Dawn light streamed across the lake, turning it into an expanse of glittering amethyst jewels. Dust Moon and Rumbler sat on the strip of sand between the water and the snow, tending their breakfast fire. The waves had calmed with the coming of morning. They shished and rocked gently, tumbling pebbles and bleached twigs before them.
Dust Moon checked the teapot and cook pot hanging on their tripods at the edges of the flames. They steamed, but not enough. She added more driftwood to the fire. Orange tongues of flame licked up beneath the soot-coated pot bottoms. Cups, bowls, and horn spoons nested near the fire pit. Sparrow had gone hunting right after they’d stopped, about half a hand of time ago, but hadn’t returned yet.
Rumbler sat across from her, his unwavering gaze on Wren’s pack. It rested beside the fire pit, the top unlaced. The corner of Rumbler’s black shirt stuck up through the opening. It had been washed and carefully folded. Dust had searched the pack, found a number of empty food bags and one containing a small amount of cornmeal, but little else.
A thoughtful expression creased Rumbler’s round face.
“That’s your shirt, isn’t it, Rumbler?” she asked.
Rumbler nodded. He drew his legs up beneath the fox-fur cape, and propped his chin on his knees. The white hood that framed his round face made his chin-length hair appear startlingly black. “It was dirty. Wren gave me one of hers to wear.”
The love in his voice touched Dust Moon.
“She gave you that cape, too, didn’t she?”
It had to be. Made to swing around a girl’s waist, it hung to Rumbler’s ankles.
“Yes,” he said softly. “I was cold. Wren took the deer-hide cape for herself. Sometimes, she shivered all night long, Grandmother.”
Dust Moon walked around the fire and sat on the sand beside him. The fragrance of pine-needle tea touched her nose.
“I’m glad Wren took such good care of you.”
Rumbler rubbed his plump cheek against the fur over his knees. On the horizon behind him, yellow lances of light shot across the sky. The glimmers on the lake changed from amethyst to pale yellow. “Wren is my best friend.”
“I thank the Spirits that you found such a friend. By the time we learned you had been captured, and the Walksalongs planned to kill you—”
“Not all of the Walksalongs, Grandmother. Wren’s
uncle told his people not to hurt me and—and Wren sneaked me food on Lost Hill.”
Dust pulled a stick from the woodpile to her right and prodded the fire. Sparks flitted and popped. So that’s how he had survived the bitter cold and wind. Hallowed ancestors, if anyone had seen Little Wren bringing a condemned child food, she would have been punished severely, maybe even killed.
A faint lake-scented breeze ruffled the gray wisps of hair on Dust’s forehead.
“Wasn’t Blue Raven watching? How did Wren manage to bring you food when—”
“Wren is smart, Grandmother,” Rumbler said. “At dark, she gathered wood, then she built her uncle’s fire very high, to blind him. She’d crawl through the snow on her belly to reach me. She always wore this cape. It was hard to see her coming, even for me.”
The worship on his face made Dust’s heart ache. She tilted her head. “That took real courage.”
Rumbler frowned at his mangled hands. “She’s brave.”
Dust reached for Rumbler’s hands, and gingerly turned them over. “Did Wren do this, too?”
“Yes.” He slid closer to Dust, offering his hands for her inspection. “Wren sawed the black joints off with her knife. She was scared. But she did it.”
Dust examined the work. “She did a good job, too. The tendons and ligaments were severed cleanly, and she sliced through the middle of the joint. Did she cauterize the wounds—”
“Yes, she—she said it would help to seal the flesh around the bones.” Rumbler wiggled his fingers. “See? It did. Mostly.”
“Yes, I do see.”
The little fingers on both hands remained infected, but
Dust Moon would take care of that. She released Rumbler’s hands, and reached for her pack. As she dragged it over, and searched around inside, she said, “Someday Wren will make a great Healer.”
“I know. I—I love her, Grandmother,” he murmured.
Dust found the folded bandages and Healing herbs, lifted them out. The laces on the leather herb bag had been gnawed in two.
“Mice!” she said. “They chew up everything. I wish the gods would wipe them all from the face of the earth.”
Wind fluttered Rumbler’s hood around his face. He tilted his head and looked away.
“What’s wrong? Do you like mice?” Dust asked.
“They do chew on things, but …”
“What, Rumbler?”
“Well, they also listen, Grandmother. When I was on Lost Hill they came to me every night. I talked to them, and they listened. The mice made me feel better.”
Dust stroked his hair. “I’m sorry, Rumbler. I won’t say another bad thing about mice.”
