HOW MANY ANSWERS YOU SEEK ARE JUST A PART OF YOU, WAITING TO BE FOUND?
The game has changed.
Fresh from her first brush with mortality, a fragile Sadie Matthau is playing human in New York while the Survivors endure unimaginable tragedy. Wrought wit...
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Kainai First Nation Blood Indian Reserve, No. 148 Alberta, Canada December 1885
EVERETT WINTER STOOD AT THE EDGE OF THE BLUFF, STARING INTO the distance. Kutoyis ran up behind him; the distinct sound of powdery snow dusting beneath his feet with each step rang in Everett's ears.
"Gold Heart, I've searched for you. What brings you here?" Kutoyis asked. He was almost a head shorter than the younger Winter boy. His skin wasn't as tanned as the rest of his tribe, but it was red and rough from the cold. His musculature was obvious and steely. Ebony silk hair grew from his head, parted between his onyx eyes, and hung down past his shoulders. He wore buffalo-skin moccasins and leggings and a thin headband with feathers and beads around his scalp. His face was covered in a crimson paste that gave Kutoyis and his people their moniker, the Bloods.
"A man has to think, Kutoyis," Everett said.
"What are you thinking of, Gold Heart?" Kutoyis asked, staying a step behind Everett, who had not turned around to look at him.
"Of what the future holds," Everett answered. The men stood facing the horizon, both knowing that somewhere along that path, hidden among the hills that tapered off here at the top of the Rocky Mountains, the Hidden City stood, playfully dancing below their radar.
"What do you think they could be?" Kutoyis asked, knowing that's what his Gold Heart was thinking of.
"A threat," Everett answered, his voice tight.
"Red Eye says nothing of this! He defends them to the Red Chief. He says they are Christians and so they cannot be so bad," Kutoyis reasoned.
"The Christians are about to tear your tribe apart, Kutoyis. And yet you think they aren't capable of doing something bad?"
Kutoyis shrugged. "Red Eye and the Red Chief say it won't stick, that the missions will come and go. But however good or bad they are, they aren't magical. That much is clear. And so whatever kind of sorcery those Christians have, I think it can't hurt us."
"My father and your chief know less than they think they do," Everett spat.
Kutoyis narrowed his eyes at Everett's disrespect, and he took a bold step forward to face the man so many years—even if it didn't appear to be so—his elder. "Red Eye can see the future."
"My father can see some parts of the future. Others can see more of it, more clearly," Everett argued.
"Warrior can?" Kutoyis asked, excited. The eldest Winter brother had always been his idol.
"Patrick can't see anything. He never had that gift," Everett answered. He dropped to the snow now, sitting so close to the edge of the bluff that Kutoyis had to think hard about whether to join him. "Ginny's the one. She knows there's danger. She knows that inside that hidden place there is peril."
