The black bearskin, softened by countless wearings, clasped Gray Cloud's arms and shoulders, protecting his body from the cold that cut like knives into his cheeks and forehead. The upper half of the bear's skull covered his head and weighed heavily on it, as heavily as the awful fear of the vision quest weighed on his spirit.

His moccasins whispered over the fallen brown grass that covered the trail. He had walked a long way, and his toes were numb in spite of the leaves stuffed into the moccasins.

Abruptly the path stopped, and he was facing sky. He stood at the edge of the bluff looking eastward over the frozen Great River. He gripped the deerhorn handle of his hunting knife.

For the feeling of strength it gave him, he slid the knife out of the sheath of hardened leather tied to his waist. The steel blade glistened, colorless as the sky above him, in the fading light.

The knife my father left for me, he thought. Where are you tonight, my father?

The clouds seemed close enough to touch. They rippled like snowdrifts painted with light and shadow. Upriver the sky was darkened almost to black, and Gray Cloud smelled snow in the air.

He saw the silhouette of a hawk, wing-tip feathers spread, circling over the Illinois country across the river, hunting in the last moments before nightfall.

Hawk spirit, help me to live through this testing. Help me to see a great vision and grow to be a mighty shaman.

The tiny spot of black dwindled in the sky, till he could no longer see it.

Perhaps it flies over the winter silence of Saukenuk village.

He sheathed the knife. Turning his back on sky and river, he looked westward over the way he had come. A prairie of waving tan grass almost as high as his head stretched as far as he could see. Killed by the cold, the grass yet stood, held up by the stiffness in its dead stalks. Like a fur cloak, the brown covered the hills that rolled away to the west.

He could not see his people's winter hunting camp from here; it nestled back among those hills, sheltered in a forest that grew along the Ioway River. Looking in its direction, he saw Redbird in his mind. Her eyes, black as obsidian arrowheads, shone at him. He felt a powerful yearning just to see her, to speak to her and hear her voice, to touch her cheek with his fingertips. The thought that he might never see her again, never go back to his people, chilled him more than the winter cold.

O Earthmaker, grant that I live to return to Redbird.

He knelt and peered over the edge of the bluff, the bearskin cloak bunching around him. Gray limestone, wrinkled and pitted like the face of an old man, swept down to dark masses of leafless shrubbery at the river's edge. His eyes searched out and then found an especially black shadow in the bluff wall. If he had come any later on this day, he might not have been able to find the cave mouth in the dark.

Then he might have had to wait till morning. Or, trying to climb down to it, he might have missed the way and fallen to his death. A cold hollow swelled in his belly. It would be so easy to slip.

Enough of what might have been. It was what would be that frightened him now. He might die, not of falling, but of what he found in the cave.

Or what found him.

Forcing that thought, too, out of his mind, he lowered his body over the edge of the bluff, dug his toes into footholds and carefully climbed sideways and downward. In places, the path along the bluff face widened out and was almost as easy to walk on as a forest trail. But then the crumbling stone would slant steeply, so that he had to grip hard with his buckskin-shod feet, feeling as if he were clinging to nothing at all.

A wide ledge spread before the entrance to the sacred cave. He let out a breath of deep relief as his feet stepped firmly on the flat stone.

From outside he could see nothing of the cave. But when he entered, he felt a sudden warmth, as if he were walking into a well-sealed lodge with a bright fire going. He could smell old fires-and something else. An animal smell that sent a ripple of cold through his bones. But not a fresh smell. He thanked Earthmaker for that, because he was sure it was the smell of bear.

But Owl Carver had been using this cave for his vision quests for winters beyond counting. And he had never spoken of a bear.

Gray Cloud stood uncertain in the entryway, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. He saw round, gleaming shapes clustered against the back wall, and a motionless figure about as high as a man's waist, with a sharply curved beak and spreading wings.

Again, seeing these things, he felt the coldness of fear. Now he saw that the round objects on the floor were skulls, and he knew them for the skulls of ancestors, great men and women of the tribe. Green and white stones that had long ago been necklaces glittered around the jaws of the great dead ones. And the winged figure standing over them was the Owl spirit, who guided the footsteps of the dead along the Trail of Souls. Owl Carver had earned his name by carving this statue of the spirit and setting it here.

From a pouch tied to his belt Gray Cloud took a handful of sacred tobacco grains and sprinkled them on the cave floor as an offering.