His black eyes glowed. “The mice might have been trying to tell you something, Grandmother, but they had to chew your laces to get your attention.”
Dust shrugged awkwardly. “Well, if so, I didn’t hear them.”
“Mother … my mother,” he said with a quaver in his voice, “she told me once that animals talk to humans all the time, but only our souls can hear them. She said that even though we have human bodies, our souls have wings and whiskers. That’s why our souls hear the voices of the animals, and our ears don’t.”
Dust smiled. “Yes, that sounds like Briar. She was very wise.”
Dust dipped up a cup of pine-needle tea, and set it on the sand beside her, then unfolded two strips of bandages.
Shadow Spirits fled from the scent of pine needles like cougars from the scent of humans. She tucked the bandages into the cup, and while they soaked, loosened the gnawed ties on her bag of licorice root.
Rumbler sniffed. “Is that licorice, Grandmother?”
“Yes, it is. Here, let me see your hands again.”
Rumbler propped his right hand on Dust’s knee, and watched as she poured a little ground licorice powder into her bowl. “I told Wren about licorice.”
“She didn’t know that licorice drives away Shadow Spirits?”
He shook his head. “I think her people have different plant Spirit Helpers.”
Dust poured enough tea over the powder to make a paste, then stirred it with her finger. She dabbed the thick paste over the feeding grounds of the Shadow Spirits, then lifted one of the bandages from the tea. After wringing it out, she carefully coiled it around Rumbler’s little finger and wrapped his palm twice. As she tied off the cloth ends, she said, “Let’s take care of the other hand, then we’ll have a cup of tea. How does that sound?”
“I’d like that, Grandmother.”
Rumbler held out his left hand, and Dust glanced at him as she coated it with licorice paste. “What are you thinking, Rumbler? Your eyebrows just pinched.”
He moved his bandaged finger, then in a barely audible voice, said, “I found my mother.”
Dust hesitated, then finished bandaging his left little finger and tied it off. She touched Rumbler’s chin, tipping his face to look into his eyes. Anguish and grief filled those black depths. Until this moment, it had not occurred to her that perhaps he’d seen Jumping Badger clubbing Briar, or watched her crawl from the lodge on fire … or heard her screams.
Dust murmured, “We saw her, too.”
Rumbler tucked his freshly bandaged hands in his lap. “Grandmother? Do you think … I’ve been worried about Mother’s afterlife soul. I asked a siskin to go and see if she was in the Up-Above-World, but it never came back. What do you think that means?”
Dust could see the terrible fear in his eyes, fear that his mother wandered the earth alone, a wailing homeless ghost. “Oh, Rumbler, I should have told you the instant we found you. Don’t worry about your mother. Sparrow and I buried her.”
Rumbler’s mouth dropped open. Disbelief vied with hope in his eyes. “Did you Sing her soul to the Up-Above-World?”
“Yes, we Sang her soul to the Up-Above-World. I’m sure she’s there this instant, laughing with old friends.”
His head trembled. “Then—if I ever learn to soul-fly, I can go see her?”
“You certainly can.”
He threw his arms around Dust’s neck and hugged her. His hood fell back. “Oh, Grandmother, thank you.”
She kissed his hair. “We couldn’t leave her like that, Rumbler. We loved her, too.”
His breath warmed Dust’s ear for a time, then he whispered, “I miss her.”
She hugged him tighter. “I do, too. There’s something your mother wished me to talk to you about.”
“You spoke with her? Before—”
“No, this was a long time ago, right after you were born.”
He pulled back and frowned. “After I was born?”
“Yes.” Dust smiled at the memory. “I had just cleaned you up, and wrapped you in a blanket, and your mother looked at me and said, ‘Dust, if anything ever happens to me, I want you to take Rumbler. Promise me you will take him and raise him as your own son.’”
Rumbler toyed with the fringes on her cape, flipping them. “What did you say, Grandmother?”
“I told her that I could think of nothing more wonderful than having you as my own son.”
For a moment, the joy of being loved and wanted seemed so great that he couldn’t answer. His throat worked, and he tugged at Dust’s fringes. “I love you, Grandmother.”
“We love you, too. Very much. Sparrow and I want you to live with us. If you want to. You know you have other relatives, third and fourth cousins in Flowering Tree Village—”
“But Grandmother, first … I—I want to find my father.”
“Your father?”
“Yes. Wren and I?” he said in a desperate voice. “We were on our way when her uncle came. But now you could go with us! You and Grandfather.” He smiled as though she’d just answered a silent prayer. “If you were with us, we wouldn’t have to be scared.”
The shock coalesced into a hard knot beneath Dust Moon’s ribs. “Rumbler … your father … I don’t know where he is.”
