The Growing

“Best to keep our blankets dry,” Koda counters. “See if my heavy flannel is in there. I won’t be out long.”

Digging further, Kirsten comes up with Koda’s thick, lined flannel shirt, and she tosses the garment over. She watches as her lover shoulders it on and flips her braid out from beneath the neckline. “Be careful out there, alright?”

Koda responds by kissing her lightly; a kiss which quickly deepens as their bodies realize exactly, to the very second, how long it has been since they have last made love. The nights of late have found them both so bone tired that it has been all they can do just to strip and slide into their joined sleeping bags before falling deeply asleep, huddled closely together. “Hold that thought.” Koda’s voice is suspiciously husky as they finally break for air, hearts pounding in tandem.

“Hurry back,” Kirsten replies on a breath that is just as ragged.

*

The wind howls as it soughs through the trees like an express train headed east. Already, half an inch coats the summer-warm ground, and more accumulates as the seconds pass. Practically snow-blind by the driving blizzard, Koda hunts for firewood on instinct, straying near the deciduous trees with their new growth covered in crystals of virgin white. Within twenty minutes, she has all the wood she can carry bundled in a more or less neat stack, and is silently thanking her father for many such a chore in her growing-up years. She picks her way carefully through the newfallen snow, her inate sense of direction leading her surely to the small shack in the middle of nowhere that they’ve chosen as their temporary—she hopes—shelter.

“Get in here!” Kirsten shouts to be heard over the shriek of the wind, all but pulling Dakota through the doorway. “God, you’re soaked all the way through!”

“That’ll be remedied soon enough,” she replies, walking to the fireplace and setting down the branches she’s managed to forage. Her fingers, quite numb from the cold, are sluggish to cooperate and Kirsten, seeing this, kneels down to help, scowling at her.

“You just get out of those soaked clothes. I’ll start the fire.”

Koda’s stiffening knees send out twin bolts of pain as she rises, and she walks gingerly back to where Kirsten has laid their packs, rummaging about for some warm, dry clothing. She takes in a deep breath, and is pleasantly surprised at the vast reduction in rank odor permeating the place. “Nice,” she hums.

“House-cleaning for backwoods shacks 101,” Kirsten replies, shaking out a wooden match from the waterproof tube and lighting it on the first strike. “Find a branch with dead leaves—instant broom.”

“Learned that from the felonious Martha did you?”

“Ha. Ha. I’ll have you know that beneath my bookish looks and geeky charm lurks a genuine Rosie the Riviter.”

“Mm,” Koda’s liquid voice sounds right next to her ear, “I like your bookish looks and geeky charm.”

“Jesus!” Kirsten utters, as much at the sudden onrush of hormones as at the fact that she has almost burned herself to a crisp. “Honey, I love you, but I think I learned in Girl Scouts that it’s unwise to seduce someone when they’re trying to start a fire. At least…one in a fireplace.”

“Interesting troop you belonged to, canteskuye.”

“You have no idea,” Kirsten purrs, this time managing to get the tinder to light underneath the larger branches and logs.

“What else did they teach you?”

Kirsten shoots her a coy look from beneath partially lowered lashes. “Get out of those cold, wet clothes, and you just might find out.”

“You must have gotten the incentivising for fun and profit merit badge.”

“Frist time out,” Kirsten replies smugly. “Now scoot!”

“Consider me scooted.”

As she turns away, Koda notices another improvement in the shack. Kirsten has used her bright yellow rain poncho as a windbreak, using their roll of duck tape to lash it securely over the hole masquerading as a window. Added to the now burning fire, the warmth is palpable, and Koda lets go a shiver as the pins and needles of sensation rush into her warming skin.

“You okay?” Kirsten asks, moving over to her side and helping her remove the sopping garments.

“Getting better. Nice job with the window, Rosie. Have any more talents you haven’t shared?”

“Maybe one or two,” Kirsten replies, grinning. “However, they still don’t include cooking worth a squat so…any suggestions?”

“Trail rations, at least for tonight. And some hot tea to wash them down with.”

Kirsten’s lips mou. “I could have done that.”

“True,” Koda replies, pretending to consider. “I suppose I could open the door and invite a couple of rabbits to hop into the stew pot—assuming we had one—but I think, personally, that they’d rather take their chances with the blizzard.”

“Mm. You have a point there. Tell you what, I’ll scare up our jerkey and crackers, and you heat up the water for tea. Sound fair?”

“More than.” Slipping on her loose sweatpants, she moves to their gear and pulls out the stacked cooking gear they picked up from the camping store, pours some water from one of their canteens into the largest pot, and sits it on the heath to warm. After setting out a couple of tea-bags, she moves to the door and, with a bit of effort, manages to get it seated more or less securely into its swollen, warped frame. By the time she’s completed that task, the water is gently steaming in its pot, and she returns to the fireplace and pours the water into two travel mugs, allowing the tea to steep.

Kirsten has already laid their sleeping bags atop a thick blanket, and has used a second blanket to cover the blackened floor. Their simple fare sits atop this blanket, several pieces of jerky, a tube of crackers, and some cheese she’d liberated from a holiday basket some weeks back. It’s not a feast, no, but when she thinks about it, it’s not too different from the cardboard tasting microwave dinners she’d used to eat when she was living in the lap of civilization—when she remembered to eat at all, that is.

And, she thinks, looking over at the beauty who comes to sit comfortably by her side, tea mugs in hand, the company is infinitely preferable.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Koda remarks, tossing a piece of jerky to Asi, who sets to with vigor.

“Is that the going rate these days?” She chuckles. “Actually, I was just sitting here thinking that there could be worse places to be than holed up with you in some shanty eating cold food and waiting out a blizzard.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Home, for instance. I mean…the home before all this started.”

Koda thinks for a moment. “What would you be doing if you were there instead of here?”

“What is it, about six or so?”

“Thereabouts.” Neither wears a watch, but, as with many things in this brave new world, they’ve learned to get by without them.

“I’d probably still be at work. I never left much before nine or so.”

“Hillary kept you running ragged, huh?”

Kirsten smiles. “Nah. I was pretty much a workaholic anyway. I was doing something I loved, and there really wasn’t anything for me back home…”—she is interrupted by a rather outraged whine—“except for Asimov, of course, I’d never forget you boy.” She ruffles him behind the ears, earning a grunting acceptance of her oblique apology. “How ‘bout you?”

“Mm, pretty much the same thing,” Koda remarks around a mouthful of tea. “I usually kept my clinic open till late. More often than not, Wash or one of my other brothers would be down helping, and I’d drive them back home and take dinner with the family. I’d usually hang out with them for a bit, see if there were any chores that needed doing, then drive home. One last check of my patients, and I’d head to the house for bed.” She shrugs. “With Tali gone, there really wasn’t much else to do.”

With the mention of Tali’s name, Kirsten feels a burst of insecurity, but it’s more of an echo now, not the sharp, bitter tang she might have felt not three months before. She smiles internally, pleased at the growth she can feel in herself. I’m getting there, she thinks. I might not be all the way yet, but I’m getting there. She blinks, startled as a tin cup clinks softly against her own, and looks up into Dakota’s soft, loving eyes.

“To us, and to the future we’ll build together.”

“To us,” she replies softly, the warmth rushing through her an answer to unuttered prayers.

The rest of their meager repast is eaten in comfortable silence between them. The shrieking of the storm outside is mellowed by the cheery crackle of the fire. And though the shacks cracked walls and questionable roof lets in some of the cold, the warmth between them more than makes up for it.

Kirsten sets her empty cup down on the blanket and wraps her arms around Dakota’s lean waist, snuggling her head against one well-muscled shoulder and sighing in contentment. Smiling, Koda sets her own cup down and trails her fingers through Kirsten’s now long hair, watching as the strands sift through her hand like rays of warm spring sunshine. “Cante mitawa,” she whispers as Kirsten tilts her head up and their mouths meet, slip away, then meet again in loving welcome. Kirsten’s lips part to the tender, inquisitive touch of Koda’s tongue, and she shivers with delight even as her hand slowly raises to cup her lover’s firm breast, caressing it with her thumb as she feels its warm weight in her palm. The hand in her hair tightens and she feels her neck arching as her head is drawn firmly, tenderly back, exposing the strong column of her neck to the ravenous lips, tongue and teeth of her lover. She shivers again, then moans as her bounding pulsepoint is nipped, then soothed with the tip of an amorous tongue. A low growl sounds from Koda’s throat as she removes Kirsten’s hand from her breast and eases the younger woman back onto the blanket, lips still attached to her throat, suckling at the pale, tender skin presented her. Her hands and fingers are demanding as they tug and pull at Kirsten’s T-shirt, easing it up until her lover’s breasts are exposed to the chill air and her voracious gaze.

“Beautiful,” she rasps. “So beautiful.” Her eyes are the sky of a moonlit night, her pupils black holes and Kirsten feels herself drawn into their vortex. Long fingers dance over the pale, silken flesh, circling nipples hard and aching even as her thigh slides up and seats itself between Kirsten’s legs, pressing and releasing and gently grinding. Kirsten trembles, then cries out softly as a warm, wet mouth moves down over her left breast, taking her in and sparking a fire that flows through her veins, making her limbs heavy and leaden as sharp teeth graze her nipple and a tongue soothes the sting.

As Koda moves over to Kirsten’s right breast, her hands dance down over belly and hips in long, slow, reverent strokes, then work the button to her jeans with expert precision. Rolling partially away, Dakota draws down the jeans and undergarments over strong thighs and tanned, toned calves, and tosses them in the direction of their packs. She then returns, grasping her lover’s legs and bending them, spreads them wide. Her tongue peeks out to wet her lips as her eyes feast on the evidence of Kirsten’s passion shining in the dancing light of the fire. With a soft groan, she eases back between those legs, rocking her pelvis until the soft fabric of her pants chafes against Kirsten’s swollen need.

“Oh God!” Kirsten gasps out, fingers digging into the ragged blanket.

“Mitawa,” Koda growls, circling her hips against Kirsten’s swollen wetness. “Mitawa.” Leaning forward so that her thick, black hair forms a curtain around them, she melds her lips to Kirsten’s, nipping her lower lip and tonguing the fold in slow, suggestive strokes and circles.

Kirsten’s legs move of their own accord, wrapping themselves around Koda’s waist, pulling her closer. “Please,” Kirsten whispers. “Please.”

Sliding her hands down to Kirsten’s hips—hot hands they are, so hot, searing her skin like brands—she begins to thrust in earnest, the soft cloth of her sweats giving her lover the exact friction she needs. Reaching up, Kirsten, in a burst of passionate strength, rips open Dakota’s T-shirt from hem to neck, then pulls the sweaty back down so that their breasts and bellies slip and slide along their lengths in time to their rocking thrusts. “More,” Kirsten moans, her body liquid fire. “More, please, God, more!”

Dakota’s lips blaze a trail over her cheek and jaw and latch onto the fleshy part of her lobe; her tongue traces the whirles and whorles, still rocking, still thrusting, meeting Kirsten’s need with her own in a circle that has no end. Her hand slips between them and she groans as liquid heat bathes her fingers in a benediction of passion.

“Mitawa,” she growls into Kirsten’s ear as she thrusts three fingers deep into her lover’s core, claiming her, filling her, loving her. Kirsten’s head slams back against the ground; her body arches like a bow bejeweled with sweat, every muscle taut and straining, every vein plump and thrumming just beneath the surface of her skin. Koda pulls her fingers out to the tips, twists, and thrusts back in with force, her eyes fluttering closed to her lover’s scream of ecstacy. Holding herself up by one trembling arm bent at the elbow, she begins thrusting in earnest, advancing and retreating to the rhythm of Kirsten’s wildly bucking hips. Her grunts of effort into Kirsten’s ear are low and guttural and send waves of sensation flowing through her and into her lover, causing Koda’s vision to blur and her head to spin. She slips out again, then adds a fourth finger to Kirsten’s delighted shout, and her thumb curls up to circle tease the engorged flesh, circling, circling, circling until Kirsten, finally, can take no more and crests on a thunderous wave of spiraling light that seems to have no end.

Sensing her lover is at her breaking point, Dakota begins to slow the rhythm and force of her thrusts, bringing Kirsten back to earth in the sweetest possible way. She lays butterfly kisses along closed eyelids and furrowed brow, on cheeks, and chin, and passion-swollen lips until finally Kirsten relaxes and drops back to the blanket, spent and gasping for breath. Koda gathers her in close, gently stroking hypersensitive skin, murmuring words of love and adoration she knows go likely unheard.

After several moments, emerald eyes flutter open, slightly dazed. “That was…you are….GOD.”

“No,” Koda jokes, “just a minion.”

Kirsten rolls to her side, grabbing tight to the t-shirt she’s ripped and pulling Koda belly to belly with her. “I love you. I love you. I love you. I could say it a million times a day, and it wouldn’t be enough. Never enough.”

“More than enough,” Koda replies softly, tilting her lover’s chin so that their eyes meet. “More than enough, cante mitawa.” Their lips come together again, and this time it is Kirsten who pulls away.

“I need to taste you,” she says urgently. “Now. Right now.”

Not needing to be told twice, Koda slips up to a sitting position and shucks off her sweats and undergarments in one easy move. As she moves to lay down on the blanket, Kirsten halts her. “No, sit up with your back against the wall. I want you to watch me. I want to watch you.”

The naked, cracked wall is scratchy on her now naked and sweating back, but that minor annoyance is completely forgotten as Kirsten, licking her lips, spreads Dakota’s long legs, bends them at the knee, and situates her lover’s feet flat on the floor. Then she lowers herself onto her belly and takes in a deep breath. The spicy, exotic scent of her lover’s arousal flows through her senses, kick-starting hormones that had just given up the ghost. Her mouth waters and her eyes, filled with joyous anticipation, catch the dark, blazing eyes of her lover watching her every move.

With a little smirk, she begins by kissing the insides of Koda’s long, muscular thighs, using her tongue to gather up all traces of her lover’s passion and moaning in happiness over the taste that is, to her, finer than anything this world has to offer. “Touch yourself,” she whispers, “your breasts. Make love to them as I make love to you. Here.” Dipping two fingers into Dakota’s wetness, she reaches up and paints her lover’s nipples with her own essence, which shines like molten gold in the light of the fire. Dakota’s hands come up to caress her breasts, using the moisture to stimulate her nipples until they are stiff peaks that ache with sensation. “Now watch,” Kirsten orders, dipping her head and using just the tip of her tongue to part Dakota’s lips. Dakota’s head slams back against the wall and she hisses with pleasure as she feels her lover’s talented tongue explore her folds, gently at first, then with more vigor. The first touch of Kirsten’s tongue on her clit almost sends her over, but she holds back with everything in her, squeezing her nipples and trying to keep her hips as steady as possible—a nearly impossible task given what Kirsten is now doing with her mouth.

Pursing her lips, Kirsten draws Koda inside, then traps the shaft with gentle teeth, leaving the turgid bud smooth and pulsing on her tongue. First lapping like a kitten to cream, then twisting and dancing, she finally settles down to a staccato rhythm that she knows Dakota particularly loves. Her lover is silent, like she usually is when being made love to, but Kirsten need only hear her labored breathing and feel the wiry tension in the inhumanly strong muscles clamped to her sides to know that she’s nearing the edge. With a final swirl of her tongue, she bites down as hard as she can without breaking the skin, and applies the perfect suction. One more touch of her tongue, a gentle, long lick, and Dakota climaxes, her entire body shuddering with the force of her explosion. Kirsten greedily drinks at her lover’s font, taking in every drop that springs from her like a waterfall until Dakota collapses, boneless, against the wall.

Getting to her knees, Kirsten moves forward and gathers her semi-conscious lover into her arms, stroking the sweat damp hair and whispering nonsense words into her ear as she recovers and comes back to planet earth.

“You…learned that in…Girl Scouts…did you?” Koda asks as strength and sensation finally opt to make a reappearance.

“That one I thought up on my own,” Kirsten replies cheekily. “I’m glad you liked it.”

“Liked it? As soon as I can find the top of my head around here, I’ll show you how much I liked it.”

Kirsten chuckles. “We’ve got plenty of time for that, my love. Right now, I think sleep’s calling.”

“Donwanna.”

“Come on, boneless one, time for bed.”

A truly aggrieved sigh follows, but Dakota allows Kirsten to help her to her knees and over to where their sleeping bags lie ready for them. They settle in, back to front, and Koda presses a kiss to Kirsten’s salty shoulder. “Love you.”

“I love you too, Dakota Rivers. I love you too.”

And with that, the two lovers fall into a well earned slumber.

CHAPTER FIFTY FIVE

FROM THE DEPTHS of her dream, Dakota hears the whine of a dog desperate for relief. “Wash,” she mumbles, shifting beneath the blankets, “let the dog out.” Another whine, this one louder and even more desperate. “C’mon, Wash. She’s your dog. Let her out already!”

A somewhat grouchy, somewhat sleepy grumble sounds right next to her ear, causing her eyes to open. It comes to her, then, with sudden clarity that this stunning blonde vision is about as far from being her youngest brother as it is possible to get.

“All right. I’m up already. I’m up!”

“I’m sorry, love,” Koda replies, rolling up and wiping the sleep from her eyes. “I was dreaming. I’ll get him.”

“No, no,” Kirsten states, eyes still closed as she struggles out of the confining sleeping bag, “he’s my dog, I’ll let him out.”

Both manage to get to their feet at about the same time and spend a moment leaning against one another as they fully awaken to a new day. Asi whines again, all but crossing his legs. Kirsten swears his eyes are yellow. “You poor goober,” she sighs. “We forgot about you last night, didn’t we.”

His expression appears to say that yes, they did forget about him, but all will be forgiven if they would just please use their opposable thumbs to unlatch the door and let him outside…post haste, if you please.

Snagging the top blanket to wrap around herself, Kirsten stumbles to the door and, after a few good yanks, manages to pry it open. Asi takes one step out into the still raging blizzard and stops. A wide strip of fur from shoulder to tail spikes up and he tears off into the whiteness, barking insanely.

Kirsten freezes. “Asi—.”

“Asimov! No!!” Without thought, Dakota runs naked into the blizzard toward the sudden snarls—which aren’t Asi’s, and the pained yelp—which is.

“Dakota!!” Kirsten screams, already losing sight of her lover in the driving, thigh-deep snow. “Shit!!” Turning, she runs back into the house and grabs the first set of clothing she can lay her hands on, yanking on too-large sweatpants and her own t-shirt and shoving her feet into her still wet boots. Dakota’s gun is closest to hand, and she grabs it and heads back outside at a run. “Dakota!! Asimov!!”

“Stay back!” Dakota’s voice is commanding, though oddly flat, as if muffled by cotton batting.

Ignoring the order, Kirsten bounds into the snow, following the short trail Dakota has blazed, rifle cocked and at the ready—for what, she doesn’t know. Another series of high-pitched and piercing yelps is followed by an unearthly howling that all but freezes Kirsten’s heart in her chest. “Dakota!!!”

The howling cuts off abruptly and Koda reappears through the curtain of snow, blood covered and carrying Asi’s limp form in her arms. “Get my kit and build up a fire! Hurry!!”

Without further question, eyes wide and fearful, Kirsten turns again and races through the deep snow back into the shack. Setting the rifle in the corner, she hurries to the packs and quickly digs Koda’s first-aid kit from the larger one. Placing it on the sleeping bags, she then strides to the fireplace, drops to her knees, and starts feeding sticks into the smoldering fire, fanning it to hurry the process along. Dakota enters a moment later and lays Asimov gently down on the sleeping bags. “It’s okay, boy,” she says softly, stroking his fur, “you’re gonna be alright. I promise.”

The fire blazing, Kirsten comes to kneel beside her lover, placing the blanket over Koda’s icy shoulders and looking down at her beloved pet. A long, blood slice lays open his side from mid-chest to belly. Blood pours liberally from the cut, obscuring its depth. “What happened?” she asks, eyes brimming with tears.

“Wolverine. Get me some rags, t-shirts, anything to wipe this blood off, and some water. Hurry.”

Kirsten grabs random batches of clothing from their packs and starts shredding them as Koda opens her kit and removes several items. Her fingers are like ice, but the adrenaline rushing through her body causes her not to notice. Grabbing a rag from her lover, she covers the wound and presses hard. Blood soaks through quickly, and she tosses it away, retrieving another one and repeating the process until finally the blood from the gouge begins to slow to a trickle. Grabbing a pair of battery-operated clippers, she quickly and efficiently begins to shave away the fur around the gash until his skin is smooth to the touch. “Give me a couple of wet rags,” she orders.

Wet rags in hand, she carefully wipes the blood from the edges of the wound, breathing a sigh of internal relief as the cleansing reveals that the cut, while deep, does not break through the deepest barrier of skin. His organs are intact and undamaged. “Does he mind shots?” she asks, without looking up from her work.

