“Blue Raven? Blue Raven, they are here!”
Plume threw back the hide door curtain to the longhouse, and peered inside. Ten winters old, the boy had a broad flat face. He wet his lips nervously and used a grimy hand to shove shoulder-length black hair away from his eyes. “They just arrived! Starflower says you must hurry. But just you! No one else. They are taking the False Face Child to the council house!”
The longhouse went silent.
They had been waiting for this, most like children expecting an enchanted gift from the Spirit World, some as if dreading the terrible punishment they deserved for the crime. Blue Raven’s gaze drifted down the house’s hundred-hand length, studying his relatives’ taut faces. He had opposed this raid. They knew it. All forty sat perfectly still, horn spoons of food halted halfway to their mouths.
“Let me gather my things.” Blue Raven set down his freshly poured cup of fir-needle tea. Tall, with long graying black hair and an oval face, he had seen forty-one winters. He reached for his cape.
His aging mother and young niece sat across the fire from him. Both appeared to be in shock. His mother, Frost-in-the-Willows, had her head down, face blank, but her breathing had gone shallow. The triangles of pounded copper encircling the collar of her tan dress shimmered with each swift exhalation.
His niece, Little Wren, gazed at him in awe. Twelve winters old, Wren had a slender angular face, as if carved from a fine golden-brown wood. She wore her long hair in a single braid which fell over her left shoulder. Her parents and younger brother had died in a canoeing accident eight moons ago. Their bodies had never been found. Since then, Wren had grown unruly and bold. She had been averaging one nasty fistfight each moon. Perhaps even worse, certainly more dangerous, Wren was absolutely fearless. She might chase a wolf into the forest just to watch its fur shine. Blue Raven never knew what the gangly girl might say or do next.
Wren set her teacup on the floor and leaned forward to whisper, “The False Face Child is here? Truly?”
As he swung his beaver-hide cape around his broad shoulders, Blue Raven said, “Did you doubt your cousin’s abilities as war leader, Wren?”
“Yes,” she answered blithely, and her frankness made him suppress a smile. “And I thought the child had more Power than to let himself be caught,” she added. “May I go see the boy, Uncle? Just to look? I don’t have to touch him, I just wish to—”
“No!” Plume threw the curtain aside, leaped into the house like a small ferocious bear, and blurted, “Matron Starflower told me that only Blue Raven could come!”
Blue Raven patted his niece on the head. “I thought you were going to visit Trickster today?”
“Oh, yes, I must. I promised him I would.” Wren’s hand dropped to touch the knotted strip of rawhide that hung from her cord belt. One end showed teeth marks. She petted the toy as if it soothed her. “But Trickster will understand, Uncle, if I go to visit him after I see the Power child.”
“I know, but not now, Wren. Later.”
Wren scowled at Plume, and the boy grinned.
“And I had best not discover you sneaking through the brush after me, Wren,” Blue Raven warned.
She blinked owlishly, trying to convey innocence. “You won’t, Uncle.”
Blue Raven gave her a skeptical look. “If I see you, I’ll turn you over to Starflower.”
Matron Starflower showed disobedient children no mercy. She forced them to fetch water, grind corn, and carry wood, until they pleaded for pardon.
Wren slumped dejectedly. “I will remain here, Uncle. You have my oath.”
The longhouse seemed to stir to life. Murmuring broke out. As people shifted, their brilliantly colored clothing became a sea of rich reds, greens, yellows, and the palest of blues. Shell earrings danced. Though hides covered the hard-packed dirt floor, it required four evenly spaced fires to heat the longhouse. The orange light from the flames flickered over the baskets, bows, and lances that hung along the bark walls, and played among the dried vegetables suspended from the high arching ceiling. After moons of hanging in the rising smoke, the corn, beans, squash, sunflowers, and other plants had obtained a shiny patina of black creosote.
“What will you do, Blue Raven?” a man from the
opposite end of the longhouse called. “Will you bring the child here? To live among us?”
“I will make no decisions until I see him.”
Red porcupine-quill chevrons ran down the sleeves of his cape. They flashed as he rose from his place by the fire.
People stared, their apprehension palpable.
“Continue eating,” he said calmly. “The worst is done. We have stolen the child.”
Frost-in-the-Willows pursed her withered lips, but did not comment.
