SPIRIT WALKER

Chapter 17: How the Sky Feels (part 1 of 2)

While the men were gone that morning, Wisteria and Scandal straightened camp, watching over their shoulders for danger as they repacked food from broken barrels and smashed crockery, salvaging all that they could.

A herd of giant deer wandered through camp—"trees on heads," as the Pwi called them, or "megaloceroses," as the Starfarers preferred. The enormous antlers on the largest one must have spread fourteen feet across, and each of its eight tines had webbing between them, making it's rack truly massive.

The giant deer were nobler in bearing than an ungainly moose, larger than even the biggest elk.

The giant deer wandered along not fifty feet from the wagon, grazing on watercress and other tender plants that grew near a winding stream. It was as if he knew that the humans wouldn't harm him.

Wisteria watched the creatures, so majestic and serene, until one of the does tried to edge away from the herd. The huge buck made a bugling sound and charged her, then nudged her back into the fold.

Scandal chuckled. "Mating season comes early for these ones. . . ." He gave Wisteria a sidelong look.

All day, Wisteria had worried that Tull and the others might not return, that she and Scandal would have to make their way home alone, and she imagined how well they would fare if Mastodon Men attacked or if a scimitar cat decided to carry her off for its cubs to eat.

So when the men returned in late afternoon, rolling the barrel in front of them, Wisteria felt a thrill of relief. Scandal didn't bother asking what had happened to the mastodon, and Wisteria suspected that the men did not mention it in an effort to protect her tender feelings for the beast. Instead Tull quietly kissed her and the men loaded the barrel onto the wagon, then he and Ayuvah pulled the wagon half a mile as they moved camp. They ate a cheerless dinner consisting of items that would spoil now that their containers were broken.

They set camp in the deep forest beside twin redwoods that seemed to have sprouted from the same root.

Farther into the shadowed woods, the dire wolves howled.

"I keep trying to count my blessings," Scandal said over dinner, "but I'm coming up short! This was a fool's quest. We might make it a couple hundred miles north to the river without a mastodon to pull the wagon, but once we get there, we're stuck. Fifty men couldn't pull that wagon once we fill the barrel with water."

Phylomon considered. "Once we get out of the mountains, perhaps we can find some farmer and buy some oxen to pull the wagon. I don't know. It's been nearly a hundred years since I've visited this part of the world."

"A hundred years hasn't changed a thing along the Mammoth Run. It's still the Rough!" Scandal said. "There's nothing but a few wild Neanderthals on those plains, and they're smart enough not to bother trying to domesticate cattle out here, where the wolves sneak in camp to eat your babies while you are busy fighting the cats that want to drag off your livestock."

Phylomon gazed off, raised an eyebrow, as if an idea had struck him. "You're wrong, of course. Fifty men could pull the wagon! As long as the barrel is empty of water, we can push the wagon to Denai ourselves, and then buy slaves to push the wagon from Denai to Bashevgo."

"You'd buy slaves?" Wisteria asked. "I thought that you killed slavers."

"I've bought many slaves over the centuries," Phylomon said. "And I've set every one of them free. If we were to buy some Neanderthals, they'd thank us for it in the end."

Scandal was not at all pleased at the prospect, and Ayuvah refused to hear talk of journeying into Denai to buy slaves. The whole reason they had wanted to bring the wagon in the first place was so they could avoid the city, but Phylomon insisted that in Denai, with its large flesh markets, they would not attract much attention. Tull did not take part in the argument. Instead, he sat quietly with Wisteria on the wagon and held her hand. He was still dressed in war gear.