“I…I don’t think so. Koda…?”

“Is he up to date on his rabies?”

“I…um….”

“Kirsten!”

“I’m thinking, alright!? It was maybe two weeks before everything went crazy. Asi stepped on a thorn or something and I took him to the Vet. He got a shot.”

“Was it rabies?”

“I don’t…yes, it was. His year was almost up, and the vet decided to give it to him then so I wouldn’t have to come back.”

“Good.”

“Do wolverines carry rabies?”

“They can, yes. Get another wet rag and try to keep the cut clean of blood so I can see what I’m doing.”

Swallowing hard, Kirsten does as asked, using her free hand to gently stroke Asi’s trembling flanks. Reaching into the kit, Koda removes several narrow syringes. “Lidocaine,” she explains to Kirsten. “It’ll deaden the area I need to stitch. Just a little prick, boy.”

Asi looks at her with offended eyes, and Koda chuckles softly. “Yeah, that’s what all you men say. Ok, here we go.” Pinching up his skin, she injects the drug into several places, then sits back, waiting for the medication to take effect.

“Dakota,” Kirsten says gently, “you need to get warmed up. You’re nothing but a block of ice.”

“I’m alright,” Koda replies firmly, shaking Kirsten’s arm from her shoulder. “I need to take care of the dog first.”

“But you can’t—.”

“I’m alright.” Reaching out, she touches the skin around the cut, nodding. “Okay, boy, time to stitch you up. Kirsten, sit over there near his head in case he gets a mind to bite me.”

“He’d never bite you!”

The look Koda gives her convinces her to switch positions, and a second later, she’s settled next to Asi, his head in her lap. “It’s gonna be okay, boy. You’re gonna be okay. Promise, ok?”

Raising calm eyes to his mistress, Asimov licks the inside of her wrist, causing her to giggle. “Stop, that tickles!”

Slipping powdered latex gloves on over her icy hands is an exercise in slow torture, but Dakota manages, and further manages to make the fine motor skills of her fingers work in picking up the threaded suture needle. “Ok, boy, here it comes.”

It takes a double row of stitches to close the deep wound, but Asi bears it well, without even a whimper, and soon Dakota’s work is done. A bit of antibiotic salve rubbed over the stitches, and she removes her bloodied gloves with a snap. “There, all done. It’ll leave a scar, but his fur should cover it, and if it doesn’t, he can brag to all his buddies about the time he went up against a wolverine and lived.” Then she looks directly at her patient. “And no licking, or I’ll have you looking like Mary, Queen of Scots in a heartbeat, understand me?”

Asi gives an affronted growl.

“Just remember what I said. I’ve got plastic collars right here and if you don’t want to be mistaken for a radar dish for the next week, no…licking. Got me?”

With a truly martyred sigh, Asi lays his head back in his mother’s lap and closes his eyes to further discussion on the matter. Kirsten looks up at Koda, eyes shining. “Thank you.”

Dakota gives a short nod. “Just trying to protect his family.”

“The wolverine?”

“Asimov. It was pretty brave. Stupid, but brave.”

Testing an unsure barometer, Kirsten gives a small smile. “Speaking of both of the above.” She inclines her head, scanning her lover’s naked, mottled and blood spattered body. “Please,” she whispers. “You helped Asi. Let me help you. Please?”

After a moment, Dakota nods, then tries to stand. Her knees refuse to bear her weight and she winds up sitting on the wet, bloody floor beneath her. Laying Asi’s head carefully down on the sleeping bag, Kirsten jumps to her feet and grabs the rest of their blankets, bundling her lover in them before going over to the fire and removing two pots of water she’d set to heat when she built up the blaze. Liberating some soap and clean cloths from their bags, she comes to her partner’s side and gently begins to clean the crusted blood from her limbs and body. She doesn’t miss the stiffening, nor the soft intake of breath when she reaches for Dakota’s left arm. Bringing it slowly out into the light, her eyes widen even as her face pales. “Dakota?” she asks, her voice tremoring. “Did Asimov bite you?”

“No,” Koda replies from between tightly gritted teeth. “Wolverine.”

“Oh, god.” She looks up into her lover’s pain shadowed eyes. “What do we do? What—?”

“It’s alright,” Dakota spits out. “Just clean it as best you can with soap and water and wrap it. I’ll give myself a couple of shots that should take care of it.”

“A couple of shots?? Dakota, did that wolverine have rabies???”

“There wasn’t time to tell. I was too busy trying to keep him from cutting me into filets.” She smiles slightly. “Relax. I have the vaccine here and as long as I take it, I’ll be fine. You know that.”

“Jesus, Dakota! You could have been killed out there!”

The smile disappears from Dakota’s face as if removed with acid. “It was either that, or let Asimov die. I saw a chance. I took it. End of story.”

Kirsten opens her mouth, then closes it with a snap of teeth. This isn’t time to argue, and she knows it. Dakota is in pain, and she concentrates on that, cleansing the wound with as gentle a touch as she can manage. “Jesus,” she whispers as she examines the angrily swollen puncture marks on her lover’s forearm. “Dakota, we need to get you to a doctor.”

“No, we have what we need right here. It would be worse trying to go out in this weather. Believe me, I’ll be fine.”

Kirsten has reservations, a whole ton of them, but pushes them back hard. “Ok,” she says instead, tossing the bloody rag away, “what now?”

“Throw those rags in the fire, then grab the syringe marked ‘rabies’ from my kit. There’s also a bottle of pills in there marked ‘Amoxicillin’. Get those too, and some water.”

By this time, the adrenaline she’s been working on has completely worn off and in its place, violent wracking shivers invade from top to toe, making even her guts clench with the force of the contractions. “You’re…gonna have to…give me…the shot…I think….”

“Whatever you need me to do, Koda. I’ll do it. Just show me how.”

“Hel…p…me l…lay down on my s..s..side.”

With a tenderness that surprises her, she is able to lay her lover on her side, cushioned by the sleeping bag. “Ok, what now?”

“Th…there’s a landmark. Be..between my hip and my asscheek. Almost a triangle…of muscle. Feel it?”

“I…I think so, yes.”

“G..good. Now, pinch up the skin, just…just grab it and pull. Then take the needle and stick it in, like you’re throwing a dart, right into the muscle.”

“I…um….”

“Just do it.”

Taking a deep breath, Kirsten wills her hand to stop shaking and inserts the needle. “It’s in.”

“I can feel it, yes. Now…now pull back a bit on the plunger. Just a little. Check…check for…b…blood. Is there any?”

“N-no. I don’t see any.”

“Good. Now p..p..push the pl..unger in, nice and sm…mooth. Like that, yes. Then remove the needle and clean the puncture with a clean rag to stop the bleeding.”

“Okay, it’s done. It’s not bleeding anymore.”

“P…perfect. You gi..gi..give go..go..good shots, Dr. K-king.”

“Thanks, but that’s the first and last shot I hope to ever give in my life, so we’ll keep that little talent a secret, shall we?”

“Wh-whatever you s..s..say, Doctor.”

“Now, how about those antibiotics? Can you drink some water?”

“I can try.”

Koda sticks out her tongue and Kirsten places the capsules in her mouth, then tilts the mouth of the canteen up to her lover’s lips. Koda takes a few choking swallows, enough to wash down the meds, then turns her head away. “N..no more right now…I’ll just..ch..choke on it.”

“Alright, then. It doesn’t take an MD to see that you’re suffering from exposure and hypothermia. So, Asi and I are going to make a Dakota sandwich and warm you up, whether you like it or not.”

“’s the b..best i..i..idea I’ve h..h..heard all day.”

“It had better be, because it’s the only option you’re getting. Can you try and scoot over a little next to the dog?”

Koda manages a weak half-crawl, and collapses next to Asi, who immediately snuggles against her, back to front. Stripping, Kirsten slips into the bag and presses her warm front against Koda’s ice-cold back, then draws the covers over them all, praying with all that is in her that this will work.

*

For the second time that day, Kirsten awakens to a whine from Asimov. Tension flooding her, she twists within the confines of the blankets and the body pressed against her. “Asi?!”

Whining again, Asi stares past Kirsten, his tongue bright pink and lolling from his mouth, his sides heaving with the strength of his panting.

“Asi? What’s wrong boy? Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

He continues to look past her, still whining plaintively, and finally Kirsten’s sleep-numbed brain gets the message and she rolls over, and freezes, one hand moving up to cover her mouth. Dakota’s normally bronzed complexion is pale as curdled milk save for two high, clownish spots of color resting on her cheeks. Her entire body is bathed in sweat and suddenly, Kirsten can feel the immense heat radiating from her as from an oven. “Jesus!” she chastises herself as she scrambles from beneath the heavy, sodden blankets, “What was I thinking? How could I have fallen asleep?! Jesus! Koda? Sweetheart? Can you hear me?”

An unintelligible moan is her only response.

Throwing the blankets away from the makeshift bed, she stares in horror at Dakota’s arm. Massively discolored, it is swollen to nearly twice its normal side. The puncture marks constantly ooze bloody drainage mixed with yellow, foul-smelling pus, and, worst of all to Kirsten’s view, long red streaks radiate from the wound up the arm. “Toward her heart,” Kirsten whispers, hand against her own chest. “Oh god. Oh, god. Ok. Ok, Kirsten, think. Think. You can do this.” With a slightly shaking hand, she touches Dakota’s uninjured arm and squeezes, just the tiniest bit. “Dakota? Dakota, can you hear me? Honey, you need to wake up now, please.”

“Ina?” Koda rasps, eyes still tightly closed. Her soaked head thrashes back and forth on the makeshift pillow. “Ina?”

“No, sweetheart. It’s Kirsten. Please, you need to wake up now.”

“Wakinyan he. Wakinyan tuwapiIyuha te.”

“Sweetheart, Dakota,” a harder shake, “honey, wake up. You’re dreaming and I can’t understand you. Please, please wake up.”

” Kohipe, ina,” Koda moans, still thrashing desperately. ” O opa le te. Tali.”

“Dakota! Please!!”

” Ikahe. Waciyeye.”

Kirsten pulls back, wringing her hands. “Ok, ok, you just need to calm down here and not panic. Now, she’s got a fever, and she’s delusional. That’s to be expected, right? So…what do you do for a fever?” She looks around. “Water. Cool water, on a rag. Wipe the sweat away, cool her off. And…aspirin. That’s good for a fever, right? Right. Okay, let’s just get this done.”

Grabbing one of their clean t-shirts and a canteen, Kirsten wets the cloth with the last of their fresh water. “I’ll need to melt some snow to get more,” she tells herself. “It’s gotta be pretty clean out here in the middle of nowhere. I hope.”

Once the rag is fully wet, she brings it to her lover’s face and gently bathes the sweat away, slightly comforted when Dakota immediately stops thrashing and seems to calm beneath her tender touch. “That’s right, sweetheart, just let me help you, ok? You’re gonna be alright. You are. You have to be.”

“Ina,” Koda whispers. “Kohipe, ina.”

“It’s alright, Dakota. It’s alright, sweetheart. I’m here. I’m right here.” Not sure what else to do, she begins to hum, slightly off key, a tune she’s heard Dakota hum in the past. Even if the tune isn’t exactly right, it seems to reach down into whatever hell Dakota is trapped in, and her labored breathing eases slightly as she seems to fall into a deeper sleep. Continuing to hum, Kirsten gently bathes the sweat from the rest of her lover’s body, leaving the brutally injured arm for last. She doesn’t know if it’s a good or bad thing that Koda shows absolutely no reaction to the cleansing of what has got to be a horribly painful wound.

“Ok,” she says, tossing that rag into the fire and listening to the flames’ hissing protest, “now Aspirin, and more Amoxicillin. Water first, though.” She rises to her feet a bit unsteadily, battling down a wave of dizziness that threatens to take her back down to her knees. “Oh no, you’re not going to get sick too. Not going to happen, so you can just forget that action. Asi? You stay here, boy. I’m going outside to get some snow for water. I’ll be right back.”

Slipping into some dry clothes and wet boots, she grabs the pots from the cooking kit and heads outside. The storm appears to be slowly tapering and Kirsten breathes a sigh of relief over this one bit of halfway decent news. Staying within a pace of the shack, she grabs handfuls of snow and packs it tightly into the three pots she carries. “Okay, this will have to do for now. I’ll just melt it over by the fire and see if I can get Dakota awake enough to swallow it with some pills.”

Satisfied with her course of action, she lifts the pots and heads back into the shack, kicking the door closed behind her. Asi lays full length next to a too-still Dakota, once again offering his warmth. “Thanks, boy,” Kirsten says, bringing the pots over to the hearth. “I’ll check on you and let you out in just a minute, ok? Just got to get some medicine into Koda first.”

The snow quickly melts and Kirsten pours some into one of their drinking cups, then roots through the packs for Aspirin and Amoxicillin. Two caplets of each in hand, she moves over to Koda’s side and sits cross-legged beside her. “Now for the hard part.”

Dakota’s head lolls like a corpse’s as Kirsten gently tries to lift it enough to get the cup to her lips. “Come on, sweetheart, you can do this. We can do this. Please.” Setting the cup down, she opens her lover’s mouth and slips all four caplets on her dry, discolored tongue. Then she retrieves the cup and starts to trickle the water in. Most of it runs harmlessly down Dakota’s cheek and chin. With a sigh, she tries again, this time using her thumb to close her lover’s mouth and one finger to gently stroke her throat, as a mother would when trying to get an infant to swallow formula. “Thank god,” she says when it works. “Oh, thank you, god.”

Taking away the soaked bundle of clothing she’s using as Dakota’s pillow, she replaces it with the last of their fresh sweats and gently replaces her lover’s head on the prop, tenderly stroking tendrils of wet hair away from her cheeks and brow. “Now you just rest, sweetheart, and let the meds do their work. Asi and I are right here and we’re not going to let anything happen to you. Just concentrate on getting well, ok?”

Wiping the tears from her eyes, she regains her feet, takes away the dirty clothes and cup and puts both in a corner to be dealt with later. “Okay, boy, your turn. How’s your side, huh?”

Asi obediently comes to her, easily and without a limp or obvious pain, and as she pets his great head, she looks at the wound on his flank. Despite her own serious injury, Dakota had done her job to perfection. The wound is clean, dry, and free of swelling or discoloration. “Another thing to be grateful for, huh? Ok, let’s let you outside to do your business and then come back and keep watch, alright?”

The snow has tapered off even more to isolated flurries when she opens the door. Asi goes bounding out and heads immediately for the blood-covered area where the corpse of the wolverine lies. Lifting his leg, he marks it, then turns away, sniffing at other trees, bushes, errant leaves, and whatever else strikes his fancy. “How did you kill it?” Kirsten wonders out loud. “You didn’t have a gun. Hell, you didn’t even have any clothes on. How did you kill it?”

The chill breeze gives no answer.

*

Kirsten rouses from her watch from time to time to add wood to the fire and to stir up the embers. Its warm glow spreads over the stones of the hearth and the crude walls of the cabin, over their spread sleeping bags and Koda’s face. Kirsten is not sure how much of the flush of her lover’s skin is the flame’s reflection, how much is the burning of an inner fire. Her breathing seems more rapid now than the last time Kirsten checked, her lips dry. Kneeling beside the pallet, she turns the cover back from Dakota’s bandaged hand. The forearm strains tight against the wrappings, its swelling grossly unmistakable now where the flesh balloons around the elbow. Scarlet stains the gauze and lycra, bright against older, rust-colored spots. A bright yellow streak, fresh drainage, seeps through with the blood.

A chill runs along Kirsten’s spine. The infection from the bite has grown worse, spreading to adjacent tissues. Whatever it is—Staph? Strep? One of those flesh-eating megabugs?—is not responding to the Amoxicillin. If it gets into the bone, or goes systemic, into the blood, Koda may not be able to throw it off. She may not be able to throw it off, even now.

For the half-dozenth time, she rummages through Dakota’s kit, hoping to find something, anything, she’s overlooked. There’s a second antibiotic, Sulfamasomethingunpronounceable. Maybe if she gives it in addition to the Amoxy? Sometimes, she knows, drugs can be more than the sum of their parts. Breaking two of the large, white tablets from their foil-and-plastic blisters, she lifts Koda’s head from the rolled jeans and flannel shirt that serves as her pillow and slips the tablets into her mouth with a trickle of water. Without awakening, Dakota swallows, reflex taking over. With Asi beside her, Kirsten wraps her own hand around Koda’s and does the only thing she can do. She waits.

Kirsten walks a corridor filled with light. Her nylon-soled shoes make no sound against the tiled floor as she passes what seems to be an endless series of wide, numbered doors on her right, an equally endless series of tall windows on her left. Men and women in white coats and surgical scrubs pass her in a human stream, their elbows cocked to hold clipboards, stethoscopes draped over their shoulders, their pockets brimming with coiled wires and esoteric-looking instruments. Looking down, she sees that she, too, wears a lab coat and carries a file, the name blurred against its red label.

She reaches an intersecting corridor, marked by what is apparently a nurses’ station. An endless rank of white-clothed figures stares at monitor screens arrayed on the desk, so many it might almost be a computer lab. None of them moves or speaks to her, or raises a head to acknowledge her. It comes to her that she does not know where she is or why she is there. One of the nurses might know, but she hesitates. Perhaps something terrible will happen if she asks one of them a question. Or, perhaps, something terrible will happen if she does not ask. Galahad—no, not Galahad, one of those other impossibly priggish knights, she can’t remember his name—at the Grail Castle, too polite to ask the obvious and heal the King.

But that doesn’t make any sense. I’m the King

Doctor King.

As if in response to her thought, the intercom crackles above her head. “Dr. King. Dr. King. Room 486 please. Stat. Dr. King, go to Room 486. Emergency.”

No single head turns away from its monitor. The human traffic continues to flow around her, oblivious. Kirsten begins to run, paying attention to the numbers on the rooms for the first time. 400. 410. She dodges around a meal cart, pushed by a young man who spares her not so much as a glance. 420. 440. She crosses a second intersecting hall, a third. 460. Her chest heaves with the effort; surely she has run half a mile, three-quarters of a mile since the intercom’s summons. 470. The corridor makes a double-dog leg turn, leading away from the bright hallway lit by windows. Here rooms run on either side of her, and she panics, almost skidding to a halt in her tracks. The numbers on the doors no longer march in sequence. She passes 239, then 863. But no, there is 472, and a bit further on, 475.

As she runs, the passage constricts and becomes darker, the lights above dimmer, the traffic diminished. Finally, at the end of the hall, lying now almost entirely in shadow, she comes to the door she seeks. Her breath coming in gasps that are part exhaustion, part fear, she pushes it open and brings her hands to her mouth, stifling a scream.

The room lies in near-total darkness, lit only by running LCD readouts on screens that rise up from the head of the hospital bed to the ceiling. In their flickering rainbow light, she can dimly make out Koda’s face on the body lying so still and stiff on the bed, a white sheet drawn up to its chin. Oddly, none of the instruments seem to be connected to her—no tape, no tubes, no needles.

Oh gods, no. It’s the morgue. No.

“No, it isn’t. Not quite.”

Kirsten follows the sound to the corner of the room. A white-coated figure stands there, the multi-colored lights playing about him like an acid-dream aura. The person takes a step forward, ostentatiously checking a Rolex the size of a saucer that lies against his slim brown wrist.

His brown furry wrist.

“There is not,” he says, “very much time.”

Another step forward, and Kirsten can see him clearly now, partly in the instrument lights, partly in the glow from the lighted dial of the immense watch. Bottle-bottom round spectacles perch over his pointed black nose, and a brushy tail, grey stripes and black protrudes from beneath the pleat of his lab coat. The hand that turns the Rolex so that she can see the time bears five long fingers, and no thumb.

“You!” she snaps. “What the hell—”

“Tch. Again with the manners. Your mother should hear you.”

“What the hell”— Kirsten can hear her voice rising, out of her control—“What the fuck are you doing here? I don’t need you! I need someone who can help!”

“On the other hand, your mother shouldn’t hear you. What a mouth you’ve got.” He gives an indignant sniff. “Besides, look where you are. Have some respect.”

Kirsten’s gaze returns to the still figure on the bed. She stares fixedly at the sheet for a moment, willing it to rise and fall with Dakota’s breath. It does not stir.

All the fight goes out of her, her spine slumping with the sudden weight that falls on her. “She’s dead,” Kirsten says in a voice so flat she does not recognize it as her own. “I couldn’t help her. The infection got out of hand—” She swallows hard against the dry contraction of her throat. “We didn’t have the medicine, and I couldn’t help—”

“And it’s all your fault, yadda yadda yadda. Suck it up. You can help.”

