She would send for Eagle Feather. The fat aunt and the grandfather would love them and care for them.
She tried to see herself living here with White Bear. For a moment the picture was clear in her mind. Then it dissolved in blackness as she realized that taking herself out of the Sauk tribe would be like pulling a medicine plant up by its roots without its consent.
She would die. It would be a slow death that would be worse than the pain she was suffering now.
And then another thought struck her.
Children!
Her heart felt heavy as a mountain.
She remembered how Owl Carver had said, after Eagle Feather smoked the peace pipe with the Winnebago, that he could be a greater shaman than any of them. But that would happen only if he was raised as a Sauk.
Floating Lily was dead. Redbird could not live with the people who had murdered her.
And—she touched her belly—this was not White Bear's child.
She began to cry aloud.