“Mother,” he said. “I will return soon. Don’t fret about me.”
As she tipped her brown face up, firelight flowed like honey into her deep wrinkles, making her seem a thousand winters old. Her white hair gleamed. “It is very dangerous, my son.”
“He is nine winters old, Mother.”
“It is an abomination!”
Blue Raven knotted the laces of his cape. “Perhaps. I will wait to judge.”
“Why is he an abomination?” Wren asked. She balanced on her knees as if preparing to spring into a run. “I thought he was a Power child?”
“He is,” Blue Raven said. “For now, that is all we know.”
Frost-in-the-Willows lifted a thin white brow. “You would call the Paint Rock elders liars? They say it is very dangerous.”
“Yes, and their words have kept us frightened, haven’t they, Mother? Just as they planned.”
Frost-in-the-Willows used the authoritative tone that had trembled Blue Raven’s heart as a child. “Those elders say that by the time the False Face Child could run, it was hunting, not little birds and chipmunks, like other
boys its age, but wolves and bobcats. At the age of four, it no longer needed a bow or arrows. It could kill by calling out to an animal in its own tongue. Old Silver Sparrow has seen it sit upon a rock all day long, as if deaf and blind, and when he asked what it had been doing, the boy answered, ‘Listening to my father’s people talk.’”
Wren gasped. “His father was a Forest Spirit! Is that not right? That’s what Beavertail told me!”
“Hush, girl!” Frost-in-the-Willows shouted and Wren almost bit her tongue off closing her mouth. Frost-in-the-Willows turned back to Blue Raven. “For the sake of the ancestors, my son, the child went on its first vision quest at the age of five winters. You cannot treat it—”
“I know the stories, Mother,” Blue Raven replied shortly. He had met Silver Sparrow once, and liked the old man. But he hadn’t been a Dreamer then, just a Trader. “Your nephew, Jumping Badger, has made certain everyone knows them. I wish that you would trust me.”
Plume glanced back and forth between them. His broad face shone orange. “Elder, Starflower said for you to come now.”
“I’m almost ready.” Blue Raven picked up his mittens from where they warmed at the edge of the hearthstones. “Tell Jumping Badger—”
“He is not here, Elder,” Plume replied. “Jumping Badger sent two runners ahead with the boy. Mossybill and Skullcap said Jumping Badger should return tonight, then they turned the False Face Child over to the matrons, and fled for their longhouses. The runners were so ill they could scarcely walk!”
“Ill?” Wren asked, her interest piqued. “From what?”
“No one told me!” Plume bellowed. “I am just a boy!”
Blue Raven uneasily slipped on his mittens.
The men had been running and fighting for days, of course they would be exhausted, but … ill? “And why is Jumping Badger still out? Where is he?”
“He is hunting down the survivors of the Paint Rock Village battle.”
Heat flushed Blue Raven’s cheeks. The clan matrons had sent Jumping Badger to kidnap a child, and he had taken it upon himself to kill every last member of the child’s village. For many winters Blue Raven’s dislike for his arrogant cousin had been growing. Jumping Badger had been war leader for five winters. In that short span, he’d managed to antagonize nearly every village within a moon’s running distance. His words, it seemed, possessed more strength than Blue Raven’s. He waved a mittened hand at Plume. “Run and tell Matron Starflower I am on my way.”
“Yes, Elder.” Plume ducked under the curtain and dashed away.
Frost-in-the-Willows squinted at Blue Raven. “Listen, my son. Everyone knows you opposed this raid. I opposed it, too. None of that matters now. The deed is done. The False Face is here. Treat it as you would a wounded panther, a beast in pain who will do anything to escape.”
“A beast, Mother?” Blue Raven’s strained voice went low, and it seemed that the entire house swayed toward him to listen. “He is a little boy. A child who has just witnessed the destruction of his entire world. He—”
“I warn you.” She lifted a gnarled hand. “It is not human.”
Wren’s mouth gaped. “It isn’t? Then what is it?”
Blue Raven ignored Little Wren. He loved and respected his mother too much to challenge her words in
front of others. She sat stiffly, her white hair glimmering with firelight. “I will be heedful, Mother. I give you my pledge.”
Lifting the door curtain, he quickly ducked outside.
The cold hit him like a fist, stinging his flesh and burning his lungs. He hurried forward.
