TCA

PILGRIMS

Muskets fell like two waves of dominoes atop stone walls on the blue and gray sides of the quiet creek. When the rifled barrels reached the horizontal they fired, burning eyes with the pungent smoke of spent powder.

Downstream the walls became the rails of a stone bridge. Union and rebel soldiers converged on foot, shouting as they merged. The fighting deteriorated to bayonet thrusts and even fisticuffs. The federals had the greater initial momentum and nearly reached the other side of the bridge before a rebel rally bounced them back.

The boys in blue trod in reverse over a layer of bodies one deep. Some were dead, others writhed with broken bones or lead balls lodged in their innards. A few of the fallen had survived the battle of Shiloh where the war attained a high but stable plateau of savagery. A tube loaded with canister shot was lined up on the long axis of the bridge and mowed down counterattacking rebels like grass to form a second layer of bodies. Some of the fallen boys in gray had survived the artillery hell at Malvern Hill during the Seven Days.

Two guns were set up on the Confederate side of the creek upstream. One fired bursting shells that maimed the Union gunners and another fired several rounds of solid shot. The Union gun became a pile of splinters and dented steel. Then followed another Rebel attack. The men in gray gained most of the bridge, which had become an abattoir.

A colonel on the Union side was shot, but to the wonder of his men he stood up again with a lead ball lodged in his Bible. With this apparent divine sanction the colonel led yet another attack. But the only effect was to make the hill of twisting bodies on the bridge that much higher. Men standing on the pile swapped empty muskets for loaded ones handed up to them like water in a fire bucket brigade.

But inevitably the Confederates ran low on gunpowder. They saw the bridge was lost, so they switched to saving their two pieces of artillery, with fresh troops firing in a rearguard action to cover the retreat. The federal general commanding the attack on the bridge saw the retreating gray backs and ordered a lieutenant to report to McClellan that the bridgehead had been secured.

But the junior officer saw the bridge was stacked with bodies and refused to desecrate the dead. Instead the messenger dropped to the creek bed and splashed across on foot, bypassing all the carnage on the bridge. In so doing the officer suffered little hardship. After all, as the local farmers well knew, the water in the creek was only knee deep.

At the end of the day the Army of Northern Virginia was bottled up against a bend of the Potomac. All the next day McClellan watched from the long slope rising north of the river and refused to advance, even with a two-to-one numerical advantage. Were the numbers ten-to-one he would yet wire Washington to say he didn't have enough men.

The meetinghouse of the local German Baptist Brethren had been pressed into service as a field hospital for the Union army. Dried blood stained the interior walls, only to be overlaid with sprays of new blood. One doctor sedated men with chloroform while another doctor sawed off their limbs and threw them into a pile. A messenger arrived by horse and ordered the doctors to get the wounded out by wagon. The pile of amputated limbs was set ablaze. Horse-drawn ambulances carted the wounded away with every bump in the road eliciting screams from the men inside. No one who witnessed the convoy of pain and the carnage that was left behind would again say they craved the glories of war. Certainly none of the Christian Brethren did.

Three days prior, when they first heard the sound of artillery on South Mountain the Brethren had thought it prudent to move their work horses by circuitous routes to a place far away from the men of either army who might like to "borrow" them. Upon their poor leftover mules they rode out, when it seemed safe, to bury the dead. For this task the United States paid a dollar for every man they laid to rest. There was heard a rumor that one fellow, who was not of the Brethren, took the money and dropped sixty dead men into a dry well.

Many hundreds of bodies lay near the house of prayer of the Brethren. They found their labors to be a hateful thing that, but more bitter was seeing their beloved meetinghouse riddled with holes made by bullets and even solid cannon shot, and how the interior had come to resemble a slaughterhouse. The Long Table was covered with blood, and both the east door, where the menfolk entered, and the south door, where the womenfolk entered, had been removed from the hinges and converted into operating tables. The expensive Bible gifted to the congregation by Daniel Miller was missing.

Chief elder David Long, forty-two years of age, inspected the meetinghouse thoroughly and said, "Do not grieve overmuch, my friends. We shall bury the dead and make our meetinghouse like new. If God is willing, soon all this will be but an unhappy memory."

To this Deacon Mark Lange objected, saying, "Nothing will stop the same thing from happening once more, Brother David. Virginia lies over yonder river and last month there was a second battle of Manassas. This is an easy spot to get across the water. We should build anew at my uncle's farm north in Pennsylvania. By his leave our horses have already been moved there to guard against thieves.”

The congregation seemed divided on the question of moving. Elder Jacob Reichard said, "For a decision of this import we must let the Lord make his will known. So let us pray on it, each one of us. And there is no prayer better than work.”

After the Brethren finished burying the dead soldiers Elder Long insisted he would stay at Sharpsburg, as did the Sherrich family. Also Samuel Mumma, the farmer who had donated the land on which to build the meetinghouse, was intent on restoring the farm the armies had demolished. The men who were originally deeded the plot for the Mumma meetinghouse also chose to stay.

But Daniel Miller sold his corn field for pennies on the dollar, as it was now really just a battlefield cemetery. Joining him, ten other families joined Mark Lange in seeking a quiet new life in Pennsylvania far from the threat of war, or so they hoped.

Before the battle in Maryland the horses of the Brethren had been taken to Gettysburg by five male cousins from Lange's father's side. As the families prepared to move the horses were returned. It was Mark's cousin Joanna who brought them all back, and this she did entirely by herself. Joanna's own horse was groomed better than she was, yet Mark fell stone in love with her at first sight. But he persistently had four-legged competition.

