Their eyes met. All the carefully prepared words vanished like mist in the morning sun. Her heart beat powerfully, a tingle in her limbs.

"I hear you tried to follow." He spoke softly, as if burying a deep hurt.

She smiled, oddly shy, looking away, seeing the skulls, the drawings, the holes in the rock filled with bundles of tied gra.s.ses and stuffed fox hides. A Dreamer's place. A place she could never share.

"Wolf didn't take very good care of me." She smiled uneasily. "It turned out to be a difficult trip."

He nodded, gesturing to the hides beside him. Hesitantly, she complied, sitting cross-legged on the soft caribou furs.

"You've changed. You're stronger."

"Your brother saw to that. But then, you've changed, too. More confident, possessed. Being a Dreamer suits you."

He looked away, face paling. "It also costs a great deal."

"Most things do."

They sat in silence. Her heart roiled in her chest. She wanted to throw her arms around him, declare her love--but found herself afraid.

"Why is this so difficult?" she asked. "I came, Runs In Light. I followed you. Why weren't you at Renewal? I waited there, keeping myself for you. All those things you told me, about marriage and love, they kept me going all through this miserably long year."

He swallowed hard, pain glittering in his eyes.

"Won't you speak to me?" she pleaded, sensing a wrongness between them.

He closed his eyes, his entire body trembling.

She reached across, grabbing him by the parka and tugging gently at first, then harder, until he opened his eyes and met her gaze.

"Tell me what's wrong?"

"I love you." His voice cracked.

Joy and relief swelled inside her. "And I love you." She let him go, sliding closer to him, so close she smelled his masculine scent. She searched his handsome face. "Is that wrong?"

The muscles in his jaw leapt and quivered. "You're the only thing between me and the Dream."She blinked. "Between?"

"Back in Mammoth Camp, I didn't know what the Wolf Dream meant. How it would change me ... or the People. Now I've seen. I've learned to Dream."

She lifted a hand to stroke his smooth cheek. He flinched, closing his eyes. "And you'll save the People."

"Maybe."

"But I've heard you found the hole in the ice?"

"It won't be enough." "What?" She crossed her arms, trying to still the turmoil inside. Hurt, confusion, love, pain, hope; it all mixed, unsorted, leaving her heart hammering, blood pumping hot in her veins.

From the contorted expression on Light's face he wasn't doing much better.

"I .. . can't let myself, my personal wants, get in the way of Dreaming the People to safety far in the south." A gleam lit his dark eyes as he stared at her. "There's a beautiful land there."

"What are you saying?"

"The only way to Dream--to really Dream--is to lose yourself in the One.

To go beyond the motions of the Dance."

"You're babbling nonsense. What does this have to do with our love for each other?"

He deflated like a punctured walrus-bladder float, puffing his cheeks out as he blew a futile breath. "Nonsense? That's what I told Heron once. I didn't understand. How can I expect you to?"

"Tell me, do we have a future together?" Her voice trembled suddenly.

"Or has some other woman taken your heart?"

"No one has taken my heart but you."

"Then--"

".I've had to choose!" he shouted, then lowered his voice to a wretched whisper. "I've seen the end of the People. Without a Dreamer, we have no chance. Raven Hunter has swayed the People one way. I must sway them another."

A pounding desire built to hug him, hold him, soothe his unrest. "I'll help you."

"No."

"But Dreaming isn't like some curse. Use your gifts to save the People, but--"

"It is a curse. It's like .. . like being born with a clubfoot or with a long nose. It's just the way things are. Because of that, I can't love."

"Why not? Didn't Heron ever love? I know the old stories about Bear Hunter.""She .. ." He turned away, squeezing his eyes tightly closed.

Conflicting emotions warred. Exploit this hurt? Or cuddle him close, ease his pain, apologize. Frozen, she simply sat, paralyzed by the rending within.

"The man she loved killed her. Ask Broken Branch. She saw. Heron let herself love him for just a moment. But it made her lose the One and the mushrooms killed her."

