Child of the Dead by Don Coldsmith Page B

But the woman looked at her and recoiled in terror.
    “Go away, girl!” the woman shouted. “We are leaving.”
    “But I …”
    “Stay back! We will kill you if you follow us.”
    Gray Mouse did not understand at all. She was frightened and still angry. Why would everyone leave her, when she needed them …?
    She woke, terrified. She had dreamed it again. Almost every night, it happened. Quickly, she looked to see that the grandmother was still there. Yes, soft snores came from the robes beside her.
    And Yellow Dog … he raised his head and wagged his tail. At least these two would never leave her. They had not yet, anyway. A shadow of doubt crossed her mind. The grandmother was sick, and looked much like those she had known who had crossed over. Would she, too?

12

    T here were many things that Gray Mouse did not understand. One was the grandmother. She did not even know who this woman might be, who had come out of nowhere. It had been good … This was the first human who had treated the girl with kindness in a long time, it seemed to her.
    But, kind though she might be, there were puzzling things about the grandmother. Her strange language … Her garments, slightly different than the ones familiar to Mouse. The manner in which her hair was plaited …
    These things were not really distressing, because it was apparent that the woman was kind. The lap, the comforting arms, were those of a woman who understood the needs of a lonely child, abandoned and frightened. Gray Mouse had perceived immediately that here was a mothering-person. A person older than her own mother, though, so it must be a grandmother. Mouse had inquired, through hand signs, and it was verified.
    That was when the girl felt her very worst. There were a few days that she did not even remember very well. The mind blocks out and forgets much of the unpleasant and the painful to spare us part of the bad memories.
    Grandmother talked to her a lot. At first Gray Mouse knew none of the words at all, and was too sickto care. Then, with repetition, she began to recognize words and phrases.
Water, food. Go to sleep. Dog, lodge, corn, meat … fire
.
    The woman had built a sort of lodge to shelter them. Poles and sticks and a big sheet of hide that she had cut from the lodge skin of Stumbling Elk in the camp below. Elk had no need for it, Grandmother told her. That was true. He was on one of the scaffolds downriver now.
    Among the very confusing things were the stories. Mouse had seen stories in hand signs before, when a traveling trader had camped with them, so that part was nothing new. The stories themselves, however. She, Gray Mouse, had requested stories. Stories told by her mother or her father had always been part of happy times, and had made her feel better. She had wished for things to be happier. The new grandmother had agreed, and had held her in comforting arms, had sung and rocked her, and had told stories in words and hand signs.
    Now came the confusing part. The stories were different. Bobcat …
Do you know how he lost his tail?
the grandmother had asked. Yes, Mouse knew and loved that story. Bobcat had had a long tail at Creation. He had lost it when he stood motionless, watching Rabbit, with the long tail hanging down in a pool of water. A sudden shift in the weather had frozen the pool, and when Bobcat pulled away, his tail, frozen in the ice, broke off short. This is why even now, the bobcat’s tail is short and he does not like water.
    It was with great surprise, then, that Gray Mouse heard a quite different story. The new grandmother had said that Bobcat had slipped into a hollow tree to hide from a hunter. But his long tail
(that
was the same) … his tail stuck out through a knothole, and the hunter had chopped it off to decorate his bow case.
    This was quite puzzling.
Which story is right?
thought the girl. She was sure that her own version, that of her parents, must be the correct one. She was almost indignant that anyone who did