Then one of the crows that had flown ahead to scout our path came gliding down. It landed on my shoulder, shook out its feathers, cocked one eye at me.
“KA-KAWR,” it said. “KA-KAWR, KA-KAWR.”
And I understood what it was saying, and realized what had been making me feel so apprehensive. The wind had shifted and was in our faces now. It brought with it the smell of smoke from ahead of us, smoke from the danger my black-feathered friend was warning me about: a huge prairie fire now being pushed our way by the wind.
CHAPTER TWENTY
I held up my right hand to Phil, telling him to stop. Then I ran ahead a hundred yards to reach the top of the rise in front of us.
And I saw it: a band of red light stretched across the land from one end of the horizon to the other. An immense fire. It was so awesome that it was almost beautiful. The smoke rising above it was diffused by the silver glow of the sky, or I would have seen it sooner. It was still a few miles away, but being pushed by the wind in our direction.
It was destroying everything in its path as it came, and now I could hear its hungry voice, a low, rumbling distant roar as it devoured the grasses and shrubs and trees, reducing them to black ash and cinders — just as it would swallow us.
And as I watched it, it came to me why that fire had started and why it was heading our way. Behind it would be the cause of that blaze — firewolves.
I’d heard that once you kill a firewolf, the others in its pack will let nothing stop them from exacting their revenge, one way or another. They would be happy tearing you apart in person or by destroying you with their favorite weapon — fire.
They must have been alerted by that scout who tangled with the badger. His injuries hadn’t been serious enough to keep him from going ahead of us to tell the others where and who we were. Perhaps it had recognized that one of us — me — had been among those who killed their pack members up in the hills. My scent had been left behind in that place on the hill where the six firewolves had tried to kill us and lost their own lives in the battle.
They would follow close behind the wall of that blaze and find our charred remains.
There was no way around it, no way through it. We were trapped.
I felt someone next to me, his hand on my shoulder. I didn’t remove it. I just stood there paralyzed.
Doomed. We were doomed.
“Oh my god,” Phil said in a soft, awed voice. “Rose, what can we do?”
How would I know? I thought.
And as soon as I thought that, an idea came to me. Once a prairie fire has passed, the land behind it may be black and ashen, but it is no longer burning. You can safely follow close behind a fire with the wind to your back.
“Come on,” I said, grabbing Phil’s hand and tugging at it. Dragging him behind me, I raced back down the hill and up onto the cracked pavement of the deserted highway, continuing east as fast as I could for perhaps a hundred yards. Then I stopped, yanked a dry bush up from its roots, took out my propane lighter and set the bush on fire.
“I’ll take this side,” I yelled to Phil. “You take the other.”
Phil nodded, understanding right away what we would be doing. He yanked out another bush and walking north, setting the grasses and dry shrubs on fire while I did the same to the south. Soon our own wall of flame was heading east ahead of us, driven by that same steady breeze.
We tossed our improvised torches to the side and began to follow our fire. We could feel its heat on our faces, even though we stayed back from it. Our feet stirred up black feathers of ash. Tiny burning specks flew through the air in front of us and all around us in little whirlwinds. One cinder stuck to my cheek, burning like a bite from a horsefly before I brushed it away. I was up on the pavement of the highway now, Phil close beside me as we jogged along, staying ahead of the deadly wall of fire behind us, following our own break fire ahead.
I’d thought it was hot before, but now realized what hot really was. It was hard to breathe. The smoke was almost choking me as I inhaled.
“Rose,” Phil said. “Rose!”
He was taking his bandana off and tying it over his nose and mouth, gesturing for me to do the same. Doing so made it easier to breathe, even though it seemed as if we were being cooked by the heat of the fire in front of us, the oncoming heat from behind.
We didn’t slow down as we jogged along behind our wall of flame, moving at about the speed of a marathon runner. My legs were aching, and I was drenched with sweat that caught the ashes on my skin and turned it black. I wiped my forehead and came away with a palm caked with gray.
We kept moving.
Stop and we die, I thought. Stop and we die.
Phil looked back over his shoulder. Then he grabbed my hand, pulled me close, and put his arm around my shoulder to turn me back to see what he saw.
“Look,” he said. “It’s working.”
Phil was right. The fire from the west was no longer a wall. Half a mile or more behind us was an arc bent around the burned landscape we’d created.
Phil took off his bandana. Looking at his face, I started to laugh.
“What?” Phil asked.
I shook my head and took off my own bandana, knowing what it would reveal: a wide line of black from my eyes on up to my hairline, and a paler strip like a mask from below my eyes to my chin.
“We’re raccoons,” I said.
“In reverse,” Phil said.
Then he began to laugh, too. Both of us were laughing, hugging each other and laughing like idiots. It wasn’t that funny, but after what we’d been through, it was a sort of release.
I started to cough and Phil patted my back until I stopped.
“We’re safe now,” he said.
I took another breath, and then gently pushed myself out of his arms — even though I would have been just as happy staying there in his embrace for a whole lot longer. I looked out across the blackened landscape off to our west.
