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Light-in-his-Eyes breaks the muzzled veldt with stammers and rigid backpedals. He speaks to the children, motioning toward himself with a hand even as he scrabbles farther away from you. Kule still will not meet your eyes, but he answers in his native tongue, staying where he is. He moves forward some with raised hands and subtle demeanor, not unlike one calming a wild horse.
Noka walks up to the cliff’s edge to the bodies of the Twins, passing you with contemplation sunk into her face. Your stare flies first to Light-in-his-Eyes, almost halfway back to the wood. You come down from the cliff ledge now, adopting a passive, humble mien. The moon is bright and fertile. Light-in-his-Eyes is taking longer breaths, his eyes do not circle and dart with as much velocity. You are enkindled with irritation and think again of the words Coyote taught you back in P’oilkat, the words that allowed you to understand Indian speech. You are close to applying them again, when a chipmunk runs out of the wood.
The little creature sprints past the young shaman, sprints past Kule, and sprints past yourself. All three of you follow the movement, but only for a moment, as a rabbit steals your attention, also sprinting out from the forest. A weasel follows that, then a trio of squirrels, then beavers, marmots, snakes, foxes, mice, shrews, and a family of deer. All behind the stampede is the steady step of hoof on snow, heard over the running of the others. The animals begin to scream. Every variant of alarmed audition passes through your ears, through the mountain air and up to the high, dauntless moon. They run and run, but through it all, a heavy step on the snowy ground. It sounds like drumming. The animals do not look back, they do not look anywhere, their eyes are closed, and they run and run until they run off the cliff. The worming slide of foot and claw turns silent as they vault off of Owl’s Perch, suspended in the light of the moon until they are driven down into the earth far, far below.
In the end, all that remains is the step, repeating. The step, resounding. The step, resolving again and again. The wood turns red, the trees draw blood against the grain. It comes into view, as you knew it would, face shrouded in shade. The grease slick coats your face. The tip of your nose and the tip of your tongue and your fingers and the words in your mouth. All sink into a fetid murk. You recall your first hunt in these mountains, the thing that Badger Tail had called an Oiliot’e. This looks similar, but if the other was a shepherd meant to guide and gather, perverted to malice by that Black Shaman, this was its opposite. This is abomination, this is meant to profane, to murder, to sup life’s most sacred blood.
