Chief Gray Feather sat before his lodge fire, eating wild-rice cakes covered with thick, rich syrup. His granddaughter, Dancing Star, had stayed the night with him. She sat at his side, her fingers dripping with syrup, her eyes content as she shoved another piece of cake and syrup into her mouth with her fingertips.
“You eat well this morning,” Gray Feather said, smiling down at Dancing Star. “You will grow up and be healthy and strong like your grandfather.”
“Where is Mother?” Dancing Star said, glancing toward the door. “Why did she leave me here with you to spend the night instead of having me sleep with her in our own lodge?”
Gray Feather licked his fingers clean of the syrup. He gave a worried glance toward the entrance flap, then stared quietly into the lodge fire.
“Gee-bah-bah-nahn, Grandfather, where is Mother?” Dancing Star persisted. She wriggled onto his lap and faced him as she twined her tiny arms around his neck. She gave him a steady gaze as he looked into her eyes. “Do you not think Mother would also enjoy eating breakfast with us? Should I go and awaken her?
“Gah-ween, no,” Gray Feather said, his voice hollow. “Let her nee-ban, sleep.”
“But why sleep without me?” Dancing Star asked, sighing. “And why is she so quiet and strange lately?”
Gray Feather gazed at Dancing Star a moment longer. Then he lifted her from his lap and rose to his feet. He went and drew back the entrance flap and gazed at Song Sparrow’s wigwam, which sat not that far from his own.
“Why is she so quiet and different in personality lately?” he said softly. “It is because of an ee-nee-nee, man.”
“You are speaking of White Fire?” Dancing Star said, going to Gray Feather, looking up at him again with her innocently wide, dark eyes.
Gray Feather nodded. “Ay-uh, it is because of White Fire that your mother is so quiet and withdrawn these past few days,” he said thickly. “But in time, she will be her usual, cheerful self again.”
He dropped the flap and went to bend low over a washbasin of water. He sank his hands into the water and sloshed them around until they were clean of the syrup.
He then went and picked up Dancing Star and brought her to the water. “Wash your hands and then we will go and awaken your mother,” he said. “We will take her a platter of wild-rice cakes.”
“With lots of syrup on them?” Dancing Star said, putting her hands into the water, enjoying splashing them around in it.
“Ay-uh, yes, with lots of syrup on them,” Gray Feather said, laughing throatily. “She loves sweet things, especially geen, you.”
“Am I sweet?” Dancing Star asked, smiling softly up at Gray Feather.
“Better than all of the syrup in the world,” Gray Feather said, placing her to the floor as she lifted her hands from the water and shook them free of drops.
He grabbed the platter of wild-rice cakes.
Dancing Star picked up the wooden bowl of syrup.
They left the wigwam and walked out into the bright sunshine. When they reached Song Sparrow’s lodge, Gray Feather stopped and looked up at the smoke hole. There was no smoke spiraling into the sky. That had to mean that his daughter was still fast asleep.
He hesitated waking her, then shrugged his shoulders. It was a beautiful morning. It would do her good to wake up to the songs of the birds and the laughter of her daughter and to the warmth of the sun.
“Hold the flap aside for me,” Gray Feather said, nodding at his granddaughter toward the buckskin flap.
Dancing Star held the bowl of syrup with one hand and slid the flap aside with the other. She waited as her grandfather entered the lodge.
She then went inside, herself, and stood, wide-eyed, staring down at where her mother’s blankets had not been rolled out for her to sleep upon.
Then she smiled. “Mother is already awake,” she said. “She is down at the river bathing.”
Dancing Star set the syrup down on a bulrush mat and ran from the wigwam. “Grandfather, I will go and bathe with Mother,” she shouted over her shoulder.
Gray Feather set down the platter of wild-rice cakes on the bulrush mats beside the syrup. He kneaded his chin thoughtfully as he gazed at the cold ashes in the fire pit. It was not usual for his daughter to leave her lodge without first starting her fire, which would last the entire day for the preparation of her meals for herself and her daughter.
He again gazed at the blankets and pelts that were so neatly rolled up at the sides of the lodge. “I do not think she slept in them at all last night,” he suddenly said aloud, a sudden fear leaping into his heart.
He thought back to the previous evening and at how moody his daughter had been; how quiet and withdrawn. Even when she had asked if Dancing Star would spend the night with Gray Feather, he had felt that something was amiss.
“Chief Gray Feather! Chief Gray Feather!”