"You seem so sure."
"I've always believed his Dream . . . even when you didn't."
"I was younger then. Foolish. Broken Branch made me take another look."
"Then you went back to see what was right—whose Dream to believe. You've seen."
"Yes." Singing Wolf lifted a muscular shoulder. "But never in all the memory of the People have so many fled to such a small place. What if there's no way out? What if Raven Hunter doesn't drive the Others away? What if there's no way across the ice?" He turned, looking down at her in the gray light of day. "We could die. I want you and my child to live."
Chapter 42
Slick, so slick. Wind Woman tried to tear his fragile grip loose from the ice as he climbed. Around Wolf Dreamer, snow blew in wreaths, chattering softly across the ice. In the perpetual gray of the Long Dark, he proceeded, step-by-step, grip-by-grip.
Heron's soul had been prayed to the Blessed Star People.
Who am I? Where am I going? Heron, why have you left me here all alone? What did your Dream mean? I've tried, but I can't unravel the symbols: man-made mountains? A winding river? Sun Gods? Thunderbirds? A desiccated land and a scaled animal with no legs? What is this tall grass with yellow seeds? What are these rock shelters? Fantasy?
An aching numbness left his thoughts spinning without direction.
"Lonely. I'm so lonely." Around him, hour by hour, the Long Dark spun out its cold fury, ice cracking, the glacier ever active.
"Ghosts," he whispered. "Let them come. Them, and the spirits of the Long Dark." To the cloud-streaked blackness, he raised his hands. "Here I am! Come and get me! I defy you!"
Silence thundered at him.
His food had dwindled to one small sack of fat-filled pemmican. And around him, canted slabs of ice beckoned death. The wrong step, an inadvertent advance across a cornice, and he'd fall to be trapped forever in the hidden crevasses within the ice. Compressed, fractured, twisted and tortured, the gritty ice jutted and sloped. He'd entered a world of jumbled angles—no surface level, cold, murky shadows inhabited by the chill breath of the ice. Slabs towered above him, snow sifting down from the edges so high overhead. Gaps and holes fell away to shaded depths below—a trap of eternal frigid darkness.
Step-by-step, he probed, using his dart shaft to check the footing, moving with constant hesitation.
"Dancing Fox?" Her face filled his restless sleep.
"Thrown out? Disgraced? Why? Because you would love me? Because you would have followed the Wolf Dream?"
Love killed Heron. She told you . . . told you that day in the pool. A human who Dreams can't have the distraction, can't join his life with another's. If he does, he can't lose himself to the One. Can't forget who he is—and must be.
He gasped, fighting the hollow hurt inside. "Is nothing left for me? Am I to be alone forever? Hear me, Father Sun! Am I to be alone forever? "
His pain mingled with the gusting sigh of Wind Woman.
"Numb. Life is numb, black, like the Long Dark. That way we live. Step-by-step. Pain by pain." He looked up into the scudding smoke-shaded clouds. "Can't I be like everyone else? Can't I . . . love?"
Wind Woman worried his parka, howling her mad rebuttal across the cornices and spears of ice. She moaned and wailed, a haunting reflection of his misery.
' 7 don't want to be alone!''
Two weeks onto the ice, he could find no route. Only the. wind at his back provided the direction.
From his memory, voices mocked.
"You're crazy to go out there now," One Who Cries had moaned, arms lifted. "Wait. Wait until spring. Then go. You can't go out and kill yourself just because—"
"I'll be back. I've got the Dream. Got the proof. Now I need the way."
They'd gone as far as the ice with him. Two of the dogs that had followed him were gone—lost in hidden crevasses in the ice. But he'd learned from their mistakes. The ice terrified him . . . worse than the reflection of anguish in Heron's dead eyes.
The pemmican lasted two more days.
Stillness. It woke him out of a deep sleep. Wary, cautious, he resettled himself, blinking in the grayness as he snugged his robes around his throat.
"Mad," he whispered. "I've gone mad. Hear the silence?" He laughed at himself. "I finally hear the silence."
He stood, cupping ice-encrusted mittens around his mouth, hollering, "I'm mad! Crazy! Hear me, Father Sun? Hear me,
Star People? See me! Crazy, huh?" Turning to stare at the endless sculpted ice around him, he dropped his voice to a quiet whisper. "Crazy."
Silence. No wind. He chuckled, shaking his head. The growling of his empty belly echoed in the night. Behind him a steep-sloped drift rose. To either side, sheltering slabs of gritty ice thrust toward the sky.