People of the Fire (47 page)

 
          
 
"I’m not the one!"

 
          
 
"I'll give you all the time I can, little
friend. Then, when I can no longer wait, I'll have to test you. In the
meantime, prepare yourself. You can't help who you are, or what you'll be. You
can only prepare . . . and Dance the Spiral. You can only prepare . . . prepare
..."

 
          
 
'Tm NOT the one! NOT THE ONE! NOT-"

 
          
 
Fire blasted up with the clapping explosion of
lightning, beating him into the heat, burning him into the very skeleton of the
tortured earth, twisting. . . .

 
          
 
"Little Dancer!" Elk Charm's cry
pierced his horrified sleep like a frosty dart.

 
          
 
He gasped and jerked awake, sitting up in his
sleeping robes. He gulped to fill his lungs with the crisp night air. Around
him, the others sat up in their robes, staring with wary eyes. Makes Fun talked
in cooing voices, soothing Mouse Runner, who'd awakened echoing Little Dancer's
cries.

 
          
 
"You were dreaming again," Elk Charm
told him, placing a cool hand on his sweaty shoulder. "You're here. We're
all here. It's all right."

 
          
 
He shot a frightened look into her worried
eyes and swallowed, feeling his throat burn, as if still in the Dream.

 
          
 
"Sleep now, son," Hungry Bull called
from where he and Rattling Hooves sat up in their robes.

 
          
 
"You bet!" Black Crow called from
the bed he shared with Makes Fun. "Any of those dream beasts come in here.
Three Toes will dart '
em
one right after another/'

           
 
"Hey!" Three Toes cried. "You
dart those dream monsters yourself. Me, I'm running faster than an antelope
with an angry wasp on his tail!"

 
          
 
No one laughed despite the effort.

 
          
 
Elk Charm had gripped his hand in hers. He
took a deep breath and nodded. "Just a dream, that's all. Everyone go to
sleep." I'm just being strange again.

 
          
 
Rattling Hooves stared intently at her
daughter, a look that communicated something private. Two Smokes watched, eyes
like slits where he lay curled in the corner. To Little Dancer, he might have
been a knowing predator. His manner smacked of a bobcat waiting over a rabbit
hole.

 
          
 
Little Dancer lay back down, watching the rock
overhead where it glowed dully red from the embers in the remains of the night
fire. Like the reddish billows of blackness that rose from the burning forest
in the Dream.

 
          
 
Elk Charm settled herself next to him,
pressing her body reassuringly against his, snuggling close and hugging him
tightly.

 
          
 
"I worry about you," she whispered.
"Tomorrow, Little Dancer, let's go for a walk. We've . . . well, I think I
know something that will stop the Dreams. Tomorrow . . . we'll talk about
it."

 
          
 
"What?"

 
          
 
"Tomorrow," her strained voice
promised. "Tonight, just hold me. Hold me like it was the last time."

 
          
 
He pulled her against him, reaching to run her
long black braids through nervous fingers. "
Shhh
!
Sleep now, I'll be fine."

 
          
 
She hugged him with all her strength until her
arms shook. A warmth rose to fill him. Yes, let the Dreams come and do as they
pleased. So long as he had her, he could stand them. Why had she sounded so
lonely, so desperate and frightened?

 
          
 
The afterimage of the fire burned behind his
eyelids. He stared straight overhead, memorizing each of the angles of rock,
noting which had the thickest soot, listening to the night wind beyond the
hangings that kept the shelter warm and moderately protected.

           
 
In the darkness, a wolf howled, the sound
cutting like a quartzite blade in his heart.

 
          
 
He looked toward the back wall of the shelter
above where the children slept, and his soul chilled. There, the wolf effigy
watched him with burning eyes.

 
          
 
"How much more of this must I stand? This
. . . human treats me like a bit of dung. Each time my anger grows. I weaken,
yet you tell me to remain helpless! Power leaks away like heat from a winter
lodge and I can do nothing? I would break him, twist his bones like grass
stems. I would sear his soul in his body! You seen, felt, yet you do nothing
but torment his little finger!''

 
          
 
"Patience," Wolf Dreamer soothed.
"The boy is walking into our net.''

 
          
 
"I haven't much patience left."

 
          
 
"We need the boy desperately. Humans live
with time. They Dream the future as well as the past. "

 
          
 
“My patience has limits. I see no progress
with the boy. Heavy Beaver plans to send his warriors to the mountains with the
spring thaw. What are you going to do?"

 
          
 
“I know my options. I have another gamble to
make.''

 
          
 
"Like the last one?"

 
          
 
"Wait. The Watcher follows the boy."

 
          
 
''As I wait, desperation grows. I must act . .
. or die.''

 
          
 
"Wait! Or you will destroy it all."