“But I heard my mother tell you! She told you my father had gone north to the Picture Rocks.”
Dust felt as if a bolt of lightning had just struck her. Every nerve hummed. She remembered that conversation as if it had taken place yesterday. She and Briar had been huddled together in the lodge, whispering, trying not to wake Rumbler who slept in the back. He couldn’t have been more than two winters old.
Dust said, “Blessed gods, you remember that?”
“Yes, Grandmother. My mother said that after my father discovered she was heavy with child, he decided to
go far away. To the Picture Rocks. Don’t you remember?”
“Well, yes, I do, but …”
Sparrow walked out of the elm trees that lined the shore, carrying a cleaned, plucked grouse in his left hand. Wind Mother had snarled his waist-length white hair into a mass of tangles. Damp curls bordered his cheeks, and draped the front of his elk-hide coat.
As he neared the camp, he held up the grouse and smiled. “It’s not much, but it should put some fire back in our bellies.”
The newborn light shadowed the hollows of his wrinkled cheeks and temples, making his dark eyes, and beaked nose, seem to jut from his face.
Dust gave Rumbler a serious look, and said, “Let’s eat, then we’ll talk more, all right?”
He nodded, but he didn’t look overjoyed with the idea of waiting.
Dust kissed his forehead and said, “Sit down and I’ll get you a cup of hot tea.”
Rumbler stepped back, and sank to the sand.
Dust dipped up a cup of tea for him. “Don’t worry, Rumbler.” She handed him the cup. “Here, this should warm you up inside.”
He took the cup in silence and balanced it on his knee.
Sparrow knelt at Dust’s side and glanced between them. “You two look like somebody put water hemlock in your tea. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, Sparrow. That grouse looks wonderful. Instead of boiling that bird, why don’t we cut it into quarters, and roast it?”
Sparrow grinned. “I like that idea.”
He removed his knife from his belt, slit the bird around the middle, then cracked the spine in two. Next, he sawed
along the backbone, splitting the two pieces into four, and handed them to Dust.
She pulled sticks from the woodpile, skewered the pieces, and stuck the sticks into the wet sand. Then she tilted the sticks to lean the grouse quarters over the flames to cook.
In only moments the sweet aroma of roasting meat filled the cold morning air.
Dust dipped up two more cups of tea and handed one to Sparrow. Their fingers brushed as he took it, and he seemed to feel her tension.
“Are you going to tell me,” he asked, “or do I have to guess?”
Dust sipped her own tea. The tart flavor of the pine needles enlivened her flagging souls, and gave her the strength to pull the memories from the dark corners where she kept them. I have held this secret in my heart for ten winters. Can I talk about it? Even with Briar dead? I gave her my promise I would never speak of it again.
She looked up and found Sparrow staring at her intently.
Dust said, “Rumbler wants us to help him find his father.”
“His father? You mean the Forest Spirit? The Disowned?”
Rumbler licked his lips, and rushed to say, “Yes, Grandfather. Wren and I were going, but then her uncle came.”
Sparrow smiled. “But Rumbler, who can know where a Forest Spirit lives? They’re very fickle. They ride whirlwinds, and fly on falling stars. I don’t think we could ever—”
“Grandmother”—he sucked in a halting breath, and looked at Dust—“she knows.”
Sparrow lifted his brows, and swung around to face Dust. “Do you? How?”
Dust ran her finger around the warm lip of her cup, frowning at the pale green liquid inside. Images flashed, faces half-remembered, others too clear to bear. The sound of Briar’s cries floated through Dust. Her heart thudded dully. She lowered her cup to the sand.
“I know because—because I’m the one … I …” The words failed. She took a deep breath. “I’m the one who asked him to go away.”
Sparrow sat immobile, but she could see the thoughts coalescing beyond his dark eyes. “Is this something we should talk about now?” He glanced at Rumbler.
Rumbler’s eyes had gone huge. The cup on his knee trembled.
Dust reached over and brushed his cheek with the back of her hand. “I promised I would never tell you,” she said, and the ache came through her smile. “But I think it’s time for you to hear the story.”
Rumbler whispered, “Did he go to the Picture Rocks?”
Dust let her hand fall. “Yes, at first. But I’ve heard through Traders since then that your father has moved several times. The last I heard he’d gone to a place called the Cove Meadows.”
“Can we go, too?”
Dust laced her fingers in her lap, and held them tightly.
Sparrow didn’t say a word. But he didn’t have to. Kindness and patience shone in his face.
Sparrow asked, “What was his name?”
“Bull Killer.”
