'Do you know anything about Willow?' she asked anxiously.
The fatuous smile returned. 'Oh, yes,' he replied leisurely. 'I know lots about Willow. More than she knows herself,' he added, a giggle in his voice. 'Where's she gone?' Vandien demanded impatiently. 'There's bound to be patrols along this stretch of road, and if she's spotted alone, with no papers ...'
'Gone?' The word came out of Goat as if it were a rock he'd discovered in his mouth. 'Willow's gone?'
'Yes,' Ki told him angrily. 'And if you know where, you'd better say now.'
'She can't be gone.' Goat sat up, frowned, then winced and put his hand to his jaw. 'My face hurts still, you pile of sheep dung,' he told Vandien angrily. In the next breath he muttered, 'She wouldn't dare be gone. She can't be gone.' He glared at them as if he suspected a trick. 'She's probably off peeing in the bushes.'
'Sure she is. Since dawn,' Vandien agreed sarcastically. He turned to Ki. 'Now what do we do?'
She shrugged. 'We can wait for her to come back. But we aren't sure that she'll do that. Or we can look for her. Damn. I should have stayed with her last night, made her tell me what she was crying about.'
'I should have tried to talk to her,' Vandien added guiltily. 'But I was just so tired.'
Ki shook her head. 'None of this does us any good now. There's no good in worrying about what we should have done. The question is, What do we do now?' She turned aside from them, climbed up to the top of the wagon itself. 'Willow!' she called. But the heavy air of the gathering storm muffled her shout. Ki turned slowly, scanning the prairie in every direction. Its seeming flatness was a deception. The tall dry grass and low growing brush were moving in the winds of the rising storm like the waves stirred by a storm over water. Any of a hundred rises and dips could be hiding Willow, even if she were walking back toward them. And if she were deliberately hiding, lying flat in a swale of grass, they could look for days and never see her.
'Where did she go, Goat?' Vandien's voice was flat. And why did she go?'
'How would I know?' Goat demanded angrily. 'I was sleeping in the wagon, stupid. It wasn't my job to watch her.'
'Goat.' Ki cut into the argument. 'Did you get into Willow's dreams last night?'
He scrambled out of the wagon. He suddenly struck her as ridiculous, his clothes awry and his hair wild from sleep, his pale eyes huge in his swollen face. Her question hung in the air between them, and as she looked at his childish stance, his arms crossed stubbornly over his narrow chest, her own words seemed silly. This spoiled and pouting brat the nefarious dream-thief of the old legends?
'That's stupid,' he echoed her thought. 'Willow tells you a lot of gossip about me, and then, just because she runs away, you think it's true. You're stupid, both of you. Just as stupid as that dumb Willow.'
'The girl in Algona,' Vandien said, his voice soft and fanged. 'Was she stupid, too? Or was she lying when she said she had dreamed about you?'
Goat looked flustered. 'I don't know!' he sputtered. 'Some stupid girl says something ... who cares what the stupid little wench said ... she just wanted to make an excuse, because she let me mate her. She wanted to make it my fault that she couldn't keep her legs together.' Vandien lifted his hand suddenly and Goat instantly shrank in on himself, throwing his arms up to cover his face.
'Hitting him won't get anything out of him,' Ki observed pragmatically, but disgust was in her voice. 'Leave him alone, Van.' She climbed down from the wagon to stand in front of the boy. Vandien gave a huff of frustrated anger and turned away from them. Going to the fire, he began to kick dirt over it.
Goat peered out anxiously from the shelter of his arms. Seeing that Vandien was a safe distance away, he dropped his arms. 'It wasn't my fault,' he told Ki earnestly. 'None of it was my fault.'
'Whatever.' She dismissed the earlier quarrel. 'What I need to ask is this. Where do you think Willow might be?' As the boy opened his mouth to protest, she quickly filled in, 'I know, you said you don't know. I'm only asking you what you guess, where you suppose she would go if she felt very upset. You know her better than Vandien and I do; maybe you can guess what she might do.'
The calmness of Ki's words reached the boy. He stood scuffing his foot in the dust. He finally looked up at Ki guilelessly. 'She'd probably go on to Tekum. To her precious Kellich!' There was a wealth of distaste in his words suddenly. 'Yes,' he added, staring off down the road. 'She'd hurry ahead to Kellich, to try to explain.'
'Explain what?' Ki prodded gently. But Goat was wary again.
'Whatever was troubling her,' he said sweetly. 'That would be just Willow's way. Run ahead and tell all her troubles to big, brave Kellich. Big brave Kellich can make everything all better. Or so she thinks.' The sneer in his voice was unmistakable now.
'Vandien!' Ki called, but he was already putting the big horses to harness.
When the rain broke it came down in sheets of grey water that shut down the world around them and set Goat scuttling inside the wagon. Lightning flashed in the distance, and cleared a space of silence in which Ki and Vandien listened to the creak and rumble of the wagon and the damp clopping of the horses' hooves in the now wet road. He reached and put his hand on her leg as the thunder reached them, filling their ears with its threat. Ki took one wet hand from the reins and set it atop his.
'You're worried,' he said, sliding closer to her.
She nodded into the rain, blinking against the heavy drops. 'I feel responsible,' she admitted.
'Me, too.' The rain was not cold, but it was constant, drenching them and running down their faces. It soaked Vandien's hair to his skull, making his curls lie flat on his forehead and drip in his eyes. 'I always wondered what it would be like to have children.' He paused. 'It's a pain in the ass.'
'When they're your own, it's even worse,' Ki told him. 'Except for the times when it's wonderful.' They rode a long ways in silence. The rain stained the grey backs of the horses to a deeper charcoal. The road became both sticky and slick. The horses began to steam. But despite Ki's anxiety for Willow, the storm brought a strange peace with it. The drumming of the rain on the wagon became a noise so constant it was a different kind of silence. She and Vandien were alone on the box, rocking together to the sway of the wagon. The annoyance of the rain trickling down her collar and running a wet finger between her breasts seemed minor.
'A few weeks ago, I'd have said this was miserable weather.' Vandien echoed her thoughts. 'Now itseems peaceful.'
She nodded into the rain, blinking away the blinding drops. 'I've missed you,' she said, and laughed aloud at how senseless her words seemed. But he understood. He lifted his hand from her leg and put his arm across her shoulders.
It was nearly noon before they came upon Willow. 'She must have slipped away right after I talked to her, to get this far,' Ki observed. Vandien nodded silently, and stared at the small figure plodding ahead of them. Her clothing was drenched, and her long skirt clung to her. Mud weighted the hem; her slippers were a ruin. Her hair was plastered down flat. But her spine was straight and she did not look back, even though she must have heard them coming. Ki glanced over at Vandien and slowed the big horses. Vandien stood, then agilely swung down from the moving wagon. His boots threw up clods of mud as he ran.
When he reached the girl he slowed to keep pace with her. Ki watched them walk together, the girl's back straight and angry at first, and then starting to hunch in misery. Vandien, she knew, probably wasn't saying a word. As a storyteller, he excelled, but his ability to listen, to nod and be understanding, had earned him more meals. She watched him listen, saw Willow wave her arms wildly and even caught the sound of her angry words as she ranted at Vandien. Then suddenly the girl turned and butted into him, burrowing her face into his shoulder and clinging to him as she stood crying in the rain.