But even though they’d heard word of that raid, no one in Okwaho’s small village of only ten handfuls of people had expected they would be the target of any revenge attack. Everyone knew those fifty had left Onondaga to get away from fighting. They only wanted peace to grow their crops, hunt and fish, and take care of their families. Surely any raid would be against the big town of Onondaga, with its more than one thousand people. Not their tiny village. Also, they had thought it was well hidden—far back from any of the main trails.

We were wrong, Okwaho thought as he stayed crouched down in the thick tangle of the blackberry bushes. Wrong. You cannot escape war.

“See how the leaves on the trail are scuffed here?” Angry Voice growled. Even nearer to Okwaho than before. Too near.

“Ah,” Cold Voice replied. “Yes. See that broken branch? And then the next? He went off the trail that way. We’ll have him soon.”

No. You won’t. I broke those branches to lead you away from where I am now.

He kept his head down, his eyes closed, the words of the song—you will pass on by—repeating in his head.

An enemy may feel your gaze. That was what At the Edge of the Sky taught him. For just a moment Okwaho felt again the pain of his uncle’s death—at the hands of Standing Stone men like those now hunting him. It was like something smoldering inside him, that pain that he felt grow hotter every day, ready to burst into the flame of revenge.

It is not right that we seek to kill each other. Those had been his mother’s words, even after her brother’s body was brought back to their camp. How could she still believe that?

“Follow me,” Cold Voice said. He sounded eager now. “He must be cutting across to the river trail.”

“We’ll catch him before he reaches the water,” Angry Voice snarled.

Okwaho waited until the sounds of thudding feet could no longer be heard. Then he lifted his head slightly to peer up through a squinted eye. Neither of the men could be seen. But he did not rise up from where he lay. Never assume that an enemy is not trying to deceive you by pretending to give up the chase and merely waiting for you to show yourself.

He silently counted, slowly breathing in and out, until he reached ten. A chickadee came fluttering in and landed on a blackberry cane a hand’s width from his face. It cocked its head to look at him.

“A-dee-dee-dee?” it said, as if to ask why he was still hiding. Then it began to pick at a dried berry.

“A-dee-dee-dee,” Okwaho sang back to the bird, whose song was a message that the danger was past. “A-dee-dee-dee.”