"What a fool!" Water Flows Fast, standing nearby, had spoken. "The pale eyes have steel knives and blankets and big sturdy lodges that are always warm and never leak. They always have enough food. I would be happy to go live with a pale eyes if he asked me."

"Is your prattling tongue never still, woman?" said her husband, Three Horses.

"It was my prattling tongue that agreed to marry you."

Redbird had no heart to listen to them bicker.

"Let me through!" she cried, and the crowd parted before her.

"Where are you going?" cried her mother. "It is shameful to run after him." She grabbed Redbird's sleeve. "All the people will laugh at you."

"Let me go!"

As Wind Bends Grass pulled at her, Redbird's eyes met those of Wolf Paw, standing beside his father, the war chief. He glared at her. She knew he, too, wanted to tell her not to run after White Bear. But if he showed that he cared that much, the people would make fun of him.

She turned her back on all of them-Wind Bends Grass, Wolf Paw, Black Hawk, Owl Carver-and began to run.

When she reached the riverbank she saw no sign of him. For one panic-stricken moment she thought, Did he throw himself into the river?

Then, downriver, she saw a canoe gliding over the glistening water. He was paddling hard and was almost out of sight around a bend.

Her own small bark canoe, on which she had painted a bird's wing in red, lay a short distance down the riverbank. She pushed it into the water, jumped into the rear and seated herself in the middle. The canoe's bottom scraped over the riverbank as she pushed off with her paddle.

She stayed a distance behind White Bear, just close enough to keep him in sight. He might not want her to follow him. She could not guess what was in his mind right now.

What would she do when she caught up with him? She had hoped to marry him, if not this summer, then the next. Ever since she was a small child she had found him endlessly fascinating. More so than ever since his return from his spirit journey. Nothing, she thought, would make her happier than living with him. Sun Woman had told her all about what happens when a man and a woman lie down together-knowledge that Wind Bends Grass had insisted that she did not yet need. It sounded painful, pleasurable, frightening and exciting. She had looked forward to lying down with White Bear.

But now she was going to lose him. How could Sun Woman send her own son away from the tribe?

And send him away from me. Redbird felt more hurt than if her own mother had turned against her.

And did White Bear truly mean to go with the pale eyes? He had smoked the calumet. He must.

The current carried her canoe through the water, brown with silt caught up in spring flooding, almost faster than she could paddle. Ahead the river divided, flowing around an island near the right bank, thick with trees. White Bear turned into the narrow channel that ran between island and shore, and she backpaddled to slow herself and watch.

His canoe rounded a huge fallen tree, whose exposed roots clutched at the island's shore like the fingers of a drowning man, and disappeared behind the trunk.

She let her paddle drag in the water, first on one side then on the other, holding her canoe back until he had time to land. Then she glided into the narrow channel and around the dead tree.

He had drawn his canoe up in a small sandy cove, and was gone. She landed on the patch of sand beside his canoe and pulled her canoe partway out of the water.

She listened, and for a moment heard nothing but the wind in the trees. A redbird, her namesake, trilled long and loud, and another answered from a more distant tree.

Then she heard a human voice. No words, just an outcry. A cry of pain.

She plunged into the forest that covered the island, pushing her way through the shrubbery toward the sound of his voice.

He was sobbing so loudly that she was sure he could not hear her coming. She had heard a man sob like that once before, a dying hunter whose leg had been torn to shreds by a bear.

She moved through some trees and saw him. He was sitting with his back against the big black trunk of an oak. He was in a grove of trees so big and so old that little grew in their heavy shade, and there was an open place to sit. The season was so young that their branches were still almost bare, and she could see White Bear clearly in the afternoon sunlight. He held a severed tree branch in his lap. His eyes were squeezed shut and his lips were drawn back from his teeth, and his cries of pain came one after another.

She stepped out of the bushes into the grove. He looked up, and the face he showed her was so twisted that she could not tell whether he saw her. He went on sobbing hoarsely.

Her heart hurt to see him suffer so. She sat down beside him.

For a long time she listened to him weep, waiting for a chance to speak to him.

She looked at the branch he was holding. It was almost as long as her arm, and, surprisingly, it had leaves at its tip, even though this was only the Moon of Buds. He clutched it as a child clutches a doll for comfort.

Gradually his weeping subsided. She reached out very carefully and patted his shoulder lightly. When he did not pull away, she rested her hand on him. She eased herself closer until they were pressed together side by side, and she slid her arm around his shoulders and held him tightly.

At first she felt no answering movement. He seemed only half alive. She wondered if he knew she was here. Then his head dropped to her shoulder. She felt the weight of his body yielding to her.

