“The Blue God does not frighten me, Elder,” Catkin said. She took the cup, and set it on one of the hearthstones, while she finished her tea.
Stone Ghost leaned forward, and hissed,
“She should.”
They stared at each other for several heartbeats.
Catkin calmly responded, “Elder, with all the warring these days, dead gods are the least of my concerns.”
“Incorrect, child. The Blue God is your only concern. She is death itself. Don’t you recall any of the stories your mother told you?”
“Just pieces of stories.”
“Curious.” Stone Ghost regarded Catkin with unwavering black eyes. “I’m surprised you’re still alive.”
Peeved, Catkin snapped, “Elder, I did not come here to discuss dead gods! My war chief, Browser, sent me to ask you if you will come to Hillside Village and help us find his wife’s murderer. Will you?”
The firelight flashed on Stone Ghost’s beaked nose as he sharply looked up, his cup halted midway to his mouth. “Why me?”
“Because he trusts you.”
“I can’t imagine why.”
“Well, I suppose it’s because you are relatives.”
A blank expression creased Stone Ghost’s ancient face. “Really? Which relative?”
“You do not recall Browser?” Catkin asked. She found it inconceivable. Browser’s presence affected people like a Spirit plant in the veins. No one who had ever met him could forget him. “Browser is your sister’s grandson.”
“Which sister?”
“I do not know, Elder! I expected you to know.”
She picked up her soup cup, and dipped her spoon. Seasoned with yucca fruit and chokecherries, the broth tasted rich, and tart. Prairie dogs were fat, the meat greasy—exactly the sort of thing her hungry body craved after such a long run. Around a mouthful, she added, “You may not recall him, but Browser remembers you quite well.”
Stone Ghost almost dropped his tea cup. After he’d steadied it, he said, “The last time someone told me that, it was at the point of a spear.” He glanced up at Catkin. “What else did he say?”
“There was not much time to speak about you. But I did ask him if you were mad.” She paused, gauging his reaction to this. His expression remained blank. Catkin continued, “Some people say you are, as I suppose you know, but Browser said he’d never seen it.”
Stone Ghost chuckled. “I wonder which of my sisters produced such a dimwit? Probably Bee Sage. She never had the sense the gods gave a moth.” He scratched his wrinkled cheek. “Of course, all my sisters are dead now, but that doesn’t mean Browser, or the Blue God, for that matter …”
He stopped, and Catkin lowered her spoon to her cup. “Doesn’t mean Browser what?”
Stone Ghost jerked around to look at her. “What about Browser?”
“The fact that your sisters are dead doesn’t mean Browser what?”
“Well”—he picked up a branch and briskly prodded the fire. Flames roared and leaped—“I suppose it doesn’t mean a lot of things. Why did you ask?”
“Why did
I
ask!” Catkin yelled. “I asked because you said … !” At his intent look, she sighed, and clamped her jaw.
Stone Ghost’s stick hovered over the flames. “What did I say?
Oh, wait! I was telling you about the Blue God. I’m getting so forgetful! I meant to ask if you knew that the Blue God is a huge bloody-headed woman? She meets the breath-heart soul as it climbs up the burial ladder out of the grave, and leads it to the shores of a deep black lake where the lights of the dead shimmer like a thousand torches. A soul has to dive into the lake, and swim down to find the Land of the Dead.”
“Elder,” Catkin growled in exasperation, “we weren’t speaking of the Blue God, we were discussing the murder of Browser’s wife.” Catkin carefully enunciated: “He-wishes-to-know-if-you-will-come-to-Hillside-Village-and-help-us-find-the-madman-who-did-it.”
Stone Ghost looked at her as if she’d just sprouted antlers. He said, “What makes you think he’s mad?”
“He murdered an innocent woman. He must be.”
“My dear child,” Stone Ghost sighed, “there are only two forms of nourishment in life: love and death. All else is slow starvation.”
