Unknown - The_Growing_589064

“You take Asi out for a few minutes. I’ll put some water on the stove.”

Kirsten padded away to her small room at the end of the corridor, while Koda gathered the quilt and laid it across a chair in the bedroom. From the hall came the thump and scramble of paws on the floorboards, followed by a high-pitched yelp from Asimov. Another sharp bark was followed by Kirsten’s voice. “All right, boy. All right, I’m coming.”

Wrapping her robe around her, Koda made her way to the kitchen, setting the coffeemaker to brew and two large stew pots to boil. It was no substitute for a working water heater, but the bath would at least be warm. From outside, Asi bayed like the hound of the Baskervilles, and she turned to look out the kitchen window just in time to see a squirrel scramble up an oak, just leafing out, to perch just out of the big dog’s reach, chittering and jerking his tail in outrage. “Watch the sign language there, bro,” Koda murmured as Asi took up station at the base of the tree, apparently content to watch. Kirsten, her head thrown back, laughed at his pretensions—“Some hunter, oh yeah,” and tugged gently on his collar to distract him.

When the water boiled, Koda drew half a cold tub full, poured in a potful and added a handful of lavender bathsalts. Steam rose briefly, its sharp sweet scent dissipating in the cool air. Setting the other pot and its hot water on the tile floor, Koda dropped her robe and stepped into the tub just as the door flew open and Asi pounded into the kitchen in search of his bowl. Kirsten’s steps followed, more quietly as she called, “Dakota? I’m back.”

“In here,” she answered. “Come on in. The water’s fine.”

In this spring wracked by the aftermath of destruction and wanton death, Koda knows that a small green shoot has pushed its way up out of her own grief, growing toward the light. Igmu will soon return to the ways of her kind, hunting free to sustain herself and, by summer’s end, her kittens. The coyote they will release near the place where Manny and Andrews found him; he is a social creature and will rejoin his pack. The mother wolf and her cub are a more difficult problem. Their former shelter is now a tomb, and Wanblee Wapka and Tacoma have gone this morning to build Wa Uspewikakiyape’s burial scaffold nearby. Somewhere near the river, perhaps, or closer to home, near Wanblee Wapka’s village. His folk will respect them.

The shape of the wolf grows clearer as Dakota narrows the snout, cutting shallow lines for whiskers, notching the natural curve of the stick just below the ears to show the ruff. She turns the carving in her hands, letting the clear light flow over the smooth length of the branch where she has stripped the bark. No one would ever mistake her whittling for sculpture, not even connoisseurs of “primitive” art, if any are left. But it is clearly a representation of a wolf, and it is made with love. And that is all that matters.

Gently she rubs a thumb over the muzzle. I will miss you, my friend. Yet the grief has lost its sharpness; the pain no longer tears at her, no longer threatens to plunge her into that echoing void that had swirled about her when she had found him dying. For the next year she will be the keeper of Wa Uspewikakiyapi’s spirit, offering her strength to him as he makes his journey along the Blue Road, treading the path of stars. In the back of her mind, only half-acknowledged, lives a small, selfish hope that he will choose to turn again to life on Ina Maka. For me, yes, but not just for me. For Ate and Fenton and Maggie and Tacoma and Kirsten, and for the folk who aided her on her way. For all of us who must somehow remake the world without a pattern. Especially now, for Kirsten.

A frown settles between Koda’s brows. The world had intruded on them too soon, too insistently. There would be no honeymoon in the Greek Isles this time.

Kirsten’s happiness this morning had lit her from within, her eyes bright, her skin almost translucent. When the warm water turned first tepid and then cool, she clung to Koda as they both stood under the still-frigid spray of the shower, burying her face in Dakota’s breasts and muttering something about “mountain runoff.” Ambushed for the second time by Kirsten’s sense of humor, they laughed and pressed even more closely together “just so we don’t get hypothermia.”

The mood held through breakfast. She and Kirsten had bacon frying and eggs ready to tip into the pan when the men arrived as predicted, Wanblee Wapka trailed hopefully by Tacoma and Manny. If she had not been watching for it, she would not have caught the sudden light in Wanblee Wapka’s eyes when he stepped over the threshold and saw them standing side by side, doing nothing, really, more intimate than rolling and cutting biscuits. Yet that was enough. Kirsten, too had seen. She had blushed and become suddenly absorbed in greasing a baking sheet, and Wanblee Wapka’s eyes had danced..

The conversation when they sat down to breakfast ranged from Base politics to horse breeding, carefully skirting anything more intimate. Wanblee Wapka said casually, pushing scrambled eggs onto his fork with half a biscuit, “Chunksi, if it’s all right with you, I’d like to try Wamniyomni with one or two of Wakinyan Luta’s fillies this spring. Unless you want to breed them back to their sire?”

“The big black? Sure, that ought to work out well.” To Kirsten she added, “His name means ‘tornado.’ He’s that fast, and just about as sweet-tempered.”

“He’s not mean,” Tacoma observed, “just—independent.”

“And how many times has he tossed you? Just out of good-natured high spirits, of course?”

“We’ve come to terms.” Tacoma smiled, including Kirsten. “He’ll never be a ‘ladies’ horse,’”—his long fingers made mocking quotation marks in the air—“but then, there aren’t any ‘ladies’ in our family. Thank the gods.”

Dakota had swatted him with her napkin, “And if you ever call me that,”(swat again) “I’ll have” (swat) “ your hair.”

“Ow. Kindly remember I’m a wounded hero, here.” Tacoma raised an arm to defend himself, laughing. “Kirsten, save me!”

“And have you call me names? Hit him again, Dakota.”

“Kirsten, have you ever had a horse of your own?” Wanblee Wapka interrupted the horseplay, his eyes crinkling. “I’ve got a grey filly coming up, one of Wamniyomni’s, that would suit you.”

Manny, oddly silent, had been following the conversation like a spectator at a tennis match, his head turning from side to side. A long, hard look at Tacoma brought no help, only his cousin’s increased concentration on his plate. His brows knitted into a frown, he finally said, “I don’t get it. You look like the cat who ate the canary, Leksi.”

Wanblee Wapka regarded him mildly. “You and Tacoma are the cats, Tonskaya. And this,” he said, spearing a bite of ham with his fork, “was a pig.”

Half an hour later, Kirsten had returned to the endless coil of binary code streaming across her computer screen, running now on batteries as much as possible, the lilt gone from her voice and her step. For the first time, Koda allows herself to wonder what they will do if the code is not there at all. If it is nowhere to be found.

And the answer to that is what they have to do, beating the druids back and back again until they have no more strength and no more resources. And then what?

But she refuses to follow the thought. For all the dead; for Wa Uspewikakiyapi; for the living yet to come, failure is not an option. She runs her fingers again over the carving in her hand. It is as finished as she can make it. Rising, she lingers for a moment in the glade, absorbing its peace, its faint hint of Kirsten’s presence. Then she makes her way back toward the clinic and the hard parting still facing her this day.