Whyd we bring so much jerky? Rob asked.
Conner turned from the horizon and saw his brother rummaging in the rucksack. Close that up, he said. Youre letting sag in.
But Im hungry.
Conner reached into his pocket. Ive got food for the hike here. Now seal that flap.
His brother did as he was told, didnt seem to have seen all else in the bag. Rob sat with his back to the wind and chewed on a heel of bread. In the far distance, carried on the breeze, the drums and thunder of No Mans Land could be heard, sounding nearer than last year and nearer still than the year before that. Soon, Conner thought, those drums would be beating in Springston. Soon they would be beating in all their chests, driving them mad.
The sun beat down as the clouds of sand abated. It was one or the other during the day. At night, it was the cold and the howling beasts. The various torments of life worked in shifts so that one was always on duty. Thus was human misery extracted day and night like water and oil are pulled from the earth. Thus was the toll inflicted, the price one paid for being unwittingly born.
Lets go, Conner said, getting to his feet and adjusting his ker. He pulled his goggles down over his eyes. Well be making camp in the dark if we keep lingering like
this.
His brother rose without complaint, and Conner helped him with the pack. He lifted the heavy tent with its lantern and bedding and stakes and sandfly, and the two of them left the great wall behind and marched to the thunder. They marched to the thunder, if not in step with it.
17 The Bull and the Boy
In the olden days, the stars that marked the great warrior had been more closely arranged, the man a mere boy and not fully grown. But even when young he had shown promise as a hunter and a warrior. He and the bull whose tail always pointed north had been great friends in those days. They rode across the sky in defiance of the firmament, laughing and howling, playing and hunting. Together, they ruled all, for the spear and hoof were a keener measure of power than land or title. The world beneath them stood quiet, and water ran everywhere like the softest of sands.
But the white bull belonged not to the boy but to his chief, the One Clansman. Sand was the Royal Bull, protected from the hunt and sacred. So when Sand returned from a long absence with a nick in his hide, it was Colorados spear that was blamed. Sand moaned and moaned and said this was not so, but none save for Colorado could understand the bulls laments. The others heard only the pain, which stoked their anger.
The One Clansman was pulled from his tent and was asked to make a judgment. He approached his injured bull and studied the wound. When his hand came away red, it painted the sky at dusk. It was the boys spear, he said.
Outraged, the people of the tribe drove the boy out. They cast stones at him, which broke into smaller and smaller rocks. And still they threw them, until there was stone no more. The boy Colorado wintered by himself beyond the jagged peaks where no rock could reach him. And so began the winter of ten thousand ages. During this time, the belt of the great warrior Colorado never rose above the horizon, as was common in the cold months. The months stayed cold for a very long time.
Rain froze and gathered. The ice grew so heavy, it made valleys where once there were plains. The rocks used to drive the boy out now covered the old world. Sand and ice took turns burying the clan.
Countless moons and a thousand winds passed. Now a man, Colorado chased a cayote up the mountains, following his tracks, which led him over the peaks and down to his people. He had been absent so long, no one recognized him. Not even the great bull Sand, who had grown old, his hide and eyes gray, the scar on his flank a black and jagged mark. Nor did Colorado recognize his old friend of the hunt. The years had been too many. The world was upside down. Ancient maps had been redrawn and relearned.
The only reminder of what had happened was that black scar on Sands hide, and all the old bull knew of the wound was that the spear in Colorados hand had made it, and so the bull and the grown boy began to war with one another. Man and Sand were now at odds, could no longer find harmony. A fiction had become truth. Lost was the true story of how Colorado had saved the bulls life. No one remembered the pack of cayotes clinging to Sands hide, how theyd been felled with a mighty blow from Colorados spear, a nick made in the bulls flesh as the point caught him as well. The truth had vanished like the sheets of ice. A hide bore a great gash, just as the plains where Colorado hunted held a jagged line in the crust of the earth that marked the boundary of No Mans Land.
Conner knew these legends, but he didnt trust them. He was old enough to know more than one version of these stories. The tales he had learned as a youth had changed, and he imagined theyd been changing for as long as theyd been told. Back when the legends began, the sand that made the dunes had probably been solid rock.