People of the Sea(62)

Horseweed squinted skeptically, a sinking sensation in his heart. Here it comes. What was it Balsam said? A liverwort? A leech?

Behind him, Balsam yipped excitedly. “We’ll be heroes! What did I tell you? They’ll probably hold a Dance in our honor. For cycles to come, people will speak our names with pride!”

Sunchaser smiled, but he gazed steadily at Horseweed. “Will you help me?”

The sinking sensation yawned wider. “What do you need?”

“I need to know what Catchstraw has been saying about me. I missed another Mammoth Spirit Dance. Surely he noticed.” Sunchaser gazed seriously at Horseweed.

“Catchstraw doesn’t like you, Sunchaser.”

“I’ve noticed that. What did he say when I missed the Dance?”

Horseweed shrugged uncertainly. “We left the village the day before the Dance started, but I did hear him tell Grandfather that if you hadn’t appeared by the end of the Dance, he was going to…” Horseweed paused. How had Catch straw put it? “I think he said he was going to ‘seek advice among the clan elders.” “

Sunchaser’s face darkened. He released his hold on Horse weed’s shoulder. “He has every right.”



“You think he’s trying to take your place?” Horseweed snorted derisively. “Catchstraw’s no Dreamer! He’s a fake. Grandfather’s certain of it.”

“Yes, but Oxbalm has seen enough Dreamers come and go that he can tell the difference. The other clan leaders… well, we’ll see. I won’t judge them before I’ve had a chance to talk to them.”

“Are you expecting them to condemn you for missing the Dance again? Sunchaser, you were in the mountains Healing. Everybody knows that. How could they condemn you for saving lives?”

“Oh, they may not condemn me.” Sunchaser shoved his hands into his jacket pockets. “But most people think that their own needs are far more important than the needs of others. And I suspect that the Otter Clan villagers thought they needed me.” He tilted his head apologetically. “They didn’t, of course. Mammoth Above hears the Songs, feels the motions of the Dance, whether I’m there or not.”

Horseweed frowned. “If they do condemn you, they’re fools! Those people at Brushnut Village are our relatives. Cousins. Even aunts and uncles. How could you leave the sick and dying just to lead the Mammoth Spirit Dance for us?” He fiercely slapped a dogwood branch, and a cascade of white petals splashed, into the air around them. Sunchaser peered at Horseweed askance.

“Well, it makes me mad,” Horseweed said. “I see why you’re worried. If you had come to the Dance, somebody would have cursed you for leaving their relatives to die. Since you didn’t come, they’ll curse you because you didn’t lead the Dance for them. You were cursed either way, Sunchaser.”

The Dreamer smiled and studied the deer tracks in the mud of the trail for a few moments. “I hadn’t realized that you’d grown up, Horseweed. It’s good to have a man to talk to.”

Horseweed’s chest swelled. Though he tried to hide it by turning his head to the side, a broad smile came over his face. A man! He was fourteen summers old, true, but had yet to kill his first mammoth or go on his first war raid. Technically, he



wasn’t a man, although he certainly felt like one. It elated him that the great Dreamer thought he was.

Hesitantly, Horseweed asked, “Sunchaser? What’s it like to visit the Land of the Dead? I’ve always wanted to ask you, but I… I’ve been too afraid before. Grandfather says it’s very dark.”

“Oh, yes. At first the darkness is so deep and still that you feel your soul will be crushed by it. But then you hear voices. They’re familiar, though it takes a while to recognize them. They call out to you, and you cling to the sound of your own name as though it were the only thing saving you from oblivion. You concentrate on it. The darkness changes, becomes a great white light that swallows you and carries you up, up. Then you step out into an alien sky, and you fall toward a new land… trees … red ridges so jagged and winding they remind you of the skeletons of long-dead monsters … a land terrifying in its beauty.”

“Sunchaser’s voice faded, and his eyes took on a faraway gleam, as though seeing that landscape rising before him again.

Wonder tingled in Horseweed’s chest. He watched Sunchaser from the corner of his eye but kept quiet, letting the Dreamer remember.

When Sunchaser’s steps slowed, Horseweed took the lead down the trail. Balsam eased around Sunchaser very carefully before running to catch up. His face looked plaintive.