"First Runs In Light and his Dream!" he muttered over the rasping of the stone. "Now Raven Hunter wants to hunt the Others instead of mammoth and caribou! We always have trouble now."
Singing Wolf looked up from where he carved a segment of mammoth ivory, shaping it carefully into an atlatl hook. Laughing Sunshine patched his moccasins nearby, the new life in her belly barely visible.
"It's as Heron said," he muttered. "The world's changing. Nothing's the same anymore."
"Raven Hunter and Runs In Light have split the People right down the middle."
Green Water lifted her chin, thoughtful. "Which half should we go with? Runs In Light kept us safe—led us to Heron. We can't forget that." With a rounded cobble, she kneaded a mixture of brains and urine into the hide she worked. The caribou fawn skin would make undergarments, soft, warm and light. Already the bulge of a child rounded her abdomen.
From the side, Dancing Fox worked at stitching new fawn-skin undergarments together. Her hair swung in a black wave as she listened.
"I think we should have stayed with him," One Who Cries agreed. "I could have missed all this."
"You say that a lot now," Green Water mentioned easily.
"What?"
"We should have ... we should have. . . ." She smiled warmly at him, enjoying his scowl.
"Why do you think," Singing Wolf asked curiously, "that Crow Caller has said nothing?"
One Who Cries shrugged. "It's as if he's waiting for something."
Dancing Fox sniffed loudly.
"You know what Heron said about him. You heard Broken Branch." Laughing Sunshine turned the long boots in her hand. "Says he doesn't Dream. And Heron would know. Maybe he's waiting to see which way the wind's blowing so he can make up a Dream."
"Heron believes Runs In Light's Dream," One Who Cries muttered. He nodded to himself as he ran his thumb down the edges of the tool he crafted and picked up his baton.
"But people say she's wicked, a witch," Laughing Sunshine whispered.
"She didn't do anything bad to us. She fed us, kept us alive. No, she's all right. And she Dreams. She really Dreams. Remember the way she called the caribou?"
"Remember the way Runs In Light called the caribou?"
"Yes." One Who Cries whacked his baton along the edge, he'd prepared, driving flat thinning flakes from the tool. "Good tool stone up there. Haven't found anything like it down here."
Dancing Fox crowded closer to watch, absorbed by his work.
"Hey!" Singing Wolf complained. "Quit that! Those flakes of stone go all over the place. Next thing you know, I'll sit down and have one stuck in my butt!"
One Who Cries looked around in disgust. "Man can't knap out a good point to save his soul around you. But just wait, huh? Soon as I'm finished, you'll want this point. You'll be trying to trade one of your little pictures for it."
"I can't help it if you make the best dart points of all the People. Especially that new thin one you created. What am I supposed to do? Let my family starve? Besides, these pictures I trade are powerful, give you luck."
"Then quit hollering about the flakes! You can't make a point without—"
"I want that point," Dancing Fox said boldly, studying the stone. "I'll trade two fine fox hides for it. Good hides, the kind for lining parka hoods or insulating mittens."
"It's yours." One Who Cries beamed his pleasure at Singing Wolf, who muttered something under his breath and bent to his ivory.
"Make me a detachable foreshaft—and maybe I'll trade you a couple of points," One Who Cries mentioned slyly.
"Detachable darts?" Singing Wolf waved it away. "You're out of your mind."
"Something I thought of after that buffalo almost got me." One Who Cries frowned. "Just think about it, huh?"
"You don't think we should follow Raven Hunter?" Laughing Sunshine asked, steering the conversation back to the matter that worried them all.
Singing Wolf scratched his chin. "Odd things are happening. What if he was right? What if Geyser's people should have turned and fought back? I wish I knew more. I just don't know."
"Fighting isn't our way," One Who Cries protested. "I remember a tale Flies Like A Seagull used to tell. About a long-gone time when we warred with Others. That's why the People came here, to get away from all that. She said it was better to leave than to have all that raiding. She said people looked over their shoulders all the time and nothing ever got done. There was no time to hunt. That's why Father Sun brought us here. Gave us rules so we didn't kill each other."
"Maybe Father Sun brought the Others here? You know, sort of a test?"