Her cave was warm, almost cozy. The entrance was sheltered from the weather, and she had covered the floor with the largest of the buffalo robes. Her supply of roots and dried fish was stored under a ledge, and bunches of herbs and flowers she’d gathered hung drying from a pole beneath the ceiling. Against the inner wall, Annie slumbered in the cradleboard Black Sun had woven on the night of her birth. Illuminated by occasional flashes of lightning, the child was the picture of contentment, a fearless and serene little island in a sea of danger. Sadly, Annie would not recall any of this time. She was far too young for that. But maybe when she heard the story of the sacred canyon where she’d spent the first weeks of her life and the tall Arapaho warrior who’d brought her into the world, a few buried impressions of this place, and of Black Sun, would awaken and remain. Charity shivered as she remembered the cold weight of Black Sun’s knife lying across her hands. That knife had been used to cut Annie’s birth cord, giving life as it had once given death, she reminded herself.
