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I sent him a smile that it didn’t reach my eyes.
“You never told me about your conversation with Flying Deer,” he said. “Crow said that you spoke with her.”
“I did,” I said.
“Did she know of your cave then?”
I nodded. “Yes, I confirmed that their people have known about it for a long time.”
At my tense pause, Bryant prodded, “And did she tell you how to travel back to your own time?”
“Well, yes and no,” I said, my brows drawing together.
“What does that mean?”
“To put it bluntly, I was told that the fates brought me here to vanquish a mortal foe with my unknown Prince Charming at my side.”
“Prince Charming?”
I grunted. “Yes, I allegedly have a male suitor out there somewhere searching for me. One who won’t even recognize me when he sees me.”
“And what does that mean?” Bryant questioned.
“Talk to Flying Deer. I stopped trying to make sense of her fractured fortune cookies fifteen minutes into the conversation. To be honest, I think the old woman is a bit senile.”
“Is that it, then? What has you upset.”
“That, and the news that I’m not going anywhere for now.” I let go of a long breath, explaining, “According to her, the cave won’t send me anywhere until the next fire feast, which in my case will be on Samhain, the last day in October. Four months from now.”
Bryant frowned and faced forward. “Did she now?”
“Don’t worry,” I said at his tense silence. “I don’t plan to make a pest of myself anymore. You’ve been nice enough to take me in the past couple of days. I’ll find someplace else to hole up until then.”
“Where might that be?” he asked.
“I...I don’t know. I’ll think of something. I always do.”
Bryant was silent as he thought things through.
“I’ll speak to Alice about putting you up for a time,” he finally said. “For now, you’ll have to stay at the cabin, until the Arcans leave town. We can’t risk any of them recognizing you.”
“You won’t mind?”
“What else is there for you to do?” he remarked.
Not exactly an enthusiastic invitation, but there really wasn’t any place else for me to hide for now.
We reached the stony creek and followed it upstream until the cabin came into view. Bryant tended the horses and created a temporary shelter for them with poles and branches, while I went inside the cabin and pulled together a rough meal from Dove-callers’ offerings to us.
As we ate, we talked over the timing of my temporary stay with him, then moved onto some things he spoke to the elder council about. One issue in particular brought back my own conversation with Dove-caller that had bothered me greatly all afternoon.
“Dove-caller did mention some priest coming into the village,” I said.
Bryant nodded, taking another bite of brown bread. “Father Xavier, his name is. I met him last week. Not a bad sort. He told me that territorial representatives sent him and a few others to the Tulalip, Skykomish and Snohomish tribes to teach the children to read and write. It’ll be good for them, I think. Couldn’t hurt, in any case.”
I frowned down at the sliced carrots, greens and broiled rabbit meat in my plate.
“What if you could stop a monster?”
