People of the Wolf (46 page)

"I will wait." She smiled sourly. "Then we'll see how safe your hole in the ice is!"

"I'm
still
not sure about this." One Who Cries shook his head, bending to stare into the inky blackness. A frigid breeze blew out of the slit in the grimy cobble-encrusted ice that spread in dirty heaps to either side: an awesome world sundered. Before them, the Big Ice lay in mounds and ribbed masses like piled scales. Snow gleamed softly in contrast to the dirty ice. Faint echoes of the tormented ghosts reached their ears even here.

A trail of rock—the washout from the runoff channel—led into the ice, an undercut pathway winding between walls of forbidding cold.

Muscles—like bands—tightened in One Who Cries' chest. As he swallowed, it seemed to stick in his throat—midway, like a crossed fish bone. Unease prickled the base of his scalp.

"So immense ..." Singing Wolf gasped, arms spread as he looked at the ice rising high against the gray day.

One Who Cries nodded nervously.
Gray. The world has turned gray for all* of us. Color is gone. Only desperation remains. Ice and rock ahead of us, around us. Behind comes painful death at the hands of the Others. Is this the way? Truly ? Isn 't there life and joy and happiness anymore ? I don't want to go in there. Not into the darkness with the ghosts.

Wolf Dreamer stood to one side, a brooding look on his face. He wore the tailored hide he'd skinned from Grandfather White Bear. The hem swung slowly in the breath issuing from the yawning crack before them, the long white hairs rippling.

One Who Cries looked back, seeing the stiff set of Dancing Fox's face. Studiously, she and Wolf Dreamer avoided each other. What had happened in Heron's shelter that day? What did it mean for the rest of them? More than the chill wind shivered in One Who Cries' thoughts.

"See how the boulders have been rolled out?" Wolf Dreamer called, leading them up on a pile of rock. "That's

from the summer melt. This whole thing fills with water—a regular river.''

"Why's the ice only here? Why not all the way to the end of the world?" Singing Wolf asked.

"Mountains. They come together here from the east and west, restricting the Big River. The ice forms higher and runs down here to block this one place." Wolf Dreamer pointed as he explained.

Behind, the People came, packs bundled high on their backs, rope made from braided lengths of caribou and mammoth hide—laboriously split—clutched in their hands. The dogs nosed about, sniffing with lowered heads at the dank exhalation.

Green Water stopped, hands on hips, her child peeking out from under her hood, like two heads perched on one body. The infant's dark eyes blinked in awe. One Who Cries caught his wife's gaze, smiling an encouragement he didn't feel.

Wolf Dreamer took the lead, placing each step carefully on the piled rock, keeping slightly to one side where the current had lessened, the sorted deposits providing more level footing there.

"This worries me," One Who Cries growled.

Singing Wolf shot a quick look at him and smiled weakly. "Spirits are always getting mixed up in your life now, eh?"

He gave Singing Wolf his best scowl. "I had to listen to
you.
'Come on,' you said. 'We'll go first. Prove to everyone that it can be done!' And I listened. I listened to
you!
I'm out of my head! How do you talk me into these crazy things?"

"You were the one who agreed! You were the one talking about what the Others were going to do, about what would happen if the People stayed north of the Big Ice."

"But that doesn't mean I ought to listen to your stone-brained—"

"Hush," Green Water commanded anxiously, eyes on the hole. "Wolf Dreamer will lead us."

One Who Cries filled his lungs with the musty air and sighed. "Uh-huh."

"We haven't died yet," Singing Wolf reminded through clenched teeth, following in Wolf Dreamer's tracks. His head bobbed this way and that as he cast uneasy glances overhead, eyes darting as he studied black shadows and niches that

wormed away into the ice. Laughing Sunshine followed close behind, a knot of tension in her back.

"Haven't died yet—haven't died yet," One Who Cries repeated under his breath, glancing up at the cloud-shredded sky visible through the narrow crack above.

He swallowed, faint tricklings of sound barely audible from the ice to either side. Bands tightened on his heart.

"You coming? Or do I have to carry you?" Singing Wolf called from ahead.

Goaded, One Who Cries trotted forward, hair crawling— like being on a ridge just before Sun Father threw a lightning strike down. A curious wobble had unhinged his legs.

Fingers reached for him. He started, blinking in the gloom, seeing nothing. Fingers, soft, brushing, stroking death across his warm flesh—he could feel them. Ghost fingers, they flicked around him, leaving his skin to shrink against itself.

Fear! I'm more afraid than I've ever been in my life! It's not death. No, I can die. It's the darkness . . . the ghosts. A man shouldn't die in the darkness. His soul is trapped. Dark. Forever dark.

He stopped, panicked, on the verge of bolting back the way he'd come.

Behind him, he heard gravel and rock grinding under Green Water's feet. And more followed—all silent, scared numb by this insanity they were attempting.

From some deep depths, the courage came. Unwilling to let so many see his cowardice, he walked on, terror possessing his body.

The breeze carried strange scents to his sensitive nose: musty, cold, smelling sharp and tangy of rock and earth and darkness. One Who Cries clamped his teeth tight and fingered his darts as the slit of light overhead narrowed. Walls of grayness angled up from the sides, pockets scoured by abrasive water.

"And what good are darts against the ghosts of the dark?" he wondered. Some warning in his mind sent him scuttling to the side, the cool brush of the fingers tracing invisibly across his cheek.

In the lee of a turn in the channel, Wolf Dreamer uncovered an ember he'd carried in a shaped slate bowl, nudging it to touch a moss wick. A tiny light came to life.

One Who Cries shivered as they proceeded, the crack overhead vanishing at a bend in the rocky route. He took his turn, following Singing Wolf, Green Water grabbing the line behind him. He could hear his little son gurgling happily where he rode his mother's shoulders.

