At last she turned from the inn. The cool sympathetic hands of her aunt, the Night, received her. Her brother, the West Wind, blew softly upon her with his sweet forest breath. Her very old uncle, the Moon, looked down upon her with compassion. At the edge of the forest a figure detached itself from a tree and stood beside her.

“It is ready?” the familiar voice asked in Delaware.

“I have the blanket,” she answered.

“It is a long journey,” he reminded.

“I have come. I can go,” she said.

“On the Allegheny Sipu we will find a boat,” he promised. “It will take us to the small river of Quipias, the buffalo. Quipias will bear us to the lake, and a stream I do not know the name of will take us to the Great Sweet Water. There is a fort and two portages if you can carry.”

“I can carry,” Stone Girl said.

“Elke, good. First we camp where the small warrior breathes no more. You can visit the grave and make what you need for yourself till you are strong. I will fill your bowels with game. Then we will run up the mountains. I climbed them with my cousin. I know the way.”

She turned. Behind her the inn rose above the bare fields. Its yellow eyes looked after her like the eyes of the lady on the wall but the whitewashed stables behind were a ghost in the night.

She turned back to True Son, who had stood waiting with Indian patience. He, too, he told her, had once taken leave of his father’s house at night. Now with Stone Girl behind him, he struck out along the edge of the dark woods, heading toward the ancient path that led to the mountains behind which the sun set.

As she marched, the words of another journeyer came back to her. It had been the one they called Milhilusis, old man, who had asked for refuge in their village when she had become a wife. See Fire, who had given him room in his cabin, said he was of the Cannois tribe that some call the Canawese or Kanhawas, but Espan declared he was of the faraway Mahicanni or Stone Axe people whom some called the Schainkooks or River Indians who had lost their lands again and now must move once more. No one knew how old he was, but he told See Fire that the day he did not walk out he would die. Afternoons, sun, rain, or snow, he wandered about the village chanting his lament. At first it was hard to understand him but gradually the village learned his words by heart. Stone Girl had never been able to forget them. The lines came back to her now to the rhythm of her step as she tramped.

I am the wanderer. I am the exile,

Banished to live in a country of strangers,

Scanning their faces. None are familiar.

Where are my fathers? Where are my people?