She put a gnarled hand in the middle of Sunchaser’s chest and weakly shoved him toward Standing Moon’s lodge. “Come back to me when you’ve finished. I’m not done talking to you yet. Something is happening to. Power. Something is fooling with it, allowing the Evil Spirits who cause this illness to stalk the land and find homes in people’s bodies and souls.”
“I’ll return as soon as I can.”
Good Plume leaned on her walking stick and sighed deeply, as though she planned on waiting patiently right there.
He walked back and picked up his Healer’s pack. Clutching it to his chest, he returned to Standing Moon’s lodge, bent to the door flap and announced himself. “Standing Moon?”
“Sunchaser? Come. Please.”
He lifted the flap and ducked inside. It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the dimness. The powerful odors of sweat, urine and sickness encircled him. He draped the flap up on its hook to open the lodge to the cool breeze. On the low benches that lined the walls, four sick people lay beneath heaps of furs. Moans laced the air. The fire in the middle of the floor had died to gray ashes, but a slight warmth still radiated from it.
“Thank you for coming, Sunchaser,” Standing Moon said. She was kneeling on the far side of the lodge. Her hair had been cut short in mourning, accentuating the grief that strained her round face. She held her three-year-old son’s hand while he cried. His fever-brilliant eyes darted about in the dimness.
“How is he?” Sunchaser asked.
“He fell ill last night. He won’t eat. I went to find the spring tubers he likes so much, I walked very far from the village, Sunchaser, but I couldn’t find any. And he won’t eat anything else. He shoved away the deer soup I made for him.”
Standing Moon kissed her son’s forehead, then rose to her feet and wiped sweaty palms on her cat hide dress. Long fringes hung from her sleeves; each fringe had a lion’s claw knotted at the end. When she moved, the claws clicked together like dry bones rattling in the wind. Bravely, she said, “But it’s my sister I’m most worried about.”
The eyes of the sick followed Sunchaser as he walked behind Standing Moon to the south side of the lodge. She pulled the hides away from Wooden Cup’s face and her mouth trembled. “She’s been like this since midnight. I… I think her soul has separated from her body. Can you tie it back?”
“If it hasn’t traveled too far.”
Sunchaser unlaced his Healer’s pack and crouched beside the bench. Wooden Cup didn’t seem to notice, but stared blankly at the soot-coated ceiling. Sweat-drenched hair framed her slack face. Only twenty summers old, she looked much older. Her skin had gone sallow. Saliva dribbled from the corners of her mouth. Gently, Sunchaser used the edge of a hide to wipe it away. “Could you bring me a bowl of water and a red ember from the fire, Standing Moon? Then build up the fire. Make it hot.” “Yes.” She hurried to fill an abalone-shell bowl from a bladder bag and knelt to dig through the ashes until she found an ember. She scooped it out and tucked it into a wrinkle on the top of the shell. Careful not to spill the water, she walked back and handed the bowl to him before placing kindling on the tiny eyes of embers and blowing a crackling nicker alight.