“Get us?”
“Yes. Does it put more food in the mouths of our families? Will it bring back the rains, or make our crops more productive? Will it make our enemies stop killing us?”
When Wakdanek just stared at Cord with a sad expression, Sindak made a low disgusted sound and walked away to join Koracoo.
The Healer said no more, and Cord turned to follow Sindak.
Behind him, very quietly, he heard Wakdanek reply, “It might.”
Twenty
Odion
By noon I’m shaking so badly, I can’t keep my head still. I try to focus on the tawny velvet distances, but they possess a fuzzy gleam, as though the sky is a golden painting that someone has tried to erase with a rough piece of hide.
The other children who sit on the riverbank don’t know what to do. Baji and Tutelo glance worriedly at me and try to pretend nothing is wrong.
I pull my knees up and hug them to my chest. Cedars and white pines surround us, casting wavering shadows and scenting the cold air with sweetness. Green water flows before me. I shift to look at the adults as they search for Gannajero’s trail. For six hands of time, they’ve followed out one set of tracks after another, then returned again and again to start over at the old woman’s campsite. Strains of conversations drift on the cold breeze. They sound irritable. They’re losing hope. All across the abandoned camp, Dawnland People also wander, searching the discarded items left by the warriors, hoping to find some cherished belonging, or the trails of those who were taken captive.
Throughout the day, Wakdanek has spent most of his time with his relatives, but now he crouches on the riverbank ten paces from me. His gaze seems to be searching the brush on the opposite bank, but I frequently see him staring at me. The cap he wears—made from the shoulder skin of a moose—creates a bristly crest down the middle of his skull. The two feathers tied to the cap flit in the wind as though trying to fly away. I study the sheathed knife that rests on his breast, hung from a cord around his neck. It is large. Much larger than knives carried by the Standing Stone People.
I wipe my shaking hands on my leggings. I’ve already wiped them so many times my fingers are swollen. But his blood is still there. It soaked into my skin and has been filtering, like a paralyzing numbness, through my hands and up my arms. I can barely breathe. In another hand of time his blood will seep into my heart and stop it from beating.
“Odion?” Tutelo pats my arm. “Why don’t you let me go get Mother?”
“No. I’ll be all right.” I hold my hands out to her. “But, Tutelo, do you see any blood?”
She grabs my hands and studies the palms carefully, then turns them over. “No, Odion. Your hands are very clean.”
I scrub them on my leggings again, hard, but it doesn’t help. The numbness continues spreading. If I could only forget last night, I might—
“Stop ordering me around!” Father shouts. “I know what I’m doing. I’ve been a tracker all my life!”
I spin to see Mother staring at Father. She glances at those close by, then whispers something to him. Whatever she said, it wasn’t pleasant. Father’s face contorts in anger. He gestures wildly with his hands, whispering to Mother through gritted teeth. The other warriors keep their distance, but War Chief Cord’s eyes narrow, as though, if he were in charge, he would not be so nice to Father.
Mother walks away and starts searching again. Every time the wind breathes, ash swirls up and resettles, covering the tracks she’s just made.
As I watch her, an inexplicable panic surges through me. I rise and hurry down to the river, where I kneel and scoop handfuls of sand to wash my arms and hands. My skin is raw and red; it hurts. But I keep washing, scouring my flesh, hoping to remove the soaked-in blood. “Just forget,” I whisper. “It never happened. That part of last night wasn’t real. It never happened. Never. Never.” I repeat it silently to myself several more times.
But when I stand up, my knees wobble. After all the beatings, and the days of marching with almost no food, I can’t seem to—
“Can I help?” a soft voice says from behind me.
I turn too fast, and stagger sideways. Wakdanek is two paces away, studying me with kind eyes. “Why? What do you want?”
He kneels, and the ball-headed war club he carries tucked into his belt thumps the ground. The blunt angles of his starved face are shadowed with ash and make it look like a skeleton’s. He reaches for his belt pouch. “You know I am a Healer, yes?”
I lick my lips nervously. “Yes.”
“I think I can help you, if you want me to.”
As though trying not to frighten me, he slowly pulls out a chipped cup and two leather bags. One has a red spiral painted on it. The other has a green lightning bolt.