Free People of the Wolf by W. Michael Gear, Kathleen O'Neal Gear

memory. "Your face looked like a blowed-up walrus bladder ... all pooched out and skintight! Ha-heeee!"
    "Yes, and you remember what Crow Caller did?"
    "Don't glower at me like that, you old hag. Of course I do. How could I forget you howling like a wolf with his nose caught in a clamshell?" Broken Branch slapped her leg, chuckling dryly. ' 'It took how many hunters to hold you down while old One Eye worked his healing? Five? Ten?"
    "That's not the point!" Gray Rock bristled, wrinkles pulling tight as she hissed, "The point is, he saved my life."
    "Bah!" Broken Branch smacked her lips. "He drilled a hole through your cheek with a big bone awl. I could've done that. And just as good!"
    Gray Rock pouted before adding sullenly, "Still, he saved my life." She paused. "I'm going north."
    Broken Branch carefully scooped the last of the marrow from the bone. She licked the shine of the fatty material from her fingers and the fractured bone before pocketing the fragments to boil later for whatever grease she could render.
    "Well . . . go." She shook her finger at Gray Rock. "See what his Power brings you. You'll turn south soon enough— if one of them Others don't stick your guts with a dart."
    Gray Rock worked her tongue over empty gums as she studied her friend. "Darts may be better than the ghosts of the Big Ice."
    "What would they want with an old hag like you anyway? You'd be nothing but trouble for them—get in their way. Foul up their ghosting or something."
    Gray Rock smiled weakly. "I told Jumping Hare to go with Runs In Light."
    "You what? That's not right!" she gasped. "Your son should stay with you. Singing Wolf and that 'yes-no' One
    Who Cries are going with Light. Crow Caller's band won't have enough hunters. If you're thinking that going south is really right, why don't—"
    "Raven Hunter will be enough."
    "Bah! He'll get you in trouble with those Others. Young idiot! All he wants is war. Something bad in his blood. I remember when he was born. Blood . . . bad blood."
    Gray Rock looked through the crack in the hide door to see how much time remained. Dawn light grayed the sky. "They're getting ready to go. I hear them." Almost as an afterthought, she asked, "Do you really think Heron went that way?"
    "I know she did. I saw her leave."
    "Most people think she's a myth, that she never really—"
    ' 'Only the old ones still remember.''
    Gray Rock frowned uneasily. "The stories tell how wicked she was, how she consorted with the Powers of the Long Dark. Why'd she go? Did the clan drive her off?"
    Broken Branch shook her head awkwardly. "No. She left on her own. Needed to be alone, she said." Guilt tinged the. old woman's voice, guilt and remorse.
    Gray Rock eyed her downcast face seriously. "What'd you do? Kill Heron's mother? That look on your—"
    "Quit asking things that are none of your—"
    "All right," Gray Rock said wearily. "I was just making talk."
    Broken Branch rose slowly to her feet, offering a hand to her crippled friend, who struggled vainly to rise. "You're walking to find another clan of the People? You can't even stand up!"
    "Oh, shut up, you old bear bait," Gray Rock spat. But she took the hand, bones crackling and straining as she fought to stand. "Once I'm up, I do fine. Get me started and I don't stop. It's what all them oversized kids did to my hips that keeps me down!"
    In an uncharacteristically gentle voice Broken Branch added, "Well, don't sit down, then. I won't be there to pick you up."
    Gray Rock nodded, hobbling to the flap and ducking under it. In the faint light, she looked back toward Crow Caller where he gathered the People going with him. "See you
    among the stars," she whispered, wrinkling her antique face in one last wink before she tottered off toward the old shaman.
    Broken Branch watched her go, a familiar pain of loss smoldering around her heart.
    Chapter 6

"Wolf Dreamer?"
    Runs In Light turned, seeing Jumping Hare walking up behind him. They called him that now—at least the