Six longhouses encompassed the central plaza. Around the village they had constructed a palisade of upright logs that stood twenty hands tall—the result of Jumping Badger’s raiding. They no longer felt safe even in their own village.
People rushed to doorways to watch him pass, breaths puffing whitely as they whispered to each other. He could feel their excitement and fear; the emotions prickled at him like the first drops of a torrential rain that would flood the rivers and send them all scrambling for their lives. He could do nothing to stop it now.
The entry in the palisade consisted of the space between two overlapping walls. There were two entries, one on the north side of the village, and one on the south. He slipped through the southern entry and headed down the hill.
His cousin had been railing about the False Face Child from the night he’d become war leader, recounting horrifying events of murder and mutilation—describing in detail the times the boy had saved his people from destruction. The want had grown in Jumping Badger until it had seemed to consume him. “We must have the boy!” he’d said. “He is a False Face, a Spirit being! Paint Rock Village has not been attacked since the day of the child’s birth, while we have been raided once every two or three winters! Every battle that the Paint Rock war leader has waged he has won! Think. Think what would happen if we had the boy? We would be invincible! We
could raid where we wished, take what we wanted. We must have that child!”
A quarter moon ago, new rumors of war had drifted in with the Traders. Blue Raven mused as he walked. The Walksalong Clan was part of the Bear Nation. For hundreds of winters the Bear Nation and Turtle Nation had been pushing against each other: The Bears pushing northward, then the Turtles pushing southward, and now, again, the Bears pushing northward. Ever since the Bear Nation began to cultivate crops and live in large fortified villages, they had been forcing the Turtle Nation to flee before them, or to blend their villages with Bear villages. Often this meant that longhouses existed alongside the traditional small conical lodges preferred by the Turtle elders. They all spoke similar languages, so melding was possible, but it was not easy.
Three distinctly different kinds of villages had resulted: Bear Nation villages, which generally had longhouses, like Walksalong; Bear-Turtle villages, like Grand Banks, which often had both small houses and longhouses, and Turtle villages like Paint Rock, with small conical lodges.
The Turtle Nation reckoned descent through the father, not the mother. This created great confusion when a member of the Turtle Nation wanted to marry someone from a Bear Nation clan, as often happened west of Pipe Stem Lake. In Bear-Turtle villages, a young man had to gain the permission of both the mother and the father before marrying their daughter. In Bear villages, women alone arranged marriages. In Turtle villages, fathers arranged marriages. The poor children were left to sort out the conflicting rules and taboos.
Bear-Turtle villages allowed children to choose which clan they wished to belong to, their mother’s or their father’s, but this compromise had resulted in chaos. If a
man and woman divorced in a Bear Nation village, the children stayed with their mother’s clan. Their names remained the same, as did their status and future obligations. But if a child had been born in a Bear-Turtle village, and had chosen his father’s clan, he had to leave his mother’s village and go to live with his father’s people. Children too young to choose had their lives decided for them. Fathers generally claimed the boys, and mothers claimed the girls.
This strange mixture of customs, originally intended to maintain harmony between different clans, had become a source of mounting hostility—because people no longer agreed on how they were related.
Incest taboos had become impossible. Last summer a young woman from Walksalong Village, named Pebble, had wished to marry a man, Blackhawk, from Grand Banks Village. Because the Walksalong Clan traced descent strictly through the mother, only maternal kin were forbidden as marriage partners. The Walksalong matrons had approved the marriage. The Bear-Turtle council of Grand Banks Village, however, had refused to allow it. Blackhawk, it turned out, was Pebble’s father’s brother’s son, and in Bear-Turtle villages both maternal and paternal kin were forbidden as marriage partners.
Just thinking about it made Blue Raven’s head swim. No wonder warfare had broken out.
To complicate matters, Bear and Turtle used the land differently. Bear clans planted corn, beans, squash, sunflowers, and tobacco. While most people left the main village for hunting and fishing camps in the spring and summer, many women and children stayed to tend the crops, weeding, watering, burying fish to fertilize the tender plants, harvesting, storing, guarding the stores. As a result of constant use, every few winters, the soil gave
out, and they had to move their villages to find new fields.
Bear-Turtle clans spent winters in their villages, but abandoned their villages in the summers and moved to smaller camps where they fished and hunted, gathered nuts and berries.
