Dancing Fox grimaced as she hobbled along the pool, thick streamers of white steam rising into the gray mist overhead. A dull pain still grated in her ankle. That she’d broken the thin bone along the outside of the calf was apparent, but it
seemed to be healing all right—even if it left a lump. Too long Green Water had made her lie on her back.
She’d put off this meeting. Put it off in the hopes he’d come to her. In the long days since he’d returned, she hadn’t parted Green Water’s shelter flap, waiting in an agony of indecision.
As if by magic, Green Water appeared at her side. “Going to see him?”
Dancing Fox swallowed and nodded, perhaps too curtly. “What should I say to him? Start out with, ‘My heart is glad to see you again’? Or how about, ‘Your cursed Wolf Dream ruined my life. What’re you going to do about it?’”
Green Water’s kind eyes chided. “I don’t think the last will help the situation any.”
Fox shook her head. “I know. I’m confused. I’ve been scared to death ever since he returned. One minute I was afraid he’d show up and crawl into my robes. I’d close my eyes and hope, imagining how it would be. The next, I hated the very thought of seeing his face.” She shifted off her healing foot, wincing in the process. “Everyone’s in awe of him. It’s a scary thing. Do I even know him now?”
Green Water crossed her arms, staring thoughtfully at the gravel underfoot. “I don’t know, but you’ve changed as much as he has. No one knows either of you anymore. Perhaps you’ve both taken the responsibilities of leaders.”
“They’d never let a cursed woman be a leader,” she scoffed.
“A lot of people respect what you did out there, the way you handled Raven Hunter. They talk of the honor you showed by staying with Talon and how you traveled so far with a broken ankle. Some are even whispering that you have Power. That you can hunt on your own, maybe even Dream in animals the way Heron did.”
“That’s because they didn’t see me eating rancid bone marrow, or shivering in my parkas, drenched with fear sweat that Grandfather Brown Bear would find me.”
“You were scared when you stayed with Talon?” Green Water’s benign eyes didn’t waver.
Dancing Fox looked away, memories of the old woman’s death too tender to deal with. “Terrified. She was my friend—my teacher. I’ll always be frightened to tackle life without her.”
“But you will.”
“Of course.” She glanced apprehensively at Heron’s shelter.
“You’ve heard enough from me. Go and see Wolf Dreamer. He’ll help you find out what you want next.” Green Water nodded encouragingly and walked off about her business, humming under her breath.
Dancing Fox sucked in a deep and anxious breath, then strode hurriedly, stopping before the door flap. Clearing her throat, she called, “Runs In Light? You in there?”
“I’ve been expecting you.”
The familiar voice touched her, while some subtle quality set her on guard. She ducked through the caribou-hide hanging, looking around, seeing him on folded wolf skins, a white bear hide pillowed behind him.
Their eyes met. All the carefully prepared words vanished like mist in the morning sun. Her heart beat powerfully, a tingle in her limbs.
“I hear you tried to follow.” He spoke softly, as if burying a deep hurt.
She smiled, oddly shy, looking away, seeing the skulls, the drawings, the holes in the rock filled with bundles of tied grasses and stuffed fox hides. A Dreamer’s place. A place she could never share.
“Wolf didn’t take very good care of me.” She smiled uneasily. “It turned out to be a difficult trip.”
He nodded, gesturing to the hides beside him. Hesitantly, she complied, sitting cross-legged on the soft caribou furs.
“You’ve changed. You’re stronger.”
“Your brother saw to that. But then, you’ve changed, too. More confident, possessed. Being a Dreamer suits you.”
He looked away, face paling. “It also costs a great deal.”
“Most things do.”
They sat in silence. Her heart roiled in her chest. She wanted to throw her arms around him, declare her love—but found herself afraid.
“Why is this so difficult?” she asked. “I came, Runs In Light. I followed you. Why weren’t you at Renewal? I waited there, keeping myself for you. All those things you told me,
about marriage and love, they kept me going all through this miserably long year.”
He swallowed hard, pain glittering in his eyes.
“Won’t you speak to me?” she pleaded, sensing a wrongness between them.
He closed his eyes, his entire body trembling.
She reached across, grabbing him by the parka and tugging gently at first, then harder, until he opened his eyes and met her gaze.
“Tell me what’s wrong?”
“I love you.” His voice cracked.
Joy and relief swelled inside her. “And I love you.” She let him go, sliding closer to him, so close she smelled his masculine scent. She searched his handsome face. “Is that wrong?”
The muscles in his jaw leapt and quivered. “You’re the only thing between me and the Dream.”
She blinked. “Between?”
“Back in Mammoth Camp, I didn’t know what the Wolf Dream meant. How it would change me … or the People. Now I’ve seen. I’ve learned to Dream.”
She lifted a hand to stroke his smooth cheek. He flinched, closing his eyes. “And you’ll save the People.”
“Maybe.”
“But I’ve heard you found the hole in the ice?”
“It won’t be enough.”
“What?” She crossed her arms, trying to still the turmoil inside. Hurt, confusion, love, pain, hope; it all mixed, unsorted, leaving her heart hammering, blood pumping hot in her veins. From the contorted expression on Light’s face he wasn’t doing much better.
“I … can’t let myself, my personal wants, get in the way of Dreaming the People to safety far in the south.” A gleam lit his dark eyes as he stared at her. “There’s a beautiful land there.”