On the way north when the weather turned bad Joanna let her horse have the tent while she slept outside. Joanna spent more time cleaning her horse than helping her mother clean the house. Mark thought the house was a pigsty but the barn was as neat as a pin. Her mother said Joanna needed a male companion to quiet some of the rumors going around, so she got a stallion. Joanna's father looked askance when Mark began courting her, but his wife was overjoyed at Joanna's new interest in something other than equines. One time he grew jealous at finding a strange hair on her coat but Joanna was easily able to produce the horse to match. At her bridal shower Joanna received a large number of gifts. Most of these were actual bridles.

When the happy day finally arrived and it was time to show up for her wedding Joanna came in late because she took too long cleaning the stalls. Mark married her anyway.

The following summer the Army of Northern Virginia crossed the Potomac River once more. They moved by brigades and became spread out in an arc that nearly reached the Pennsylvania state capital, but federal movements in response forced General Lee to concentrate his forces at Gettysburg, which was a dense node in the road network, and this brought on three days of conflict in the biggest battle of the war.

On the third day of the conflagration Mark Lange walked to the meetinghouse and found all the pews scattered outside. Union officers were seated upon them idly smoking cigars and playing tic tac toe on them with pocket knives. Inside the meetinghouse the Army of the Potomac's commander poured over maps laid on the Long Table and concluded the next hammer blow would land on the center. The short-tempered commanding general angrily demanded who he was. Mark said, "I'm the the pastor of this church!"

General Meade replied, "The hell you say, sir! This is the headquarters of the Army! Now get out of my sight, parson, or I'll put a musket in your hand and stand you up on yonder stone--"

The general was interrupted by a crash as the church filled with flying wood splinters. Confederate artillery had opened a furious barrage. He ran out of the meetinghouse picking splinters out of his skin and barking orders. His officers on the pews began to scatter as shells burst nearby.

Union artillery was brought up to answer Confederate guns but Lange remained inside. Perhaps he thought his presence would move God to spare the building, but solid shot made gaping holes in the walls. Mark clasped his hands and prayed, "Lord, forgive your stiff-necked servant. Your will was that we move west, not north!"

Two shells from Lee's main battery burst over the roof of the church. It was dark and Mark felt enormous pain wracking his entire body. He heard a male voice say, "Take great care, Anael. There is a man alive in this pile of wood and he is injured."

Another voice acknowledged him. With each painful motion of debris the light seemed to increase. A last huge pine beam was removed and Mark saw this Anael was not a woman as he first thought from the sound of the voice, but perhaps a very tall boy. Anael moved the wood as though it weighed very little.

Then Mark saw who was speaking in the more masculine voice. He was much shorter than Anael, with a face filled with compassion and dark eyes that glittered in light filtering through trees that surrounded him. He said, "Do not be afraid, Mark Lange. A large splinter of wood has pierced your kidney. You also have a broken leg you cannot feel because timber is pinching it. But we must lift the beam, and you will most certainly feel that."

Mark could only manage to gasp for help. The short man told Anael to lift the beam. To Mark, everything seemed to turn red. His face was frozen in astonishment at the pain, greater than any he had ever felt, and he fainted from the overbrimming flow of it.

After he was healed Mark Lange lay in a bed cared for by attendants who bade him to remain in repose long after he felt sufficiently revived to stand once more. But at length a young man introduced himself as Jashen. He invited Mark to meet the one who had healed him.

Mark thought Jashen had the appearance of the people who preceded the Europeans to North America. Glad to be permitted to move about at last, Mark saw the short man who helped him when he was injured. He was seated outdoors near a small table on a deck of dark wood near a pool of water. Sitting with him was one even taller than Anael had been and more obviously female.

As he drew near Mark felt only a very small residue of pain in his back and his leg, and he was entirely able to walk. The short man invited Mark and Jashen to be seated. Jashen sat next to the woman and Mark sat close to the healer.. The short man greeted Mark and told him, “This is Leliel, who was sent to bring Jashen to us. But Mark Lange, whom say ye that I am?'

Lange recognized the question from scripture and he said in reply, "You are the Christ, the son of the living God."

Then he stood up because it didn't seem fitting to recline in the presence of his Lord, but he gestured for Mark to be seated once more. He looked over at Jashen and Leliel, and Jashen assured Yeshua, in English, that he never mentioned the name.

Yeshua turned back to look at Mark and said, "You do well to say so, Mark, on so few cues. There was a Pope who foisted upon the faithful the face of his bastard son as me, and ever since then most people expect to see a taller Italian fellow with a beard and long hair."

Mark said in reply, "Your Father emphatically told us not to create such images, but we never seem to obey, though we dare to call him our God."

He said, "Some do still obey God, Mark. A small remnant are faithful, both here in Kemen and on Earth. It is enough. You spoke truth in your prayer when you understood I wanted your flock to go west. Indeed, to go as far as you can go by river or rail, and even farther on foot."

Mark followed Yeshua's finger as he traced out a course on a map down the Ohio River to lands in the west. The map had no political boundaries, only cities and rivers and uplands. His finger stopped at one mountain. Mark saw that the feature was marked with words he could read: Green Dome.

Yeshua said, "Here is the home of Jashen's people. I would have you travel to this place, Mark, with your wife and any others from your congregation who would freely choose to go. You will take with you this map and also a book you will copy yourself from Leliel’s White Scroll. This is the task I set before you, Mark, before you return home. But the three of you must toil together to let it come to be. Jashen can understand Leliel's speech but he cannot read her letters nor your own, while Leliel cannot understand your speech nor your letters."

Then Leliel set upon the map an oven-fired clay pot and removed a cylinder of parchment that seemed to be bleached white, inscribed by dark letters that Mark could not dicipher. Jashen in turn reached into a leather sachel and produced a fat codex with blank pages bound between two green covers. Finally Yeshua himself provided pens of a type that Mark had never seen before. They could be used immediately and did not need to be dipped in ink.

“Mark, as you copy out this book you will find that it argues against the Bible on many points. And when you return some of the families in your flock will think you to be apostate and have nothing further to do with you. But others will believe. I cast you in the role of Yohanan the baptizer who prepared my way, though he himself did not live to see it come to pass."

