His voice echoed in the stillness. The cow shuddered and faintly moaned, frightened by his nearness. Her lids fluttered, as though fighting a great weight, then opened.
Sunchaser knelt at Helper’s side and looked into the mammoth’s eye. Fear and pain surged in that dark well.
“I haven’t come to hurt you, Mother. Not again. I swear it.”
Sunchaser reached out and gently touched the gray skin below her eye. The wrinkles felt soft and warm, like sunlit moss on a summer day. For the first time, he noticed the variations in her skin color, from the pale green of her eyelids to the rich reddish-brown spots around her mouth.
Suddenly the cow’s body spasmed. Her hind legs twitched uncontrollably and her trunk thumped the grass as though trying to grasp on to something, anything, to keep her here, alive.
When her muscles relaxed again, Sunchaser hurt as though he’d swallowed crushed obsidian. He Sang the cow’s soul to the Land of the Dead, praying to Mammoth Above to come
and lead her safely on the long journey across the ocean … and all the while, he begged forgiveness.
Mammoth blinked lazily at him.
He didn’t know how long he held that forlorn gaze, but when the cow’s eye became glassy with death, the sky showed stars flickering through a thin layer of clouds. Sunchaser silently lay down on his side, facing the cow, and placed his cheek on a patch of the long silken hair that hung from her lower jaw. It smelled of grass and sunshine . and blood. Cold, so cold. He felt colder than he’d ever thought possible for a living man.
Helper trotted over and curled around Sunchaser’s back, shielding him from the mist that gathered in the box canyon.
“I—I had no choice, Helper. You know that, don’t you? I had to kill this cow. I didn’t want to. But that little girl’s screams… and the boy …”
Helper whimpered.
Sunchaser buried his face in the cow’s shaggy hair. Grasshoppers sawed their legs in the grass, their songs mixing oddly with the lullaby of the waterfall.
Sunchaser closed his eyes. But he couldn’t sleep. He tossed and turned, reliving the battle in the village, seeing again the look in the cow’s eyes. His soul drifted. Like an old leaf touched by winter’s first gale, he longed to break loose from his body and fly with the cow to the Land of the Dead…
Sometime in the night, movement stirred the grass.
Sunchaser scrambled to sit up, panting, and saw the cow staring at him. “You … you’re alive! I didn’t kill you!”
The cow’s shape blended with the darkness. But as she lifted her huge head, the glow of the full moon struck her and he could make out her face. A silver sheen coated every wrinkle on her old hide and reflected in the black depths of her eyes. She curled her trunk and tucked it between her forelegs.
“Yes, you did, human. I came to Otter Clan Village to die.”
Her voice rumbled in his ears like far-off thunder, soft, deep. “You wanted to die. Why, Mother?”
Mammoth let out a breath that rose in frosty curls around them. “You have failed us, Sunchaser. There is nothing left for mammoths on this earth.”
“No, not yet. I… I’ve just lost my way temporarily,” he said. “I’ll figure out the path through the maze. Give me more time!”
“There is no time left, Dreamer. The world is changing too fast for us. As the glaciers melt, the ocean rises, the rain never stops, and the grasses change. The buffalo are growing more numerous, taking from us the few areas of good graze left. We’re starving. We’re sick. Our weakness makes us easy prey for you humans with your deadly darts and powerful atlatls. It is time for us to go.”
“Is that why the mammoth herd ran into the sea?”
“They were trying to reach the Land of the Dead across the water. They had been begging the Thunderbeings to come for them. Finally they decided to try to make the journey alone. How brave they were. It is not an easy thing to admit that your time is finished. Someday, human, your kind will have to face this truth, too.”
“Help me, Mother,” Sunchaser said. He extended his hands to her pleadingly. “Maybe it’s not too late for you. If I can just figure out how to bypass the new turn in the maze, I can go and talk to Wolfdreamer again. He can guide me, tell me how to put the world back in balance so that you will have enough grasses to eat. I’ve been so busy Healing the sick that I… I haven’t had time to Dream. But Wolfdreamer promised to bring all your relatives back with him from the Land of the Dead when I’ve balanced things again. Maybe there is a place where the buffalo aren’t so numerous. Maybe—”