The Turtle Nation barely used the land at all. They threw some seeds in the ground and left, spending most of their time hunting and gathering the natural resources. They returned in the fall to harvest whatever the birds and insects had left them of their crops, then settled into their winter villages. Clearly they did not need the soil as badly as their cousins in the Bear Nation. There had been many clashes in the past; houses burnt, women and children stolen, food stores raided. Nothing unusual. Until now. The Traders claimed that the Turtles had vowed they would be pushed no more. They would band together and wage open warfare on the Bears.
Blue Raven had laughed at the very idea. The Turtles could barely get along with one another for six nights at their annual ceremonial gatherings. How, he’d asked, could they hope to band together for a long war?
Jumping Badger had connived and wheedled, using the rumor to convince the clan to vote for a raid to steal the child. When their approval came, Blue Raven had been stunned. Before he could try to reason with people, Jumping Badger had gathered his war party and disappeared into the forest.
Faint images of fleeing people and charred houses flitted across the fabric of Blue Raven’s souls. His dreams last night had been tortured, filled with the screams of dying children.
He took a deep breath, and bulled forward.
Icy wind gusted up from Pipe Stem Lake, pungent with decaying leaves and wood. A light dusting of snow glistened
on the winter-bare maples and birches. Blue Raven’s gaze clung to that beauty. Against the golden sky, the frosted branches etched a blinding filigree.
He reached the fork in the trail, and took the path down the hill toward the council house in the small grove of red cedars. One hundred twenty hands long, and sixty wide, the rounded roof stood fifty hands tall. The bark walls had grayed with moss. It resembled a giant shaggy beast.
Blue Raven slowed. What should he say to the boy? The Paint Rocks called him the False Face Child, but surely he must have a name. A boy’s name. His mother, the woman Briar, had supposedly borne him at thirteen winters, before her bleeding began. The Paint Rock elders whispered that Briar had mated with a Forest Spirit that resembled a withered tree. It had come to her for six nights in a row, to watch and court her. On the seventh night, they had coupled. The boy took after his father, the elders said, in both his frightening Powers, and his twisted appearance.
Blue Raven gazed at the council house. No sounds came from within. Curious. All captive children wept for home and lost family. Blue Raven had witnessed it a hundred times. Perhaps the clan matrons had gagged the child? Starflower could be practical to the point of cruelty.
He walked to the door, and stood outside the leather curtain. “Matron Starflower? I have come as you commanded.” He leaned closer. “Matron? It is Blue Raven. Would you have me wait outside?”
A hoarse voice whispered, “Enter. Hurry!”
Blue Raven threw the curtain back and lunged inside. As the curtain swayed behind him, light flashed over the gray heads of the clan matrons. Starflower stood with her
back to him, facing the corner to his right, while Kit lay on her side forty hands to his left.
“What happened? Is Kit hurt?” He started across the floor for her.
“Stop!” Starflower ordered. “Stay where you are!”
Blue Raven halted, his fists clenching and unclenching. “Why?”
Fifty-nine winters old, Starflower had lips that sank in over toothless gums, making her narrow face appear shriveled at the center. She lifted a trembling chert knife and pointed, but the tip wavered, aiming at the ceiling, then the floor, then the ceiling again. “Do you see it?”
“See what?” he demanded. “Where is the boy?”
Starflower swung around with fiery eyes. “It is not a boy. It is the Disowned! Look!”
Blue Raven surveyed the room, scanning the brightly painted ceremonial masks that hung at regular intervals along the walls. His people rubbed them with sunflower oil to keep their skins shiny and soft. Pots sat on the floor to his right, along with a stack of deerhides used for seating, and a pile of chopped wood. The Disowned? It was a very old and tragic love story told around the winter fires. He had heard people whisper that the Disowned might be the boy’s true father, but not the boy himself.
“Matron,” Blue Raven said, “what has happened? I do not see the boy. Did he escape? Did you …”
Something skittered across the roof.
Blue Raven stumbled backward at the same time that his gaze shot up, his heart thundering.
The boy seemed wedded to the darkness, little more than a black spider among the roof poles of the house. His stunted arms were spread like wings. The feet below his stubby legs, bound with rawhide straps, rested upon an oak bole. He wore a black garment that glittered with what looked like quartz crystals.
