The girl was struggling to hold back tears, and Sam felt his chest squeeze. The last person he’d seen with that look on their face had been the girlfriend of a guy who’d fronted him in a bar when he’d been eighteen, before he’d joined the Army. Before he’d met Meg. His step faltered as he tried to remember himself back then, and how different he thought he’d become. It came as a shock to see that look again, particularly having done nothing to deserve it.

He had not wanted to see that look ever again. But there it was, yet another unwanted thing beyond his control, and he understood instantly that he’d caused it just as surely as he’d caused that other one, if by a different path. Big bad spirit Sam, pretending to be a spook to bamboozle people into listening to his advice.

He walked slowly past the two Agawam, giving them a wide space before turning to regard them. Bowing again, he took his seat, winkling the tablet out from behind the plate and powering it up by feel. He’d keep it in his lap this time so that he could use it for reference to pass through any rocky places.

Clearing his throat, he addressed the Saginaw. “Well met, Kills Bear, Saginaw of Tall Trees,” he intoned.

The Saginaw’s eyes widened and he leaned back a bit before a smile came to his face. “Well met, Sam spirit,” he answered. Then he said some other things that Sam couldn’t catch.

“Slow,” Sam reminded him. “Speak bad.”

Kills Bear was surprised to hear the Sam spirit speak his name and get the greeting almost correct. The spirit must have been learning somehow even when away.

He turned to Sings in Morning and nodded in the Sam spirit’s direction.

“I-I am S-Sings in Morning,” she sniffed, awkwardly repeating the spirit’s bow.

She looked hesitantly to Kills Bear and he nodded towards the spirit again.

“You s-say ‘well met,” she told it in her clear, smooth voice.

“Well met,” the Sam spirit looked to her. “Well met, Sin...”

“Sings,” she prompted.

“Sings...”

“In Morning.”

“Sings in Morning. Well met.” and the spirit smiled, showing white teeth.

Kills Bear smiled. Already she seemed less frightened, and already she was proving that she would be able to perform the task set to her.

He turned back to the Sam spirit and told him; “Sings in Morning go you. Teach speak strong.”

Sam wasn’t ready to be convinced. Even aside from the terrified look she was trying unsuccessfully to hide, there yet remained the fact that living with a girl his granddaughter’s age, even temporarily wasn’t something he wanted to do.

Oh, sure, he’d rolled into this circus fully intent on purchasing a wife or two at some point. As a business proposition. He’d done the math and determined that, if he expected to reach the west coast, he’d need help, and he wasn’t about to trust a warrior or hunter, for whom the temptation to steal Sam’s magic might prove too strong to resist. A wife, though, was a partnership.

It hit him suddenly, as his nineteen year old body reminded him of the biological imperatives, that young pretty girls brought with them significantly more issues to be concerned with than how much they could carry, or how well they could learn first aid.

And she was a pretty young thing, with big, almond eyes of sparkling brown, and a figure that her baggy clothes didn’t quite hide. By current standards, she’d be well old enough to marry and start having kids of her own. Five hundred wasn’t twenty-twenty-three, and puberty hadn’t yet started retarding into the later teens. She would have peers her age already balancing babies on their hips.

It struck him that his great grandfather Tucker had been sixteen when he’d married his great grandmother Elizabeth. And she’d been fourteen.

Nope! All the nopes! Nope to the nopeth power! Even with her hair slathered in grease, her face dirty, and her fingernails caked with crud, he wasn’t about to bring that girl home with him and risk everything on his ability to throttle this rebellious body into compliance and propriety.

The Saginaw was speaking again.

“—has—”

Sam held up his hand to forestall whatever was being said. Dipping his head beneath the poncho, he keyed up a word. “Again,” he requested once he’d pulled it back out.

Stolen story; please report.

“Sings in Morning speak strong,” the Saginaw claimed after deciphering the word, the expression on his yap as innocent as a babe’s. It wasn’t working. Sam had raised two kids, and he knew how duplicitous the little bastards were.

He shook his head. “Bad.”

Kills Bear narrowed his eyes. That word had been close enough. Did it know something about Sings in Morning that he didn’t? Could it somehow know things no other did by virtue of being a spirit? Or was it saying that the idea was bad?

“Sings in Morning good woman,” he tried.

Granted, Sam thought after consulting the tablet and ferreting out the meaning of the words. Probably. As good as a teenaged girl was likely to be, anyway. That bar wasn’t particularly high.

He really was in a better position than the Saginaw at this juncture. He could hear the sounds and match them to the dictionary much more readily than he could produce them blind. Too, with every word spoken, he was better able to assign sounds to letters.

“Yes,” he agreed aloud. “Good woman. Bad...” he scrolled madly through the dictionary, ignoring the strange grammatical structure. “Alone... man!” he shook his head and frowned.