She put her other arm around him. She held him as if he were her child. In spite of his sorrow and her own, it was a great happiness to hold him like this.

He sighed and wiped his face with his hand. She stroked his cheek, brushing away the tears.

She wanted to talk to him, but waited for him to speak first.

"There is nothing I can do," he said. "I must go with Star Arrow, my father."

She studied his face as he stared off into the forest. She could see now the features of his father in him. There had always been something odd about his eyes, but she had never been quite able to decide what it was. Now she saw that they were rounder than most people's. They were shaped like his father's. His nose was thin and bony, with a high arch, and sharp at the end, like the beak of a bird. His eyebrows were thick, black and straight across. His chin was pointed. She loved the strangeness of his face.

She said, "When it gets dark we could go back to the village and fill our canoes with food and blankets and tools and weapons. There will be feasting tonight for Star Arrow. Everyone will sleep soundly after that. We could cross the Great River tonight, and tomorrow we could be far away."

He stared at her. "But I do not want to leave my people."

She had not thought that far ahead, about what it would be like to be away from Owl Carver, Iron Knife, Sun Woman, her sisters, her mother, all the others. Yes, it would be a great loss. But she could stand the pain, she thought, if she were beside White Bear.

"But we would have each other. Would it not hurt you less if you had me with you?"

He did not answer at once, and that made her feel as if a rough hand had squeezed her heart. But then he smiled at her, and she felt better.

"Yes, if I could share my life with you, the pain of leaving Saukenuk would be less." Then his face darkened. "But we could not live on our own. A man or a woman cut off from their tribe can no more be happy than a flower after it is picked can continue to grow. And I would have dishonored the promise I made with the sacred tobacco. The spirits would turn their backs on me. My mother and Owl Carver say that if I go with Star Arrow, I may learn things that would help our people."

She was thunderstruck to realize that he actually wanted to go with Star Arrow. Then what was all this weeping for?

He did not care for her as much as she did for him. That made her angry. She pushed herself a little apart from him.

"I see that I have been a fool to chase after you, just as my mother said. It means more to you to go and live with the pale eyes than it does to have Redbird as your woman."

His eyes widened. "We have never before today spoken of this, you and I."

"Did we have to speak?" She felt herself getting angrier and angrier. "Why do you think I went looking for you when you went on your vision quest? Why do you think I followed you from the village today? And why did I say I would go with you across the Great River? Yes, I did want to be your woman. But you do not want me. You want to go away with this pale eyes father of yours, and maybe you want to take a pale eyes woman for yourself."

His mouth as well as his eyes opened up in amazement. "I have never even seen a pale eyes woman. How could I want one? I do want Redbird to be my woman. And I weep at leaving Saukenuk because I must leave you."

Again she reached out to him, putting her hands on his arms. "I would rather be cast out of our tribe than lose you."

He shook his head. "We do not have to lose our people or each other. It was part of the promise sealed with sacred tobacco that I am to come back. If we ran away now, Earthmaker would be angry with us."

She moved closer to him. She had seen Earthmaker in dreams. He was taller than the tallest tree, and he carried a great war club with a ball-shaped rock at the end of it and looked much like Black Hawk, with a long black lock of hair coiling down from the top of a shaved head.

"I wish I could meet and talk with the spirits, as you have," she said. "Sometimes I think I do meet them, in dreams."

"It can be dangerous to meet with the spirits," he said. His eyes seemed to be looking into the distance. He had seen so many things she had not. It was unfair, she thought sadly.

She had gone out to him in the bitter cold when the world was an endless white waste. She might have frozen to death. She might have been punished by drowning in the icy river. She had risked almost as much as he had.

"I do not say that I am as strong as White Bear, or as worthy to speak with the spirits," she said. "I only wish I had a chance to."

He took her hands in his and looked deep into her eyes.

"The real danger of a shaman's vision is not to the body."

"What is the real danger?"

"I did not want to come back."

She felt a cold wind blowing across her neck, as if spirits had quietly entered this grove with them and were standing about them, listening to them, judging them.

"It is so wondrous," he said in a voice so low she had to strain to hear it over the wind whispering in the tree branches. "You are there with them. The White Bear, the Turtle. You see them, talk to them. You see the Tree of Life, the crystal lodge of the Turtle and the spirits of all living things. Why would anyone want to return?"

Redbird shivered. But she still envied him.

"Your hands are cold," White Bear said, and he put his arm around her and drew her close to nestle on his chest. She slid her hands under the leather vest he wore and felt the smooth warmth of his skin and the firmness of his muscles. How powerful his arms were around her. She thanked Earthmaker that White Bear had found the inner strength to return from that other land.

