Winter Prey

Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Only a lone candle in a sacred turtle shell flickered, a pale attempt that barely penetrated the darkness. Keoman waved the water-soaked sigaasinan, and the bundle of grass dripped on the madodowasinan, the heated sacred stones. Steam roiled up, thick and dense. Even the song/prayer on Keoman's lips was muted in a silence broken only by the hiss and faint crackles of dispersing heat. Barely visible to Kymbria in the fog, the Midé laid the grass aside and stared at the stone pit, legs crossed, sweat pouring down his bronze body. Beside him lay his midéwayan, his medicine satchel, a few articles spread around it.

Keoman's voice rose to penetrate the gathering obscurity inside the madodoigan, a sweat lodge woven from pine boughs and mud, snow packed around it for stability and insulation. These types of shelters were built for specific purposes, sometimes an ordinary sweat lodge, sometimes a place for sacred ceremonies. They were also destroyed periodically, in order to eradicate any evil spirits that might find them and lie in wait. Keoman had built this one for a purpose he refused to explain, but he'd said her need would put it to good use.

A carpet of pine boughs crisscrossed the sweat lodge floor, but even that and the animal skin where Kymbria sat did little to mask the coldness of the frozen ground. It offered a sharp contradiction to the atmosphere of mindless humidity that soaked the open area and depleted nearly all the oxygen.

Kymbria sucked in faint breaths, her body torpid and relaxed, soothed by her near meditative state as much as Keoman's melodic chant. Eyes barely slit, she lost sight of him across the stone pit and surrendered totally to her awareness of her surroundings, which encompassed only this tiny area in the vast wilderness. It seemed like eons since she'd been able to relax like this. She'd put herself totally in Keoman's hands, her faith in him complete.

But when Keoman spat a shout of demand at whichever ancestor or spirit he implored, it startled Kymbria out of her near stupor. Despite the heat, she shivered. Too many times over the past few years unexpected noise eruptions had forewarned of an immediate catastrophe.

Rigid, she reminded herself where she was - in an isolated sweat lodge with the Midé, whom she trusted with her life. In the far reaches of northern Minnesota, not Afghanistan. Safe. She didn't need to escape the field hospital and head for a protective trench. Or shove her feet into boots and grab her medical supplies, race to try to save bleeding and broken soldiers...or women and children caught unaware.

Sweat trickled down her neck and dripped off nipples pebbled to hardness with her involuntary chill. She reached for her towel, then remembered Keoman had insisted she leave it outside the door. His voice dropped to a murmur, and she willed herself to again relax, although she had no hope of returning to the meditative state.

Once we enter, once I call down the spirits, we cannot leave until I am finished with the ceremony. Until we gain permission to leave.

Keoman had warned her of this not once, but twice. She'd given her word, just as she had with Adam, Keoman's father, all those years ago. This lesson in the Old Ways meant too much to her to break that promise. This lesson, and any future ones, were her last hope to be the woman she yearned to be once more, the type of extraordinary mother to Risa that Niona had always been to her.

Kymbria's hair lay soggy and damp against her skin. Under cover of the thick steam, she pushed a spiral from her forehead and drew some around to partially cover her nakedness. The locks barely fell to her breasts, but that small disguise comforted her.

She was supposed to be listening to Keoman; opening herself to communication with the spirits. Yet she needed to regain her belief in them first, and so far, most of her awareness concentrated on the Midé across the stone pit, nearly as naked as her. He, at least, wore the ceremonial loincloth.