 
          
 
Hip aching, White Calf hitched her way through
the snow. A pack of firewood hung from a tumpline pressed into the parchment
skin of her forehead. Her breath puffed in a white wreath with each laboring of
her lungs. White hair hung in straggles from under her fox-hide hood.

           
 
She worked her way out of a thick stand of
timber she'd hesitated to harvest at first. For one thing, it sat on a steep
slope, which increased the risk of her falling in the dense, interlacing tangle
of deadfall. At her age, alone, in winter, a broken leg meant death—but then so
did freezing from lack of firewood.

 
          
 
She stopped, grimacing at the pain in her hips
and the trembling of her exhausted legs.

 
          
 
"Getting too . . . too old . . . for this
kind of thing." She swallowed, bending over to brace birdlike hands on
thin knees, easing the strain on her back.

 
          
 
She hadn't realized how much simpler life had
been with Little Dancer to carry wood and water. And what a joy it had been to
talk to Two Smokes around the night fire. In the company of the
berdache
, she could sit by the hour and reminisce about
Broken Bill and old Has No Sense and Eats Too Fast. All gone now; they lived
only in her memory. Did that constitute the sum and total of existence? Only to
live on for as long as someone remembered you? And what then? Did that fragile
link between this world and the
Starweb
break? If
only the ghosts could speak instead of just haunting the quiet, green-shaded
places and the hidden crevasses under the snow. If only they'd give tongue to
their musings instead of silently watching the ways of the world.

 
          
 
Her lungs made a wheezing sound as she tried
to get her breath. A trembling had begun in her leg and the joint of her hip
burned as if someone had dropped a small ember from a smoldering fire down
inside. She hadn't realized how much she'd aged in the last five years since
her final return from Heavy Beaver's camp.

 
          
 
She growled to herself and squinted up at the
sky. Worse, she, White Calf, who had always chosen to reject the ways of people
for the solitude of a Dreamer, missed the company of others. "Sour old
excuse for a Dreamer you are, girl," she mumbled to herself.

 
          
 
Taking a resigned breath, she hitched her pack
up and began breaking a careful trail down toward the path. Despite the newly
crusted thickness of spring snow, the elk had used the route through the winter
and beaten down a track. With that footing, travel wasn't as horrible as it
could have been. Spring, despite its sunny days, made traveling far more
difficult. The snow, loose and crumbly in winter, melted and froze while new
water-rich spring snow covered the old ice. It never froze hard enough to
support a person's weight. Sooner or later, her foot punched through the thin
ice, leaving her wallowing and cursing as she fought to get back up. Nor did
snowshoes help much, for each ridge had been blown free of snow, leaving
gnarled brush, rocks, and sticks and other irregularities to puncture the
webbing or break the willow hoops.

 
          
 
"I hate spring," she growled,
feeling the cold bite of the wind. "In the dead of winter, the deep cold
lies on the land and that's that. But spring? So what if the air's warmer? It's
wetter . . . and blowing all the time. The wind goes right through a person.
Then you wade around in the wet snow and everything gets soaked. Then darkness
comes, and the temperature drops, and then what kind of shape are you in? I'll
take a blizzard in the deep cold compared to this any day."

 
          
 
She jutted her jaw out in silent assent and
considered the mud that always made such a mess of spring walking. She hissed
at herself, and put all thought of it out of her mind. Why be depressed when
she had a hard walk ahead of her?

 
          
 
On quaking legs, she rounded the last bend in
the trail and stopped to take another breather, waiting for her lungs to
recover and her heart to quit trying to batter through her breastbone. Only
when she looked up did she see the faint trace of smoke rising from her shelter
where it nestled under the gray brooding limestone cliff.

 
          
 
"Who ..." Perplexed, she found some
reserve in the depths of her antique body and forced her legs into a vigor
they'd forgotten they'd ever had.

 
          
 
"Ho-
yeh
!"
she called. "Greetings! Who's there

 
          
 
The surprise increased when Little Dancer
parted the flap and stepped out, squinting in the brighter light. He smiled and
hurried to help her, easily lifting her load with one hand and swinging it over
his back. She narrowed an eye—a nasty retort on her lips. Strength always
seemed to be wasted on the young—who were forever too foolish to know what they
had.

 
          
 
"Thanks," she wheezed. "Whew.
Let me catch my breath and I'll tell you hello."

 
          
 
He cocked his head, inspecting her. "I
thought about tracking you down, but I figured you might be up on the mountain.
You know, up where you've got the stone circle with the lines in it. I didn't
want to disturb your Dreaming."

 
          
 
She huffed and puffed up the slope to the
hangings, slipping in and waddling over to her hides. After the snow and bright
sunlight the place looked like night. Despite the graying of her vision, she
knew the way by heart. Grunting and creaking, she let herself down and sighed,
staring absently at the crackling fire. "You could have tracked me. For a
bit there, I wasn't sure I'd make it back."

