In the firelight within Sun Woman's wickiup, Redbird saw agony in the tightness of the older woman's wide mouth and the clenching of her strong jaw. Gray Cloud's mother was built big, with broad shoulders and hips and large hands, but there was a helplessness now in the way she stood staring into the fire. Hanging from the curving bark wall behind her were her craft objects, a medicine bundle of deerskin, the carved figures of a naked man and a naked woman, clamshells to mold maple sugar, a horse's tail dyed red, a small drum and a flute. Redbird spoke in a rush. "If he dies I do not want to live." She feared that if she tried to address Sun Woman properly, her voice would be choked by sobs before she could say what demanded to be said. She should not even suggest to Gray Cloud's mother that he might die. And she should not even hint to his mother of her love for Gray Cloud, when neither Sun Woman nor Owl Carver had spoken to each other of plans for their children. The band would be appalled at such rudeness. "Forgive me for speaking so to you," she said timidly. Sun Woman smiled, but Redbird saw that there was much sadness in the smile. "You know you can." "Yes, you are different," Redbird said. _Even though the pale eyes killed your husband, you took a pale eyes into your wickiup._ This had happened more than fifteen winters ago, and Redbird knew it only as a story that her mother and other women liked to repeat while they did their work together. Sun Woman's husband, a brave named Dark Water, had been killed in a quarrel with pale eyes settlers. In spite of that, when Gray Cloud's pale eyes father came to live with the Sauk, Sun Woman had come to love him. "I am different, too," said Redbird. She wondered if Sun Woman knew how different she was. Most women lived from season to season, while Redbird sometimes thought about what the tribe might be doing, where they might be, ten summers from now. Only two kinds of people thought the kind of long thoughts that came often to Redbird--chiefs and shamans. She sometimes imagined what it would be like to be a shaman. To live in accord with the gift Earthmaker gave her. She thought so often about it that it became a longing within her, even though she knew that such a thing could not be. This, Redbird thought, was the most she could hope for--to become a medicine woman, like Gray Cloud's mother. A medicine woman had an important place in the band, but she was not listened to, as the shaman was. Sun Woman reached out and laid her bare hand on top of Redbird's, which was still in a mitten. "That is why I would be pleased if you and my son shared a wickiup." Redbird was startled and, amidst her fear and grief for Gray Cloud, delighted. Truly, no mother ever spoke like this before words between parents had been exchanged. And to know that Sun Woman would accept her as her son's wife--wondrous!