People of the Fire by W. Michael Gear Read Free Book Online

reddish tinge of oxidation around them.
These you could almost see the shape of. Fire hearths. Old, so old . . . and
almost gone.
                   The world was changing.
                   "Hello!" she hollered through cupped
hands. "Who's there?"
                   Nothing moved. Something, a feeling, a
wrongness, drifted through her thoughts like a bat in the night.
                   In the stillness, an infant cried.
                   The Dream wrenched her back again. White Calf
started, blinking her eyes into the night gloom of her rock shelter. Her gut
lurched, leaving her physically sick, as if something had been dislocated. She
fought the need to vomit. Stillness settled on the night. What had happened? The
feeling of sickness reeked of abused Power. But whose? Where?
                   Mouth dry, she reached for her water skin and
sipped. Sitting up, she rubbed her old legs, feeling the night cramp of
age-knotted muscles. Eight years had passed since Power had led her to the
child and the berdache . What had gone wrong now?
                   Looking out through the hangings on her
shelter, she traced the familiar outline of the peaks against the skyline. She
searched the dark patterns of the clouds as the moon broke the eastern horizon
again.
                   She stiffened as the moonbeams sliced the
clouds, seeing him again. Moonlight played lightly over the mounded white. The
young man of her Spirit Dreams formed out of the billowing cumulus. Half man,
half wolf, the image spun from the clouds appeared to point off to the
southeast—toward the land of her people.
                   In shock from Heavy Beaver's desecration, the
Wolf Bundle vibrated, wailing its anguish into the clefts and curves of time.
The voices of the thousands who had touched it in awe and left part of their
souls within the bindings whimpered and moaned.
                   The Power pulsated, remembering the
defilement, withdrawing from the world of men, sucking down into a smoldering
kernel of being.
                   "Remember, the Spiral. . . Circles within
circles, joined, yet never touching. The time hasn’t come yet. But it will. . .
it will.
                   And the Wolf Bundle waited.
     

Chapter
2
     
                   "You don't have to do this." Sage
Root met Dancing Doe's eyes as she ducked from the birthing lodge, the infant
cuddled to her chest. Dancing Doe shot a surreptitious look to where Heavy
Beaver stood before his lodge with arms crossed on his broad chest. Sunlight
revealed him as a middle-aged man, thick through the body and short. No hint of
the thoughts inside could be seen on his wide heavy- jowled face. His nose, too, looked mashed and flat against his splayed cheekbones. A
deep scar ran diagonally across his high broad forehead—legacy of an Anit'ah war dart.
                   "There isn't enough food," Dancing
Doe whispered miserably, wincing at the tenderness in her hips as she
straightened in the slanting light of morning.
                   "I say, don't do it. Something will
happen." The angry knot in Sage Root's stomach growled. Nothing much
remained of the last kill, only some thin strips of dried meat—enough for another
meal or two. Some roots had been collected, enough for stew. Already women had
gone out to beat the brush, look for rabbit or gopher holes close enough to the
river that water could be diverted to flood them and flush a meal. Still, to
kill a child . . .
                   Dancing Doe's mouth tightened. "My baby
... it's a girl." Her gaze slipped to Heavy Beaver where he stood.
"He knows."
                   "It's your decision! He can't make you
kill your own—"
                   "Please." Dancing Doe's plea
wrenched Sage Root's heart. "I know what you're trying to do, but until
Long Runner comes back . . . Well,