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rites from afar. While she wore a long, fringed deerskin shift identical to those of the other village women, Willow looked nothing like them. The Shawnee women were generally short and sturdily built, with high-bridged noses and coarse black hair. In contrast, the tall and slender Willow had lighter skin and more delicate features. Most strikingly different was her waist-length chestnut hair, which Bear’s Daughter took great pride in adorning. This morning, the old woman knelt behind Willow as she braided thin rawhide strips into its soft, lustrous strands.
    Willow grew weary of sitting still and turned to address Bear’s Daughter, her tone carefully polite. “Is something wrong that you spend so much time dressing my hair this day, my mother?”
    “The stiffness that holds my hands makes them slow, Littlewillow,” Bear’s Daughter replied.
    “You are not well, my mother. The medicine man—”
    “Sits-in-Shadow has no medicine for me,” Bear’s Daughter said scornfully, and Willow feared she spoke the truth. Her mother hadn’t fully recovered from the terrible cold of last winter when even the O-hio-se-pe had frozen solid and they’d all hungered. Bear’s Daughter touched Willow lightly on the shoulder. “Turn around. I will put this fine blue jay feather over your ear. Then I will be done.”
    Willow sighed. “No one else calls me Littlewillow. Am I not already even taller than the chief of Waccachalla village? I am no longer ‘little,’ my mother. The others smile behind their hands that you still call me so.”
    Bear’s Daughter grunted in disapproval. “Do I not always tell you not to care what others say? Their laughter means nothing. I call my daughter what I like.”
    Willow well knew the futility of attempting to change her mother’s mind. “It is so,” she murmured.
    Bear’s Daughter leaned over Willow’s shoulder and pointed toward a young warrior who had just returned to the village with a brace of rabbits. “What of Short Elk, Littlewillow? Perhaps he will yet bring you a deer.”
    Willow glanced at the Shawnee, a lad she had beaten in foot races as a child; then she looked away lest he should see her watching him and think she meant to invite his attention. “Short Elk is well named, my mother. I would not look down on my man.”
    “It is not good to say such things.” Bear’s Daughter tried to sound reproving, but her tone told Willow that she agreed. “My daughter must soon take a husband. Black Snake says it is a disgrace before the village that she does not already do so.”
    Willow’s mouth tightened. “Why should this be true? There is not one warrior in Waccachalla you would want me to wed, nor any who would have me.”
    Bear’s Daughter did not try to deny Willow’s statement. “You are feared because you are different, but my kin the chief knows better. For many years Black Snake has cared for us both. It is right that someone else should now share his burden.”
    Willow regarded her mother with suspicion. “Does the chief himself say these words?”
    “Black Snake does not have to speak. The women whisper that the great warrior Otter wishes to take you into his lodge.”
    Willow drew in a sharp breath and her eyes widened. Much older than she, Otter had been married for several years until his wife died of a fever. Willow had never thought of Otter as a possible suitor, nor did she wish to now. “Otter has not said this thing to me.”
    “Ayee, but his eyes speak it when he looks at you.”
    Willow shook her head in disbelief and raised her chin, half in defiance, half in appeal. “Does my mother think the chief will make this match?”
    Bear’s Daughter stood and looked at the beautiful young girl she’d reared from birth. She recalled how, years ago, Littlewillow’s mother had said almost the same words.
I cannot choose from these warriors of the Clan of the Turtle
, Silverwillow had told Bear’s Daughter.
There is not one I would have
. Scarcely a week