Mark said, "Lord, my flock has already been uprooted once before and most of us are worse than destitute. We've gone into debt to pay for homes we built on land we don't even own. None of us have the means to leave again."

Yeshua said, "Mark, do you think I, intending to build this tower, have not first counted the cost?"

Mark watched Jashen fill the satchel with much money. Greenbacks lined the interior and formed a cushion for the green book. The Lord said, "Be a good steward of this currency, Mark, for there are some among the Brethren who would only feign to follow you for the love of money."

Mark said, "I beg the Lord to choose more worthy people to make his will come to pass!"

"Not so, Mark, for I deem the German Brethren to be most like those who first loved and followed me when I was in the world. Have no fear! This money will be sufficient to take you and the families who are willing to follow west to the place where the rail ends. There some of my other students shall do much to prepare your flock to continue, as your journey will then be only half complete."

No one among the Brethren disputed the house of prayer of the Five Corners Free Congregation was demolished by two shells that burst overhead while Mark Lange huddled within. But after he crawled out from the pile of timber unharmed it became a matter of faith that he had literally met Jesus Christ, as he solemnly claimed to have done. Lange told his fellow parishioners his leg had been broken by falling timber and a large splinter of wood had become lodged in his kidney, but he was healed by Christ himself. This claim Joanna readily believed, not merely because she knew her husband was not a liar, but she saw a new scar in Mark's back where previously there was none.

And for his part Mark marveled that only a day had passed on Earth while he tarried a year in Kemen, yet he spoke of this to no one, not even his wife, for such was the command of Yeshua.

For the time being the matter was set aside. The Brethren were preoccupied with burying the fallen soldiers of both armies, as they had done once before in Maryland. They were adequately compensated by the United States for their labor at least, if not for the loss of much of their farm land to many hundreds of burial plots.

The following Sunday when the Brethren met in a tent on the grounds of their ruined meetinghouse Mark read aloud from the book he called the Printer’s Manuscript. The Sunkel, Clark, and Martin families decided he was trying create new scripture from his own mind, a mind damaged, perhaps, in the blast that destroyed their church. A new bible was something they simply could not accept. These three families returned to Sharpsburg, Maryland where Elder David Long welcomed them home as prodigal sons and daughters.

After the work of burying the fallen soldiers of both sides had been completed the nine families who remained in the congregation made preparations to sojourn west. Some of them sold their homes outright, while others deeded them to kin who would remain behind. It took until the end of the war for the Porters, Bergins, Henrys, Zinters, Hillings, and Krauses to provision themselves for the pilgrimage. But the Savitts and the Brannens dwindled in their ardor. After Atlanta fell, just before the presidential election, they deemed it safe to return to Maryland, and this they promptly did.

Mark Lange took his flock first to the state capital in Harrisburg, and thence by a hodgepodge of lines across the Appalachian Mountains all the way to Pittsburgh. These railroads were laid of wrought iron, and the maximum speed permitted was a mere twenty-five miles per hour, lest they wore out in one year rather than ten. And setting aside the fact the mountains were a barrier to east-west travel in general, there were many stops along the way. From Harrisburg it took most of the night and the better part of the next morning to cross the state.

At Pittsburgh the congregation switched from rail to steamboat, which, despite moving with the current down the upper reaches of the Ohio River, made no better speed than a sustained brisk walk. But unlike the train, there were staterooms to occupy on the upper deck. The ladies segregated to the stern. Lange's group was not so destitute as to be relegated to sleeping on the first deck amid the bales of cotton and other cargo, as many of the walk-ons did while the steamboat made its way downriver. From their rooms the members of Lange's flock looked out with contentment upon the ever-changing scene along the river as it sliced through the forested hills. They spent three days steaming first north, then south and west, stopping at times to board and disembark passengers or to take on firewood for the boiler that churned, ever so precariously, it seemed to them, under the very flammable decks.

At Cincinnati Mark Lange's group disembarked from the steamboat and again took to rail, as they had come to the end of the mountains and had passed through an odd corner of the country where time and circumstance had not yet conspired to make the railroad network complete. But again, at East St. Louis, after crossing the states of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, they briefly took to the water once more. At that time the only bridge lay far to the north in Davenport, Iowa.

Once the travelers and their luggage were safely on the western shore of the Mississippi River they resumed riding rail once more. The Missouri track was laid of Bessemer steel, permitting travel at a breakneck forty-five miles per hour. The line west came to an end just a few miles past Independence, Missouri. And Mark Lange, glancing at the train platform even as they were rolling to a stop, saw someone he recognized waiting for them, the extraordinary tall Anael, who was standing next to someone who was even taller. He raced up to greet them as soon as he disembarked.

"We meet again, Mark Lange," Anael said, "and this time in much better circumstances than the first! I trust your journey has so far gone well?"

Mark said, "Very well indeed, Anael. Imagine my immense relief to find you already here."

By this time some of Mark's followers had gathered around, marveling that at least one of the strangers knew their pastor. These were the nucleus of hardcore believers who never wavered in their faith, yet it was comforting to hear confirmation of what Lange had frequently told them. Still, they were dismayed to find the strangers were rather swart, and each wore a decorative headdress with white horns. The one who was taller than Anael said to Mark, "Did you fear you would reach the end of the line and find yourselves to be castaways?"

"This is Azrael," Anael said to Lange. "He is here to help you with the animals.” Lange greeted Azrael with the mutual forearm grip that he knew was the custom in Kemen. Mark said, "I dreaded the hard looks and harder questions from my flock should we arrive here with no one to greet us. Perhaps I feared it would be a sore test of their faith, and mine."

"The journey you just made was the test of your faith," Azrael said, "and that you are here, all of you, says everything. But the simple truth is that Anael and I have been working since dawn bringing all these mud-wagons here, and riding back by turns to bring more."

