People of the Fire (62 page)

 
          
 
"One old woman." Left Hand waved
them forward.

 
          
 
Straight Wood felt that tug at his heart, the
feeling of premonition. Why? Hadn't Heavy Beaver Sung over him and made him
powerful? Reassured at the thought, Straight Wood followed.

 
          
 
The old woman could have been oblivious.
Straight Wood studied the situation. No one could sneak up on them from behind.
A belt of trees grew along the base of the limestone, and that was it. Unless
an entire war party hid in the shelter, they faced one old woman, and maybe the
young girl who'd killed so quickly after they raped her.

 
          
 
"Stop there, warriors of the
People!" The feeble cry wavered in the air.

 
          
 
"She's one of the People?" Left Hand
asked.

 
          
 
"Who are you?"

 
          
 
"I am White Calf. Come no closer or
you'll die!"

 
          
 
"The witch!" Straight Wood gasped,
thoughts going back to that day when White Calf had appeared and taken the
berdache
and the boy from under Heavy Beavers very

           
 
"Witch?" Left Hand laughed.
"Are you a witch?"

 
          
 
"No. But go away. You have this chance.
Otherwise you'll die."

 
          
 
Left Hand's arm shot back. Human lightning,
his body bent, putting weight behind the cast of the dart. Straight Wood
stared, watching the slim projectile glinting in the sun. It could have been a
hawk, so smoothly did it fall from the blue sky, lancing down to transfix the
old woman's gut with a soft slap.

 
          
 
"Come on!" Left Hand yelled.
"Let's find the girl!" And they charged forward.

 
          
 
Straight Wood straggled along behind, eyes
fixed on the old woman where she still sat, fragile fingers tracing the shaft
of the dart that stuck up from her guts.

 
          
 
He didn't see Left Hand take the dart that
killed him, but the warrior stumbled and went down, whimpering horribly.

 
          
 
"The girl!" Firm Dart shrieked,
pointing, changing the direction of his charge, oblivious to the plight of Left
Hand. The others sprinted after her. She ducked through the trees with the
grace of a deer in flight.

 
          
 
Straight Wood hesitated, and finally walked up
the gradual slope, looking down at the old woman. Yes, this was White Calf. She
stared up at him, black eyes flashing.

 
          
 
"So," she croaked. "You killed
White Calf? Fool, you just brought the death of the People."

 
          
 
"Heavy Beaver's warriors are everywhere,
witch.
Anit'ah
flee from us. Most don't even stand
and fight. Heavy Beaver's Dreamed their destruction."

 
          
 
She chuckled and winced at the pain.
"With my death you've spat upon Power for the last time."

 
          
 
"What do you mean, witch? What would you
know of Power?"

 
          
 
White Calf grinned happily, fingers clenched
around the dart shaft. "Where's your war party? Eh? Look down where they
ran. What do you see?"

 
          
 
Straight Wood tore his gaze from the old
woman's sparkling eyes and stared down the valley under the shade of his hand.
He looked just in time to see Firm Dart charge full tilt into a cast missile.
The warrior shrieked, falling face forward. Quick Fall, the last on his feet,
slid to a stop, frantically turning, sprinting for the far timber. The dart
caught him before he'd even started, penetrating the small of his back. He
pitched on his face and slid in the grass, trying to crawl painfully away.

 
          
 
“You're the last. Run now. Run like you've
never run before, boy. And tell Heavy Beaver that a new leader has risen among
the
Anit'ah
. Her name is Tanager. And tell Heavy
Beaver the Dreamer . . . and the Wolf Bundle are coming for him. Tell him, and
all the People . . . they'll have to Dance with fire!"

 
          
 
Straight Wood barely heard the last. He turned
on his heel, pounding back across the meadow, back tingling as his prickling
skin anticipated the bite of a keen point.

 
          
 
He paused only long enough to throw a look
over his shoulder when he reached the trees. The sight left him stunned. From
out of the clear blue morning, a whirlwind had formed before the shelter. It
whipped the grass angrily, sucking debris and dust high, twirling it all into
the clear, still air. Then it moved up the slope, centering over the old woman,
tossing her hair this way and that, flapping her clothing about. Finally, it
rose, lifting over the cliff face.

 
          
 
Straight Wood cried out, and ran as he'd never
run in his life.

 
          
 
How long? Three days? Four? The pattern of
sunrise and sunset had blurred in his fevered mind. A continual pain shot up
Little Dancer's burning leg, powered with each beat of his heart.

 
          
 
“Wolf Dreamer?" he croaked yet again.

 
          
 
Only the faint whisper of the wind accompanied
his pleas. Sometimes, when the delirium came on him, he thought it spoke in
familiar voices, but he couldn't distinguish the words. In those moments, he
talked back, hearing Elk Charm and Hungry Bull, or perhaps the rattling cackle
of White Calf's dry laugh.