Blue Raven stood there, breathing hard, fighting the sudden terror that perhaps the boy was a Spirit. He whispered, “How did he get up there? His feet are bound!”
“Old White Kit …” Starflower’s voice broke as she gestured to the matron curled on her side on the floor. “She felt sorry for him. The warriors had pulled his ropes until they’d rubbed bloody gashes in his ankles and wrists. Kit said, ‘He is the size of a four-winters-old boy. If we leave his feet tied he will be no trouble to us.’ She used her knife to cut his wrist bonds and the child … it struck without warning, Blue Raven! Like a serpent! It grabbed the knife and plunged it into Kit’s heart! Then …” She lifted her own knife again, pointing, and this time Blue Raven saw that blood streaked the white stone blade. “It killed Kit and flew up there. I swear! It flew up there like a wingless blackbird! I—I cut him as he leaped, but he—”
He swung around to White Kit. “Then Kit—”
“Yes.” Sobs choked Starflower. She lifted a hand to cover the mournful sounds coming up her throat, and nodded.
“Blessed gods. The village will explode. Everyone loved her.”
Rage and hurt vied for control of his senses. Kit had been a faithful leader of the clan for thirty winters, tending the ill, feeding the hungry. She had loved children more than her own life. People would scream for retribution.
“Does the child still have the knife?” he asked.
“No!” Starflower gestured toward Kit. “He dropped it right after he realized what he’d done. Threw it down like it had burned him. The knife lies in front of Kit on the floor.”
Blue Raven didn’t see it. But he didn’t see any blood,
either. The poor light probably kept a wealth of things hidden from him.
“Why didn’t you call for help, Starflower? Someone would have heard and come running.”
Starflower wiped her damp eyes on her red sleeve. “It happened only moments ago. I was too stunned to cry out. I feared that if I took my eyes from it for a single instant, it would escape, transform itself into a Forest Spirit, and destroy our village!”
Disgust built in Blue Raven’s chest. Disgust with Jumping Badger because he had demanded they kidnap the boy, and with his clan because they had approved the raid. How many had died because of it?
Blue Raven backed toward the door, lifted and hooked the curtain over its peg. Light flooded the council house. He cupped a hand to his mouth and shouted, “Acorn? Springwater? Come quickly! We—”
A flutter, like the frantic batting of wings, came from the roof. Blue Raven’s heart nearly burst through the cage of his ribs. He jerked around. The darkness near the boy seemed to ripple and sway, as if fanned by feathers. In the heart of the disturbance, a tiny hand grasped frantically for a roof pole.
“Starflower,” Blue Raven ordered. “Leave. Now. I ask that you make certain Acorn and Springwater heard my call. Send them if they did not. I will stay—”
“I will find them for you, Uncle Blue Raven!” Little Wren leaped into the doorway, panting, her eyes curiously searching the council house. She wore a painted deerhide cape over her shoulders. When she saw the dark shape clinging to the roof, she went silent and as still as Mouse seeing Owl.
Blue Raven started to shout at her, but instead said, “Wren, help Matron Starflower up the trail and back to the village.”
“Yes, Uncle!”
Wren ran to Starflower and gripped her elbow, helping the old woman to her feet. They passed him without a word, out into the daylight.
Wren called, “I’ll fetch Acorn and Springwater, too, Uncle!”
Blue Raven shivered.
The council house had turned bitterly cold, of a sudden, as if the Thunderbirds had flown in and made nests in the walls. He rubbed his arms, and turned back toward the child.
A low hiss, like a snake slithering through the brush, slipped through the darkness.
Blue Raven’s knees shook. It shamed and angered him, but he could not stop. All of the stories Jumping Badger had been telling for the past five winters came into focus, and he had the dreadful feeling that nothing he knew for certain was certain at all.
“I—I am Blue Raven, Headman of this village,” he said. “You are called the False Face Child, are you not?”
He forced his feet to move. When he stood directly beneath the child, Blue Raven removed his mittens, tossed them to the floor, and spread his arms to show he held no weapons in his hands—though he did have a knife tied to his belt beneath his cape. “Do you have another name? A boy’s name?”
The hiss came again, but this time it sounded more like scratching, and it clearly originated from the boy. When the scratching faded, a click-click-click-click rose. The sound of claws on wood. It paced back and forth, each click as carefully placed as a prowling animal’s.
