Green Water stopped, hands on hips, her child peeking out from under her hood, like two heads perched on one body. The infant's dark eyes blinked in awe. One Who Cries caught his wife's gaze, smiling an encouragement he didn't feel.
Wolf Dreamer took the lead, placing each step carefully on the piled rock, keeping slightly to one side where the current had lessened, the sorted deposits providing more level footing there.
"This worries me," One Who Cries growled.
Singing Wolf shot a quick look at him and smiled weakly. "Spirits are always getting mixed up in your life now, eh?"
He gave Singing Wolf his best scowl. "I had to listen to you. 'Come on,' you said. 'We'll go first. Prove to everyone that it can be done!' And I listened. I listened to you! I'm out of my head! How do you talk me into these crazy things?"
"You were the one who agreed! You were the one talking about what the Others were going to do, about what would happen if the People stayed north of the Big Ice."
"But that doesn't mean I ought to listen to your stone-brained—"
"Hush," Green Water commanded anxiously, eyes on the hole. "Wolf Dreamer will lead us."
One Who Cries filled his lungs with the musty air and sighed. "Uh-huh."
"We haven't died yet," Singing Wolf reminded through clenched teeth, following in Wolf Dreamer's tracks. His head bobbed this way and that as he cast uneasy glances overhead, eyes darting as he studied black shadows and niches that
wormed away into the ice. Laughing Sunshine followed close behind, a knot of tension in her back.
"Haven't died yet—haven't died yet," One Who Cries repeated under his breath, glancing up at the cloud-shredded sky visible through the narrow crack above.
He swallowed, faint tricklings of sound barely audible from the ice to either side. Bands tightened on his heart.
"You coming? Or do I have to carry you?" Singing Wolf called from ahead.
Goaded, One Who Cries trotted forward, hair crawling— like being on a ridge just before Sun Father threw a lightning strike down. A curious wobble had unhinged his legs.
Fingers reached for him. He started, blinking in the gloom, seeing nothing. Fingers, soft, brushing, stroking death across his warm flesh—he could feel them. Ghost fingers, they flicked around him, leaving his skin to shrink against itself.
Fear! I'm more afraid than I've ever been in my life! It's not death. No, I can die. It's the darkness . . . the ghosts. A man shouldn't die in the darkness. His soul is trapped. Dark. Forever dark.
He stopped, panicked, on the verge of bolting back the way he'd come.
Behind him, he heard gravel and rock grinding under Green Water's feet. And more followed—all silent, scared numb by this insanity they were attempting.
From some deep depths, the courage came. Unwilling to let so many see his cowardice, he walked on, terror possessing his body.
The breeze carried strange scents to his sensitive nose: musty, cold, smelling sharp and tangy of rock and earth and darkness. One Who Cries clamped his teeth tight and fingered his darts as the slit of light overhead narrowed. Walls of grayness angled up from the sides, pockets scoured by abrasive water.
"And what good are darts against the ghosts of the dark?" he wondered. Some warning in his mind sent him scuttling to the side, the cool brush of the fingers tracing invisibly across his cheek.
In the lee of a turn in the channel, Wolf Dreamer uncovered an ember he'd carried in a shaped slate bowl, nudging it to touch a moss wick. A tiny light came to life.
One Who Cries shivered as they proceeded, the crack overhead vanishing at a bend in the rocky route. He took his turn, following Singing Wolf, Green Water grabbing the line behind him. He could hear his little son gurgling happily where he rode his mother's shoulders.
With all his courage quivering, he followed Wolf Dreamer into the black.
"Got to keep to the side here," Wolf Dreamer told them, voice echoing eerily, mixing with the creaking ghost voices of the black. "The water undercuts, eats its way back and forth under the ice. There are a couple of places where the roof is a little low, but enough water has run through to carve this out. There's lots of holes, too, where the water swirls, so watch your step."
Somewhere ahead in the pitch blackness a grating sounded, gritty, unclean.
"Ghosts," someone whispered.
"Don't fear." Wolf Dreamer's voice came from ahead. "I challenged them before. They're all around. Last time I had no light. Last time they let me pass in the darkness. Just be-worthy. Show them honor and pride and courage and they will let you pass unharmed."
"No wonder they growled at Crow Caller's grandfather," One Who Cries grunted, trying to fortify himself.