“Wha— Didn’t you hear me? The medicine doesn’t do any good! What are you going to do, give me somebody’s grandmother’s recipe for a magical herbal tea? She needs a doctor. She needs a hospital. She needs—”

“This prescription.” Tega extracts a notepad and a pen from his coat pocket and begins to write, holding the ballpoint between the middle joints of his third and fourth fingers. He tears off the script and passes it to her across the bed. “Here. Any questions?”

Kirsten glances down at the paper in her hand. Printed in fine, flowing letters across the top is the legend, W. T. Kunz, M.D., Ph.D., A.P.A., F.R.C.S., D.V.M., LL.D., K.C.B.E.

Half the alphabet soup she does not understand, and it occurs to her that that is probably just as well. Beneath it, in clear block print, is “Levaquin Injectable. 500 mg 2/day for 10 days. Packet 10 3cc syringes w/needles.” It is the most lucid prescription she has ever seen, and the most useless.

She says bitterly. “It might as well be skunk cabbage tea. Where the hell am I supposed to find this? There’s no Walgreen’s over the next ridge, or if there is, it’s looted.”

“How about the hospital pharmacy?” Tega cocks his head to one side, looking at her as if she is a slightly backward child.

“What hospital? There is no hospital, dammit! This is a dream. We’re marooned in some god-forsaken fishing shack in the god-damned middle of god-damn nowhere!”

“Craig,” says Tega.

“What? Who’s Craig?”

“Not who. Where. Over the state line in Colorado. There’s a clinic. In Craig. With medicines. You can fill the prescription there.”

“But—”

He glances at his watch again, steadying its immense dial with one hand. “Get out the map, put on your boots, and go. There isn’t much time.”

“Wait! What—”

The intercom interrupts her. “Dr. Kunz. Dr. Kunz to Emergency. Code Purple. Stat.”

“Gotta go, schweetheart. It’s been fun, and it’s been real, and get up off your ass and go get the meds.” With that he begins to fade, and the hospital room around him. Kirsten’s eyes snap open, to the now-familiar sight of the fire and Asimov’s anxious gaze, and the too-quiet form beneath the sleeping bag.

“Gods, what a damn dream—” Without thought, she raises a hand to rub at her aching forehead.

There is a paper in it. A paper that was not there before.

Hardly trusting her sight, let alone her mind, Kirsten looks down at the words that march across the corner of the Wyoming/Colorado map from Koda’s rucksack. In her own neat handwriting it says, “Levaquin Injectible. 500 mg/day for 10 days. Packet 10 3 cc syringes w/needles.”

“Ok,” she says, wiping her hands on her pants. The script crinkles in protest. “I can do this. I have to do this. Even if that nutty striped Marcus Welby wannabe from my very weird subconscious didn’t tell me, I’d still have to do it. So let’s get going. First things first. It’s gonna be a long hike, so I need to be dressed for it. Or as dressed as I can be, anyway.”

Slipping off her sweats, she tugs on a dirty pair of jeans, then pulls the sweats back on over them, then pulls Dakota’s sweats on over them, changing her appearance to that of a housewife who’s spent a little too much time with the bon-bons and soaps. They have two dry t-shirts left, and she pulls both of them on, then one of her own flannels, then one of Dakota’s, and finally Dakota’s heavily lined flannel that is more jacket than shirt. A third flannel is tied, babushka style, over her head. A pair of heavy, clean socks double as mittens. “I know, I know,” she remarks to Asi, who seems to be laughing at her, “I look like the bagperson from Hell, but at least I’ll be warm. I hope.” Three pairs of socks and her boots come last.

Fully dressed for whatever may come, she waddles over to Dakota and, with the effort of a small child in a full snowsuit, lowers herself to her knees. “I’ll be back soon, sweetheart. I promise you.” She strokes the damp hair from her partner’s forehead. “I’ll have the meds you need and you’ll be better in no time. Then we can finish this shit and get on with the rest of our lives, ok?” Tears sting her eyes and she swipes at them. “Just…hang in there while I’m gone, alright?” Bending still further, she places a tiny kiss on Dakota’s forehead, and a longer one on dry, cracked lips. “I love you, Dakota Rivers. Never forget that. Ever.”

Pulling away, she pauses for a moment, and looks up at the ceiling. “Ina Maka? I don’t know if you can hear me. Hell, I don’t even know if I believe you even exist. But Dakota does, I know that, and that’s enough for me. I don’t pray much—heck, I don’t pray at all, really, but I’m doing it now. Please, please watch over her while I’m gone, ok? I know that you and her are close, and you might be thinking of calling her to your side so you can be together all the time, but…don’t do it just yet, ok? I need her. I need her and I love her…so much. And if you really are up there, you know that. So please, just…watch over her for me, alright? Thanks.”

Struggling back to her feet, she takes one long, last look at her lover, then turns to her dog. “Guard her with your life, Asimov. I mean that. Do you understand me?”

A stern bark is her answer as she exits the cabin without looking back.

CHAPTER FIFTY SIX

WITH A SOFT GRUNT, Kirsten lays the crumpled map flat against a rock whose cap of snow has melted away in the warm summer sun. Removing her makeshift mittens, she pulls out the old-fashioned compass, surprised she still knows how to read one in these days of GPS tracking, takes a reading, and looks back down at the map, frowning. “The compass says I’m going the right way. The damn map says I’m going the right way. So would someone please tell me what the hell this mountain is doing here?!?”

The world around her is, unsurprisingly, silent on the issue.

“Jesus H. Christ on a crutch, three goddamn hours of walking for what?!?” She looks slowly left, and then right. The snow-covered cliff face, nearly vertical and reaching almost as high as the clouds, stretches to the horizon in both directions. The town of Craig is only five miles away. Five miles and an unscalable mountain away, that is. “Fuck! What now?” She can’t turn back. That much is certain. Just the memory of her lover, lying still and pale as death, fills her with a desperation that fires her nerve endings and urges her muscles into action. Any action.

“What I wouldn’t give for a goddamn pair of wings.”

Perfectly on cue, a piercing call sounds above her head, and as she looks up, she sees the trademark shape of a hawk circling above her. A disbelieving smile comes to her face. “Wiyo? Is that you, girl?”

The hawk, who is indeed Wiyo, calls out once more, then gracefully shoots in for a landing atop the rock where Kirsten’s map is perched. “It is you! God, it’s so good to see a friendly face around here.” She reaches out, but Wiyo takes a step back, not quite as trusting of this woman as her two-foot companion. Kirsten laughs. “That’s okay, girl. I was only wishing for wings. I wasn’t planning on stealing yours.” Sighing, she slumps forward, leaning her elbows on the sun-warmed rock, letting the heat of it bleed into her cold-numb body. “I hope Dakota’s doing ok. I hated leaving her. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done…but I had to do it. I have to. There isn’t any other choice. And now this…this…blasted mountain is keeping me from getting back to her.”

Wiyo cocks her head, dark eyes piercing and somehow frightfully aware. After a moment, she takes off from her perch on the rock, crying out her signature call. “Sorry, girl,” Kirsten says, watching her go, “I guess I’m not very good company. Be safe, wherever you’re off to.”

Which, it turns out, isn’t very far at all. The hawk lands atop a huge, snow-covered fir and screeches out again, twice.

“I’m sorry, girl,” Kirsten calls. “If you’re talking to me, I don’t understand you. Dakota would understand you, but she’s not here and I’m not her.” She looks around, slightly abashed. “Great, now I’m talking to birds. I’m definitely losing it here.”

Wiyo calls again, lifts off a bit from the top of the tree, and lands once more. “What? Are we playing charades? I don’t understand you, girl!”

With yet another call, Wiyo jumps from her perch and lands on the next pine over, fluttering her wings. If it were possible for a hawk to look supremely frustrated, Wiyo is accomplishing the task admirably.

“Ok, ok, I get it. You’re trying to tell me something. I don’t know what it is, but it’s something alright.” Shoving her map and compass back into her pockets, she slogs through snow still up to her knees toward Wiyo’s current perch. Just as she arrives, the bird takes off, arrowing for another pine a hundred or so feet away. “Great. First it’s charades, now it’s tag. You’re definitely not in Kansas anymore, Toto. Or maybe you are and you just can’t read a map. Or a compass.”

At the sixth hopscotch, and approximately a mile away from where she had stopped at the rock, Kirsten stands staring in amazement at a tiny pass through the mountain. “Holy Jesus! I never would have found this in a million years!” She looks over her shoulder at Wiyo, perched on yet another tree and presumably agreeing with her. “Yeah, I know, I’m not super tracker, but…thanks, Wiyo. I owe you one. And I’ll pay up. I promise.”

With a screeching call, Wiyo takes off once again into the skies, circles once, and is quickly gone from her sight.

*

Craig, Colorado, a small city which, in its heyday, boasted a population of just under ten thousand souls, is a ghost-town. Wandering through its empty streets, Kirsten can’t help wishing for a set of eyes in the back of her head. Something about the town is eerie, though she can’t quite put her finger on just what that might be. Her raccoon hallucination hadn’t seen fit to give her the name of the clinic she is supposed to be raiding, nor its exact address, so she finds herself wasting yet more precious time trying to track down the medicine she needs to save her lover’s life.

Choosing a street more or less at random—more or less only because she has seen a physician’s shingle hung out on one of the well-tended houses and figures where the doctors are, a hospital can’t be all that far away—she lengthens her stride, peering fitfully at the sun which has already started its downward descent. The road she is on is narrow, curving, and steep, and as she breasts the hill, the clinic, or what remains of it, comes into full view. It had once, she surmises, been a rather beautiful place, as medical clinics go, with its broad expanse of lawn just now going to seed and a fantastic view of the mountainous wilderness seen in panorama like a postcard in a fancy boutique. It is now a mostly burned out hulk with the words “YOUR BABIES WERE MURDERED HERE” scrawled across its once-pleasant wood and stone facing in huge, red letters. “Great,” she sighs, unsurprised to feel the sting of tears, once again, pricking at her eyes. “I walk all this fucking way to find a bombed out abortion clinic. Shit!” Still, her desperate need presses her onward in the hope that something, anything, of value might yet be scavenged from the wreckage. “Please, God, just this once, ok? I’ll never ask for another thing again as long as I live.”

As prayers go, it’s been heard before, and many times at that, but she means every word with all of her heart and soul.

Stepping over fallen beams and shattered glass, she enters the clinic, wrinkling her nose at the stench of melted plastic and cordite that still permeates the air despite the obvious signs that the damage was done several months ago, at the very least. A fitful sun shines through what remains of the roof, turning the ugly scene oddly beautiful as the shards of glass sparkle like diamonds in the snow. At the rear of the reception area is a door that has somehow escaped the brunt of the blast. She walks to it and, with a hard yank, pulls it open. Beyond is more destruction. To the left, the walls and ceiling have collapsed, leaving whatever is beyond inaccessible to her. Straight ahead, a long corridor has, for the most part, been left to stand on its own. Taking out a small, but powerful, flashlight from her pocket, she switches it on and shines it down the undisturbed hallway. The walls are a soothing blue, and the doors, six to a side, are painted in cheerful primary colors. She walks slowly, cautiously, down this hallway, opening each door in its turn. All reveal neatly kept examination rooms with real beds instead of sterile tables, and all the high-tech medical equipment a prospective mother could want to be assured of the continuing health of her developing fetus.

The corridor ends with a stark white door, larger than the others, and bearing the legend: “Authorized Personnel Only”.

This door opens easily, and she steps through, into yet another corridor—sterile white, this time. “Now we’re getting somewhere,” she says, feeling a faint spark of hope bloom. There are several doorways with no doors to bar the view, and she walks to the first one, peering inside. A rather large centrifuge and other identifiable pieces of equipment identify this room as a lab. Her light reflects back at her, sparking off of many rows of glass tubes used for blood collection. The open cabinets reveal nothing of great interest, but she goes through them meticulously anyway on the off-chance that some needed item might be stored within. Coming up empty, she plays her light in a last sweep over the room and steps back into the hallway.

“Paydirt!” Her happy cry echoes through the empty corridor, though the squeaking of disturbed rats tell her the place is not exactly as empty as she might have liked. “Ok, time to find out if my furry, striped hallucination is worth the ulcer he’s giving me.”

Stepping into what obviously is the pharmacy portion of this little operation, she shines her flashlight over row after row of open cabinets, and several which appear to be securely locked. “Oh well, no narcotic bliss for me. Let’s see. Pills, pills, caplets, tablets, pills, pills, more pills, vials! Yes!!” Walking over to the cabinet containing the vials, she squints at the names on the boxes which house the ampoules of liquid medication. “Damn, I should have remembered my damn glasses. Stupid…. Ok, what do we have here. Sodium chloride. Potassium chloride. Gentamycin. Vancomycin. Zythromycin. Erythromycin. I’m not gonna even try to pronounce that one. Ampicillin. Amoxicillin. V-Cillin, Hello Levaquin!” She pulls down a box of twenty five 50cc vials. “Ok, they’re not pre-filled syringes, but the dose is right, and with my crash course in Shot Giving 101 yesterday, I think I can manage. Now all I have to do is find some syringes.”

Acting on a hunch, she pulls open a large drawer beneath the cabinet and finds a plethora of sterile-wrapped syringes of different sizes, from 10cc down to TB. Grabbing handfuls, she begins stuffing her pockets with as many as they can possibly carry. “Thank God there aren’t any cops around anymore. With my luck, I’d get arrested for drug pushing. I know it.” Another drawer reveals hundreds of alcohol prep packets, and she grabs those as well.

Pockets filled to overflowing, she takes a final look around, sees there isn’t anything else she thinks she’ll need, and steps back out into the corridor. “Alright, I think it’s time to blow this one-horse town and get back to where I belong.”

Without thinking, she turns the wrong way and faces a somber brown metal door with a safety bar across it and an “EMERGENCY EXIT” sign just below the wire-crossed window that is too high for her to see through. Seeing no reason to take the long way around, and well aware of the need (and desire) to get back to Dakota as quickly as possible, she ploughs ahead, hitting the safety bar and taking a step outside, before just as quickly reversing and allowing the door to slam closed in front of her. When it does, she sinks to her knees, breathing deeply and trying to convince herself that what she thinks she’s seen out there isn’t what she did, in fact, see. The visual imprint of the scene plays itself out behind her closed eyes, cutting her futile hopes in that direction to shards.

The first thing that comes to mind is a newsreel, seen long ago in some dusty History class in school—High School, she thinks, though it doesn’t really matter. Done in black and white, it showed, in incredibly vivid and heart-wrenching detail, scenes captured just after the liberation of the concentration camps of post World War II Poland. She remembers giant bulldozers pushing before them the emaciated bodies of dead Jews, Gypsies, and gays into gigantic earthen trenches.

The trenches are here, as they were there. She’s seen them, no matter what her mind tries to tell her. Instead of musselmen, however, these slashes in a weeping earth bear the bodies of infants. Not fetal abortions—even assuming an abortion clinic would toss their remains in some stinking, rat infested pit—but infants, and even, she would swear before court, toddlers.

“Jesus Christ,” she moans, her body rocking in a completely unconscious self comforting gesture. “Oh sweet Jesus Christ. What the hell is happening here?”

Her plaintive wail goes unnoticed and unremarked in the cavernous emptiness of the bombed out clinic. Even the rats, it seems, have no answers for her.

Ok, Kirsten, she thinks, putting her hands over her ears like a child not wanting to hear a fight between her parents, you’ve got to let this go for now. There’s nothing you can do here. There’s nothing anyone can do here. They’re dead, and dead they’ll stay. You’ve got someone out there who loves you and depends on you, and damnit, you’re not going to fuck this up. Get a hold of yourself and get the job done. Mourn later.

Thus bolstered, she rises to her feet. A spasm hits her belly, and everything she’s eaten for the day comes up in a large glut, pooling on the ground between her feet. Black speckles dart before her eyes and she stumbles blindly until her back is against the wall, her flashlight falling to the ground and breaking, plunging her into total darkness. She can feel panic begin to draw its icy talons down her spine. She fights it down as she fights the waves of nausea and the threat of fainting, digging down deep to a reserve of strength she senses is Dakota’s as much as her own—the bond they share. That same sense of her lover tells her that she’s running out of time, and that scares her far more than what she’s dealing with here. Her stomach settles and the dizziness and cold sweat of panic recede, enabling her to move away from the wall, hands in front of her like a blind woman. One booted foot slips in the mess she’s left, but she continues on, one hand skimming along the corridor wall until she’s able to find the door. She opens it quickly, and steps into the second hallway, this one just as night-black as the first. Hurrying now, a map of this corridor firmly in her head, she runs down the hall and grabs the doorknob, yanking it open and breathing a sigh of relief when the charred rubble of the waiting area appears before her.

It’s snowing again. Hard. The flakes fall in straight, heavy lines through the roof’s many holes, adding to the accumulation already on the floor from the earlier blizzard. Kirsten barely notices as she stumbles through the partly covered wreckage and into what remains of the day. Frosty breath jutting in twin streams through her nose, she secures her hard-won and newly gotten gain and begins to run.

*

The door to the shack opens reluctantly on its one squealing hinge. A gust of bitter wind enters and flows over Dakota’s uncovered, sweat-shiny body. She shivers, then stirs. Sunken eyes, ringed with deep, dark circles, flutter open, dazed. A huge wolf, gray-pelted and sleek, steps through the open door and looks down at Dakota, dark eyes wise, calm, and affectionate.

Dakota struggles to sit, but it too weak to do more than lift her head the merest inch from its makeshift pillow. “Wa Uspewicakiyapi? Am I dreaming?”

“No.” His voice is deep and comforting in her mind. “Nor do you walk the Blue Road, Mato Sica Kte.” (ed. Note: Killer of the Wolverine—loose translation.)

From the depths of her illness, Koda musters up a smile. “You saw that, huh?”

“Indeed. It was most…impressive.”

She looks away, hopeful that the slowly guttering fire hides the blush that creeps onto her cheeks, but knowing that her old teacher’s eyes are keen indeed.

“The reason I have come,” he continues, “is because your mate is in danger.”

Koda’s eyes snap back to him, wide and fearful. “My m….Kirsten?” She cranes her neck, looking frantically about the tiny shack. Asi lies, oblivious, next to her, deeply asleep. “Kirsten?!?”

As she struggles to rise, all thoughts of illness, and its attendant weakness, forgotten, Wa Uspewicakiyapi steps forward and places a forepaw on her shoulder, easily holding her to the floor. “As you are now, there is nothing you can do, young one. Your mate has gone to The Far Away Place to gather healing for your wound. Your body is too weak to follow.”

“You don’t understand! I have to—.”

“I understand well, my friend,” he replies, putting more of his weight down on her shoulder, sharp claws not quite digging into the tender flesh beneath them. “As you are now,” he repeats, words measured and deliberate, black eyes staring deeply into hers, willing her fevered, panicked mind to understand, “you cannot help her. Remember.”

“Remember what? I can’t —.”

Again she struggles and again he presses more of his weight into her. He can feel his time growing short. The solidness of his body begins to shift and grow insubstantial. “Remember my lessons. Remember where your true strength lies. Goodbye for now, my friend. I will be watching.”

“Wa Uspewicakiyapi! No!! Wait!!! Please!!”

“Remember….”

Her frail strength depleted, Dakota slumps back on the ersatz bed, shivering in pain and distress. “Remember. I need to remember….” Her gaze darts about the empty cabin, searching…searching. “Kirsten!! Kirsten, where are you?!? I have to find you! I have to….” She struggles, but it’s one that’s over before it has truly begun. Her body is weak, wrung out, her mind delirious with fever. Delirium tells her she is simply dreaming, but the more rational part of her mind, buried deep and struggling to maintain its hold, tells her the truth of the matter. She is not dreaming, and Kirsten is in danger.

“Remember,” she mutters to herself, dragging her good hand through her sweat-tangled hair. “Remember….”

Her eyes drift closed and a vision, not of Wa Usepwicakiyapi, but of her grandfather, appears in the darkness. His face is exactly as she remembers it; lines as deep as river-cut canyons running down from the corners of his somber mouth, braids iron gray and tightly wrapped, eyes stern, but always with a tiny twinkle of amusement sparking their pale depths. He holds in one gnarled hand a teaching stick. A feather, tied off with rawhide, dangles from its end.

In this vision, fever induced or otherwise, she sees herself as she was many years ago, a weaning-child, all pudgy arms and legs, a mop of coal-black hair, and pale blue eyes. Giggling with joy, this younger version of herself reaches for the pretty feather and topples forward, into the feather’s bright colors and the paleness of her grandfather’s eyes. Dakota finds herself merging with this younger version, and together they fall into the swirling void.

“Remember….”

*

The blizzard has grown greatly in intensity, but Kirsten, at the bottom of a deep ravine, barely notices. Both sides of the ravine bear signs of her struggle. The back side, scuff and tumble marks from where she had, in her haste, blundered off the path and down the steep embankment, end over end, and the front side is covered in the broken branches and muddied snow that marks her scrambling, frantic attempts to get back out.

