It was hard not to look at him. Not only was he a large, strongly muscled, good-looking man; there were finely drawn blue tattoos on his body. Fish designs decorated each of his cheeks. A bird that looked to be a blue jay spread its wings across his chest. Concentric circles were drawn around his arms and legs.

It was impressive. Many men and women had tattoos, but this man was the first he had ever seen with so many. Such designs were not just meant to look good. They always signified something deeper. If an image came to someone in a dream, it brought power once it was cut into that person’s skin.

Having so many tattoos meant that the stranger Okwaho was looking at had much determination and courage. It was a painful process to get a tattoo. First the shape was traced on your body using a piece of charcoal. Then, with either a sharpened bone or a thin-edged piece of flint, the picture would be cut. Painful as it was, that was not the end of it. While the wound was still bleeding, charcoal dust or a special mixture that included the color blue would be put into it. For days after, the one tattooed had to endure not just the pain, but also the constant itching that couldn’t be scratched without ruining the design.

Holds the Door Open nodded at Okwaho and then at the ground next to him. Okwaho’s mother, Wolf Woman, sitting with the other headwomen across from Holds the Door Open, nodded at her son. Okwaho walked over to sit next to his father.

Okwaho had always felt close to his father. But it was a boy’s uncle, the brother of his mother and thus of his own clan, who was supposed to be the most important man in his life. Every father still cared about his own son. Also, Okwaho’s father had no sisters who had survived to adulthood. So Holds the Door Open had no nephews. He had also been the lifelong best friend of At the Edge of the Sky, Okwaho’s uncle. Their friendship had been as close as that of Okwaho and Tawis, a tie of brotherhood stronger than blood. Until At the Edge of the Sky was killed by enemy raiders, the two of them had shared the duties of teaching Okwaho.

“Tell us again,” Holds the Door Open said to the stranger. “Let my son hear your story.”

The tattooed man nodded. Then he gently clapped his hands together and spread them out to either side. “It is worth telling often,” he said. “So I, Carries, will tell you again. And this time I will tell you more.”

The man who had just named himself as Carries did not have the accent of an Onondaga. His accent identified him as a member of the Longhouse Nation closest to the sunrise direction—the Kanienkehaka, the People of the Flint Stone.