Dancing Fox sat back, stunned by the haunted seriousness on his face.

"You believe that my love will destroy you?"

"Yes." He shook his head as though trying to clear some deadly mental fog. "I've seen it happen to a woman with far greater Power than mine.

I've chosen my ... No, I've been chosen by the way. The People must have a Dreamer."

Heart in her throat, she nodded slowly, that eternal emptiness yawning inside. "So, it's over? All this way, all this suffering .. . and you don't want me?"

At the pain in her words, his face twisted, a dull ache in his eyes. He whispered a dusty, "I'm sorry." She nodded, standing, looking down while her soul screamed.

"Light?"

He looked up.

"Touch me, one last time." She reached for him.

He extended a hand, sympathy in his eyes. Only as their fingertips touched, something flickered across his face, as if a memory came unbidden from the recesses of his mind. He stiffened, staring at her in horror, face stricken, body going rigid.

"What?" she asked, pulling her hand back. "What's wrong?"

He turned away, burying his head in the white bear's hide. The sobs chilled her soul.

"Leave me!" he shouted.

Turning, she ripped through the hanging hide, running, heedless of her tender ankle. She almost bowled One Who Cries over, sprinting up the path, struggling to escape that last terrible memory of the horror reflected in his eyes.

Moon Water stretched her taut back muscles, wincing at the pain. From behind the veil of her hair, she watched her captors as they congregated around the young Dreamer. He was powerful for such a young man. The sight of the caribou coming to his calling had awed her. Despite the number of carca.s.ses stretched out on the snow--and the work they entailed --the memory still brought a chill to her spine.

He may be as powerful as Ice Fire. As powerful as our greatest shaman!The thought brought a bitter sneer to her lips. Unthinkable! Unthinkable that these pitiful remnants of a people could have so powerful a Dreamer.

Seeing Jumping Hare looking in her direction, she quickly bent to the task of stripping the hide from a caribou.

Despicable! She, Moon Water, eldest daughter of the White Tusk Clan's Singer, must process a kill like an old hag! Rage and anger burned. The heat of it fueled her muscles, giving her strength to continue.

Her fingers cramped around the flat biface she used to cut the hide and dismember the carca.s.s, the warm odor of caribou streaming up around her head. She stropped the tool on her long boot, cleaning the edge of resistant tissue before attacking the carca.s.s again.

And this Dreamer was taking them under the Big Ice? It was insanity. No human could walk under ice!

But he had Dreamed in the caribou. She'd seen that. She'd seen him cure the infant born to that woman Green Water. She'd seen him suck the fluid from its nose and breathe life into the tiny blue fetus who'd been born so early. Powerful, yes; powerful, indeed.

"But not so powerful as Ice Fire," she whispered confidently.

She sank teeth into her lip, feeling her fingers strain as the gray quartzite biface severed the caribou's tissues. With a section of antler beam, she quickly knapped off a new edge, the long flakes driven off by her expert hand. The new edge sharp, she resumed skinning.

"But they can't keep me." From behind her swinging wealth of black hair, she glared hatred at Jumping Hare where he carried thick quarters from the butchering area. "And you'll soon have to forgo your pleasure on my body, bolt-fly maggot! Stick to your skinny woman of the People. The daughter of the White Tusk Clan is too good for you!"

Soberly, she reached down, pushing hard on her belly as if to drive his seed out of her. Anxiously, she waited this turning of the moon, knowing her bleeding was overdue.

Soon, soon she would make her break, now that the Long Dark had begun to ebb. Before the People walked under the ice? She continued to chew her lip, her perfect brow furrowed in thought. The stories were that Wolf Dreamer had found huge herds of animals on the other side. If a woman of the Mammoth People were to find this magic hole, could not Ice Fire, with his greater Power, take all the Mammoth Clans through? "I will wait." She smiled sourly. "Then we'll see how safe your hole in the ice is!"

Chapter 46.

