“Do you want to be turned into pemmican?” he asked it, and it snorted once?—laughter, Gabriel was certain of it—and departed, its hooves kicking in a graceful, thudding lope that covered ground faster than anything that large should move, leaving the grass upright and uncrushed in its wake.
Gabriel reached down again to touch one hand to the surface of the water, letting its chill cool his own skin, the awareness of water filling him. This was real, physical. He could sense where this narrow creek led, could trace back to its source higher in the mountains, the thick packed snow that fed it, the tiny rivulets and deep-down springs that connected to it. Like the Road, it was all one. All connected.
It was also seductive, that feeling, coaxing him in until he would drown of it. Gabriel jerked his hand back as though the water had suddenly become steam-hot, wiping it against his pant leg.
“No.” He looked out where the elk had disappeared to, then up into the sky, wispy white clouds moving east to west, echoes of his dreams carried in their shapes. “No.”
He refilled the canteens he’d brought with him, carefully, not allowing his hands to linger in the water, and went back to rejoin the others.
Isobel was sitting next to the rebuilt fire, combing out her hair. In profile, the strong bones that had first drawn his eye were even more apparent now, the softness of saloon life worn to finer lines. She would never have been pretty, but something drew the eye and left it there to linger. Her hair was brighter than the old man’s, reddish highlights glinting in the black, and her flesh wasn’t the same copper, but with the two of them sitting together by the fire, for a moment he was all too aware of his paler skin and blue eyes. Never mind that he’d been born to the Territory same as she, that his father and grandfather had been hunters in the Wilds; in that instant, he was an outsider.
And who holds blame for that? Old Woman asked again in his thoughts before he shoved her out.
“You have water?” Isobel’s question broke the moment, and he nodded, handing her one of the canteens. She placed her comb down on her knee and poured the water into the battered tin pot, placing it on the tripod to bring the chicory-and-coffee mixture to a boil. Then she sifted her fingers into her hair, swiftly plaiting the long strands into a single braid.
He sat down and watched her face, how her lips pursed, bright eyes hooded as she concentrated on what she could feel between her fingers rather than what she could see. There was an intensity to her that he’d admired since the first he saw her, a determination to do, to be something, with an intensity that would accept no obstacles.
It was a quality he’d admired, even knowing it attracted trouble the way a carcass attracted buzzards.
“How are you feeling?”
“Better.” Her hands didn’t pause until she reached the end of the braid, tying it off with the loop of leather cord he’d cut for her. She then reached into her pack and pulled out the two small feathers Calls Thunder had given her, back in De Plata, one greyish-blue, one banded white-and-black, both slightly ruffled along the edges now, each barely the size of his thumb. She wove them into the braid with that same nimble surety and seemed oblivious to the fact that her actions had attracted the old man’s attentions.
“Tsigili,” he said. “Et jasur.”
Isobel looked at the old man, then at Gabriel, clearly expecting a translation.
“Je m’excuse, qu’est-ce que vous avez dit?”
The old man gestured at Isobel with two fingers held upright. “Des plumes.”
It was, Gabriel thought, a question more than a statement. “étant données à elle par la parleur-des-rêves dans De Plata.” If the feathers did have some medicine-meaning, better the old man know Isobel had been gifted them by someone with the authority to do so, rather than claiming them for herself.
The old man pursed his lips, dropped his fingers, and that seemed to be the extent of his interest.
Gabriel pushed, delicately. “Vous savez ce que signifient-ils, grandpapa?”
He grunted. “Le devin et le potin, le messager.” More pursed lips, then, almost grudgingly: “Elle comporte de nombreux symboles forts.”
Isobel was watching them, her gaze flicking alertly between them. “What did he say?”
“Your feathers. I told you someone would know what they meant.”
Her expression livened at that. He had told her that feathers meant something, but he hadn’t known what, specifically, and Calls Thunder, who had given them to her, hadn’t explained.
“And?”
“The birds they come from, one is far-seeing, the other carries messages.” Gossip, the old man’d said, but Gabriel wasn’t going to tell her that. “He says that they’re strong medicine.”
“But what do they mean?”
Gabriel was suddenly immensely tired. “I don’t know. Calls Thunder gave them to you, so I’ll assume that it’s for you to learn, not me.”