Blue Raven clenched his hands to hard fists. He longed to draw his knife. “Boy! I have come to help you. Do you understand this?”
A drop of water struck Blue Raven’s forehead. He
blinked, startled. Another hit his shoulder. The next splatted in the dirt. ,
He frowned.
… Tears.
A little boy’s tears.
Softly, he said, “I did not wish this, boy. No more than you. I’m sorry for what has happened. Please. Let me help you. The floor must look frighteningly far away from up there. May I climb up and carry you down? I—”
“Blue Raven?” Acorn shouted. “Blue Raven, we are here! We’ve brought the whole village! We all have bows. We’re—”
A low sound, half moan and half growl, came from the False Face Child. Blue Raven’s blood pounded in his ears. The cry resembled that of an animal caught in a trap.
“Acorn?” he called, but his eyes remained glued to the misshapen black silhouette on the ceiling. “Keep everyone outside. Do not come until I summon you. Do you understand?”
Panicked voices rose in questions, and dust drifted in as dozens of anxious feet shifted.
“Do you understand?” Blue Raven repeated. “Go back up the trail. Wait until I call.”
“But Blue Raven, what if—”
“Do not question me now! We will speak of this later. Just do as I ask. Please!”
“Yes … very well,” Acorn answered hesitantly. “I—I don’t like it! But we will go.”
People retreated, their voices dimming until only a faint buzz drifted on the wind.
Blue Raven fought to calm his labored breathing. The boy hung silently, high above, his eyes glinting.
“I’m climbing up to get you, boy.”
“No!”
“I will not hurt you. I promise you this.”
A pathetic whisper floated down, “You wish to kill me.”
“No, no. You must believe me. I have never wished that. Nor have my people. We wish only—”
“They burned my village! I saw it!”
A muted cry filled the stillness—the sound of sobs straining against tightly closed lips.
“I vow to you that you will be safe here,” Blue Raven said. “You may trust me, boy. I have never lied to a child.”
Cautiously, Blue Raven made his way to the corner pole, a log about two hands in diameter. Saplings wove around the pole, giving it stability, and creating a strong ladder, which they used for repairing the walls and roof. He lifted his right foot and placed it on the first rung.
“I’m coming, boy.”
The higher Blue Raven climbed the better he could see the dwarf child. Despite his stunted arms and legs, the boy had thick dark hair, cropped even with his chin, and a beautiful round face. Tears glistened in his black eyes. A wound leaked blood down his left arm. The wound Starflower had, no doubt, inflicted. Blue Raven took two more rungs. The boy’s robe, which he had earlier assumed to be decorated with quartz crystals, was really speckled with pieces of exquisitely etched shell. The shapes of Thunderbird and Falling Woman adorned two of the larger discs. The boy’s copper gorget, his pendant, was so large it nearly covered the Power bag he wore around his throat. The gorget bore the grotesque image of a gnarled uprooted tree.
Blue Raven stopped at the junction between wall and roof. The boy stood eight hands to his left, his back pressed to the sloping roof, his bound feet resting on the bole. Is that why Starflower thought he’d “flown” up?
The boy had used his arms to climb while his useless feet dangled behind him? The child had been holding so tightly to the roof poles that his stubby fingers had gone white.
Blue Raven reached out. “Take my hand. Please. Don’t be afraid. I won’t let you fall.”
The boy shook his head.
Blue Raven stretched his arm out farther. “Just reach down. I’m right here.”
Desperately, the boy’s gaze darted over the council house, obviously searching for another way to freedom … and landed on one of the smoke holes in the roof.
Panic warmed Blue Raven’s veins. He would surely fall to his death if he attempted it. “It’s too small for you, and too far,” he warned. “Please, don’t!”
The False Face Child’s eyes remained on the smoke hole, as if calculating the risks involved in reaching it.
“And—and our warriors are outside, boy. Even if you should make it, they would surround the house and have you the instant you climbed down.”
The False Face Child gripped one of the roof’s cross-poles, and appeared ready to leap.
Blue Raven shook sweaty locks of hair away from his oval face. He had to keep the boy talking, to shift his thoughts. “Boy? Please. What is your name? The name your family calls you by? Do you have a boy’s name?”
The False Face Child did not answer.
