Ryan didn’t understand, and didn’t the wolf understand that they lived in a land of death, and death would be with him as it always had been and always would be?
Four circles of life , the wolf said. We are passing through the fourth and last circle. We will go to the beginnings of the first circle .
“Why?”
So you may see what you have never seen.
The wolf began to sing, in a lilting voice full of primal power and pride and happiness so heart-deep and vast that Ryan felt a pain at the roots of his soul.
Grandfather, Great Spirit, you have been always, and before you no one has been. There is no other one to pray to but you. Everything has been made by you. The star nations all over the universe you have finished. Grandfather, Great Spirit, lean close to the earth that you may hear the voice I send.
On the far horizon Ryan saw a glimmering of light breaking through the black curtain of the Deathlands.
You toward where the sun goes down, behold me! You where the White Giant lives in power, behold me! You in the depths of the heavens, an eagle of power, behold! And you Grandmother Earth, the only mother, you who have shown mercy to your children who have ripped and burned and poisoned you, I shall heal you!
Lifting his voice, Ryan sang, “I shall heal you!”
Hear me, four quarters of the world a relative I am! Give me the eyes to see and the strength to understand, that I may heal you !
The light spread out over the horizon, like a warm wave, so bright, so brilliant, so blinding, Ryan had no choice but to close his eyes. He could still see the lightgreen and orange, yellow and redspreading out, sweeping across Deathlands, changing it, transforming it.
RYAN OPENED HIS EYE, shutting it again as sunlight shafted through the window. He heard the murmur of voices and smelled a sweetish odor. His wrist chron told him it was half-past eight, and he sat up. His eye patch still covered his left eye, and he had slept in his clothes, except for his boots. Krysty had to have pulled them off after he had fallen asleep.
He pushed the residue of the dream into the back of his mindexcept it hadn’t felt like a dream, not even like the hallucinatory, almost-real illusions he occasionally experienced after a particularly rough gateway transfer.
Smelling bacon from the common room, Ryan stuffed his feet into his boots and quickly laced them up. He felt hungry and thirsty.
The others were sitting around a table laden with platters of food. J.B. sipped at a cup of steaming liquid and grimaced.
Ryan sat in a chair, and Mildred handed him a cup of dark green-black fluid that exuded a strange aroma. “It’s some kind of tea,” she offered.
Tentatively sipping at it, Ryan found it was strong, bitter and pungent. The platters contained loaves of bread, fatty, blistered strips of bacon and crumbling wedges of cheese. He hacked off a hunk with a knife and chewed it slowly, the cheese so sharp it made his sinuses ache.
Jak spit a half-chewed piece of bacon rind onto his plate. “If plan to kill us, this food simplest way.”
Krysty and Doc were silent, nibbling on crusts of bread and nursing cups of tea, their eyes downcast.
“What’s with you two?” Ryan asked.
“We took a walking tour of Amicus this morning,” Krysty replied.
“And?”
“And,” Doc answered, “this is not salubrious ground. As his honor the mayor indicated, the populace is now aware of the circumstances that brought us here. They are displeased about our being encamped on their front doorstep.”
“They hold us responsible,” Krysty added. “They want us to leave.”
“Someone told you that?” Mildred asked.
“They did not need to voice it,” Doc stated.
“Their desire is evident in the backs turned to us, the fish-eyed stares and the all-around frigid temperatures of their shoulders.”
“Fuck ’em,” Jak snapped. “We leave.”
“That may not be easy,” Krysty told him. “The Red Cadre has bottled up the main way in and out.”