She leaned against the cairn, willing the whirling and shaking to stop. She considered the blood on her hands, and the stain where she had wiped the knife on her leggins. She considered the rivulets winding over the flat rocks, the thick smell that rose the bile in her throat. Then she crawled around to the other side of the stone marker and sat, cross legged, to stare into the distance and regain her balance. She hummed the chant of the old one, the only song of her people she could remember, and waited for her soul to clear.

"So he braided his hair, and painted his face, and tied up his pony's tail, and sang his war song; then he went to revenge those that had been killed."

SETTLER'S LAW, page 225