Free Feather by Susan Page Davis Page A

loyalty?
    Kama shrugged. “Perhaps if they steal enough smart people like us, they will grow even stronger, no?” Her white teeth gleamed in a smile.
    Feather chuckled. “Perhaps. I think their hunting has improved already.”
    “Yes! But you know, they will keep on losing the arrows.”
    Feather knew the tall, dry grass hid many of the spent arrows. “Maybe we should use brighter feathers or dye some. Red or yellow perhaps.” She did not say that at home Weave had dyed many feathers for her for this very reason. Scarlet, sky blue, and bright goldenrod. Each of the men chose his color of feathers and painted colored markings on his arrow shafts. Hunter’s had stripes of black and red, she remembered, with two red feathers and one black. Karsh, who was not yet a hunter, did not get the best feathers. On his arrows, she placed one golden feather and two natural, and painted one green stripe around each of his arrow shafts.
    “It is good,” said Kama. “Perhaps they will not lose so many. But always as we approach the autumn equinox, many things are lost. Especially many arrows.”
    “What do you mean?” Feather asked.
    “The days, they grow shorter.”
    She nodded.
    Kama shrugged. “It is a bad time. The cold winter comes. The fruit and grain stop growing. We have to find a place to keep warm. People get angry. Whole things are broken, and treasured things are lost.”
    Feather frowned, thinking about that as she sliced the vane of a hawk’s feather precisely down the center. “Why now?”
    Kama shivered. “It is just the way it is. We go to the City of Cats, and on the day when light and dark are equal, our boys will become men. After that, things start to get better, even though the winter comes.”
    Feather looked up at her in puzzlement, but Kama was very serious. Not all things were broken and lost now, though perhaps the hunt accounted for more lost arrows than was normal. Still, she remembered that Hana had broken a small clay pot she valued only the day before, and Tag had lost his flint stone on the journey.
    If that is true, Feather thought, perhaps there is a time when I will be restored. My tribe is broken, and I am lost. She hesitated, then asked Kama, “Is there a time when lost things are found?”
    Kama smiled once more, and Feather began to think her smile was bright in her dark new world. “Yes, yes. In the spring, when once more the day and night are equal. That is when broken things will be mended, and lost things will be found.”
    T he next night Feather sat with her back to the large rock where she and Tag often met. The stone still held some of the sun’s warmth from the day. She hugged her arms tight, trying to keep her body’s heat close in the chilly evening air. She was almost ready to run for her wool blanket when Tag sprinted around the side of the rock and dropped to the earth beside her.
    “Good. You’re still here.”
    “I thought you might not come again.”
    “I had to get away from the others first.”
    She smiled at him in the moonlight. “I’m glad you’re
here.”
    The noise from the camp was louder than usual tonight, and Tag nodded back toward the fires. “The men are fighting over today’s kill. Each band’s leader claims a large share of the meat.”
    “Will we leave soon?” Feather asked. The nighttime revels and quarrels among the men made her afraid.
    “Yes. We must go to the City of Cats together.”
    Feather blinked in surprise. “I thought we would leave the others.”
    “We will. After the ritual.”
    “But . . . that takes place soon, doesn’t it?”
    “Lex says four more nights by the moon. I think we will leave tomorrow.”
    “Why didn’t we just meet there to begin with?”
    “The people don’t like to camp near the cats. Their city is full of the old plague, it is said, and only the cats keep it away. But the cats will come around the camp while we are near. At night they will steal dogs and children if the people are not