Ah, the slow pulsing of afterglow. He staggered around in a bliss. Vomiting, spurting, they were all part of it. To feel so good in his body; he should have been spurting in Mother Earth as often as he could manage it. Well, maybe he had been; maybe this was the first time in the whole fortnight he had had the time and warmth and strength and spirit. Of course; or else he would have. Afterglow buzzing down his legs from his spurt, up his belly from his spurt, then out his arms to his fingers. A subtle but distinct flow of goodness, there to do battle with all the nicks and scrapes, with Spit and Crouch, and all the days of throbbing cold feet. Well, down at the very ends of his legs it was hard to penetrate with the goodness. Too cold down there. Best to hop again, dance and chant again, say good-bye to Sage for a while and focus his attention on the moment. The sun was high, it was midmorning and the air was warming up. Time to be out and about.
He rolled up his cape and tied it around his waist, retied his belt and skirt, and headed down the plateau’s edge toward the top of his home valley. Upper Valley dropped to the river, past Cave Hill onto Loop Meadow, the filled dry river course that ran around Loop Hill and the Stone Bison, which straddled the river. He was not a great distance away from home, it would be only a day’s walk on the ridge trail between Upper and Lower Valleys. Going down the valley cleft itself it would take much longer, but it would be good to avoid the ridge trail, he judged, to reduce the chances of running into anyone. As he walked he found he had decided to stay just under the ridge trail, on the Upper Valley side.
He limped down the easiest traverse as it presented itself. There were faint trails traversing the slope where animals had chosen, like he had, to make their way without risking a ridge trail encounter, also without descending into the alder thickets filling the valley floor. Up here he could often see over the west ridge of Upper Valley to the distant horizon, a white haze obscuring the ice caps, which were sometimes visible. Many of the hilltops around Upper Valley were white knobs and protuberances, so that the land looked like an immense boneyard. Now it was breathing a little under him, undulating like the back of a living thing. He had to slow down to keep his balance, using Prong more than ever.
He began to feel exhilarated. His afterglow had turned into a benign tingling all through him. It emanated from his stomach and gut. He found he could walk without actually putting his weight down, which caused Crouch to sigh contentedly. Anywhere he looked sprang right to him and resolved as if he were close to it, which was part of what was making him sway as he walked; it was hard to keep his balance when things kept jumping at him. The blue of the sky throbbed with different blues, each more blue than the next. The clouds in the blue were scalloped and articulated like driftwood, and crawled around in themselves like otters at play. He could see everything at once. His spirit kept tugging at the top of his head, lifting him so that he had to concentrate to keep his balance. The problem made him laugh. The world was so great, so beautiful. Something like a lion: it would kill you if it could, but in the meantime it was so very, very beautiful. He would have cried at how beautiful it was, but he was laughing too much, he was too happy at being there walking in it. All right, this was what he had not known: Thorn poisoned himself to get to this feeling. Once you got to it, you saw the puking was worth it, oh yes no doubt about it: well worth it. You would die for this feeling. He reeled a little, trying to turn and take it all in at once, but then Crouch complained, and he went back to traipsing along, as in a slow dance, winding along the narrow ledges that allowed him to walk just a few body lengths below the ridge trail.
Then he heard a noise on the ridge, and he dropped under a fallen log and froze before he had time to think a single thing. Musky smoke smelclass="underline" the old ones.
Terror ripped through him, and he snuggled farther under the log, trying to shrink to the size of a mushroom cap. They would stick their mammoth spears through him and he would die in a squeal of horrible agony, like a rabbit. His feet went ice cold again at the idea, and the leaf mat under the log disintegrated into whorls of blotchy color, like pebbles seen at the bottom of a swift stream, everything breaking up and bouncing in his eyes.
The sounds above him moved downridge, in the direction he had been going. He heard the old ones croaking to each other in their raven voices. Over any distance they whistled to talk. These two were moving down the ridge trail pretty quickly. If he tracked them he would know where they were, and then when night came he could move away from where they were. As long as there weren’t any others, he would then be safe. It seemed like a good plan.
He floated down through the trees and rocks under the ridge, on the hunt and never more so, not ever in his whole life. He caught sight of them below him from time to time, by putting just one eye around trees to have a look; each sight of them made him tingle. The little trees on this broad ridge rustled and clicked in their own birdlike language, waving their branches to snag his attention. Clouds were swirling out of nowhere into existence overhead. One had to hope it would not rain. Although it felt like rain would only hiss and steam off him. He found he wanted to kill the old ones; that would make him safer, and he could see what they owned. But this was not a good idea, in fact he was surprised it had come to him. One didn’t kill old ones; they were people in their way, almost-people, and never dangerous to humans properly in a pack. Although as he was alone, ordinary conduct did not obtain. But it was still a bad idea.