Free Godbond by Nancy Springer

felt forever starved, hunger as much of soul as of body. Talu starved worse than I, kicked apart rotten logs, ate the grubs and worms. She grew thin, and I took to walking to spare her when our pace was slow, when the brush was dense.
    The fifth day after I had left the pool of vision, as I struggled through one such thicket with my fanged mare at my side, something scuttled out of the cover at my feet, clucking. “Ridge chicken,” I muttered, standing dumbfounded because I had not seen a living wild creature in so long. And before I could think my mouth began to water at the thought of the roasted flesh. Ridge chickens made easy hunting, so stupid that a child could walk up to them and knock them on the head. The one I had flushed had stopped at a small distance. There it stood, complaining through its beak. As if of its own accord my hand drew the stone hunting knife from its leather sheath at my belt. I let go of Talu’s reins, prepared to grasp and kill.
    But my heart stopped my hands. The dimwitted, rackety creature, probably it lived only because not even gluttonous Mahela wanted it, as she seemed not to want the asps and worms. But it was a creature of Sakeema even so. One of the few remaining. I could not kill it. With a fierce, joyous resolve I knew that I would never eat flesh again, and I stood rapt, watching its small eyes amid their pink wrinkles of wattle, the fussy stirrings of its dust-colored feathers—
    And Talu, who had grown tired of waiting for me to dispatch the hen and give her her share, pushed past me, shouldering me out of her way and sending me sprawling into a thorn bush. She bore down on the ridge chicken in two strides, bit off its head and devourer it, bones and all. After a moment I swallowed my vexation, got up out of my thorny seat and turned away from watching.
    â€œWell,” I muttered, kicking at the loam as if I could find myself something tasty there, “better you than I. Pity we can give none to our friend the wolf.”
    Talu walked on with satisfied grunts thereafter, and we made good time that day.
    I came to my people of the Red Hart some few days later, quietly, in the hush of dusk. When I saw the signs of their nearby encampment I left Talu in the brush and made my way afoot, skulking forward as silently as a thief, for I wanted no commotion until I had had a chance to greet Tyee. At the time of day he would be in his tent, I thought. But I was wrong.
    I blinked in astonishment, for ahead of me blazed a great fire. It was hardly the season for soulfires, at the wrong end of the year, in fact, but there one burned, flames swaying higher than the heads of those gathered around it. All the tribe, even to the infants, was seated in a wide circle there. Firelight shone off the unbound, sun-colored hair of children and the yellow braids of the others, the warriors, the matrons, and the bone-white, thinning hair of the elders.
    I stopped in the shadows of the nearest aspen grove, watching.
    The shaman was dancing. A raven mask covered his hair and face. In a spearhead-shaped cloak of deerskin he danced, circling the blaze, and his fringes hung so long they seemed to spring from the ground, wavering like fire. To me he was a black, swaying flame of a man seen against the flames that danced and swayed much as he did. He passed his hands through the fire to show that he possessed power. He reached into the blaze, pulled out coals and held them up for his people to see. With his hands he raked out coals in plenty, like a marmot raking out a fiery burrow, and then he stood upright and walked on them with his bare feet. His head and shoulders had been thrust into the fire. I could not believe what I was seeing. This was a new shaman, a young and potent shaman, not the old graybraid I remembered. He danced again. Others should have been dancing with him, the king, the warriors, but no one did.
    I scanned the tribe, seeking Tyee, but could not find him amid the crowd of