For the moment, she lies at the very bottom, bruised, aching, sore, and above all, tired. It does not seem like she is lying on snow at all, but rather a soft, warm bed that appears to promise her a restful sleep if only she’d close her eyes and sink into the gift it offers. The scientist in her knows the dangers of such seduction—hypothermia will kill her far more quickly than any animals who might slither down this cut in the earth looking for an easy meal. The medicine she has somehow managed to keep safe, though the thought of Dakota seems far away—hazy almost, as if she’s dreamed that part of her life. “Sleep,” she murmurs, laying her cheek into the soft, so very soft snow. “Just a little rest. I can try again when I’m stronger. She’ll understand.”

Some part deep within her fights this sudden lassitude, but the pull of seduction, like the Siren Song of old, spins its false promises to avidly listening ears. Her eyes begin to drift closed, by slow degrees until her outside view of the world is cut off completely in the darkness that follows.

A minute later, an hour, she isn’t sure, she is awakened by something that feels suspiciously like a tongue licking her cheek. “Ew! Dog kisses!” she mumbles, pushing the furred snout away. “C’mon, Asi, just a few more minutes, ok?”

A low, deep throated growl that could never have come from Asimov snaps Kirsten’s eyes open, and when she sees an enormous black wolf staring down at her, she forgets her aches, bruises, and tiredness and begins to crab-scrabble backward on hands and heels until her back is slammed into an overturned log, preventing her further retreat. Her heart slams against her ribs, her mouth going dry as cotton. She crab-scrabbles backward on hands and heels until her back slams into an overturned log, preventing her further retreat. Duck and cover. The scream dies in her throat. High, shrill sounds mean distressed prey, and Kirsten wants to do nothing to provoke the four-footed death in front of her. Making herself small against the log at her back, she curls up with her head down and her hands over her neck. “Nice wolf,” she sing-songs softly. “Niiiice wolf. You don’t want me for dinner, Mister…er….Miz Wolf. Really. I’m too tough. Bad for the digestion.” With effort, she clenches and unclenches her hands, stiff and chapped with the snow. “Nothing but gristle.”

Growling again, the wolf takes another step toward her, then sits down on its haunches, looking down at her. Kirsten, risking a glance upward, swears that she can see a look of expectancy in those eyes, even in her fear.

Those blue eyes.

Staring at them in frank wonder, she quite unconsciously echoes Dakota’s earlier words. “Am I dreaming? ….or dead?” She unfolds slightly from her crouch; a firm pinch to the inside of one reddened forearm answers that question quite nicely. “Ok. So you’re a blue eyed wolf. Tacoma said they weren’t as rare as I thought they were, and he should know, right? Right.” So why does it seem that this particular blue-eyed wolf is laughing at her?

Scooching forward a bit, the wolf places a fist-sized paw on Kirsten’s thigh, then cocks its head in a gesture so familiar that it steals her breath. Then the more rational (she believes) part of her mind reasserts itself and she laughs in self deprecation. “Must be hypothermia,” she mutters to herself, staring down at the huge paw still resting on her thigh. “Are you…uh…testing for choice cuts,” she hazards, “because I’m telling you, an old boot would taste better than me right now.”

After staring at her a moment longer, the wolf lowers its massive black head, takes her wrist, very gently, between its long, sharp teeth and tugs lightly. Startled, Kirsten cries out before realizing that she isn’t being hurt and that, in fact, like Wiyo, this animal is trying its best to communicate with her. And like Koda’s wolf, like her own—patron? mascot? familiar?—raccoon, this one must be at least in part a denizen of the spirit world. Gently she reaches out to touch the massive shoulder, knotted with muscle under the thick fur. Not entirely a spirit, then. At least this one doesn’t talk, or dress up in hospital whites. When the gentle tug comes again, she sighs and shakes her head sadly. “I…think I know what you’re trying to tell me,” she comments, feeling vaguely embarrassed to be having a rational discussion with a wild creature who, logically, should be ripping into her guts right now, “and I wish I could, but I’ve tried and I just can’t make it up there.” The tug comes again, and with a sigh, she gets stiffly to her feet, crying out softly as her twisted left ankle is forced to bear weight.

The wolf immediately drops her wrist and stares up at her with what Kirsten swears is concern blazing from those strangely colored eyes. She finds herself blushing. “I twisted my ankle falling into this blasted hellhole and twisted it again trying to get out. It…hasn’t been the best of days for me.”

Cocking its head again, the wolf then trots easily down the mouth of the gully, returning a moment later with a large, forked branch in its mouth.

“A crutch?” Kirsten asks incredulously. “You’ve brought me a crutch?” She stares down into the disconcerting eyes—“Who are you? What are you?”—and swears she feels something pressing at the recesses of her mind. Then, like a fleeting dream upon awakening, it is gone and she finds herself taking the stick from her newfound companion and propping it under her arm. It is slightly too short, and pokes at her uncomfortably, but it helps bear her weight and for that, she is grateful. “I…um…thank you. For this. It helps. Though I’m not sure how much good it’s going to do once we have to start climbing.”

Giving her one more look, the wolf turns and trots toward the incline several feet away. Shaking her head in bemusement, she follows, limping and wincing as the snow continues to fall around her. The truth of her prediction is borne out as, two steps into the hill, her good foot slips and she finds herself falling. The wolf is immediately there, and she instinctively wraps her arms around its well-muscled neck and chest, astonished at the easy strength and supple grace of the animal as it climbs the steep ravine, hauling her along as if she weighs no more than a sack of feathers. As it hits the steepest part of the incline, the wolf’s sharp claws slip and slide over the loose ground cover, but it digs in and continues climbing, scrabbling over the fallen branches and snow-slick leaves until finally, with a final heave of its sleek, muscled body, it brings them both over the lip and onto level ground once again.

When she feels the ground flatten beneath her, Kirsten releases her death-grip on the wolf and leans back, breathing deeply. She finds herself briefly alone as the animal disappears back down the ravine, then reappears, her crude crutch in its mouth. Still muddle-headed from the cold, she scrambles to her feet as best she can and gratefully retrieves the crutch from the she-wolf’s massive jaws. “Maybe you could come home with me and teach that trick to my dog Asimov. Not that…of course…I’m comparing you to my dog. Or any dog, actually. I’m…uh…pretty sure that’s an insult to you, being a wolf, and…I should probably stop babbling now, right? Right.” Once again, the wolf’s eyes seem to sparkle laughingly up at her. A thought comes to her as if from out of the blue, creasing the space between her brows in puzzlement before she rejects it as out of hand. “I’m losing it. I know I am. Gotta get back to Dakota.”

Settling the crutch securely as possible beneath her arm, she sets off, completely unsurprised when the she-wolf trots ahead in the same direction, looking back over her shoulder to make sure her companion is following.

*

The low sun lays blue shadows on the snow, crusting now as the day’s melt begins to freeze with the falling temperature. Kirsten stumbles and slips as she crests the last slope leading up to the fishing shack, her attention wandering with lack of sleep and the increasing effort of setting one foot in front of the other. All feeling has gone in her legs, and she knows she is moving only because the wolf still paces steadily beside her as the landscape shifts. Her brain has gone numb, too, all fear gone, all feeling. For the last twelve hours, she has been driven only by will. She has not allowed herself to think of what she will do when she arrives at the cabin, still less of what she may find.

But she will be there. If she had gone, I would know.

The thought comes to her now, and with it the conviction of truth. She does not know how she would sense her lover’s death, nor why she is certain that Koda still lives. But she does not doubt, cannot doubt.

“Gonna make it girl,” she murmurs, perhaps to the wolf, perhaps to herself. “Gonna make it.”

For answer, the wolf glances up at her, a glint in her improbably blue eyes. The last of the light strikes white sheen from her fur, thick and lustrous even through the hunger and sleeplessness of the forced march from the Colorado line. That is strange, as is the fact that she has not seen the wolf eat or drink along the way.

Huh. What’s strange is that a wolf pulled you out of a ditch. What’s strange is that a wolf is trotting along beside you like a poodle.

Scratch that. You’re the poodle, King . She’s the one in charge here.

Almost as if she understands the thought, the wolf turns to Kirsten, tongue lolling in a wide canine smile. She moves closer, half-pushing, half-supporting Kirsten as she takes the last few steep steps to the crest of the rise, her bulk warm and solid against her leg. Below, the stream runs through the small valley, its floor in shadow now, the square shape of the hut clear along the rising curve of the hill on the other side. Kirsten sniffs the wind for the hint of smoke, but there is none. Koda has not been able to rise to stoke the fire. So much for the forlorn hope that she would return only to find Dakota up, dressed and full of vinegar, wondering where the hell she’d gone.

A frisson of fear runs down her spine. Dakota cannot, must not . . .. She cannot even think the words.

A different pressure then, the wolf’s nose cold and wet against Kirsten’s hand. The wolf looks up at her with that same heart-breakingly familiar sidewise glance, then gives one sharp bark, wheels and trots along the top of the rise to disappear into the stand of pines that runs along its western edge. Kirsten can just make out her shape, a shadow among the tall trunks, as she begins the descent to the other side.

“Hey, you sure you don’t want to get a signature on delivery?” The small joke bolsters her confidence, and she picks her way down the slope, splashes through the water without feeling its chill, and scrambles up the other side, slipping once and resorting to all-fours where the granite juts from the hillside in broken slabs. Vaguely she remembers that there is an easier path, but she cannot take time to find it in the gathering dark. Besides, the frontal assault is quicker.

At the door she pauses, gathering courage. With an effort of will she quiets her suddenly hammering heart, slows her breathing. It is going to be all right. She is in time. Koda will recover when she has the medicine. Tega said so.

Riiighht. Now you’re taking medical advice from a delusional raccoon.

Or maybe it’s not Tega who’s delusional.

Gently she pushes open the door. A blast of air greets her, colder than the evening breeze that now ghosts over the snow. The acrid smell of wet ashes greets her, mingled with the musty odor of unwashed human and unwalked dog. Asi whines, stretches and comes to meet her, his gait stiff from confinement and lack of exercise. “It’s okay, boy,” she says quietly. “We’ll go out in a minute. How’s Koda, huh?”

Asi whines again as she approaches the bed. The blanket rises and falls visibly with Koda’s chest, but her breath comes in small, rapid gasps. “All right,” Kirsten says softly, partly to herself, partly to Dakota. “All right. First thing, get some light in here. Then the shot. Then the fire.”

Kirsten turns up the wick of the Coleman lamp and lights it. Dakota’s face is pale almost as the puffs of condensate that form with each breath, frosting in the chill air. Her face is not so much pale as grey, its rich bronze faded to brass, her lips cracked and dry. A sliver of white shows between her eyelids, yet she does not wake.

“Okay,” Kirsten says, trying to keep the panic out of her voice. Out of her mind. “Lamp’s lit. Water.” From the canteen by the bed, she trickles a few drops into Koda’s mouth, raising her head to aid her swallowing. Dakota’s throat moves convulsively, a dry tongue running over her lips, and Kirsten dribbles more water from the flask. Twice more she repeats the process, then sets the water aside. No more putting off what she has to do. “Shot. Get it over with.”

Kirsten tears open the packet of syringes, and, holding the Levaquin ampoule close to the lamp, she pierces the seal and draws the fluid up to the mark. “All right,” she tells herself. “I can do this. Nothing to it. Just stick it in, push the plunger, that’s it.”

Kirsten pulls back the blanket, vacillating between arm and thigh. The arm is easier; one handed, she rolls up the left sleeve of Koda’s shirt and stabs the syringe down, her thumb driving the plunger home. With a sigh of relief, she recaps and discards the syringe. “Hey boy, how’s that? I didn’t panic and pull it out. Now we just gotta wait.” Wait for the medicine to work; wait for Koda’s burning skin to cool.

Waiting is something she has never had a talent for. Fifteen minutes of wild running about the small clearing and the desperate relief of a leg lifted against a tree burn off at least some of Asi’s tight-held energy, but Kirsten feels as though her nerves have wound into a tight spiral within her. Gods, what I wouldn’t give for a drink. Just a shot of bourbon, just one. Or a mouthful of old man Kriegesmann’s brandy.

But no such luxury is available, and she lays out a few strips of jerky for Asi and sets about rebuilding the fire. When it is burning nicely, she turns to Dakota. In the red light of the flames, her face seems touched with flame from within, the fever eating its way to the surface to show the white bone beneath. Carefully, Kirsten removes the bandages from the injured arm and hand; the skin lies drum-tight over the distended flesh. More carefully still, she wipes the dark blood and serum and oozing pus from the punctures made by the wolverine’s teeth. Red streaks run through the purpura that surrounds the wounds, and Kirsten forces down her fear, feeling the spring within her tighten another turn. “All right,” she mutters. “All right, damn you, you masked quack. You promised she’d be all right. She damned well better be, do you understand? Do you understand?”

That is not quite true, but she has no time for nuances. She intends to hold her delusion accountable, promise or not.

But all she can do now is replace the bandage, tuck the arm underneath the sleeping bag and wait. Somehow she manages to choke down a few bites of jerky, then settles in the one serviceable chair to keep vigil, Asi beside her.

She is never sure, after, what wakes her. She claws herself up out of the depths of a sleep she never intended to Asi’s sharp barking, the rustle of cloth, the sound of a voice. Weak and scratchy, vile with every four-letter word in the English language and others in a language she does not understand, but a living voice. Koda’s voice.

“Fuck. Shit. Burning up. Goddam. Gotta pee.” More rustling. “Damn. Hurts.”

Kirsten starts upright to see Koda struggling with the sleeping bag, half sitting up with one leg over the side of the bed. Her face, her hands, her throat are bright with sweat, her lank hair lying over her shoulder as wet as if she’d been standing in the rain. A huge wave of relief washes over Kirsten, and she throws her arms around Dakota. “I got you, love . I got you. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

“Goddam arm. Hurts like hell.”

“It’s okay, I’ve got something for it. What do you need?”

“Pee,” Koda says succinctly, and, wrapping her in the sleeping bag, Kirsten helps her outside into the first light of morning, the sun barely brushing the peak of the mountain behind them. Half, supporting, half carrying, Kirsten steers her back into the cabin, back to the bed. Lucid she may be, but Koda remains catastrophically weak, and subsides onto the narrow cot with a sigh. “How long?” she says.

Kirsten pauses to do the calculus of her journey. “A couple days, maybe three.” Gently she strokes Koda’s forehead, cool now beneath her touch. “You can go back to sleep in a few minutes. Just let me change the dressing again and give you your shot.”

“Mffph,” Koda says, covering her face with her good arm. “Gods. Stink. Mouth feels like a regiment camped in it for a month.” Then, “What shot?”

“Antibiotic. Levaquin,” Kirsten replies, pulling the injured hand toward her and beginning to unwind the gauze. It comes off slackly, the swelling already visibly reduced. The discoloration has also receded, crimson and purple lingering around the wounds themselves, but the surrounding flesh is clean, normal color returning. Koda flinches under her touch, and she bites her lip. “I’m sorry, love. It looks better, though.”

“Goddam nerves waking up. Where’d the AB come from?”

“A clinic a few miles away,” Kirsten lies without even thinking about it. She can tell Koda later about her dream, about the trek across the state line, about the wolf.

About the dead children.

Later. Much later.

She rewraps Koda’s arm and reaches for the Levaquin and the packet of syringes. Koda’s eyes follow her movements, and she gives the second injection with what she hopes is more aplomb than the first. Rummaging in her pack then, she finds the Vicodin and taps a pill out into the palm of her hand. “Here you go,” she says. “Something for the pain.”

“Dr. King,” Koda says, a faint smile turning up the corners of her mouth as she swallows the tablet. “How’d you know where to find an unlooted pharmacy?”

“Just followed directions.” And as Koda glances sharply up at her, “Later. Can you eat something?”

A half hour later, with Koda sleeping soundly, her breath slow and easy, Kirsten leans back in the chair, propping her feet up on the edge of the mattress. Dreamless sleep rises up about her, and she surrenders without a struggle.

CHAPTER FIFTY SEVEN

KODA STIRS HER soup slowly, savoring the aroma of parsley and bay. For the first time since her fever broke, she can smell something besides her own tainted breath, and the steam from the dried herbs and reconstituted vegetables is the very perfume of Paradise. The bowl’s warmth also soothes her injured hand, and she shifts her grip to lay her wrist against the heat. That’s not to say that the Vicodin doesn’t help, too. So does the burnished feeling of her clean skin beneath clean clothes. It required a dozen pans of heated snowmelt and almost two hours, but with Kirsten’s help she has at last scrubbed the stink of illness off her.

She glances out the window of the fishing shack to where Kirsten has carried the sleeping bags to lay them in the open on a slab of dry stone. Snow still lies blue in the shadows under the pines, but where the sun strikes it has melted, running down the slope to swell the stream below. Kirsten stands just at its edge, spreading their laundry on a sandstone boulder that juts out into the water, making a narrow rapids. Asi has made himself comfortable on the grass beside her, belly turned up to the summer warmth, tongue lolling. A dark-crested Steller’s jay, its vivid blue a splash of color amid the dark needles of a balsam pine, pries at a cone with its bill, ignoring Wiyo where she floats high above aginst the open sky. Her cry floats down on the breeze, mingling with the song of a cardinal hen and the scolding of a tuft-eared squirrel. It is not a day to stay inside.

Carefully Koda pushes herself up from the edge of the bed. The Levaquin has done its work, and the infection is clearly under control. She is not so sure about her legs. Transferring her spoon to her bowl, she uses her right hand to steady herself as she progresses from bed to table, from table to door, and finally from the door to the trunk of a fallen larch halfway down to the water. She reaches it gratefully, steadying herself again as she sits and gives herself a moment to catch her breath.

I made it, though. Made it without help.

For a moment she simply sits, idly eating the soup and watching Kirsten’s neat, economical movements as she rinses out their spare shirts and underwear in the churning water, slapping them against the rocks, then smoothing them out to dry. In the past months, her skin has tanned to a rich bronze, her hair lightened under the sun and rain to the color and sheen of cornsilk. The waifish prettiness of the Kirsten King she had first met at the Minot android facility has gone, transformed into the taut beauty of a woman at home beneath earth and sky. Almost she could be Lakota.

But she is Lakota. Little by little, she is becoming a walker in two worlds. Kirsten King, President of the United States. Inktomi Zizi, warrior of the Lakota, wife of Tshunkmanitu-wakan Winan. That is something even Themunga will have to acknowledge.

Wanblee Wapka will help. So will Tacoma and her other brothers and sisters. Even Wiyo.

Her soup finished, Koda sets the bowl on the ground and slides down to sit in the grass, her back braced against the log. Lulled by the warmth, she feels her body grow heavy, her eyelids sliding shut. She should get up and go help Kirsten. But maybe a little nap first. Just a little one. Just a. . ..

She wakes to pressure of Kirsten’s body against hers, her still-bandaged left hand held lightly in her lover’s right. The bright head rests just as lightly on her shoulder, and she opens her eyes to its silver-gilt sheen. “Nun lila hopa.” She barely breathes the words, not wanting to wake Kirsten. “Nun lila hopa.”

“Thank you,” Kirsten says quite clearly, and Koda can just see the twitch of her mouth as the corners turn up in a smile. “I’m not asleep.”

“You should be, cante sukye. You need rest worse than I do.”

Kirsten lifts her head with a sigh. “I’m fine. Really. All it took was a couple nights’ good sleep.”

“That was quite a hike.” Koda cannot quite picture the map of northern Colorado and is not quite sure she would know Craig if she saw it, but she knows how far they are from the state line here on this mountain. She knows that the country gets no easier for a hundred miles or more. It is mostly vertical, just as this narrow valley is.

Kirsten shrugs. “Piece of cake, compared to that last high pass over the Medicine Bows. I went, I got the stuff, I came back. Nothing to it.”

“Mmm,” says Koda.

“What?”

“You never have said just what decided you to go to Craig. Instead of, say, Columbine. Or Steamboat Springs—that’s pretty close, too.”

Kirsten does not answer, and Koda begins to think she will not. Then she says, “It was him.”

Koda takes note of the unspoken capital H and italics. Him. “Who’s him?”

“Him. My pet delusion.”

There is only one male creature that Koda knows of that Kirsten regards, sporadically, as an hallucination. “Your raccoon, you mean? Your spirit animal?”

“Yeah.” There is a long pause. Then, “He showed up in a white coat and wrote a prescription. Dr. Kunz.”

The image floats up in her own mind, vivid, of a raccoon in a lab coat, stethoscope slung across his shoulders. With an effort, she keeps her face straight and says seriously, “For the Levaquin?”

“Yeah. And then he told me where to find it. I went, and it was there.”

