People of the Sea(89)

No jacket? No sleeping robes? ..” No extra moccasins?

Sunchaser’s curiosity was aroused. He studied her. Brown spots of old blood soiled her dress, and the front of it had clearly been slashed with a knife.

“You’ve been hurt. By who? A man? Your clan? Whatever your reasons … you ran in a hurry. Why?”

Rather than burning off as the day wore on, the fog was thickening. Elusive wisps fluttered into the shelter, licking at the stone like glittering tongues of silver flame. The cold deepened.

Sunchaser shivered. He could smell snow in the air. Snow was not unusual for early spring, especially given the bitterly cold weather they’d had for the past moon, but it could be deadly. He suspected that when night fell, the temperature would plunge. As quietly as he could, he placed three more logs on the red coals and blew on them. Sparks shot out as the blaze crackled to life.

He warmed his hands, thinking. Finally he rose and gathered up his extra hides. Gently, he draped two of them over the woman and her baby.

The last one, he wrapped around his own shoulders. Then he sat down cross-legged before the fire and untied his pack. He took out the basket and set it down beside the hearth, where it would stay warm.

“Soon,” he promised the ants. “Very soon.”



Catchstraw writhed on the floor of his lodge, panting, trying to suppress his screams. The pain … the pain! He clawed wildly at the dirt floor. He kept his feet braced against the log that held down the northern wall, although his agonized movements made the whole structure shudder. The hide walls vibrated as though caught in a ferocious windstorm. In the middle of the floor, his fire had died down to glowing coals that watched him with winking red eyes.

“Blessed Spirits!” he cried. “Make this stop! What have I done to deserve this?” v

Catchstraw’s stomach tied itself in such tight knots that he rolled to his side and pulled his knees against his chest in defense. He’d already vomited until he’d purified himself. What more could the Spirits want? His face contorted. He gasped, and his eyes lit on the freshly plucked trailing stems of morning glory that lay in a neat bundle beside his red and-green medicine basket. The gray, woolly. leaves seemed to mock him.

“That old hag, Running Salmon,” he groaned, “said you’d bring visions! Not this… this agony!”

Before her death, Running Salmon had described to him in detail all the Spirit Plants that she knew of, especially those that grew near the seacoast. Catchstraw had never expected to see even half of them. Morning glory grew on the dry slopes of the foothills. He’d discovered it by accident two days ago, when they had taken the trail that veered off before Whalebeard Village and begun their ascent into the hills.

“Running Salmon… that witch! She probably did this on purpose! You’re not a Spirit Plant. You’re poison!”

He fell into dry heaves that racked his body until he wept.

Running Salmon had said that morning glory had the Power to turn Dreamers into any animal they wanted to be. She’d been dying at the time, her voice a pained whisper:



“The person who uses the plant correctly… can become Mammoth, or Condor. He can even roam the skies as a glowing ball of fire. But… be careful… very careful.”

Then her head had fallen sideways, and she had died-before telling Catchstraw how to prepare the plant, or how much of it to ingest! He could have done either wrongly! He’d boiled a handful of the leaves and drunk them as tea, as he would have done with a dozen other Spirit Plants. But maybe only the seeds of morning glory brought on Dreams, and then only when crushed to a paste and rubbed into the temples. How did he know? How would he ever know now?

“Sunchaser probably knows … but I’ll never ask him. Never! If I die…” he gasped “… I swear to the Spirits that I’ll find Running Salmon in the Land of the Dead. She’ll regret doing this to me!”

But as Catchstraw tossed over onto his back, a violent tingle began at his navel and radiated outward in hot lances. He panted in terror and stared wide-eyed at the red hue that sheathed the ceiling. Power grew inside him, like a malignant child swelling his breast to the bursting point.

“Oh, Spirits!” he gasped. “What’s happening?”

Voices hissed at him from the dying fire: “You’ve chosen your way… to witch … a witch you will be. What animal have you selected?”

“Animal? You mean, which do I want to be? I…”

The instant the words formed in his thoughts, his body began to burn as though set afire, and a garbled shriek erupted from his mouth. As he watched, his arms stretched and twisted, bending into the shape of Dire Wolf’s forelegs. Long yellow claws sprouted from his fingertips. He rolled onto his stomach, frothing at the mouth in terror, gnashing his teeth, growling—and he rose on four legs. He scratched at the dirt, throwing up a haze behind him. He looked down at himself and saw the thick black fur that coated his powerful limbs. It gleamed a dark crimson from the glow of the coals.