People of the Raven (North America's Forgotten Past) by W. Michael Gear, Kathleen O'Neal Gear Page B

here.”
    “Maybe he and Dzoo are together.”
    Maybe your mother died and the carried her body out into the forest to be ritually prepared for the journey to the Underwater House.
    People cleared a path for them. Two of the elders stood speaking softly. Behind them, a shape lay on the forest floor. A body, human from the looks of it. His heartbeat quickened.
    “Who is it?” He stepped forward. “What happened?”
    Chief Antler Spoon glanced at him, then walked a few paces to one side. Thin white hair matted his head, as though he’d just risen from his bedding. A pale caribouhide cloak hung down almost to the high wolverine leggings that covered his moccasins.
    Elder Ragged Wing stood in front of the body. He had a sunken, withered face that reflected horror and disbelief. The elder put a gnarled hand on Pitch’s arm as he came forward, and said, “Whisker thinks this her mother, but I am not so sure. You know Dzoo better than any of us … .”
    Pitch bent over the corpse where it lay in the track-pocked snow.
    At first he could make no sense of what he saw. She lay on her side with a bloody white cape covering her torso, but nothing was in the right place. She looked deformed or … contorted.
    “Skinned wings,” he murmured.
    The murderer had wrenched the victim’s arms and legs from their sockets and twisted them behind her back at unnatural angles; then he’d peeled the skin from her arms and smoothed it out flat on the snow. Pitch swallowed hard. They did resemble wings.
    In the past twelve moons of raiding, the North Wind warriors had
committed a great many atrocities, but nothing like this. Hate-filled warriors often mutilated their victims, but they did it in haste, hacking and slashing. This had been performed with grisly patience. “Bring me a torch.”
    Elder Ragged Wing took a torch from someone and held it over the body.
    The killer had cut out her eyes, leaving bloody gaping caverns, and her cheeks bulged hideously from the fatty flesh stuffed inside her mouth.
    Pitch’s hand hesitated over the cape before he nerved himself to pull it back. She was naked. Her breasts had been cut off—not with the quick hacking of a warrior, but with the surgical slicing of a practiced Healer with a freshly struck obsidian blade. He glanced at the flesh in the woman’s mouth and realized what it must be: breast tissue.
    Pitch wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Weakly, he asked, “Did you find any clothing or jewelry? Anything that might identify her?”
    “No, just this beautiful cape.”
    The longer Pitch stared at her bloody face, the more his fear grew. He turned to the milling crowd. “Did anyone see Dzoo leave the village?”
    Heads shook, and murmuring broke out. People huddled against each other as if in protection from some misty vapor that hung on the night.
    “Someone must have seen Dzoo leave. Or seen Whisker’s mother leave. They cannot both have just vanished without someone noticing!”
    “He did it for us,” Antler Spoon whispered fiercely. “For all of us!”
    Pitch twisted around to look at the elder. Wind Woman blew wisps of Antler Spoon’s white hair. He was fingering a caribou-bone fetish carved in the shape of a great northern owl.
    “What are you talking about?”
    “He Traded her.”
    “Traded who?”
    Antler Spoon’s jaws clamped, as though he was afraid to say more.
    “Who?” Pitch shouted. “Who did you Trade?”
    Antler Spoon pointed to the dead woman. “We had to give him someone!”
    “Antler Spoon, answer me. Is this Dzoo?”
    “No. Sweet Grass! We were too afraid to give him Dzoo! Broken
Sun, he say, Dzoo’s Spirit Helpers swoop down upon us and tear us to pieces!”
    A small tendril of relief wound through Pitch, to be followed by guilt. He could hear Whisker crying softly somewhere behind him.
    “Who did you Trade Sweet Grass to?”
    Antler Spoon’s sticklike arms flailed uncertainly. “We call him ‘Coyote.’ Don’t know his real name. Or even