In the eternal blackness, Raven Hunter stumbled over a waist-high boulder, banging his head as he fell. Pain blasted up his hurt arm, leaving him nauseated and sick, lights whirling through the blackness before his eyes. He lay there, the weight of the White Hide pinning him on his injured arm. Air rasped in and out of his laboring lungs. A new pain stung his head where he’d cracked it on the rock.
“Got to keep going,” he choked. “Power’s in the Hide. Power’s mine. Got to keep going.”
With his good hand, he felt out the position of the boulder, dragging the heavy Hide over it, maneuvering with his good arm, straightening and pulling the Hide over his shoulders. He locked his knees to brace his trembling legs. One step at a time, he felt his way along, the ghosts creaking and moaning in the ice overhead. Gravel crunched under his worn long boots, the chill eating through the holes where the leather bunched and chafed against the blistered soles of his feet.
Step-by-step, he continued, feeling the way by keeping to
the gravel, bent low to keep from banging his head on the overhanging ice. Around him, the forbidding black stretched.
He rubbed his cheek against the White Hide, feeling the Power it held, letting it soak into his very skin. He’d cut away his pouch, eating it strip by strip for the little strength it held.
Onward he plodded, driven by the future, goaded by the Power that would be his when the People saw the White Hide. They waited for him—and the White Hide—somewhere ahead. Beyond the blackness.
The mountains shaded lavender in the silence of dawn, stars twinkling low on the southern horizon. Before them, the Big Ice loomed—a vast white wall, ghostly in the soft light. Wind Woman whipped snow from the ridge tops, sending them stretching like long fingers into the sky. Guards hunched over a small fire, clutching their robes as they looked out across the crystalline wastes.
Singing Wolf stood apart, a foot propped on one of the boulders that tumbled down the slope around them. He’d been up most of the night, thinking, worrying—but it was none of his business. Still, he winced as his gaze drifted to Ice Fire’s shelter. Nestled in the center of the camp, the hide roof glistened with frost. Every night for the past week, Dancing Fox had gone in to share dinner with the Most Respected Elder and not come out until dawn. Her warriors, especially those from Raven Hunter’s old band, bristled, stamping around threateningly, charging treason.
Singing Wolf heaved a tired sigh and contemplatively smoothed the snow from the rock beside him, whispering to himself, “No, she’s no traitor.”
He’d seen the tender looks Fox and Ice Fire had started to share, the guarded way they touched each other—and he understood their newfound togetherness. The elder reminded them all of Wolf Dreamer. How could Dancing Fox not feel longing for the man? She’d loved the Dreamer with all her heart.
And maybe the fact that Fox and Ice Fire shared robes would strengthen both peoples. Yes, maybe. He gripped a handful of snow and crushed it into a ball, then tossed it silently into the lavender rays of dawn.
“This is crazy!” Eagle Cries whispered viciously from down the slope.
Singing Wolf turned to see the youth’s fist lifted toward the Others’ camp. In the dim rose-amber light of the fire, Eagle Cries’ face twisted with anger.
“Tomorrow, we take these Others into the hole under the ice? I can’t believe it!”
“I can’t either,” Crow Foot remarked. His round face glowed boyishly smooth in the dim light. “We lead men who raped our women and killed our brothers into the heart of the People’s camp? It’s madness.”
Singing Wolf massaged his forehead and tiredly headed for their fire. They started, surprised, as he appeared out of the darkness. “Don’t forget the oaths you swore to uphold the peace.”
Crow Foot turned, catlike on his heels. “You’ve always been weakhearted, Singing Wolf. I remember the day you ran out on Raven Hunter and the rest of us. Oaths didn’t matter so much then, eh?”
Singing Wolf’s breath fogged around his face. “What Raven Hunter did was wrong for the People. Wolf Dreamer is doing right for us.”
“Right for us,” Crow Foot mocked. “Is it right that I clutch to my bosom the beast who killed my sister?”
Singing Wolf blinked and lowered his gaze. “I know it’s hard, but we all have to—”
“I saw him in Ice Fire’s lodge!” Crow Foot shouted, the echo running through the camp and down the valley.
“What’s more important? Your dead sister? Or the survival of the People?”
Crow Foot took a step forward, nose inches from Singing Wolf’s as he stared into his eyes. “How can leading these animals to our women and children save us?”
“I believe the Dreamer.”
“You believe.” Crow Foot sneered, spitting his disgust.
By sheer force of will, Singing Wolf stifled the rage that exploded in his heart. “I’ll wait,” he managed to say, biting off the words. “I think, boy, that more than you or I can know is at stake here. I think this is a matter for Dreamers and Elders.”
Crow Foot tensed as if stung. “And I think we should kill
them all.” With the speed of a mouse, he darted away into the darkness.
