The Dawn Country (30 page)

Zateri moved into the clearing and bravely walked beneath the ghost. Rainbows danced upon her upturned face. “It’s the skin. A dried human skin. It must have been stretched over the frame, but the frame fell off when the wind—”

“Who is it?” Auma released Conkesema, and the girl sank to the ground and covered her face with her dress hem. Auma walked to stand beside Zateri. “Is it Wrass?”

“The corpse is too big. It’s probably that guard Akio. This was his punishment for letting us escape. She turned him into one of her
hanehwa.”

Zateri studied the ground. The leaves were thick in this small clearing, and Wind Mother had stirred them around. There were no tracks, no trails. But Gannajero’s men must have walked back to the river where the canoes were stowed.

She carefully made her way down to the shore and frowned. Near one of the places where they’d shoved off, there were strange drag marks.

“What’s this?” she said just above a whisper.

“Did you find something?”

“Yes, but I’m not sure what it is.”

Zateri knelt. When her eyes narrowed, the reflections off the water seemed to grow brighter. “One of them must have been hurt. I see handprints beside the drag marks, but no footprints. The handprints are small.”

“A boy’s?”

Hope was rushing in her veins. She put her fingers over one of the handprints. It was only slightly larger than hers. “Yes,” the soft cry erupted from her lips before she knew it. “I—I think it’s Wrass.”

Auma hurried over to look. “He escaped?”

Zateri sank down on the sand to look at the handprints more closely. Something was wrong. A frightening sensation constricted her chest, squeezing it until she couldn’t breathe. “Auma, if he’s dragging himself, he’s hurt badly.”

“Maybe that’s why the old woman left him. He was dying.”

The words were like a deerbone stiletto in Zateri’s heart. She longed to strike the girl. But she got to her feet and let her gaze follow the drag marks up the shore. He couldn’t have gone far. “I’m going to find him.”

Thirty-one

S
onon leaned against the trunk of a hemlock and watched the snow fall out of the lingering blue dusk. The storm had quieted the forest and given it a luminous serenity. Even the sound of the nearby river seemed hushed.

He tipped his face up and let the cold flakes land on his skin. The boys whispered to his right. He didn’t look at them, but knew they sat atop the rounded humps where Wakdanek and Sindak had buried them less than one hand of time ago.

He closed his eyes and just tried to feel.

One of the boys laughed, and it filled his tired heart with warmth. As long as Wakdanek lived, they’d be all right. The Healer would come back and make sure they got home to their families, who would in turn make sure they were properly prepared to cross the bridge to the afterlife.

He shoved away from the tree and turned toward the river. In the subdued light the water had a leaden sheen.

He wasn’t needed here.

He headed south down the shore.

Nothing mattered now except his steps; they would decide everything. Steps always did. A man might plan for every detail and try to prepare himself for all the things that could go wrong, but in the end steps were all that mattered. Steps created the path. Steps brought you to the final moment when you had to stand face-to-face with all the grief you’d ever been asked to shelter in your heart. Your own, as well as that of others. It didn’t matter who you were, or how you’d lived … the enormity was unbearable. It slammed you down. When you struggled up again, the grief either transformed into the Healer’s balm or it became a murderer’s inspiration.

He concentrated on placing one foot in front of the other.

Somewhere just ahead, he would take the final steps.

Thirty-two

O
nly the muffled tramping of their feet on snow-covered leaves filled the twilight.

“We’ll have to stop soon,” Auma said from behind her. “It’s getting too dark to see the drag marks, and the snow is falling harder.”

Zateri didn’t answer. Panic was running hot and fierce in her body. She couldn’t believe Wrass had dragged himself this far, but she knew him. The darkness and snow wouldn’t stop him. He’d keep moving, trying to put distance between himself and Gannajero, until he was physically unable to continue and collapsed in a dead faint. If she didn’t find him soon, she never would. The snow would fill the drag marks, and his trail would be erased from the world.

“Did you hear me?” Auma asked. “We should stop for the night.”

“I’m not stopping.” Zateri kept her gaze on the ground. A shallow swale marked the path where Wrass had dragged himself through the falling snow. It led around a thicket of willows and up into the trees. As she walked along beside the swale, gigantic flakes swirled around her, landing cold and silent on her hood and cape.

“
Zateri!
We have to stop!”

She swung around with her jaw locked. She was too exhausted and frightened to tolerate weakness. In anyone. “If you can’t keep up, then sit down. I’ll come back for you as soon as I find Wrass.”

