SILVER CLOUD walked over to Goddess Woman where she squatted drawing magical circles in the snow and said, "I need to talk to you."
She went on doing what she was doing. "Talk, then."
"Can you stop drawing the circles for a moment?"
"The circles protect us."
"Stop anyway," Silver Cloud said. "Stand up and look me in the eye. I have a serious matter to discuss."
Goddess Woman gave him a sour, scowling look and got slowly to her feet. He thought he could hear her bones creaking as she came out of her squat.
The snow had stopped, at least for a little while. The sun was shining weakly, a late-season sun, low on the horizon.
"Well?" Goddess Woman said. "Talk."
"We have to leave this place," said Silver Cloud.
"Of course we do. Everyone's known that for a long time."
"We're going to leave this place, is what I mean. Today."
Goddess Woman scratched her rump thoughtfully. "We still haven't been able to worship at the shrine."
"No. We haven't."
"We came here to do that. If we leave without doing it-after having failed to hold the Summer Festival-the Goddess will be angry at us."
Silver Cloud said, in irritation, "The Goddess is angry at us. We know that already. She sent the Other Ones to occupy the riverbank and keep us from using the shrine. All right, then we can't use the shrine. But we can't stay any longer, either. We have no real shelter here and not much food and we're right on the edge of winter."
"You should have admitted these things to yourself a long time ago, Silver Cloud."
"Yes. I should have. But at least I'm admitting them now. When we are finished talking, I will give the order to break camp, and you will perform the rites of departure, and we will leave. Is that understood?"
Goddess Woman stood staring at him for a time.
Then she said, "Understood, yes. But you can no longer be chieftain after this, Silver Cloud."
"I know that. The Killing Society will convene and do what has to be done. I can be left behind as an offering to the Goddess. Some other chieftain will lead us up the hill and out to the east to find shelter."
"Yes," Goddess Woman said. What he had just said didn't seem to perturb her in any way. "And who will be chieftain after you? Blazing Eye? Broken Mountain?"
"Whoever wants to be," said Silver Cloud.
"And if more than one wants to be?"
He shrugged. "They can fight it out, then."
"But this is wrong. You should make a choice."
"No," he said. "My wisdom is used up. My day is over. Go, get yourself ready for what happens next, Goddess Woman. I am done talking with you."
He walked away. She called his name, but he paid no attention. She hurled a snowball after him, and it struck his shoulder and snow ran down his back, but still he kept walking. He had no wish to talk with anyone now. This was his last day of life and he simply wanted to be calm, to be quiet, to pass the time peacefully until the Killing Society came for him with the ivory club. Tomorrow his leg would no longer hurt and someone else would bear his burdens of power.
He stood by himself, looking across the way to the shrine that his people had never been able to use.
Some Other Ones were stirring about down there, by the edge of the river. Warriors, they were, and armed. What were they up to? Young Antelope was on sentry duty near the shrine, and he was pacing back and forth in an uneasy way. An attack? Was that what they had in mind? Taking the shrine by force?
It would be just my luck, Silver Cloud thought. We sit here in stalemate week after week, each side afraid of the other, neither one willing to risk seizing the shrine by force. And the very day I decide to withdraw and give the place to them, they decide to take it from us in battle. And we have no way of communicating with them, so we will have to fight, and many of us will die. Needlessly. If they would wait until tomorrow, the shrine would be theirs without a fight, for we would be gone from here.
"Blazing Eye!" he called. "Tree Of Wolves!"
The men came jogging over. Silver Cloud indicated what was going on down by the shrine.
"Are they going to start a fight?" Tree Of Wolves asked.
"The Goddess only knows, boy. But you'd better get yourselves ready, just in case. Tell the others. Tell everyone. Even the old ones." Silver Cloud held up his own spear. "I'll be fighting right alongside you, if they attack."
Blazing Eye looked at him incredulously. "You, Silver Cloud?"
"Why not? You think I've forgotten how?" Better to die in battle, he told himself, than to have to face the ivory club of the Killing Society. Though he would prefer no battle, and the peaceful departure of the People from this place.
Blazing Eye and Tree Of Wolves ran off to sound the alarm.
Then, suddenly, the woman She Who Knows came leaping forward out of nowhere, as though she had been stung. She had gone off by herself this morning, as she often did: wandering back up the trail along the hill that led to the east. She grew stranger and stranger every day, that one did.
"Silver Cloud! Silver Cloud! Look!"
He turned toward her. "Look at what?"
"On the hill! The light!" She whirled, pointing back behind herself. "Do you see it?"