“We’re safe from the fire,” I said. “But not from what started it.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
It didn’t take us long to come up with a plan, which was good since there was little time to make one.
“Firewolves are smart,” I said, “but they’re not that smart. That’s one advantage we have.”
“And the other is that they expect us to be dead?” Phil said.
“Right. Barbecued and ready to eat.”
Phil smiled at that — my second attempt at humor around him. Graveyard humor.
“Yup,” he grinned. “I’ve heard they prefer their food a little crisp around the edges.”
We made our way quickly to a place I’d remembered back over a rise in the road we’d passed half an hour before we started our break fire. As I’d expected, the fire had swept through there, too, but fire doesn’t burn concrete or stone. It had no effect at all on the low, domed structure above the road to our right with a flight of cracked steps leading up to it. Nor had the fire done anything to the two big rocks leaning together on the hill to the left of the road. There was a space between those stones just big enough for a single person to crawl in and not be seen from the road.
I pointed to the rocks with my chin. Phil nodded. He slid down the charred shoulder of the road and bounded up to the shelter of the stones in long strides, reaching them at about the same time I’d climbed the steps to the small concrete dome. There was an opening for a door, but the door was long gone. I stepped inside and looked around the one small, low-ceilinged room with two open window slots — one facing down the road and one facing up it.
The room was empty and had been so for a long time — years and maybe decades. Perhaps it was from the western states wars that took place before the Overlords brought their reign of painful peace. It was clearly a reinforced bunker where a soldier with a pulse cannon or even something as old-fashioned as a machine gun c
ould attack traffic coming from either direction. I was no more than ten yards from the road, while Phil’s vantage point was twice that far. We were both at the right range for his bow and my own weapons. I had two guns now because Phil had loaned me his .45.
And we waited. We were as ready as we could be.
That was what I thought before I heard the voice.
A bee flew in through the slot in front of me, hovered in front of my face, buzzing. Then its wings stopped moving and it hung there in the air in front of me, motionless.
Rose, said a voice that came from nowhere and everywhere. Rose.
I thought I recognized that whispery voice. It sounded like Aunt Mary’s. Then it spoke my name again.
ROSE EAGLE.
And this time it was not a whisper. It was like silent thunder. And I knew it was not coming from any human throat. The small hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
“What?” It was the only thing I could think to say — and even that single word was hard to speak because my throat was so choked by the emotion I was suddenly feeling — which was something that was both more and less than fear.
What do you seek? the voice asked.
I thought I knew the answer to that.
“I seek a vision,” I said.
Why?
“To help the people.”
I waited . . . and waited.
Then that breathless voice spoke again, this time very slowly.
Will killing help the people?
The question confused me, taking my thoughts in a whole new direction. I couldn’t speak at first, then my words stumbled out as uncertain as a baby taking its first steps.
“Sometimes . . . I think,” I said, “killing is . . . necessary.”
There are only two reasons to kill, the voice said, its tone like that of someone trying to explain the most simple facts to a small child. What are those two reasons?
And this time I knew the answer. It had been taught to me since I was able to understand speech. I’d heard from my mother, from my father, from Aunt Mary. It was the heart of our old way.
“To defend and to survive,” I said.
Was-te, the voice said in Lakota. Good.
It seemed then as if that voice was leaving.
“Wait,” I said, “are you my vision?”
Not yet. This time the voice actually seemed amused.
“But what should I do now?” I asked.
Use your gifts.
And then it really was gone. The bee that had been frozen in midflight in front of my nose started buzzing again and flew out through the window.
I didn’t question what had happened. Instead, I questioned myself.
What am I doing now that’s wrong?
What should I do?
What gifts am I supposed to use?
I looked down the road toward the west. There was no sign of movement yet, but I knew that there soon would be. The firewolves would be coming down that road, walking into our ambush.
I crawled out of the bunker, ran down the steps, and climbed the hill to where Phil was waiting behind the boulders, an arrow nocked to his bow string, half a dozen arrows close at hand for rapid fire. He looked at me in confusion.
“Rose,” he whispered, “what are you doing?”
“Nothing,” I said. “And something. Just wait.”
We waited, and as we waited, I did something I’d never done consciously before. I tried to reach out with my mind, to hear the thoughts of the ones hunting us.
And when I did, it surprised me. It was as if I felt a strand of spiderweb touch my forehead, a strand that slid through my skin and became a connection. Then I was in the mind and the body of one of those red-furred hunters, an invisible passenger he was unaware of as he loped along on three legs.
Something else surprised me as that contact grew stronger. I’d expected those thoughts to be crazy or at least fierce. But what I sensed going through the mind of Old Three Paws was so different that it took my breath away. It was concern and uncertainty . . . and fear.
He was leading a group of six others like him — and not like him for he was the alpha, the one the others trusted to keep them safe. This new world they found themselves in when the electric fences vanished was such a frightening one. There were monsters everywhere in this world and it was only through their use of fire and staying together that they could survive. At night, when they slept, they whimpered in their sleep because of the fear that was always with them. And what they feared most were humans, like the terrible ones he hoped they’d wiped out with this fire. The ones that he thought had come into their territory to hunt them.