Catkin understood the love part. Love sustained every moment of her life, but how could death provide nourishment? She ran a finger around the rim of her cup. Unless he meant hunting? Of course people killed to eat, but what did that have to do with murder? She repeated, “No one sane would murder an innocent woman, Elder. It is unthinkable.”
“What makes you think she was innocent?”
Catkin lowered her cup to her lap. It had never occurred to her that Ash Girl might have been guilty of something. The only crime Catkin had seen the woman commit was against her husband. She’d treated Browser like a mangy camp dog, kicking him in the belly whenever she could. Browser had wandered the cliffs at night just to get away from her. When he’d needed a friend, he’d come to Catkin. Ash Girl was no one’s friend.
“Ah,” Stone Ghost whispered, and made a delicate gesture, as if pushing at a tuft of mist. “I see.”
“What do you see?”
Stone Ghost stared straight at her, but did not seem to see Catkin at all. His eyes had an empty faraway look. “You must understand. For a murderer life is bondage, and murder is emancipation. To find the murderer, you must discover what binds him.”
“Why would murder free someone? Even when I kill an enemy who deserves it, I feel hollow, and chained by guilt.”
He blinked, and his gaze returned from wherever it had been to pin Catkin. “Why didn’t you like Browser’s wife?”
Catkin stiffened. “I-I did not dislike her. Not really. She was not a kind person, but—”
“She was not kind to you?”
“She was not kind to anyone, Elder, especially her husband. She shouted at him constantly, and was always wringing her hands, and making demands he couldn’t—”
“And her son? Was she unkind to him?”
“Not that I ever witnessed, but I would not doubt—”
“And the others in the village? Did she slap old people, or children? Did she throw rocks at birds? What about ugly puppies? Did she kick them?”
Disarmed by the barrage of questions, Catkin just sat there.
“So,” he said. “She was only unkind to her husband. That you are aware of. What had he done to her? Did he beat her? Berate her in public?”
“He did nothing to her! He tried to please her in every way he could! Less than a moon ago, she went for days without speaking to him, or anyone in the village! And, once, after she’d harassed him all day long, I found him around midnight wandering the cliffs, weeping as though his heart had been torn from his body. He was crying out to someone I’d never heard of, then the next day, he—he came to me—”
“What name did he cry out?”
Catkin shook her head, wondering what possible point this discussion could have. Stone Ghost wouldn’t know the person anyway. “I don’t recall. Shadow something, I think. But it doesn’t matter. I had never heard the name before. I’m sure you wouldn’t recognize it either.” Blood pulsed very loudly in her ears, she could barely think. She looked across the fire, and found the old man staring at her with obsidian sharp eyes.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Oh,” he said, and shoved his empty cup around with his finger. His white hair glimmered as though sprinkled with gold dust. “I was just wondering if she knew you loved her husband?”
Catkin could not answer.
In a kindly old voice, Stone Ghost asked, “Does he know?”
“Does he know what?”
“Oh, well, of course he does. Silly of me to ask. That’s why he comes to you. How do you think that made his wife feel? That he came to you for comfort? Do you think she resented you? Hated you?”
“Gods, Elder! She—she used to fall asleep when he touched her! He would start to love her, and she would go limp in his arms. He would look down and find her sound asleep! What kind of a wife is that?” Catkin waved a hand. “I wouldn’t have cared how she felt. He needed me.”
“What?”
Stone Ghost shouted at the top of his lungs, and spun around.
Catkin leaped to her feet, bouncing on her toes, her war club poised. “What’s wrong?”
The old man peered wide-eyed at one of the fabric bags hanging near the roof. To the bag, he said, “How do you know that?”
“Who are you talking to?” Catkin’s skin had started to crawl. She searched the house for anything that might be white, or slithery.
Stone Ghost turned back and gazed at Catkin like a surprised stork. “What? … Oh! Crooked Nose says you saw her. Did you?”
“Who’s Crooked Nose?”