Singing Wolf glared after him, seeing the youth’s shadow flicker across the ice.
“Raven Hunter would know what to do,” Eagle Cries defended. “He’d never have made a pact with the butchers.”
I’ve changed so much, thought Singing Wolf. Once, it would have been me clamoring for the blood of the Others. Now, I can’t afford my temper. A childish outburst would kill the hopes of the People. Is this constant futility what leadership means? Singing Wolf studied the angry youth beside him. How much smarter is One Who Cries, who avoids such dangers.
In a neutral voice, he murmured, “You promised on the spirits of the Long Dark to wait, to see if some way could be found to make peace. Is your word good?”
Eagle Cries turned, the glow of the fire, reflected from the snow, shone on his strained face. “Yes, man with no corage, I’ll wait. But once we’re there—once we’re at the camp of the People—my word will be done.”
A soft scritching of boots on gravel came from around the boulder, as though someone stood listening. Singing Wolf and Eagle Cries halted, tensing a moment. When no more sounds came, Singing Wolf continued tiredly, “And the rest of your warriors?”
“They’ll keep their word. Unlike you, we place a value on honor. Raven Hunter taught us that.”
“And what else did he teach you?” Dancing Fox asked as she came around the side of the huge dark boulder. She was dressed in a worn caribou parka, her black hair glistening against the background of white fox fur in her hood.
Eagle Cries jerked, asking maliciously, “Has Ice Fire tired of you already? Go back to his—”
“Answer my question, warrior!” Dancing Fox’s voice cut as coldly as the crystals of snow blowing in Wind Woman’s breath. “Is hatred all that Raven Hunter taught? Did he forget that wisdom and the ability to think are important too? Did he teach you all to disregard the ways of our elders? To forget that the People have struggled for hundreds of Long Darks to live in peace as Father Sun wished?”
“Raven Hunter is the son of the Father Sun!” Eagle Cries shouted. “He was born to lead us to a new way.”
“Then why didn’t you follow him after the Dreaming?”
Eagle Cries clamped his jaw and crossed his arms brusquely over his chest.
As the silence stretched, Singing Wolf repeated, “Why didn’t you?”
“That may have been a mistake.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Look, don’t you see? What if there is peace? Eh? What then? How do we keep who we are separate from the Others? Does Father Sun get replaced by the Great Mystery? Does Dreaming get replaced by their visions in high places?”
Dancing Fox asked, “Isn’t that what Raven Hunter wanted? To destroy Wolf Dreamer? Kill him with a dart in the middle of a Dreaming—during the Renewal, of all things?”
Eagle Cries sputtered a sigh. “That was wrong. It was a crazy thing done in anger. He’d just seen his friend killed by witchery. He—”
“It’s witchery now?” Singing Wolf lifted a brow. “Not Dreaming?”
“I … I don’t know anymore. Maybe it is.”
“Fine children of Father Sun we are.” Dancing Fox exhaled gruffly. “In our camp, the warriors can’t wait to drive darts through the Others, watch their blood run out, and laugh while they die. In Ice Fire’s camp, they can’t wait to get their White Hide back and drive darts into our bodies.” She shook her head. “And we’ll all die if we don’t change.”
“What do you mean? Die?”
“You’ve heard the Dreamer. The world’s changing. The ice is melting and the seas are rising. Perhaps the doom callers are right. Perhaps everyone in the world is crazy.”
“Perhaps,” Eagle Cries agreed sullenly.
“Will you keep your oaths until we meet with the People?” she implored.
“We’ll keep them. But after that, we’re free men.”
“And what will you do with this freedom?”
He shrugged irritably. “Maybe no Others will make it back to tell their warriors how to find the hole in the ice.”
“Moon Water stayed with the rest of the White Tusk Clan. She still knows where the hole is.”
Eagle Cries laughed harshly. “Then she’ll have to die, too.”
“And Jumping Hare’s child?” Singing Wolf asked coldly.
“It’s half Other.” Eagle Cries grinned malevolently.
“So’s your hero, Raven Hunter,” Dancing Fox muttered. “Maybe true strength comes from a mixing of our blood with theirs, eh?” She turned and strolled away toward the rising sun and Ice Fire’s camp. A tendril of smoke twisted from the elder’s lodge, the soft glow of fire penetrating through the door flap.
Clouds drifting on the horizon glowed pink and orange now from the sliver of gold peeking above the distant mountains.
Eagle Cries frowned and turned to Singing Wolf. “What’s she talking about? Raven Hunter can’t be …”
It hurt his eyes. Had the sun ever been so bright? Cloud Woman parted long enough that a shaft of light practically blinded him. Raven Hunter looked away, tears coming to his eyes. On his shoulder, the White Hide beamed, the reflection illuminating the ice that parted to either side as he stumbled out, his back crying as if it had never been straight before.
