He passed a trickle of snowmelt in the sun, and crouched to drink, and Crouch crouched with him. Crouch was in a bad mood. He had retrieved Prong from above the first ledge, and now it and another walking stick he picked up became part of his arms. He had become one of the four-legged animals again, with very long, double-jointed forelegs. Snowmelt cold in his empty belly, flooding him from the inside, stilling the buzz in him until he could float again, could walk as lazily as a leopard, flowing with the bump and tilt of the rocks underfoot. He moved so slowly that he didn’t move, and the sky’s blue billowed and lofted over him, higher and higher, bluer and bluer. What clouds there were that day were all inside him.
It was a day for animals. Fourteenth day of the fourth month, the days getting longer fast, the sun higher in the sky, the warmth of spring finally burnishing the air of the world. Snow melting everywhere it was left. Everyone felt good on a day like this, they all came out to forage and look around. The gods inside them pushed out into their pelts.
Four-pointing down the valley, floating a little. There was a narrow lane in Upper Valley, above the creekbed so choked by alder, below the valley wall so rocky and snowy. Loon descended to this lane, he floated down onto it. When he got to it, he sat and rested, and felt Mother Earth spin a little under him, undulate up and down with her breathing. The narrow lane was mostly grassy, and where side creeks tumbled across it, the darker greens of sedge and moss striped it. Every creature walking up- or downvalley used this lane, and in the muddy patches Loon saw hoof and paw prints of all kinds.
Around noon he came to a broad open flat, a meadow where the creek slowed down and snaked through grass-green reeds. Loon kept against the eastern wall of the valley, which was here a stack of setback cliffs, with trees on every ledge. He felt safe here, and when a little herd of bison appeared at the top of the meadow and wandered downstream, he hid behind a tree and watched. They were wary and skittish, as if being hunted, and soon they passed out of sight downstream. The bison was Thorn’s animal, which was just right, they were so big-headed and full of themselves.
Now the valley was peaceful again, and the squirrels chirped and dashed about. Overhead a hawk spiraled lazily, one of the few birds to be here so early in the spring; a sprucetopper, seeming too high to be on the hunt, though it wasn’t true. They sometimes dove from so high they only became visible as a dot already diving. A quiet warm afternoon, not as clear as the morning had been, but almost cloudless still. His stomach pinched, and he felt a little weak. He floated not so much from relief as from light-headedness. With every heartbeat the trees moved away and then back at him, and a cloud of bees around a beehive roared in a way that told him he did not want their honey. Although some honey… if he threw rock after rock, blasted them away, knocked the hollow tree apart, splashed them and smoked them… but no. Only smoke would do it. Otherwise they would get angry and attack him in a swarm, he had had it happen before. One more bee sting added to the buzzing already in him and he would burst out of his skin.
Regretfully he left the beehive alone and continued downstream, slower than the water flowing through the meadow. After the stream left the meadow and fell down a forested slope he moved from tree to tree, resting against them as if against friends. They propped him up the way friends did.
The afternoon shadows lengthened in their leisurely way. He was close enough to the pack’s abri that he could stop and crawl under a log. His sleepless night suddenly caught up with him, and he had to give in to sleep, hoping that nothing hungry would come upvalley while he did. On a journey of twentytwenty days you can still fuck up on the last step. Yes, but there was nothing for it, he was helpless to hold it off. Sleep with one eye open.
When he woke it was just a fist above sundown. He pulled himself up, brushed himself off. He went to the river and washed his face, then spotted a chunk of earthblood in the stream and plucked it out happily. A little scraping with a harder rock would yield enough red for some facepaint. He still had his deer tooth necklace, and his knot carved into a lion man, which now gave him a little shiver of dread as he pondered it; also his deerhide clothes and cape. He would use the earthblood to spot his hide cape like his cheeks and forehead. Make a leopard pattern on both, come into camp in style. He would be thin and weak and injured, but clothed and well. Alive. He considered casting aside Prong and the other pole; but if he did he would have to limp, because Crouch was now objecting loudly to every single step he took. He could lose the poles at the last moment, and stop himself from limping for his walk in, if he chose to.
In the last light of the sun he crossed Loop Meadow and slowly climbed Loop Hill. From its top he could see down into the bowl of land they lived in, and up the river gorge to the ridges all round, to the sunset and the moonrise. Camp was down there under the abri that seamed Cave Hill. When night fell he could walk right down to it. It was all coming together just as he had planned in the sleepless nights of his wander. Looking down he saw the smoke from their campfire, curling up through the trees. Ah yes.
In the last part of that day, sunlight slanting down the gorge of the river, there was a motion on the first ridge to the west of him. He saw it was a black horse, standing there looking around. The sacred animal, the most beautiful animal.
The horse stood alone, watching the sunset just like Loon. Loon took the chunk of earthblood from his belt flap and scraped its friable surface with his foreclaw until he had some of it nubbled in his palm. He spit on it and rubbed it around until he had a paste, then applied it in streaks across his forehead and under his eyes. Then he bowed to the horse, and the horse bowed back, nodding his head and lifting it up, nodding and lifting. The god animal was lit by the sun almost from below. Long black head, so etched and fine. The land’s witness to the end of his wander, pawing once, then nodding and lifting. Throwing his great head side to side, his black eyes observing Loon across the gulf of air between them. Black mane short and upright, black body rounded and strong.
Then without warning the horse tossed his long head up at the sky, off toward the sun, and this movement popped in Loon’s eye and bulged out across the space between them, scoring his eyes such that he could close them and see it again; Loon’s eyes spilled over, the tears ran down his face, his throat clamped down and his chest went tight and quivered. He put his hands on his heart. The horse turned away and cantered over the ridge out of sight, disappearing with a final flash of sun on its black upright mane. Loon looked away, still blinking out tears, and for a time he was almost afraid to look west again. He squeezed his eyes shut, saw it all happen on his eyelids. The head leading the body through its turn away, so graceful, so smooth. Last of the sun flooding the gorge, gleaming off the black body as if off a crow’s wing. Rounded shoulders and long legs.
The sun touched the horizon and began to set. At the same moment a spot on the eastern horizon gleamed brilliant white, spread left and right: the moon was rising. In the same time the sun took to set, the moon rose; watching the two, looking back and forth, Loon felt himself expand between them, felt the sky rolling over Mother Earth. Sun down, moon up, all part of one big flight. So it must indeed be the night of full moon.