the path you
find will be good. But many others will journey in sorrow into the
setting sun. And there they will disappear forever."

Bewildered, Gray Cloud looked from the Turtle to the pale eyes near him
and back to the Turtle again. These things the Turtle had said were
strange, like the words Owl Carver would chant before the council fire.
Must he bring his people a message of suffering and sorrow? Would they
listen?

He wanted to ask more questions but he felt a gentle pressure from the
great body of the Bear beside him, and he knew that his visit to the
lodge of the Turtle was ended.

2

The Spirit Bear

Redbird stood at the edge of the hunting camp, beside the grove of trees
where the band's horses were sheltering from the falling snow. Her tears
mingled with the snowflakes melting on her face. Wherever she looked, a
white curtain hid the land.

Would Gray Cloud die? The thought made her heart feel as if a giant's
fist was squeezing it. Yesterday, at midday, her father had sent Gray
Cloud on his vision quest, and in the most dangerous time of the year,
the Moon of Ice, when the spirits harvested the living, leaving only the
strongest to survive through to the spring. And just as night fell, the
snow had begun. Would the spirits take Gray Cloud?

Tears burned her eyes and she felt dizzy. She had not slept all last
night, and she had waited and watched through the day.

As she stood looking eastward, where Gray Cloud had gone on his spirit
journey, it came to her that he might already be dead. The wind must
have been blowing snow into the sacred cave all night and all day. Gray
Cloud, in a trance, might already have frozen to death. She might be
weeping for a dead man.

She sobbed aloud and put her hands, in squirrelskin mittens, to her
face. The snow on the mittens felt barely colder than her cheeks.

A flash of light, brighter than the sun, blinded her. A tremendous roar
of thunder almost knocked her to the snow-covered ground. Another bright
flash made her cover her eyes in dismay, and in a moment there was
another long, rolling, earth-shaking rumble.

People stood at the doorways of their dome-shaped wickiups, murmuring
to one another. Thunder with a snowstorm. This was the heaviest
snowstorm of the year so far, and a snowstorm with thunder and lightning
foretold some great event. Much snow lay on the rounded roofs of the
wickiups, and some women took whisks of bundled twigs to brush it aw