A new thought occurred to her. "What if you find that the land of the pale eyes holds you fast? Then you will never come back to me, and to the Sauk you will be dead."

He smiled gently and patted her shoulder. She pulled herself closer to him.

"Can the land of the pale eyes, altogether without spirits, hold me, when the spirits themselves could not?"

"I do not think so."

"Can the land of the pale eyes hold me, when Redbird is not in it? I do not think so."

Her body seemed to be melting. She wanted to flow together with White Bear as the Rock River flowed into the Great River.

His arms tightened around her. Then he raised his hand to brush the fringe of hair that fell over her forehead.

She moved against him until her cheek touched his. Slowly she slid one side of her face against his, then the other side. A hunger filled her. It was almost as if she wanted to devour White Bear, but all she could do was touch his smooth cheek with her fingertips.

His nostrils flared and his lips parted and she could hear his breathing. His hands were roaming over her body, awakening powerful feelings wherever he touched her, making her want more.

How did they come to be lying down? They must have moved without realizing it. She could see, feel and think only of White Bear. Her head was pillowed on his arm and her face was pressed against his. With his free hand he caressed her, seeking her flesh under her jacket and skirt. His hand became bolder, plucking at the laces that held her clothing together, baring places that only a husband should look at as he was looking now. And touching those places, sending ripples of delight all through her.

And she wanted him to do that. She felt no shame or fear, only happiness. She let him do whatever he wanted. She helped him. She moved her hands also, to touch more of him. Her hand found the oak branch that he had been holding just before she sat down with him. She put the branch aside and let her fingers feel the hardness pushing against his loincloth; he was ready to come into her in the way that Sun Woman had explained.

She could still stop him if she wanted to. She knew him and trusted that he would not do anything she did not want.

But she wanted this. She wanted his hand to go on skillfully preparing the way for him. She wanted this golden glow inside her to fill her more and more. This was happiness, and she was climbing toward a greater and greater happiness. She felt him move, and all at once her hand was not on his loincloth, but on his hot flesh. She wanted to open herself up to the part of him she held so tightly.

Then he was upon her, and she felt a sudden stabbing pain. She cried out. Almost at once his cry of pleasure followed on hers and his hips thrust forward violently and she felt him filling her. He let out a long sigh and relaxed, lying on top of her, resting all of his weight on her.

I am like the Turtle holding up the earth, she thought.

There had been mounting pleasure until her moment of pain. Now there was an ache and a faint memory of the good feelings. She wanted more pleasure. Sun Woman had told her it would hurt only the first time. And that from then on it would be better and better.

Slowly he withdrew from her and they lay on their sides looking at each other. His eyes were huge right before her face.

"For a moment," he said softly, "I felt as I did when I walked on the bridge of stars."

She thought of asking him whether it made him so happy that he would stay with her now instead of going to the country of the pale eyes with his father. But she knew what his answer would be, and that his saying it would only hurt him and her.

She said, "It was Sun Woman, your mother, who told me about this-about what men and women do together."

He laughed. "It was also she who told me." His face reddened. "I feel as if my mother were here watching us."

It was Redbird's turn to laugh. "What would she see that she did not know about already?"

He shook his head. "I would not want anybody to see us doing that."

"The spirits watch us."

"That is not the same. They watch everything, so it is not special to them."

"Is it special to you?" she asked.

"Oh, yes. Something has passed between us. I have given a part of myself to you. And I have a part of you too. Now, even if I must leave you, we will still be with each other."

She did not want to hear him speak of leaving. She wanted to stay here with him in this grove of ancient trees forever. When she had spoken to him of going off and being alone together, this was what she imagined it would be like. But then a dark thought crossed her mind.

"White Bear, they might send people looking for us. They might catch us together like this." Anxiously she started to pull her clothing together.

He sat up beside her and put his hand over hers. "I do not think anyone is coming." He sounded so sure that she thought he must be speaking as a shaman.

"They know I will come back to the village," he added. "They saw me smoke the calumet. And in a few days I will leave with Star Arrow."

He said it with such finality that the sun seemed to go out.

"And so there is time," he said, "If you want ..." and guided her hand to touch him. To her joy she felt him strong in his readiness to be within her again. This time, she was sure, it would not hurt. She would know the full delight that Sun Woman had told her of. The afternoon sunlight slanting through the budding branches was warm again, bathing her and making her feel joyful and free.

Their flowing together lasted longer this time, and gave her all the happiness she had hoped for.

And it came to her, as they lay peacefully side by side afterward, that this might have happened someday, but it would not have happened today if Star Arrow had not come to claim his son.

* * *

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