get my pack from my lodge. There are things in it that my little girl needs!”
Irritably, he stopped and let her loose. “All right, but hurry! It will be dark soon.”
Dust swept the beach in glittering plumes and sizzled against the hide lodges in Otter Clan Village. Most of the people still slept. Their ears laid back, only the dogs prowled the plaza, slinking through the cold wind that gusted down from the north. With it came a billowing swell of blue-gray clouds and the fragrance of rain. Sunchaser braced his shoulder against the trunk of a fir tree. All around him, the dawn forest rustled with the wind.
He watched two rangy forms saunter from the trees. He had been waiting for them. For four nights straight, they’d arrived at the same time. The lions paid him no attention as they padded silently across the sand, climbed up on the wind smoothed rocks at the ocean’s edge and stood silhouetted against the pale-blue aura of the sky. The male lifted his muzzle, scenting the sea breeze, and the predawn light shimmered in his golden fur. The female stretched out atop the rocks with her huge head resting on her forepaws. They made small, intimate sounds to each other, lovers’ sounds, barely audible above the roar of the surf and the screeching of the gulls.
Sunchaser cocked his head to listen. The lions stood no more than a good stone’s throw away. But he felt no fear. Lions had been in this world much longer than people had, and their faces reflected a stillness, born of age and wisdom, that humans barely understood. Sometimes when Sunchaser looked into their eyes, he could see and hear things that had long ago hidden themselves from human senses. He’d sat with the lions and heard the mountains Singing at sunset. He’d spoken to the souls of the flakes of snow that fell from brooding winter skies. The lions had taught him that
a Presence secreted herself in the dark veil of night, and, if he turned quickly enough, he might glimpse her in the forest shadows. Sunchaser called her Soot Girl, because she clung to the darkness the way soot clung to the roof of a lodge.
“It is the sign,” he whispered softly as he gazed out past the lions to Mother Ocean, whose face had gone ashen with the coming of morning.
In the surging waves, the thirty-four mammoth skeletons lay like huge, white cages. More mammoths than Sunchaser had seen at once in his entire life. They usually traveled in small herds of no more than ten, although six winters ago, he had seen a herd of twenty-seven. Leg bones littered the sand, torn off and scattered by dire wolves and big cats. But the ribs remained intact. Squealing flocks of gulls lit imperiously on them and fluttered through the stomach cavities. The Otter Clan villagers had butchered and smoked enough meat to last the entire cycle. They’d also called in people from nearby villages, begging them to take what they needed. Everyone had gone away with packs full of meat. Most had been smiling.
Oblivious. Like eyeless cave bats.
As Sunchaser looked upon the pathetic remains of those enormous animals, his fear, the fear that had stalked him for moons, metamorphosed into despair. He shook his head, whispering, “Relics of the last days.”
“What does that mean?” Oxbalm asked from somewhere behind him. His moccasins had not whispered against the sand. Sunchaser wondered how a man Oxbalm’s age could move with such stealth. “The ‘last days’?”
Sunchaser shrugged, unwilling to elaborate, even for this old friend. “Nothing. I’m just tired, Oxbalm.”
Oxbalm hobbled forward, touching a fir bough to keep himself steady. Like towering giants, the trees swayed back and forth, pushed by the wind.
“I think it’s more than that,” Oxbalm said. His llama hide shirt and pants had been smoked to a dark brown, a warm background for his gray braids. As he neared, his elderly face became contemplative. He braced a hand on another fir
branch and frowned out at the dead mammoths. His sunken lips pursed. “Were things bad at Brushnut Village?”
“So many died … so quickly. I didn’t have time to count them.” Oxbalm wet his lips, and his brows drew together. “I could feel your ache. In your silence the past few days. That’s why I waited to talk with you…. You couldn’t help the people in Brushnut?”
“I helped as many as I could. But half of the village is gone. Just… gone.” Hollow-eyed children reached out to Sunchaser from the mirror of his soul, and anguish coiled around his heart. “Most of them were children. Babies.”
“Is that why you missed the Mammoth Spirit Dance? We waited and waited for you.”
Sunchaser peered out at the Mother. Spume had collected in thick, foamy drifts at the bases of the rocks where the lions lay. It reminded him of the high mountains. Even with springtime upon them, the granite peaks above the tree line stood wrapped in a glimmering cloak of snow. He wished desperately that he were there. Alone, so he could think.