Confused by her feminine switches in logic, Sunbright could only reach out and cuddle her close. He felt a tear on his bare shoulder, patted her back like a child's, and said, "I'd feel alone and sad, as I felt when my tribe was lost, but you were kind and stayed with me, even when I was bitter and afraid and angry."
"Yes, I did," she sniffled. "Because I love you."
"Yes, and I love you. Do you feel alone and afraid?"
"I don't…" She pulled back to see his face, held it in her small, calloused hands with the many scars, and told him, "I'm not lonely when I'm with you, but suddenly you're not with me. You're either arguing with your tribesfolk, or lost in dreamland. I'm alone."
The shaman hugged her, and she squeezed his ribs. "I love you, Knuckle' " he told her softly. "I must help my tribe, but I'll try to keep you close. That's the best I can offer."
"It's enough," she breathed in his ear. "Just don't forget me."
They were quiet a while, until, finally, Sunbright said, "I must start this fire. And I need you to leave."
Her single dark eye flashed at this new betrayal.
Sheepishly, he offered, "I must be alone for the ceremony. There are prayers to Jannath and Amaunator and such. And the fire must be lit at noon, and if the first spark doesn't take I need to wait another day. It's…"
"Fussy," the thief supplied. "Very well. I'll wait with your mother. She'll understand, having been a shaman's wife."
An hour later, Sunbright threw aside the rotted hide over the door, cupped his hands, and warbled an ancient cry: "To council! To council! All adults, to council!"
Knucklebones rose from the shade where she'd waited, and smiled at his grin. The shaman gestured with a sooty hand at folks converging from all around.
"Look!" Sunbright beamed. "They've waited all morning to council and talk. To discuss the future and what we should do. It's like zombies rising from their graves to find new life. There's just one thing, though-I need to find us a direction."
The thief squinted at his clouded face, and asked, "Direction for what?"
Sunbright moved aside to let villagers enter the common house. He cast his eyes over the rocky dunes, the brown mountainside, the shabby town in the distance, and the winking sea. "Where we should go," he answered. "No matter what, we can't stay here. I need to seek a vision."
Now the thief frowned. "Isn't that how you lost Whatshisname?" she asked. "Owlfluff?"
"Owldark. Yes. He went into the wasteland to find a new direction, and found only death. Yet I must follow, for we need the truth."
"Fine." Knucklebones shifted her belt on her hips, tugged her silver-wrapped pommel around, and said, "I'll go with you."
"No. A shaman always makes a vision quest alone. Dangerous or not. He needs to escape from distractions to hear the whispers of the gods…"
His vision grew distant as he stared at the Channel Mountains running off to the south. He didn't see Knucklebones reach into a flat pocket, slip on her brass knuckledusters, and ball her fists. She cooed, "Sunbright… If you can change and improvise customs, so can I."
And hauling back knotty arms, she slammed him in the breadbasket hard, four times in four seconds. Sunbright gasped, clasped his stomach, and doubled over retching.
Knucklebones cooed over his wheezing, "New rule. From now on, a shaman making a vision quest may take one companion to see he doesn't fall headfirst into a hole to be eaten by weasels. How's that sound?"
Sunbright couldn't straighten, but gasped, "I suppose… the gods… won't object…"
"Good." She kissed his horsetail and sashayed off, saying, "I'll go pack."
Dreaming, Sunbright flew.
He spiraled upward from the wastelands. Yellow rock and sand merged with green-brown mountains in the west, grasslands in the east and south, the silver-white sea in the north. His tribe's wretched camp was no more than an anthill, a smear of sticks amidst rocks. In a hollow of the Anchor, he saw broken shells in the nest of a bald eagle. Nimble chamois jumped along a sheer slope. A whale spouted in the sea, blew spray onto a boat with slanted sails. A mule train plodded across the plains, a small dog yapped after bounding antelope. Buzzards flapped lazily over Patrician Peak, riding the updrafts.
As he rose higher, he saw into the depths of the fetid Myconid Forest at the foot of the Channel Mountains, where fungusmen with stone spears tracked a lazy giant lizard across a swamp. He heard the dinosaur hoot in disdain. Beyond the mountains, in the Marsh of Simplicity, he saw fishermen spook ducks from the water with slapping sticks so the birds plowed into hidden nets and squawked. A girl caught a salmon from a rotting dock, and it almost yanked her into the water before she landed it. In a shipyard in Zenith, two fire giants caulked a careened boat with thunderous mauls. Orcs left the forest near the Nauseef Flow and crept toward a cabin where peasants tilled turnips. In the Columns of the Sky, two rams butted heads until one tumbled into a snowy crevasse. An elven couple made love in a glade near the head of the Gillan River. On the tundra, gaunt reindeer cropped moss along a glacier while the high sun sparkled on ice.
Sunbright saw all this and wondered. Was it real? Were these things true, and happening right now? Or did he merely imagine them? If all these events were true, then a human family would be slaughtered by marauding orcs along the Nauseef Flow, and that ram would starve to death in the icy crevasse. Yet he could do nothing about either threat. Visions could be a curse, he was learning.
But if the visions were not true, then did this dream mean anything, or were the images as worthless as marsh gas bubbling up in his brain? And why did he fly? Where was he bound?
Black flickered at the edge of his imagination. A black with a sheen of purple. A raven's wing. He flew as a raven, totem of his clan. Perhaps this was a true vision! Or perhaps it was just more brain-gas. Either way, he gave in and trusted the totem. He watched, and waited for truth, for falsehood, or for nothing at all.
Wings canted and the world banked from horizon to horizon. Sunbright's stomach lurched. The Channel Mountains passed underneath, then the floating enclave of Quagmire, then a grove of drooping birches along the Watercourse where he'd once stood with Knucklebones. The Watercourse was placid in late summer, still and empty, idly rippling instead of roaring as in spring when the tribes gathered to fish salmon. Then the river fell behind, a silver trickle near Sunbright's raven tail.
All was vaguely familiar, for the land turned to rolling grasslands dotted with horses, antelope, and deer. In a hollow between hills a mother mammoth and two yearlings lolled away the afternoon heat, their shaggy hair clotted with old mud and manure. More mammoths swayed and sauntered to the south, yanking up whole bushes with clever trunks and cramming them in their mouths. From a hill, a lone saber-toothed tiger crouched, only ear and eyes showing. Even flies settling on its rump couldn't elicit a twitch.
Sunbright knew this scene from his childhood, for once a year the tundra barbarians crossed the Narrow Sea and met their southern cousins to fish and fight and joke and carouse and flirt. But of these southern folk, the clans of Tortoise and Saber-Tooth and Hellbender, he saw no sign. No one in the tribe knew where they were, another link to the past gone missing.
The phantom raven flapped on. Or perhaps it was a real bird, and Sunbright only saw through its eyes. Gray lumps in the distance rolled higher to form the Barren Mountains, with the dense High Forest at their feet. Yellow grasslands met gray mountains, met green forest. The whole world was laid out like Jannath's Quilt. The shaman wondered about his destination, if any.