“What are you saying?”
“The only way to Dream—to really Dream—is to lose yourself in the One. To go beyond the motions of the Dance.”
“You’re babbling nonsense. What does this have to do with our love for each other?”
He deflated like a punctured walrus-bladder float, puffing
his cheeks out as he blew a futile breath. “Nonsense? That’s what I told Heron once. I didn’t understand. How can I expect you to?”
“Tell me, do we have a future together?” Her voice trembled suddenly. “Or has some other woman taken your heart?”
“No one has taken my heart but you.”
“Then—”
“I’ve had to choose!” he shouted, then lowered his voice to a wretched whisper. “I’ve seen the end of the People. Without a Dreamer, we have no chance. Raven Hunter has swayed the People one way. I must sway them another.”
A pounding desire built to hug him, hold him, soothe his unrest. “I’ll help you.”
“No.”
“But Dreaming isn’t like some curse. Use your gifts to save the People, but—”
“It is a curse. It’s like … like being born with a clubfoot or with a long nose. It’s just the way things are. Because of that, I can’t love.”
“Why not? Didn’t Heron ever love? I know the old stories about Bear Hunter.”
“She …” He turned away, squeezing his eyes tightly closed.
Conflicting emotions warred. Exploit this hurt? Or cuddle him close, ease his pain, apologize. Frozen, she simply sat, paralyzed by the rending within.
“The man she loved killed her. Ask Broken Branch. She saw. Heron let herself love him for just a moment. But it made her lose the One and the mushrooms killed her.”
Dancing Fox sat back, stunned by the haunted seriousness on his face. “You believe that my love will destroy you?”
“Yes.” He shook his head as though trying to clear some deadly mental fog. “I’ve seen it happen to a woman with far greater Power than mine. I’ve chosen my … No, I’ve been chosen by the way. The People must have a Dreamer.”
Heart in her throat, she nodded slowly, that eternal emptiness yawning inside. “So, it’s over? All this way, all this suffering … and you don’t want me?”
At the pain in her words, his face twisted, a dull ache in his eyes. He whispered a dusty, “I’m sorry.”
She nodded, standing, looking down while her soul screamed.
“Light?”
He looked up.
“Touch me, one last time.” She reached for him.
He extended a hand, sympathy in his eyes. Only as their fingertips touched, something flickered across his face, as if a memory came unbidden from the recesses of his mind. He stiffened, staring at her in horror, face stricken, body going rigid.
“What?” she asked, pulling her hand back. “What’s wrong?”
He turned away, burying his head in the white bear’s hide. The sobs chilled her soul.
“Leave me!” he shouted.
Turning, she ripped through the hanging hide, running, heedless of her tender ankle. She almost bowled One Who Cries over, sprinting up the path, struggling to escape that last terrible memory of the horror reflected in his eyes.
Moon Water stretched her taut back muscles, wincing at the pain. From behind the veil of her hair, she watched her captors as they congregated around the young Dreamer. He was powerful for such a young man. The sight of the caribou coming to his calling had awed her. Despite the number of carcasses stretched out on the snow—and the work they entailed—the memory still brought a chill to her spine.
He may be as powerful as Ice Fire. As powerful as our greatest shaman! The thought brought a bitter sneer to her lips. Unthinkable! Unthinkable that these pitiful remnants of a people could have so powerful a Dreamer.
Seeing Jumping Hare looking in her direction, she quickly bent to the task of stripping the hide from a caribou.
Despicable! She, Moon Water, eldest daughter of the White Tusk Clan’s Singer, must process a kill like an old hag! Rage and anger burned. The heat of it fueled her muscles, giving her strength to continue.
Her fingers cramped around the flat biface she used to cut the hide and dismember the carcass, the warm odor of caribou streaming up around her head. She stropped the tool on
her long boot, cleaning the edge of resistant tissue before attacking the carcass again.
And this Dreamer was taking them under the Big Ice? It was insanity. No human could walk under ice!
But he had Dreamed in the caribou. She’d seen that. She’d seen him cure the infant born to that woman Green Water. She’d seen him suck the fluid from its nose and breathe life into the tiny blue fetus who’d been born so early. Powerful, yes; powerful, indeed.
“But not so powerful as Ice Fire,” she whispered confidently.
She sank teeth into her lip, feeling her fingers strain as the gray quartzite biface severed the caribou’s tissues. With a section of antler beam, she quickly knapped off a new edge, the long flakes driven off by her expert hand. The new edge sharp, she resumed skinning.
“But they can’t keep me.” From behind her swinging wealth of black hair, she glared hatred at Jumping Hare where he carried thick quarters from the butchering area. “And you’ll soon have to forgo your pleasure on my body, bott-fly maggot! Stick to your skinny woman of the People. The daughter of the White Tusk Clan is too good for you!”
Soberly, she reached down, pushing hard on her belly as if to drive his seed out of her. Anxiously, she waited this turning of the moon, knowing her bleeding was overdue.
Soon, soon she would make her break, now that the Long Dark had begun to ebb. Before the People walked under the ice? She continued to chew her lip, her perfect brow furrowed in thought. The stories were that Wolf Dreamer had found huge herds of animals on the other side. If a woman of the Mammoth People were to find this magic hole, could not Ice Fire, with his greater Power, take all the Mammoth Clans through?
“I will wait.” She smiled sourly. “Then we’ll see how safe your hole in the ice is!”