Shaman Part 46

Lead him over the bridge of stars and sunbeams, Along the westward Trail of Souls.

Take his soul into your heart."

After she had finished the song, Sun Woman wiped the tears from her face with her blunt fingers. She reached out and stroked his cheeks as well.

He had not realized that he was crying.

But grieving for Pierre reminded him to reach into his medicine bag.

"I have a gift for you, Mother." He took out the flat silver case with its velvet neck cord, opened it and showed her the pair of spectacles Marchette had brought to him from Victoire. "Do you know these?"

"Your father wore circles of gla.s.s like these. To see the marks on the talking paper."

"Yes. These are the same ones." He closed the case and pressed it into her hand. "Now you have something that was close to Star Arrow."

She said, "He was with me for five summers only, but in spirit, ever since. Now I will feel even closer to him." She slipped the ribbon over her head and dropped the case down the front of her doeskin dress.

He saw the tracks of more tears on her smooth brown cheeks in the fading light. This time she did not wipe them away.

"Tell me all that has happened to you," she said.

As White Bear talked, he deliberately made his voice loud enough to carry, so that Redbird, in the wickiup, might hear.

When he was through telling his story, he felt weighed down by guilt.

"I fled, Mother, even though I promised my father I would care for the land. And smoked tobacco with him to seal the promise. Should I have stayed?"

She put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed. "You kept your promise as far as you were able. That is all the calumet requires. Your father would not want you to die fighting for that land. It is better that you come back here and be a Sauk again."

White Bear looked down, unable to meet Sun Woman's eyes. Feeling an ache deep in the center of his body, remembering the great stone and log house, the blizzard of blossoms in the orchards, the fields of green corn and golden wheat, the herds that darkened the hillsides, he wanted to clutch his chest where it felt as if it had been torn open. He could not so easily forget Victoire.

_When I was at Victoire I yearned to go back to my people. Now I am with my people and I miss Victoire. Will my heart never be at peace?_

Nancy had wanted him so desperately before they parted; Redbird would not even let him see her.

White Bear saw that once again women had started to gather nearby, among them the round-faced Water Flows Fast. And now White Bear saw another familiar face he had not seen earlier, Redbird's mother, Wind Bends Gra.s.s. She glowered at him as she always had, her fists on her broad hips.

_O Earthmaker! Why would Redbird not come out and speak to him?_

A dozen cawing crows flew over the camp. Laughing at him.

He heard a movement behind him, a rustling of the buffalo-hide curtain.

He dared not look around.

A voice at his back said, "Go away, White Bear!"

A cool, sweet flow poured from his heart like a mountain spring at the sound of Redbird's voice. He unfolded his legs, stiff from hours of sitting, and pushed himself to his feet. He turned.

Weakness washed over him; he thought he might fall to the ground.

Redbird stood before him, her cheeks flushed, her slanting eyes sparkling with anger. Her face was thinner than he remembered, her lips fuller. She still wore a fringe of her hair over her forehead.

Standing silent and open-mouthed, he felt he must look utterly foolish.

"Go away," Redbird said again. "We do not want you here."

"To see you is a sunrise in my heart, Redbird."

"To see you is a foul day in my stomach!"

Reeling back from her anger, White Bear saw a little boy standing in the doorway behind her.

He was bare-chested, brown-skinned. He wore a loincloth of red flannel and fringed buckskin leggings. He was s.h.i.+fting uncomfortably from one moccasined foot to the other and clutching at himself under the loincloth.

Now White Bear understood why Redbird had finally come out. She and the boy must have been inside the wickiup all the time he was sitting out here, and the boy was about to burst.

It would have been funny, except that a much more important discovery struck White Bear.

He looked closer at the boy's urgent eyes. Blue eyes.

White Bear's own eyes were brown, but Pierre's were blue. Could eye color be pa.s.sed in the blood from grandfather to grandson? Around his eyes, in the narrow shape of his head, his long chin coming to a sharp point, White Bear could see that this boy was a de Marion.

_This is our son! Redbird's and mine!_

Joy blazed up in his body like a fire that warms but does not hurt.

He asked, "What is his name, Redbird?"

She glanced over her shoulder at the boy. "What are you standing there for? You have to go. Go!" The boy ran off toward the woods. White Bear watched him. He ran well, even though he was very young and most uncomfortable.

White Bear wanted to reach out and take Redbird into his arms.

She turned back to him, her fists clenched at her sides, her nostrils flaring in fury.

"_Now_ you want to know what his name is. Now, five winters after he was born."

He turned to Sun Woman. "Does she have a husband?"

Sun Woman raised her eyebrows. "There were many braves who wished to marry her. Wolf Paw was most insistent. He offered Owl Carver ten horses. Little Stabbing Chief of the Fox sought her. There were others, besides."

Wolf Paw had wanted to marry her. That must have been the meaning of that strange encounter outside the camp. Wolf Paw probably wanted to kill him.

"Please, Sun Woman, do not talk to this man about me," Redbird said.

"You are his mother, and a mother to me. But you cannot make peace between us."

"True," said Sun Woman, picking up her basket of herbs and bark. "Only you can do that, daughter."

She turned to White Bear. "If Redbird does not welcome you into this wickiup I share with her and Eagle Feather, I cannot invite you inside."

With that Sun Woman turned abruptly and trudged off toward the river.

_Eagle Feather!_