Task complete, she pulls out the blanket and wraps the pup carefully within its folds, murmuring nonsense words to him in Lakota. He whimpers softly, oh so softly, and collapses against her, completely spent. She feels frantically for a pulse, and sags in relief when it is there—too weak, too thready, but there.
“C’mon, boy,” she whispers, tucking the final fold about his tiny, defenseless body. “Let’s get you home to your Ina.”
*
Kirsten stands outside of the den, eyeing the helter-skelter jumble of boulders with deep suspicion. Her dream (and what else could it possibly be? She refuses to entertain the notion that even her hallucinations would feature a talking raccoon with an attitude problem.) comes back to her in soft-filter, like the camera lenses they used to use on movie stars. Back when there were movie stars.
“She needs your help. Go to her. Go to her now.”
She eyes the rockpile again. Is that a rumble she hears? A shifting of stones presaging a total collapse of the structure? Is this why she is needed?
“No,” she whispers, horrified.
Another image flashes before her, this one in sharp, stark lines and bold tones of red and black.
The outcropping is collapsing, drawing down unto itself in cracks of thunder and stifling dust that chokes her as she screams Dakota’s name into the blackness of the night.
Her hands. Blood on her hands. Her palms scraped raw, flesh hanging in tatters as she desperately pulls rock after rock away this charnel house.
“She needs your help.”
Her voice, hoarse and ragged, screaming Dakota’s name over and over and over again.
“Go to her.”
Her lungs. On fire. Sending out pluming jets of vapored, panicked breath.
“Go to her now.”
Her heart. Thundering in her chest. Fear and a savage, piercing grief fueling its frenetic pace.
“No,” she whispers. And “no” again.
And almost launches herself to the moon as Dakota materializes in front of her like a wraith from the mist.
Her face is still harsh-planed, but her eyes have softened a bit from their earlier rage. Kirsten suspects—when she can think again—that that softening is a result of the tiny bundle she holds so tenderly in her large hands.
Her heart rate slows, though grudgingly. She doesn’t like shocks. Never has. And she’s had more than enough to last several lifetimes. Somehow, though, she doesn’t think Dakota will appreciate the sentiment. She’ll have to remember to tell her later.
“How—how many?”
“One,” Koda replies tersely. “The rest were dead.”
“Oh god…I’m so sorry.”
“’s alright. Nothing anyone can do about it now.” Though her words seem offhand, her tone is clipped, each word as precise as a knife cut.
“Still….”
Dakota’s eyes harden. “Let’s get this one back to his mother.”
The pair takes only a couple of steps before a screeching call splits the silence of the night. Both look up, two pairs of keen eyes tracing a shadow against the shadows, flying low over their heads and landing in a tree some forty yards distant.
Kirsten finds herself suddenly cradling the tiny wolf pup as Koda stares deeply into her eyes. “Go on ahead. I’ll be there shortly.”
“But—!”
She finds herself talking to air.
Dakota has disappeared.
“Oh no you don’t, Ms. Bossy,” Kirsten mutters half under her breath. “You forget who you’re talking to here, I think.” She looks down at the bundle in her hands. “Hang on for a little longer, little guy. I have something I need to do.”
*
The deep black of the night parts like a cloak before her. She sprints, full out, toward the tree, keen eyes already spotting the thick chain wrapped around its gnarled base. Wiyo screeches again. Koda looks up at her briefly before rounding the broad trunk, intently following the chain links as they stretch off to a shadowed spot not ten feet away.
A thick, frost tipped pelt comes into view, and her heart shudders in her chest. “Oh no,” she moans, low and deep. “No. Please, Ina, no.”
Her soft prayer goes unheeded, as she knows it must. Tears sting her eyes. She wipes them away with a savage swipe of her arm, not noticing the pain as the stiff cloth of her jacket rakes across her wind-chapped cheeks.
He lays there in his own filth and blood. The one her brothers call Igmu Tanka Kte — “Cougar Killer”— for his fierce defense of his pack from a hungry mountain lion slinking down from the hills in search of easy prey.
The one who has visited her dreams and visions for years.
Who has shared with her bits his life and his ways.
The proud Alpha.
The one she calls Wa Uspewicakiyapi.
Teacher.
His rear left leg, half gnawed through in a desperate bid for freedom, is caught in a steel-jawed trap—the kind that has been illegal for decades. His soft underbelly is flayed, the skin hanging in flaps, blackened from frostbite and infection. His ruff is spiky with dried blood and she can only imagine the terrible wounds hidden from her view beneath the thick pelt.
He is mortally wounded, and yet lives still, bound to life by some strength of will that she can only wonder at. His chest moves weakly, sporadically, pulling in air he soon will no longer need. When she squats carefully by his massive head, he looks up at her through eyes that are glassy and exhausted and utterly calm, as if her presence by his side had always been expected.
Perhaps even anticipated.
“Hello, old friend,” she murmurs in the language of her ancestors, reaching out to gently stroke his proud muzzle. “I’m so sorry.” Tears fall now, and she allows their passage, watching as his image trebles before her, fracturing even as her heart fractures. “So…so sorry.”
Feeling the tentative, weak touch of his tongue on her hand, she shakes her head, blinking away the tears and clearing her vision. His eyes, likewise, have cleared, and she finds herself drawn into them, drawn as if bound by a puppeteer’s strings.
In those eyes, she can see visions; bits and pieces of his life, and hers, and the bond that draws them together closer than kin.
She slips free of herself, and for the last time they run together, unfettered and uncaring, into the nightwind, into the hills and valleys of the home they share as the moon, ripe and full, watches on from her perch above. They run for the joy of running, for the freedom of their souls, for their fierce love of the Earth and all who live upon it.
Then, at last, after what feels like hours, she finds herself gently released and in her own body once again.
Breaking herself free from his gaze, she leans down and touches a soft kiss to his head, then whispers into his ear, “Tóksha aké wanchinyankin kte. Wakhan Thanka nici un.”
And, not allowing herself to think, she moves her hands to his now-fragile neck, and twists.
His spine snaps. His chest settles slowly, and his eyes grow distant and fixed to a point only he can know.
All of her grief, all of her rage, washes through her with the force of a tidal wave, bowing her back and arching her neck to the uncaring sky. She howls in a voice that none would recognize as human, and all would fear.
Still howling, she jumps to her feet and pries the brutal trap from his leg by brute force. Grabbing the chain, she hurls the trap against the tree again and again and again, screaming incoherently, eyes flashing, glowing as if lit from the internal fires of her rage. The tree shakes, bark flying from its trunk in great spraying chunks.
Kirsten, who has forced herself to stand by and watch even as tears stream down her face unnoticed, finally breaks free of her paralysis, and steps forward. Only to dance back as the trap comes perilously close to bashing her head in. She stands for a moment, undecided, her lower lip caught pensively between her teeth. “Dakota,” she tries softly. And then louder, “Dakota!”