The Broken Land(118)

She listened to his steps as he climbed down the slippery boulders. A short while later, she saw him slowly walking the trail back to the camp. He was alone. Where was Gitchi?

Taya climbed down the boulders and found the wolf standing with his ears pricked. He did not wag his tail. He merely gazed at her with shining yellow eyes, as though waiting for a command.

“Leave,” she ordered, and flung her arm to point back to camp.

Gitchi stood his ground. The old wolf’s graying head had a curious sheen in the silver light.

“I don’t want you here. Go home. Go find Sky Messenger.”

Gitchi licked his muzzle and sat on his haunches.

“Did Sky Messenger tell you to stay and protect me?”

He stared up at her, and she threw up her hands. “Gods, that means I’ll never get rid of you. All right, come on.”

Taya marched along the shore with Gitchi at her heels. When she reached the far side of the pond, she stared across the shimmering surface to where their camp nestled in the maples. She couldn’t see him, but she knew Sky Messenger was there; it tore her souls apart. “Do you really think he’s planning on dying?”

She slumped down on the sand and put her head in her hands, trying to force sense into her worry-laced brain.

Gitchi eased forward, lay down, and rested his muzzle on top of her feet. When she looked at him, his tail thumped the ground as though he knew she was hurting, and he was trying to comfort her.

He was a curious animal, totally devoted to Sky Messenger. In all the world, the only person who really seemed to exist for Gitchi was Sky Messenger. Yet … here he was. Taya reached out and stroked his warm fur. “I don’t really like you, and you know it, don’t you?”

Gitchi wagged his tail.

Elder Sister Gaha pushed the air with a soft invisible hand, and Taya tugged her cape up beneath her chin. Gitchi watched her. When she shivered, the wolf got to his feet, walked around behind her, and curled his body warmly around hers.

Tears filled Taya’s eyes. She slid a hand from beneath her cape to stroke his head. “We can’t let him die, Gitchi. Even if he’s foolish enough to think it’s the only way. You’ll protect him, won’t you?”

The wolf’s gaze suddenly shifted to the opposite side of the pond. A low growl rumbled his throat.

“What is it?”

Gitchi eased to his feet, his eyes still focused on the forest shadows across the pond. His muscles bunched as though ready to spring forward. She tried to see what he was looking at. By now Sky Messenger was wrapped in his cape and almost asleep—yet something moved near their camp. A black silhouette. It ghosted through the darkness.

Silent as the moonlight, Gitchi broke into a dead run.





The wolf shot around the pond like a silver arrow, its lean body gleaming in the night. Ohsinoh chuckled and took one last look at Odion. He would always be Odion to Ohsinoh, never Sky Messenger. Odion, the boy who was always afraid.

He’ll be even more afraid. Very soon.

Long before Gitchi rounded the pond and hit the trail to camp, Ohsinoh turned and trotted into the deep forest shadows.





Forty-seven

High Matron Tila lay on her sleeping bench with her great-granddaughter Kahn-Tineta snuggled beneath the hides beside her. Morning sunlight streamed around the leather curtain that led outside, casting lances of pure gold across the longhouse floor. As they flashed across the little girl’s face, Tila’s heart ached.

Many people scurried to and from the house today, securing the village, hauling in pot after pot of water and armloads of wood. Each time a person walked through the blue clouds that rose from the fires, smoke swirled and snaked upward toward the smoke hole in the roof high above.

She weakly stroked Kahn-Tineta’s long black hair. “I know these are hard days, child, but things will get better.”

In a pitiful voice, the eight-summers-old girl said, “No, they won’t. Mother and Father are going to die, Great-grandmother. Just like my sisters.”

Tila frowned. From this view, she could just see Kahn-Tineta’s profile. Tears sparkled on the girl’s long eyelashes. “What makes you say that? Your father is a great war chief, one of the most respected men—”

“When Father left, he barely had the strength to lift his war club! Didn’t you see him?” Kahn-Tineta rolled to her back to look at Tila. Her small face was white and strained. There was a luminous look of stunned disbelief in her eyes. The innocence of her expression struck Tila like a blow.

“I did see him.” Tila shoved away the hair that had glued itself to the girl’s wet cheeks. Zateri and Hiyawento had both come to bid her good-bye three days before. Though she was almost beyond feeling anything except her own agony, Tila had hurt for them, but especially for Hiyawento. The man who’d stood before her had been a pale haunted shadow of what he had once been. “I think your father’s souls split apart for a time after your sisters traveled the Path of Souls. It will take time for them to weave back together again, but they will.”