Chapters Twenty-Three and Twenty-Four Summary

Cassie is learning to make moccasins with the elderly women of the village. Her time in Pine Ridge has been free from the stress of Alex's temper and violence, but she has become withdrawn. Will has returned to the reservation and is learning from Joseph Stands in Sun. Will interrupts the sewing party and dances Cassie out into the rain. Dorothea remembers obsessing over her son Zachary's white wife, Anne, and how love comes down to blended shades of gray.

At a pow-wow celebration, William participates in a dance of self-mutilation in order to take Cassie's pain for himself. As his skin splits and bleeds, she tells Will that it still hurts, even if you are suffering for someone else, and tells him he is acting like "some Big Indian".

Cassie gives birth to her son with...