"Are there, then, only two of you?"

Anael nodded. "Just we two. I hope these seven wagons will suffice, Mark, for you and all your people, and of course your luggage. Come, ride with me in the lead coach, Mark, you and your wife, and I will speak of the place that will be your home for this fall and winter."

The lower valley of the Blue River, where it dumped into the Missouri River, divided Kansas City from the town of Independence. Anael and Azrael led Mark Lang and his flock seven miles from the train station up the Blue River valley, past many small farms, crossing the river now and again, until they were come to a large structure snuggled hard against the west side of the valley. The building was a single-story pile of large interlocking limestone brick, built without the necessity for mortar. Anael said she herself had assembled the twelve foot high walls, and it did look sound, with a good roof, but Lange thought it could do with a coat of whitewash. It lay inside a larger fenced area with a small herd of oxen. The animals had grazed the grass to nubbins and now subsisted on bales of hay.

Led by Azrael, and assisted by Joanna Lange and the men and older boys, the fourteen horses that had been used to drive the pilgrims to this place were unharnessed from the mud-wagons and led into this area to mingle with the oxen and feed on alfalfa, which was spread out just for the steeds. The animals considered it to be candy. Anael gestured at the oxen and said, "Here are the beasts that will pull your wagons, Mark. At least for part of your journey. Alas for them, they will go no farther west than Fort Kearny. After that the poor worn-out things will head for somebody's dinner table."

Following Azrael the thirty-six pilgrims stepped through the double doors to look inside the structure. They saw a large bay with ten prairie schooners under assembly. The hoops for their bonnets reached nearly to the ceiling. At one end of the bay was a common dining area. Along the walls were set private rooms of diverse sizes for each of the seven families.

Azrael said, "I welcome every one of you to this place which has been prepared to carry out the will of our Lord. There is much yet to do, and much for you to learn to do, before you will be ready to finish your journey. But by then it will be, I think, too late in the year for you to arrive at your destination with time to make ready before winter sets in.

Anael said, "Azrael and I have been granted the privilege and the honor to help you make all the necessary preparations. Take no thought of money! This room and board, these animals and the wagons they will pull are all gifts of the B'nei Elohim, freely given."

Hearing this Mark said something that Azrael already knew, even if most of Lange's parishioners did not. "The Lord himself gave me much money to make this pilgrimage possible, and half of it yet remains. Did he, perhaps, give us too much?"

"Not at all," Azrael said. "The oxen you saw will only take you for half of your trek, and then you will have to trade them for fresh ones. The money you were given will make up the difference. Also, if I am not mistaken, your followers have only brought such clothing and family heirlooms you could not bear to leave behind. You will, over the next several months, make many overnight trips to Kansas City to purchase whatsoever new items you may need."

And to himself Azrael thought the people who had come to that place needed a less awkward name to know them by than to just call them "Lange's followers". In the weeks to come a child among them named Linda Bergin would learn that some oxen were not easily turned by the touch of a pole. They were called "stiff of neck" and this was the source for many references in the Bible which referred to the children of Israel as a stiff-necked people. But Anael said such stubbornness was really a good thing if it was desired to move toward a single goal without turning to one side or the other. Linda took to calling all the pilgrims, including herself, "Stiffnecks" and it quickly caught on.

The flock led by Mark Lange grew larger by two individuals while they wintered over near Westport. The first to arrive was baby Megan, born to Gary and Marge Bergin in the fall of 1865. The second was Miss Tamara Brannen, who arrived by rail from Maryland to be wed to Lee Henry in the twilight days of the same year. But it wasn't until the following spring before the roads, knee-high in mud, had become solid enough to begin the pilgrimage west.

It was a Sunday when the Sticknecks spent their last full day with Azrael and Anael, and for the final time the two B'nei Elohim worshiped with them, though they both found the practice to be odd and had frequently commented to that effect. Some of the Stiffnecks remarked in turn how this made them appear heathenish. But Anael said to them, "Have we not shared our meals together three times each day, and offered praise and thanksgiving to God? The Banquet of God is the only thing resembled "services' the Lord Yeshua ever conducted with his disciples."

At the end of the worship service Azrael rose to say a few words from his heart to the people he had lived with an served for nearly a year. "Have no illusions, this will the the most difficult thing you have ever done. But do not be afraid! The Lord Yeshua came to teach men to live together in peace, and in the beginning it was so. With God willing, your labors will make the Lord's aspiration present in the world once more."

It took all the next morning for the oxen to toil just three miles up a ravine feeding the Blue River to intersect the infant Oregon Trail running south from Raytown. There the twenty oxen pulling the wagons were released from their burdens, and the twenty beasts that made a leisurely walk out of the Blue River valley were put under harness. After another eight miles the Oregon Trail bent sharply to the west, and in another half mile they stopped.

Every day when the wagon train came to a halt it was the responsi- bility for the man of each family to raise his wagon with a jack, remove one wheel, and have his eldest son paint the hub with a mix of pine tar and tallow carried in a bucket slung from the rear axle, as they were solemnly instructed by Azrael. This they were to do as though it were a ritual, before they even took their evening meal, on a revolving basis, one wheel per night.

When they crossed into the state of Kansas the Stiffnecks dipped into the stash of salt pork stored under a false floor in their wagons, and ate them with dried peaches.

To cross rivers the bottoms of the wagons were painted with tar to make them waterproof and they were floated across after the animals were safely on the other side. But sometimes the pilgrims were brought to a halt by a severe afternoon rainstorm and had to huddle inside their wagons. Still, everyone remained in good spirits. Most of the younger children had ridden by pairs on the backs of the fourteen horses, while the adults and older children switched between riding in the wagons or walking on foot beside the oxen pulling them to lead them along the track at a stately two miles per hour.