 
          
 
He settled her bundle of wood onto a stack,
which—to White Calf's eyes at least—looked of mythic proportion.

 
          
 
He gestured at the wood. "I noticed you
had about run out, so I carried some in."

 
          
 
"You got a man name yet?"

 
          
 
He shook his head, lifting a shoulder shyly.
"No. I've never . . . well, it just never gets done. And you know, it's
not so important anymore."

 
          
 
She grinned at him. "If I didn't think it
would kill me, I'd get up and hug you."

 
          
 
A flicker of worry ceased his face.
"You're not feeling well?"

 
          
 
Her lungs
spasmed
,
leaving her coughing. She finished the spell and waved off his concern.
"No, it's not that, boy. It's just . . . well, age, you know? Seems like
every day I'm faced with the fact that I won't live forever."

 
          
 
"You'll be around," he said simply.

 
          
 
"Think so?"

 
          
 
"Too mean to die."

 
          
 
She chuckled at that and ended up coughing
again. He waited her out before noting, "You didn't used to cough so
much."

 
          
 
"It only comes when I've pushed myself
too far." She worked her toothless jaws and twitched her lips. "Seems
like the wood gets farther and farther away. Pull that flap open, let some
light in here. It's warm enough yet that we won't freeze and it's an excuse to
change this old air for new."

 
          
 
"You should move camps. When I was
looking around, I noticed the timber across the valley has been picked pretty
clean. The lower branches have all been stripped. The deadfall has been pulled
out. Only the big logs are left."

 
          
 
She shrugged. "I like it here."

 
          
 
"How's your food holding out?"

 
          
 
"They send you up here to ask me
questions?"

 
          
 
He grinned at her, a sheepish curl to his
lips. "Not really. They've been talking, of course. Two Smokes is worried
sick about you." He paused, a wicked light in his eyes. "Maybe he's
not so wrong."

 
          
 
She growled at him, narrowing her eyes evilly.
"So why did you really come? Just to make me miserable? Well, don't just
sit there like a mushroom on a log, tell me. What's the news? Why are you here?
Nobody to harass you?"

 
          
 
He threw another couple of branches on the
fire as she undid her moccasins and propped them on the rocks next to the
glowing coals. Drying moccasins had to be done just right. To begin with, they
must be made of thoroughly smoked and excellently tanned leather, lest they
shrink or harden, or crack. And if a person got the footgear too hot, the heat
would drive out the oils and fats that helped waterproof them.

 
          
 
"I get harassed plenty." His grin
faded. "People have just been wondering about how you were getting along,
like I said. We've-"

 
          
 
"Everyone's all right? No one's sick or
hurt? You didn't come for help to heal?"

 
          
 
"No, everyone's fine. But we'd started to
worry about you. The idea came up more than once to send someone up to see how
you were doing." A twinkle came to his eye as he added, "Maybe make
sure you weren't going to freeze."

 
          
 
"Bah! That'll be the day!"

 
          
 
Ignoring her outburst, he continued, "I
just sort of volunteered."

 
          
 
She perked up at that. "Volunteered? You?
I thought you didn't like me." And you're hiding something. No, there's
more to this. What?

           
 
He avoided her eyes. "It's not that I
don't like you. It's just that you kept pushing me about Power. You always
seemed to know I'd Dreamed. You always knew everything. You wanted me to be
more than I wanted to be. That's all. I didn't hate you or anything."

 
          
 
Liar! The old keenness had returned.
"Then why did you decide to come? The Dreams still bothering you?"
Ah, that's it! Look at him squirm like a packrat in a snake's hole!

 
          
 
He nodded, rubbing his hands together,
suddenly nervous. "Look, I'm not your Dreamer. I don't want to get all
tangled up in that again."

 
          
 
"Well, quit worrying. You're not my
Dreamer." She shifted the moccasins on the rock, watching the steam rise from
the warm hides.

 
          
 
"Good."

 
          
 
"But it's the Dreams, isn't it? That's
why you came all the way up here."

 
          
 
He stared silently into the fire, a faint
puckering visible about his lips, lines forming in his brow.

 
          
 
Dropping her voice, she added gently, "I
won't push you about it. I . . . well, I made a mistake. Handled the whole
thing poorly. I learned that day Blood Bear came down here and tried to start a
war. That's when it all came clear." She made a gesture as if to wave it
all away. "So just talk. I'll help any way I can. I'll just listen if you
want."

 
          
 
He hesitated, seemed to stumble, then said:
"It's the Dreams. I'm making everyone but Two Smokes crazy. Hungry Bull
says it's like being on a peak in a lightning storm, you don't know when to
jump."