Nothing happens. The ground rises up at her, the column of droids growing clear in her sight. She pulls the lever again, and again.

On the third try, the bubble pops and she flies free of the plane as it gathers speed in its descent. But the delay has cost her, and her head strikes the canopy, hard, as her seat becomes a projectile. She sees the flash of silver as her Tomcat streaks toward earth, the blue sky above her.

And then the dark comes down.

The night is blue around her, the deep blue of the deepest sea. Overhead the stars dance in stately patterns, throwing off streamers of flame as they spin and whirl, jewels burning cold in shades of amethyst and emerald and sapphire, blazing ruby and topaz with hearts of fire. A breeze slips cool over her face, soothing against her skin. It stirs the pine needles that ring the clear space where she lies, soughing softly.

There are voices in the wind. If she tried, she could make them out. But she is tired, so tired. She lies under a billow of white silk. Perhaps she is dead, and it is her funeral pall.

If she is, she decides, death is not so bad after all. She knows that one leg lies twisted under her and is undoubtedly broken; from the way the blood pounds in her head, that may be broken, too. She can feel the grass through a cool wetness above one ear; more strangeness. Something has apparently happened to her helmet. Perhaps whoever has laid her out has removed it. Odd, though, that she seems to be lying on earth. No coffin, no burial platform, no piled wood. Just the silken pall.

With effort, but with no pain, she turns her head. Just beyond her reach, a large cat sits watching her, fur silver-gilt in the strange not-moonlight that shimmers in the air, eyes deep amber rimmed in shadow. The paler fur on her belly lies in darker swirls, made, Maggie knows, by her nursing young. Elegant in its length, her tail curls about her feet.

You wander, sister, the cat says in the silence, Igmu Sapa Winan.

Where? Maggie answers without sound. And why?

You stand with one foot on the Blue Road. If you wish, you may cross over.

If I wish?

Or not. Do you want me to summon help from your own kind?

Her own kind. She thinks about that for a moment. She knows of only three of her own kind, maybe four, who might hear a call like that. None of whom can be spared from duty.

It would be easy to slip away. A picture forms in her mind, unbidden, of sky-tall trees ringing a lake whose deep purple waters lap at shores dotted with gentians and spurred columbine. As she watches, a winter buck limps up to the shore, blood oozing from a wound in his shoulder, laid open to the bone. Maggie winces for what must be the pain of it, but as he bends to drink, the blood stills. Flesh folds back on itself, skin and fur spreading to cover it, and he stands there whole, sunlight streaming down through the trees about him. A woman stands beside him, her leather dress died green, yellow shells and beadwork running in rows down its length like kernels on an ear of corn. Her black hair spills down her back almost to her knees; silver shines at her ears and wrists.

Mother, Maggie says silently, awe washing through her.

Selu, the woman answers. And this is Ataga’hi, where the hunted may come to be healed. Though you are a warrior and have killed more two-foots than most, you have never harmed one of your four-footed brothers or sisters. Hunters may not come here. Will you drink, Black Cat Woman?

My people, are they safe?

They are.

For answer, then, she rises up and steps carefully toward the lake. The grass bends gently under the pads of her feet, and she is not surprised to find that her spine has shifted so that she does not stand erect. Her ears, inhumanly sharp, take in the murmur of small life around her, the calls of birds like music. The water, when she bends to lap, slips cool across her tongue, and she drinks her fill, life pouring back into her, and purpose with it.

Then she is back in her own body, and she gasps as sensation floods back into her from cracked bone and torn muscle. The puma, though, still regards her quietly. I will call, she says.

For an instant, Maggie thinks she is seeing double. A second great cat stands beside the first, gazing at her with eyes of warm brown. And there is a bobcat, too, grinning at her with open mouth.

Hang in there, he says. We’re on our way.

The blue begins to fade to black about her. The puma fades with it, a liquid shadow in the night. Pain from her leg rises about her on a swelling tide, bringing its own darkness with it. Just, she says to the wind as words begin to desert her altogether. Just move your asses.