Koda strokes Kirsten’s hair, running the fingers of her good hand through the silky strands. She may be Inktomi Zizi the warrior, but as a Lakota, she is still a work in progress. “You know, you’re going to offend him if you keep calling Wika Tegalega a delusion.”

“All right. An hallucination.”

“How would an hallucination know where to find the antibiotic?”

“My subconscious, that’s all.”

For a long moment, Koda remains silent. She can sense something held back, something besides Kirsten’s ambivalence about her encounter with another walker between worlds. Gently she says, “Do you think Wa Uspewikakiyape was an hallucination?”

“Your wolf? No!” Kirsten’s head comes up sharply. “I mean—I saw him, I—”

“And you saw your raccoon, too, didn’t you? I seem to remember he messed up your shoes in a very visible, tangible way.”

“Yeah, but—”

“But what?”

Very carefully Kirsten draws away from her, sitting back on her heels so that she can face Dakota. She says, “But it wasn’t just him. There was another—creature. A black wolf, with blue eyes. It pulled me up a snowbank when I twisted my ankle. It brought me a crutch. That’s what St. Bernards do. Not wolves.”

“Well, not as a rule,” Koda says mildly.

“But they do occasionally, huh? Black, blue-eyed wolves? Lakota shaman wolves.”

“Occasionally, yes.”

The breath goes out of Kirsten in a rush. “Oh boy. I’m not sure I— Shit.” She shakes her head as if to clear it. “But that’s normal in your culture, isn’t it? The fox out in the chicken house just may be Aunt Matilda, huh?”

“Great-Aunt Matilda,” Koda says solemnly, “is very fond of chicken. But she likes it fried. With gravy.”

“You’re laughing at me!”

“No.” She reaches out to draw Kirsten close again. “If it’s hard for you now, just let it go. No one’s going to ask you to accept things you’re uncomfortable with. Give it time.” Then, “What is it? There’s something else, isn’t there?”

With that, Kirsten turns to her again, her face against Koda’s shoulder, her hand gripping fiercely. Dakota feels her nod, an abrupt movement against her arm. “I didn’t want to tell you when you were so sick. I wanted to wait another day or two.”

“Tell me now. Whatever it is, we’ll deal with it together.” Koda feels Kirsten’s muscles tense under her hand, her whole body going rigid. “Tell me.”

“They’re killing babies.” It comes out on one breath, desperate as a gasp for air in drowning water. “Newborns, infants, toddlers. They were all tossed out into a pit at the back of the clinic.”

“Just babies? No older kids, no adults?”

Kirsten shakes her head violently. “I don’t know. I didn’t see any. But I didn’t stay for a second look, either.”

It does not make sense. Not that the general slaughter of the uprising makes any. If you’re going to capture women to breed, go to great lengths to confine and impregnate them, presumably what you want is the babies. Any babies, given that the droids have not been exactly fastidious about the studs. So why destroy the desired product?

Maybe the droids had killed the boys? No livestock breeder keeps excess males. Bull calves become hamburger; all roosters but a few end up in the frying pan.

Clearly the droids are not eating the babies. Breeding slaves, maybe? But for whom? Slaves would not be culled by gender; every society that has ever bought and sold humans has valued strong male workers. Has valued breeding females, too, so at least that part fits. But if slaves, where is that market? Who are the buyers?

Finally she says, “I don’t understand it, cante sukye. I don’t understand it at all.” A shiver passes over her skin. Shadows have lengthened; the sun has dropped below the tops of the trees. “Let’s go inside. It’s getting cold out here.”

*

“Now I remember why I’ve always hated shopping.”

Koda picks her way through the remains of a sporting goods store, stepping carefully through the spilled tennis and golf balls scattered across the floor. Against the walls, the locked cabinets that once held guns have been broken open, their sliding lexan doors in shards behind the counters. In one dark corner stands a rack that once held basketball jerseys, judging by the scraps of brightly-colored mesh now piled beneath it. From somewhere behind it comes a rustle and the sound of small feet scrabbling on the floor tiles, punctuated by grunts and a threatening hiss. Asi gives a pleading whine, his head up, tail straight as a standard.

“Possum,” says Kirsten from behind a counter that still stands largely intact, “Mama Possum.” The drawers have been thoroughly looted of ammunition, gun oil and other useful items. Her head appears above the glass top of the display case, and she aims a frown at Asi. “Don’t even think about it, Deppity Dawg. You don’t need to get chewed up again.” Asi whines again but stands down, leaving the store’s residents in peace. Returning to her rummaging under the counter, Kirsten adds, “At least you could find stuff to fit. ‘Petite’ is a lot larger than it used to be.”

“Small but mighty.” Koda flashes her a grin. “What hasn’t been carted off or ruined by the weather has been co-opted by the critters.” Still, this modest strip mall is tame compared to the sprawling wreckage of the Wal-Mart on the north side. At least one pack of coyotes had moved in, denning among the fallen I-beams and the slabs of collapsed ceiling, sharing their quarters, judging by the limewash on the walls and the castings on the floor, with a pair of owls and innumerable mice and rats. They have assiduously avoided the business district with its tall office towers rearing up against the purple-grey bulk of the mountains and the sprawling Temple complex, all of which offer prime opportunities for armed bands to fort up. After The Elk Mountain Incident, which has permanently acquired capital letters after the manner of The Occurance at Owl Creek Bridge or The Ox-Bow, Koda will be perfectly happy if they never see another human between now and their return to Ellsworth.

Fat chance.

Sifting through the wreckage of the office, no more than a corner set off by faux pecan panels, Koda, pockets a pair of serviceable pencils and an old-fashioned red plastic grade-school sharpener. A pack of lithium batteries also goes into her pockets, together with a small handheld that looks as though it might be functional. Kirsten has taken to keeping a general log of their journey on her laptop, but other information, such as animal population and migration, the water volume of streams that no longer feed cities, needs to be recorded, too. This world is not the world she grew up in, may become something far different than any has ever imagined.

But for now, she will settle for small things that make their journey less arduous. Which means that they probably need to move on, to see if they can find a part of the city less devastated. In the scatter of papers, she shuffles aside a photograph of a trio of small girls, grinning up at the camera from their swings, their twin blonde pony tails brushing their shoulders. Two are twins. The third is perhaps a year older. To their right, a cocker spaniel makes a fourth to their number, the same grin, the same tumble of bright gold from crown to collarbone. Something is scrawled across the bottom of the picture in a hand too shaky to be legible, but it looks like numbers. Koda turns her attention to the tall free-standing gun safe, which might hold something useful if she can open it. A second scrap of paper with numbers along the bottom catches her eye in the debris on the floor. 12-28-something. The combination? She should be so lucky. She picks it up, though, carefully dusting it off.

Not the combination. Another photo, this one of a dark-eyed toddler on a red tricycle, a motorcycle cap pulled over his forehead as he leans over the handlebars. 12-30-2015.

Not a combination. A date. Retrieving the picture of the three girls, she lays it on the desk next to this one. Same handwriting. Same date. Not a birthday, then, especially since the girls on the swings wear shorts and sandals, their feet skimming green grass. The date is the second or third of the uprising; for these children, it can mean only one thing. DOD. Date of death.

Not only one thing. Date of death, date of disappearance.

“Kirsten,” she says quietly, not turning away from the cubicle. “How old were the oldest children you saw in Craig?”

For a long moment there is silence. Then Kirsten says, quite evenly, “Toddlers. Maybe two and a half. Three, maybe. Why?”

“Come here, would you?”

Kirsten’s feet make small rustling noises in the litter as she picks her way toward the corner. As she comes to stand by Koda, she says, “What is it?”

“These photos. Look at the dates. Look at the kids.”

For a long moment, Kirsten does not answer. Then she says, “The droids were taking them alive, then killing them. I don’t get it. Why?”

“They were using jails, maternity centers, clinics. There used to be a Planned Parenthood branch in this part of Salt Lake. I think we should go check it out.”

In the harsh light of the flash, the revulsion on Kirsten’s face is clear. After a moment, though, she says. “You’re right. It may not help us turn the goddammed things off, but—” Her hand makes small, loose circles in the air.

“There’s always the possibility we’ll find some kids alive,” Koda says gently. “Not much, but some.”

“Even if we can just figure out why—”

“That’ll be a start.” Koda adjusts her pack to lie more comfortably around her waist and shoulders her rifle. “Let’s go.”

*

“Bomb?”

“Looks like. Big one.” Dakota kicks at one end of a broken and charred two-by-four that protrudes from the rubble of roofing shingles and drywall, jagged chunks of concrete block and aluminum siding. Pink fiberglass insulation protrudes from between shattered boards and wall panels, threaded through with bright strands of color-coded wiring. Behind the ruined front of the Salt Lake Birthing Center, the rear half of the building still stands, its framing studs and walls stained black with smoke. Asi quarters the edge of the wreckage, whining.

“Look how bright that insulation is. This is recent.”

Koda’s gaze returns to the cotton-candy mass of fiberglass sandwiched between a collapsed wall and fallen acoustic tiles. It is as shockingly pink as the day it came off the roll, unweathered by snow or desert heat. Slowly, she turns through a full circle. A McDonald’s across the street is similarly ruinous, but its garish plastic furniture, tumbled out onto the restaurant’s parking lot, is faded to pale sherbet colors, orange and lime and raspberry. The electronics factory outlet next to it stares out onto the asphalt through empty windows, only a few shards of glass still clinging to the frames. It would have been one of the first stores to be looted, by people in desperate need of communications gear or by conventional thieves with no idea of the scope of the collapse in progress. “You’re right,” she says quietly. “Check it out?”

For answer, Kirsten nods, revulsion clear on her face and in her meticulous steps amid the wreckage, avoiding contact even with the leather of her boots where she can. Koda herself goes warily, picking out a path down what might have been a paved walkway before the blast that tumbled half the clinic’s front onto it. It takes her onto a tiled surface, perhaps once the clinic’s reception area, with darkened halls opening off it. Open now to the weather and to scavengers human and otherwise. Tucked well back in the exposed rafters between ceiling and roof, a wren has built her barrel-shaped nest, and a spattering of guano on the pale terrazzo bears witness to the colony of bats with which she shares her space. The sharp smell of ammonia rises from it, and Koda covers her nose and mouth with one hand. One corridor seems to be lined with various labs and exam rooms; another with recovery cubicles separated only by grey and tattered curtains. Still a third leads off to service areas; through an open door at its end, Koda can see the shape of a large, aluminum-topped worktable with industrial sized pots and pans hung on a rack above it. No sign of the obstetric wards and surgeries; they must have been in the wing brought down by the blast.

“Look,” Kirsten says from behind her. “On the wall behind the desk.”

Koda looks more closely, squinting at what she had at first thought to be smoke stain. The streaks show a more regular pattern, though, letters scratched out with the end of a charred stick. Some have faded to illegibility; others are faint angular shapes, parts missing where the stick has skipped over the rough surface of the concrete block. B-b- -il-e-s.

“B-b,” she says. “Baby—”

“Killers,” Kirsten finishes for her. “It’s just like that clinic in Craig.”

Koda nods. “Let’s have a look at the pharmacy and get going, then. There’s somebody in the neighborhood that’s armed. They may not want company.” She steps around a fallen chair and heads briskly for the lab corridor.

Kirsten, though, remains rooted where she stands. “We have to check.”

Caught. “There’s no place here to bury bodies, cante sukye,” Koda says softly. “The clinic backs right up to whatever is in that office strip behind it. We won’t find anything.”

“I saw an incinerator chimney when we came in.”

So had Koda. Its squat black shape had jutted up against the clean blue sky, an obscenity in the light of day. The memory of her lover’s face, pinched and white, as she told of finding the corpse-filled trenches in Craig is something that will stay with Dakota as long as she lives. That, and the nightmare-filled nights that followed, Kirsten tossing and crying out in her sleep. “All right,” she says. “You stand watch here. I’ll go have a look.”

“I’m coming with you.”

“Kirsten—”

“It’s going to be nothing, or it’s going to be bad. If it’s bad, it can’t be any worse than those graves in Craig. I’m coming.”

Koda holds her ground for an instant, then stifles her protective instincts and gives way. “All right,” she says. “Let’s go.”

The incinerator stands to one side of the main building, its red biohazard sign still bright in the afternoon sun. The stench of charred flesh still lingers about it, even to Koda’s human nostrils. It must, she thinks, be overpoweringly strong to Asi, where he stands at attention ten feet away, ears forward, legs stiff, issuing short, sharp barks of alarm despite Kirsten’s order to be silent. Foulness hangs over the place like a cloud.

The furnace has two doors, a larger one above for the burn chamber, a smaller below for scraping out the ash. Neither yields to Koda’s determined pulling, and she returns to the wreckage in front to scavenge a yard-long length of rebar. It makes an admirable pry, and she wedges it under the handle of the upper door, turning it fairly easily on the second effort. The door swings open on blackness and the stench of death, but the oven holds no bones, no infant corpses. Kirsten leans over her shoulder, peering into the shadow. It seems to Koda that the sound of her lover’s breathing has slowed; no demons here to haunt her nights. “Okay,” she says. “Nothing here. Let’s—”

“Check the bottom,” Kirsten says steadily.

Ash lies thick in the compartment below the burn chamber, black and stinking of grease. Dakota scrapes it out onto the concrete platform with the end of the rebar. Scattered throughout it are small flakes of white, bigger than the grain of the ash. “Bone,” Kirsten says, her voice expressionless. “That’s what that is, isn’t it?”

Koda nods, her teeth clenched. If she opens her mouth, she will vomit. After a moment, she breaks apart a clod of ash, freeing larger fragments of calcified bone. One larger piece still keeps its shape; half a vertebra, its spur still jutting out from the half-ring that once surrounded the spinal cord. The whole piece is less than an inch long.

“Now we know.” Kirsten’s voice is scarcely more than a whisper.

Koda forces herself to speak around the constriction in her throat. “Now we know.”

She feels Kirsten’s hand settle on her shoulder, warm and alive. A lifeline. “And we know someone else is fighting them, too. That’s a good thing.”

Suddenly it seems as if the buildings around her, the mountains around them, will fall on her at any moment. She levers herself to her feet, glancing up at the sun. “Let’s get out of here. We can be in the foothills again by nightfall.”

They make the trek out of the city in silence, hands joined, Asi quiet beside them. A long-forgotten phrase slips through her mind, from the mission school decades, eons ago. “And the Lord God rained fire and brimstone on the cities of the plain, fire from heaven.” Koda does not look back, lest she turn to stone.

CHAPTER FIFTY EIGHT

THE FAINT GLOW of the embers reflects off the back of the rock shelter, tingeing the shadows with crimson. Spilling down off the heights of the mountains, the breeze carries with it a foretaste of the turning year, its scent sharp with pine and hemlock. Kirsten pulls the mylar blanket more firmly up over her body, settling her head in the hollow of Dakota’s shoulder. Her lover’s hand makes lazy circles against her back. On the other side of the dying fire, Asi snores softly, his paws twitching with his dreams. Cold with distance, a howl rises up into the night, coyotes hunting the lower slopes. Kirsten shivers, not with the chill but with the memory of the Salt Lake Clinic. It seems out of place here in the clean air, it the light of stars spilling across unimaginable distances.

But the dead will not leave her. She feels Koda stiffen where she lies beside her, and her soft breath ruffles Kirsten’s hair. “What is it, cante sukye?”

“Nothing.”

“Not nothing. Something cold has touched you.”

Kirsten turns her face so that she looks directly up at the sky. She raises one arm to point at the great stream of the Milky Way where it arcs across the night. Almost bright enough to cast shadows, it blazes down on the earth as it has for millions of years, answered now only by wood fires and the occasional, scattered glimmer of artificial light. “You call it the Ghost Road, don’t you? My dad was into Irish heritage stuff, and he said the ancient Celts called it the Path of Souls. Funny how different cultures had the same idea.”

“Maybe it’s the braids and war-paint.” Koda shifts her weight slightly to keep Kirsten’s head on her shoulder. “Most Cherokee and Creek families who use European names are called Mac-this or Mac-that. Lots of Scotts.”

“Do they wear kilts, too?”

Koda gives a soft snort, and Kirsten can feel the laughter as it runs through her. “Now that’d be a sight, wouldn’t it? Tartans and feathers.”

From somewhere a mental picture floats up of Tacoma, tartan plaid clasped about his waist, a classic warbonnet on his head. Kirsten giggles at the absurdity of it, and the tension in her eases a bit. “What about the Dipper? Do you call that a bear, too?”

“No, but we have a summer constellation called Mato Tipila, the Bear’s Lodge. That’s Gemini, mostly. And Leo is The Fireplace.”

“What about him?” Lazily, Kirsten points to Orion, whose belt of three stars just clears the peaks to the east. “Is he a hunter in the Lakota stories, too?”

“It’s part of what we call the Backbone, which is part of the Racetrack.”

“Oh.” Kirsten cannot quite keep the disappointment from her voice. The figure of a mighty man with upraised club seems so obvious to her—even though a part of her mind recognizes that obviousness as cultural bias—that it would seem to be the stuff of legend in any society. Get a grip, King. It’s a different world. Koda’s is a different world. And somehow I’m going to have to learn it all.

“There is a story, though.” Koda’s arm tightens about her shoulders. “Want to hear it?”

“About a backbone? Sure.”

“Not exactly. See his belt, there, and his sword? That, plus Rigel are what we call the Hand, Nape.”

“Whose?”

“A chief’s.” Koda’s voice settles into a steady rhythm that is almost ceremonial, and it comes to Kirsten that among the Lakota, as among her own ancient ancestors, stories are not simply entertainment. They are history, as Blind Harry’s ballad of the Cheyenne is history now. They reach into the future, as well as into the numinous past. “There was a chief who was not generous with his people. He kept all the horses he took in raids for himself, instead of sharing them with his warriors. He showed no concern for the poor in his tribe, or for widows and orphans. And one day, the Wakinyan, the Thunderbirds, had had enough of his stinginess, and they tore off his arm.”

“Too bad the Thunderbirds never took on the Congress. Talk about one-armed bandits.”

“Not to mention the whole swarm of bureaucrats. Anyway, this chief had managed to do one thing right, and he had a beautiful daughter. Wicahpi Hinhpaye, or Fallen Star, who was the son of the North Star and a mortal woman, came courting her. And she agreed to marry him, on condition that he find her father’s missing arm.

“So he searched and searched, all through the Paha Sapa. Then he searched among the stars, because the landscape of the Black Hills is reflected in the sky, because they are both sacred. The Wakinyan tried to prevent him from searching, and he fought them. Then Inktomi, Spider Woman, tried to trick him, but he outwitted her.

“Finally he found the hand where they had hidden it in the stars, and he returned to earth with it. In a ceremony, Wicahpi Hihnpaye reattached the chief’s arm and married the daughter. He became the new chief. In the spring they had a son. And—” Koda leaves the word hanging.

“—they lived happily ever after.” Kirsten finishes the sentence for her.

“And the people flourished, and the land had peace. It all goes together.” After a moment she adds, “You okay?”

“Mmm,” Kirsten says, turning again to lay her arm across Koda’s body. “Very okay. G’night.”

“’Night, cante sukye.”

“Ever after,” Kirsten murmurs, and slips into sleep.

*

Late afternoon light filters through the branches of pine and spruce, grown thick and tall here on the western slope of the Nightingale Mountains. The Trinities lie behind them, now, the folded valleys and jagged bare-rock ranges that scar the Nevada landscape. Asi trots easily along a deer track paralleling a narrow stream that loops and swirls its way down the mountainside. Kirsten follows, Koda walking rearguard. A jay scolds from somewhere half a hundred feet up, and is answered by a chittering squirrel. From time to time the sun catches the crest of a small rapids where the stream banks pinch inward; occasionally it strikes silver off the scales of fingerling trout or minnows. Out of the corner of her eye, Koda can make out the shape of a mule deer doe drifting between the trees a hundred yards away. Her two spring fawns follow, their spots fading now with the end of summer. Gently Dakota taps on Kirsten’s shoulder, pointing silently, and a smile light the other woman’s face at the sight. Asi, too, turns to look but makes no sound, then pads on, his humans’ feet making no more noise than his own.

A pair of dark wings sails over them, to be lost in the trees. A moment later, another bird sweeps past, its cry low and harsh. Ravens, a mated pair, returning for the night to their roost and their young.

From somewhere to their right comes an answering call, and Koda pauses, staring into the shadows beneath the trees. Breeding ravens are territorial, pairs spaced out over wide distances to maintain hunting and scavenging grounds.

“Something wrong?” Kirsten looks back over her shoulder, her hand dropping to the pistol at her belt.

Koda shrugs. “Another raven, that’s all. Their ranges aren’t usually so close together at this season.”

“Passerby?”

“Probably.”