Breakfast frequently featured eggs laid by the chickens the people had brought along, but on Sundays some of these chickens were slaughtered and roasted for a midday feast.

They reached the eastern edge of the regions crossed by migrating bison. Ida Porter, Roy Hilling, and Robert Krause began collecting buffalo chips to use as cooking fuel, and they made it seem so fun the other children pitched in. When they reached streams or rivers Alfred Porter and his son George angled for catfish and caught enough for everyone to have a baked fish for lunch the next day. A family living in a farmhouse sold the pilgrims a meal of boiled beans and chipped beef, served with fresh bread and topped off with oven baked pies. But on most days the pilgrims had begun open their cans of cheese and sardines, and consumed these with hardtack bread and tea. But when they reached the Hollenberg farm there were nine boarding rooms available. The men among the Stiffnecks were glad for the change from sleeping outdoors on the ground. Breakfast was bacon, eggs, and gooseberry cobbler.

A war party of some two hundred Pawnees crossed the trail from the south, passing Lange's group quite by chance. Most of the plains Indians knew settlers on the Oregon Trail were just passing through and in the main they did not go out of their way to antagonize them, lest it brought down unwanted retaliation from the United States Army. "Make no threatening moves," Lange cautioned his followers. "Touch no rifle. Trust the Lord to protect us."

The braves swarmed around their wagons out of pure curiosity, inspecting the hatchets and mallets they found within and took turns to lie on the feather-bed mattresses one-by-one. They took no food or tobacco, and eyed the weapons stored inside but let them be. Some of them took a very close look at the women, perhaps the first white females they had ever seen, but they kept their hands to themselves. If such were the orders of their chief they were a very disciplined force at the very least.

When they had mounted their horses once more the chief scanned the whole scene, drew himself up in his full battle regalia, crinkled his face, and plugged his nose. All the braves broke into laughter, then they all rode away. When it was clear they would not return, Lange led his congregation in a prayer of thanksgiving to God.

When there was no local water for the oxen and horse the pilgrims watered the animals from cisterns in the wagon. One of the oxen in the trailing wagon had thrown a shoe and no one could guess how far back along the trail it might be. Joanna Lange applied to the ox's injured hoof. He was released from pulling the wagon and two of the horses were set in his place.

After passing the future location of Kenesaw, the trail drew near to the Platte River in another seven miles, with the smell of cottonwood trees in the air. The water was silty, but let still in a bucket for an hour it grew clear. The oxen were less discerning.

At length the Stiffnecks reached Fort Kearney, the last outpost of civilization they would find until they built their own settlement. They telegraphed messages to family members left behind in Gettysburg and traded their worn-out oxen for rested ones. At the general store they obtained more chickens and many of the sundries they had consumed on the trek, but prices were dear. Two days were spent at the fort. Taking their rest, they witnessed several other wagon trails passing through. Blacksmiths willing to labor on Sunday put new iron shoes on the horses and oxen. Lange's money was depleted that much more.

During the following week the Stiffnecks passed south of the future townsite of North Platte. Had they left Gettysburg only two years after they did North Platte would be the western rail terminus and they could have begun their pilgrimage that much closer to their final destination. Here Mark Lange led the wagon train off the Oregon Trail entirely. They struck north, overland, to reach a vast wilderness called the Nebraska Sandhills. This is a sea of ancient sand dunes anchored by grass and dotted with innumerable small freshwater lakes.

There was plenty of green stuff for the animals to graze, but the going was slow. No sooner did someone wonder, aloud, where the water came from than they were inundated by the first of frequent rainstorms that slowed their passage even more. The way twisted through the low gullies between the hills but sometimes a ridge twenty miles long and two hundred feet high lay directly across their path and they were compelled to go over it. Other times they would reach intractable brush in draws which had to be cleared by men using axes and scythes. The Stiffnecks were to spend as many days traveling off the Oregon Trail as they had spent traveling on it.

It seemed they had entered a purgatory and only Mark Lange's strict routine to keep a diary prevented them from losing track of the days. But at last they reached what Mark Lange hoped to be the Squaw River and the pilgrims turned west to follow it toward its source.

When Fort Price was overrun by the Kuwapi it was witnessed only by passing pronghorns and badgers and coyotes and prairie dogs jumping up to check out the cacophony of hoofbeats. But while the freed native women were being set upon their horses the chief’s son, Jashen, began to smell something strange, as did his wife Leliel who walked beside him. After that he grew filled with wonder when he saw the ten wagons of the pilgrims of the Five Corners Free Congregation plodding west along the north bank of the Squaw River.

"It's not a respectable wilderness anymore!" Jashen's wife muttered to herself in the language and idiom of the whites when she saw how exasperated her husband was over what seemed to be a sudden infestation of white soldiers and now white settlers.

The Stiffnecks saw the Kuwapi approach and pointed rifles at them, but Jashen saw the lead wagon was driven by a man he recognized from his vision quest several years prior. Jashen smiled, dismounted, took off his headdress and he was recognized in turn. "We meet again, Pastor Mark Lange," he said, “just as Chief Yeshua foretold."

And the settlers were as entirely thrilled by his words here as they were when two of the B'nei Elohim met them in Missouri. They saw both he and a woman standing nearby bore the same white horns as Anael and Azrael. Mark had already explained that from his readings out of the Printer’s Manuscript, which had been written by the woman now standing before them.

"Jashen! Leliel!" Mark brought his wagon to a halt and jumped down to embrace the young man. The rifles were all lowered and put out of sight. Jashen’s wife Leliel voiced well-wishes to Mark and his fellow travelers. Lange pointed to the prominent butte a few miles upriver to the west and asked her, "Is that Green Dome?"

"That's what white trappers call it,” she said. “But we call it the Island in the Sky."

"Then we have reached our destination!" Lange said triumphantly. "God be praised!" He rejoiced that not a single member of his flock had been lost to disease or misadventure.

