Worse, perhaps, was the fact that he’d been treating her like a child on her first war walk. He insisted she learn the skills of stealth, how to make an almost invisible camp in the forest, how to hunt on the run. And he spent a good deal of time correcting her when she grew careless and made a mistake. Which was often. She’d never been away from her family for any length of time, and she was desperate to see her mother and sisters, even—Spirits forbid—Grandmother.
Taya carried her heavy load to their camp and thoughtlessly let it fall beside the firepit. At the clattering of branches, Gitchi’s head shot up. Sky Messenger gave her an exasperated look.
She ignored him and wiped her forehead on her sleeve before she pulled her pack over and untied the laces. Inside, she found her firebox, a small stone container where she kept coals from the morning fire. It warmed her hand. First she made a bed of dry pine needles in the pit; then she opened the firebox, poured the coals on top of it, and added small twigs. When she leaned over to gently blow on the coals, she saw fish flopping in Sky Messenger’s net as he dragged it to shore. He crouched and patiently disentangled them, placing them with the others he’d caught. Afterward, he just stared out at the falling snow, or perhaps the darkening river. He seemed to be thinking. He sat so still for so long that snow mounded on the shoulders of his cape and hood. When he finally rose to his feet, he had to brush them off. Gitchi stretched and stared up at him with loving, devoted eyes. Sky Messenger patted the wolf’s head, collected the fish, and walked toward her.
She kept blowing on the coals, but her heart sank. Seeing the look in his eyes, she yearned to be home scooping up the moldering leaves that had collected against the palisade, or cleaning the fire pits and hauling ashes to the midden outside the village, even carrying water until she thought her arms would break. Of course, she’d never actually been forced to perform such menial duties, but she’d rather be a slave at home, than here with him!
When flames leaped through the tinder in the fire pit, she turned her attention to the tiny blaze, alternating more blowing with feeding it twigs until she had a decent fire going.
Sky Messenger plucked sticks from the woodpile, skewered each of their six fish, and propped them at the edge of the fire to cook. For a long time, he seemed to be watching the snow fall. She kept adding branches to build up the blaze. The longer he refused to look at her, the more difficult it was for Taya to catch her breath. She felt like she was smothering.
“I hate this,” she said in a tight voice. “I want to go home.” She stuffed another branch in the fire, and a cascade of sparks flitted into the air.
He gazed at her intently. “Then go.”
“Alone? Someone will kill me!” She threw out her arms, as though to defend herself. “I don’t know how any of this happened. One moment I was a happy child and the next I was betrothed to a crazy man.” The last words turned into sobs.
Most men would have melted at the sight of her tears—at least that had been her experience—but not Sky Messenger.
Instead, he came around the fire, knelt in front of her, and unsympathetically said, “I can’t take you home. Not now. We’re too far from the village. I have to complete this task first. But after that, I will. If that’s what you want.”
It didn’t matter in the slightest what she wanted. Grandmother had made it perfectly clear that the ancestors had personally spoken to Old Bahna. Taya had to accompany Sky Messenger on this Spirit journey. “But why do we have to do this? I know Bahna said—”
“Taya,” he said sternly, “I’m going to explain this to you one more time, but that’s all. So, listen. Something happened to me in the Dawnland country when I was a boy. I must face it … face him … before I can help our people.”
She assessed his stony expression. “We’re going to see a man? Who is he? Where does he live?”
Sky Messenger exhaled hard. “He’s dead.”
“What do you mean, dead?”
He stood up and went over to throw more branches on the fire. Snow had melted on his round face, making it shine.
“We’re going to see a dead man?” she asked, confused. “You mean his burial place?”
His head waffled, as though trying to decide whether or not that was a good description. “That’s a tougher question than you might suspect. He was never buried. You see, his severed head was burned, and his body was cut apart, and the pieces scattered far and wide—”
She sucked in a breath. “To immobilize his evil Spirit?”
“Partly, but mostly so no one could ever recognize him and Sing his afterlife soul to the Land of the Dead. Which, apparently, is what I must do.”