White Bear's heart sank. "But I am to marry Redbird tomorrow night. Would you have me leave her the next day to seek a vision?" Owl Carver spread his hands. "The council starts in three days." He grinned, showing the space where the tooth had been. "And it is not as if you and Redbird have never known the joy of the marriage bed." White Bear felt his face grow hot, and he lowered his eyes. Since his return they had tried to crowd into a few nights all the pleasures they had missed over the last six years. "You will not be gone from her for long," Owl Carver said. "But why do you not prophesy?" White Bear asked. "You have been the shaman since long before I was born." Owl Carver nodded sadly. "I have tried. It seems the spirits have nothing to say to me." _Maybe because you do not want to hear what they say._ As he thought about seeking a vision, White Bear began to feel more hopeful. He might not have to displease Owl Carver and Black Hawk by speaking of the strength of the long knives and sounding like He Who Moves Alertly. Instead, the Turtle, in that sacred cave looking over the river, would tell him what he should say. It was sure to be wiser counsel than anything he could think of himself. He remembered his boyhood dream of being a prophet for the Sauk. Now he would be able to tell them where their future lay. But then he remembered words Owl Carver himself had once spoken to him. They had stayed in his memory because they had made him so uneasy. _Many times the people do not want to listen to the shaman. The truer his words, the less they hear him._ The next night White Bear and Redbird sat facing each other on opposite sides of the wedding fire before Owl Carver's wickiup. White Bear's fringed shirt and trousers of soft doeskin, worked until it was nearly white, were a gift from a brave whose wife Sun Woman had helped with a difficult childbirth. Redbird's dress was of white doeskin as well. Around her neck hung the necklace of the small, striped megis shells that had belonged to Sun Woman. White Bear looked beyond the fire. Hundreds of men and women were standing in the shadows watching the ceremony, those of Redbird's Eagle Clan on her side of the fire, the Thunder Clan, kin of Sun Woman and himself, on this side. The daughter of the shaman was marrying the son of a pale eyes father and a medicine woman, and White Bear had returned from a long journey among the pale eyes and was a shaman himself. It was a wedding that people wanted to see. Wind Bends Grass, standing behind Redbird, spoke of her daughter's character. Even though she had spent all of her life scolding her, tonight she extolled her to the skies. She was beautiful, loving, skilled, obedient. Then Wind Bends Grass instructed Redbird in her wifely duties, making one small change from the usual speech. Instead of telling her to give White Bear sons, she told her to give White Bear _more_ sons.