Nina warcloud's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

At dawn Nina tied her bundle and pulled on her patterned dress. The north canyons began past the valley's edge. She had walked their mouth once as a girl, no farther. Beyond lay a maze of rock and dead ends, and one keeper who might hold the verses she lacked. She did not know the path. A wrong turn could leave her stranded far from any water. Edward stepped out from the hogan, his hunting gear already slung across his back. Her husband said little. He never did before a hard trek. He studied her bundle, then shook his head once. "You carry song," he said. "I carry the trail." "You've hunted up there," Nina said. "The deep canyons, no. But I read ground." He touched the red band at his brow. "Let me read it." They climbed through the morning. The canyon split again and again. Nina wanted the wider forks, the open ones. Edward crouched at each one instead. He read the dirt, the scat, the lean of the brush. "Animals go where water is," he said. "Follow them, not the easy turns." By midday the sun stood hard overhead. Nina's throat burned. One fork opened wide and smooth, tempting her. Edward pointed the other way, into a narrow slot choked with stone. "Tracks bend here," he said. Nina hesitated. The wide path looked safer. But she trusted his eyes more than her fear. She followed him into the slot. The walls pressed close. Then the ground turned damp. A thin seep ran down the rock, and a worn footpath climbed beside it. People had walked here. Nina knelt and drank. The water was cold and real. "Someone keeps this trail," Edward said. He pointed up the path. Smoke rose past the ridge, a thin gray thread. Nina followed the smoke to a clearing. A small earthen hut stood there, rounded and plain, its doorway painted in old colors. An old woman sat outside it, grinding something in a stone bowl. She did not look up at once. When she did, her eyes moved over Nina's dress, then her bundle of notes. "You walked a long way," the woman said. "Few find this path." "I came for the old keeper's chant," Nina said. "I sing only half of it." The woman set down her stone. For a long moment she said nothing. Then she spoke, slow and hard. "He taught me the full Blessingway," she said. "But I have not sung it in twenty years. My memory is not what it was." She held up her hands. They trembled. "The verses are here. Some of them. Pulling them whole from an old head is another thing." Nina had found the keeper. She had not found the chant. The woman knew the verses but could no longer reach them all alone. Nina sat down in the dirt. The real work had only started.