He said, "Give me leave to enter your cave, Fathers and Mothers. You know me. I am your child."

He hesitated. Only through his mother, Sun Woman, was he the child of these ancestors who guarded the sacred cave. His father was a pale eyes, and the pale eyes had no ancestors. Would the ancestors reject him?

There was no sign or sound from the skulls on the floor, but now he could see farther into the shadows, and he saw that the cave went on around a bend, and that bend was guarded by another sacred figure. He peered at the shadowy figure for a moment and decided that it was a bear, but a bear such as he had never seen before. From head to foot this bear was white. Owl Carver had said nothing about this statue.

He sighed in his dread, feeling a trembling in his stomach.

It was good for him to be here, he tried to tell himself. He had come here to learn the shaman's secrets. This was the moment he had dreamed of ever since the first time he had seen Owl Carver, with his long white hair and his necklace of small shells of the lake-dwelling megis and his owl-crested cedar stick, step into the firelight. That long-ago night Owl Carver had spoken, not with the voice of a man, but with the voice of a spirit, an eerily high-pitched singsong that frightened and fascinated Gray Cloud.

The shaman of the tribe was greater than the bravest brave, greater than any chief. He had the power to heal the sick and to foretell the future. Gray Cloud wanted to stand high among the Sauk and to go where the shaman went, into the spirit world. He wanted to penetrate the deepest mysteries and know the answer to every question.

After he began teaching Gray Cloud, Owl Carver had tried to discourage him-as a way of testing him, Gray Cloud was sure.

Owl Carver had said, Many times the people do not want to listen to the shaman. The truer his words, the less they hear him.

The warning had disturbed Gray Cloud. But he never saw the people refuse to listen to Owl Carver. And he did not lose his determination to become a shaman himself.

No one could gain such a great reward without risk. A warrior must kill an enemy at great peril to himself to gain the right to wear the eagle feather that marked him as a brave. A hunter had to kill an animal that could kill him before the tribe would consider him a man.

How, then, could one speak to these spirits of the tribe unless he, too, had faced death?

But what kind of a death? Would he freeze and starve here in this cave, his dead body remaining until Owl Carver came and found it? Or would an evil spirit come and kill him?

Whatever might come, he could only sit and wait for it in the way that Owl Carver had taught him.

He turned his back on the unknown depths of the cave and seated himself at its entrance, pulling the bearskin cloak around him for warmth. He dipped his fingers into a pouch at his belt and took out the bits of dried mushroom Owl Carver had given him from a medicine bag decorated with a beadwork owl. The sacred mushrooms grew somewhere far to the south and were traded up the Great River. One by one he put them into his mouth and slowly chewed them.

You do not need to swallow, Owl Carver had said. Hold them in your mouth until they slide down your throat without your knowing how it happened.

His mouth grew dry as the mushrooms turned to paste. And it was as Owl Carver had said; they were gone without his knowing when they disappeared into his body.

His stomach heaved once and he thought with terror that he might fail this first small test. But he held his breath and slowly the sick feeling died away.

The last light faded from the sky, and the far horizon across the river vanished. Blackness fell upon him like a blanket, thick, impenetrable. It pressed against his face, suffocating him.

The notches in Owl Carver's talking stick, which the shaman had taught Gray Cloud to count, said that tonight the full moon would rise. It would make no difference. Gray Cloud would not see the moon in this sky filled with clouds.

A small spot of cold struck his face, then another and another. His nose and cheeks felt wet.

Snow.

The snow would fall while he sat here, and he would freeze to death.

He must overcome his fear. He must enter the other world. There, Owl Carver had promised him, he would be safe. Without his spirit in his body, he could not be hurt by the cold. But if fear kept him tied to this world, the cold would kill him.

He heard something.

A thumping and scraping behind him in the cave.

Something heavy shuffling around that bend. He felt his heart beating hard and fast in his chest.

There was something in the cave. He had smelled it when he first entered. All the magic in the world could not save him now.

He heard breath being drawn through huge nostrils. Long, slow breaths of a creature whose chest took a long time to fill with air. He heard a grunting, low and determined.

The grunting changed to a rumbling growl that made the floor of the cave tremble beneath him.

Gray Cloud's breath came in gasps. He wanted to leap up and run, but Owl Carver had said it was forbidden to move once he seated himself in the cave. Only his spirit was permitted to move.

Perhaps if he did everything exactly as Owl Carver had told him, he would be safe. But Owl Carver had not told him to expect such a thing as this.