Sparrow bowed his head, and closed his eyes for a long moment. “Lamedeer’s father?”
Rumbler looked between them, then blurted, “Lamedeer’s
father? You mean Lamedeer is my brother? My father is human?”
Dust nodded. “Yes, Rumbler, he is.”
“But—but I thought Lamedeer had killed his father? Red Pipe told me—”
“I know he did,” Dust said gently. “But Red Pipe did not know the truth. No one did. Except Briar, Lamedeer, Bull Killer, and me.”
Fear slackened Rumbler’s young face. “Did my father do something bad? Is that why you made him go away?”
Dust picked up her cup again and took a long sip.
A molten crescent of Grandfather Day Maker’s face crested the eastern horizon, and a sparkling flood of light poured over the water. She admired the beauty for a time.
Rumbler frowned at his hands. “Red Pipe told me that Bull Killer was a witch. He said that’s why Lamedeer had to kill him. He—”
“He wasn’t a witch, Rumbler,” Dust said. “He was a very good man. Just a man of poor judgment.”
Sparrow, his head still down, said, “What you did was for the best, Dust. The scandal would have torn Paint Rock apart.”
Dust turned the four sticks holding the grouse quarters. Fat dripped into the fire and sizzled on the coals. She looked at Rumbler. He watched her like a dog waiting to be thrown a scrap.
“Rumbler,” she said. “This is a hard story to tell. It might take me a while to get it out.”
He said, “You don’t have to, Grandmother. I’ll still love you.”
Dust bent forward and kissed his forehead. “Thank you. You need to know the truth, Rumbler.”
She refilled the teacup, and held it in her lap. “Your mother had seen eleven winters when her father died. Your grandmother, Evening Star, was very lonely. She
took a second husband almost immediately. That’s where the mistakes began, but it’s not where they ended. Bull Killer’s first wife had died in a raid only two moons before. He was lonely, too. When he married your grandmother, he wanted to move to Paint Rock Village. Your grandmother agreed, and he came to live with her.”
“And Lamedeer came, too?” Rumbler asked.
Dust nodded. “Bull Killer had seen thirty winters, ten less than Evening Star. He … he didn’t love her. He tried, but they were very different people.” She looked at Rumbler, and found him breathlessly waiting for her next words. “Bull Killer made a mistake in marrying her. But he made a bigger mistake … when he started to love Evening Star’s daughter.”
Rumbler said, “My mother?”
“Yes. Your mother loved Bull Killer, too, Rumbler. It was wrong, and they both knew it. But it didn’t make any difference to the way they felt about each other.”
Rumbler smoothed his left thumb over the bandage on his right hand. “That’s when he went away?”
“Yes, but he didn’t want to go, Rumbler. He wanted to divorce your grandmother and marry your mother.”
Sparrow said, “Blessed Spirits, if the Paint Rock elders had discovered the truth, that Briar was already pregnant with Rumbler, they would have cast out Briar and Bull Killer. Rumbler would have never had a home. No clan, no village.”
Dust turned her cup in her hands. “It was for your sake, Rumbler, that your parents decided Bull Killer should go away.”
Wisps of black smoke rose from the grouse. Dust leaped forward, pulling them away from the flames. Spots of the skin had charred, but the meat smelled wonderful. She turned the sticks upside down and dumped the pieces into their bowls.
She handed Sparrow his portion, and he took it without a word.
As she handed Rumbler his bowl, she said, “I know this isn’t easy to understand, Rumbler. All I can tell you is that every winter, Bull Killer sent a runner to ask Briar how the two of you were doing. I think that’s why she never married. She was hoping that someday he would return.”
Rumbler blew on his grouse, and steam spun up around his contemplative face.
Dust wondered if he could grasp what she’d been saying. Adultery. Scandal. His mother, barely more than a child, loving her own mother’s husband. In the depths of Dust’s heart, she actually hoped that Rumbler didn’t understand.
“Briar always planned on telling you, Rumbler, when you got old enough,” she said.
He took a bite of his grouse. As he ate, grease coated his face and hands. He said nothing.
Dust bit into her own grouse. Neither she nor Sparrow had eaten since yesterday morning. At the first taste of the delicious bird, her stomach growled. She ate slowly, relishing each bite.
Sunrise blazed across the sky, and the Cloud Giants gleamed in unearthly shades of pink and yellow.
Rumbler finished his grouse, and pulled his arms beneath his cape. He watched the fire in silence while Sparrow and Dust finished.
Dust tossed her bones into the flames and cleaned her hands in the damp sand. “Rumbler? Are you all right?”
