She awakened swiftly, as was her way. There was rarely a twilight interim between sleep and alertness; she passed from slumber to wakefulness not like a diver rising through water, but like a hawk bolting from forest to sky.

Her name was Ayasta, and she lay in a log hut in the mile-long town called Chickamauga. Rising now on this early autumn night in 1778, she cast aside her blanket and walked silently across the packed dirt floor to the place where her son of three years, Wasi, stirred and cried.

He sat up as she reached him, his arms stretched out, and she embraced him. His thin body, afflicted again with the intermittent fever that had plagued him for the past two days, was hot against her breast. She could feel it even through her long linsey-woolsey shirt, which had been taken in a some raid against a white farmstead to the northeast and given to her by Atsina, her elderly neighbor.

Atsina gave Ayasta many such gifts. The old woman's desire to goad the young widow into marrying her son was so obvious it sometimes made Ayasta laugh behind Atsina's back; not in mirth, but in mocking irony. Could Atsina really believe her plain, lazy son could replace the brave and handsome John Hawk, Ayasta's slain husband? In the year since John Hawk's death, Ayasta had been given five opportunities to take husbands superior to Atsina's son and had denied them all. None could match John Hawk, and it was Ayasta's conviction that to live alone with her slain mate's memory was better than companionship with some inferior substitute. She and Wasi were fine alone.

Wasi snuggled against his mother and stopped whimpering. Ayasta gently patted his back and sang softly the lullaby that, according to the old storytellers, the mothers of the lost clan of the Ani-Tsaguhi sang in the days before they turned themselves from human beings into bears:

Ha-mama, ha-mama, ha-mama, ha-mama, Uda-haleyi hi-lunnu, hi-lunnu, Uda-haleyi hi-lunnu, hi-lunnu...

Within a few minutes Wasi was asleep again, soothed by the soft and repetitious music. Ayasta laid him down gently and pulled his blanket halfway over him so that he could cover himself later if his fever heat turned to chill. After that she sat on her haunches for several minutes, looking at her son in the darkness, which was only slightly dispelled by the flicker of the fire. Her thoughts were solemn, deep, even unwelcome, but also unavoidable.

The slender young woman rose and walked to the door. Opening it, she looked out over the sleeping town of Chickamauga, named after the creek along which it had been built. For a town so relatively new, Chickamauga was large and still growing. The ranks of its populace were swollen almost daily by new defectors from the Overhill Cherokees, Ayasta's native people. Other newcomers included malcontent Creeks, Cherokees of the Middle and Lower Towns, and even many whites who sought safety from the violence of the great war being fought between the Americans and the English.

Chickamauga was the town of Dragging Canoe, unappeasable foe of the white settlers, and mentor and guide of John Hawk in his last months of life. Ayasta had lived in Chickamauga almost a year now, yet it still wasn't home. Despite its size and relatively healthy state of supply by the British commissary, Chickamauga and the other allied towns around it had about them an indefinable feel of impermanence, or so it seemed to Ayasta. They were children's play-villages of reeds and sticks, doomed to be blown away in the next strong wind.

Why did she feel this way? She asked herself the question as she looked out over the dark town. There seemed no reason for her pessimism. Dragging Canoe, after all, was strong in his determination to keep his people's lands and even to regain those already lost through the acquiescence of the Overhill Cherokees from whom he had seceded. Every day, his fighting force grew. And the alliance with the British against the Americans remained firm. Chickamauga Town and the Chickamaugas, as Dragging Canoe's faction had come to be known, should hold fast and remain long.

But it won't be that way, she thought. I know it won't. How she knew it, Ayasta could not say, but she knew it. Danger was coming to the Chickamaugas, to their cabins, fields, and town houses... and also to herself and, worst of all, to Wasi. This was the great fear that gnawed at her, making sleep slow to come and quick to depart. The confidence so many of her peers placed in the British was a plant with no root. If the tide of war turned, the British might abandon the Chickamaugas as they had already substantially abandoned the Overhill towns, which now suffered dire need. Ayasta knew that one factor driving many young Overhill warriors to the Chickamaugas was that most persuasive motivator -- empty bellies.

Ayasta closed the door and sat down in the darkness, regretting the frenzied activity of her mind. Now she would surely not sleep for the rest of the night. She would remain awake until dawn, chilled by the shadow of foreboding that only she could detect.

She had once cautiously revealed her premonition of doom to Atsina, only to hear it mocked. And her brother, Ulagu, who by custom would one day train Wasi in the ways of a warrior, had similarly chided her when she had hinted of her worries to him. After that she kept her fears private, and in so doing learned something: Fears, like cave mushrooms, grow bigger when chambered in the dark.

Wasi stirred again but did not awaken. Ayasta went to him and felt his brow. Cooler now. That was good. Perhaps tomorrow he would be well, though even if he was, he would probably fall ill again before another month passed. He was a sickly boy. The old women, when they thought Ayasta did not hear, whispered that Wasi was weak and plagued by the witches of this mystic river country and probably would not live to manhood. And Ulagu, Ayasta well knew, was secretly concerned and perhaps embarrassed by Wasi's sickliness. It was Ulagu's hope that Wasi would grow to be what John Hawk had been: stronger, wiser, braver, better than his peers. Yet Wasi's sickly early childhood was not a promising start toward such an end.

Good, Ayasta thought with a surge of defiant satisfaction. Good. If Wasi is too sickly to be a mighty warrior, I am glad. His father was a mighty warrior, and he did what mighty warriors do: he died. I won't allow Wasi to die too. I'll not lose him like I lost John Hawk.

Closing her arms around herself, Ayasta strode about the cabin, thinking how Ulagu would deplore her thoughts tonight. John Hawk would have felt the same if he were alive, and there again was the point: John Hawk wasn't alive. His warlike life had led him to an early death. And now Ayasta's brother was determined to see Wasi, who was all Ayasta had left of her husband, follow the bloody tracks of his father.

No. Ayasta gritted her teeth fiercely. No. Wasi would not follow a path of death, but a path of life -- if such a path existed. One thing seemed certain: It could not be reached from the towns of the Chickamaugas. If Ayasta was to find it, she would have to look at another place and seek the help of others. And she knew where the other place was and who the helpers would be.

She smiled softly, at peace now. The great war within her had calmed. When the right time came, she and Wasi would find that path of life she so wished for. There would surely be a price to pay in finding it, but no sacrifice was too great for Wasi's welfare, even the sacrifice of the only way of life she had ever known.

Ayasta put more wood on the fire, then returned to her blankets and lay down on her left side, her knees drawn up, her hand under her head. She did not seek sleep, having been too often frustrated when she did, but this time sleep sought her. When Ayasta closed her eyes, she did not open them again until morning.