After they had walked a long time in silence, Wolf Paw said, "I failed you, Redbird. You asked me to protect your children. I sent my own wives and my children to their deaths, and now I did not save your daughter. I am not a man."
The pale eyes had not killed Wolf Paw, Redbird thought, but they had killed his spirit. She would try to heal him. Nothing would bring back Floating Lily, but perhaps she could give new life to this man.
When they stopped to sleep that night she lay on her back on the ground staring up at the sky, Eagle Feather snuggled close to her, Wolf Paw and Wind Bends Grass nearby.
A bird appeared on a tree limb overhead.
Even though it was night, she could somehow see that the bird's plumage was a red as bright as the strip of blanket she had left on Floating Lily's grave. Around his eyes was a black mask, and on his head a crest of red feathers.
The bird flew to a more distant tree limb, and she felt that he called her to follow him. She stood up, and none of the sleeping people noticed her. She walked past a long knife on guard with a rifle, and he looked right through her.
The bright bird darted into a black opening in the hillside above the river, and Redbird followed. In the cave all she could see was the glow of red wings far ahead of her. There were many twists and turns, and she went down very far.
She began to see light ahead. It appeared so gradually that her eyes adjusted to it easily, and when she came to a chamber that was brightly lit she was neither dazzled nor blinded.
The walls of the chamber rose high above her, hard and smooth and clear as ice, and they glistened with a light that seemed to be everywhere behind them. She heard a murmuring and a rustling, and saw in niches cut into the wall many kinds of creatures, plants and animals and birds. She looked down at fish swimming restlessly in the dark pool that formed most of the floor.
In the center of the pool was an island, and on the island a huge ancient Turtle squatted on four wrinkled, gray-green legs.