Just one bird skimming the edges of another’s territory, taking a shortcut home. That’s all. Maybe even, if it’s young and reckless, poaching a bit on a scrap of carrion or a pocket mouse. Dakota glances up, searching the patches of deepening sky for Wiyo, finding only wisps of cloud and a sweep of redwings making for one of the small lakes that dot the corner where Nevada angles into California. The absence is reassuring. Not even a red-tail will unnecessarily confront a raven pair on their territory, still less draw the attention of a feathered mob. Nesting ravens will attack owls and eagles without a second thought, and though Wiyo is a female, and large of her kind, she is no larger than Kagi Tanka. Koda says, “Start watching for a place to camp. Sun’ll be down in an hour.”

Kirsten nods and sets off again, Dakota following. Dark will find them halfway down the slope; by mid-day tomorrow they should be on open ground again, crossing the basin of Lake Winnemucca. At this time of year it should be dry, the snow-melt gone, the autumn rains yet to come. Still, it should be less formidable than the alkali flats they crossed a week ago, or the edges of the desert between Salt Lake and the eastern Nevada border. After the endless miles where it seemed they sweated themselves drier than the sand itself, it is good to be in the mountains again. Here the sharp pine scent rides the breeze and small springs break from the living rock feed lakes and rivers on the plain below. Cool days fade to chill nights populated with raccoon and lynx, otter and bear, while the smaller life of the understory that persists stubbornly against the pressure of larger creatures with larger teeth. Geographically, at least, matters can only get better from this point on.

Everything else, of course, can get worse. Much worse.

A raven calls again, a low, rolling prrro-o-o-ok. This time the sound comes from somewhere ahead of them, off the flight path of the first pair. Cold ghosts down Koda’s spine, and she shrugs her rifle off her shoulder.

No law says ravens have to fly in a straight line. Still, she feels better with the gun in her hands. Kirsten glances back at her, her eyes widening when she sees the gun. Wordlessly, she draws her own weapon, reaching for Asi’s collar to pull him back to heel beside her. The big dog’s ears prick, his tail coming up to jut stiffly out from his spine. Something is in the wood with them. These mountains are bear country, with straggling populations of wolverines and the occasional wolf pack. Bear she can deal with, wolf she can talk to. Wolverine—involuntarily, her trigger finger twitches. She will be happy if she never sees another wolverine in her life, even if she lives to a hundred and fifty. More likely their company is a smaller predator, bobcat or coyote, even a badger. Later, over supper, they can laugh at their excess caution. They have come too far, though, to take unnecessary risks. It is not that more depends on them now than when they left Ellsworth. It just seems like more, the burden heavier and heavier as they come closer to their goal.

Another raven calls, this one to their left. Around them, other birds have gone silent, with none of the twittering fuss of settling in for the night. “All right,” Koda says softly, ‘that’s just one too damned many.” She slides her finger into the guard, to lie lightly against the trigger.

“Don’t ravens hunt with wolves, sometimes?” Kirsten whispers? “Lead them to prey?”

“Yeah. But we haven’t seen any sign of wolves all day, and we haven’t seen any other top predators, either. Nothing to sound an alarm about.”

“We don’t count, huh?”

“Not to the birds.”

Asi comes to a sudden halt, growling. His lips peel back, showing his canines, and his tail comes up to full staff, its plume quivering with the rumble that rolls through his chest and belly. Kirsten’s hand shifts on his collar, her knuckles white. ‘Easy. Easy. What is it, boy?”

“Company,” Koda says grimly. “Hold onto him.”

The raven cry sounds again from a hundred yards down the trail. Another answers from behind them, a third and fourth from either side, yet another from above them, close. Following the sound with her eyes, Koda can just make out a darker shadow against the high trunk of a pine, some thirty or forty feet up, almost directly overhead. Just beneath the tree stands a stake topped by a deer’s antlers, clusters of black feathers hung from its tines by sinew strips. A flat stone at its base holds a spray of dried sage bound with sweetgrass and lupine, the shed skin of an indigo snake and a hollow pebble, its inner surface paved with clear crystals. It sits within the horns of a crescent, drawn around the forward edge of the stone in deep crimson. Deer’s blood, perhaps. Or perhaps not. Koda remembers enough of her anthropology to recognize the symbols, older than Babylon, older than Delphi, older even than Crete.

Carefully she moves her finger away from the trigger of her gun, then bends to lay it on the ground. She rises slowly, open hands at her sides. Kirsten glances at her sharply, then, still holding to Asi’s collar, follows suit. “Who are they?” she asks, her voice scarcely audible.

“Women,” Koda answers softly. “Goddess worshippers.”

“Keep your hands visible!” The voice comes from high in the tree. “State your names and business.”

“Dakota and Annie Rivers,” Kirsten answers, squinting upward toward the sound. “And we don’t have any business here. We’re just passing through.”

“Open your collars. Let us see your necks.”

Moving slowly, Koda and Kirsten obey, turning so that the still invisible watchers can see clearly that they bear no circlet of metal.

“Good. Now, you, the tall one. Take off your clothes.”

“What?” Kirsten stares up into the branches. “What the hell—?”

Koda, though, sits down on a rock by the stream to pull off her boots. “It’s okay, cante sukye. They just want to make sure I’m really a woman.” She drops her pack beside her, then her shirt, finally stepping out of her jeans and rising to stand in the open. Loosened, her hair spills down her back. She turns slowly, her hands at her sides.

For a long moment, the glade is silent. Then, low-pitched and long, a wolf whistle comes from behind them. “Oh, yeah, now. Ain’t she a woman!”

Kirsten whirls to face the speaker, still invisible. Her face flushed crimson, she snaps, “Back off, bitch!”

A whoop of laughter answers her, a contralto rich with the dark earth of Mississippi. “Get you dander down, Shorty. I’m just admirin’.”

Suppressing a grin, Koda lays her hand on Kirsten’s arm. “I’m ‘Shorty’s’ woman, sister. Anybody wants to argue with that, deals with me.” Asi gives a high, challenging yelp, and Koda adds, “Yeah, and his human, too.”

“How say you, sisters?” The voice from the tree again. “Shall they pass?”

Four answer her, more or less in unison. “They shall pass, and welcome.” It has the feel of ritual, and Koda wonders again just how the crimson stain came to be on the stone. A rustling of pine boughs draws her attention back to the tree above her, and a back-lit shape plunges down the length of the trunk, rappelling off it with the aid of a rope. The woman lands with a thump on the carpet of fallen needles, one ankle turning slightly, as though she has not yet entirely got the hang of the maneuver. She has no trouble putting her weight on it, though, and she steps firmly enough out into the light. “Hi,” she says, extending her hand to Kirsten, who takes it almost reluctantly, then to Dakota. “I’m Morgan.” Her clasp is firm, her palm callused with work and, evidently, the handling of weapons. An AK slants across her back, and a Bowie knife hangs from her belt, both worn with use. “Hey. Annie? You want to put your clothes back on?” She turns back to Kirsten. “We have a permanent camp a few miles on. You’re welcome there.”

From beneath lowered eyelids, Koda watches irritation and bemusement flicker across Kirsten’s face. She turns away to pull on her clothes, letting her hair fall forward to hide a smile. Okay, Ms. President, here’s a chance for some diplomacy.

Kirsten says softly, pointing, “I’m Annie. She’s Dakota. He’s Asimov. Who are you, besides Morgan?”

Koda turns just as her head clears her shirt collar. Kirsten stands straight as a birch tree, her face expressionless. Ms. President, indeed. Morgan’s grey eyes flicker over her, assessing, and she says easily, “I’m Morgan fia d’Loria, and I’m chosen Riga of the Amazai.”

A small shock runs through Koda. For an instant, a fraction of a second, the vision of the Cretan coast flashes before her again, a blonde swimmer in the surf. But she keeps her voice even. “Amazai? Moon women?”

Morgan glances sharply at her. “You’re a linguist?”

“My first wife was. I had to learn a bit to talk to her while we were in school.”

“Mmm. Greek’s not just ‘a bit.’”

Koda shrugs, tucking her shirt into the waistband of her jeans. “For a while we spoke a dialect unknown outside our dorm room. Some French, some Spanish, some Lakota, a few words of Sanskrit. It took a year or two to sort out. You?”

“Lawyer. We’ve got a Classics wonk in the band, though. She’s our history-keeper.”

Warriors. A bard. How much of the social structure she is beginning to sense in this group of women is deliberate reconstruction based on texts? How much is instinct, repeating itself across the millennia? Koda sits again to pull on her boots, watching the other woman from beneath her eyelashes. Morgan, though not much taller than Kirsten, seems to fit the scale of the forest. Part of it is sheer personal presence, the kind of thing that would sway a jury in a courtroom. Part of it is the rippling muscle under her tanned skin, shown to advantage by her leather vest and wrist-guards. The left one covers her forearm almost to the elbow, marking her as an archer even though she carries no bow. And part of it is the series of diagonal hatch lines scored into each cheek, tattoos done the old fashioned way, with pigment rubbed into a bleeding cut. It takes no imagination to divine what they represent, no more a mystery than the crescent moon between her pale brows. Madame President, meet the Queen of the Amazons, with four, five, six, seven kills to her credit. Let’s keep it friendly if we can.

Morgan raises an eyebrow at her covert study. “Ready?” she asks.

“The others?” Kirsten indicates the surrounding trees.

“On patrol. We guard our borders.”

“Against androids?”

“And men,” Morgan says coolly. “We’re a tribe of women. No men. No man-gods. No man-laws.”

Which makes sense. Ari Kriegesmann and his bachelor-babboon coterie can hardly be the only ones of their kind. It comes to Koda that Tanya and Elaine would fit into Morgan’s world as if born to it, and she wonders again how the fight at Elk Mountain ended. Not, for certain, with Ari in charge. “Ready,” she says. “How far are we going?”

“The camp’s by Pyramid, across the dry lake.” Koda’s face must show her dismay, because Morgan adds, “Not to worry. We have horses tethered at the foot of the trail. We’ll be there by full dark. You do ride?”

Kirsten snickers, and Koda says, “Yeah. I’m a vet. My family breeds horses.”

The mounts tethered at the foot of the slope scarcely look up at the three women and one dog when they emerge onto the meadow. The grass grows thick here, interspersed with dandelion and columbine, salvia and mallow, good eating that makes for sleek hides and bright eyes. All the horses are mustangs, in various combinations of white with chestnut, white with buckskin, dapple grey and black. They are the classic mounts of the Plains Nations, the breed that made the Lakota and Nez Perce in their time the finest light cavalry in the world. None is equipped with more than a bridle and saddle blanket, some of those no more than a sheepskin. Koda’s respect for Morgan and her band takes a quantum leap, and she asks, “Wild caught?”

Morgan bends to loose a young grey from her ground tether, glancing back over her shoulder at Koda. The filly whickers softly and nudges at the woman’s pocket, obviously looking for a treat. Morgan pushes her nose away gently and says, “More or less. They were running loose, and none were broken. They’d had some handling, though. Take your pick; two of the patrol can double up on the way home.”

“They’re good stock.” Koda strokes the withers of a tall white and chestnut mare who sports a wide white blaze from ears to muzzle. “Annie?”

“I’ll take the black.” Before Koda can offer a hand up, she springs up easily onto the horse’s back, sliding only a little on the loose buckskin that is its only saddle. It is an impressive performance, meant to impress. Alpha female, meet alpha female.

Suppressing a smile, Koda says only, “Good choice,” and mounts the paint. The horse snuffles and turns twice widdershins at the feel of an unaccustomed rider on her back, but settles quickly with a pat and a word or two of assurance. “All right,” she says to Morgan. “Lead the way.”

The way takes them down the mountainside and onto the miles-long expanse of the dry lakebed. The dark gathers around them, rose and gold along the line of the western hills gradually giving way to deep blue that blends into black at the zenith and stretches behind them to become indistinguishable from the last slopes of the Nightingale range. The moon, one night off full, rises bright enough to cast shadows along the alkali-pale flats. Heat, absorbed during the summer day, radiates upward now, mingling with the already-cooling air of the evening. The breeze, slipping over the line of hills from the west, smells of water, and more faintly, dark earth and salt. Moving at an easy pace, the horses’ hooves clatter against the hard surface. Morgan leads, the weight of her pale braid bouncing between her shoulders to the rhythm of her mare’s gait. She chants as she rides, something Koda cannot quite make out, though she thinks she hears the words “Isis” and “Demeter.” Kirsten follows, her hair a pale halo in the moonlight. Koda rides rearguard, her rifle slung over the saddlecloth in front of her. Asi trots along beside them, breathing easily. The wolf is an endurance runner, and for all his faithful breeding, the wild has begun to surface in the big dog, as if the genes of his ancestors have only been lulled by ten thousand years of domestication, lying dormant until the turn of an age in which humans no longer rule the earth. The dog, the horse, even the comfort-loving cat, may once again become something no living member of her own species has ever encountered in the flesh.

And we’re losing our domestication, too. Warriors and shamen. Tribes of women. Warlords. We are being drawn into our own past, dragging the remains of our technology behind us.

The alkali lakebottom gives way to loose scree, and Morgan picks their way carefully through it, setting them on a path that winds through low hills and then rises, climbing the mountain slope. Columbine and Indian paintbrush grow close along its margins, leaving space for two horses to pass abreast; pine branches, low enough to sweep an unwary rider from the saddle, obscure it from above. Barely visible in the shadows, Kirsten slows to lean down and rub covertly at her left calf, shifting slightly on the horse’s back to ease what seems to be a stiffening back muscle. Koda knees her mare and pulls even with her lover. Careful to keep amusement out of her voice, she whispers, “Sprain something there did ya, Annie Oakley?”

Even in the dark, Koda can see the frown that knits Kirsten’s forehead, then the rueful smile. “That obvious, was it?”

“’Fraid so. I’m flattered, though.”

The smile breaks into a grin. “You damned well better be. I wouldn’t bust my butt like that for just anybody.”

“Such a nice little butt, too. Is it sprained?”

“My butt?”

“Your knee.”

“Nah, just pulled. I’m fine.”

Asi, doubling back from where he has been ranging ahead of Morgan, weaves between their horses’ legs, whining. The Amazai herself has halted. “You okay back there?”

“Cramp,” Koda says, tactfully omitting whose. Morgan touches her heel to her mare’s flank, then, and turns her head to lead them up a branching pathway, narrower yet, that leads upward at a steeper angle. Twice along the way, she gives the low, rolling call of a screech owl, and is answered. The second time, when it seems to Koda that they must be about halfway to the crest, Morgan says, “This used to be a park campground, but we’ve blocked the main access on the other side. Nothing gets up here we don’t know about, and nothing at all with wheels.”

Which may or may not mean that they have no vehicles. They could always be stashed lower down. Most state and national park had motor pools and the gas to fuel them. Unlike Ari Kriegesmann, Morgan and her sisters do not seem to be the kind to waste resources unnecessarily. They might, though, be persuaded to part with one in an excellent cause. A nice Jeep could put Koda and Kirsten on the Mendo coast in—three hours? Four?

Pipe dream. They’d be gunned down, by droids or hostile humans or both, before they got halfway there.

The path takes a final hairpin turn, then opens up to lead under a gate carved from knotty pine. Two torches flank it, and its sign, just visible in the dancing shadows, reads, ‘Welcome to Free Sierra.” The letters are rough, cut into the arch over the original name of the park. And the red light shows something else; Kirsten, who must see it, too, jerks hard on her horse’s reins, then knees her again as she pulls up. She is, perhaps, not certain what she is looking at. Koda is not certain, either. Not entirely.

A round shape hangs from each gatepost. The red light strikes a steely gleam from the one on the left, outlining its bare metal dome. On the other side, the torch draws the shape in dark hollows; two that might be eyes, another that might be a gaping mouth above a caked and matted beard. With the sweet night air comes the smell of rotting meat. So much for ambiguity. No lilacs blooming in the dooryard here.

“Hell of a No Trespassing sign you got there,” Koda says quietly.

Morgan shows her teeth in something that is not quite a smile. “Yeah. Got ‘em both on our last raid. Reno.”

Which means that these women either do have vehicles, or whoever they took down in Reno did not. Kirsten, who has quietly nursed her sore muscles on the ascent, says, “On who?”

“A clinic. You know about that?”

Koda answers, carefully, “We know that women have been kidnapped for breeding in jails, sometimes in birthing centers, women’s clinics. Stuff like that.”

They pass a couple of low signs, illegible in the dark except for their white arrows pointing directions to the various park facilities. Morgan leads them to the right where the path forks, and says, “Yeah. Stuff like that. They had another place in Reno, where they took the kids they didn’t kill. Right off, anyway.”

Koda sees the flinch in Kirsten’s shoulders, remembering the death-pit in Craig, the ruins of the clinic in Salt Lake. Morgan, though, seems disinclined to answer questions. Up ahead, the path fans out into an open space where white smoke rises up into the moonlight above the embers of a fire. Cabins line the perimeter, small oblong log structures with coarse screening in the windows. Here and there he yellow glow of a kerosene lantern silhouettes women’s shapes as they move about in their lodgings; one, as they pass, seems to be tucking a child into bed. Looking up at the sound of the horses’ hooves, the women wave as they pass, calling greetings to Morgan. One, leaving her cabin with a guitar slung over her shoulder, pauses to stare at Kirsten and Koda; Morgan answers her unspoken question with a wave of her hand and a brief “Later.” To Koda she says, “I’ll show you where the stables are, then where you can bunk. Come join us around the fire after you get settled; there ought to be some stew or something left in the pot.”

The stables, obviously designed to accommodate only a handful of horses for the amusement of riders on family outings, now house mostly hay, grain and tack. The horses themselves are tethered along a picket line behind the building. Koda counts thirty-two as she and Kirsten lead their mounts to one end to remove their saddle cloths and rub them down. Add to that the ones left behind in the hills across the dry lake and those likely to be on patrol in other directions, and you get forty riders, a formidable warband when the population of the continent has been reduced by 99 percent or so. Most are mustangs, but one or two show signs of more aristocratic breeding: a chestnut walking horse with white socks and blaze, a couple Appaloosas. Almost all are mares, two of them beginning to swell with foal; a few are geldings. They whicker softly as Koda passes, one nuzzling at her back pocket where she has stashed a trail bar. Kirsten, following her gaze, says, “I guess the ‘no man’ thing extends to the critters, too. Maybe we should worry about Asi.”

“Maybe Asi should worry about Asi,” she replies, smiling and ruffling his ears where he walks beside her. “They’ve got a stallion or two somewhere; they just wouldn’t stake them out on the line with the rest.”

At the end of the picket, Kirsten and Koda slip the skins off the horses’ backs and loop their reins around the rope that runs between a pair of tall pines. Tossing an armful of hay down in front of them, Koda hands Kirsten one of the two curry brushes she has brought from the tack room. “Know how to use one of these?”

Kirsten, her eyes wide in the low light, looks at Koda as if she has sprouted horns, or a second head. “You’re kidding, right? I’ve ridden before, but some stable guy has always taken care of the technical stuff, like getting the saddle on and off.” Gingerly she stares down at the arcane instrument and shrugs. “How hard can it be, though? I mean, it’s basically a hairbrush, isn’t it?”

“Basically,” Koda says with a smile. “Just watch and do what I do.”

Ten minutes later, both horses stand munching contentedly at the hay, their coats smooth and free of dust and the small accretions of the trail. Kirsten has done yeoman work, following Koda move for move, watched by Asi where he has settled in among the tree roots, his gaze sardonic. He follows them to the cabin Morgan has shown them, which contains little but four bare cots and a galvanized pipe across one end for a closet. “Looks like we’ve got our penthouse to ourselves,” Kirsten remarks. “We could shove a couple of these beds together.”

“Mmm,” says Koda. “We could. Just for warmth, of course.”

“Of course.” Kirsten grins back at her as she shed her pack. Asi hops up onto the bed in the far back corner and stretches out, making himself instantly to home. “Guess you’re not gonna come check out the place, huh, boy?”

For answer, Asi lays his chin on his paws and closes his eyes. “Guess not,” Koda answers for him. “Want to go get something to eat?”

The path to the center of the camp leads them past other cabins like theirs, a slightly larger main office building with actual windows, a communal shower and latrine. “Wonder of that still works?” Koda murmurs. “The one good thing about the Elk Mountain Incident was that hot bath.”

“Wonder how that came out? My money’s on Tanya and Elaine.”

“If not, we could always introduce Ari to Morgan and her tribe.” Koda flashes a grin. And I know where my money’d be on that one.”

“Nasty.”

“But amusing.” She pauses, sniffing. Her stomach turns over in a barrel roll of sheer joy. “Gods. They’ve found some onions somewhere. And chicken. Come on.”

