by Anne Bishop
Tobias swallowed hard. “What could lift several hundred pounds like it was nothing more than a deer fawn?”
Joe glanced at the Wolves and Coyotes. Half of them were paying attention to the Intuits. The rest were keeping careful watch over what now moved among the carcasses, selecting a meal.
Grabbing Truman’s and Tobias’s arms, he turned them toward the road and growled, “If you want the people in your town to remain safe, you didn’t see that.”
Tobias met Joe’s eyes—almost, but not quite, a challenge for dominance. “We tend the ranch’s livestock; we camp out away from the ranch when we need to. A lot of times, one of us is riding out alone. If the Intuits and the terra indigene are going to work together now, we should be allowed to know some of the things you know. Like what’s out there.”
The man had a point. One of the reasons Intuits and Others began these agreements generations ago was because they recognized a common enemy: the other kind of human.
“What’s out there has been out there long before your people asked to settle around these hills,” Joe said. “This is wild country with little pockets of land that have been . . . altered . . . by human presence. The ones who come down from the hills to hunt bison . . . Their kind of terra indigene have been around a long time.”
“But what are they?” Tobias asked in a hushed voice.
“They are Namid’s teeth and claws.” Joe tapped his chest. “The terra indigene like me call them the Elders. They seldom shift out of their true form, and when they do . . .” He shrugged, uncomfortable about saying more.
“So now they’re aware of us.”
“They’ve always been aware of you. Today they allowed you a glimpse of what watches”—and judges—“humans when you step beyond your towns and cities. In a way, those hills are the Elders’ city in this part of Thaisia. We located our settlement closest to your town in order to act as a buffer between them and you. It allows you to have some access, through us, to the timber, to the water, and to the prey that also lives in the hills.”
“So you pretend they aren’t out there,” Tobias said.
Joe shook his head. “My form of terra indigene is small compared to them. Even a large pack of Wolves couldn’t survive an attack by one of the Elders. You are a small predator compared to us, so being respectful is your best chance of surviving an encounter with one of them.”
Wyatt joined them, carefully licking blood off his claws.
The Grizzly gave Joe a long look, then lowered his paw. “The hauler is back. Once we load what it can carry, we’ll have enough meat.”
“We’ll want the meat of one more bison to trade,” Joe said.
Wyatt growled, making Tobias and Truman flinch. “With the humans? They’ve left good meat to spoil in the heat; they aren’t going to want any of ours.”
“Not with the humans. I want to find out if we can ship some of this meat to the Lakeside Courtyard.”
Wyatt finally nodded. “We’ll come back for one more.”
After they’d dragged one more half-grown bison close enough that the men would be able to winch it onto the hauler when it returned again, the horses were loaded into the trailer and returned to the ranch. The hauler slowly drove off with its cargo. The Wolves and Coyotes, having eaten enough, jumped into the pickup beds, happy to nap on the way back to the terra indigene settlement.
Tobias started the truck, then looked at Joe. “You want me to drop you off close to your place?”
Joe shook his head. “I need to talk to Jesse Walker and use the telephone.” He waited for Tobias to put the truck in gear. “Something else?”
“The Elders. Do they mean us harm, Joe? I guess humans have done plenty to piss them off lately, so I have to ask.”
He considered his words carefully. “If you honor the agreements you made with the terra indigene, there is no reason for the Elders to do more than watch you as they go about their own lives. But, Tobias? If they had wanted to do you and your community any harm, you wouldn’t have survived long enough to ask the question.”
Tobias put the truck in gear and headed back to Prairie Gold.
• • •
Their footsteps filled the land with a terrible silence. They moved among the carcasses, breathing in the mingled scents of Wolves, Coyotes, horses, and the two-legged beasts called humans.
They moved up to the road, where the scents were not mingled. A different smell here, a sourness in the air that displeased them—and reminded them of the human beasts who had entered their hills without their consent. Those beasts had snuck in, as if that would keep them hidden from the terra indigene, and scurried to one of the creeks to collect some of the yellow pebbles. Wondering if the new Wolf had given permission, they had allowed the beasts to take the pebbles and leave. But the new Wolf had not given permission, so the next time the beasts came for the yellow pebbles, they became meat, and the pebbles were returned to the creek where the smaller terra indigene would find them.
Humans were still new to this part of Thaisia, still something to watch. The new Wolf was also something to watch, something interesting—something connected to the Wolf who lived near Etu, the Wolf who was being watched by many while the Elders in the east considered if the little predators called humans were needed by the world.
They tore open the bodies of the prairie thunder and ate their fill. Then they tore off large pieces of the meat and returned to the hills to feed their young, to rest—and to keep watch.
CHAPTER 6
Windsday, Juin 6
Vlad leaned against the doorway of HGR’s upstairs office. “Could you stop waking up Meg so early in the morning? Some of us would like to sleep a bit longer.”
Simon bared his teeth. “I didn’t wake her up this morning. She woke me.” He turned on the computer. Everyone who lived in the Green Complex was getting an early start this morning—and everyone was so quick to blame him.
