“Why can’t you just let us die, human? There is nothing wrong with dying.”
Sunchaser slowly lowered his hands to his lap. “I can’t let you go, Mother. I need you. Humans need you.”
“For what?”
“For ourselves. Don’t you see? We’ve hunted and eaten mammoths for so long that we are mammoths. Our bodies are made from yours. Like your children’s. Your blood runs in our veins. Who will we be when you’re gone?”
The cow barely moved.
Sunchaser drew up his knees and propped his forehead on them. “You don’t understand.”
Winters would be the worst. Now, on bitterly cold mornings when the snow drifted ten hands high around his lodge and he wondered if Summer Girl would ever be brave enough to stir from her long sleep, he had only to see a mammoth to feel warm—as though he knew deep down what it felt like to live inside that thick, woolly hide. But it took seeing a mammoth to remind him that he knew. Maybe his soul would never be warm again. Or maybe he would be warm only in his dreams, like the old woman who had lived with mastodons.
Fiercely, he demanded, “What will happen to our souls, Mother, when our flesh becomes that of sage chickens? Instead of trumpeting in our dreams, we’ll have to learn to cluck!”
Despite the darkness, he saw a twinkle of amusement in the eye that peered at him. “You believe that? That the human soul will change without mammoths?”
“Yes. I do. Please, I just—I need more time.”
The cow went quiet. With her trunk, she pulled out each of the dart shafts that protruded from her hide and dropped them into the pool of blood that had formed by her chest. Then she heaved a great sigh. Her hairy body looked sleek again, unmarked by her sufferings. She lowered her chin to rest it on her front feet and gazed at him steadily. Her eyes burned like torches.
“There is a place by the sea where you must go for your answer, Sunchaser—a rock shelter that hangs out over the
suspended atop a narrow ledge of stone. It’s very difficult to find. There is only one way to enter it….”
Sacred chanting filtered eerily through the misty coastal forest, punctuated by the wails of the bereaved. Pot drums kept time with the crashing of waves and the squawking of sea gulls. People moved through the devastated village like ghosts, stepping over the ruined lodges, veering wide around the dead mammoth carcasses. They wandered from burial litter to burial litter, placing gifts beside the corpses of their relatives. Everywhere, bodies lay in various stages of preparation. Some were being bathed, others dressed in their finest ceremonial clothing, and still others undergoing the final ritual painting, while prayer feathers were being hung on their litters.
Horseweed bowed his head as Sumac added alternating stripes of red and blue across Mountain Lake’s forehead. Balsam crouched beside him, sniffling. Their little sister looked as pale as sea foam in the early morning glow, lying on her litter of pine saplings lashed with rawhide strips. Her once rosy skin had shrunken over her facial bones, making her nose look long and her little mouth protrude like a fish’s. Still, she wore her finest wolf hide dress, tanned a warm gold and with green and red porcupine-quill spirals across the breast. Layers of richly painted hides covered her body from the waist down. A wealth of rare and colorful seashells had been piled atop the hides, a testament to the love her family felt for her.
Sumac’s soft cries ravaged Horseweed’s heart. Tears ran down her old cheeks, pooling in her deepest wrinkles. Her lips had pinched with grief and tightened over her toothless gums, and her white hair straggled damply around her face. For all practical purposes, she had been Mountain Lake’s mother, caring for her, teaching her, tending her through
one childhood illness after another. Mountain Lake’s death must have hurt Sumac more than it did the rest of them put together.
But as Horseweed searched for his grandfather in the crowd, he wondered. Oxbalm sat at the fringe of the commotion, his shoulders braced against a fir trunk, his head back. His gray hair fell around his swollen face as he studied the goings-on through half-closed eyes. His thin body seemed to be visibly wasting away. Oxbalm had barely moved in two days, getting up just long enough to carry out his responsibilities as chief, most of which entailed arguing with Catchstraw over trivial matters.
The false Dreamer had grown arrogant and boastful since the council meeting. He flaunted the fact that Sunchaser had lost his way and whispered that he, Catchstraw, had reached the Land of the Dead and spoken to Wolfdreamer himself. Catchstraw said that he had thrown away Sunchaser’s maze and that since then Wolfdreamer had been leading him by the hand. And he seemed to be gaining a following. Yucca Thorn, Maidenhair and old man Cheetahtail had been staying close to Catchstraw, whispering to him as they eyed the other villagers.