Like a sleepwalker, Kestrel followed.
Catchstraw’s thin face shone orange in the light of his small fire. He’d made camp away from the other villagers, in the depths of the forest, where he could be alone. Anyone else would have been thought odd for separating himself like that, but not a Dreamer. Dreamers had special privileges when it came to privacy. The pungent odors of bear dung and crushed grass surrounded him. Trees hunched forward as though watching his every move. He could hear them whispering amongst themselves; they were frightened by his Power.
Catchstraw glowered up at the rustling branches that made a canopy over his head. Through them, patches of stars glittered. “Shut up,” he said to the trees. “There’s nothing you can do. You’re disturbing my concentration.”
He went back to the maze. His hand had grown heavy, so numb that he could barely lift it. He chanted softly while he used a chunk of charcoal to draw new lines, crisscrossing the old, obliterating some pathways so that they ended abruptly, as though striking a stone wall. His soul had left his body and floated above, watching, guiding.
“Soon I’ll have Dire Wolf’s legs,” he whispered hoarsely. “I almost managed it last night. Tonight they’ll sprout. I can already feel them growing. Then I’ll be able to run away, far away. I’ll find Sunchaser …”
The wind came up suddenly. The branches of the trees clattered together and showered him with small green leaves. The bushes joined the din, sawing back and forth, squealing and shishing.
They created so much racket that Catchstraw finally lurched to his feet and shouted, “You listen to me! There’s nothing you can do to stop me. There’s nothing anyone can do. I will become Dire Wolf!”
A shooting star streaked across the sky, leaving a silver trail. Catchstraw swallowed hard. Witches traveled in the form of shooting stars. Could some long-dead witch be descending from the Land of the Dead to speak with him? He waited, afraid.
“All of my life I’ve done what others told me to do,” he murmured. “I married women that I hated, because my mother ordered me to marry them. Then …” he glared at the trees and bushes that watched him. “… I… I always wanted to be a Dreamer, but clan elders like Oxbalm wouldn’t let me. They told me I had no talent for it, that Dreamers were born different, but not different like me, different like Sunchaser! Even after I became a Dreamer, when Running Salmon died, none of the elders sat in council to Sing and talk about their new Dreamer; none came to offer me their prayers or to discuss clan problems. No one has ever asked my advice… until I began destroying that maze.” It surprised him that a sob lodged in his throat.
The forest went silent, and the wind held its breath.
Catchstraw blinked and slowly gazed around at the still oaks and pines. The Star People gleamed with frosty radiance. “You see now, don’t you? That’s why you’re listening to me. I’ve found Power! .. I’ve never been happy! Never.
Because I’ve always been Powerless! And now that I’ve found Power, no one, human, animal or Spirit, will ever take it from me again.
“I will become Dire Wolf, and when I do, people will start doing as I tell them to. No one will dare to shout at me, or … or to say that I am useless!”
Another shooting star blazed across the blaok belly of Brother Sky, and Catchstraw lifted a hand in greeting. “Are you coming to speak with me? Is … is that you, old Cactus Lizard? Come. I want to learn the things you knew. Come and talk to me. I’ll be waiting.”
A gust of wind squalled through the forest again, and the trees clattered and rustled. The bushes hissed at Catchstraw, but he sat down, picked up his chunk of charcoal and lowered it to the distorted maze.
Nineteen
A shimmering blanket of fog covered the coast, obscuring Sunchaser’s vision as he walked along the edge of the high sea cliffs, so that he moved by memory rather than by sight. He couldn’t see the forest of stunted cypress that sloped upward to his right, but he knew it was there. Just as he knew that two hundred hands below, on his left, the subdued waves of ebb tide caressed the shore. He could hear their faint purl. He held his moose hide jacket closed against the chill mist and followed the curve of the cliff around to the north.
Ahead, he could see the dim outlines of the wind-sculpted pines that grew in the jumbled rock outcrop.
“That’s where the yellow ants are, Helper. I found them yesterday,” he said to the dog that trotted at his side. “There are a dozen anthills at the base of those rocks.”
Helper tipped his muzzle and scented the air, then growled. He loped out in front with his nose to the ground, his back bristling.