It wasn’t his fault. One moment he was happily asleep; the next, Meg screamed and threw herself on top of him, startling him enough that he yelped. Loudly. And since the windows were open, and since terra indigene all had excellent hearing, the scream and yelp had brought the rest of the Green Complex’s residents running to find out what was wrong.
Vlad approached the desk. “She just had a dream? You’re sure she wasn’t cut, even by accident?”
“No cuts. No broken skin.”
“You’re sure?”
Simon nodded. Before Henry Beargard pounded on Meg’s front door and Vlad, in the Sanguinati’s smoke form, flowed through the screened bedroom window, Simon had planted a paw on Meg’s back and given her a quick but thorough sniff to make sure there wasn’t any blood.
Not that he was going to mention that to anyone.
“You’re not starting the day that much earlier,” Simon growled. “And you were the one who said we needed to get our book orders in today to make sure the store was fully stocked when the Addirondak Wolves arrived next week.”
“Fine. I’ll start on those, and you can . . .”
The phone rang. Simon grabbed the receiver on the second ring. “Howling Good Reads.”
“Simon? It’s Jackson. We need to talk to Meg.”
Simon looked at Vlad.
Vlad opened the office’s back window, shifted to smoke form, and flowed down the side of the building—the fastest way to reach the back of the Liaison’s Office.
“Vlad is fetching her,” Simon said. “Is the pack all right? Are you?”
“Yes. Look, we have the phone on the speaker thing. Grace and Hope are with me.” Since Jackson had finished the sentence with a snarl and needed to talk to Meg, it was easy to figure out who had caused trouble for the Sweetwater pack.
Footsteps on the stairs. Then Meg rushed into the office.
“Simon?” She sounded a little breathless. He was going to have
to chase her more to build up her lungs. “Vlad said—”
Simon waved her toward the desk. When she hesitated, Vlad gently gripped her shoulders and steered her behind the desk.
“Jackson?” Simon said. “I’m going to put you on speaker now that Meg is here.”
“Meg?” A timid female voice.
Meg sat in the chair, so Simon leaned a hip on the desk while Vlad stood to one side.
“Yes, this is Meg.”
“Tell her why she was a bad puppy!”
Hearing anguish beneath Jackson’s anger, Simon’s canines lengthened in sympathy. He poked Meg’s shoulder. “Yeah, Meg. Tell her why she was a bad puppy.”
Vlad gave him a sharp look.
“I just needed the color!” A wail.
“I remember you,” Meg said, pretending she hadn’t heard his comment. “You were called cs821.”
“Yes.”
“Did you choose a name for yourself?”
“Hope.” A sniffle. “Hope Wolfsong.”
“That’s a wonderful name.”
But not really amused, Simon decided after studying the Sanguinati. There was nothing amusing about a cassandra sangue using a razor.
“You liked colors, liked to draw,” Meg continued.
“Yes. I’m allowed to draw now. Or I was.”
Poor puppy, Simon thought. She sounded scared. But he would still take Jackson’s side because the Wolf was probably scared too.
“You drew a picture,” Meg prompted.
“Yes.”
“And then you cut yourself, using the razor?”
“Yes. No. I wasn’t trying to cut; I just needed that shade of red.”
Simon poked Meg’s shoulder again. “Tell her the rules.” He raised his voice, even though Jackson could hear him just fine. “There are rules.”
Meg stared at him and bared her teeth.
Vlad muffled a laugh.
Meg leaned toward the phone. “Hope? Is this the first time you’ve cut since you left the compound?”
“Not exactly.”
“The first time with the razor?”
“Yes.”
“Well, Simon is right; there are rules.”
“Told you,” he said quietly.
Meg huffed. “Hope, sooner or later, cutting will kill you. You know that, don’t you?”
A whispered, “Yes.”
“Cutting is about revealing prophecy, and the euphoria that we feel when we cut is our bodies’ way of protecting our minds from what we see. The only way we can remember the visions is to swallow prophecy—if we don’t speak, if we don’t describe what we see, we’ll remember it.”
“I can see my drawings,” Hope said.
Meg nodded even though Hope couldn’t see her. “It’s different for you. But your drawings also mean you don’t have to cut to release the visions of prophecy.”
“I made a drawing for you.”
Meg leaned back. “About me?”
“No. Yes.”
“There is a shop in the Intuit’s part of Sweetwater,” Jackson interrupted. “They have a camera that will take a picture that can be sent through e-mail. We’ll have a picture made for Meg and send it to you, Simon.”
“That’s fine.”
“I’ll create an e-mail account for Meg, adding it to the ones we have for Howling Good Reads,” Vlad said. “She’ll be able to receive mail for herself in a day or two.”
Vlad smiled.
Simon considered that. For a while anyway, Meg would know only what Vlad taught her about e-mail.
No argument from him.
“The drawing you made for me frightened you enough to cut?” Meg asked.
“No! I wasn’t frightened, and it wasn’t the drawing I made for you! It was the other drawing. I made the other drawing.” Hope sucked in a breath. “And then I saw . . .”
“What?” Simon asked when the only sound coming from the phone was uneven breathing.
