SPIRIT WALKER

Chapter 10: A Pwi Wedding

The sun rode high in the sky and the morning dew had left the grass when Tull returned to his house from Chaa's. After the executions the night before, the mood in town had been quiet, and the Pwi hesitated to disturb any mourners by walking outside their homes.

As a son of Chaa, Tull would be expected to move his belongings into the family house, but he thought he would let that wait for a few days. He would want his valuables kept at Chaa's while he was gone, that was certain. The newness of the situation unsettled him.

So he'd decided to spend the day making a new war spear for the journey. So he took a bone from a dimetrodon's dorsal fin and began sharpening its sides, forming a three-foot-long spearhead. It was the only kind of spearhead one wanted while traveling through territory infested by Mastodon Men and wild mammoths.

Tull felt profoundly aware of the silence in the woods outside of town. When he neared his door, the only sound he could hear was the surf beating against the rocks and sparrows hopping among the laurels by his doorstep.

So when he reached the doorstep, he was surprised to see a figure eight painted with flour upon the grass—a small figure eight, no more than four feet across. Normally when a woman painted the figure eight upon a man's doorstep, she set all her possessions in one half of the circle——her food, her cooking utensils, her weapons—then she stood with them and waited to see if the man would join her. But there was only a handful of wild daisies in the circle, and no woman.

Tull crouched to look at the daisies, wondering what it could mean. Only a poor woman would have left them, a woman who had nothing but herself to give. Even the poorest Pwi would have brought an object that contained kwea, something to which she had a strong emotional attachment. Perhaps this one loved daisies?

A child, he thought after a moment. A little girl has a crush on me? Who could it be?

He'd have to let the girl down gently.

But another thought came. Perhaps it was someone who had nothing at all, not even some poor necklace that held good kwea.

He suddenly thought of the one woman who fit that description. His heart began racing in his chest. He stood up to look for her, entered his home, and found Wisteria sleeping on his mat on the floor.

She woke when the swinging door scraped the dirt floor. Her eyes were red and swollen, as if she'd cried all night, and her hair was sweaty and matted, her blouse and skirt rumpled. She didn't say a word, just rose from the floor and sidled past him, back out the door. She stepped into the sunlight in the circle and stood with her chestnut hair gleaming, daisies at her feet.

He could not believe it. "Are you sure?"

"Sure?" Wisteria said, placing a hand on her forehead as if to test for a fever. "Yes. I'm sure."

Tull studied her.

"I'm tired. I'm hungry. I'm desperate," she continued. "I'm hurting inside, and I'm mad as hell. You know I've always been fond of you—from the time we were children—but I wasn't sure . . . if those feelings would last. Then, this morning it all came clear to me. I'm in love with you. I've been in love with you for years. But I was afraid that my father would disapprove. . . ."

"When he stumbled into me last night," Tull said, "I grabbed him to keep from falling. I didn't even know who'd hit me, and then I realized someone was trying to escape. I threw him back into the crowd and held him at the same time. I didn't know it was him. I swear, if I'd have had time to think, I'd have let him go."

Wisteria began to tremble. Tears misted her eyes. "I know," she whispered.

"We were all crazy last night," Tull said. "We just stood there and watched it happen. I didn't have time to think, to decide if what we were doing was right."