he earth on a
bridge that was beginning to fall apart.

He looked back over the way he had come.

There was no bridge behind him.

Nothing but a blackness. He screamed, waved his arms, staggered.

He started to run forward after the Bear, his only protector, and his
feet were sinking _into_ the bridge. The Bear and the doorway and the
Council Fire Star itself seemed farther and farther away.

He fell to his hands and knees, afraid to stand any more.

But what was the fear trying to tell him?

It was right that Gray Cloud should be afraid, meeting a spirit so much
more powerful than himself. And now he must trust that the spirit would
not hurt him.

With that thought, he felt the bridge growing more solid under his
hands. He pushed himself back to his feet.

He was standing before the doorway. All above him and to the sides
stretched the curving, shimmering, many-colored surface of the Council
Fire Star.

He did not see the White Bear. It must have gone into the star. He took
a deep breath, and taking his fear with him, he plunged through the
doorway.

For a moment light blinded him. The air was full of a fluttering and a
rustling.

His eyes grew used to the light and he saw that he stood at the edge of
a pool full of fish swimming in circles.

They were not fish, he knew, but fish spirits. The spirits of trout and
salmon and bass and walleye and sunfish and pike, all the fish of lakes
and streams that fed his people.

Full of fear of what else he might see, Gray Cloud raised his eyes.

He saw a Turtle.

The Turtle was frightfully big. He was on the other side of the rushing
pool, but still he loomed over Gray Cloud, his head high in the air. His
front feet rested on a blue-white block of ice. Behind him rose a
mountain of ice crystals. The wrinkles around his eyes and mouth told
Gray Cloud he was immeasurably old.

"Gray Cloud," the Turtle said. "You are welcome here." His voice was
deep as thunder.

Gray Cloud fell again to his hands and knees.

"Do not be afraid, Gray Cloud," said the rumbling voice.

He looked up again and saw kindness in the enormous, heavy-lidded yellow
eyes. The exposed belly of the Turtle was the pale green of spring
leaves. On his bone-encased chest a bright drop of water formed, like a
dewdrop or a teardrop, but big as a man's head. After a moment it fell
and splashed into the pool. Gray Cloud looked into the bottom of the
pool and saw the blackness of a deep pit in i