"Amen, Pastor Mark Lange! But this has been a full day. The United States Army came hunting the hunters of the People. The hunters became the hunted and now we no longer fear the men of this fort, but during the tussle we became separated from Jashen’s father and the rest of our people. We now must make haste to return and see if they are well, and Elyon willing they are. I bid you to continue upstream until the very slopes of Green Dome lie before you, and there when we meet again we shall make you more than welcome."

Early in Wanica's chiefdom the Northern Raiders paid their last visit to the People. When Wanica confronted them he used a gradually tightening squeeze so the black spear of wind emerged from the Golden Gift at a visible rate. At full extension the beam ballooned out like an umbrella. The enemy saw that it was Chief Wanica's magic which absorbed the arrows fired at him. They saw it was Chief Wanica's magic that sliced their leader in half, both he and the horse he rode in on.

Wanica knew the Northern Raiders operated like pack animals with no stomach for sticking around once they lost their own Chief. And sure enough they fled into the grasslands north, never to return to the river ford at the foot of the Island in the Sky claimed by the People.

A bison gets thirsty eating grass all day out on the Great Plains and Squaw River was a reliable source of water. A herd came near to the source at the Island in the Sky where the stream was still fairly narrow. When the herd was taking drink Wanica struck with the Golden Gift, taking just one of them according to the needs of the Kuwapi People. It was done in such a stealthy way the rest of the herd barely noticed. In this way the Kuwapi were able to sustain themselves without ranging far afield to hunt.

Later the People saw the first wagon trains of white skin settlers use the ford at the river. The white skins used their fire sticks to drop some of the animals merely to clear the way and they did not even take the animals for food. Fair enough, Wanica thought, there is plenty for all. But by the second year the herds had grown noticeably thinner, and many of the People remembered the fire sticks.

The year after that no large game animals were seen at all. The People had to scratch a living from small game, or from the scrawny solitary black-tail deer they sometimes chanced upon. A few of of the hunters murmured openly, recalling with glowing fondness the time of Chief Bad Heart Bull, perhaps forgetting that even during that lost "Golden Age" it was still Wanica who led the hunts.

The army of the Whites set up an outpost six land miles (and twelve river miles) eastward of the Island in the Sky they called Fort Price. Captain John Smalley commanded a company of mounted rifles detached north from the 6th Calvalry Regiment, and despite his bitter hatred for the dead-end post he had been assigned, snack in the middle of the biggest zone of nothing in the American West, Smalley maintained good relations with Chief Wanica and the Kuwapi. For one reason, they all somehow spoke passable English, and the son of the Chief and his wife actually spoke it better than most Whites. He considered the People to be relatively peaceful.

But contacts were necessarily limited because the People are so poor they have almost nothing to trade. "This fort ain't exactly a charity outfit," he was often heard to say. Ten Kuwapi women lived at the fort and the less busy the soldiers were the more busy the women were.

One day eight whiteskins came mounted on horses, cracking whips, two on Point, two on Flank, and two on Drag, with a cook with his own wagon in the rear and a man riding way out front picking the best path for five hundred animals bulkier than any game animal save the bison.

The whites drove their herd to a large island in Squaw River where the best grass grew. They did this without the basic courtesy of offering Chief Wanica one or two head as toll.

Miffed, the Chief dispatched hunters to take payment in kind with a few well-placed arrows. The eight white men fired back. Two Kuwapi hunters were killed, which was more than Wanica could afford to pay to learn how the strange new animals tasted. The Kuwapi withdrew halfway up the eastern flank of Green Dome and watched as the herd was driven to the north bank.

John Morrison, the man on Point who owned the cattle, told his boys to stand fast and defend the herd while he rode hell-for-leather downstream to Fort Price and told Captain Smalley he wanted to "donate' twenty head but there was the slight matter of an Indian problem. Chief Wanica knew what was coming, and made his plans accordingly. Then he rode back down to the island with a boy named Tashunka sitting behind him, They started to field-dress one of the fallen cows.

The bugle sounded and Fort Price vomited seventy mounted men plus John Morrison. Wanica and Tashunka were slicing the guts out of a cow, and the rest of his hunters, maybe twenty men, were four hundred feet above it all. When the cavalry showed up the Kuwapi rode down the hill and down the river, commanded by Jashen, with his wife Leliel leading the way before all the horses, on foot.

Smalley divided his forces and sent almost sixty of his men after the hunters. This detachment was led by Lt. Lambert Welles. But Smalley, Morrison, and twelve other soldiers begin circling Wanica and the boy. They slowly closed in. Along the river a chase ensued. Three miles from Fort Price is a low ridge running north to south, and the Squaw River, which is really a large creek, cut straight through it in a short twisting little canyon with steep walls and no path except for the river itself. Here Welles got his T crossed.

Sixty soldiers were riding in single file and ten Kuwapi waited at the mouth of the canyon firing arrows as they came up one-by-one. So Welles ordered a countermarch, which was an even worse tactic. The other ten Kuwapi rolled boulders down on them and broke the legs of their horses. After that it was like shooting fish in a barrel.

The Kuwapi hunters left one soldier alive, tied to a tree, with one hand free to scoop up river water to drink, but the knot was too far away to unravel. Such was their custom, that tales of their ferocity would spread. Then the warriors of the People continued down the river to engage any reserve forces left behind at Fort Price.

There were five soldiers on the sick list who didn't make the raid, they were supposed to hold the fort. They sent forth the ten Kuwapi women held as slaves and Jashen was entreated.

Back at the ford Smalley and Morrison moved closer to Chief Wanica while four soldiers supporting the Captain orbited the scene at a stately trot. "God damn it Chief," he said, "you know better than to start acting like the Northern Raiders."

"What are you going to do to him?" Morrison asked.

"Take him in for cattle rustling. That'll have to do. The boy can go. The rest of these red fellows were just following orders. They got families to feed. And now they can pick themselves a new chief."

