As I pulled off Thea's makeshift bandage, I saw she had been right. There were four distinct puncture wounds, two seriously deeper than the others, but none dangerous to me or my leg.

And none nasty enough to explain the pain I had felt when I stepped into the clearing. The incident was already fading from memory, though. . perhaps it hadn't been as bad as I recalled. I was tense at the time. That amount of anger and frustration could easily have amplified my reaction. I was calm now, though, and ready to find the sons.

I left the wound open to the air. It would heal quickly. I could already put weight on my leg with no pain, and I didn't need a bandage as a reminder of what had happened.

I left my room and stepped into the hall. There were sounds coming from the kitchen-the hearth-keepers fixing breakfast and preparing goods for the farmer's market in Madison, Wisconsin, in three days. It was a weekly event during the summer for us. Technically everything sold at the farmer's market was supposed to be a Wisconsin product, but we weren't big on technicalities, and a small piece of land the tribe owned in northern Wisconsin provided a convenient address for the paperwork. Marketgoers knew us as Amazon Farms, and they loved us. Who wouldn't?

I personally didn't frequent the market; Lao handled it and handled it well. I seldom went to Madison at all.

But Thea had said the bird last night was heading north. Madison was north, as were the only two sons I knew how to find. I'd met both of them in the fall, or seen them at least. We hadn't exactly sat around the fire and exchanged war stories.

One worked for my friend Mel in her tattoo shop as an artist. The other, his mentor, was an older man confined to a wheelchair. His handicap was the result of the old Amazon ways, when we still killed or maimed our sons to keep them from becoming threats.

If the council didn't call this morning with a new direction, searching out whatever sons I could seemed a sensible step. So a trip to Madison would clearly be in order.