Old Three Paws looked over his shoulder. His mate was close behind him, her brother next to her. The wounds on his mate’s brother’s shoulder where he’d been bitten by the badger were starting to heal. Farther back were the four young ones, only half grown. The seven of them were all that was left of his pack, the last of their kind. He had to protect them.
I took a deep breath and I was no longer in the alpha firewolf’s mind. I understood more than I had expected now. If I wanted to find what I needed to find, to truly become a medicine person, then killing these gemod creatures from ambush was not the thing to do.
Especially now that I realized that to them, we were the monsters.
I pushed down the bow Phil was pointing through the opening between the big rocks. The pack of firewolves had now come into sight, all of them except Old Three Paws loping along on all fours.
Having been in his mind, I saw him and the others differently now. They were powerful, dangerous, but there was also a fierce grace about the way they moved. And they were more like us than I had ever imagined. If I could convince them not to hunt us, there was no reason for them to die.
But I could not do so directly. Showing myself to them was too much of a risk. I reached out again with my mind. It was easier this time.
Danger gone. Turn away, I thought to him.
Old Three Paws stopped in his tracks. He stood up as straight as a man, no longer slouched forward. He looked around, sniffing the air. But the wind was blowing toward us and the fire had burned away any scent of us that we’d left behind.
Turn. Go home. Go south, I thought.
Old Three Paws turned and faced directly at the rocks where we were concealed. That surprised me. He slowly nodded. Then he turned toward the south, gave a single yelping cry, and leaped down off the road followed by the six other members of the pack.
I followed them for a time with my mind, hardly believing that I’d succeeded. But their direction never changed, and the intent I read in Old Three Paws’ thoughts was simple. Take his family back to a place of safety. And there was also in his mind a feeling of relief.
I stood up and gestured to Phil.
“Come on,” I said.
“Rose, what did you do now?”
There was awe in Phil’s voice — and I have to admit that I kind of liked that.
“Just used my head. Now let’s go.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
It took us an hour of walking to finally leave behind the burned lands. The fire had swept through so fast that it would not take long for the grasses to return. I could see that some of the bushes still had green on their branches, despite the blaze taking all their leaves. A fire can actually help revive the land, cleaning away the dry grass and brush, the ash fertilizing the land as long as rain eventually follows.
As I thought that, it came to me that maybe that was what was happening to our planet. That what the Silver Cloud brought was not an end but a new beginning. It was a strange thing to think, I know, especially as we walked through a landscape devastated by fire toward who knew what dangers still ahead. But my mind was in a strange place, actually feeling happy.
We were alive. We’d survived what had looke
d like certain death from that fire. We both kept coughing and trying to clear our throats. The water from our canteens wasn’t enough to clear it, and we had to conserve it for drinking water. And I itched all over, an itching that got worse as the sun got hotter and I sweated more. But the talk that Phil and I’d just had had changed so much about this journey that I was still smiling as I walked along by his side.
“Man,” Phil said, spitting out a black glob of phlegm and tar, “I can’t take this any longer. I would give a thousand credits for a bath.”
I thought about Uncle Lenard’s map.
“Box Elder Creek,” I said, looking south. “Maybe there’s a pool in it somewhere.”
I waved my hand and whistled. One of the crows that had been circling ahead of us came down and landed on my arm.
“Water,” I said. “Can you find some for us in the creek, a nice deep spot?”
The crow leaped up, flapped its way up into the sky high overhead and then sailed to the southwest until it was out of sight. Before I could count to ten it reappeared and dived down, cawing.
“Thank you,” I said to the crow as it circled.
I heard Phil chuckle behind me. “Rose Eagle,” he said, “you are amazing.”
* * *
The pool of water, formed by a few boulders lying in a curve of Box Elder Creek, was twenty feet wide, twice as long, and perhaps six feet deep. Its surface was like glass, only broken here and there by the tiny rippling circles where small water striders floated across its surface. We were several miles beyond the fire zone now and there was no longer even a trace of smoke in the air. Alders and willows lined its far bank, and some sort of red flowers were blooming there, vibrant as living flames. It seemed like the loveliest place I’d seen.
I looked over at Phil, who had shrugged off his pack and was looking down the small hill at the pool with a longing that matched mine.
“Go ahead, Rose,” he said. “You first.”
I slipped off my boots. The moss on the bank felt soft, warm, and spongy underfoot. I placed my holstered shotgun and my sheathed knife on top of my packs. I rinsed out my vest, threw it back up onto the bank. Then I couldn’t wait any longer. The water felt too good. I didn’t even take off my socks. I just splashed in. Gray circles rose around my legs as the ash dissolved from my skin and my tight jeans in the cool water. Then I just sat down, relaxed and fell back, eyes open underwater, feeling the cleansing embrace of the creek for a moment.
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