People of the Wolf(15)

Singing Wolf shook his head, angrily jerking a burin from his pack. A graving tool with a sharp pointed end, he'd carefully crafted it for grooving wood, bone, or antler. From the ice-packed floor, he pulled a fragment of split mammoth rib-long since boiled for any marrow butter it might have held.

The lines above his eyes deepening, he began scratching figures into the cortical bone with the burin tip. Coolly he added, "Crow Caller cursed anyone who eats wolf."

"So? Both Crow Caller and Runs In Light are right about one thing. We've got to leave here—but we're not going to make it very far on empty bellies."

Green Water, One Who Cries' wife, crawled over, a wolf-hide blanket pulled tight around her shoulder. "Sitting here won't fill bellies either," she added in her well-modulated voice, an eyebrow raised. Not even hunger dulled the love in her eyes as she studied her husband. "No one has seen game . . . seen even sign. Will we have strength to even walk if we stay longer?"

One Who Cries glanced at his rehafted dart and took time to sing a spirit song under his breath to bless it before he slipped it into his caribou fawn-skin quiver. "I'm eating the meat."

"My child is dead," Singing Wolf added flatly, eyes going to where Laughing Sunshine sat watching him, quiet, pain in the set of her mouth. He looked back to the glistening meat. "All my children are gone."

The women stared, Laughing Sunshine's expression hollow-eyed as her husband studied her. The silence stretched.

Singing Wolf continued, "Is Laughing Sunshine next? Huh? Me? Am I next? Who starves next?"

One Who Cries lifted a shoulder helplessly, digging soot from the corner of one eye with a stubby finger. "Crow Caller says you . . . if you eat that meat."

"My child ..." Singing Wolf repeated, "would have been a beauty, a bringer of life to the People." He paused. "Crow Caller wouldn't even sing for her. A worthless life, he said. Another death . . . and there lies meat. How many days have we gone out? How many times have we seen nothing but blowing snow?"

"Too many."-

Singing Wolf expertly bent his fingers around the burin as it scritched on the flat bone he held.

"Throwing Bones went out and found Grandfather White Bear," Green Water reminded him evenly.

"And that's another thing," One Who Cries continued.

' 'Who ever heard of Grandfather White Bear this far south? Some spirit wants us out of here." One Who Cries sniffed at the cold and ran his thumb along the edge of the broken point he'd removed from the dart shaft. "I'll have to resharpen this. Good tool stone is getting scarce this far south. Maybe we'd find some obsidian on the other side of the Big Ice, huh? Or some fine quartzite? Maybe those lost dead of Crow Caller's will point the way? You think?"

Laughing Sunshine spoke softly. "How much bad could come of eating spirit meat?"

Singing Wolf sighed confusion. "If I have to choose between Spirit Dreams, I choose Runs In Light. He—"

"He's barely a man."

"Crow Caller's been right in the past," Green Water reminded them, fumbling with a fold in her hide robe.

"Two rights?" One Who Cries wondered. "Each going a different direction? There isn't enough of me to keep two Dreamers happy! I can't split down the middle!"

"But did you see the look in Runs In Light's eyes?"

"I think I'll starve before letting my stomach turn inside out. You remember that time Crow Caller cursed Seal Paw? All his teeth fell out." One Who Cries shuffled through his pouch, finding his fine-point antler tine and a thick square of rawhide with a hole cut for the thumb. In the red haze of the fire, he studied the damaged point and grunted. From long practice, he settled the stone in the leather where it would protect his hand. Squinting down his flat nose, he placed the antler tip against the edge of the tool and pressed, snapping a long pressure flake off the stone.

"Hey!" Singing Wolf growled. "Do that outside. I get those sharp little flakes stuck in my hands every time I sit down. They go all over . . . get in the food and stuff.''

"So? We leave here tomorrow. You think wolf will mind when he snuffles around looking for something we missed? Unlike you, he can tell sharp stone from ice."

Green Water sighed irritably and bent her efforts to mending a long boot bottom, driving a bone awl through thick leather. She scowled at the men from the corner of her eye.

The click-snapping of the resharpening continued as Singing Wolf carved on the mammoth bone in his hand, turning it occasionally to study the image in the red glow. "Broken

Branch says Crow Caller's Power is gone. Crow Caller says Light is just a boy playing at being a shaman."