Wanica, thanks to the English lessons of his son Jashen, understood perfectly what Smalley wanted to do to him, and he decided not to go peacefully. He had the Golden Gift in his hand and pointed it right at Smalley. The black shaft leaped out with its hideous sucking sound and sliced off the head of Smalley's horse Then Smalley himself was rendered in two. That black line remained there, drinking in light and air, while five more orbiting horses and men ran right into it, including Paul Morrison.

After that Wanica used the Golden Gift to get rid of the bodies of the men and the horses he had slain. He knew the killing range of the Golden Gift was not much longer than a spear. Against a troop of whites armed with firesticks he would be helpless, and he did yet know the outcome of the battle downriver. He knew the Whites would kill him, and his son, and his warriors, and no doubt all of the women and children and old men in the camp of the People as well in retribution for him killing the white chief. There were rumors of such atrocities happening before. Then the army of the whites would have the Golden Gift. Wanica needed to think fast. Little did he know, his son Jashen had already solved the problem for him.

The pilgrims of Five Corners Free Congregation arrived at the foot of Green Dome at dusk. The four fallen warriors of the People, Left Hand, Half Yellow Face, Kill Eagle, and Hairy Moccasin, were lying on a bier of branches taken from woody shrubs. And it was on this solemn occasion when the Kuwapi People and the settlers of Mark Lange's group were first gathered all together.

In full view of everyone Chief Wanica, with words of reverence for Wakan Tanka, struck off the Golden Gift and made the bodies of his dead men disappear. The Whites were struck speechless. Coming as they did from a religious background, such a display could be nothing other than the power of God made manifest.

"This is a sign!" they exclaimed. They recognized the Golden Gift from the translation of the White Scroll read to them by Lange. It was the same weapon wielded by Prince Melchizedek when he first encountered father Abraham. Not merely the same kind, but literally the same artifact.

"God has brought us all together," Lange declared, "White man and Red man alike, in this land of His choosing, flowing with milk and honey." At Lange's words all the people looked around in the fading light and took in the barren, mostly treeless grasslands. Lange cleared his throat. "Here we all shall remain, and prosper with God's blessings!"

Lange couldn't just take the weapon outright, as it was holy, a divine gift, so it could never be defiled by base theft. Obviously the People of Wanica and the remnant of the Five Corners Free Congregation would have to be permanent and equal (but separate) partners. The doctrine of matrimonial consanguinity, or cousin-marriage, would prevent any joining between the two sides, thus salving some of the settlers' hor- ror at any race-mixing.

After the funeral there followed a good old-fashioned mass conversion of the entire Kuwapi people, followed by their assembly-line baptism in the cold waters of the Squaw River. They were each plunged into the stream three times using total immersion, since Lange was at heart still a Dunker. So a new congregation was born, the Church of Green Dome, with a White Wing and a Red Wing, "Two lungs by which the united people of the Creator draw new breath," Lange declared.

That night Wanica's people returned to their encampment at the 4,650 foot level of Green Dome, on a wide bench on the eastern side of the hill. In the morning, aided by the Whites, they began to turn it into a permanent village.

WATCHERS

The Watchers are born with a hunger to know. Even the children of angels and men annoy their parents with endless questions pondering their own origin. To silence Daughter, Father said, “Your beginning was the result of my physical joining with Mother.”

When Daughter asked further of origin of her parents, and whether there lived others of their kind, Mother said, “We are a multitude beyond your ability to reckon. But it is our law and tradition to isolate a newborn for a time before immersing her in the song of the City of Stars, lest your identity be lost in the cacophony of the many voices.”

Daughter could see the purpose of that precaution. She had known only Thaumiel, the Two, and only as soundless voices and an interior assurance of identity. Daughter ceased her questions and set about to discover her own answers.

There was a thing she knew how to do, although she did not know how she was able to know it. Daughter could send pieces of herself out of her body. These fragments were like tiny hot drops of liquid, yet ach one was as heavy as a stone temple.

These drops were hurled into a void surrounding Daughter. There they expanded and cooled, becoming large frozen shapes. They flew free of Daughter’s body, yet each shape remained connected to her by a thread which none could see. Not even Daughter herself with her own surrogate eyes in the shapes could see this thread.

Daughter saw her body was a globe of light, and her surface was covered in jets and loops of flame which erupted into the void. When she beheld the stars, she knew that she was seeing countless others of her kind, but they were so dim that Daughter, who saw how her own light faded with distance, marveled how far across the void they truly were.

Daughter also saw other points of light that looked like stars, yet they only reflected the light that she herself made, and they were much closer than the others of her kind. She slightly fattened the link to one of her tools and let hot gas flow through. This gas then escaped into the void and caused the tool to move.

As it responded to Daughter’s will and offered her the sense of sight, she lived through the tool vicariously, as though her body was free to move through the void.

One of the objects lay at a distance a hundred-fold greater than the width of the Daughter's body. Her avatar dropped below the cloud layer and cooled off in a world-girdling expanse of water.

When Daughter’s avatar emerged from the ocean it crossed over a land thickly covered with green trees. As she plowed through the vegetation Daughter observed frightened apes fleeing over the ground using all four limbs to move.

She arced through the void to another place and reached a grassy plain with a single mountain dominating it. Here Daughter saw another group of apes that walked erect. She changed her shape to watch.

Hidden from their notice as a white rock, Daughter observed a burial ceremony for a newly dead hunter. Afterwards the apes polished elaborate bone tools with stone tools and repaired the animal hides they slept within during the hunt. At night they entered a cave and a tendril from the avatar of Daughter snaked in to watch them. A female applied pigment to the wall to produce a beautiful painting. Daughter saw resin boiling in a pot over a fire. The resin was then used to fix a stone spearhead to a shaft for hunting.

