“Your dagger is nothing but a toothpick, a little toy, to Balthazar,” Grey Feather said.
“Then how can we kill him?” I said in a clipped tone, trying hard to not detonate anyone with my words. “There’s got to be a way to defeat him. If my dagger isn’t strong enough to kill him, how can I destroy him?”
Roman raised his palm to shush me, but I pushed it away.
Grey Feather stayed quiet.
I looked at Marcellious as if he knew something.
“I need answers! I need a solution ofsomekind. How can I vanquish someone as powerful as Balthazar?” I threw my hands into the air.
The chief nodded. “There is a way.”
Finally….
I nodded back, eager to hear what Grey Feather had to say.
“You must find the sun and the moon daggers,” Grey Feather said.
Roman, Marcellious, and I fixed our gazes on the chief.
“What are the sun and the moon daggers?” I said, leaning forward.
“They are the first daggers ever created during the first recorded solar eclipse.” The chief’s head bobbed up and down. “Some say they were created in 1223 BCE in the ancient city of Ugarit. So there is your answer, Little Moon. The only way to destroy Balthazar is to find the sun and the moon daggers.”
“And yet no one knows where they are?”
“There’s one place you might look.” The chief folded his arms over his belly.
“Really? Where’s that?” I said.
But the chief’s eyes were closed. He’d either fallen asleep or was blowing me off.
Olivia
As I sat in the teepee with Chief Grey Feather, Roman, and Marcellious, my mind jumped all over the place, trying to make sense of our dire circumstances. Balthazar was on the hunt for us time travelers. And I had no real way to fight him. Somehow, we had to find these mysterious sun and moon daggers to defeat Balthazar. The chief had said as much.
But where were they? As far as I knew, they could be at the bottom of the ocean.
As usual, I was left with more questions than answers.
Roman and Marcellious had lapsed into silence. Perhaps they were creating plans in their minds to find these strange weapons. But we were all feeling our way through the dark.
Outside the teepee, voices of women and men and children chattered and laughed as the tribe stirred to life. The incessant noise of the bird song had ceased, letting me know the sun had pushed past the horizon and was making its arc through the sky.
The light inside the teepee came from the hole in the top and the small fire in the center.
Marcellious kept poking and stirring the fire, keeping it alive—and perhaps keeping himself from falling over in exhaustion.
“Hunting Wolf, you look fatigued. Your wounds have taken a toll on you,” Grey Feather said in a fatherly tone to Marcellious. He patted Marcellious’ leg with one of his gnarled old hands.
Marcellious regarded him with a soft-eyed, appreciative gaze.
It was a rare glimpse at something real in Marcellious besides the sarcastic, unfeeling persona he flaunted out in the world.
“Thank you,” he said simply. “I would indeed appreciate some more rest.”
“My wife is outside preparing our morning meal. Ask her to summon a healer to your dwelling.” Grey Feather patted Marcellious’s leg as if that alone could heal him.