The fragrance comes from a circle of stones some twelve feet across. A fire pit in the center sends clouds of smoke billowing upward, and nestled in the embers is a Dutch oven of a size that would serve the entire Rivers family, with seconds all around and thirds for Manny and Phoenix. Around it, their faces flushed with the red glow, a company of perhaps a dozen women sits on rocks or skins or the bare grass. Some still hold their bowls in their laps, while a couple lean back on their elbows, gazing up at the sky, and the woman with the guitar strums softly, her voice weaving wordlessly in and out amidst the melody. Yet another pair sit with their arms around each other’s waists, a small dark woman leaning her head against her taller partner’s shoulder. Introductions go round the circle. Inga fia d’Bridget. Frances fia d’Alice. Magdalena, daughter of Rosario. Sarai fia d’Yasmin. They bear their own names and their monthers’, no acknowledgement of paternity or patriarchy. And every face that Koda can see bears, too, the marks of dead enemies. Three, five, not a few with seven to equal their leader’s. Morgan herself sits on a flat granite boulder at the northern quarter of the circle, her bowl still between her hands, a far-off look in her eyes. She takes note of Kirsten and Koda, though, rising to invite them to stand beside her while she makes the introductions. With Salt Lake behind them, their story is now that they are headed for Los Angeles to find “Annie’s” parents. At that, the faces around the circle grow grave, and Morgan says, “Haven’t you heard?”

“Heard?” Kirsten frowns. “It’s been a bit busy between St. Louis and here. We haven’t had any contact with anyone at all in California.” And again, “Heard what?”

Morgan lays a gentle hand on Kirsten’s arm, and draws her down to sit on the boulder. “LA’s gone. Nuked.”

CHAPTER FIFTY NINE

KIRSTEN’S PARENTS WERE nowhere near Los Angeles when the uprising began, have not lived in southern California for two decades. Yet even in the dim light, Koda can see the blood drain from her face as her mouth repeats the word without sound. Dakota’s own mouth goes dry, imagining the radiation cloud spreading inland on the winds off the Pacific, sweeping across the orange groves and to lay radioactive ash on the already burning sands of the desert. “Bombed?” she says, inaudible even to herself. Then, more loudly, “Bombed? Who?”

Morgan’s eyes between them, softening suddenly. “I’m sorry,” she says, “I didn’t think. Of course you might well know someone there.” Laying a hand on Kirsten’s arm, she draws her down to sit beside her on the boulder.

“It’s okay. It’s just—sudden. I grew up a bit further south, San Diego .”

Very deliberately, Koda lifts the lid of the Dutch oven with the poker left by the side of the firepit and ladles two bowls full of the stew. She replaces the lid and brings one bowl and a spoon to set beside Kirsten, settling cross legged on the ground beside her with her own meal. She says, “Who did it? How?”

“We’re not real sure. We heard about it from a couple refugees headed back east to try to find their people. Seems a couple ships up from the Naval base at San Diego sailed into the port there and blew up.”

“Warheads aboard?”

“Maybe. According to what we heard, it was a pair of aircraft carriers. The Reagan and the Kerry .”

Stirring her stew aimlessly, Kirsten says, “All the new aircraft carriers have nuclear power plants, some of the older ones, too. Even if it was just the reactors, it would be bad. Real bad.”

“Supposedly there was more than one mushroom cloud. Supposedly the fireball incinerated everything from Long Beach to Ventura and out to Pasadena . It’s all fourth- and fifth-hand, of course. Hearsay. What we do know from what we’ve heard since is that Los Angeles just isn’t there anymore.”

“There were so many droids in LA to begin with, we heard they took it in half a day.” The small, dark woman straightens and leans forward, toward the fire. Her face carries no expression. “Lots of tech-droids, maid-droids, lots of military models at Oxnard . My brother worked for Paramount . He said they’d taken over just about everything except the acting.”

Almost imperceptibly, Kirsten’s eyes widen at the mention of Oxnard . Then the shock is gone, and she lowers her gaze and begins to eat silently. No one else seems to have noticed, their attention still on the Amazai whose brother must have been blown to subatomic particles in the blast. Not for the first time, it comes to Koda that Kirsten’s government position has made her more poker player than politician or diplomat. No glad handing, no smooth equivocation, just the calculation of a very junior predator in a pack of hyenas all older and more experienced by decades.

“So,” comes the inevitable question from across the circle, “what’s it like where you’ve been?” The speaker is an older woman, her red hair graying at her temples, introduced earlier as Fiona fia d’Linda.

The circle seems to draw closer together as Koda gives a carefully edited account of their wanderings. She makes no mention of Ellsworth or the two battles fought there, nor of Kirsten’s journey from Washington . She begins with Wyoming, gets a round of laughing applause and “Right on, sisters!” when she recounts the Elk Mountain Incident in all its dubious glory, plays up the encounter with the wolverine without making clear exactly where it occured. Then she says, watching their faces in the flickering shadows, “When Annie went into town to look for some antibiotics, she came across a wrecked women’s clinic. And back by the incinerator she found a pile of dead kids—babies, toddlers. There was a spray-painted sign on the building that said, ‘Children Murdered Here.’ And then we found something similar in Salt Lake . Like it was organized.”

Silence falls around the circle. Morgan’s eyes run around its circumference, and something apparently passes between her and her tribeswomen. She says, “The band from over by Provo did the Salt Lake clinic. Don’t know about the one in Colorado . We don’t have any contacts that far east.”

“Band?” Kirsten asks quietly. “Like this one? There are others?”

“More or less,” Morgan answers. “We’re not linked to them, but our foragers have met their foragers. News still travels.” She turns to Koda. “You liked our gate decorations?”

“Is that what you were doing in Reno ?” Bombing a clinic?”

“Among other things. We’re going out again tomorrow night. Want to come along?”

“Where to?”

” Carson City .”

Koda conjures up the map of Nevada in her head. It’s a hundred and twenty mile round trip. “Not on horseback.”

“Not on horseback,” Morgan confirms.

They need to move on. The sooner they get to San Francisco , the sooner Kirsten will have the code to shut down the droids. Time is of the essence.

Time after is of the essence, too. Morgan and her women are the kinds of allies they will need once the uprising is put down. That’s the favorable reading. The unfavorable reading is that these are the kinds of rivals they may face in reunifying the nation; splinter groups, petty nations, warlords. It has happened, disastrously, within her lifetime, in Afghanistan and Iraq , in Syria and Palestine . In either case, they need to take the measure of the Amazai, who are, apparently, a growing territorial power. “Annie?” she says quietly.

Kirsten sets down her bowl. “Let’s do it.”

A murmur of approval runs around the group, and Inga, the woman with the guitar, strums a descant on her twelve-string and begins to sing. Other voices pick up the song around the circle.

In an anarchistic garret, so dingy and so mean,Smell the pungent odor of nitroglycerine.Midst the piles of pipes and powder, and pamphlets to the skies,‘Neath the dust and dirty laundry, you can hear this mournful cry:

Oh it’s Sister Jenny’s turn to throw the bomb! (Throw the bomb!)God knows what’s become of Brother Tom. (Brother To-o-o -om.)Mama’s aim is bad, and the cops they all know Dad,So it’s Sister Jenny’s turn to throw the bomb! (Throw the bomb!)

There are knives and guns and daggers scattered on the front room floor.Look behind the sofa, you’ll find two dozen more.But Cousin Mac’s in prison, and Grandpa is long dead,And Uncle Jim has left us to become a ‘Frisco Red.

The tune is lively, and Koda finds her foot tapping of its own accord. Kirsten has begun to clap in rhythm to the chorus, and Koda takes it up, adding her own voice to the chorus.

Oh it’s Sister Jenny’s turn to throw the bomb! (Throw the bomb!)God knows what’s become of Brother Tom. (Brother To-o-o -om.)Mama’s aim is bad, and the cops they all know Dad,So it’s Sister Jenny’s turn to throw the bomb! (Throw the bomb!)

In the hall you’ll find the baby teething on some dynamite.Try to get it from her, you’ll find you’re in a fight.But she’s too young to do it, and Mama’s baking breadAnd Uncle Jake is tripping, and he’s flipping out his head.

Oh it’s Sister Jenny’s turn to throw the bomb! (Throw the bomb!)God knows what’s become of Brother Tom. (Brother To-o-o -om.)Mama’s aim is bad, and the cops they all know Dad,So it’s Sister Jenny’s turn to throw the bomb! (Throw the bomb!)

There’s a saveau tabby kitten sittin’ purrin’ by the door,And lying in the bed, there’s a smiling saboteur.But a cat’s no good at bombing, and none of us is sureThat that smiling sleeping freak is not a pig provocateur.

So it’s Sister Jenny’s turn to throw the bomb! (Throw the bomb!)God knows what’s become of Brother Tom. (Brother To-o-o-om.)Mama’s aim is bad, and the cops they all know Dad,So it’s Sister Jenny’s turn to throw the bomb! (Throw the bomb!)

The song ends on a cheer, and Morgan rises as the roar subsides. She raises her arms, her hands open, over her head. “Sisters! Shall it be so?”

“So mote it be!” thunders back, with more clapping and war whoops. Koda finds herself shouting with the rest, the spirit of the song infectious. Kirsten, her face flushed, is caught up in it, too. She catches Koda’s eye, and where there might have been embarrassment a month ago, there is now both the joy of battle and frank desire. They have come a long way, in more ways than one. And now there is but a little way to go, for life or death. Slipping her hand into Kirsten’s she says huskily. “Ready to go?”

Kirsten’s green eyes sparkle up at her. “Where you go. Always.”

*

Koda leans one shoulder against the concrete block wall and carefully eases her right leg out from under her, stretching to relieve the cramp in her thigh. The long muscle that runs from hip to knee has twisted in the hour and more she has crouched in the alley across from the Carson City Women’s Clinic, waiting for the wreck of the city to grow quiet. She grits her teeth and rubs at the knot, willing herself not to swear aloud, though obscenities in at least five languages cascade satisfyingly through her mind. Beside her Kirsten leans forward, her face a pale shadow in the moonlight that filters down between the two strips of shops that once housed medical offices, pharmacies and the odd restaurant or two. Koda shakes her head, reaching out to touch the other woman’s hand reassuringly. The cramp hurts like hell, but it will not kill her.

Not unless she makes noise and attracts the attention of the droids across the street.

There are droids at the clinic; they have seen the metal-collared guards pacing the perimeter of the grounds. Arriving on the outskirts of the city at sunset, the twelve women have picked their way cautiously from house to vacant house through a ruined residential neighborhood populated only by stray dogs, feral cats and the small prey that sustains them. From the suburbs through the business district and now down medical row, they have encountered not so much as a single human. Except, it seems, for the droids, the city stands completely abandoned. The survivors of the uprising have all fled. If, that is, there were any survivors.

The sound of boots on the clinic walkway announces the arrival of a guard droid on its rounds, and Kirsten shrinks back into the shadows at Koda’s side. Further down the alley, the other members of the raiding party crouch behind the detritus left by the city’s vanished inhabitants. A dumpster blocks half the passageway; further down, a Mercedes sedan continues its gradual descent onto its wheelrims as air seeps out of its tires. The sentry crosses Koda’s narrow angle of view. Like the clinic, like the alley, the street lies in shadow, but the moon gives enough light to show the droid in silhouette. A humanoid type, it wears a uniform of some kind, its M-16 slung casually across its back, its cap set at an angle that would pass for jaunty if it were anything to which self-assurance had any meaning. It passes, turning the corner of the building, and Koda feels the muscles in her back unravel along her spine. The next sentry should appear in five minutes; this one again in another five. They have the timing down.

Wastepaper rustles softly to her left, and Morgan steps out from behind the dumpster to crouch beside Dakota and Kirsten. “Okay,” she whispers. “Their rounds haven’t varied in almost an hour. We let the next one go by, then the one after it. Then we go in.”

“Got it,” Koda replies almost soundlessly.

“Swing wide, take the west side. I’ll go straight for the front. Inga and Sarai will head for the back.”

“Got it,” Kirsten repeats.

They have gone over the plan a dozen times back at the camp. All on one floor, the clinic has three distinct sections. The central area consists of offices and waiting rooms. Nothing interesting there except the door to be bashed in. Branching off to the east, the wards and private accommodations give onto a long corridor, rooms offset in stair-step fashion to give maximum natural light. Opposite, in the west wing, are the delivery rooms, the labs, the pharmacy and storerooms and kitchens. Koda, like the rest of the party, has the layout firmly in her mind. Break in, destroy the android staff and any humans cooperating with them, determine if any living children are present, bomb the place to flinders. Simple.

“Good,” Morgan says, touching Koda’s arm briefly, Kirsten’s more gently, lingeringly. Then she backs again into the darkness, and they wait.

The first sentry passes. Koda shifts slightly as his footsteps fade, trying again to ease her leg. Carefully she shifts the flashlight and the two small bottles that hang at her waist. Filled with gasoline and fused with rag run through holes in their metal caps, they may not be regulation grenades but will do the job at hand. From somewhere across the parking lot comes a faint whimper, a low sound that might be made by a puppy or a newborn kitten. Either is likely enough. The droids have shown no interest in any non-human beings, either for good or for ill. The shrubbery around the long, low clinic building, with its offset rooms in the patient wing, provides plenty of sheltered nooks where a pregnant animal might bear and nurse her young. The sound comes again, louder, is repeated in a broken cadence that rises in volume, finally becoming the full-throated wail of a human baby in distress.

“Goddess! There’s kids—!” someone behind her exclaims and is cut off abruptly by Morgan’s rough, “Go! Go, dammit!”

Koda levers herself up to her feet, the cramp in her leg still hampering her, and sets off across the pavement at a shambling run. Kirsten paces her, with Morgan and Beatha on their heels. Morgan and the three women in her squad peel off to the right, making for the main entrance. Sarai and Inga, backed by two more Amazai, split and make for the rear, the backpacks that hump against their shoulders bearing the explosives and the timing devices that will bring this obscenity down in a cloud of dust and mortar. Except, now, they have to find the children first, and bring them out.

Koda skids around the corner of the building, Kirsten on her heels, running flat out now that the cramp in her leg as loosened. The wailing sound comes again, fainter now with the angle of the building in between. Behind Koda, Beatha shouts, “Windows! Go for the glass!”

The side entrance was also, apparently, once the emergency entrance. As they pound up the ramp, Koda can make out the sheen off the sliding pocket doors and beyond them the second pair that leads into the wide receiving bay. She shifts her rifle in her hands as she reaches the head of the incline, ready to smash through the doors with its butt. To her shock, the doors simply slide open on their well-oiled rails, and she half stumbles into the airlock space between the two entrances, Kirsten and the other women barreling into her from behind. “Well,” says Kirsten as she regains her balance. “That’s convenient. They’re expecting us?”

“Or dead sure they’re not expecting anybody,” Beatha adds. “Whole damned atmosphere’s pretty casual.”

“Whole damned town’s pretty dead.” Koda lowers her gun and stands for a moment before the inner doors. “Trap, maybe?”

From somewhere toward the front of the building comes the sharp rattle of automatic weapons fire, punctuated by a high-pitched scream. Koda cannot tell if the sound signals pain or triumph. They do not have time to think about it, nor about a trap. Koda takes two steps forward, and the glass panels slide back.

Heat rolls over them, the pent up heat of a closed building that has stood for months in the summer sun without air conditioning. With it comes, faint but discernable, the distinctive odor of human infant, a hint of warm milk and the riper smell of unchanged diapers. And under it all, fainter still, runs the stench of blood and rotting flesh.

Kirsten coughs, a small, strangled sound. This clinic must bring back the horror of Craig, the hideous confirmation of the incinerator at Salt Lake , but there is no time to take or give comfort. Motioning the others to stillness, Koda stands for long seconds, letting her senses expand into the space around her. Hunter-sight, shaman-sight. Along with the odors that signal the presence of live infants and the underlying stink of death comes the sharper tang of alcohol, the acid-tinged smell of formaldehyde. She has no sense of physical human presence in the rooms stretched out before them; the only living things, it seems to her, must be further down the corridor, perhaps in the rooms on the other side of the main entrance at the center. But there is something, something. . . .

Something not living but conscious, waiting for them to move down the corridor. Something with death on its mind.

“All right,” she says softly, switching on her flashlight. “We’re going down that hall, checking each room as we go. They already know we’re here. There’s no point in secrecy now.”

The beam of yellow light precedes them down the corridor, sliding over a bulletin board with tattered announcements still dangling from bright red pushpins, over the fire extinguisher in its glass box on the wall, over a floor that shows hardly a mote of dust. So the facilities in this wing are still in use, which means that women are still delivering here. Rape does not need a clean floor. Neither does the butchery of infants.

A door opens off the hall to her right; a quick sweep of the room with the torch shows the a low table and a tangled witch’s cradle of black cables snaking down from the ceiling: Radiology. The door opposite remains closed and locked; playing the light through the narrow, wire-reinforced window, Koda sees only shelves of neatly ranged bottles and boxes. Beatha, on tip-toe behind her, whispers, “Pharmacy?”

Koda nods. “We need to come back here and collect as much as we can before we blow the place up.”

On the other side of the hall, Kirsten leans into a room whose door stands ajar. She says softly, “Koda. Over here.”

“Over here” is a delivery room. Koda sweeps the light around its tiled floor and walls, all spotlessly kept still. An autoclave stands on a counter to one side, its LED bright crimson in the semi-darkness. She touches it and draws her hand sharply away. Still hot, still in use. Carefully she unlocks and lifts the lid; forceps, clamps, hemostats, scalpels, all neatly ranged inside, ready for use. Kirsten, staring down into the sterilizer as if she is gazing into the pit of hell, says in a flat voice. “So what do they do with the women after they deliver? Send them back to the34 jails to breed again?”

“Are they even that organized?” Beatha asks. The controlled substances cabinet swings open to her touch, not locked or even latches. Androids, after all, cannot become addicted.

“We’d better check the incinerator out back,” Koda says grimly. “Look for adult remains, too.”

Despite the sterile atmosphere, the stink of decay is stronger here. Nothing in the room seems to be the source of it. Koda plays the light over the acoustic tiles of the ceiling; it is possible, just possible, that a possum or other uninvited resident has gotten into the roof space or the air conditioning ducts and died. But if that were the case, here on the downside of summer, there would be flies. There are none. “Something,” she says quietly, “something—”

“Is dead,” Kirsten finishes for her. “Somewhere close.”

“Next room,” Beatha says. “Let’s try there.”

The smell hits them full force as they push open the door to the adjoining examination room. Kirsten gives a small, strangled choking sound; Beatha gags, covering her mouth and nose with her free hand, sweeping the room with the muzzle of her rifle with the other. Nothing.

At first glance, the small space seems as clean as the delivery room. Table, counter, blood pressure cuff dangling from the wall, oxygen tank, all spotless. A steel trash receptacle stands by the table, its lid down. The edge of a red plastic bag shows under the edge of the top. A five-gallon can, it might hold bloody bandages, used dressings, discarded gloves.

Except that the room is otherwise spotless. Except that they have seen no humans that might need such things. Certainly no one would walk into a place like this as if it were a neighborhood med station, wanting a sprained ankle bandaged or a cut stitched.

Bloody bandages. Used dressings. Discarded gloves.

A very small human body.

Steeling herself, Koda crosses the room and, not giving herself time to think, steps on the pedal of the receptacle. The smell pours upward out the can, and she turns away for a moment, choking on the stench and on the realization that there can now be no possible mistake about what they found in the incinerator in Salt Lake City .

The light shows her a small, rounded bundle, the curve of head and shoulders and updrawn knees clear under the plastic. Leaning down, she slips a hand between legs and belly; the flesh beneath, even in the heat, is chill to the touch. Dead some time, then.

“Is it—?” Kirsten asks.

“Yeah. It is.” Koda lets the lid fall. No time now to examine the corpse.

The rest of the corridor appears clear. No sound comes from the other side of the building, the other women presumably going there from room to room as they are doing here in the east wing. At the double swinging doors that lead from the service wing into the reception area, Koda pauses, hunching down below the eye-level ports. The other women range themselves behind her against the wall, hardly breathing. Koda concentrates on the small sounds that come to her through the wood and metal; a voice, not so distant now in the far corridor; a whimper that might be a living child; the clink of metal on metal as someone shifts her gear. She can distinguish nothing that she can identify as distinctively android.

“They’re there,” Kirsten says suddenly.

“What? Who?”

“The androids. They’re in the center section.” Kirsten moves forward to crouch with Koda beside the doors. One hand is raised to her temple, her fingers white-knuckled in the light of the flash. “I can hear them.”

“What—? How the hell?”

A downward slash of Koda’s hand cuts off Beatha’s question as effectively as if she had slapped the woman. “Implants,” Kirsten answers. “I’m deaf.”

“How many?” Dakota whispers.

“Three, I think. One near the front door. The other two further back.”

