People of the Sea(63)
“What’s wrong?” Horseweed asked softly.
Balsam shook his head. “Dreamers. They’re all scary. Sort of half here and half somewhere else.”
Horseweed grinned. “That’s why we call them Dreamers.”
Fourteen
Kestrel bounced Cloud Girl on her knees. Near panic, she couldn’t think of anything else to do. The baby had grown irritable after her noon feeding. Then she’d started crying and had yet to stop. Kestrel had made camp early, in an oak grove overlooking a small lake. The newly budded limbs threw a black weave of shadows over her hastily constructed lodge. Made of dead branches propped against each other, then covered with brush, it looked shabby and fragile, but it would keep them dry if it rained tonight. That was all Kestrel cared about. Tomorrow morning they would be running again.
On the lake, a flock of swans floated placidly. Their rich bugling calls filled the valley, providing a beautiful background to Cloud Girl’s wails. Everywhere in the grove, birds sang and hopped from branch to branch, birds she had never seen before, with red, blue and bright green feathers.
“Oh, my daughter, please, what’s wrong?”
They had made their way through a low, rocky pass at the southern tip of the Mammoth Mountains and entered the foothills on the other side. Northward, snowcapped peaks pierced the blue sky. But Kestrel’s eyes drifted to the west, where the land flattened out and gradually sloped downward. Dark patches of mountain mahogany choked the drainages that flowed toward the sea. Between the drainages, a strewn handful of small lakes was burnished a greenish gold by the slanting rays of light. “Try to eat, baby.” Again Kestrel put her breast in the baby’s mouth, but again Cloud Girl twisted away to shriek
and wave her tiny fists. “Baby, what do you need? What’s wrong?”
The cries were driving Kestrel to distraction. Nothing stopped them. Frantic, she put Cloud Girl against her shoulder and got to her feet. Sunlight fell through the trees, warming her face as she walked the trail toward the lake. Cloud Girl seemed to like the motion. Her cries dropped to whimpers. Kestrel patted her bottom, hoping to ease her daughter. Probably Cloud Girl had colic.
“I could cure you easily if we were home, baby. The entire country of the Bear-Looks-Back Clan is filled with bunchberry and nettle, but where would I look for them here? The land and plants are so different.”
Kestrel strode through a meadow of blue wildflowers, looking for the winter dung of a buffalo, or maybe, if she were lucky, a shrub ox She found buffalo dung first.
“This won’t take long, Cloud Girl. Please, be good. Don’t cry.”
But as soon as Kestrel laid Cloud Girl on the soft green grass, the baby erupted in shrieks again. At the age of three weeks, Cloud Girl had developed the lungs of a two-moon old child. Kestrel hurried. She lifted Cloud Girl’s shirt, then unlaced and removed her rabbit-fur pants, seeing the soaked crushed bark within. The pants, nothing more than a square piece of hide folded over and stitched up along the sides, with two leg holes in the bottom, had a protective layer of woven bark sewn into the crotch, which was filled with absorbent. The layer rested against Cloud Girl’s body, keeping her dry. The women of the Bear-Looks-Back Clan used a variety of absorbents during different times of the year. In the winter, they collected dead moss or dry dung; in the spring, fuzzy cottonwood seeds; and in the fall, cattail down.
Kestrel turned the pants upside down and shook out the old absorbent, letting it fall to the grass. Then she crumbled the buffalo dung and tucked it between the woven bark layer and the hide. It would absorb all the moisture that flowed through the bark layer. She did not re-dress Cloud Girl; instead, she
picked up the pants and her screaming daughter and headed straight for the lake. Mixing crushed mint with water, she thoroughly washed the baby. “There, Cloud Girl. Feel better now?” she asked as she slipped the pants over those fat little legs and re laced them.
Cloud Girl fell into a suffocating fit of crying. Kestrel quickly rose and began walking with her again. “Will I have to walk all night to keep you happy, my daughter?” They circled the perimeter of the lake, staying just beyond the thick ring of tules that flourished in the shallows. Redwing blackbirds clung to the stalks and cocked their heads with suspicion as Kestrel marched by. Swamp smartweed grew in clumps near the tules. Kestrel picked handfuls of the young shoots and ate them ravenously. They tasted bitter, but tender. To keep up her strength, she’d been eating everything she could find, but her milk supply had dwindled, and she’d never been this hungry in her life.
Cloud Girl stopped crying so suddenly that Kestrel came to a dead halt in the grass. “Goodness, my daughter, did the colic vanish so quickly?” Cloud Girl stared at her from wide eyes.