People of the Sea(90)
Catchstraw managed uneven steps, learning this new body. Sometimes when he looked down he saw skinny human
legs, and he had to concentrate hard, very hard, before wolf flesh sheathed them again. Such a wealth of scents! He’d never guessed that the world contained so many smells. His hearing had sharpened, catching even the faint scritchings of insects in the grass outside. He slipped his keen nose past his lodge door flap and wobbled out into the night—and entered a different world, one shaded in dark grays instead of blackness. As he trotted down a game trail in the starlit forest, he growled, then lifted his voice in an eerie howl that echoed through the foothills. A crack of lightning split the cloudless night, lanced across the sky and blasted a nearby hilltop.
The rumble followed him as he jumped a pile of deadfall and loped headlong for the trees.
Twenty
Kestrel moaned softly in her nightmare. She found herself alone again, standing at the bottom of the hill outside of Juniper Village, hearing Iceplant’s hoarse shriek pierce the night. Against the blazing background of the bonfire, Lambkill brutally brought his war club down on Iceplant’s head. Iceplant’s knees buckled…
Kestrel tried to scream, but no sound would come from her constricted throat. She flailed about and almost woke up.
Somewhere far away, waves struck a shore, and wind whimpered. Fish was roasting, the scent sweet, delicate…
Lambkill took his knife from his belt and thrust it into Iceplant’s stomach, then sawed upward. A small, wretched cry escaped Iceplant’s lips.
Kestrel tried to run back to him, to save him, but her feet wouldn’t move. “Iceplant!”
The ground started to quake beneath her. Through the roar of the quake, she heard the snorting and bawling of a short faced bear. Kestrel staggered back and forth, terror flooding her veins. She had never experienced such anger from the Quaking Earth Spirits. In the country of the Bear-Looks-Back Clan, such quakes rarely occurred, and when they did, they stopped almost instantly. This tremor built until it shook the world. Trees toppled sideways, crashing into each other, and the rumble turned to an earsplitting cacophony. Or was that Bear roaring?
“Iceplant?” she screamed again.
“Run!” Iceplant shouted feebly. “Run… Kestrel.”
The rage of the Spirits mocked him, jerking the ground from beneath Kestrel’s feet and tossing her headlong toward a pile’ of rocks. She fell, twisting to guard her pregnant belly, and landed hard on her left shoulder. Clawing and gasping, she tried to crawl away from the toppling trees, only to have the earth before her crack with a deafening blast. A shriek tore from her throat. A hissing fissure opened and spat hot steam into the air. In the writhing haze of mist, she tried to scream a name, the most Powerful name she could imagine, but not even she could hear it. The Quaking Earth Spirits trampled it to dust…
“It’sail right,” an unfamiliar voice intruded into the dream. “You’re safe. Everything is all right.”
Kestrel felt herself being tugged away, climbing, climbing Terror and futility swept over her, and silently she wept. Tears trickled down her face. She could sense her body again. It felt like a feather floating on a gentle summer breeze. So tired, but so warm. For the first time in almost a moon, her fingers and toes didn’t ache.
And she felt something else. A hand, large and gentle, upon her shoulder, squeezing comfortingly.
“Try to wake up,” a man’s accented voice said in soothing tones. “You’re safe. Your little girl’s fine. And food is cooking.”
She heard him stand and walk a short distance away. Then
a fire crackled as though more wood had been thrown onto it. Kestrel lay still, feigning sleep, listening while her heart raced. Wind gusted, blowing cold across her face. She realized that a hide covered her. Had he put it there? Clamping her jaw to stifle her fear, she opened her eyes.
Beyond the rock shelter, snow fell. Huge white flakes filled all of the sky that she could see.
The man knelt before the fire, with Cloud Girl in the crook of his left arm. The baby’s tiny fists twined in the fringes of his sleeves while she sucked on her mouse hide pacifier.
He glanced at Kestrel. Their gazes met and held. His eyes were so dark and deep-set that she seemed to peer into two black, bottomless holes. He had a long straight nose, and the bluntness of his square jaw was softened by the high curve of his cheeks. The deep copper tones of his skin belied his shocking white hair. Not an old man, but a young man… and a handsome man.
“Are you feeling better?” he asked. She remembered that curiously deep, gentle voice from her dream. “You had a good long sleep.”