The Skrayling Tree (12 page)

“Oh, yes,” he said. “There is. And as you saw, every so often he devours some. What we probably will not see is the
kenabik
disgorging most of what he eats. Unfortunately he was not born a meat eater. What he misses is the rich foliage and lush
grass of his native south. The transition from herbivore to carnivore is impossible. The meat he eats is killing him. What
vegetation grows here is too sparse and too hard for him to harvest. Even if we did not kill him, he would be dead soon, and
it would be a bad, ignoble death. His shame would be great. It would weight his spirit and keep him bound to this realm. He
would have long to brood on the ignobility he has brought to himself and his tribe. We can offer him better. We can offer
him the respect of our arms. You could say it was his own fault for leaving his grazing grounds, but predators were moving
up behind his kind, picking them off as they weakened. He was chased from his homeland. I wish to try to kill him mercifully.”

“You show much forgiveness for the beast that ate your father.”

“I understand that it was an accident. The
kenabik
probably didn’t even know he was eating him. There was no malice involved. My father took a risk and failed.” Two red stones
shone in White Crow’s rigid face.

I turned away.

Ayanawatta had recovered his bow and quiver while White Crow collected all the fire he could find back into the pot. The little
lean-to we had put up against the rainy breeze was totally trampled, so again Bes gave us her massive bulk for shelter. The
two of us slept warily as White Crow elected to keep watch until dawn.

I woke once to see his profile set against the grey strip of light on the horizon, and it seemed to me he had not moved. When
I woke again, his face and head were set exactly as I had seen them hours earlier. He resembled one of those extraordinary,
infinitely beautiful marbles of the Moldavian Captives Michelangelo had carved for the French pope. Infinitely sad, infinitely
aware of the cold truth of their coming fate.

Once again I felt an urgent wish to take him in my arms and comfort him. An unexpected desire to bring warmth to a lonely,
uncomplaining soul.

He turned at that moment, and his puzzled gaze met mine. Then, with a small sigh, he gave his attention back to the distant
mountains. He recognized what was in my eyes. He had seen it before. He had a cause. A dream to live out. His destiny was
the only comfort he allowed himself.

When we woke it was drizzling hard. White Crow had pulled a robe over his shoulders as he struggled to settle the great saddle
on his mammoth’s back. Ayanawatta moved to help him. Everything smelled of rain. The whole sky was dark grey. It was impossible
to see more than twenty yards ahead. The mountains, of course, had vanished.

I wrapped myself tightly against the cold and wet. The mammoth rose to her feet, groaning and muttering at the winter wind
stiffening her joints. We had not tried to make a fresh fire the night before, and our firepot was low, so we ate cold jerky
as we rode.

We followed the
kenabik’s
bloodstained trail. Bes had injured him enough at least to slow him down.

We were warier than usual, because we knew the
kenabik
might be waiting in cover to attack. The steady rain finally stopped. The wind dropped.

The world was strangely silent. What sounds there were became amplified and isolated as the going became harder through the
soaking grasslands. Occasionally the sky cleared and thin sunbeams banded the distant tundra. The mountains, however, remained
hidden. We heard the splash of frogs and small animals in the nearby water. We smelled the strong, acrid aroma of rotting
grass from an old nest, and then once again came the sudden hissing wind bringing rain. We heard the steady sound of Bes’s
feet as she carried us stolidly on after our prey.

We reached a kind of wallow, a muddy bayou filled with weed. It was clear the monster had rested, attempting to eat some of
the weed. We also found the half-digested remains of various smaller mammals and reptiles. White Crow had been right. This
creature was too specialized to survive here. Also the wound was clearly more serious than we had originally guessed. There
were signs that he had made a crude attempt to stanch a flow of blood with some of the grass. How intelligent was this creature?

I asked Ayanawatta his opinion. He was not sure. He had learned, he said, not to measure intelligence by his own standards.
He preferred to assume that every creature was as conscious as himself but in different ways. It was as well, he said, to
give every creature the respect you would give yourself.

