Where could Ice Fire be? Where would she find a camp of the Mammoth People?
Chapter 49
Dancing Fox felt her way through the pitch blackness, her breathing echoing loudly from the icy walls. Water splashed around her feet, making the footing more precarious. Carefully, she placed her foot on a slanted rock and leaned forward. In a flash, her foot slipped off and she tumbled face-first to the ground, groaning softly at the sharp pain in her ankle. The joint raged, but the bone hadn't broken this time. Would she forever be favoring that four-times-cursed ankle?
The holes had filled with waist-deep water now. The passage not only creaked because of the ghosts, but it echoed with dripping water. Her soaked feet had gone so cold they'd become totally numb. The only dry places to sit were on the larger boulders that she blundered into in the eternal dark. Of course her kindling and fire sticks were soaked; she had no way to dry them.
The light came faintly at first. Icy water leaving her legs awkward and fumble-footed, she splashed on, jaw muscles clenched.
"You'll never reach your people, Moon Water," she promised fervently. "I'll find you."
The journey seemed to take forever. More than once she thought her end had come, that there had been a branching of the channel—a dead end leading her into the eternal bowels of the very earth.
Still, the light grew, the only sound her splashing feet and the gurgle of the increasing current. Sky appeared in the jagged cracks overhead.
She flailed and splashed her way around the end of the opening, dripping water as she limped up on the rocks to blink out at a gray overcast day.
"I'd have never thought it was true!" a strange voice said from the rocks above her.
She whirled, fumbling for her darts with cold-stiffened fingers. Three Falls shook his head at her. He was dressed in a frayed parka, and his middle-aged face shone like burnished copper from long days in the sun.
"Dancing Fox? What are you doing coming back? I thought only-"
"Chasing an enemy." She shivered, cold eating into her flesh as the wind sucked the last of her body heat away.
"An enemy?"
"Yes," she said, trying to relax, too cold to do much else. "But first, I've got to warm up."
"That a proposition?" Three Falls raised an eyebrow, smiling as he saw her expression. "I've got some dry stuff. Not much, just a little dry dung and a bundle of willow sticks. Strip out of those wet things."
She shucked off her pack, teeth chattering as he led her to a sheltered place in the boulders, unslinging his pack, building a fire as she peeled her sopping hides from her body. She wrung out the leather while he bent, spinning his fire sticks with practiced hands. Smoke rose from the charred tinder. Three Falls bent down, blowing softly, coaxing the flame to life. He backed away, motioning her forward.
She twisted her hair into a braid, couching gratefully over the smoking dung.
Three Falls sighed, letting his eyes trace the curves of her naked body. "The other way would have been more fun."
Dancing Fox looked up at him. "I've seen you naked before. No thanks, I'm not up to you. I like my innards arranged as they are." She frowned. "Besides, I thought you were one of Raven Hunter's admirers. He'd object, I'm sure, to your association with me."
"No," Three Falls grunted, working on her clothing, propping it to air out as much as possible. "His ways and mine are different."
"Are they?"
He tilted his head, brow lined with thought. "I'll kill Others. I'll fight for our land. But he's done things I think are crazy. He's taught the young men to torture the Others, cut them apart and eat the captives' hearts. There's something wrong with that. He's . . . I don't know, kind of crazy. You can't tell what he'll do between one minute and the next."
"I know." She nodded, shifting her weight, placing one foot above the fire, gasping ecstatically as warmth caressed her flesh.
"How long have you been keeping watch here?"
He filled his cheeks with air and exhaled furiously. "I'm not keeping watch . . . exactly."
"Then what?"
"I heard talk of Heron's valley and came here to look myself. I left Raven Hunter's camp in the middle of the Long Dark." His eyes were downcast. "I've kind of drifted here and there, hunting, trying to figure out what to do in my head."
"You deserted him?"
He gave her a sharp look. ' 'I believed the tales of Runs In Light's hole in the ice. I came to join him."
A soft flutter of pride filled her chest. The People's faith had grown? Perhaps everything would be all right. If ... "Did you see a woman come through before me? Moon Water? Jumping Hare's Other woman? Maybe two, three days ago?"