He glanced at the leg and suspiciously said, “Are you sure? I don’t want you to get hungry on the trail.”
“I’ll be fine.” She rubbed her greasy fingers in the dry leaves to clean them and reached for her tea cup again. As she sipped, she watched Gitchi. He was taking his time eating the rabbit. His tail wagged often. “You should have taken that rabbit away from him and cooked it for us. Then neither of us would have to worry about being hungry on the trail.”
Sky Messenger replied, “It’s his rabbit. He hunted it.”
“You could give him a leg, or maybe even two, but he’s a wolf. He doesn’t need as much food as we do.”
“The rabbit belongs to Gitchi.”
Annoyed, she chastised, “You protect that old gray-faced wolf like he’s a human being, Sky Messenger. He’s not.”
Sky Messenger reached out to pet the wolf ’s head, and the love in Gitchi’s eyes touched even her. “He’s my friend.”
Taya frowned into her tea cup. She hated to admit it, but she was jealous of the affection he lavished on the decrepit wolf. She turned the cup in her hands and decided to change the subject. Anything to keep the morning filled with warmth and conversation.
“What did you mean when you said it would have been ‘acceptable’ to cut up the grouse with my knife?”
The wrinkles across his forehead deepened. He finished chewing the bite in his mouth before he replied, “I’m still finding my way, discovering what I can and cannot live with.”
“I don’t understand. What’s wrong with cutting up a grouse with a fine chert blade?”
“I just need to think about it for a time longer.”
This confused Taya, who tried to decipher what he meant. A knife is unacceptable to him. Why? She could understand, no matter how ridiculous, that he didn’t want to carry a bow, spear, stiletto, or war club—he’d stopped fighting—but a knife?
“So,” she said, “you consider a knife to be a weapon?”
His head waffled, as though uncertain. “I’m just at the foolish stage, Taya. Don’t waste too much time trying to figure it out. I don’t understand it myself yet.”
“But, you mean you’re at the stage of figuring out what is a weapon and what is not?”
“Yes.” He picked up the leg she’d given him and concentrated on eating it. When he finished, he lowered the bone to his bowl and wiped his greasy hands on his leggings. Many people did that because the oil helped to keep water from soaking into the leather. Sky Messenger rose to his feet and extended a hand. “May I take your bones away?”
She gave him her bowl. It was considered disrespectful to the animal to throw its bones on the ground. He walked away to the sycamore and carefully placed the bones in the crook of the tree. Then he said a soft prayer, thanking the grouse for its life, and walked back to kneel in front of her. When he bowed his head, his heavy brow cast shadows over his brown eyes, and his black hair fell forward.
“A knife is a tool, Sky Messenger, not a weapon. A leather punch is a tool. An awl is a tool.”
“Yes, in most hands. But in my hands”—he opened his palms and stared at them distastefully—“they have often been weapons. I can see the faces of each person I killed with a bone awl, a punch, or a fine chert blade.”
“You were a warrior fighting for your people. Of course you used whatever you could find to defeat the enemy. You should be proud of it. Not ashamed.”
The few brief moments of happiness between them vanished. The curtain closed over his eyes again. He rose and walked away to stare down the trail toward the distant pond, which shone a deep blue.
Taya drank her tea and frowned at his back. Was he going to start refusing to use tools? If he wouldn’t touch an ax, how could he chop wood to keep them warm? If he wouldn’t touch a knife, how could he skin animals for their food? What good was he if he wasn’t willing to be a warrior, a hunter, or perform any other manly duty?
Blessed gods, does Grandmother know this?
Sky Messenger folded his arms and walked out into the trail, apparently waiting for the Trader.
Beyond the rolling tree-whiskered hills, dawn had begun to blush color into the day. A swath of deep purple limned the eastern horizon. High above it, the brightest campfires of the dead continued to gleam.
When she’d finished her tea, she silently gathered up their things and packed them—a menial duty she usually left to him. Then she set both packs beside the trail and went to grab his cape. It smelled of wood smoke and crushed grass. She held it to her nose for a time, just breathing in his scent, before she walked to him and draped it over his shoulders.