He looked up. And up.
Above him, golden eyes blazing, black jaws open and white teeth glistening like spearpoints, towered a Bear.
Gray Cloud was in the presence of a spirit so mighty that his whole body seemed to dissolve in dread. He wanted to shrink into himself, bury his face in his arms. But he had no power over his limbs.
The Bear's paw on his shoulder lifted him, raising him to his feet. Together they walked out of the cave.
What had happened to the clouds and the snow?
The sky was full of stars that swept down to form a bridge ending at his feet. The starlight cast a faint glow over the ice on the river, and he could see the horizon and the opposite shore. Through the dusting of tiny sparkling lights, he saw the ledge outside the mouth of the sacred cave. Two steps forward and he would fall over the edge and be killed.
The White Bear, on all fours beside him now, seemed to be waiting for him. Gray Cloud knew, somehow, what was expected of him. He must put his feet on the bridge of stars and walk out over empty air. He could not do it. Terror clawed at his stomach as he thought of standing high above the river with nothing to support him.
This, too, was a test. The bridge would be safe only if Gray Cloud trusted it. From now on everything that happened to him would be a test. And if he did not master each one in turn, he would never be a shaman.
And what would he be, then, if he lived? Only a half-breed boy, the son of a woman with no husband, the child of a missing father. The boy they called Gray Cloud because he was neither one color nor the other, neither white nor red.
This trail was the only way for him. He must walk on this bridge, and if he fell and died, it would not matter.