They nodded to each other, solemn-faced, each knowing that Grandmother Walks would die before sunset, and walked without speaking that knowledge back to the bed under the trees and the frail brown form lying on it. First People didn't feel a pressing need to fill the air with empty noise.
At least Grandmother Walks had kept her mind. She could barely breathe, spoke one word at a time, but her eyes stayed sharp and each word meant what it said. Not like Aunt Jean, the last year or so. Caroline had been young then, but she remembered. Being a witch didn't immunize you against Alzheimer's. The last time, Aunt Jean had called her by five different names, none of them Caroline. Some of those names had been dead for fifty, sixty years.
Suddenly the remembered death-stink of that sickroom seemed so strong that she almost gagged. Grandmother Walks had it right — much better to die out in the dry clean air with blue sky overhead and the brown mountains filling your eyes and heart.
"Granddaughter."
So again English was permitted. Caroline didn't know if that was kindness or a gentle fence to keep her at a distance from the true heart of Grandmother's dying.
"Grandmother. I have come."
The ancient woman nodded, a fraction of a dip of her chin. "Child. Of. Water." Each word needed a breath of its own. She paused and took three quick shallow breaths to fill in after them. "Hear. Me."
"I listen, Grandmother."
"The. English. School. Gives. You. Nothing."
Another pause, another four breaths and a break when she didn't breathe, Aunt Alice would have a fancy medical name for it. Caroline didn't want to know. Then Grandmother breathed again, and the world went on.
"They. Only. Take." Breathing, shallow but Caroline could hear a rasp in it. "You. Do. Not. Need. Them."
"I do learn from them, Grandmother. Without the school, I never would have come to you."
One withered hand stirred on the blanket, the handspun hand-woven wool blanket that belonged in a display of ethnic art but instead was holding in faint body heat on a day that the living found hot. One old brown finger shook in negation.
"Others. Would. Have. Taught. You."
Another pause for breathing, another pause in the breathing, and then breathing again. Any breath could have been her last, but the old woman refused to die until she was damned good and ready. Until she had finished what she meant to do, said what she meant to say. Caroline felt tears cold on her cheeks, evaporating in the dry air, and she bowed her head.
"Leave. Them. Go. Home."
"Grandmother, I have not finished my degree. I have not finished my journey."
That brown finger moved again, sideways and back, waving denial. "Journey. Yes. Degree. No. Degree. Is. Not. Journey."
"Grandmother . . ." But no words came. Caroline reached out, tentative, and touched the withered hand. It gripped her, hard, still strong and independent of the weakening struggle underneath the blanket. Caroline felt a tingle in her fingers, as if she completed an electric circuit. The feeling ran up her arm and down her spine.
"Learn. From. Your. People. Teach. Your. People. Not. The. English." She paused, not breathing this time. "Go. Back. To. The. Waters. That. Give. You. Strength." And then Grandmother panted again, gasping, eyes closed with the effort of that long speech. Her breathing stopped. It started. Her eyes opened.
"Remember. The. Hunter. Find. The. Hunter."
The dark eyes glinted, pure will. Caroline's thoughts skipped away from the dying, wondering how the old woman had reached such an age without cataracts clouding her vision, after so many years gazing into so fierce a sun.
Grandmother's hand squeezed hers again. "The. Hunter. You. Will. Need. Her."
"Grandmother, I will try. My brother thinks he may have found the place where she is hidden."
"Then. Go. Now."
And the hand released hers. Grandmother's eyes closed, and she lay there on the bed. She was still breathing.
Caroline turned away from the bed and nodded to Morning Star. They touched hands and then shared a quiet embrace. Caroline walked slowly over to where she'd left her backpack, made sure she'd refilled the water bottles, hoisted the pack to her shoulders, and then scanned the small world that had become her home for a few seasons. The dusty yard, the rambling wood-framed tin-roofed house faded and frayed and grayed by sun and wind, the sparse dry trees, the rim of brown mountains crowned by a sky as hard as blue enamel. The family, four generations or more, continuing life alongside the dying, baking bread again, watering horses again, tinkering with old trucks again.
As yesterday, as tomorrow, as ten or a hundred years from now in either direction on time's arrow. World without end, amen.
She grimaced and plucked a battered Stetson from a branch stub nearby, remembering to check the hat for spiders or scorpions, the worn felt once white but now the same mottled beige as the car, the dry leaves, the surrounding hills. She hated hat hair, but even October sun could fry her brain. Caroline turned her back on the scene and walked. More tears came, and blurred her eyes, and she fought them back and swiped them away because she had to guard her footing.
A twisted ankle, a rattlesnake, a missed turn on the trail could mean death in this hard land. And two-legged coyotes prowled, white and brown, who might think a woman alone in the wild meant a tasty meal. She paused when she was out of sight of the house and pulled the Glock out of her pack and clipped its holster to her belt.
She blasted