He must not look up.

The scratching of those giant claws was right behind him now. He could not breathe at all. There was a bright light all around him, and yet he could not see anything.

He felt-

A heavy hand-no, paw!-weighing down on his shoulder and gripping it.

He did not willingly turn his head, but his head turned. He did not mean to lift his gaze, but his eyes looked up.

He saw something like a vast white tree trunk beside his head. It was covered with white fur. Claws gleamed on his shoulder.

He looked up. And up.

Above him, golden eyes blazing, black jaws open and white teeth glistening like spearpoints, towered a Bear.

Gray Cloud was in the presence of a spirit so mighty that his whole body seemed to dissolve in dread. He wanted to shrink into himself, bury his face in his arms. But he had no power over his limbs.

The Bear's paw on his shoulder lifted him, raising him to his feet. Together they walked out of the cave.

What had happened to the clouds and the snow?

The sky was full of stars that swept down to form a bridge ending at his feet. The starlight cast a faint glow over the ice on the river, and he could see the horizon and the opposite shore. Through the dusting of tiny sparkling lights, he saw the ledge outside the mouth of the sacred cave. Two steps forward and he would fall over the edge and be killed.

The White Bear, on all fours beside him now, seemed to be waiting for him. Gray Cloud knew, somehow, what was expected of him. He must put his feet on the bridge of stars and walk out over empty air. He could not do it. Terror clawed at his stomach as he thought of standing high above the river with nothing to support him.

This, too, was a test. The bridge would be safe only if Gray Cloud trusted it. From now on everything that happened to him would be a test. And if he did not master each one in turn, he would never be a shaman.

And what would he be, then, if he lived? Only a half-breed boy, the son of a woman with no husband, the child of a missing father. The boy they called Gray Cloud because he was neither one color nor the other, neither white nor red.

This trail was the only way for him. He must walk on this bridge, and if he fell and died, it would not matter.

He took the first step. For a terrifying moment his moccasin seemed to sink into the little sparks of light rather than rest upon them. But it was as if the bridge were made of some springy substance, and the sole of his foot did not fall through it. He took another step. Now he had both feet on the bridge. His heart was thundering, the blood roaring through his ears.

How could a bridge be made of nothing but light? How could a man stand on it?

One more step forward. His leg shook so hard he could barely put his foot down. His knees quivered. His body screamed at him to go back.

Another step, and this would be the hardest. Now he could see the abyss below him. He was out over it. He looked down, his whole body quaking. He breathed in quick bursts, and saw little clouds in front of his face in the starlight.

Another step, and another. For balance, his trembling hands went out from his sides. He looked down. The river was solid ice, and the stars reflected on its smooth black surface. If he fell he would hit that ice so hard every one of his bones would break.

He teetered dizzily. He looked to the left and the right and saw that the edges of the bridge were just on either side of him. He could topple over and nothing would stop him. Where was the White Bear?

Fear would make him fall. Even if this bridge of lights still held his weight, it was so narrow that he must surely lose his balance and die.

But if it holds me, I must be meant to live. And if I am meant to live, I will not be allowed to fall.

It was only his fear that was making the bridge feel so precarious. He knew that the more he believed, the safer it would be for him.

Never turn your back on fear, he remembered Owl Carver saying. Never try to drive it away. Fear is your friend. It warns you of danger.

But what about when I must face the danger and not be warned from it? he asked.

As long as you listen to its warning, fear will not stop you from doing what you have to do. But if you try to pretend you do not hear it, fear will trip you and bind you with rawhide cords.

Gray Cloud, still afraid, stepped forward more boldly. Whatever spirits were making this happen to him, surely they were not showing him these wonders only then to destroy him.

He was out over the middle of the river, and he heard a deep muttering behind him.

He turned, and it was the White Bear, as big as an old bull buffalo, moving with him on its huge, clawed feet. It came up beside him, and he reached up to touch its shoulder. He knew now that it was a great spirit, and that it was his friend. He dug his fingers into the thick fur and felt the warmth and the enormous, powerful muscle underneath.

Joy flooded through him. Where he had been nearly overcome with fear, strength and excitement had entered. He ran up the rising curve of the bridge. He felt an impulse to dance, and he broke into the half trot, half shuffle of the men when they welcomed the harvest of good things to eat that the women had planted around Saukenuk village. He flapped his arms like the wild goose.

