the light, they would come to investigate, and no one must know she had passed this way. The last few strips of jerked tapir would have to do for supper.
Kestrel pulled the strips out and chewed them slowly, savoring each bite. She hadn’t eaten since before dawn, and the sweet, smoky meat tasted especially wonderful. Her stomach growled. The blue of Cloud Girl’s eyes had begun to deepen. By the next moon, they would be a deep, dark brown, like the winter hide of Brother Buffalo. She blinked at Kestrel and began to cry in earnest.
“Oh, I’m sorry, baby. Here.”
Kestrel brought up her knees and propped the rabbit-fur sack on them, then loosened her dress and drew out her left breast. Cloud Girl took the nipple and nursed contentedly while Kestrel finished the tapir jerky.
She held the baby to her and sank back against the cool wall. Shadows had devoured the reeds and cattails, melting the individual stems together into a solid indigo wall around the marsh. Westward, only a thin, glowing crescent remained of Father Sun’s face. It outlined the distant foothills with gold. To the north, she could just glimpse a slice of the Mammoth Mountains, their jagged peaks turning purple with night.
“That’s the way, Cloud Girl. Your father’s people are through there. Where the foothills start up toward the peaks, there’s a pass. We must go through it, then walk as far west as we can. To the sea. We just have to—”
A tiny whisper of sound made her hush. Her gaze swiftly combed the marsh, lingering on each man-sized shadow. A swarm of gnats glittered in the last rays of twilight, spiraling upward over the water. Another sound. On the stone above her. A scratching, like moccasins on gravel. I Kestrel’s fingers dimpled the hide that encased Cloud Girl. Lambkill? Oh, Blessed Spirits, how could I have been so careless? I should have kept running until after dark. Four rapid steps patted across the stone of the overhang. She
started to shake violently. I have to run! Where… where can I hide?
She choked on a cry as a raven walked boldly to the edge of the overhang, caught sight of her and sprang into the sky with a sharp caw.
Kestrel sat back hard, panting, her heart racing. Cloud Girl had not even stopped nursing. She peered up at Kestrel placidly. Her tiny hands kneaded the breast in slow, sleepy motions.
It took several moments before Kestrel could get a deep breath into her lungs.
She stretched out on her side and watched the evening colors vanish in the embrace of night. Nighthawks fluttered over the marsh, their wings whistling when they dove for prey. She clutched Cloud Girl tightly against her and fell into an exhausted sleep.
Gray clouds scudded across the morning sky, sailing eastward. Horseweed glanced at them as he loped down the forest path. Would it rain again? He hoped not. The mud from the last storm had yet to dry. His moccasins were so caked with it that they stuck to his feet like a damp second skin.
“Sunchaser? Wait. Wait!” Horseweed called.
Dogwood trees thrust their branches, laden with white flowers, in his way. Petals showered the path as he shoved the limbs aside without losing his pace. Squirrels chittered, chastising him and Balsam for making so much noise. Sunchaser rounded a bend in the trail ahead, and Horseweed lost sight of him. He slowed down. “We’re never going to catch him.”
“It doesn’t look like he wants us to,” Balsam noted.
Horseweed twisted his face sourly. They had been tracking the Dreamer for three days. Every time that Horseweed thought they’d caught him, he seemed to vanish into thin air, along with that mangy dog of his.
“He’s probably cast a spell on us,” Balsam said, “so that we can’t see him. I bet he’s standing right there in front of us, laughing.”
“Dreamers don’t cast spells. Only witches do that.”
Balsam came up alongside Horseweed and cocked his head. His round face and pug nose were greasy with sweat. “If witches can do it, why can’t Dreamers?”
“Well, maybe they can. I don’t know. But I’ve never heard of a Dreamer using spells.”
“Doesn’t mean they can’t. Did you ever think that that’s why we didn’t see the herd of sacred deer or the woodpile at the Dream Cave?”
Sarcastically, Horseweed said, “Or maybe the deer had wandered into the forest to bed down until dark, and Catchstraw used up all the wood last autumn.”
“You think Sunchaser lied about eating the deer?”
“Sunchaser wouldn’t eat sacred deer,” he admitted sullenly. “He’d be afraid to. Like everybody with sense. He probably said that just to mock us.”
The trail broke out into a meadow that sloped off down the side of the mountain. Horseweed stopped to scrutinize the maze of tracks crisscrossing the grass. In the mud he saw elk, wolf, camel and rabbit prints. Nothing that looked human. He shook his head. Maybe Sunchaser had stayed in the trees? A bushy hedge of cypress created an unbroken ring around the edges of the meadow. Horseweed walked next to them, listening to the wind whisper through the dark green foliage. He noted the places where a giant sloth had stripped the branches of new growth and left piles of fresh dung. As he watched, bars of sunlight shot across the meadow. The dewdrops clinging to the blades of grass sparkled. Such a beautiful day. At this pace, they would be home by nightfall. His stomach growled for a good meal, but his soul cringed at the thought of facing his grandfather.