People of the Fire (53 page)

 
          
 
"And if I die? What then? What happens to
Elk Charm, and my father? You've already told me the Wolf Bundle will die—and
the buffalo, too. What about the people I love?"

 
          
 
Wolf Dreamer's expression mirrored the concern
within. "A spirit can see only so much of the future—and not all will come
to pass as we foresee. But I foresee them fleeing, finding a place to be safe on
the shores of the western ocean. ''

 
          
 
Little Dancer hovered on Wolf Dreamer's hand,
looking into those kind eyes. Memories slipped and slid through his mind. His
mother's words echoed hollowly, dominating his thoughts. Heavy Beaver's
arrogant smile lingered, and he relived the moment the shaman walked forward,
club raised to dash his brains out. White Calf's angry face formed for a
moment, before it faded into Elk Charm's anxious features. The Spiral on the
rock shelter wall before him seemed to pulse with life. The Wolf Bundle fell
with a sickening thump from the night sky and the world reeled. In the silence
that followed, he could hear the echo of Heavy Beaver's pot drum, singing Sage
Root's death. Death . . . She sat propped in the sun-bleached crook of a
weather-stripped cottonwood. Flies walked on her face, rising to hover over her
slit wrists and suck greedily of her blood. His mother's dead eyes burned with
Power, searing his very soul.

 
          
 
"I'll live." The words caught in his
throat. "Just give me as much time as you can."

 
          
 
''It will hurt worse when it s time. ''

 
          
 
"I know."

 
          
 
Wolf Dreamer nodded. “I’ll come for you.
You’ll know, of course. But I’ll meet you . . . like this . . . and we’ll talk,
I have some things to teach you." A pause. "Why did you choose the
way you did? ''

           
 
He looked into Wolf Dreamer's eyes.
"Maybe ... maybe like you ... I love too much."

 
          
 
'Wolf will save you. He’ll take you to his den
and warm your body. He’ll go with you, guard you, keep you and your family safe
for as long as I can allow. He’s my promise to you.''

 
          
 
Haze drifted down, spinning the Wolf Dreamer
away. As if Little Dancer had jumped into a pool, his body rose, twisting
slightly as it rocked. Around him, the comforting warmth began to ebb, replaced
with chill that leached into his very bones. Pain and fear began to pound with
each muffled beat of his heart. A throbbing agony fired the side of his numb
head.

 
          
 
He whimpered at the pain of his body pressed
onto the angular rocks. Crying out, he tried to move. Snow restricted his
progress. Pain. Numb-tingling cold—his flesh shrieked of it. Broken and
battered as he was, the memory of the warm drifting haze of death seeped away
into miserable reality. He lay dying as light fled and darkness dropped on the
land.

 
          
 
He raised his head, blinking at the ice
crusting his lashes. The shivering had gone, a sign that the last of his heat
had vanished. Death lay so close.

 
          
 
The black form detached, slinking close,
circling uneasily.

 
          
 
"Wolf!" The sound of his cracked voice
frightened him.

 
          
 
The big black animal sniffed at his face,
whiskers barely felt as they brushed his numb skin.

 
          
 
Little Dancer summoned some hidden reserve and
lurched, getting hands and knees under him. His entire body hurt, stinging,
aching as he got to all fours.

 
          
 
He almost fell, reaching out, bracing himself
on the wolf, half expecting the animal to whirl and snap at him. On legs that
refused to function, he crawled. Using an angled deadfall, he managed to get to
his feet.

 
          
 
One step after another, he moved doggedly
forward, keeping the huge black animal in sight. Around him, the timber grayed
to blackness, as if seen through a hole in the night. He staggered and stumbled
on. He walked in a daze, images of the Wolf Dreamer hanging in his dull mind.

 
          
 
"Won't die," he whispered through
unfeeling lips. "Won't . . ."

 
          
 
He fell hard, the impact jarring his tortured
body. Cold, so terribly cold. The hurt seemed to cause a ringing in his ears.
Spent, he struggled to stand, struggled to . . . Consciousness faded.

 
          
 
Elk Charm sat on the uncomfortable hardness of
a worn boulder where it stuck out of the hillside. She could see the length of
the valley where it ran southeast out of the
Buffalo
Mountains
and down to the distant hogbacks. An abrupt
ridge hid the far horizon she'd memorized that evening she'd sat next to Little
Dancer—and finally coupled with him. Until the day she died, she'd remember the
look in his eyes as he stared out over the plains. A premonition of trouble;
pain at what he'd left behind; confusion; it had all come together in the set
of his face. What a cruel legacy.

 
          
 
Now the final shadows of the terrible snow
melted out of the stands of timber on the north slopes. Below, in the valley,
the creek ran full with runoff, white water dashing and crashing around the
oxbows of the broad valley. The willows had gone viridian in the warm sun.
About her, grasses shot lush spikes of leaves up through the brown clump of
last year's growth. Life had come again to the mountains—and found only a barren
grayness in her heart.