“Okay, then. Everybody lie flat. Let’s do a little differential diagnosis here.” Koda stretches out on the tiles, her small party face-down behind her, and, with the muzzle of her rifle, gently nudges one of the swinging panels open an inch or so. Withering machine gun fire answers her, shattering the lexan panes and tearing through the upper portion of the door where human heads and torsos would be if they were not plastered to the corridor floor. About five feet up on the walls, the light from the torch shows long gashes in the hospital-green paneling. From across the reception area, then, comes a high yell of “Amazai! Amazai!” and a cacophony of fire breaks out, the Amazai firing into the reception area and droids answering.

Koda levers her feet under her, pulling one of the incendiaries loose from her belt. “High-low, Beatha!” she shouts. “Annie, cover us!”

With that she kicks the door wide, crouching low, and as Kirsten’s gun sprays the room, she lights the fuse and lobs the container of homemade napalm at the nearest shape, a droid with an M-16 at its shoulder, firing down toward the bottom of the ward door opposite. It takes the android on the shoulder, and flame spills down its back and flowers up through its dynel hair and over its optical sensors, where it will cling and burn through to the circuits below. Her second, arcing through the air in a fiery pinwheel with Beatha’s, lands at its feet, sending a column of flame up its uniform trousers. Others spin across the room from the opposite door, landing at the droids’ feet, taking one in the face. And still they continue to fire, wheeling blindly as the bullets spray from their M-16’s, eerily silent as the incendiaries burn away their uniforms to expose the metal plates and sensor arrays below.

From across the room a human voice, Morgan’s Koda thinks, yells, “Back! Back off!”

Koda snatches at Kirsten’s elbow, pulling her back, and with Beatha they retreat again down the corridor at a crouching run. Behind them comes the concussion of two explosions, not the main charges by the sound of it, but a pair of grenades as the roar echoes in the confined space and shakes the walls, bringing with it the crash of falling light fixtures and the shatter of breaking glass.

Silence falls. Something hisses and whirrs overhead, and the sprinkler system sends sprays of water down onto them. Koda flinches with the sudden shock of it, then runs a hand through the wetness and over her face. “Think they got ‘em?” That is Beatha, her normally pitched voice a novelty after the cacophony of a moment before.

“Sounds like,” Kirsten answers. “I don’t hear them anymore.”

Behind them the door pushes open, and Inga appears, her face and hands soot-blackened. “Ten minutes till we set the main charges. Morgan says trip off anything that looks useful and get out.”

“Gotcha,” Koda says. “Pharmacy. Let’s go.”

Fifteen minutes later, the raiding party regroups across the street. The charges are laid and timed. Koda shoulders a trash bag full of medicines, swept at random from the shelves, Beatha and Kirsten two more. Morgan, her face and hands blackened from scrabbling through the wreckage of the entranceway, holds a baby perhaps two years old, her head on the Amazai’s shoulder. Sarai, her face stained with blood from a cut on her forehead, holds a cellphone in an equally bloodied hand. “Ready?” she asks?

“Anything else?” Morgan asks, looking around the small circle of women in the moonshadowed darkness. “Because once that signal goes, we move. We don’t stop for anything till we get back to the Jeeps and we don’t stop after that till we’re back home.”

“Didn’t you want to check the incinerator, Dakota? For remains?” Inga looks up from where she is stuffing medical instruments into her backpack that has lately carried several pounds of plastique.

Koda shakes her head. “No time. No need.”

“No need?”

“Later,” Kirsten says.

Morgan’s glance runs over her sharply. But she says. “All right. Trigger the timer, Sarai. Let’s move!”

They cover the distance between the clinic and the parked vehicles on the town’s outskirts in a tenth of the time it took them going in. Half-running, keeping up a steady trot with fingers ready on the triggers of their guns, they arrive at the abandoned car dealership in just over ten minutes. They have met nothing and no one, only a pack of dogs that crosses their path a few blocks from the clinic, just another band of hunters in the wilderness that has claimed the city. At the lot, they pile into the Jeeps, Koda driving one with Kirsten beside her, Morgan and Beatha in the back.

“Wait.”

Koda’s fingers freeze on the key in the ignition, and she looks up to see Sarai holding one hand at shoulder level, her cell phone in the other. “Ten,” says Sarai. “Nine. Eight. . .. Three. Two.” Her hand comes down in a slashing gesture of triumph. “One.”

From a mile and a half away comes a rumble like a freight train, like an earthquake. Above the roofs of buildings still left standing, red stains the night sky, a black billow rising to blot out the moon. Koda, leaning over the back of her seat to get a better view, sees Morgan’s eyes narrow in triumph, a smile like a sickle blade touching her lips. She runs a hand over the baby’s back, soothing her as the noise rolls over them. “Good job,” says the Amazai Queen. “Let’s go.”

CHAPTER SIXTY

THE SUN STANDS halfway to noon when Koda emerges from the showers. Her body feels clean and polished, despite the cold water. The errant children of Israel might have yearned for the fleshpots of Egypt in their wanderings—she was a sophomore in high school before one of the nuns explained that that meant stew pots, to Koda’s great disappointment—but Dakota Rivers would be happy with a hot shower. Not that cool water is a terrible hardship on the last day of July. She turns her face up to the warmth, swinging her still-wet braid over her shoulder to settle against her back. Kirsten, up and bathed earlier, is most likely to be wherever there is a late breakfast to be found, and Asi with her.

She sets off up the road to the stone circle, which seems to be both dining hall and meeting place. The cabins she passes stand empty, neatly made-up cots visible through the screen mesh, clothes poles hung meagerly with jeans and shirts and jackets. Several bear the crudely drawn images of large black birds, apparently intended to be ravens. Ravens on some, she corrects herself as she passes one with a saucer-faced raptor with eyes almost as big, owls on others. Both are sacred to warrior-goddesses, ravens to the Morrigan of Celtic legend, owls to Athena. There are no doves, which does not surprise her.

It doesn’t disappoint her, either. She and Kirsten and Morgan had sat up until well past midnight attempting to riddle out the puzzle of the murders. Item: droids kidnap women. Item: droids breed women, presumably with the purpose of producing babies. So far, understandable to a point. Dakota has lived in ranch country almost all her life. Most livestock eventually find their way into one of those fleshpots, even the breeders when their reproductive value is exhausted. Even horses, on many operations, ultimately wind up in an ALPO can. No puzzle there. It’s what comes next that is the problem.

Item: the droids kill and discard infants and toddlers. They are not, clearly, consuming long pig. Just as clearly they are not supplying anyone else’s depraved taste for the same.

Which leaves the burning question why.

A medical expert, a cyber expert, a legal expert should have been able to put together some hypothesis, but nothing they could postulate held water. The only thing that made sense was sheer terror. More than one human conqueror had pursued a strategy of killing enemy men, raping enemy women, slaughtering enemy children. But that doesn’t work, either. They’ve made no effort to set up a government. In fact, they seem content to let the rest of us be, at least for the time being.

Most of the rest of us, she amends. They still want Kirsten.

Bad.

Koda shakes her head to clear it. Cold shower or not, she still craves caffeine. Onward. Strategizing can wait another half hour.

On her left, she passes the deserted stables and the picket line. Only half the horses range along it this morning, including the two left on the hillside with the patrol a day and a half ago. Some of the Amazai, then must be out beating the bounds, guarding their borders, replacing sisters who have returned. But patrols would not account for the near-emptiness of the camp.

As she tops the rise that leads to the circle, which, goddess willing, will lead to coffee, a wolf-whistle rings out, clear and loud. “Yo, babe!”

Ripe as the back bayous of Louisiana, the voice and the whistle belong to the unseen Amazai from the mountain patrol. She crouches now beside the firepit, carefully setting a spit onto a pair of freshly-cut greenwood uprights. Even in that position, it is clear that woman is taller than Koda by an inch or so, and wider, as Themunga would say, by half an axe-handle. Her tank top shows off biceps and deltoids bulging like melons under her deeply tanned skin, a fair proportion of which sports tattoos in blue and green and red. Peacock feathers, beautifully drawn, cover her upper arms, and her pale hair, worn in a straggling braid, does nothing to conceal their counterparts that sweep up the sides of her neck. Kirsten, seated on the stone Morgan had occupied the night of their arrival, quietly sips coffee, hiding a three-cornered smile behind her mug. At her feet, Asimov grins up at Koda. No help there.

“Good morning,” Koda says equably. “I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced.”

The woman gives a bark of laughter and straightens from her work. She extends a hand easily as big as Tacoma’s. “Dale. Dale fia d’LouAnn. Pleased t’meetcha.”

“Dakota Rivers. Likewise. Is there any breakfast left?”

“There’s coffee and some fruit and bread back at the old main office. Nobody cooked this morning. Too much to do to get ready for tonight.”

“Tonight?”

“Lughnasa.”

“Loo—?”

“Lugnasa,” Dale repeats. “Lammas. Harvest.”

“Oh,” says Koda, and to Kirsten, “Can I have some of your coffee? Please?”

Kirsten hands the cup to her, and she subsides onto the rock beside the smaller woman. The coffee is still hot, and she swallows gratefully. “Gods,” she says. “It’ll be a terrible day when we finally run out of this stuff.”

Dale only shrugs. “There’s still coffee trees in South America—droids’d have no reason to destroy ‘em. Whoever manages to go after it and bring some back’ll make a fortune in trade, eventually.”

“Is that an Amazai project?” Kirsten asks quietly.

The big woman narrows her eyes. “Maybe. Eventually.”

Which means that this band has allies, is territorially ambitious, or both. Koda lets the thought wash about in her brain for a moment, along with the caffeine. It also means that survivors are beginning to live with the idea that “normal” is irreparably different than the “normal” of nine months ago. She hands the mug back to Kirsten. “So where is everybody?”

“Some’s out hunting. Some’s down at the farm. Some’s over at the Lake.”

“We’re invited,” Kirsten says, draining the coffee.

They need to move on. They also need to make the beginning of an alliance with these women, just in case they survive. Koda nods. ” Okay. Anything we can do to help?”

Dale grins at them sardonically. “Just about everything’s covered. If you want to do something, though, you can go pick some flowers.”

“Pick—”

“Unless you want a harder job?”

“That’s okay,” Kirsten says, standing up abruptly. “Flowers it is.”

Koda gives her an outraged glance. But the pleading look in the green eyes forestalls speech. “Flowers it is,” she repeats. “But coffee first.”

Two hours later, Koda wades through Indian paintbrush grown knee-high, carefully cutting the blossoms and setting them into a bucket partly filled with water. Kirsten, invisible over a fold of the mountainside, is working a high meadow carpeted in purple gentians and deep-blue iris. Koda’s own pail is near full now, overflowing with blossoms in autumn colors: red, vermilion, orange-and-yellow, gold. In among them she has placed tall spikes of blue and pink lupine, the wolf-flower. The Lammas feast marks the changing of the year. With the harvest, the year turns from summer to autumn, even though the days remain hot and long. It is a time of partings, looking toward the fallow season of winter before rebirth in spring. So: wolf flower, in honor of Wa Uspewikakiyape; in honor of the goddess in her form of hunter and defender. In the clear blue above, a hawk circles, rust glinting off her tail where the sun strikes it. Wiyo has kept her distance from the human camp, but has not strayed far. As Koda watches, she seems to pause in mid-flight, her wings backing air. Then she folds them and plunges like a meteor, her feathers gleaming copper as she streaks toward earth and her prey.

Koda watches for a moment, then hefts the bucket, testing its weight. That ought to be enough for one bucketful. They need enough for altar, “the quarters,” whatever those are, and the feast table. Four pails should do it. Time to take this one back to where the horses are tethered and get the second.

Koda finds their mounts ground-tied under a stand of balsam pine, happily browsing the undergrowth. Kirsten’s full pail sits on a stone not far away, overflowing with rich purples and blues. She sets her own beside it and runs her gaze over the high meadow that occupies a shelf of the mountainside here. Nothing. Nothing but the flowers, a pair of swallowtails sipping at the deep cups of the gentians, bees gathering pollen against the winter. No Kirsten.

“Kirsten?” she calls. “Kirsten!”

No answer.

“Kirsten!” All right. No need to panic, Koda lectures herself. She’s probably just off in the woods for a moment. “Kirsten! Asi! Asi! Answer me!”

From twenty yards away, deep among the flowers, comes a high-pitched yelp of greeting, and Asi’s face appears, eyes bright, tongue lolling in a canine grin. Beside him, just barely visible, Koda can make out a paler head, turned away. Koda can feel her heart skip a bit as it brakes, draws a deep, deliberately calming breath. “Kirsten?”

Still no response. Asi, though, comes bounding toward her, leaping among the tall blossoms like a fox hunting in high grass. Kirsten turns then and sees her, a smile lighting her face. Koda checks the impulse to run and instead approaches slowly, keeping that smile in the center of her vision. There is no danger. Kirsten is not hurt. Asi passes her, offering his head for a scratch, then taking himself off under the trees with the horses.

Tactful of him.

“Kirsten?” Koda says again. But she does not answer, only smiles and beckons. Old legends run through Dakota’s memory, mortals taken by the elves, who must bear their sojourn under the hill in silence or remain forever apart from the human world. And among her own people, there are old tales of warriors seduced by silent women in the hills who vanish with the morning, leaving behind only the imprints of a deer’s hooves.

“Kirsten?”

For answer, Kirsten raises one hand to her temple, and suddenly Koda understands. She has seen Kirsten retreat into silence before, knows by now that it is a kind of refuge for one long solitary. More than most, Koda understands. A shaman knows the silence and its power. And last night, gods know, was enough to send anyone bolting for sanctuary.

For a moment she simply stands looking down at Kirsten, at her hair pale gold in the afternoon sun, her skin golden, too, with the long days and weeks of their quest. “Nun lila hopa,” she says without sound, letting her mouth form the words, smiling when she sees the glint of understanding in Kirsten’s eyes. She kneels before her, then, forming Kirsten’s name in silence, and again, Nun lila hopa.

For answer, Kirsten draws Koda’s mouth down to her own. The kiss lengthens, deepens, the taste of summer sweet on her lips and tongue. Breathless, Koda draws away slightly and raises her head, threading her fingers through the pale strands of Kirsten’s hair where it lies along her shoulder, smoothing it back. She slips her hand inside the collar of Kirsten’s shirt, running her thumb across the base of her throat, feeling the pulse jump under her fingers. The other woman’s shoulders are hard as old wood, the muscles knotted.

There is a cure for that, one she knows. Koda bends to lay her lips to the pulse-point. Winan mitawa. She forms the words without sound.

My woman. My wife. My love.

Strange, not to say it.

Her eyes smouldering under long lashes, green as the grass, Kirsten leans back onto the crushed stems and leaves about her. It is invitation and promise at once, familiar by now yet new each time they come together. Rising, Koda sheds her clothing, spreading her shirt and jeans on the ground. Kirsten’s hands go to her own shirt, but Dakota stops her and, kneeling beside her lover, slowly looses the buttons, letting her hands linger with each motion as she spreads the cloth, brushing Kirsten’s breasts, their nipples already hard, tracing their curves from shoulder to breastbone and back again. Koda slides her hands lower, below the belt of Kirsten’s jeans, brushing the high arches of her hipbones and the hollow of her thighs. Hooking her thumbs into the band, then, she slides the garment free.

She turns and bends to kiss her lover once more. Fire runs through her blood, but the time is not yet. There is another need that must be satisfied. She leans back and with a gentle touch to her shoulders turns Kirsten to lie on her belly. Koda kneels astride her hips, and beginning at her neck, works her hands in tight circles down the column of her spine. She has no oils for this. Instead she crushes an iris blossom between her palms and rubs its subtle fragrance into Kirsten’s skin with each stroke. Systematically she works the stress from the lithe body, feeling the knotted muscles give way under her hands, the massage taking on a rhythm of its own in time with her heart and breath. The change comes gradually, the tightness of stress and exhaustion becoming tension of another kind. Kirsten’s skin warms under her touch, her blood humming as it runs warm just below the surface. She stretches luxuriantly, almost cat-like, rising onto her elbows and letting her head fall loosely back. She does not speak, letting her body communicate her satisfaction for her.

With a final sweep from hip to shoulder, Koda leans forward and lays a kiss on the back of her neck, then blows softly at the short hairs, still not grown out, at her nape. She feels the shiver as it goes through her lover’s body, feels it deepens to pulse within her own flesh. The fire sings through her, spreading from her belly up her spine to quicken her heartbeat, drawing the skin tight over her breasts, tautening her nipples. She slips from where she kneels across Kirsten’s body, sliding down to lie beside her. The desire for words has left her. She raises Kirsten’s hand to her lips, kissing the palm and wrist. The hand settles between her breasts, then, pressing gently. With a questioning look at her love, Koda settles onto her back. Kirsten kisses her once more, then rises to kneel above her, slipping one knee between Koda’s thighs.

Another kiss, then Kirsten’s fingers brush over Dakota’s face, tracing her forehead, her eyes, her mouth. Her lips follow, pressing against her eyelids, returning to close them again when Koda glances upward. She shuts her eyes, then, giving herself up to touch and sound as Kirsten has given herself to sight and touch. Yet she is not in darkness. The sun beats down directly overhead, and its brilliance shows her red-tinged shadows still, a hint of movement as Kirsten bends over her, letting her hair, fine as cornsilk, trail over Koda’s face and throat.

I would know you in the silence between the stars. The thought is her own, and not. And with it comes another. I see you in the darkness, like a flash of lightning. And the darkness cannot hide you.

Not now. Not ever.

Koda raises her hands to lay them on Kirsten’s shoulders, letting her fingers trail down over her breasts. Faint among the hum of bees, she can hear her lover’s breathing, coming faster now. The fall of Kirsten’s hair sweeps again over her throat, her own breasts, its touch delicate as a summer breeze. Warm lips follow it, then, suckling gently. At the same time, Kirsten’s knee moves between her legs, parting them, and Koda opens to her. Kirsten draws away, sliding back, and Koda feels the brush of her fingers in the hair above her sex, sliding downward to the entrance to her body. The fingers trail upward, lingering on the delicate nub at the apex, and Koda’s belly tightens, her thighs growing taut. Kirsten parts the lips, then, shifting to lie above Koda, center to center. Her hips circle slowly, building pressure. Flame licks down her legs, up her spine. Point counterpoint to her own, Kirsten’s breath come in short gasps that punctuate the silence. The fire runs along her nerves, through her veins, until it seems she must be consumed, the rhythm of her lover’s movements driving it through her body in waves. Her heart hammers against her breastbone, and there is no air any more, nothing now but the flame that owns her flesh. Sound builds within her, seeking release, but she stifles it in her throat until finally it breaks free and she comes, the pulse of Kirsten’s release matching her own. Spent, her lover sinks down into her arms, her skin slicked with sweat beneath the ripening sun.

Cante mitawa.

Now and forever.

They come down out of the hills at sunset. The sky over the mountains burns gold and crimson, its fire sheeting over the surface of the water that lies still in the calm evening. Koda pauses, taking in the sweep of the lake from north to south, its whole surface struck to bronze in the fading light. The cries of birds going to roost along its rocks, gulls and terns like pale ghosts as they skim above the shore, come to them where they stand on the last slope of the foothills. A chill runs over Koda’s skin that has little to do with the coming of the night. Something old and unnamed stirs within her—a memory, a fear, something that has been or will be, she cannot tell. Glancing at Kirsten beside her, she sees unspoken recognition in her face, something that calls to her out of time, out of the confines of common space.

Unbidden, there comes again the image of a pale head and bronzed, flashing arms above the waves of the Aegean, wine-dark as the combers roll over it to shore. A breeze ghosts by, and it seems to lift a strand of hair from Kirsten’s shoulder, only that shoulder is level with her own, and the hair is black as a raven’s wing. Time runs oddly in this place, sacred to the Mother of All Life under all the names by which she has been known.

“Ina,” Koda murmurs. “Wakan.”

Beside her, acting as their guide, Dale nods. “Mother Earth. This is Her place.”

Far from shore, an island looms dark against the mountains behind it. Huge white shapes circle it, riding the darkening air on outstretched wings, necks tucked against their keelbones, bills deep copper in the lingering light. Kirsten tilts her head back to watch as they circle, sixty of them, perhaps seventy, in a trailing V formation. “Pelicans?” she says tentatively. “They look like something from a different time, like sailing ships.”

“They breed here,” Dale answers her unspoken question. “We’ll be going around to the other side where we won’t disturb them.”

As she speaks, the sun dips behind mountains. In the thickening shadows, a light breaks out at the top of the huge rock formation that gives the Lake its name, a pyramid rising from the near shore some four hundred feet above the surface. It flickers a moment, steadies, then flares into a flame that leaps toward the sky. A dark figure, silhouetted against it, cries out, “Who comes? Name yourselves!”