People of the Silence(257)

Poor Singer shook his head and continued. “She asked me if I understood what it meant to have the heart of a cloud.”

“… The heart of a cloud?”

“Yes. A Spirit once told me: ‘You must have the heart of a cloud to walk upon the wind.’ I didn’t understand back then.”

“And do you now?”

Poor Singer frowned. “Some of it. I told the Keeper that I thought that the heart of a cloud was tears, and ‘to walk upon the wind’ meant to be able to look down from high above, to see more clearly.” He turned to face Jay Bird, and his eyes were moist. “I think the teaching means that if I live inside the tears of other people, I will see life more clearly.”

Jay Bird sat back. For a man Poor Singer’s age to understand the nature of shared pain was rare. How many old men, men in their seventieth summer, had yet to learn that truth? “What did she say?”

“She said, ‘Tell your grandfather what you did here. What you saw here. He will understand.’” Poor Singer frowned at Jay Bird, as if wondering if he did.

Jay Bird smoothed his hand over the grass at his side. The new blades felt soft and delicate. “Did she say anything else?”

Poor Singer nodded. “Yes. She told me that if I spoke with you, I would be a great Singer one day, and that I should make my life an offering. That it would save far more people than my death.”

An odd throbbing pain built above Jay Bird’s heart. This wise woman of the mountains had hidden a message for him alone in those words. She is warning me that my grandson will be a very great holy man. That is, if I don’t kill his soul by killing his friend.

But to let Ironwood go free! His wife’s dead eyes stared out at him from the depths of his soul. How could he let her murderer go? Or turn his back on the loss and abuse of his daughter? Could he simply forget the terrible suffering and grief?

Jay Bird shook his head. “I can’t let him go, Poor Singer.”

“He was following the orders of his Blessed Sun, Grandfather, as your War Chief follows yours. You are punishing the tool for allowing itself to be used.”

“But his death will strike terror into the hearts of our enemies, Grandson. I must—”

“They are already afraid, Grandfather.” Poor Singer’s nose wrinkled at the strange odor carried on the western breeze. “The gods have their own sense of justice. I…” He frowned. “Like an old tree, the Straight Path nation looks massive from the outside, but the center of the trunk is rotting, dying. They do not have much time.”

“How do you know, Poor Singer? Did the gods tell you this?”

Poor Singer folded his arms tightly across his chest. “No … but I know it to be true.”

Jay Bird’s brows lowered at the glow in Poor Singer’s eyes. For long moments, he stared into those eyes, seeing the promise of the future, the pain of the past. Justice was such a tenuous thing, the balance so precarious. How could he believe? Poor Singer was barely a man. Could Jay Bird trust his vision?

Jay Bird closed his eyes. “Sometimes,” he whispered, “a man must be willing to forego the satisfaction of vengeance and place his faith in his family.”

Poor Singer straightened. “What does that mean?”

Hatred curled like an angry snake in Jay Bird’s belly. “It means I…” He could barely get the words out. “I will free Ironwood.”

Poor Singer embraced Jay Bird so hard the hug drove the air from his lungs. A warm sensation spread through him—the same sort of elation he used to feel when Young Fawn hugged him. Jay Bird smiled wearily and patted his grandson’s back.

“But you must tell him,” Jay Bird said. “If I look upon him again, I will surely kill him.”

“I’ll tell him!”

Jay Bird shoved back. “Then go. Do it now, before I have time to reconsider. We will talk more later.”

Poor Singer leaped to his feet and ran, his legs pumping as he took the trail toward the pen.

Jay Bird struggled to calm his writhing gut. All those years of brooding, the suppressed rage, had carried him as wind does a feather. Now, his soul had come to ground. The arms of the breeze had failed him.

Is this the price for all that pain? He had grown sentimental in his old age. But perhaps it would all work out. Poor Singer would have to repeat his vision to the entire community. Everyone would wish to hear it. And it might be the only thing that saves me from my people’s wrath.

Not that it mattered. He had endured their wrath before, and this one act had given him the grandson he might otherwise have lost. The warmth of Poor Singer’s embrace lived in his heart.