Auma clutched the collar of her doehide dress closed beneath her chin. “I wasn’t trying to make you angry. We’re tired and hungry. We can barely see. I—”

“Stop complaining. I can’t stand it. Don’t you think I’m tired and hungry, too?”

Zateri glared at her and turned back to the trail.

She followed his path around a massive sycamore trunk, then down a slope. Auma and Conkesema resolutely plodded along behind her.

Zateri’s taut nerves hummed. Every noise, even the whisper of an owl’s wings overhead, left her shaking. She loved the woods at home, but this forest lay as though under some dread enchantment. She could sense Forest Spirits moving around her, tracking her through the haunted darkness, peering at her between the frosted branches. Every now and then, she glimpsed something blacker than the shadows drifting through the trees. And there was more than one.

But she couldn’t let fear stop her. Auma was right about one thing: the light was almost gone. Time was running out.

Ahead of her loomed the dark bulk of a toppled maple. The roots thrust up into the air like crooked arms. Straining her eyes against the falling flakes, she thought the trail led toward it.

Her moccasins squealed in the snow as she trudged ahead. In the hollow beneath the upturned roots, there was a dark splotch, a mound, like an animal curled on its …

“Wrass?” she cried. Down the swale she ran, slipping across the snow, her cape streaming behind her. “Wrass?
Wrass!
”

He woke with a start and shoved up on his elbows. Weakly, he answered, “Zateri?”

“Thank the gods we found you.”

She launched herself at him, but the instant her arms went around him, her joy vanished. Earlier in the day, the snow must have melted on his cape as he’d dragged himself, soaking it. He was cold to the bone … but he wasn’t shivering. She pushed away and stared at him. He was wobbling, and his eyes had a dreamy half-awake look, as though he wasn’t sure she was real.

“Zateri?” he said again in a faint voice.

She spun around in panic. “He’s freezing to death. Gather wood. We have to warm him up.”

Auma wrung her hands. “But … won’t Gannajero see the fire?”

“Get wood
now
!”

Auma and Conkesema scrambled through the falling snow, breaking off the dead branches at the bases of the trees. They would be the driest wood around. In the meantime, Zateri pulled Wrass’ wet cape over his head and draped it across two roots to serve as a kind of roof over his head. Then she pulled off her own cape and slipped it around him. As she tugged it down over his arms, he blinked up at her. Snowflakes coated his narrow face and perched upon his hooked nose.

“Zateri.” As he said her name, tears filled his eyes. “I hurt … my ankle. Can’t walk.”

“I’ll take care of it, I promise. For now, I need you to stay awake.”

“But I’m so t-tired.”

She grabbed him by the shoulders and stared at him. “I don’t care how tired you are. Stay awake or I’ll beat you with a stick. Do you hear me?”

His head wobbled, but a smile came to his lips. “You really are here. I … I wasn’t sure. Been s-seeing things. Faces … in the forest.”

Auma and Conkesema returned, piled wood beside Zateri, and went back for more.

As Zateri started digging a hole in the snow to create a pit for the fire, she said, “Yes, I’m really here, and I’m going to take care of you, Wrass. You’re going to be all right.”

But as she arranged the kindling in the pit, she kept glancing out at the dark forest.

Thirty-three

A
gloating smile curled Gannajero’s toothless mouth. All around her, her men crouched in the brush or stood behind tree trunks. In the falling snow, they blended perfectly with the forest shadows. She couldn’t even hear them breathing.

For Kotin’s ears alone, she said, “I told you Chipmunk Teeth would never leave the boy. Order our men to slowly spread out. I don’t want any mistakes this time.”

Thirty-four

T
he evening breeze was freezing cold and carried the distant howling of wolves.

“Tree.” Koracoo leaned out of the bow to point.

Cord moved trancelike, dipped his oar, and steered the canoe around the snag that bobbed along in the water. The snow was falling so heavily he could barely see the spinning branches. If they struck something like this in the darkness, it would rip the bottom right off the birch-bark canoe. But he wasn’t about to be the one to suggest to Koracoo that they stop for the night. For the past hand of time, she’d been terse, concentrating on the river.

Cord dipped his paddle again. Waves spun away, colliding with the whitecaps and leaves floating on the muddy surface. Somewhere upstream, the storm must have been violent. Debris, including whole trees, had washed into the Quill River.

Sindak, who sat in the stern just behind Cord, murmured, “She’s going to get us killed.”

“We can still see. We’re all right.”