She hated Owl Carver. He was the one who had sent Gray Cloud on this spirit journey, and now would do nothing to save him from death.
As if sensing her agony, he said, "The spirits will watch over Gray Cloud."
She wanted to believe him, but she could not. She had begged him to help Gray Cloud, and he had commanded her to be silent. Now she had no more to say to him. She turned from Owl Carver.
He could have forbidden her to go to Sun Woman. But he would not do that. There was an understanding between Redbird and her father that she could not put into words. She knew that when he looked at her, he was torn between pride that she, the oldest of his children by Wind Bends Grass, possessed the same gifts he did, and sorrow that she was a woman, and could never be a shaman. And she knew that of all his children, he loved her best.
The snow, blown off the roofs of the wickiups, piled up in long drifts on their western sides. The east wind battered Redbird as she plodded through the winter camp toward one low, rounded black structure that rose out of the snow a bit apart from the others, on the north side of the camp.
The skinned quarters of small animals hung frozen from a rack outside Sun Woman's doorway. Redbird went up to the flap of buffalo hide and called, "It is Redbird. May I come in?"
Redbird heard Sun Woman undoing the sinew laces that held the flap down. She bent and entered.
In the firelight within Sun Woman's wickiup, Redbird saw agony in the tightness of the older woman's wide mouth and the clenching of her strong jaw. Gray Cloud's mother was built big, with broad shoulders and hips and large hands, but there was a helplessness now in the way she stood staring into the fire. Hanging from the curving bark wall behind her were her craft objects, a medicine bundle of deerskin, the carved figures of a naked man and a naked woman, clamshells to mold maple sugar, a horse's tail dyed red, a small drum and a flute.
Redbird spoke in a rush. "If he dies I do not want to live." She feared that if she tried to address Sun Woman properly, her voice would be choked by sobs before she could say what demanded to be said.
She should not even suggest to Gray Cloud's mother that he might die. And she should not even hint to his mother of her love for Gray Cloud, when neither Sun Woman nor Owl Carver had spoken to each other of plans for their children. The band would be appalled at such rudeness.