“Stone Forehead.” An unpleasant tickle taunted her stomach, as if doom had walked in with him. “Now that you’ve found us, what are you supposed to do?”
He stretched his stocky body out across the sandstone and gestured with his cup. The glow of the fire sheathed his dark eyes with a sunrise sheen. “Your parents said to make certain you got to your relatives’ villages. Tomorrow morning that is what I will do. We will walk back to the fork in the road, then I’ll—”
“You’re going to drag us away, even though we don’t wish to go!” Cornsilk said indignantly.
Stone Forehead grinned, his white teeth flashing in the firelight. “Exactly. At the point of an arrow, if necessary.”
Cornsilk reached over, took the two sticks with rabbit legs, and thrust one into Fledgling’s hand. He took it sullenly.
She sank her teeth into the hot meat. As she chewed, she glowered at Stone Forehead. “It’s a good thing you brought your own food.”
Stone Forehead grinned. “You’ve always been a problem. I expected—”
“And a good thing you brought your bow,” she added, “because I’m not going.”
The twinkle vanished from Stone Forehead’s eyes. “What are you talking about? You have no choice.”
“You mean you’re going to kill me? Perhaps beat me into submission? I can’t wait to see the look on my parents’ faces when they hear the news.”
“Cornsilk,” Stone Forehead warned, “don’t force me—”
“Go ahead.” She smiled evilly at him. “Try to force me to go.”
Stone Forehead jumped to his feet. “So help me, Cornsilk, I swear, you’ve … Ever since that time you shot those four grouse when I only shot one, I knew you were impossible!” He threw up his hands. “By the Blessed Ones! You are the most stubborn woman I have ever known!” He glared at her through weary eyes, shoulders slumped in defeat. “What did I ever see in you in the first place?”
She lifted a shoulder.
“Cornsilk, you will shame me! Is that what you wish? To make me look bad before our entire village?”
She smiled and took another juicy bite of rabbit.
Fifteen
The sacred road, which had been heading due south, veered off at an angle toward Center Place. Ironwood studied the land while he waited for Dune. A thick coating of frost caught the slanting sun, striking sparkles from each leaf and blade of grass. Behind him, the ancient holy man hobbled along, placing his walking stick with great care.
Spider Woman must have smoked her pipe all night long to create the shimmering layer of fog that rolled through Straight Path Canyon. As the mist crept over the tan cliffs, it changed from golden to the palest of pinks. The brush glittered with a coral hue.
Ironwood propped his foot on a sandstone boulder, unslung his pack, and drew out a juniper stick and an obsidian flake—a thin palm-sized piece of stone. When honed and fire-hardened, the stick would make a deadly stiletto.
They had crossed the flats north of the canyon, where scrubby sage and wispy grasses fought for existence in the clay-heavy soils. The occasional small dunes they’d passed, little more than shadows of thin sand, supported here and there some rabbitbrush or greasewood, but little else.
Ironwood longed for the pines, but few of them grew this close to the canyon, and those that did survived by sinking roots along the steeply eroded cliffs. Ironwood had often stopped to wonder at them. They survived by clinging to any crack in the stone where soil and water existed. Their squat trunks twisted back and forth, seeming to wallow before they gained enough strength to send up stubby branches. There was something Powerful about an old, old tree that refused to die. Something deeply sacred.
Dune came alongside and gazed out over the mist. His long brown shirt and tattered buckskin leggings contrasted sharply with his sparse white hair. He leaned on his walking stick for balance, breath puffing whitely.
“Give me a moment,” Dune said, “to catch my wind.”
“Take as long as you wish. We’ve kept a good pace, Dune. We’ll be at Talon Town by midafternoon.”
Ironwood shaved off a curl of wood and watched it spiral to the ground. The rich fragrance of juniper encircled him.
He had been thinking of Night Sun all morning. The Blessed Sun’s impending death had opened a door inside him that he’d walled up long ago—and he couldn’t seem to close it again. Though he had not touched her in many sun cycles, his hands remembered the softness of her skin and the mink’s fur texture of her long hair. Sometimes late at night, just at the edge of sleep, he heard her joyous laugh and reached out for her … to touch only empty air.