“Dead bison,” Jackson replied grimly. “A mound of dead bison.”
“Mound?” Simon frowned, puzzled. “Bison are big. Who would put them in a mound? Who would kill so many?”
A phone began ringing downstairs. HGR’s other line.
“I’ll get that,” Vlad said, rushing out of the office and down the stairs.
“Can you send that drawing too?” Simon asked.
Hesitation. “All right,” Jackson replied. Then his voice turned urgent. “We need to know what to do about the cutting.”
No one interrupted while Meg explained about cutting just deep enough to leave a scar but not so deep to cause serious injury; about setting the back of the razor’s blade against an old scar, then turning the hand so the razor was in the correct place to cut new skin. Simon nodded when Meg emphasized the need to have someone there before Hope made the cut, that someone needed to be there to listen—and to help if something went wrong.
“Do you have a piece of paper?” Meg asked. “I’ll give you the phone number of the Liaison’s Office. You can call me if you have other questions.”
“It’s long-distance, Meg,” Simon said. “The telephone companies charge a lot of money for long-distance. Besides, you’ll have the e-mail.”
“Hope? If it’s urgent, you call me. Otherwise, you can use e-mail.” Meg brightened. “Or we can exchange letters. Where can I send a letter?”
Grace joined the conversation, giving Meg the Sweetwater mailing designation for the terra indigene’s settlement.
“Are you feeling better?” Meg asked.
Simon wasn’t sure who was supposed to answer the question, but Hope said, “Yes.”
“Simon?” Jackson said. “We still need to talk.”
Simon looked at Meg. “Shoo.”
She blinked at him.
“Shoo,” he said again.
He was pretty sure Meg wasn’t trying to run the chair’s wheels over his foot as she pushed away from the desk.
He waited until he heard her heading downstairs. Then he picked up the receiver and disengaged the speaker. “What else?”
“Have you heard from Joe?”
“I know he was resettling. All the Wolves who helped destroy the Controller and that compound decided to resettle, and a new pack formed to watch the humans in the town. Joe said he would let me know where to find him as soon as he could.” Simon paused. “Why?”
“Dead bison. The Hawks, Eagles, and Ravens are checking the Sweetwater territory this morning. We do have a herd of bison that graze around here, but our prophet pup draws pictures that are connected to us but not always about us. I don’t think we’re going to find human-killed bison around here.”
“If there is that much meat, it might not have been humans that killed the bison.”
“Maybe.”
“I think Joe’s still in the northern half of the Midwest,” Simon said after a moment. “He might have heard something about dead bison.”
“Hope painted Wolf prints on all the bison. She painted them in her blood. And then she screamed.”
Simon shivered. What had the pup seen beyond her drawing? Not Wolves, but maybe that was as close as she could get to what she had seen in some way?
“Stay in touch,” he said. “I’ll talk to Steve Ferryman. His people are sending out the e-mails to Intuit settlements, relaying information about blood prophets and how to help them stay alive. I’ll have him include you on the Lakeside list. And I’ll ask him to find out if any Intuit settlements have heard about bison being killed.” And he would call Lieutenant Montgomery. It wasn’t likely that the police would hear about dead bison, but Montgomery and his captain, Burke,
heard about a surprising number of things that happened beyond their territory.
Finishing up the call with Jackson, Simon made his calls to Steve Ferryman and Lieutenant Montgomery.
Then he went downstairs to find out who was on the other line.
CHAPTER 7
Windsday, Juin 6
Jesse Walker pushed at a lock of gray hair that had escaped the hairclip and looked up from her list as Shelley Bookman, the community’s librarian, rushed into the general store.
“I contacted everyone I could think of, either to help Floyd deal with the meat or offer up a bit of freezer space,” Shelley said. “And I brought over the discussion list, in case we have a chance to talk about more than meat.”
“I wouldn’t push for more discussion,” Jesse warned. “At least, not until we have a better idea how upset Joe Wolfgard is about the bison being killed like that.”
“I know, I know, but he’s the first one of them to initiate contact with us since some of our ancestors pitched a few tents here and bargained for some land. He came into the library last week.”
“Did he take out any books?”
“No, he shied away as soon as he saw me, but he came in.”
Jesse looked at her list. “I’ve put in calls to the dairy farm, the produce farm, and the ranch. A couple of women from the farms are on their way to help, and Tom and Ellen Garcia are heading in from the ranch. For now, that’s all we can do.”
She watched the younger woman go to the door and look out. Like Tobias, Shelley was thirty years old and a child of Prairie Gold, having lived in this small community all her life except for the years she’d gone to school for her degree to become a librarian. The outside world wasn’t an easy place for Intuits, and while Shelley never talked about her years away, Jesse had the feeling that the woman’s heart had been betrayed and broken. Whatever had happened, Shelley liked men just fine as long as they wanted to be friends, but she wouldn’t consider being more.
A shame, really, because, in Jesse’s experience, a lot of enjoyment could be had with the right man.
Shelley hurried back to the counter. “Tobias is driving up, and Joe Wolfgard is with him.”