“When I was a boy,” Blue Raven said, “I had a special name. My parents called me Dancing Foot, because I was forever whirling around on one foot. They said I resembled a demented one-legged grouse.” He smiled at the memories. “The other children used to cluck at me when I passed. Do you have a name like that?”
At first silence met his question, then, barely audible, came, “R-Rumbler.”
“Rumbler? That’s a shining name. I’ve never heard it before. Why did your mother call you that? Did she tell you?”
Rumbler lowered his gaze and tears fell from his eyes onto the distant floor of the council house. Tiny puffs of dust sprouted, spinning like tornadoes in the sunlight. “I like echoes.”
Blue Raven smiled. “I know a wonderful canyon where the Echoers shout back and forth five times or more. I used to go there as a boy, to talk with them. Would you like to go?” He extended his hand again, leaning out as far as he could without risking doom. “I would be happy to take you. You will be surprised by the voices you hear. Each of the Spirits has a different tone of voice, like the unique sounds made by moving your fingers over the holes in a flute.”
Rumbler bit his lip. After a long while, he slid his bound feet toward Blue Raven.
“Good. That’s good. Don’t look down.”
The boy inched closer, his whole misshapen body trembling.
“Don’t be frightened. You are doing well. I can almost reach you.”
When the boy came within range, Blue Raven grabbed for his left hand, and Rumbler let out a small cry of pain or fear.
“I have you! It’s all right.”
As Blue Raven scanned the boy’s wrists, he understood Kit’s fatal decision. The ropes had cut deep gashes just above the boy’s hands. Shadow Spirits had been feeding upon the flesh, leaving festering trails of infection. Rumbler’s bound legs looked just as bad, bloody and swollen. The sight pained Blue Raven. How could two grown men do this to a child of nine winters? If they had been that frightened of this little boy, their presences
shamed the Walksalong War Society! They should be driven out as cowards!
“I won’t let you fall, Rumbler,” he said gently. “Slide your feet closer a bit at a time, just work your way to me. I need to cut off those leg ropes.”
Rumbler’s black eyes narrowed, as if searching for trickery.
“I am reaching inside my cape to pull my knife from its sheath. I don’t want you to be concerned. I am only going to use it to cut your bonds. Do you understand?”
Blue Raven moved slowly, lifting the gray chert knife toward Rumbler’s legs. He sawed through the knot and the ropes fell away, plummeting toward the floor.
A small sigh of relief escaped Rumbler’s throat.
“There,” Blue Raven said. “Moving should be easier now. Come. We’ll climb down and find a warm fire to sit by.”
Rumbler tentatively reached out again, and Blue Raven grasped a tiny freezing hand.
“Good. Thank you, Rumbler.”
As he came closer, Blue Raven slipped an arm around the boy’s waist, and pulled Rumbler onto his hip.
“Hold tight as we climb down, you understand?”
The boy nodded.
Blue Raven began the descent. On the third rung, Rumbler buried his face in the folds of Blue Raven’s cape, hiding his eyes.
“We are doing well,” Blue Raven soothed. “Don’t be afraid.”
In response, Rumbler frantically groped through the opening in Blue Raven’s cape and grabbed a fistful of blue shirt.
When he stepped onto solid ground, Blue Raven said, “You can look now. See? I told you we wouldn’t fall,” and he set Rumbler on the floor.
The boy’s injured legs shook. He seemed to be trying to still the tremor by tightening his muscles, but it did little good. Finally, he spread his feet to brace himself. After several deep breaths, he bravely asked, “What will you do with me now?”
“I will take you to my longhouse. Where is your cape? Or did the warriors give you a blanket to keep you warm?”
Rumbler tucked a shaking finger into the corner of his mouth. As he sucked, an expression of solace slackened his features. Around his finger, he slurred, “I had only my shirt.”
“Surely the men who captured you gave you something to wear for the long journey.”
Rumbler shook his head. “They gave me nothing. No food, or water. They feared me. The second night, when we made camp, I told them I was going to kill them. After that, they didn’t wish to touch me.”
Blue Raven removed his own cape and draped it around Rumbler’s shoulders. “They had orders to take good care of you, Rumbler. They will be punished for their foolishness. I assure you.”
He tied the cape’s laces beneath the boy’s chin. “I think this will work.” Two hands’ worth of hem dragged the floor. “You might have to pull up the hem when you walk, so as not to trip over it, but at least you will be warm.”
