“Seven summers!” Toksus started shivering. “And he never got away?” His voice turned shrill. “She might keep me for seven summers? That’s the rest of my life!”
Wrass was still watching the warriors, and thought he saw Dakion say: She’s insane … . Leave her … .
Toksus grabbed Wrass’ hand. “Tell me! Why didn’t she ever sell him?”
“Somehow, and I don’t know how, he kept her safe.”
Auma asked, “How could a captive boy keep her safe?”
As Wrass watched Kotin make a dismissive gesture to Dakion, he said, “Hehaka once told me that he’d tried to escape, but she’d always ordered Kotin to find him and bring him back. He once heard Gannajero tell Kotin …” His voice faded when Gannajero suddenly whirled around and stared at the assembly of warriors. She was breathing hard, her chest rising and falling. The men went utterly still, like mice when an owl’s shadow passes overhead.
“Kotin, come!” Gannajero ordered.
Kotin said something to the other warriors, backed away, and hurried to where she waited under the trees. A filigree of dark limbs stained the paler gray behind her. Gannajero’s voice was indistinct, almost a singsong. She shook a fist in Kotin’s face, and he threw out his arms as though in surrender.
Wrass barely heard Gannajero say, “ … plotting against me. Don’t you … he’ll find me.”
But Kotin clearly replied, “We’re far away from his country. We won’t be going back for many summers. He’ll never find you!”
Gannajero went silent. She appeared to be thinking about that.
The group of warriors on the riverbank shifted. Dakion had his eyes narrowed menacingly. He said something to Ojib that made the man nod.
Kotin glanced their way, put a hand on Gannajero’s shoulder, and guided her deeper into the trees.
Wrass lifted his left hand from beneath his cape and felt his forehead. His fever raged, but he—
Toksus gasped suddenly and pointed at Wrass’ hand. “What happened?”
Wrass looked at it. The pain in his head was so staggering, he’d forgotten about his little finger. He flexed it. “Gannajero sawed off the tip with a chert knife.”
“Why? What did you do?” Auma asked.
“Nothing. She needed a flesh offering to consecrate the eagle-bone sucking tube she was going to use to suck out a man’s soul.”
Their horrified expressions gave Wrass the queer sensation that he had just stepped over the edge of a cliff … and it was a long way to jagged rocks below.
“She sucked out a man’s soul?” Toksus hissed. “Why?”
“She’s Gannajero the Crow. A witch. She sucked out the man’s afterlife soul and blew it into a small pot that she carries in her pack.”
Starlight coated Auma’s face with a wash of silver. “She has a pot filled with souls?”
“Yes. She took Hehaka’s, too. She got mad at him one night and sucked his soul into that pot. Then she told him that when he died, she would carry his soul far away before she released it.”
“So that he could never find his relatives again, and he’d be doomed to wander the earth alone forever?” Toksus asked breathlessly.
“The old woman doesn’t like to be crossed.”
They all turned to peer intently at Gannajero, who was waving her skinny arms while Kotin slouched, as if under assault.
Barely audible, Toksus whispered to Wrass, “There’s something inside me. It feels like a snake, coiling around.” He put a hand to his chest and winced. “Do you think she cast a spell—?”
“You’re just scared.”
Toksus licked his dry lips. “But it feels like more. Are you sure she didn’t shoot a witch’s pellet into my heart?”
“When she curses you, you’ll know it. Hush. Here she comes.”
Gannajero strode back to the canoe and climbed into the bow. Standing like some perverted bird, she stared at Wrass first, then, one by one, at other children. They tried to shrink through the bark hull.
“Come here, boy.” Gannajero gestured to Toksus.
“W-Why?” He huddled against Wrass.
“We’re going to make camp, and I’m going to feed you first,” she said in a bizarrely kind voice. “Aren’t you hungry?”
“Yes.”
“Then come.” Gannajero’s voice might have been a doting grandmother’s.
Wrass bit his lip, desperate to protest, any words dying in his throat as the old woman fixed him with her soul-eating, empty eyes.
Shaking like a leaf in a hurricane, Toksus walked across the packs toward her. When he got close, she grabbed his arm and jerked him out of the canoe.