"What? -Where?"
He narrowed his eyes and peered upward. He saw nothing unusual up there.
"Along the path," She Who Knows said. "Where we came down. You see a light?"
"No. -Yes! Yes!"
Silver Cloud felt a strange chill. It was a light of a sort that he had seen once before. The air was sparkling up there, giving off dazzling flashes of red and green. Shining loops and whorls of color danced in a wild wreath-like shape. And at the center of it was a zone of fierce white light so brilliant he could barely stand to look straight at it.
There had been light like that when they had descended the hill into this place many weeks before. On the day when the Goddess had seized the boy Skyfi^e Face.
He muttered a hoarse prayer. He heard Goddess
Woman chanting something behind him, and then the other two Goddess Women taking up the chant as well.
"What is that light, Silver Cloud?" someone asked him. "Tell us. Tell us!"
He shook the questioners off. Slowly, numbly, like a man who has walked too long in the snow and whose feet have turned to stone, he began to move toward the path that led up the hill. He had to get closer. He had to see.
"The Goddess is here again," a woman's voice whispered behind him.
He kept walking. He could hear the others following at his back. And, glancing down toward the shrine, Silver Cloud saw that the Other Ones too were aware of the apparition on the hillside, that they had halted whatever it was they were doing by the riverbank and were moving slowly toward it, drawn as irresistibly as he was by the urge to have a closer look.
"The Goddess is up there!" some woman moaned. "I see Her. I see Her!"
"The Goddess, yes!"
"The Goddess. And the Goddess is an Other One!"
"The Goddess is an Other One! Look at her! Look!"
Silver Cloud narrowed his eyes, straining to see what the others saw. But the light was too bright-that strange light, that bewildering whorl of color with the whirling whiteness at its heartThen the light began to fade. And Silver Cloud saw the Goddess.
She stood serenely on the hillside at the place where the strange light had glowed. She was of the Other Ones' kind, yes, very tall, very slender. Her skin was pale and her hair seemed fair and her lips were red, and her brow rose steeply and smoothly. She was wearing white robes of a kind that Silver Cloud had never seen before.
And she held a child in her arms. A child of the People.
Slowly, calmly, the Goddess descended the trail, coming down the hill to the group gathered at the base. Silver Cloud continued to go toward her. She Who Knows was at his left hand now, and Goddess Woman on his right, and Keeps The Past just behind him. They clustered close to him, as if they were as mystified as he was and wanted the protection of the chieftain's sacred presence as they went toward Her.
She was very near, now.
How strange her face was! And-though it was an Other One face, unquestionably an Other One face- how beautiful, how tranquil! She was smiling and her eyes were shining with joy.
And the boy she was holding-half-grown, he was, and dressed in a strange kind of robe-his eyes were shining, too.
"The mark on his face-" She Who Knows said. "Do you see? The skyfire sign! You know who that child is. Where is Red Smoke At Sunrise? Look, Red Smoke At Sunrise, the Goddess has brought back your lost son Skyfire Face!"
"But Skyfire Face was only a little boy. And this one is-"
"The mark, though! The mark on his face!" "Skyfire Face! Skyfire Face!" The shout went up on all sides.
Yes, Silver Cloud thought. Skyfire Face. It had to be him. How happy he looked! He was smiling, waving, calling out to them. In just a few weeks he had grown years older-some miracle of the Goddess, no doubt- but beyond question it was Skyfire Face, truly returned to them. Where had the boy been? Why had he been brought back now? Who could say? It was all some great and wondrous deed of the Goddess.
"Look," Keeps The Past whispered. "The Other Ones are coming."
Silver Cloud glanced around. Yes: the enemy was practically upon them, he saw. But not to make war: he could see that in their faces. Not only the warriors of the Other Ones were advancing up the hill, but all of them, the women and children and the old ones, too. And they all seemed as stunned by the appearance of the Goddess as were the People themselves-just as awed, just as humbled by this divine vision.
The Goddess stood waiting, holding the boy Skyfire Face still in her arms, and smiling. A golden light seemed to stream from them both.
Silver Cloud fell to his knees before them. Joy flooded from them in waves, bringing strange tears to his eyes, and he had to kneel to give thanks. Goddess Woman knelt also, and She Who Knows; and then he looked around and saw that the others too were dropping down to worship Her, both the People and the Other Ones. Everybody side by side, all thoughts of warfare forgotten, one by one kneeling in the snow, looking up with wondering eyes to pay homage to the shining figure with the smiling child in her arms who stood in their midst like a harbinger of springtime and peace.