The snow was thick on the ground when her child was born. She didn’t hold on long enough to learn the child’s name and so passed on into the spirit world never learning it. So, when those magicians that dealt with the dead summoned her for information she could not say who her child was or where her child was. The only thing they could get out of her was what they already knew. That the child would be sachem. The magician had flinched at the word. He was opposed to the idea of what he would call a savage becoming at all important.

“There’s nothing that can be done,” his apprentice whispered, “We don’t even know how old he is. All we know is that his mother is a savage and that he was born in winter.” The girl said the word savage without inflection. She didn’t hold the hatred her master did and only used the term to keep the peace with him.