“Peacemaking is just another word for cowardice. It—”
“Peacemaking is the best quality of the brave, and the only thing to fight for!”
She clenches her fists at her sides. “I want to go home! This journey is making you even stranger.”
“Taya …” I have to remind myself that she is terrified. I force calm into my voice. “I think, maybe, the way out is to dip with the river, not against it. I’m not sure I can do it. I am frail and more than a little frightened, but I must try.”
“I don’t care. I just want to go home!”
I blink at her, truly seeing her for the first time. She has left all of the camp duties to me: fishing, cooking, cleaning. I set up camp and take it down. She doesn’t lift a finger to help. She acts very much as though she’s home and I am just another of her slaves. On the war trail, every warrior cares for himself, so this is not a burden to me … . It’s just—I had hoped this journey would help her grow up.
“I’m going to take you home. I’ve already promised you that. There’s one stop I must make on the way. Then I’ll take you straight home.”
She wets her full lips and gazes at me suspiciously. Uneasily, she says, “Where do we have to stop? We are in enemy country surrounded by those who wish to kill us. We should go straight home.”
“I have to see an old friend. He saved me once. I pray he can do it again.”
Night is falling … . Wrass keeps glancing at me from where he walks at my side … . In a very soft voice, he says, “I will be there. I promise you on my life, I will be right at your side.” When the end comes.
Sulking, Taya breaks the memory, saying, “We should never have come here. What can an old fire pit filled with bones teach you? We—”
“I had to. Bahna was right.”
I bend, pick up a splinter of skull, and clutch it so hard my knuckles go white. Sickness tickles the back of my throat. The last thing on earth I wish to do is Sing him to the Land of the Dead.
As I walk away from Taya, she lets out a small frustrated cry. “Where are you taking that piece of skull? Put it down!”
Gitchi trails a few paces behind me, taking his time licking the morning dew off the blades of grass.
Taya does not follow.
She looked across the field of blowing leaves to where Sky Messenger stood at the edge of the forest, turning the splinter in his hands. As though hot, he’d thrown his cape back over his shoulders, revealing his tattered war shirt and the array of Power bundles dangling like cocoons around his waist. Taya was utterly convinced now that he’d lost his soul. Maybe he’d lost it here, and that’s why he kept speaking to invisible things. Was his soul standing right here beside her? Is that who he was talking to? Cold and terrified, she desperately longed to run away. She looked around, judging which direction to go. She had no idea which way led home.
Sky Messenger tilted his head back. In the sky above him, Cloud People, scouts of the Thunderers, marched westward through the pink rays of dawn. The cool breeze tousled his shoulder-length hair around his face. His lips moved, but she couldn’t hear his words. Was he calling to his loose soul? Or to the ghosts of those long dead, killed in this forgotten battle? He spread his arms, hesitated like a hovering kestrel, then whirled in the motions of the Thunder Dance. The seven Thunderers, very Powerful sky-dwellers, controlled the rains, and also kept the monsters of destruction, like Horned Serpent and Tawiscaro, the Evil-Minded One, locked beneath the earth.
Sky Messenger’s muscles bulged through his shirt as he swayed and spun, his feet stamping the ground while he clutched the splinter of human skull and Sang as though his heart were bursting.
Taya’s brows plunged down. “What’s he doing? Calling the Cloud People so the dead war chief can use them as stepping stones to reach the Path of Souls? But he said the man deserved to wander the earth … .”
Without warning, lightning flashed and the deep rumble of the coming Thunderers shook the morning. Rain drifted out of the sky in a glistening wind-borne mist. A hushed whisper filled the air as drops pattered on the grass and brittle leaves. Sky Messenger continued dancing, his moccasins cutting dark swaths across the wet meadow.
As though rubbed with fox fur, the hair on Taya’s arms stood up. Her whole body seemed to be crawling with ants. With each stamp of his feet, she could feel the Power quickening. Gitchi must have felt it, too. He flopped down in the grass and laid his ears back.
Finally, Sky Messenger lifted the bone splinter straight over his head. As though they’d heard his pleas and opened their eternal eyes, the Thunderers roared so loudly Great Grandmother Earth shuddered.