Stiffly, for the fear-crystals had not yet melted out of her joints, the child got up and went to Coyote. Off to one side along the hill was one of the lines, a fence. She didn't look at it It was OK. They were outside it
"Look at that!"
A smoked salmon, a whole chinook, lay on a little cedar-bark mat "An offering! Well, I'll be darned!" Coyote was so impressed she didn't even swear. "I haven't seen one of these for years! I thought they'd forgotten!"
"Offering to who?"
"Me! Who else? Boy, look at that!"
The child looked dubiously at the salmon.
"It smells funny."
"How funny?"
"Like burned."
"It's smoked, stupid! Come on."
"I'm not hungry."
"OK. It's not your salmon anyhow. It's mine. My offering, for me. Hey, you people! You people over there! Coyote thanks you! Keep it up like this and maybe I'll do some good things for you too!"
"Don't, don't yell, Mom! They're not that far away—"
"They're all my people," said Coyote with a great gesture, and then sat down cross-legged, broke off a big piece of salmon, and ate.
Evening Star burned like a deep, bright pool of water in the clear sky. Down over the twin hills was a dim suffusion of light, like a fog. The child looked away from it, back at the star.
"Oh," Coyote said. "Oh, shit"
"What's wrong?"
"That wasn't so smart, eating that," Coyote said, and then held herself and began to shiver, to scream, to choke—her eyes rolled up, her long arms and legs flew out jerking and dancing, foam spurted out between her clenched teeth. Her body arched tremendously backwards, and the child, trying to hold her, was thrown violently off by the spasms of her limbs. The child scrambled back and held the body as it spasmed again, twitched, quivered, went still.
By moonrise Coyote was cold. Till then there had been so much warmth under the tawny coat that the child kept thinking maybe she was alive, maybe if she just kept holding her, keeping her warm, she would recover, she would be all right. She held her close, not looking at the black lips drawn back from the teeth, the white balls of the eyes. But when the cold came through the fur as the presence of death, the child let the slight, stiff corpse lie down on the dirt
She went nearby and dug a hole in the stony sand of the draw, a shallow pit Coyote's people did not bury their dead, she knew that But her people did. She carried the small corpse to the pit, laid it down, and covered it with her blue and white bandanna. It was not large enough; the four stiff paws stuck out The child heaped the body over with sand and rocks and a scurf of sagebrush and tumbleweed held down with more rocks. She also went to where the salmon had lain on the cedar mat, and finding the carcass of a lamb heaped dirt and rocks over the poisoned thing. Then she stood up and walked away without looking back.
At the top of the hill she stood and looked across the draw toward the misty glow of the lights of the town lying in the pass between the twin hills.
"I hope you all die in pain," she said aloud. She turned away and walked down into the desert
It was Chickadee who met her, on the second evening north of Horse Butte.
"I didn't cry," the child said.
"None of us do," said Chickadee. "Come with me this way now. Come into Grandmother's house."
It was underground, but very large, dark and large, and the Grandmother was there at the center, at her loom. She was making a rug or blanket of the hills and the black rain and the white rain, weaving in the lightning. As they spoke she wove.
"Hello, Chickadee. Hello, New Person."
"Grandmother," Chickadee greeted her.
The child said, "I'm not one of them."
Grandmother's eyes were small and dim. She smiled and wove. The shuttle thrummed through the warp.
"Old Person, then," said Grandmother. "You'd better go back there now, Granddaughter. That's where you live."
"I lived with Coyote. She's dead. They killed her."
"Oh, don't worry about Coyote!" Grandmother said, with a little huff of laughter. "She gets killed all the time."
The child stood still. She saw the endless weaving.
"Then I—Could I go back home—to her house—?"
"I don't think it would work," Grandmother said. "Do you, Chickadee?"
Chickadee shook her head once, silent
"It would be dark there now, and empty, and fleas... You got outside your people's time, into our place; but I think that Coyote was taking you back, see. Her way. If you go back now, you can still live with them. Isn't your father there?"
The child nodded.
"They've been looking for you."
"They have?"
"Oh, yes, ever since you fell out of the sky. The man was dead, but you weren't there—they kept looking."
"Serves him right Serves them all right," the child said. She put her hands up over her face and began to cry terribly, without tears.
"Go on, little one, Granddaughter," Spider said. "Don't be afraid. You can live well there. I'll be there too, you know. In your dreams, in your ideas, in dark comers in the basement. Don't kill me, or I'll make it rain..."
"I'll come around," Chickadee said. "Make gardens for me."
The child held her breath and clenched her hands until her sobs stopped and let her speak
"Will I ever see Coyote?"
"I don't know," the Grandmother replied.
The child accepted this. She said, after another silence, "Can I keep my eye?"
"Yes. You can keep your eye."
"Thank you, Grandmother," the child said. She turned away then and started up the night slope towards the next day. Ahead of her in the air of dawn for a long way a little bird flew, black-capped, light-winged.