Stone Ghost rose, went to the wall, and carefully lifted the red bag from its peg. He carried it back to the fire like a precious child. After he’d reseated himself, he began untying the laces.
“What is that?” Catkin asked, on the verge of bolting.
Stone Ghost’s bushy white brows lowered. “An old enemy. Of course, he’s a friend now. Death has a way of smoothing even the most vile insults.”
Catkin watched as he drew out a skull. Her gaze flitted across the other bags on the walls, counting sixteen. She’d thought they contained gourds!
“This is Crooked Nose.” Stone Ghost ran his hand over the skull as if petting a favorite dog.
“Are all of those bags filled with skulls?”
“Hmm?” Stone Ghost frowned up at the bags as if he’d never seen them before. “Why, I haven’t the slightest idea. Why don’t you
bring some down and we’ll open them and look? They’ve been hanging up there for, oh, perhaps thirty sun cycles.” He grinned like a mad dog. “I was a fine warrior back then.”
“Elder—”
“Shh!” Stone Ghost pressed his ear to the mouth of the grinning skull. “Really?” he murmured, and looked at Catkin. “Crooked Nose says you saw the Blue God.”
“I don’t even believe in the Blue God.”
Stone Ghost squinted one eye so that he could peer deeply into the skull’s left eye socket. Firelight gilded the flattened rear of the head. “Um,-yes, that’s possible. She may not have realized what she was seeing.” Then, “I suppose.”
Stone Ghost cradled the skull against his bony chest and said, “Where were you the night of the murder?”
Catkin lowered her club. She had been out running the canyon rim with three other warriors, searching for raiders. “How do you know it happened at night?”
“Very well, where were you the day it happened?”
“I do not even know
when
it happened! I heard Matron Flame Carrier say the War Chief’s wife had been gone for two days, but that is all I know. I was away on a war walk.”
“Where did you walk?”
Exasperated, she waved her club. “Around the rim of Straight Path Canyon. Over the past sun cycle, several women and little girls have gone missing from the smaller villages. We know it must be raiders. Probably Fire Dogs. We—”
“Which villages?”
“Well. Many. Whitetail village, Badgerpaw, Frosted Meadow. And others.”
“Browser sent you on this war walk?”
“Yes, but I don’t see—”
“How many warriors accompanied you?”
She gripped her war club as though to strangle the life from it. Catkin forced her voice to be low and controlled. “Elder, I did not kill Browser’s wife. Is that what you are asking? Three warriors accompanied me on the war walk: Whiproot, Jackrabbit, and He-Who-Flies. They will tell you I was with them every moment of those four days. Well, except He-Who-Flies. I dispatched him a
day early to run home and tell the War Chief all was well, and we were coming home.”
Stone Ghost stretched out on the deerhide, and rested the skull in front of him. “Thank you,” he said softly, and petted the skull.
Catkin glared at the empty eye sockets. “Are you thanking me, or Crooked Nose?”
“You, dear girl. You have told me many things in the past finger of time. Things I suspect you’ve never told anyone.”
She shifted her weight to her opposite foot. What? That she’d disliked Ash Girl? That she loved Browser?
“What have I told you?”
“More than you know, child. Details you do not even realize you are aware of.”
As she gazed down into his luminous eyes, Catkin felt physically exhausted.
The fire crackled and spat, but no sound penetrated from the outside except occasional moans of wind whipping around the butte. She wondered how the old man could stand the isolation.
She sank back to the floor and propped her club over her knees. It hadn’t occurred to her until now that for almost a sun cycle Browser had lived within a day’s run of his great-uncle, and never once come to see him. She wondered about that, about what it said about the old man. And, perhaps, about Browser.
“I should tell you, too,” Catkin said. “When we found his wife’s body, we also found our Sunwatcher injured. Hophorn had been tending the burial fire, and was apparently struck in the head by whoever threw Browser’s wife into the burial pit.”