 
          
 
The delicate yellow heads of sagebrush
buttercup and purple shooting star added no color to the drabness of her
thoughts. Not even the calls of the rosy finches and the flocks of juncos could
dent the lingering edges of her grief. Little Dancer's memory suffused her
life. His words ghosted through her ears. She saw his face, the way his smile
went from serious to irreverent. Her body tingled with the lines of his caress.
Her loins ached for him, knowing his light had flickered and gone dim in the
world.

 
          
 
Worse, she dared not think of him, how his
body must look as it melted out of the snow. She'd seen her father, she knew.

 
          
 
“There you are."

 
          
 
She'd missed his approach.

 
          
 
"Mind if I sit down?"

 
          
 
She shrugged, looking up listlessly.

 
          
 
Two Smokes grunted as he lowered himself,
making room for his game leg. He pulled his good knee up, hugging it in the
loop of his arms. "Spring has finally made it. I'd come to think we'd
spend the rest of our lives staring at each other. Have you noticed how
everyone has disappeared over the last couple of days? That comes of living
with each other for too long in the same shelter."

 
          
 
She said nothing.

 
          
 
"I think what we'll do is when everyone
gets back, we'll move over to the west side. I know some wonderful places over
there that have a spectacular view. You can see right across the basin, for
maybe ... I don't know, four days' hard walk, to the mountains on the other
side. Good grass up there. Lots of sego lily and balsam root for the digging.
Yampa
's
pretty thick, too. We could find one of
those valleys cut down through the cap rock. Lots of shelters there so people
don't have to crowd together. Another winter with those children and I think
I'd rather slit my wrists with dull quartzite."

 
          
 
She swallowed at the lump in her throat,
wishing she could talk back—finding no words in the desert of her thoughts.

 
          
 
"There's a good deal of wood, too. Won't
be so long a hike to pack it back as we had this year. I know of a couple of
excellent sheep traps. Used to be buffalo down in the basin, but that's a lot
of packing to get the meat back up to the shelters."

 
          
 
She traced the path of a red-tailed hawk as it
danced on the air currents. Before long, the ground squirrels would be out,
wary of the hawk's sweeping flight. For now, the hawk waited, seeking instead
any red squirrel or unwary cottontail.

 
          
 
"You know," Two Smokes added kindly,
"I'd like to know what you feel. I can't bring him back;
berdache
don't have that kind of Power, but maybe we could
talk. It might make his spirit rest easier."

 
          
 
Her insides wilted and she could feel her chin
quivering. Blessed Wise One, did it have to hurt so badly?

 
          
 
"All my life, I cared for him." Two
Smokes shook his head, the gray in his braids glinting silver in the sun.
"I can't figure. It used to be that I could feel the link between the Wolf
Bundle and Little Dancer. That Power feeling, you know?"

           
 
She reached for his hand, feeling the warmth
of his skin under her fingers.

 
          
 
"It's my fault," Two Smokes added.
"I failed both the Wolf Bundle and Little Dancer. I should have stood that
night . . . and run a dart clear through Heavy Beaver. They might have killed
me for it, but I could have washed the insult in Heavy Beaver's blood first.
Sage Root would have seen that the boy got the Wolf Bundle. Maybe I could have
saved us from all of this."

 
          
 
"It's not your fault," she managed.
"Two Smokes, you did the best you could. No one can know the future.
People just have to do the best they can."

 
          
 
"Perhaps. Maybe we can't know the future,
but the past is forever. How are you feeling? What's in your heart?"

 
          
 
She looked up at him, seeing the lines that
had eaten so deeply into his face. A perpetual squint, like that of a man in
pain, etched his eyes. These signs, and his graying hair, showed that Two
Smokes had passed the threshold to old age. But was he that old? No, Rattling
Hooves had been born even a year or two before Two Smokes. Had life treated him
so poorly? Her wounded heart beat with sympathy for the old
berdache
.

 
          
 
She reached up to hug him, burying her head in
his chest to let tears relieve the hurt for both of them. For a long time, he
held her, let her hot tears wet the front of his quill-decorated shirt.

 
          
 
"We're a pair, aren't we?" he
murmured, stroking her hair.

 
          
 
"It's just like what happened to my
father," she mumbled, and straightened to stare off into the distance,
watching the hawk turning slowly with the winds. "I know how my mother
felt now. Did we do something wrong? Did we offend some spirit somewhere? What?
All I did was love him/'

 
          
 
Two Smokes took a breath and hugged her.
"It wasn't you. He'd been picked for something by Spirit Power. Remember?
I told you that day above White Calf's camp. I didn't know that it would happen
this way."

 
          
 
"The others still say he's coming back '

 
          
 
Two Smokes slapped at a fly that had begun to
buzz around them. "I'd like to believe that. Only I trust your dream. I
thought I . . . well, I thought I felt him go. A
berdache
can do that sometimes, feel a person's soul like that."