I could not entirely accept this view. I told him that I could not believe, however conscious they might be, that animals
possess a moral sensibility. And the most unstable of rocks are poor conversationalists.

Almost immediately, I found myself smiling, amused by my own presumption. Not long before, I had been accusing my husband
of being insufficiently imaginative.

Ayanawatta was silent for a moment, raising his eyebrows. “I may be mistaken,” he said, “but I seem to recall an adventure
I once had among the rock giants. They are, indeed, extremely laconic.”

The sideways glance he threw in my direction was humorous.

White Crow slipped suddenly down Bes’s flank without stopping her progress and began to pad beside her, studying the muddy
creek. It reminded me of what Ulric must have seen in the trenches at the end of the first war. The
kenabik
had clearly been in agony, rolling over and over in an effort to stop the pain.

Our hunt took on a peculiar gravity. It had something of the air of a funeral procession.

The rain came down harder until we could scarcely see for the sweeping sheets of water. As we descended a long hill, we confronted
a stand of tough, green grass that reached almost to Bes’s shoulder. She found it difficult
to walk on through. White Crow told her to turn and move back to a better place. Slowly she crushed her way out of the confining
growth and made for the high ground again.

Then through the pounding rain we heard the
kenabik.
No longer did it squawk and scream and moan as it had done. No longer did its voice have the fading note of pain and self-pity.
The sound had the fullness of a baritone, rhythmic and slow, the noise of a bull-roarer, booming from that massive diaphragm.

White Crow took a slender spear from the long quiver. The edges were tipped with silver, the shaft bound with ivory and copper.
With this, he again dismounted and was quickly lost in the rain and deep grass.

Bes came to a stop, turning her head as if she feared for him.

“What is the
kenabik
doing now?” I asked Ayanawatta.

“I am not sure,” said the warrior, frowning, “but I think he is singing his death song.”

The beast’s voice grew deeper still, and something connected with me. I could feel his bewildered mind reaching into mine,
questing for something. Not me. Not me. There was a mutual repulsion. Curiosity. An almost grateful quality as the monster
tasted tentatively at my identity.

All the time that song went on. Somehow I believed he was telling the story of his people, of their glory, of their virtue
and their destruction. A psychologist would consider this transference, would argue that the beast could not feel such complicated
emotions and ideas. Yet, as Ayanawatta said, who are we to measure the value or quality of another’s perceptions?

I could not bring myself to bond with the
kenabik’s
brain. It was too unlike anything I understood. It dreamed of tall fields of cane and thick, nourishing ferns, and its song
began to reflect this dream more and more. A harmony grew between the strange view of Paradise and the thrumming voice. Whatever
it is in sentient creatures that needs to communicate, that is what I heard. It was a confused, frightened mixture of half-understood
images and feelings. Who else could the dying creature reach out to? Another voice entered the song, taking the melody until
it was impossible to tell which was which.

In response to this, the monster abruptly shifted its attention elsewhere. I was, I must admit, deeply relieved. While it
could not be the first time I had attended a dying spirit, this strange, anachronistic being found little comfort from me.

The clouds parted for a moment or two, and the rain passed. We saw that we stood in waist-high grass. Some distance off, with
his back to us, was White Crow. From his stance and the position of his head I understood the
kenabik
to be somewhere below him. Then, out of the misty foliage, I saw a beaked head rise. Huge yellow eyes sought the source of
the other song. The eyes were filled with baffled gratitude. As it died, the monster received grace.

The clouds rolled in again. I saw White Crow lift his silver-tipped spear.

Both songs ended.

We waited for a long time. The rain lashed down, and the wind blew the grass into glistening waves. We had
become used to these blustering elemental attacks. At last Ayanawatta and I made a decision. We dismounted, telling Bes to
remain where she was unless she needed to escape danger, and pressed on through the fleshy stalks surrounding us, our moccasins
sinking into the thick, glutinous mud. Ayanawatta paused, cautioning me to silence, and he listened. Slowly I became aware
of soft footfalls.

