To Spoil the Sun

You cannot imagine what it [smallpox] is like. It falls on everyone and soon there is no one who can stand. It is like a fire that sweeps through the town, an invisible fire. People begin to fall with fever, and blisters rise on their skin and turn to running sores, and there is no way to give them comfort. I reeled at the force of it, horror-struck, unable to imagine it.

It is the sixteenth-century and Rain Dove, a young Cherokee girl, lives in Mulberry Town. If things continue the way they always have, she can look forward to choosing a husband (her grandmother advises picking a young warrior) and raising a family. But, after smallpox strikes, life for the people of the Seven Clans will never be the same.