People of the Sea(35)

Kestrel ran with all her might, dashing down the narrowing walls behind the cow, shrieking and beating the brush with her branch. The cow reached the cliff, where the calf had stopped to peer over the edge. Frightened, the cow bawled and tried to slow her headlong rush, but her feet skidded on the loose gray dirt. She struck her calf in the haunches, spinning it sideways … and toppled over the cliff. The force of the blow sent the calf reeling. It cried out in stark terror, fear bright in its dark eyes as it slid off behind the cow.

Two satisfying thuds came from the stone ledge below.

Kestrel unslung the rabbit-fur sack from around her neck and hung it on one of the branches protruding from the wing wall. Cloud Girl began to scream loudly. On the balls of her



feet, Kestrel inched forward to peer down, careful of the slick surface.

The calf had died instantly, its neck broken in the fall. But the cow still lived. She pawed pathetically at the stone ledge with her front feet, trying to force her two broken hind legs to work. When she saw Kestrel, she let out a desperate groan and hoisted herself up on three legs but quickly toppled backward.

“Forgive me, Mother,” Kestrel said as she pulled the stout oak branch from the pile of brush where she’d hidden it at dawn. She backtracked to a low place where the descent was less treacherous, moved a juniper stump and eased her way over the cliff. A cascade of sand showered her when she jumped down to the ledge. The coppery scent of blood blended with the musk of tapir to fill the air.

The cow screamed and struggled as Kestrel stepped over the dead calf. Singing the Hunter’s Song, Kestrel lifted her club. It took twelve smacking head blows before the cow flopped onto her side and her eyes rolled back. She spasmed, and blood sprayed from her nostrils. With a hoarse gasp, she went limp. Tiny red bubbles foamed around her nostrils and mouth.

Kestrel sank down by that big bloody head and gently patted the black hair, so stiff and warm to the touch. A last breath escaped from the cow’s lungs and raised a spurt of dust by her curved snout. “I—1 had no choice, Mother. Bless your hide to my use. You will give life to my baby. And to me. We will never stop Singing your praises to Above-Old-Man.”

Kestrel crouched and leaned her shoulder against the bluff while she untied the pack from around her waist. Through a narrow cut in the rock below, she could see part of the turbulent river. Pinyon jays cackled and shrilled with their usual good humor as they flocked from tree to tree in search of last year’s pinyon nuts, or ripening juniper berries. Because it took juniper berries three cycles to ripen, some of the trees could almost always be counted on to provide food. The



cold wind rustled branches and rasped on the worn beds of sandstone. The rabbit brush had begun to turn green. Soon the chi misa would leaf out.

Here in the sun, it was pleasant to clear her mind of any sensation but the warm hide under her callused fingers. If only she could stay like this forever, with the warmth of the sun beating down on her and the satisfaction of fresh meat for her hungry belly.

But a chill like Winter Boy’s shadow stole into her heart. She could feel Lambkill’s presence, sense him staring at one of her tracks, reaching down to press the rain-spattered soil with a finger to test its age.

There is no rest for you, Kestrel. Not until you find sanctuary —and perhaps not even then.

Cloud Girl had settled down. Her crying had subsided to an almost inaudible whimper. Kestrel climbed back up over the ledge and pulled her daughter’s sack from the wing wall where she had left it. Then she edged her way down to the tapirs again.

“Sit here in the sun beside me, my daughter. Smell the rich sweetness of tapir blood. Tonight we will both be full and happy.”

Kestrel leaned Cloud Girl’s cradle board up against the rocks and opened her pack to pull out the quartzite cobble she had taken from the riverbed, a black-and-white gneiss hammerstone, a flat piece of red sandstone and two yellow blossoms she’d picked from an early-blooming desert primrose.

A flock of cranes passed over the bluff, calling to each other in warbling notes as they sailed toward the river. Against the azure background of sky, they looked like tumbling flakes of snow. Kestrel watched them flap down and alight in the reeds that had been revealed at the edge of the river as the “water level receded. She rose. Carefully she plucked the petals from the blossoms and placed them over the cow’s and the calf’s eyes. It would have been cruel to let them watch each other’s dismemberment. Now they would see only a glorious



yellow, as if Father Sun himself had descended from the sky to take their souls to the Land of the Dead.

Kestrel gripped her hammerstone and steadied the quartzite cobble so that the blows would drive off the correctly shaped flakes. Under the sharp blows, the stone made hollow cracking sounds as she drove off several large, flat gray flakes of quartzite. When she had a pile of ten flakes, she began the laborious process of skinning the tapirs.