Today here by the blackened walls of the preacher there were no tales or mimicry. The story was flesh. The ruined house gazed mutely out at her from its sightless sockets. Stone Girl could feel no hate or happy ending. She went to the open doorway and pushed a pole through the ashes, hunting for something she didn’t find. Otter Boy was staring at the sprawled figures on the ground.

“Guka, Mamma. Isn’t it good for this to happen? Isn’t it good?” he begged her.

Stone Girl did not answer. Her face was cruel as she hunted among the scattered tools to dig a shallow grave.

“Guka, Mamma. Why do you do that? Does the white Ohum feel when she is dead?”

“No, but you and I do so,” she told him. “Perhaps someday you will put a blanket over the face of your Guka, mamma, to keep it from the stones and ground of the grave.”

The boy strained against his mother, pulling at her skirt.

“Guka, Mamma. Let us talk of other things. Let us talk of the white sister who spits in our faces. Where is she?”

“Otter Boy. We will look farther,” Stone Girl told him, and led the way to other small farms in the forest. Here the buildings had been of logs and were ashes now. There were few bodies and no Nan. Most of these people had fled down the river. At the last house in the valley embers still glowed. Stone Girl said they would wait for them to cool off to get close enough to search the ashes.

“Guka, Mamma. I do not like this place,” Otter Boy whispered. “I see a green bush walking.”

Stone Girl turned. From the edge of the woods a bush moved silently and insidiously toward them across the stumpy field.

“Otter Boy. It looks like a bush but it is a man. I think it is one of our people.”

She did not say more. Sight of the walking bush had taken her back again to the home village. How often had she seen young Indian boys play war with small green bushes uprooted from the forest in front of them. They played on the knoll in the center of the barked cabins. It was here that girls played, too, trying to hold their balance on a sled of slippery elm bark. She could see in her mind the alder marshes around the village, and hear the sound of a loving Indian father patiently teaching his infant son Allamuin, the war whoop. It was here she had first been aware that Espan had taken notice of her.

She waited until the green bush was halfway across the blackened flax patch.

“Nimat, brother,” she called in the Delaware tongue. “Why do you hide your face to your own people?”

The bush stopped stock-still. After a moment a voice in the same tongue answered from behind it.

“Auween lacke? Who are you?”

“I am Lenape. And this is my Lenape son.”