He thought again about the decision he and Tawis made that day—to go out, just the two of them, to the stream. Had it been his idea or Tawis’s? Like so many things they did together—used to do together—it had been as if they were one mind in complete agreement. They hardly had to speak to know what their plans were that day. Go fishing.

As always, their mothers had not forbidden them to go out beyond the safety of their little walled village. After all, they knew, as did every mother of their nation, that to tell a young person not to do something could have the opposite result. To forbid a child any course of action might waken that small voice within that would eventually lead to their doing the thing they were told not to do.

To go fishing would be safe. That was what they’d foolishly believed. Without the voice of Atatarho constantly urging his young men to go and raid their enemies, they’d imagined that war would not touch them. They would have peace in their new village. The two of them could venture out on their own and not be in danger.

What a fool I was! Okwaho thought. Believing in peace?

He felt the anger in him growing again. Anger at himself as well as at those who took his best friend from him. And as the anger grew, the face of Atatarho came into his mind. A man so filled with anger that it twisted his body. Was that how he would eventually look?

Okwaho shook his head. The anger inside him was like a spiderweb, trapping his thoughts. He wiped his face with the palms of his hands. Enough! He had to do something.

He swung his legs out over the edge of his sleeping rack and dropped lightly to the floor of the longhouse. He unhooked his wooden spoon from his belt, where it always hung connected by a rawhide cord with a toggle at the end of it.

Okwaho knelt by the cooking pot, dipped out a spoonful of venison soup, and ate it. In addition to the deer meat there was corn and beans and squash mixed in, along with the seasoning of salt and dried sassafras leaves ground and stirred into the stew to thicken it. He also tasted the hint of sweetness from the maple sugar his mother sometimes added. The soup was warm and good and he felt its warmth in his throat and then his belly. Good food was truly a medicine. For a moment it almost made him forget his anger and regret. Almost.