With all his courage quivering, he followed Wolf Dreamer into the black.

"Got to keep to the side here," Wolf Dreamer told them, voice echoing eerily, mixing with the creaking ghost voices of the black. "The water undercuts, eats its way back and forth under the ice. There are a couple of places where the roof is a little low, but enough water has run through to carve this out. There's lots of holes, too, where the water swirls, so watch your step."

Somewhere ahead in the pitch blackness a grating sounded, gritty, unclean.

"Ghosts," someone whispered.

"Don't fear." Wolf Dreamer's voice came from ahead. "I challenged them before. They're all around. Last time I had no light. Last time they let me pass in the darkness. Just be-worthy. Show them honor and pride and courage and they will let you pass unharmed."

"No wonder they growled at Crow Caller's grandfather," One Who Cries grunted, trying to fortify himself.

Singing Wolf laughed too sharply. A brittle sound, it shattered in the dark.

The line tugged in his hand. Mouth dry, heart hammering, One Who Cries started forward, walking toward the fingers.
I'm racing toward a black soul trap.
Crackles of dread coursed along every nerve.

' 'Keep talking,'' Wolf Dreamer called back. ' 'Where there are holes and places a person could stumble, tell the one behind you."

A sputter of voices broke the silence.

"Just show them honor and courage," One Who Cries mumbled to himself. He blinked in the darkness, shivering again at the faint noises in the ice around him. Overhead, something groaned loudly, horribly. I
have no courage . . . or pride . . . or honor! I just want light!

Step-by-step, they moved, Wolf Dreamer's calm voice

keeping them together, his very Power hanging about them like a protective shroud in the blackness.

The grasping fingers of the dead dangled, waiting. His skin seemed alive with the feet of tiny things of the black.

One Who Cries kept his left hand knotted around the darts at his side while his right gripped the mammoth-hide line. As he felt with his feet, his eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness, faint images coming from the lamp in Wolf Dreamer's hands. Shadows flickered across the grimy walls, tall and long.

Behind, in the blackness, Broken Branch cackled, "Wolf Dream . . . Wolf Dream" over and over. The sound of human voices wove a frail shield against the horror of the squeaks and creaks of the ghosts hanging like bats in the black overhead.

Forever stretched. One Who Cries walked—fear like an animal in his breast, scurrying, eating at his heart. The gouged ice hung lower. His soul screamed,
Trapped, you 're trapped!
Mouth dry, he forced himself onward. He fell over rounded polished cobbles, hide-wrapped feet sliding off the smooth surfaces. Behind him, Green Water hummed a spirit song to keep her courage, recradling the baby to nurse it as she walked.

They stopped every so often, shuffling forward to huddle around the sputtering grease-fed lamp Wolf Dreamer carried. Each time, the rest and food rejuvenated, a camaraderie of the dark binding them together, giving flagging spirits relief from the cold and the black, and the horrifying mewing of the dead.

By the time they'd made the fifth stop, a resignation had set in. They talked, laughed nervously, and One Who Cries actually looked up to where the tiny flickers of Wolf Dreamer's light played on the shining surface overhead. To his relief, no hollow eyes stared back.

The memory of sunlight became a dream. In rough places, One Who Cries pitched in to build a trail over the piles of rock, making it easy for the elderly and children who still stared wide-eyed at the darkness.

A hideous shriek began far overhead, rumbling down

through the ice like a bolt of lightning. The ground shook, forcing people to stumble.

"Grandmother?" Red Star called in a frail terrified voice.

"I'm here, child," Broken Branch responded.

"Can you hold my hand? I'm scared."

"Don't worry about the ghosts, child. Wolf Dreamer's Power keeps them at bay. We're safe . . . safe."

The shaking stopped, the shriek dying away to nothingness.

One Who Cries nodded uncertainly, wanting to believe. As an added protection, he refused to breathe through his mouth, lest something fly inside—some ghost reach in and hook his soul to rip it away into the forever black.

An hour or two later, they rested again, huddling close to one another. One Who Cries caught himself staring at the young man who had once been Runs In Light. Could this be true? That they walked under the Big Ice? Walked from one world into another? The shimmering hide of Grandfather White Bear gleamed in the faint flicker of the tiny lamp as Wolf Dreamer refueled it at each rest with a frozen lump of fat.

In the feeble glow, One Who Cries caught a glimpse of Dancing Fox's face. Her chiseled features were as cool as the ice around them—and as unforgiving. At that moment, her dark brown eyes lay on Wolf Dreamer, her soul bared in longing and pain. One Who Cries swallowed and pulled Green Water close, hugging her, thankful for her love.

Only then did he realize that Dancing Fox walked last in line. The most vulnerable, the farthest from the light, who would know if she were sucked away by some monster? Seeing the smoldering of her eyes in the dim glow of the lamp, he looked, away. Who was this Dancing Fox? What had she become? Once Crow Caller had hurt her, kept her from the man she loved. But now Wolf Dreamer stood only a short distance in front of her and he'd built a wall around himself she'd never be able to climb. Her haunted eyes said she knew it. One Who Cries shivered.

One step at a time, they continued, forever moving, forever clambering over battered boulders, traversing holes, progressing. Rock grated hollowly under hide-wrapped feet, the

echoes mixing with those of the ghosts, challenging the spirits, making a new reality in this place of darkness and fear.

"Bend here." "Watch this step." "Be careful through here." Had it not been for his imagination, he might have forgotten where he was. Only the cadence of Broken Branch's continued mumbling became a subconscious reality. "Wolf Dream.'' Over and over it echoed in his head—one with darkness.

They slept finally.