People of the Wolf (5 page)

eyes as wide and round as an owl's. She gritted her teeth in a mixture of anger and hurt as she rumbled stiffly to shove a bone awl through frozen leather.

"Curse this—"

"What?" Sunshine asked shakily.

"I was talking to the hide. It's frozen so solid I can hear the ice crystals crunching as the awl wiggles through them.''

"Hurry, please," said Laughing Sunshine, "I can't bear this."

Laying the baby in her lap, Dancing Fox quickly pulled her hand up into her sleeve and used the hide cuff as a cushion beneath her fist as she forced the awl through the leather. A dull crackling sounded as the hide gave way. Placing the awl in her teeth, she worked the last segment of sinew through the hole and drew it tight, sealing the tiny face in the hide sack.

So many dead. Has the Long Dark eaten all our souls? Have light and life left the whole world?
She rubbed her gaunt belly, fearing Crow Caller's seed might have taken root in her womb. Her bleeding hadn't come in the last two moons—but then hunger did that to a woman.

Across from her, Laughing Sunshine moaned to herself, rocking back and forth on her heels, a grimace tightening her triangular face and beaked nose. With a flake of stone she'd struck off one of Singing Wolf's cores, she cut at the skin of her gaunt cheeks until blood ran hotly. Then she turned the sharp edge on her hair, cutting it short to the collar, letting long black strands fall onto the frozen, stained ground.

"Sunshine?" Dancing Fox called softly, tying the death knot on the baby's sack. The child's haunted blue face hung heavy in her mind, like oil smoke on a cold morning. She held the sack out for the mother to take, but Sunshine only shook her head bitterly.

Dancing Fox laid the baby in the crook of her left arm and with her right reached out to squeeze Sunshine's shoulder. "Stop this," she ordered softly. "You're using up strength you need to live."

"Maybe I don't want to live," Sunshine whimpered, dropping her bloodied face into her hands. ''All my children have died this Long Dark. I—"

"Hush! Of course you want to live. There can be other babies. You aren't so old you can't—"

"Doesn't anyone Dream anymore?" Sunshine wailed hysterically, slamming her fists repeatedly into the frozen floor. The dull thudding stabbed bitterly at Fox's heart. "What's happened to us? What are we doing here, starving to death? Has Father Sun abandoned us to the spirits of the Long Dark?"

"It may be," Dancing Fox said bitterly. "But I plan to go on living just to spite Him. And I'm going to drag you along with me. Now stop torturing yourself. We have duties to perform."

Sunshine wiped her eyes, whispering, "Is your heart as empty as your belly, Fox? What has Crow Caller done—"

"Done?" she asked reflectively, pain smoldering in her breast at the mention of her husband's name. She lowered her eyes to scowl at the floor. "He's made me stronger."

"You mean half-human. You used to be kind and—"

"Kindness is for the living," she said, pushing the door flap open. Cold splashed into the shelter, wind flapping their fur hoods. "The dead don't need it anymore."

Sunshine cocked her head curiously. "But my little girl's spirit can still hear—"

"There aren't any spirits."

"You ... Of course, there are. What do you think makes—"

Fox shook her head vehemently. "No, there aren't. I've been praying to Father Sun and the Monster Children for two moons to—"

"Since you married Crow Caller?"

, Fox let the flap drop closed and nodded tightly. "They haven't answered a single prayer."

Sunshine blinked away her tears, swallowing hard. "Maybe his Power prevents them from hearing you."

"Maybe."

"So they might still exist," she said pleadingly. "And my little girl can hear."

"Of course." Dancing Fox nodded, shame at her insensitivity reddening her cheeks. She fumbled with the death sack, stroking the covered head. What did she think she was

doing, undermining her friend's last hope? "I didn’t mean it, Sunshine. Of course she can hear."

"I know you didn't." Sunshine smiled consolingly, patting Fox's arm. "You're just hungry and tired—like the rest of us."