White Crow came crashing out of the grass. Over his shoulder he carried his lance and two huge feathers, gorgeous against
that grey light. He was covered from head to foot in blood.

“I had to go inside it,” he said. “To find the medicine of my father.”

We followed him to where Bes waited. The mammoth was visibly pleased at his return. He took the two gigantic brilliant feathers
and stuck them into the wool near her head. Her hair was so thick that they did not fall, but White Crow assured her he would
attach them more securely later. Bes looked oddly proud of her new finery. White Crow was acknowledging her victory. Then
he went back to the creek and washed the blood off his body, and again he sang. He sang of Bes and her hero-spirit. She would
find her ancestors in the eternal dance and celebrate her deeds forever. He sang of the great heart of his finished enemy.
And it felt to me as if that monster’s spirit were at peace leaving the world to join its brothers in some eternal grazing
grounds.

White Crow spent the rest of that day and part of the night washing himself and his clothing. When he came back to the camp
he seemed grateful for the fire we had
made. He sat down, took a pipe, and smoked for a while without speaking. Then he reached to where he had placed his pouch
on top of his freshly washed clothes and slid his hand inside. His fist closed on something, and he withdrew it, opening the
palm to show us what he had retrieved.

The firelight threw wild shadows. It was hard for me to see.

“I had no choice but to go into his guts,” said White Crow. “It was difficult. It took some time. The
kenabik
had three bellies, all of them diseased. I had hoped to find more. But this was what there was. Perhaps it is all we need.”

The fire flared, lighting the night, and I saw the tiny object clearly. Turquoise, ivory, scarlet. Round. It was horribly
familiar…

I recognized it.

I had an immediate physical reaction. My head swam. I gasped. My mind refused what my eyes saw!

I looked at an exact miniature of the huge medicine shield on which I had made my way into this world. I had no real doubt
that it was the same. Every detail was identical, save for the size.

“It was my father’s,” said White Crow, “when he was White Crow Man. I am truly White Crow Man now.” This statement was made
flatly. His voice was bleak. He closed his fingers tightly around the talisman before putting it away in his bag.

I looked at Ayanawatta, as if for confirmation that I was right in recognizing the tiny medicine shield, but he had never
properly seen it as I had. He had merely
glimpsed it in his summoning dream. Every detail was the same, I was sure. Yet how had it become so tiny? Was it some process
in the animal’s belly? Some supernatural element I had not perceived?

Was Klosterheim a dwarf? Or was I the giant? What had gone wrong with the scale of things? The workings of Chaos? Or had Law,
in its crazed wisdom, wished this condition upon the world?

“What is that you hold?” I asked at last.

White Crow frowned. “It is my father’s medicine shield,” he said.

“But the size…”

“My father was not a large man,” said White Crow.

Northward to the northern waters,

Northward to the farthest shore
…

W. S. H
ARTE
,

“The Maker of Laws”

A
nd so, having reached that particular stage in the dream-quest of my two companions, we continued our journey north. All
obstacles seemed to be behind us. The weather, though cooler, was bright and clear. I felt instinctively confident that Ulric
still lived and that we should soon be reunited. Only the constant, thrusting, whispering, insistent wind reminded me that
I still had mysterious antagonists, those who would stop me seeing my husband again.

Game became increasingly plentiful, and I was able to feed us on antelope, hare, grouse and geese. Now there was wild alfalfa,
maize and potato. Both my companions carried bags of dried herbs which they used
for cooking and smoking. I was by far the best shot, and the men were content to let me hunt. We became used to eating very
well, usually around sunset, while Bes, the mammoth, grazed happily on the rich grasses and shrubs. We enjoyed exquisite light
saturating gorgeous scenery, the tall peaks of the horizon, the varied greens and yellows of the prairie. The evening sky
was deep yellow, flooded with scarlet and ocher.

We ate heartily, as if to keep our strength against the coming winter.