The bridge, he saw now, did not cross the river, but followed it. He looked up. The trail of stars ended at the one star in the sky that, as Owl Carver had pointed out to him, remained fixed when all the other stars danced around it. And therefore it was called the Council Fire Star.

The little lights twinkled all around him, like flocks of bright birds, and his heart was full of happiness. It was all so beautiful, he wanted to sing.

And he did sing, the only song he knew that seemed right for this moment, the Song of Creation.

"Earthmaker, you fill the world with life.

You put life in earth and sky and water.

I do not know what you are, Earthmaker,

But you are in me and everything that lives.

Always you have dwelt in life,

Always you will dwell so."

He sang and danced and the White Bear rose up on its hind legs and strode heavily along beside him.

The light from the Council Fire Star grew brighter and seemed to dispel the blackness of the sky around it. The star grew until it was a sphere of cold fire that filled the sky.

He heard a roaring sound and saw that from the bottom of the shining globe water was pouring. The water gave off a light of its own. His eye followed its plunge. He was far, far above the earth now. The Great River was a shiny black ribbon, barely visible, winding over the earth. Straight as a spear the water from the Council Fire Star was falling down to the place where the Great River began its winding course.

He exulted. Already he had learned a secret no other Sauk knew, unless it be Owl Carver himself-the true source of the Great River.

He saw a square, dark opening in the glowing surface of the star. The path led to it. Still walking on its hind legs, the White Bear pressed inexorably on toward that doorway, and Gray Cloud walked beside it.

The colors of the rainbow shimmered in the light from the star, and it pulsed faintly like a beating heart. When he thought of what a mighty spirit must dwell in this magnificent lodge-perhaps Earthmaker himself-Gray Cloud's heart was once again full of fear.

He trembled and his steps slowed. He could not come face to face with such a being. It would be like staring into the sun. His eyes would be burned out of his head. He felt himself weakening.

The star-studded surface under his feet shook a little. He took a step and it quivered under his footfall. The White Bear was ahead of him now, leaving him out here alone among the stars, high above the earth on a bridge that was beginning to fall apart.

He looked back over the way he had come.

There was no bridge behind him.

Nothing but a blackness. He screamed, waved his arms, staggered.

He started to run forward after the Bear, his only protector, and his feet were sinking into the bridge. The Bear and the doorway and the Council Fire Star itself seemed farther and farther away.

He fell to his hands and knees, afraid to stand any more.

But what was the fear trying to tell him?

It was right that Gray Cloud should be afraid, meeting a spirit so much more powerful than himself. And now he must trust that the spirit would not hurt him.

With that thought, he felt the bridge growing more solid under his hands. He pushed himself back to his feet.

He was standing before the doorway. All above him and to the sides stretched the curving, shimmering, many-colored surface of the Council Fire Star.

He did not see the White Bear. It must have gone into the star. He took a deep breath, and taking his fear with him, he plunged through the doorway.

For a moment light blinded him. The air was full of a fluttering and a rustling.

His eyes grew used to the light and he saw that he stood at the edge of a pool full of fish swimming in circles.

They were not fish, he knew, but fish spirits. The spirits of trout and salmon and bass and walleye and sunfish and pike, all the fish of lakes and streams that fed his people.

Full of fear of what else he might see, Gray Cloud raised his eyes.

He saw a Turtle.

The Turtle was frightfully big. He was on the other side of the rushing pool, but still he loomed over Gray Cloud, his head high in the air. His front feet rested on a blue-white block of ice. Behind him rose a mountain of ice crystals. The wrinkles around his eyes and mouth told Gray Cloud he was immeasurably old.

"Gray Cloud," the Turtle said. "You are welcome here." His voice was deep as thunder.

Gray Cloud fell again to his hands and knees.

"Do not be afraid, Gray Cloud," said the rumbling voice.

He looked up again and saw kindness in the enormous, heavy-lidded yellow eyes. The exposed belly of the Turtle was the pale green of spring leaves. On his bone-encased chest a bright drop of water formed, like a dewdrop or a teardrop, but big as a man's head. After a moment it fell and splashed into the pool. Gray Cloud looked into the bottom of the pool and saw the blackness of a deep pit in its center. He realized that it must be from this pool that the stream of water poured down into the Great River. And the drops of water falling from the Turtle fed the pool. The true source of the Great River was the Turtle spirit's heart.

Owl Carver had told him of the Turtle. After Earthmaker he was the oldest and most powerful spirit. He had helped to create the world and to keep it alive.

