and keep their cooking pot full. That was something she would never do. She hated the stink of tanning hides.
Her aunt said that if she stopped wandering in the woods she would not seem so odd. But the truth was she did not want to be like other women. Perhaps she was more like her father than she cared to admit.
She missed her mother. Gathers Quills did not think Sky’s wandering was odd. But her mother had left this world for the Spirit World in the Freezing Moon of Sky’s seventieth winter.
Winter Moon was the sister of her father and she said it was not seemly for a single woman to live alone with only the occasional company of her heyoka father. So Sky had moved in with her aunt and uncle, Wood Duck. Would Winter Moon have been so insistent that Sky live in her lodge if she had known that after the move there would still be no warriors to offer a bride’s dowry for Sky?
Familiar laughter reached her. She did not pursue. Instead, she rested her head in her hands.
Her father called himself Falling Otter, choosing that name because otters never fall. And because otters are playful.
Once her father had been perfect in her eyes. Important. More important even than the chief because only he could question the chief and even sometimes mock the medicine man, something no one else was brave enough to do. He made the people think of things they had not before and that made him a powerful teacher. Didn’t it?
Skylark indulged in tears and immediately heard laughter. She lifted her head to see Falling Otter dancing off with his loincloth on his head. This was exactly the sort of behavior that she found embarrassing, and then she felt guilty for her reaction.
“Wait. Papa. We have to go.”
“Daughter. Stay, stay. Stay all day,” he sang, and vanished into the thick shrubs.
She hurried after him and decided that when she saw him again she would insist that they stay, stay, stay all day. Maybe that would get him moving back to camp. He was so thin now. Her aunt tried to feed him, but he insisted he was too full. Then he would beg food from someone else. Where had he left his horse?
The ground changed from thick ferns and dried leaves to a stretch of exposed rock. She paused, glancing about the clearing, and a chill climbed up her neck. This was the very spot where she had met her warrior.
He wasn’t hers, of course. But he had tried to make her so. She wondered what would have happened if she had let herself be taken.
“Papa. I’m going to stay here. You should stay, too! No reason to go back and eat breakfast with Auntie. Your sister said to stay away. She doesn’t want you there.”
She noticed the sunlight streaming down in golden beams through the tall trees, illuminating the small clearing. She spotted something of interest and paused to gather goosegrass. The roots made a nice red dye, but she collected the entire plant because it could also make the bowels move and cool a fevered body. She stuffed several handfuls of the spindly plants into her pouch noticing the tiny white flowers that bloomed all the way to the War Moon.
She glanced about the clearing, recalling the man, his horse, his gray dog. Then it had happened. The sun had streamed down upon them, the light flashing off the new green leaves, shimmering like water from a lake. His dog had started to whine and then bark, his pointed ears up and alert. The warrior’s smile had dropped away, his eyes had rolled white and he had fallen as if shot. They had tumbled together from his horse, rolling on the soft mossy ground. But his body had gone limp and she feared he had died. His dog had been near frantic, but the animal had let her tend him. She’d had time to check him for wounds before the tremors began, shaking his entire body. She had seen it before. It was not the palsy of the old or a simple hand trembling, but full-out witchcraft frenzy. He was cursed by a witch or perhaps an enemy. At least, that was what she had learned from Spirit Bear, their shaman. That the ghosts of the fallen might haunt the living. Despite what some of her tribe said, she could not lift a curse or rescue the haunted. Only a shaman could do that.
But her grandmother, Smiling One, had said that plants could heal any ills if only we knew which one to use. Was it true? Could all curses and maladies be healed?
It was that possibility that sent her searching for the plant that could cure her mother. Her first and greatest failure. There had been others since, ones she could not save. She could heal many things, but not all things and not the malady that sent her warrior into fits.
She had kept him from choking on the blood from his lacerated tongue, set him on his side and waited at a distance until he woke. His dog had not left his master’s side and had watched her go, giving a whine as she slipped away.
Now she wondered if she should have stayed.
Her father broke her musings by dashing across the clearing waving his loincloth in one hand and a thick stick in the other. He ran in the direction of their village.
“Can’t be late, daughter. Everyone must take a nap at midday.”
Skylark turned to follow him. Of course, everyone would not nap at midday. They would be doing the complete opposite of resting, which was exactly why her father had said this. By midday the entire village would be struck and moving to their next hunting site. The Hunting Moon was a busy time with the buffalo hunts and preparation of meat and hides. All would be working hard except, of course, her father.
* * *
Night Storm led his horses through the dense undergrowth with his dog at his heels. He didn’t know if lightning would strike twice, but he was growing desperate. This was very near the place he had met her, during the Many Flowers Moon. Only three moons ago and his life had changed completely. The time of first meeting her had also been the last time he had ridden his horse. She had looked like an ordinary woman, but now he knew better. What they said was true. She had unnatural powers. Her exceptional beauty was just a lure. A trap. He recalled her thick ropes of hair and wide eyes that sloped upward at the edges. That was what he remembered most, her eyes and her smiling mouth. But her form had also been perfect, full and lush as the ripe berries she gathered. Perfect, too perfect, he now realized.
He had been so taken with her that he had tried to carry her off. And she had warned him. Told him to let her go before it was too late. He had thought the warning odd. But he had not recognized then that she had cursed him.
Now he understood why she had not shown the least bit of fear at his approach. Because, like the puma, she was beautiful, powerful and deadly.
How had she cast a spell without his notice?
He was uncertain. What he did know was that he must find her, capture her and then, somehow, he must make her remove the spell.
But what if she was not even a witch? What if she was a spirit? Anog Ite, Double-Faced woman, or Kanka, the greatest of all witches? Night Storm knew that it did not matter. If he found this woman, he would succeed in getting her to restore him before someone found out. Even his father had asked him why he did not ride. Any day now those of his tribe might discover he was cursed. And then he would be outcast.
At the very least he would lose his status as hunter and warrior and that was a fate worse than death. His malady even kept him from fulfilling his promise to wed Beautiful Meadow, the niece of Thunder Horse, who was their shaman. Her uncle was very strict. Men unfit to hunt or raid were stripped of their duties. If Beautiful Meadow discovered his affliction, would she help him or tell her uncle?
It was his doubts that kept him from speaking the words that
