Raven's Choice by Harper Swan Read Free Book Online Page B

of a wilted flower. Her shoulders slumped, and her long hair fell forward around her bowed head, unbraided and messy. Clearly, she hadn’t slept well due to Bear callously spending his first night back not with her but out in the lean-to. A pang went through Raven. Willow was suffering because she’d cared enough for her younger sister to want her close by.
    She remembered with shame how, after the first onslaught, she’d all but invited him to continue. They’d coupled as thoughtlessly as rabbits several times during the night.
    Willow began stoking the fire, bending over the hearth. She didn’t look up or respond when Raven entered the clearing and warmly greeted her. Neither did she make any comment when Raven began telling her about straightening the Longhead’s arm. She finally finished with the fire and squatted before the hearth opposite Raven, her face a frozen frown. Raven stopped talking.
    Light clouds crossed overhead, their shadows webbing the clearing while Raven’s heart went cold, like an icy stone, as she understood that her sister regretted sending for her. Willow might even have said certain things about Raven so that Bear would cast her out as he’d threatened.
    Excited laughter burst from where her nieces and nephews played. Raven looked at the neat clearing, the well-built double tent and lean-to, and the warm, cozy hearth from which she might soon be banished. She wondered how she could have been so stupid as to not listen when her father talked about the importance of tribe. Raven grasped now that without the tribe, she would be nothing, an animal dead on the steppe.
    She pressed her tongue against the back of her teeth, probing the gap, and anger sparked through her. Surely Willow had suspected that could happen. With so many men dying, not only from disease but also hunting wounds, it was common enough for a bereft woman to be taken in by her sister’s mate, sometimes as his additional mate or most often only temporarily.
    Raven flung her words across the fire: “I am like a newly crafted spear, a just–knapped quartz blade, a fresh kill. One day soon, I will be as a worn spear, a chipped blade, an old kill. The freshness will be gone. I assure you that things will soon become more like they were before I arrived.”
    Willow’s eyes flipped up. For a long beat, she looked through the smoke at Raven, her face astonished. Then she sighed. “You always were full of words. Sometimes they worked for you, and sometimes they didn’t,” she said sharply, but her face relaxed.
    Willow had thawed, and she remained so, even when Bear returned to the lean-to, night after night.

    For four days, Raven visited the enclosure, making sure it was cleaned regularly and the captive was being given food and water. On the fifth day, she went by later than usual. She’d been collecting plants daily and taking them to the camp healer, Old Cloud, a timeworn woman who welcomed her help. The day before, Raven had interrupted her gathering to set traps near the burrows of steppe hamsters that had moved into the valley.
    According to Bear, the trackers who’d followed the Longheads would probably return soon, and then the captive would be released. She didn’t say anything to Bear—he would make some jab about feeding lions—but she’d decided the Longhead should have fresh meat for his journey. The string traps were set to catch the hamsters at dusk when they left their burrows, so she went to check them first thing upon awakening the next morning. Willow could always use any trapped hamsters for a meal if the trackers hadn’t returned by late day.
    She hurried, hoping that predators hadn’t found the traps during the night, but she needn’t have worried. She found four large adult hamsters with their legs noosed. Raven picked up a nearby hand–sized rock. “In this manner, the Earth Mother feeds her children,” she murmured, touching the rock to forehead and chest. She ended the hamsters’ struggles