Rumbler clutched the cape, and stood silently, watching Blue Raven. Finally, in a soft voice, he said, “I grant you your life.”
Blue Raven inclined his head in amused gratitude, but he felt oddly vulnerable. “I appreciate that, Rumbler. Are you ready?”
The boy turned to White Kit. He pulled a wet finger from his mouth and pointed. “She made sounds. Like
the crackle of the night sky when the stars fall down.”
Blue Raven frowned. “Her voice crackled, you mean? Yes. She had seen almost seventy winters—”
“No. Not her voice. The sound in her eyes.”
“In her eyes?”
“Yes. It was loud.”
Blue Raven cocked his head, not certain whether to laugh or be afraid. “Do you often hear sounds in people’s eyes?”
Rumbler tucked his finger back in his mouth. “Just when the Night Walkers come.”
The hair on Blue Raven’s arms prickled. The Night Walkers were the ghosts of the ancestors. Their lodges, sewn of white feathers, gleamed across the night sky. They only descended to earth to bring important messages, or to guide the dying to the Up-Above-World.
“Rumbler,” Blue Raven said with an uneasy smile, “I must return to my longhouse to call a council meeting. Do you wish to come with me?”
“I wish to go home.”
“This is your new home, Rumbler. But you do not have to come with me. If you wish, I will take you to stay with Matron Starflower, or—”
“My mother will be here soon.” Rumbler craned his neck to look into Blue Raven’s eyes. “She will. She promised. And you will all die.”
“Rumbler, I—”
“She is coming for me. Lamedeer, my uncle, is helping her. They promised a long time ago. They said they would never let anyone hurt me.” He nodded certainly. “She’s coming.”
Blue Raven stroked Rumbler’s black hair. He didn’t have the courage to tell the boy that both his mother and the Paint Rock war leader were probably dead by now.
“Well, while you wait for them,” Blue Raven said,
“let me help you. You had a long journey. You must be starving and tired. First, we will feed you, then you may roll up in my buffalo hides and sleep by the fire for as long as you wish.”
Blue Raven reached down and grasped Rumbler’s hand. They walked from the longhouse and up the sunlit trail toward the crowd of people assembled near the hilltop. Blue Raven studied the boy, seeing him clearly for the first time. Though he had the girth of a normal child his age, his short arms and legs gave him a squat appearance. He swaggered oddly when he walked.
Grandfather Day Maker’s light slanted through the trees and scattered golden triangles across their path, but Rumbler’s gaze desperately roamed the forest.
“Rumbler, I wish you to know that my people, everyone in Walksalong Village, consider you very precious. We will treat you well, and you will be happy with us. I promise you this. I—”
A commotion rose on top of the hill. Blue Raven gripped the boy’s hand more securely. People shouted, and several women raced away from the crowd white-faced. The rest turned like one huge many-headed animal to look directly at Blue Raven and Rumbler.
“What’s happened?” Blue Raven whispered anxiously. He started up the trail at a fast walk. Rumbler trotted at his side to keep up.
“I told them.”
Blue Raven glanced down. “Told who?”
“Them. Those men.”
Acorn broke from the crowd and dashed down the hill. A burly man, he wore his hair in the warrior’s cut of the Thornbush Clan, shaved on the sides with a bristly ridge down the middle of his skull. His buffalohide cape, curly and brown, flapped about him with each footfall.
Acorn halted a cautious thirty hands away, breathing
hard, his mouth hanging open. His panicked eyes focused on Rumbler.
“Well?” Blue Raven demanded. “What is it? What’s happened?”
“Elder,” he said breathlessly. “Mossybill, one of the runners who brought in the False Face Child … I think he’s dying.”
Blue Raven gaped, unable to speak for several moments, then he sputtered, “Wh-what? But why? Are you certain of this?”
A swallow went down Acorn’s throat. He took a step backward. “I checked him myself. I know the face of death, Elder.”
Blue Raven just stood there. Then, slowly, he looked down.
The False Face Child’s white teeth shone, and his black eyes had turned bottomless, the darkness alive, moving.
“Rumbler, what—”
Bright childish laughter erupted from Rumbler’s throat, and Blue Raven went rigid. The boy laughed again, his head thrown back.
“I told them.”