They exchanged a tender smile and crawled beneath the flap out into the faint gray light. Dancing Fox's legs quivered weakly as she got to her feet. Straining, she helped pull Laughing Sunshine up.

Crow Caller stood a short distance away, his withered features contorted with irritation. His aged flesh hung in sagging wrinkles. On one side of his hawk nose glittered a deadly black eye—the other stared white-blind, lifeless. His thin-lipped mouth held no humor—no feeling for another tragedy of death. Lifting his hands, he immediately began singing, ancient voice wavering up and down the scale as he sang the death song by rote, calling the Blessed Star People to accept this baby among them—even if it had no name.

Of course they hadn't named it. The People wouldn't name a baby until it passed five Long Darks to prove it would live-. Until that time, a baby was an animal anyway. It didn't turn human until it learned to talk, and think, and began to become one of the People. That's when a human soul would come—during a Dream—and find a home in a child.

Singing Wolf, Laughing Sunshine's husband, strode forward to embrace his wife and take the child from Fox's arms. He laid the baby in Sunshine's reluctant hands. One by one the People lifted the frozen flaps of their shelters and stumbled awkwardly to their feet. Some swayed, dizzy from hunger.

The People were tall and straight, their skin browned in the snowy glare. Squint lines had been etched tight around their eyes and mouths, a legacy of sun, wind, and storm. Wide lips meant for laughter had grown thin, futility gleaming behind pain-sharpened eyes. Wind Woman's fingers caught their tailored furs, old grease stains shining blackly in the gray ness. Against the subdued light, they looked soft and rounded in their mounds of hides, a people as worn as the polished glacial cobbles they camped on.

In a solemn line, they walked, all singing, following Sunshine as she plodded unsteadily around the ice-packed shel-

ters to the drifts beyond. She started up a slope, kicking footholds in the white crust. Stumbling, she nearly dropped her child. Hugging it to her breast, she took a deep breath, and continued.

Following haltingly in her footsteps, the People crossed to the other side. Here and there the dead lay visible, parts of their bodies twisting gruesomely from the snow. The old had died first. In the early days they had quietly wandered out into the vast wind-ripped wilderness to die alone, as was their right. Later, as strength failed, the elderly had frozen in their robes, refusing to eat.

Sunshine placed the baby on the top of the drift, dropping to her knees, sobbing her anguish. Around and below her, the People sang, voices raised in the song of death, hoping to send the nameless infant to the Star People.

Crow Caller raised his hands, turning to look at them. "It was only a girl!" he shouted. "Let's get this over with quickly so we can get back to the shelters."

Sunshine's cries halted abruptly as she turned her swollen eyes to stare imploringly at the old shaman.

Dancing Fox lifted a brow, anger searing her breast when she saw the devastated look in Sunshine's eyes. "Shut up, husband," she murmured in a low voice that shook. "Any child is precious."

"Are you so anxious to have me fill you that you'll take any result? Keep your mouth—"

"Hardly."

He jerked around to glare at her. "Brave, eh? I ought to curse your womb so you'll never give birth."

"Would you?" she responded spitefully. "I'd be grateful."

A low murmuring eddied through the gathering, people frowning at Fox's defiance. A young woman didn't speak so to an elder—especially if he was her husband. As Fox glanced at the condemning eyes, a tingling invaded her stomach. She'd tried all her life to obey the rules. Why could she never quite manage?

Crow Caller lifted his chin slowly, rage gleaming in his one black eye. He stabbed a mittened hand toward her. "You see? Evidence that women are less than nothing—dirt useful only for growing a man's seed."

"It's true," the youth, Eagle Cries, wailed from the back of the gathering. "Everyone knows it. Let's hurry and get back to the shelters!"

"Listen—" Crow Caller began.

"You fools," a fragile old voice interrupted, resounding from the last shelter. ' 'Who do you think wiped your butts when you were babes? Who wiped your tears when you were frightened? Eh, your fathers?"

