ve," she said.
"Sometimes I think I do meet them, in dreams."

"It can be dangerous to meet with the spirits," he said. His eyes seemed
to be looking into the distance. He had seen so many things she had not.
It was unfair, she thought sadly.

She had gone out to him in the bitter cold when the world was an endless
white waste. She might have frozen to death. She might have been
punished by drowning in the icy river. She had risked almost as much as
he had.

"I do not say that I am as strong as White Bear, or as worthy to speak
with the spirits," she said. "I only wish I had a chance to."

He took her hands in his and looked deep into her eyes.

"The real danger of a shaman's vision is not to the body."

"What is the real danger?"

"I did not want to come back."

She felt a cold wind blowing across her neck, as if spirits had quietly
entered this grove with them and were standing about them, listening to
them, judging them.

"It is so wondrous," he said in a voice so low she had to strain to hear
it over the wind whispering in the tree branches. "You are there with
them. The White Bear, the Turtle. You see them, talk to them. You see
the Tree of Life, the crystal lodge of the Turtle and the spirits of all
living things. Why would anyone want to return?"

Redbird shivered. But she still envied him.

"Your hands are cold," White Bear said, and he put his arm around her
and drew her close to nestle on his chest. She slid her hands under the
leather vest he wore and felt the smooth warmth of his skin and the
firmness of his muscles. How powerful his arms were around her. She
thanked Earthmaker that White Bear had found the inner strength to
return from that other land.

A new thought occurred to her. "What if you find that the land of the
pale eyes holds you fast? Then you will never come back to me, and to
the Sauk you will be dead."

He smiled gently and patted her shoulder. She pulled herself closer to
him.

"Can the land of the pale eyes, altogether without spirits, hold me,
when the spirits themselves could not?"

"I do not think so."

"Can the land of the pale eyes hold me, when Redbird is not in it? _I_
do not think so."

Her body seemed to be melting. She wanted to flow together with White
Bear as the Rock River flowed into the Great River.

His arms tightened around her. Then he raised his hand to brush the
fringe of hair that fell over her forehead.

She moved against him until her cheek