SPIRIT WALKER

Chapter 11: Grim Preparations (part 1 of 2)

After the executions, the town of Smilodon Bay went sullenly quiet. Only six funeral pyres roared that day—for no one even found the body of Beremon—and the smell of charcoal and flesh seemed to loom over the town. Each person mourned the dead in solitude. Though Phylomon stalked through town often that day, no one sought his company, which was fine with him.

It was foolish for them to grieve. The town should have been celebrating the purge of slavers.

Still, no one sought to strike back at him that day. Instead, the city brooded.

The fourth day of Phylomon's visit, the woodland mastodon that was to pull the wagon arrived from the miners at White Rock. It was a hulking brute, sixteen feet at the shoulder, well over forty years old, with the unpromising name of Snail Follower.

The miner brought the mastodon into town dragging a redwood log that was fifteen feet around and thirty feet long, convincing Phylomon that if any beast could pull a wagon carrying twelve tons of water and sea serpents over the plains, this one could.

Theron Scandal grinned all over. "Ayaah, it's a bad name," Scandal admitted as he patted the mastodon's dusty legs and inspected its swollen feet, "but I've been assured that the beast is tougher than a Neanderthal's skull."

"But it's a woodland mastodon," Phylomon pointed out. "It can't tolerate the high, cold country in the White Mountains, and it will likely take sick if driven too fast. He's a powerful brute, but he'll need to rest often. We can't have him pull for more than four or five hours a day."

Scandal just rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. "There's no mammoths to be had around here," he said ruefully.

He was right. Phylomon had an adage: "All you can do, is all you can do."

He would not waste time regretting the fact that he only had one good mastodon to pull the wagon. Like this town, he thought, I should be celebrating my good fortune.

In spite of the upcoming hardships, Tull felt eager to leave Smilodon Bay. The somber mood in town, the fight with his parents, the executions—all had combined to make home an ugly place in the past few days.

Tull was too near his parents' house when he went to see the mastodon. He could feel the kwea of his childhood home around the bend, as if the area emanated pain, and he smiled grimly.

He worried for his little brother Wayan, worried so much that he was tempted to go see the child.

He wanted to escape the ugliness and fear of this place, and felt that it would feel good to get into the wilderness. It would feel good most of all because he'd be with Wisteria.

That evening, Scandal met Phylomon in the common room at the inn and said, "Well, I can't believe it, but over the past two days, I've asked every man in town to come with us, and no one will go. You've won no friends here."

"I'm not surprised," Phylomon answered. "Executioners are never popular."

Scandal's squirrels hopped from table to table, looking for hazelnuts. His pet snakebird woke, and Scandal cut bits of meat into cubes, held them on the tip of a knife, and waved them in front of the bird.

The bird hissed and lashed out, grabbing meat between its sharp teeth. "Still," Scandal said, "I'd hoped someone would come, perhaps a few more Pwi. The only person who has made plans to come is a girl: Wisteria Altair. You killed her mother and father, and now she's married to Tull Genet, the big Tcho-Pwi."

"I told you that I was tempted to kill any human that tries to come on this quest with us," Phylomon said. "Why should she be an exception?" He peered hard at Scandal, and added. "She's a plant. Our enemies have sent her."