His useless arm dangled, swollen, the fingers puffy, the lines of his hand disappeared in the bloated member.
Owlishly, he looked around, seeing the pockmarks where the feet of the People had passed over the gravels. Snow blew down from the icy ridge overhead.
“We made it.” He nuzzled the White Hide with his cheek. “We’re close now!”
Snow had blown across the trail, but as Raven Hunter looked around, he could see the route they’d taken, the streak of white where the way led up through the brush at a bend in the river.
Bowed under the weight of his burden, he stumbled off, panting in the light as Cloud Woman drew herself close about the sky, threatening, ominous in the still air.
A crow cawed from high overhead.
Their camp nestled at the edge of a grove of towering spruce. Buffalo-hide lodges sprouted in a rough semicircle around a central open space where children played and women
and men labored at butchering the wealth of animals their Dreamer had called.
Wolf Dreamer sat on a fallen log, gazing at the carcasses. As they’d died, he’d suffered with them, feeling the stinging darts biting deep, invading the delicate tissues of their hearts, lungs, and livers. One with them, he’d choked on their blood, shared their terror as death’s fingers stole through their minds and their eyes grew dim.
At the same time, he shared the joyous abandon of the People, now wading through dispatched animals: life for another year. Meat and new clothing would fill the lodges.
Yet … beneath the suffering and joy, a deeper reality called to him—but he knew he couldn’t let himself drown in that truth until, like spider, he’d thrown out the first threads of the crimson web.
“Huh!” One Who Cries grunted, walking up to stand by Wolf Dreamer. “You know, we’ve butchered a lot of animals here, but I never noticed before. The lungs, none of them have worms in the lungs. Wonder why?”
Wolf Dreamer’s eyes drifted to the looming blackness in the north that gained Power with every breath he took. “We’re not the only life moving south.”
“You mean the hole will widen and let animals through?”
He smiled faintly. “Soon the mammoth and caribou and buffalo will walk down this way of ours. Where they walk, the worms ride.”
“Is that good?”
Wolf Dreamer gave him a wry grin and spread his arms, beginning to dance, spiraling around in a circle, never stepping on his tracks again. “See me dancing? How many times have I been around?”
“What?” One Who Cries asked, bewildered. “I don’t—”
“Look!” Wolf Dreamer danced back to the beginning before jumping out of the center and lifting his brows questioningly. “Now, tell me which came first. Did I dance from the inside out, or the outside in?”
“Inside out first and then outside in second.” He pointed. “Any hunter can tell by the tracks.”
Wolf Dreamer sighed, disappointed. “What came first? The inside or the outside?”
One Who Cries pursed his lips. “What does that have to do with worms?”
Wolf Dreamer threw back his head and laughed until he had to hold his stomach. Feeling foolish, One Who Cries began laughing, too, nervously trying to decide what he’d done that was funny.
Wolf Dreamer settled on a log and patted it to indicate his friend should join him.
One Who Cries gave him a speculative look from the corner of his eye as he cautiously lowered himself. “I don’t like it when you start talking in words I don’t understand. You’re always drifting off, leaving us alone, without your guidance.”
“I know …” he said tiredly. He smiled shyly like the old Runs In Light would have. “In answer to your question, the worms will come south, too. They—like us—live off the animals. Many of the creatures that live south of us will die off. Partly because the world is changing, partly because of us—and the worms. Change is the breath of the One, a step in the Dance. You have to see the Dancer … but the Dancer is never there.”
One Who Cries bit off what he was about to say concerning the worms, a look of mystification spreading over his flat features.
Here is a good man. Though One Who Cries doesn’t know it, he Dances closer to the One than all the others. He is pure, unimpressed by his growing stature. A slight pain touched him. I will miss this man more than any of the rest. And the end is coming so soon now, so very very soon.
In the distance, a child raced through camp, carrying a stick high over her head. A dog leapt for it, barking at the girl’s heels.
“I never know what you mean anymore.”
“Another follows me who will explain.”
“Who? Can we—”
The sensation burst upon him, leaving his senses reeling. He would have fallen from the log but for One Who Cries catching him, supporting his weight while the world shimmered around him.
“I have to go,” Wolf Dreamer groaned, breathing deeply as he pushed to his feet, arms out for balance. He felt the
red tendrils wrapping around him, the strands pulling tight. “The web is almost complete. The spiral of the spider is coming together.”
One Who Cries narrowed his eyes, looking up at the young man who had once been his friend. “Go where? Can I come and—”
“No. I have to prepare myself, to ready the Dream.”
He caught his balance, turning his steps upward, toward a high spruce-covered ridge that overlooked the camp. His feet had never seemed lighter, nor his heart heavier.