People of the Earth (45 page)

 
          
 
She lowered her eyes and pulled her shining
black hair away from her face. "Everyone seems to think I'm a Dreamer
except me. What happens if I don't want to be this Dreamer?"

 
          
 
The wrinkles on Singing Stone's face pulled
themselves into another pattern. "Oh, you won't want to. No one wants to
be a Dreamer. That's part of the way Dreamers are—at least, the good ones. Any
fool could wish to be a Powerful Dreamer, but he sees only the Power and how it
could do things for him. Make him an important person whom others look up to.
That sort of thing. What the idiot doesn't understand is that you don't use
Power. It uses you. Anyone who wants to Dream knows not what he asks—and is
generally denied by Power in the end." He shook his head. "No, young
White Ash. Dreaming is for those who have to Dream."

 
          
 
She wiped the sleep from her eyes and crossed
her ankles as she leaned against the rock wall to study him. "I don't want
to Dream. I want to be left alone."

 
          
 
Singing Stones poked at the fire with a stick.
"You have some time . . . short though it might be. You and Bad Belly.

           
 
In the end, as is the way with all Dreamers,
you will have to make a choice between the One and the things of this world.
You will have to choose illusion or truth."

 
          
 
She stood and pulled on Bad Belly's shirt,
walking over to stare down into Singing Stones' sparkling eyes. The yellow
light of morning glowed amber on the soft folds of his ancient skin. "I'll
have to choose? And if I refuse to make a choice?"

 
          
 
A fleeting smile played over his lips.
"It doesn't work that way, Mother of the People. Power isn't like an old
coat that you can discard along the trail of life. It's like your arms, or your
legs, or your heart. It's part of you. You can decide not to use an arm—a
useful example illustrated by Bad Belly's crippled condition.

 
          
 
"No, my girl. When you follow the path of
the Sun, you will act through Power. Before you can attend to the tasks that
await you, you need to learn the way of Power, to fly to the stars and talk to
the Spirits of the ancestors, to Wolf Dreamer and Fire Dancer, and to the
animals."

 
          
 
She cocked her head. "Attend to the tasks
that await me? Listen, I watched the last of my clan butchered before my eyes.
I've been beaten and raped. I killed the man who did that to me . . . and
almost died of exposure and starvation not too many days ago. I know you're a
great Dreamer, Singing Stones, but I'm just not ready for you, or Power, or
anything else. I need time to mourn my dead and decide what I'm going to do.
Not only that, I can't stay here. It's too close to the Wolf People . . . and
I'll kill the first one who shows up to share your lodge fire."

 
          
 
His beneficent smile never changed. "You
have a long path ahead of you, Mother of the People. For the moment, you're
upset, unsure of which way to turn, when to fight or run. You live on the
ragged edge of unthinking panic, like a young fawn who has become separated
from the herd. Be patient. Prepare yourself and find your center."

 
          
 
She took a deep breath. "You don't
understand. I'm not—" Her glance stopped at Bad Belly's empty sleeping
spot. A cold knot contracted under her heart.

 
          
 
"Perhaps I understand more than you
know." Singing Stones said. "But we have talked enough about Dreams
and Power for now. Your ears are closed and your mind has the resiliency of
rock. Here, this is ready to eat. Sit." He patted the hides next to him.
"Sit, White Ash. Mountains do not rise to the sky overnight. Mighty
forests do not spring to soaring heights between a mouse's breaths. The
workings of Power, and the making of a Dreamer, must come in their own
time."

 
          
 
"Where's Bad Belly?" she asked
warily. Bad Belly wouldn't have left her, would he? He wouldn't have given her
over to the old Spirit Healer and turned his back?

 
          
 
Singing Stones chuckled, reading her thoughts.
"Still Water left early this morning."

 
          
 
"Where?" She stood, crouched as if
to dart away. "Which way did he go? How long ago?"

 
          
 
As Singing Stones gazed at her, his old eyes
seemed to fall in upon themselves. "You are frightened?" His voice
dropped to a whisper. "Yes . . . I see. You have died, have lost all you
loved. She who was the old White Ash drowned in the river. That old White Ash
drifts in silence beneath the water now, passing among the rocks and moss in
the cool darkness."

 
          
 
"Where's Bad Belly?" She bent down
and grabbed him by the shoulders. 'Where's Bad Belly? Did he leave me
behind?"

 
          
 
Singing Stones met her stare and she stopped.
The wild desperation twisted sideways in her mind as she looked into those
incredible eyes. She seemed to lose her balance, barely realizing as her
fingers slipped from his shoulders. Her soul melted, drifting off in a new
direction, losing purpose.

 
          
 
"Sit and eat," the gentle voice
commanded, surrounding her resistance and overcoming the fragments of her
opposition. "Your body needs the food. Still Water will be back soon. He
is on the ridge top looking at a star wheel I built up there. He has not left
you. Nor will he."

 
          
 
When he smiled, her soul leaped with warmth,
as if a tingling heat flowed to wrap itself around her.

 
          
 
She blinked and shook her head when she
finally managed to regain control of her scattered thoughts and tear her gaze
from his. The shelter reeled, as if it had slipped in and out of focus. She
bent her head and gripped the bridge of her nose between thumb and forefinger,
squeezing as if to fix her wavering vision. "How do you do that? Make a
person lose her soul like that?"