Scarcely able to believe that he was actually looking upon the Turtle, Gray Cloud lifted his gaze and saw that all manner of beasts and birds occupied the ledges on the ice-crystal mountain. All creation was here. Trees-maple, ash, elm, oak, hickory, birch, pine and spruce-clustered on the mountainside, roots somehow drawing nourishment from the ice.

He said, "Father, I thank you for letting me come here."

Instead of answering him, the huge reptilian head swung to one side. He followed the gaze of the yellow eye.

A man was standing near the Turtle's head on one of the ledges. He was tall and thin. His eyes were round and blue, his face white. A pale eyes! What would a pale eyes be doing here in the lodge of the Turtle? The man had long black hair streaked with gray, tied at the back of his head. His thin figure was dressed in a blue coat, pinched at the waist by a black leather belt with a sword and a pistol hanging from it. His white trousers were tucked into shiny black boots that came up to his calves. Seeing the sword, Gray Cloud thought this man must be one of the long knives, the dreaded pale eyes warriors.

The man was looking at Gray Cloud. His face was narrow, with deep lines. All the pale eyes Gray Cloud had seen had hairy faces-thick mustaches growing under their noses, and sometimes beards that spread out over their chests-but this man's face was clean. His nose was large and hooked like a hawk's beak. Gray Cloud saw that the man was weeping. Tears were running down his creased cheeks as he stared at Gray Cloud. The look in those blue eyes, Gray Cloud realized, was not sadness, but love.

Returning the man's gaze, Gray Cloud felt a warmth in his own chest like the heat suddenly rising from a fire that has taken hold.

"I have brought you to hear a warning," said the Turtle, his voice shaking Gray Cloud's very bones. "You must carry my words back to my children, the Sauk and Fox." As the Turtle spoke, another huge drop splashed into the pool, to add itself to the Great River.

"Evil days are coming for my children."

Gray Cloud quailed, thinking that he did not want to bring that back to his people. But perhaps there was some good word he could tell them.

"How may we escape this evil, Father Turtle?" he asked.

"This evil is from the pale eyes."

At this, Gray Cloud turned to stare at the pale eyes man, who looked sad now, even sombre. Who was this man, and why was he here?

"The pale eyes and my children cannot live on the same land," said the Turtle. "Because they do not live in the same way. Most pale eyes do not wish harm to my children, but they do harm by coming into the land where my children dwell."

Gray Cloud at once grasped what the Turtle spoke of. Generations of Sauk and their allies, the Fox, had lived in towns at the joining of the Rock River and the Great River, where in summer they raised corn, beans, squash and pumpkins. Each fall they would leave their towns and fields for winter hunting camps in the West. But the pale eyes warriors, the long knives, had been telling the Sauk and Fox that they must give up all their land on the east side of the Great River, even their principal town, Saukenuk, and move forever west, into the Ioway country. And the war chief Black Hawk had defied the long knives, leading his people each spring back across the river to farm the land around Saukenuk.

Gray Cloud knew that even the kindliest pale eyes were not to be trusted. Owl Carver was suspicious of the black-robed medicine man, Père Isaac, who talked about the spirit called Jesus and who spent many afternoons with Gray Cloud, teaching him the words and signs of the American pale eyes.

The Turtle's voice broke in upon these memories. "Tell my children that a great clash is to come between them and the long knives. The people will suffer, and many of them will die."

Gray Cloud gasped as the horror of that sank in. He looked again at the pale eyes, and now where there had been love he saw lines of sorrow carved deep into the thin face.

Is this man, then, a danger to me?

"Is there no escape, Father Turtle?" he asked again.

"The people must walk their path with courage," said the Turtle. "Black Hawk will lead them. And he and his braves will show the greatest courage, such courage that the name of Black Hawk will never be forgotten in the land where he was born."

The Turtle's golden, heavy-lidded eye seemed to fix itself on Gray Cloud.

"And you will find your own path. For some of the people the path you find will be good. But many others will journey in sorrow into the setting sun. And there they will disappear forever."

Bewildered, Gray Cloud looked from the Turtle to the pale eyes near him and back to the Turtle again. These things the Turtle had said were strange, like the words Owl Carver would chant before the council fire. Must he bring his people a message of suffering and sorrow? Would they listen?

He wanted to ask more questions but he felt a gentle pressure from the great body of the Bear beside him, and he knew that his visit to the lodge of the Turtle was ended.

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