*

The antelope crashes through the undergrowth, plunging through the copse that borders the open prairie to the east. Koda follows, making no effort now to be silent, her hat scraped off her head somewhere back there where she first entered the strip of woodland, her bow in her right hand, arrow nocked. Ahead of her, the young male’s rump patch flashes white, and she sweeps low branches away from her face as she fights her way through the whip-like saplings after him. Sweat runs stinging into her eyes, blurring her vision, but she cannot pause to wipe it away. If she can just keep in range, she will have him when he breaks from cover on the other side.

The wood is wider than she had first thought, and she slides down a steep bank toward a stream, bracing her feet against a fall like a skier. The antelope, ahead of her, splashes through the water and is up the other side before she can draw back her arrow. Neither is there time to unsling her rifle and aim; by the time she has it into position, he will be on open ground again. Pronghorn can sprint at speeds approaching seventy miles an hour, fast as a cheetah. If she is too far behind when they reach the edge of the grass again, she will lose him altogether. She crosses the ankle-deep brook in two strides, scrabbling for an instant on both knees and one hand as she races up the limestone outcrop opposite, ignoring the sudden burn as she scrapes her palm against the rock. Her heart slams against her breastbone, and her breath comes in short, panting gasps. She has run the better part of two miles, about half of it flat out, since cutting the yearling out of a bachelor herd. The meat will let them save their packed rations against emergencies, gain them another day or two. And Asi, held back by main force from following the chase, will appreciate his share.

The sun breaks through where the wood begin to thin, the pronghorn sprinting now nimbly through the mould and leaf litter that carpets the ground between the trunks of pine and aspen, gaining speed. With a last burst of speed Koda throws herself after him, even as he breaks from the trees and is gone. Koda swears under her breath, what she has of it, and follows, her blood not ready to give up even though her brain tells her that the antelope is already beyond range.

Somewhere just ahead of her, the crack of gunfire shatters the still afternoon air. Abruptly, Koda pulls up just short of the edge of the trees, unstringing her bow and sheathing it and its arrow even as she shrugs her rifle off her shoulder and into her hands. Carefully she steps to the edge of the treeline, keeping a pine trunk between herself and whoever has fired the shot. Squinting into the sun, she can make out only the rippling billows of short grass, interspersed here and there with clumps of scarlet sage and mountain globemallow, thick with rose-colored blooms. Behind a screen of the tall spikes, something moves. Something large, bending down now toward something else on the ground.

Koda steps away from cover, gun leveled. She is not quite prepared to kill another human for her supper, but neither is she prepared to give it up without protest. Not when she has done the work, not when she has given fair chase. Keeping the muzzle of her gun pointed toward whatever or whoever crouches on the other side of the dense shrubs, she gathers her breath and bellows, “Hey! You over there! Stand up! Slow! Or I’ll shoot!”

Two seconds pass. “Now!” she yells, and pumps a round into the ground at her feet. “Next one won’t be a warning!”

CHAPTER FIFTY THREE

“OKAY! OKAY!” IT is a man’s voice, rich and resonant. He steps out from behind the sage spires, black curling hair and close-trimmed beard glistening in the sun, a sheen of sweat silvering his bare chest and the hard muscles of his arms and shoulders. He is tall, taller than she is, and made like a wrestler. For a moment he looks as though he might be made all of bronze, something cast by Michelangelo or Bernini to taunt their bloodless patrons tripping along the halls of the Lateran Palace. Then a sheepish grin splits his face and his hands spread open at his sides. “I’m sorry. Was that your pronghorn? I thought a cat might be after it, that’s all.”

“Yeah,” Koda says, more equably, the muzzle of her gun never moving from its aim at his belly. “W— I’ve been after him for a couple miles or so, now. From back on the other side of that treeline.” Go on, be a good boy. Give it up.

“Look,” he says, the ingratiating smile never leaving his face. “You chased it, I shot it. Share?”

It is not, under the circumstances, a bad bargain. Half the antelope is still a substantial prize. “All right,” she says, lowering her rifle without taking her finger from the trigger guard. “I’ll help you field dress it.” She may have to set down the gun, but she will still have a knife in her hand. The sudden gleam in the man’s brown eyes tells her he understands and is not offended.

Far, it would seem, from it. He extends one huge paw toward her. “Ariel Kriegesmann. Call me Ari.”

“All right,” she says, shifting her 30.06 to her left hand and offering her right. “Koda Rivers.”