Kills Bear tried to hide his smile, stealing a glance at Sings in Morning from the corner of an eye. If Sam spirit understood that it was bad for a man and a woman to be alone and was resisting this arrangement on those grounds, so much the better. It served to set his mind at ease, and lessened his worries about the girl’s safety.

“You see?” he told her quietly. “Sam spirit is concerned for your reputation.”

She didn’t seem convinced.

Turning back to Sam spirit, he cleared his throat and smiled. “She teach words. Is good.”

Sam spirit shook its head again, insistently, looking down into its cloak for some reason. “Dangerous,” it said then, looking up and attempting to meet his eyes.

Kills Bear averted his eyes before that could happen. He was fairly certain the spirit was benign, but not quite that trusting.

He was noticing, however, that somehow, whenever it looked inside its cloak, it knew words better. Kills Bear had assumed that the thick wad of cloth on its wrist still held the spirit bird, but perhaps it had moved the bird inside its cloak, and it was telling Sam spirit how to speak. That worried him. If it had a spirit translator, it wouldn’t need Sings in Morning, which would make it harder to tame.

“Show it the charm,” he whispered to her.”

The girl held out a bag of some sort that she was wearing around her neck.

“Safe,” the Saginaw said, gesturing to the bag. “No danger.”

Sam found the word. “She ain’t in that kinda danger,” he mumbled angrily to himself.

Typing quickly, he built a sentence from the dictionary. Looking back to the Saginaw, he told him as clearly as he could, “man woman alone always danger.”

Kills Bear thought about that and had to admit that Sam spirit had a point. Now what?

“Strong charm,” he tried. “Wise woman very strong, much magic.”

He could see the face of the Sam spirit moving around beneath the hair and all but feel the frustration radiating out from it. It was looking down into its cloak again, and Kills Bear thought he could hear it tapping on something. Perhaps the little bird was pecking on a spirit stone?

Eventually, the Sam spirit raised its head again to regard him, eyes hard, voice harsh. “Woman always much magic. Young woman much magic much strong. Stronger than charm.”

So the ‘man’s desires’ question was answered, Kills Bear thought.

It was a curious thing that he should be having so much trouble giving the girl over. Who would have thought that a spirit would be so concerned over such a thing? This Sam must be a very strange spirit indeed, and he was more and more convinced that he wanted it on Tall Trees’ side.

“Sam spirit not strong?” he asked quietly, taking a long chance.

The Sam spirit clenched its teeth and glared at him so that he winced, frightened momentarily that he’d overplayed his position. But then the head ducked back into the cloak and there was more tapping.

“Kills Bear strong?” the spirit asked when once it had withdrawn from the cloak, waiting for him to sort out the words. “Is he strong when his woman close?” it went on as it saw the understanding come to him.

Glancing to his side, Kills Bear saw that Sings in Morning was taking this whole conversation in with rapt curiosity. It was almost as though she’d forgotten they were speaking about her.

“Sings in Morning strong,” he told the Sam spirit. “Sings in Morning not make Sam spirit... dangerous.”

Says you! Sam snorted to himself once he’d translated the statement. Who the hell knew what teenaged girls would get up to at any given moment, or what paths their hormone addled minds would carry them down? Kills Bear might think him super human, but he knew better.

“Sam spirit learn words strong?” Kills Bear finally sighed. “Sings in Morning teach. No Sings in Morning, no one to teach.”

Sings in Morning was looking at him accusingly, but he ignored her. He wasn’t exactly lying. He was merely taking the whole of the situation into account rather than only those parts she knew of.

Well, that’s it, Sam told himself. Time to find another territory and start over. Waste another couple of months and all of the work you’ve done, try again with another band or clan or whatever... goddamnit!

He stuffed the tablet behind the plate and surged to his feet, causing the two Agawam to recoil. But he didn’t advance. Instead, he stood for a moment, glaring murder down on the suddenly pale Saginaw before closing his eyes and taking a deep breath.

Sweeping the hood back and clear of his head, he turned to the girl —Sings in Morning— allowing her to see the whole of his face for the first time. Smiling as benignly as he could manage in his current state, he held out his hand.

After looking between him and the Saginaw a couple of times, she reached timidly for his hand and allowed him to pull her gently to her feet. He held her hand for a moment after she was fully upright, looking down at her. She only stood about five feet nothin’ now that he saw her from close up.

With a final glare at Kills Bear, he released her hand and reached down to gather up her belongings, mostly consisting of a rough blanket woven from fibers he couldn’t identify, wrapped around who the hell knew what.

Without another word, he turned his back on them both and started west.

“Sam spirit?”

He turned to regard the Saginaw, anger still written upon his face.

“Friends?”

We’ll see, he thought. Then, grudgingly, he nodded before turning away again to the west. There was no point in trying to disguise his location anymore.