Her face appears on the fabric of my souls, and the darkness seems to close in.
As I turn toward the southern trail and begin placing one moccasin in front of the other, sweat melts down my face like tears.
Nine
Hiyawento and Zateri walked hand in hand through the cold morning. It was as if, during the night, the Spirits had frosted the forest with pearl dust, for every shrub, fallen log, and leaf that lay upon the ground glittered whitely.
When Zateri finally released his hand and stopped, they were far out into the trees, a long way from Coldspring Village. “I wanted to vote no, you understand that, don’t you?” she asked with slow precision. “I know you long to be out hunting for Sky Messenger.” She was so short and slender she looked childlike standing in the striped forest shadows. Her long black braid fell over the right shoulder of her white cape. Tipped up to him, her eyes wet, her face was as pretty as ever.
Hiyawento spread his hands. “You had to vote yes. I’m just surprised the decision came so quickly.”
“No one objected. You were clearly the best choice.”
Maples created a laced canopy over their heads, their remaining leaves like drops of blood against the blue sky. “I’m glad they think so. I’m just hoping I make it across the border into Standing Stone country. I’ll be traveling under the white arrow and not allowed to carry weapons. A lone man makes for good target practice.”
“Don’t joke. If Kittle has you executed, it will give Father an excuse to attack the Standing Stone alliance, which will be a catastrophe. The matrons have consistently voted against it for eight summers.” Worry filled her soft brown eyes. Her cape rustled as she folded her arms.
“Attacking Kittle’s allied villages would be a lethal error. While they cannot muster the number of warriors we can, each village is ringed by three circles of palisades. Our losses will be very heavy.”
Zateri reached down and picked up a fallen leaf. The red was still veined with pale green. She stroked it gently as she spoke. “Which means we will have to mount even larger war parties to capture children to replace our losses, and that will cost more lives, and then the whole thing will begin over again. I hate this.”
“As I do. I just don’t see any way out. We must protect ourselves.”
On the fabric of his souls, like a faint brushstroke, flashed the moment yesterday in the war council when her father had smiled at him, and he’d felt the earth shake. To his warrior’s eyes, the gesture had been larger than life, filled with unimaginable malice. After he and Kallen returned to Coldspring Village, he’d shoved it away, but he hadn’t forgotten. The gesture lay like a coiled serpent sleeping in the darkness, ready to rear its ugly head and strike.
Zateri crumpled the leaf in her hand. “Don’t go directly to Kittle.”
His brows drew together. “But those are my orders.”
“And these are mine.” She spun around to stare at him. “Go to Koracoo. She is the Speaker for the Women of Yellowtail Village now. You will have a far better chance of actually meeting with Kittle if you plead your case before Koracoo first.”
“Yes … but will she risk it?”
“I think she will.”
He shifted his weight to his other foot. “Disobeying the council’s orders—”
“May save your life, and the lives of many warriors who will die if your mission fails. How many relatives do you still have in Yellowtail Village?”
“Well, to my mind I have dozens of Bear Clan aunts, uncles, and cousins there. But I am Outcast. To them I do not exist.”
She shook the crumpled leaf in her fist. “The Koracoo I know will at least hear you out. No matter what you’ve done.”
“And then kill me,” he said with certainty, and grinned at the irony in his own voice. Koracoo held a special place in his heart, as she did in Zateri’s. It had been Koracoo—Sky Messenger’s mother—who had organized the search party to find them when they’d been stolen as children. Koracoo; her former husband, Gonda; as well as Sindak and Towa had risked everything to rescue them. She would always be one of their greatest heroes. But the world had changed in the past decade, and Koracoo with it. He had no idea what pressures she might be facing or what decisions she might make when she saw him standing at the gates of Yellowtail Village.
Zateri gave him a perturbed look. “Go to Koracoo first.”
“All right.”
Relief slackened her face. She walked to him and slipped her arms around his waist. They stood together in the morning gleam. As Elder Brother Sun warmed the world, his light sparkled through the branches, falling around them in a dusty golden veil. On the forest floor, the golden rays resembled scattered fragments of amber. Here and there the last beetles scampered through the leaf mat.