Children of the Dawnland (North America's Forgotten Past Series) by W. Michael Gear, Kathleen O'Neal Gear Page A

and people running, running hard. Three heartbeats later, a wave of heat hits me. It’s as though I’ve been thrown into the midst of a raging forest fire. My skin is peeling from my face!
    I scream.
     
     
     
    “TWIG! TWIG, WAKE up!”
    She felt Mother’s hand on her shoulder, shaking her, and bolted up in her buffalo hides. Cold sweat drenched Twig’s body. Outside, an owl hooted as it glided through the darkness.
    “Mother?” she cried in fear.
    “You scared me half to death. Are you all right?”
    “Mother, I—I had a bad dream. You were screaming!”
    “Well, it was just a dream.” Mother hugged Twig. “Everything is all right. Look at me. I’m right here and I’m perfectly safe. We are both safe.”
    Twig hugged her hard. “I’m sorry I woke you.”
    Mother smoothed her damp hair from her face. “It’s all right. Do you want to sleep with me?”
    “Yes.”
    Twig crawled beneath Mother’s hides and watched
Mother throw another branch on the fire. Sparks shot out and floated up toward the smoke hole in the roof. When Mother got beneath the hides, Twig snuggled against her.
    Mother said, “Tomorrow is going to be a long, busy day. Let’s get as much sleep as we can.”
    Twig inhaled a deep breath, trying to calm herself enough that she could go back to sleep. As the fire ate into the branch, the eagle-feather prayer fans and dried Spirit plants that hung from the roof poles spun and fluttered.
    Twig sighed and rolled to her side … and her arm hurt.
    She sat up in bed again. There was a rip in her sleep shirt. Through the hole, she could see the long gash that tore her right arm. And blood. Dark and clotted. The drops looked like black tears.

CHAPTER 9

    I T WAS ONLY mid-morning, but so warm that most of last night’s snow had already melted to puddles that made shining spots across the tundra.
    As Twig and Greyhawk trotted through the plaza, they passed two clan schools. All of the children from the Crabkiller Clan had gathered to learn to flake stone tools. Twig glanced at Grizzly and Little Cougar as she ran by. They sat with a piece of leather over their left hands and a deer antler tine in their right hands. To sharpen the piece of chert that lay on the leather, they pressed the antler tine to the edge and applied pressure. When a flake of stone popped off, they blew on the stone to clean it, and
continued pressure-flaking the edge. If they’d done a good job, at the end they would have a beautiful sharp spear point. If they’d done a bad job, they’d have an ugly stone knife. Twig knew. She’d made lots of ugly stone knives when she’d studied flint knapping.
    A little farther down the path, they passed the Waterweed Clan school. Elder Cove was showing the children how to use a stone scraper to clean animal hides, to get them ready to tan. An enormous brown buffalo hide lay draped over a pole, drying in the bright sun. Five girls and three boys were working to scrape it clean. Gray buffalo brains filled a big wooden bowl a short distance away. When the hide was clean, the children would lay it on the ground and rub the brains into the hide to tan it. It was backbreaking work. Twig was glad this was her clan’s day for children to carry water—which Twig had done all morning.
    “What did you tell your mother?” Greyhawk asked as they took the trail that led down the hill to the eastern side of the village. Yipper leaped and bounded out in front of them.
    “I told her the truth,” Twig replied. “I said we were going to see Grandfather.”
    “Did you tell her that you were going to ask him to take you to see Cobia?”
    “Shh!” she hissed. “Keep your voice down!”
    Greyhawk rolled his eyes. “That means you didn’t tell her.”
    “Well, she wouldn’t have understood. I told her we
wanted to hear Grandfather’s story about how he captured Cobia.”
    “But we’ve heard that story a thousand times.”
    “Yes, but it makes Mother happy that I like Grandfather’s