"I'm still not sure about this." One Who Cries shook his head, bending to stare into the inky blackness. A frigid breeze blew out of the slit in the grimy cobble-encrusted ice that spread in dirty heaps to either side: an awesome world sundered. Before them, the Big Ice lay in mounds and ribbed ma.s.ses like piled scales. Snow gleamed softly in contrast to the dirty ice. Faint echoes of the tormented ghosts reached their ears even here.

A trail of rock--the washout from the runoff channel--led into the ice, an undercut pathway winding between walls of forbidding cold.

Muscles--like bands--tightened in One Who Cries' chest. As he swallowed, it seemed to stick in his throat--midway, like a crossed fish bone.

Unease p.r.i.c.kled the base of his scalp.

"So immense ..." Singing Wolf gasped, arms spread as he looked at the ice rising high against the gray day.

One Who Cries nodded nervously. Gray. The world has turned gray for all of us. Color is gone. Only desperation remains. Ice and rock ahead of us, around us. Behind comes painful death at the hands of the Others. Is this the way? Truly? Isn't there life and joy and happiness anymore? I don't want to go in there. Not into the darkness with the ghosts.

Wolf Dreamer stood to one side, a brooding look on his face. He wore the tailored hide he'd skinned from Grandfather White Bear. The hem swung slowly in the breath issuing from the yawning crack before them, the long white hairs rippling.

One Who Cries looked back, seeing the stiff set of Dancing Fox's face.

Studiously, she and Wolf Dreamer avoided each other. What had happened in Heron's shelter that day? What did it mean for the rest of them? More than the chill wind shivered in One Who Cries' thoughts. "See how the boulders have been rolled out?" Wolf Dreamer called, leading them up on a pile of rock. "That's from the summer melt. This whole thing fills with water--a regular river."

"Why's the ice only here? Why not all the way to the end of the world?"

Singing Wolf asked.

"Mountains. They come together here from the east and west, restricting the Big River. The ice forms higher and runs down here to block this one place." Wolf Dreamer pointed as he explained.

Behind, the People came, packs bundled high on their backs, rope made from braided lengths of caribou and mammoth hide--laboriously split--clutched in their hands. The dogs nosed about, sniffing with lowered heads at the dank exhalation.

Green Water stopped, hands on hips, her child peeking out from under her hood, like two heads perched on one body. The infant's dark eyes blinked in awe. One Who Cries caught his wife's gaze, smiling an encouragement he didn't feel.

Wolf Dreamer took the lead, placing each step carefully on the piled rock, keeping slightly to one side where the current had lessened, the sorted deposits providing more level footing there."This worries me," One Who Cries growled.

Singing Wolf shot a quick look at him and smiled weakly. "Spirits are always getting mixed up in your life now, eh?"

He gave Singing Wolf his best scowl. "I had to listen to you. "Come on,"

you said. "We'll go first. Prove to everyone that it can be done!" And I listened. I listened to youl I'm out of my head! How do you talk me into these crazy things?"

"You were the one who agreed! You were the one talking about what the Others were going to do, about what would happen if the People stayed north of the Big Ice."

"But that doesn't mean I ought to listen to your stone brained--"

"Hush," Green Water commanded anxiously, eyes on the hole. "Wolf Dreamer will lead us."

One Who Cries filled his lungs with the musty air and sighed. "Uh-huh."

"We haven't died yet," Singing Wolf reminded through clenched teeth, following in Wolf Dreamer's tracks. His head bobbed this way and that as he cast uneasy glances overhead, eyes darting as he studied black shadows and niches that wormed away into the ice. Laughing Sunshine followed close behind, a knot of tension in her back.

"Haven't died yet--haven't died yet," One Who Cries repeated under his breath, glancing up at the cloud-shredded sky visible through the narrow crack above.

He swallowed, faint tricklings of sound barely audible from the ice to either side. Bands tightened on his heart.

"You coming? Or do I have to carry you?" Singing Wolf called from ahead.

Goaded, One Who Cries trotted forward, hair crawling-like being on a ridge just before Sun Father threw a lightning strike down. A curious wobble had unhinged his legs.