 
          
 
"It's a simple shifting of Power,"
he admitted freely. "You will learn how one day. I used it only to make
you relax. Do eat before the meat gets cold. I'll spoon out some of this
biscuit root. I think you'll like it. I use a special seasoning made of seeds
from a pepper plant that grows many months' journey to the south. One of a
group of important plants that will change the Sun People forever."

 
          
 
She accepted the meat, using her teeth to tear
off tender bites. Juicy and oddly spiced, the wonderful taste ran over her
tongue. She attacked the rest, finally licking the drips from her hands and
forearms. "What was that?"

 
          
 
"I fed you yearling buffalo, but the
flavor is in that plant I was telling you about. You have to grind the fruits,
you see. That's what gives the meat that warm flavor—like bee plant in spring,
but this keeps all year when it's dried. A Trader brings me a pack of it every
time he comes through."

 
          
 
She took the horn bowl full of steaming
biscuit root he offered and stared aimlessly into it. Then she shook her head
slowly. "Singing Stones, the entire weave of my life has come undone.
Everyone I loved is dead. From the moment we left the Fat Beaver River, my
whole world began to fall apart. I don't have anything left. Not even myself."
She clamped her eyes shut. "What's happening to me?"

 
          
 
He placed a withered hand on her shoulder.
"A new way, child. Be at peace. I told you the truth when I said that the
old White Ash died at the bottom of the river. To follow the way of Power, you
must die and be reborn. Water is the life-giver, the seed of Father Sun that is
dropped on the Earth Mother. You passed through water and were reborn to a new
life. Nothing remains of the old White Ash; you can't go back."

 
          
 
She shivered at the ghostly thoughts in her
mind. "You mean all those people died because of me? I was the real
destruction of the White Clay?"

 
          
 
Singing Stones worked his thin brown lips.
"The end of the White Clay served many purposes. Peoples—be they Wolf
People, Earth People, Sun People, or any others—have existences of their own.
They, too, live on the Spiral, each in their place. Some, like the Earth People
and the Wolf People, are ancient. Other Peoples form and dissolve within a
generation, like babies who die after only a few days of life. The Sun People
are like anxious young men who have just found their manhood. They are a
vigorous People, and from their place on the Spiral, they have a great destiny.
The Sun leads them south ... far south indeed. There they will raise their feathered
god to the sun and become proud and forget the One. But some will stay here, in
this land. They will remember the One and keep Wolf sacred."

 
          
 
“And I'm part of this?"

 
          
 
He nodded again, rubbing his hands together. “You
and Still Water. You are the future. You bridge the worlds. You have a very
important part to play. Yours is the blood of First Man and Fire Dancer. These
Sun People, they are a young race. Someone must take the blood of First Man to
them. Someone needs to set their feet on the path of the Spiral. I don't know
all the ways of it yet . . . and I suppose I won't know until my spirit leaves
this body and travels the Spiral."

 
          
 
She sighed and dipped up some of the biscuit
root, savoring the flavor before licking the sweet paste from her fingers.
"None of this makes sense."

 
          
 
Singing Stones pulled at the loose skin on his
chin. “No. It won't for a while yet. And to find the way to the One, you need
the Wolf Bundle. It Sings with a thousand voices—all that is and is not. If the
Wolf Bundle deems you worthy, it will open the path to the One for you. The
Bundle will guide you . . . and Dream you back."

 
          
 
“What is this bundle?" Bad Belly called
as he stepped into the shelter. Trouble followed at his heels, looked around,
and then flopped in a heap to chew at his tail.

 
          
 
“The Bundle," Singing Stones said to
himself, lost in private thoughts.

 
          
 
White Ash set the horn bowl aside and leaped to
her feet to hug Bad Belly. “I thought you were gone, that you'd left me
behind."

           
 
His homely face flushed nervously. "I
almost did."

 
          
 
She gasped and stared into his eyes, seeking
to prove to herself that it wasn't so. "I need you, Bad Belly. Don't leave
me. Don't go off and leave me here by myself."

 
          
 
He tried to shrug it off. "I wouldn't.
It's just that . . . well, I climbed up on top of the ridge to look at the star
wheel Singing Stones made. You were asleep. I couldn't bring myself to waken
you, not when you were resting for the first time—and even smiling in your
sleep. So, anyhow, Trouble and I climbed up there. It's a special—"

 
          
 
“Bad Belly, you said you almost left me!"

 
          
 
He grinned shyly. "I'd never do that—not
on purpose, I mean. No, what happened was that I sort of got to looking at the
sky instead of where I was walking, trying to picture it at night, you see?
Well, that's when I realized Trouble had stopped, and I turned around to see
what he was doing and . . . and almost walked off the edge of the cliff."

 
          
 
She sighed. "That's what you meant by not
coming back? That you almost killed yourself?"

 
          
 
He avoided her eyes. "It happens
sometimes. I get lost in my head, thinking about things."

 
          
 
"Still Water? Come eat some of
this," Singing Stones called as he lifted a slab of meat on a willow spit.