People turned, watching pensively as Broken Branch, the oldest member of the band, struggled from beneath the heavy hide flap to hobble forward. Brittle gray hair stuck out at odd angles from beneath her arctic fox hood. The nostrils of her preposterously sharp nose flared; her ancient brown eyes squinted in what everyone recognized as utter disdain. The People faded back, clearing a path for her.

When she reached the top of the hill, she gazed down at the crowd menacingly, pinning each man with an evil stare. A few puffed out their chests defiantly, most dropped their gazes to show respect.

She waved a hand as though dismissing all of them. "What are you doing arguing when a member of our clan is dead?" Wind Woman accented her words by gusting ferociously over the drifts. People grabbed each other to steady themselves. "You ought to be thinking about how we can keep anyone else from dying!"

"Yes," Crow Caller spat, eyeing her askance. "We must leave here. Death stalks each of us—"

"Don't agree with me, you old fake," Broken Branch accused.

Crow Caller's eyes lit with rage. "I have the greatest Spirit Power among the People!" he yelled, shaking a fist in her face.

"So you keep telling me."

Dancing Fox took a step backward as her husband bellowed like a wounded caribou bull. "Don't challenge me,
you old witch! I'll curse your soul so it never reaches the Star
People. I'll see you buried—locked in the ground forever—
to rot in darkness."

The people backed away from Broken Branch.

"We're leaving here tomorrow!" Crow Caller nodded to himself.

"Leaving?" Singing Wolf asked, hand playing over his wife's unfeeling head. "I've hunted . . . and seen no game. If we starve to death sitting . . . won't we starve faster walking? Worse, in hunger, we've eaten our dogs. Everything must be carried on our backs."

"If we go . . ." One Who Cries added thoughtfully, "we'll leave a string of dead. You expect these old ones to keep up? And which way will we go?" He raised a hand to augment his flat-faced expression. "Where is mammoth? Where is caribou? "

"Maybe we were supposed to come here," Singing Wolf cried passionately over his wife's renewed sobbing. "You're the Dreamer. Do something. I'm tired of watching my children die. Go back? But behind are the Others. If we go back . . . they'll kill us. Maybe if we go further south, we'll—"

' 'We
can't
go south,'' Crow Caller rasped, his ancient face lined and sagging under the pull of hunger. With his one good eye, he searched their faces, disturbed by Broken Branch's flinty squint. "My father's father went there." His fur-lined parka hood flapped around his white-streaked black hair. "He found a wall of ice higher than men can climb. Higher than seagull can fly. Eagle can fly that high ... but nothing else. They hunted—"

"How do you know it's higher than a man can climb?" Broken Branch ran a sleeve across her running nose and taunted, "Eh? Did your grandfather try?"

A hush descended, Laughing Sunshine's wailing silenced by the challenge to the People's greatest shaman.

Crow Caller's face crimsoned. "He didn't have to. He could look at it and know—"

"He was a coward," said Broken Branch. "The People knew it then . . . and we see it in you now. You go back north if you want. Let those Others kill you." She waved a mittened hand to the gray horizon. "But I'm going south. Heron went out there someplace. Now there was a
real
Dreamer! She'd make—"

"What?" Crow Caller ridiculed. "You'd follow a witch? A wicked Spirit who sucks men's souls and blows them out into the Long Dark? Besides, she's just a legend. Like smoke blowing around your doddering mind."

"Bah! What do you know? I
knew her!"
the old woman spat. "She went south seeking Spirit Power to—"

"Then go!" Crow Caller shouted, nodding at the crowd. "This old hag deserves death. She's no good to the People. She's too old to hunt or fish. Her womb has gone as dead as her mind.
She can't even Dream anymore.''

Murmurs swept the wastes, faces hardening. Unable to Dream? A sign the spirit world had abandoned a person. The old shaman straightened, gloating. Hesitant eyes flickered back and forth, watching, waiting.

Broken Branch lifted an eyebrow. "Well, that makes me more fortunate than you. At least I don't have to suffer false Dreams . . . Dreams that hurt the People. Or worse . . . make them up to keep people believing in a Power that died long ago."