People of the Wolf(9)

Crow Caller's eyes lit with rage. "I have the greatest Spirit Power among the People!" he yelled, shaking a fist in her face.

"So you keep telling me."

Dancing Fox took a step backward as her husband bellowed like a wounded caribou bull. "Don't challenge me,

you old witch! I'll curse your soul so it never reaches the Star

People. I'll see you buried—locked in the ground forever—

to rot in darkness."

The people backed away from Broken Branch.

"We're leaving here tomorrow!" Crow Caller nodded to himself.

"Leaving?" Singing Wolf asked, hand playing over his wife's unfeeling head. "I've hunted . . . and seen no game. If we starve to death sitting . . . won't we starve faster walking? Worse, in hunger, we've eaten our dogs. Everything must be carried on our backs."

"If we go . . ." One Who Cries added thoughtfully, "we'll leave a string of dead. You expect these old ones to keep up? And which way will we go?" He raised a hand to augment his flat-faced expression. "Where is mammoth? Where is caribou? "

"Maybe we were supposed to come here," Singing Wolf cried passionately over his wife's renewed sobbing. "You're the Dreamer. Do something. I'm tired of watching my children die. Go back? But behind are the Others. If we go back . . . they'll kill us. Maybe if we go further south, we'll—"

' 'We can't go south,'' Crow Caller rasped, his ancient face lined and sagging under the pull of hunger. With his one good eye, he searched their faces, disturbed by Broken Branch's flinty squint. "My father's father went there." His fur-lined parka hood flapped around his white-streaked black hair. "He found a wall of ice higher than men can climb. Higher than seagull can fly. Eagle can fly that high ... but nothing else. They hunted—"

"How do you know it's higher than a man can climb?" Broken Branch ran a sleeve across her running nose and taunted, "Eh? Did your grandfather try?"

A hush descended, Laughing Sunshine's wailing silenced by the challenge to the People's greatest shaman.

Crow Caller's face crimsoned. "He didn't have to. He could look at it and know—"

"He was a coward," said Broken Branch. "The People knew it then . . . and we see it in you now. You go back north if you want. Let those Others kill you." She waved a mittened hand to the gray horizon. "But I'm going south. Heron went out there someplace. Now there was a real Dreamer! She'd make—"

"What?" Crow Caller ridiculed. "You'd follow a witch? A wicked Spirit who sucks men's souls and blows them out into the Long Dark? Besides, she's just a legend. Like smoke blowing around your doddering mind."

"Bah! What do you know? I knew her!" the old woman spat. "She went south seeking Spirit Power to—"

"Then go!" Crow Caller shouted, nodding at the crowd. "This old hag deserves death. She's no good to the People. She's too old to hunt or fish. Her womb has gone as dead as her mind. She can't even Dream anymore.''

Murmurs swept the wastes, faces hardening. Unable to Dream? A sign the spirit world had abandoned a person. The old shaman straightened, gloating. Hesitant eyes flickered back and forth, watching, waiting.

Broken Branch lifted an eyebrow. "Well, that makes me more fortunate than you. At least I don't have to suffer false Dreams . . . Dreams that hurt the People. Or worse . . . make them up to keep people believing in a Power that died long ago."

Someone whispered, stepping back a pace.

Dancing Fox swallowed hard, seeing the spark of hate fill Crow Caller's black eye. His white one always made her think of death—like a corpse long hidden beneath the snow.

"You accuse me of making up Dreams?" the shaman shouted. "You—"

"Tell me about going north," Raven Hunter cried, spitting at the old woman in disdain. "Why should we go that way?"

"This land is ours!" the shaman shouted over the keening of Wind Woman. "Do we walk off and leave the bones of our fathers just because of some Others who—"

"I'm not afraid of the Others," Raven Hunter said calmly. "Think, people," he continued. "What's happened to us? The Others live in our best hunting grounds, on the path of the caribou. The farther south we go, the drier it is. The higher the ground and rockier. There's more wind. Lots of lakes we can't cross in the Long Light. We can't collect mussels on the beaches anymore. Why? Because the Others have driven us here! Will caribou come this far south? Will mammoth? Look at the sphagnum moss, the wormwood, the tussock grasses. See how short they are here? If we go farther south, will they go away entirely? If caribou and mammoth can't eat, neither do we.