Wild Thing Read Free Page A

get her back.  With or without your help.  I'll-'
    'She's not gone, yet.  They're waiting for your okay.'
    ' What?'
    'I stand by my vows to you, Shining Hair.  I always have, and I always will.  If you go, I will go too.'
    'Then what are we waiting for?'  Refusing the doubts; refusing to even acknowledge them.
    Her husband unfolded without his normal fluid grace as he stood, then limped across the small living space to his splayed-open artist's pad.  Picking it up, favoring his left side, he limped back to his wife still standing at the doorway.  A part of her, an old and well-trained part, realized he must have had some healing already, or he would not have been able to use his knee at all.
    Flipping to the nearly-completed sketch, he held it up before her as he moved behind her, pulling her into his embrace.  It was a measure of the depth of their understanding that she knew this was no ploy.  There would be no more choke holds.
    'Just look.  And listen to me.
    'The Chief told the second vision to the whole tribe.  And they understood.  Yet they also understood your reaction.  And they decided.  They have already risked all their lives, all their dreams for the future, to aid us once.  And they spoke again, and decided to entrust all they have and all they strive for, to us, again.  To you.   To your decision.
    'It's your decision, Shining Hair.  Let Happy Mouth be taken away.  Or take her, and go.
    'They leave it in your hands.
    'They ask only that you to take time to think, and feel, before you decide.'
    Neither spoke, and abruptly, he felt the tension in her shatter.  She collapsed into his arms, an awful keening wrenched from deep within her.  Like she were dying.  Or their daughter was.
    He made the call.
    Outside their tepee, the wise-woman waited for them both.  As the mother moved to step angrily past, the blind shaman spoke.  Softly.  'Stay.  Do not say goodbye to her.'
    'What?  That's crazy!  She's only four years old .'
    'Will she suffer more knowing her parents gave her away, or if she can tell herself she was taken against their will?'
    Shining Hair's fists clenched till the knuckles glowed white.  Then slowly, she nodded.
    'Shining Hair.  Crazy Bee.'
    Their desperate gazes snapped from each other, to the wise-woman's sad, blind eyes.
    'Our Way is not violence.  We do not believe that death and bloodshed is ever a solution.'
    They simply stared grimly back, growing still more angry at her, she Saw.  'Yet my second vision speaks of a powerful evil that moves unopposed.  Perhaps there is yet a reason for your daughter's terrible Way, a reason we are not wise enough to see.'
    By their auras, the shaman saw her tiny seed of hope take root.  And at that moment, also sensed the child's painting clutched in the woman's hand, wisps of love curled through the paper: the sense of a child standing between her father and mother, the adult female figure gently swelling with the promise of life.
    -
    'Why are we going this way?  Where's mama?'
    Not answering, the woman continued leading the child to the edge of the village.  A land skiff sat rigged and ready in the moon's clear light, the young warrior chosen to remove the child scowling beside it.
    'Oh!  Look there, a land boat.  And the Chief!  Will he give me my growed-up name?'
    The shaman had already been and gone, summoning a wind spirit to fill the sails of the small land yacht.  The woman and the girl reached the Chief, and the child risked a smile when they stopped.
    He did not smile in return.  'Remember these words, child: a Human Being kills only for food.'
    Confused, she repeated them solemnly.  She'd seen other naming ceremonies, for her older friends, and knew this was different.  More serious somehow.
    She waited, a little bit scared.  Maybe she wasn't going to get a Bear name after all?
    The Chief's large hand clasped around hers, leading her to the land skiff where Aunt High Mirror and one of the young hunters,