 
          
 
Uneasily, he slept, and the Dreaming came on
him. He'd be one with the eagle soaring high overhead, feeling the precise
control of the wing muscles and tail. What freedom to enjoy the subtle changes
in altitude or the tensing of feathers that traced the currents of air.

           
 
Other times, he jumped with the rats in the
night, listening carefully for the faint hiss of owl wings in the darkness. His
keen nose sought for the rich sweetness of ripening grass spikes.

 
          
 
"I'm dying," he mumbled to himself,
curled in a fetal ball as the sun sweated the last of his body water from him.
Pain had driven him mostly mad. All it would take would be to drag himself to
the edge, to let his tired body tumble over the side and down into the
forbidding rocks below.

 
          
 
Wearily, he raised his head to look down at
his leg; the sight of the swollen member sickened him. The skin had puffed out
under pressure, nearly twice the size of his other leg. The color had become
ghastly. When he touched the skin, it felt fit to burst, like a bladder under
pressure. Nausea swept him.

 
          
 
"I'm dying."

 
          
 
“You are. "

 
          
 
He looked up, squinting into the sunlight, seeing
the features of Wolf Dreamer forming out of the very gold-spun rays of the sun.
He stood, tall, glistening, bathed in the golden light, skin traced by the
patterns of the Spirit World.

 
          
 
Wolf Dreamer settled himself on the rock with
no more sound than a feather on dust. He crossed his legs gracefully and sat
serenely, back straight, hands in his lap. The beauty of his face, the sympathy
and concern expressed in his sad eyes, melted Little Dancer's soul. The
confusion, the worry and despair, drained away, replaced by a warm breeze that
caressed him.

 
          
 
Little Dancer smiled, splitting his cracked
lips in the process. The cutting burden of what he had to say lost its keen
edge—no matter that the consequences would condemn him.

 
          
 
"I can't be your Dreamer. I can't leave
Elk Charm ... or my girls. I love them too much." He sighed, emotions
blunted by the throbbing agony in his leg. "I should apologize, but I
don't think I really can, not for loving my wife and children. That's not
something to be ashamed of. You see, when you asked me if I'd live and be your
Dreamer, I didn't know how much I'd—"

 
          
 
"I don't need your explanations."

           
 
Little Dancer stared, eyesight wavering from
the burning fever. "No? But I . . . Well, I thought that when a person
made a promise to a spirit and then didn't follow through . . . well, things
happened. You know, like the story about the woman who wished to have the Power
to heal. Then when she got it, she used it to help her win at gambling games
and the spirits crippled her legs in punishment."

           
 
"It's not the same," Wolf Dreamer
added in a gentle voice. "I knew you'd come to love your wife so. I knew
your love for your children would overwhelm you."

 
          
 
"You did?" Little Dancer struggled,
mind whirling with the giddiness of fever. "I don't understand. Then why
let me live? Why send me wolf to take care of me? Why did he drag me to his den
when I couldn't go further? He curled up, warming me with his body. Why did you
do all that when you knew I'd eventually fail you?"

 
          
 
The smile warmed him, shooting like bars of
golden sunshine through the darkness of regret and suffering.

 
          
 
The words came like balm: "Perhaps it
will take a while for you to understand, but I needed your humanity. From Clear
Water you got the ability to Dream. From Blood Bear you got strength. Two
Smokes taught you endurance. From Hungry Bull you got vulnerability. From White
Calf you got wisdom. But the most precious gift of all came from Sage Root; she
taught you humanity, that common identity with your peoples. She gave
unselfishly of herself, knowing what was coming."

 
          
 
"And it destroyed her."

 
          
 
"So it will destroy you, too—in the
end."

 
          
 
"Wait. You don't understand. Fm not the
one! I'm dying. And I wouldn't leave my people. Not Elk Charm, or my girls, or
Hungry Bull, or Rattling Hooves, or—"

 
          
 
"Or the rest of humanity which needs
you?" Wolf Dreamer laughed and clapped his hands together. "Yes,
that's right. And family and friends, they all love you, but that's what I
need. A lovable Dreamer who's strong and charismatic and vulnerable. You'll do
fine, Fire Dancer, just fine

 
          
 
"My name's Little Dancer.''

 
          
 
"You never took a man's name."

           
 
He stared down at the rock beneath him. The
stone had been stained by his sweat. He rubbed a finger absently in the pecked
groove of the Spiral. "After everything I'd seen, taking a different name
didn't seem that important."

 
          
 
"I'm renaming you now. You're a man, more
so than the greatest warrior or the most cunning hunter."

 
          
 
"But I'm dying. The poison's deep in me.
I've seen snakebite. I know die signs, the blackness in the blood, the swelling
as the tissue dies."

 
          
 
"Tell me, Fire Dancer, why did you climb
up here?"

 
          
 
"To find you."

 
          
 
"And why did you do that?"