He sucked in his lower lip and chewed on it for a while. “Grandmother?” he said. “Do you think he cares about me?”
A pain lanced Dust’s chest. “Oh, yes, I do.”
Rumbler peered at her from the corner of his eye.
“Then, will you go with me to find him?”
Sparrow dumped the bones from his bowl into the fire, and said, “I will, Rumbler.”
Dust jerked around.
Sparrow met her probing gaze calmly. He dipped his bowl in the sand, and began wiping it out, cleaning it. “We can’t stay here, Dust. You know it. I know it.”
“But …” Her voice came out low, pleading. “What about Planter and our grandchildren?”
“They’ll be here when we get back. This may be Rumbler’s only chance.”
For happiness.
Dust collected the dishes, and tucked them into her pack, thinking about those long-ago events that had changed the entire world. If Bull Killer had not married Evening Star, none of them would be here now. Paint Rock Village would be thriving. Briar would have married someone else. Rumbler might not be alive … .
Unexpected tears burned her eyes. She grabbed for Rumbler, and clutched him to her chest. “I’m so glad you’re here, Rumbler. We’ll find your father. I’ll send word to Planter that we’ll be gone for a few moons, and we’ll go.”
Rumbler disentangled himself from Dust’s grip, his eyes shining. “As soon as Wren comes.”
Sparrow rose to his feet, and slipped his pack over his shoulders. “We should be on our way.”
Rumbler craned his neck to look up at Sparrow, and smiling, said, “Are we going back now?”
“Back? Back where?”
“To the pine trees.”
Sparrow frowned. “What pine trees?”
Rumbler blinked. “By the shore.”
“You mean … where we found you last night? Why would we want to go back there?”
Rumbler put a bandaged hand on Dust’s neck. “Wren said morning. It’s morning.”
Sparrow glanced at Dust.
Dust swallowed hard. Gently, she said, “Rumbler … Wren won’t be there.”
Rumbler stared at her. “She—she said she would try to come.”
“I know, but”—Dust put her hand over Rumbler’s—“do you remember when Wren ran out of the shelter?”
“Yes. She told me to wait down by the shore.”
Dust squeezed his hand. “I know, Rumbler, but the war party captured Wren. They captured Wren, and her uncle, Blue Raven. Sparrow and I barely escaped. We—”
A high-pitched animal scream escaped Rumbler’s throat.
Dust’s souls froze. She reached for him, to hold him, but Rumbler tore free, and dashed away, racing back down the beach with his fox-fur cape flying around his legs.
“Wren?” he cried. “Wren!”
“Oh, Sparrow!” Dust lunged to her feet. “Hurry! Catch him!”
Sparrow ran, his long legs eating at the distance, calling, “Rumbler? Rumbler, wait!”
When Sparrow caught up with him, he grabbed Rumbler’s hood, and pulled him backward. Rumbler stumbled, shrieking, “No! No!” Sparrow lifted Rumbler, kicking, into his arms.
“Rumbler, listen. Listen to me!” Sparrow shouted.
Rumbler punched Sparrow with his wounded hands, sobbing, “She needs me! Wren needs me, Grandfather!”
“Shh! Shh.” Sparrow hugged him tightly, and found himself saying something he’d never intended to. “We’re going to help Wren. All right? We’re going to help her.
We just have to go to Sleeping Mist Village first. We need their warriors, Rumbler. The Walksalong war party is probably on our trail this instant. The three of us can’t fight a whole war party by ourselves. If we tried, we’d all be killed. Then who would save Wren?”
Rumbler stopped fighting, but he sobbed, “So … the war party will bring Wren to us?”
“Yes. I think so.”
“Grandfather?” His mouth trembled. “Make them come fast. Her echoes … Wren’s echoes, they’re getting harder to hear. We have to make them hurry.”
Sparrow nodded, said, “We will, Rumbler,” and carried the boy up the beach toward Dust Moon. She stood by the fire with her gray hair blowing in the wind.
When he reached the camp, Sparrow set Rumbler on the ground, and gave Dust an ironic smile. “We’re going to Sleeping Mist Village.”
Dust exhaled in relief. “Good. How did you—”
“I told Rumbler we would go to Sleeping Mist and get help. Then we would save Wren.”
Dust looked down at Rumbler’s tearful face and understanding dawned. She murmured, “Yes. Of course we will.”
Dust slipped on her pack and kicked sand over the fire, then said, “Let’s go.”
As they headed north, Rumbler trotted up between them and tucked his hands into their palms. Sparrow’s fingers closed around that tiny hand. A heartrending expression creased Dust’s face.
They walked forward together.
But toward what, the Spirits alone knew.