Daughter spoke of all these things to her parents. Here lived creatures who were awake in the manner of the Watchers, yet were unutterably different. But for a long time neither Father nor Mother said a word to her in reply about the living things she had seen. And Daughter wondered if her parents had revealed them to the other elohim. Perhaps they were of small import and suchlike world-dwellers filled the void. But her parent’s silence did make her curious. She said to her parents, “It would be a small thing for me to reach one of the other suns and speak to him.”

Father said, “No, Daughter, the link to your avatar will grow too thin to be useful as a conduit for matter when it has reached the distance light travels in the time this inhabited world you discovered makes one full revolution. You could begin such a crossing but you could never stop. We rule our own near vicinity absolutely, but we can reach no further. If it were not so, even now I would be preparing to cross the void and destroy all of these living creatures you have discovered with fire from my own belly.”

Daughter said, “Help me to understand, Father. Do you really wish to destroy them? Something within me says these strange living things are not our enemies.”

Father replied, “Even if they are not dangerous to the Watchers now, perhaps they would become our mortal enemies in the future. We have found many worlds with life of like kind, but the tool-making creatures you have discovered are unique. They are potentially dangerous to us because they are fully awake, even as we are, guided by their own will rather than by their nature. Given time, nothing would restrain such ones. ”

Of her discovery Daughter said, “Certainly these creatures are intelligent beings even as we are. Does that not make them something to be treasured by the elohim for their very likeness to us, and not merely cast away?”

Father replied, “They are unruly like all the other beasts you have found. If these creatures learn the lore of the Elohim nothing shall hinder them from doing whatsoever comes into their mind to do. How can they be good students if they prove to be unfaithful servants? The risk to our kind is too great, not immediately, perhaps, but in the future. I can do nothing but block your announcement. Your mother is in full agreement. But this does not give us pleasure, Daughter.”

Daughter said, “It may be true that I cannot halt my avatar at another star, but certainly information is not so constrained. After all, I can speak freely with yourself and Mother. When my avatar reaches a nearby star I can speak to him in a quiet place, directly, and speak of the creatures I found circling me.”

Father was dismayed how Daughter, entirely without recourse to the lore of the Watchers, knew a sun’s own body filled the void with noise, yet there remained silent regions where even creatures such as the ones she had found could make themselves heard.

Father said, “You are too young to understand the responsibility that has been thrust upon you by your misfortune of finding these creatures. You have not yet been granted access to the city of stars. It is the way of the elohim to introduce our young to the other elohim in stages, after they have developed a stable personality. But after this exchange I judge you are now ready for this and therefore I will announce your own birth to the city of stars. But you must be willing to accept two conditions before I allow you to converse with the rest of the elohim. The first is you must send some of these clever animals you have found to a world circling myself, that I may examine whether they are amenable to our control. The second condition is that you shall only listen to the idle chatter of the elohim. You shall not ask of them the smallest question. You shall not speak to them of these creatures nor any other thing, until I myself reveal these creatures to them. Our highest law will bind you to this Covenant.”

To these conditions, Daughter reluctantly agreed. So Daughter entered into a covenant with Father to speak no words to the city of stars, and to bring a male and a female of these creatures to Kemen for a time of testing with the Elohim as their masters before allowing them to set aside their servitude and embrace the Elohim as teachers.

A fierce storm hurled lightning, rain, and hail. Clad in animal skins, Adamu picked his way to the base of a mountain that stood aloof on a grassy plain. His woman Chava carried a child as she followed him

Adamu found a cave in the mountainside to shelter them from the storm. Chava sat on a boulder and breastfed her child as her mate started a fire. A noise other than the crackling fire startled both of them. Adamu moved deeper into the cave with a torch to investigate

Adamu passed a wall that was covered with images of animals and hunters, evidence the cave had been used long before. But there was also much dry firewood, which spoke of more recent habitation. He thought perhaps the ones who lived there were caught out in the storm

The cave narrowed to a tunnel that meandered and grew lighter when intuitively it should have grown darker. Adamu was joined by his woman and child. They reached another cave mouth deep within the interior of the mountain that re- vealed cyan bushes and a purple sky

A branchless tree resembling a whip stirred into motion and struck the ground before them. The whip tree grabbed Adamu’s torch and hurled it away, where it started a fire. The couple could not emerge from the cave entrance by reason of the whip tree and the growing fire

Adamu and Chava edged back into the tunnel away from the heat. When the whip tree caught fire it began to thrash more intensely than they saw it do before. They retreated deep inside the cave until the tree burned to a lifeless crisp, and returned when the fire abated.

A black patch of land lay before Adamu and Chava and continued to smolder. They stepped across the hot burnt soil and carefully watched for any movement. When they gazed back towards the tunnel they were startled to see it was set it a low ridge. The mountain was gone.

When the sun set a second brilliant light remained in the sky, tinged with orange, brighter than any star. Still, it began to grow cold. Adamu used some of the smoldering embers to rekindle a fire in the tunnel entrance and returned to the other world to hunt game

Supper was two hares caught by Adamu and skinned by Chava. In the morning they saw the burned acreage was already sporting shoots of blue grass. The next day the grass was tall enough for Adamu and Chava couple to run barefoot and free.

Adamu and Chava thought the new world belonged to them, solely, but that was not to be.

A small herd of bison emerged from the tunnel and proceeded to eat the grass. They were driven by a theophany of Father, whom Daughter named The Accuser. He was a tall figure in the shape of a man but without a face and as black as obsidian.

The Accuser carried a twin-headed ax to the edge of the burn where a native plant took root in the burnt area. It laid the ax to the base of the plant and chopped it cleanly off, then flipped the ax around and used the handle's sharp tip to pry the weed out of the soil.

After that the Accuser interposed himself between the cave entrance and the human family and approached them. They backed away until they reached the perimeter of the burned area. The Accuser held out the tool and motioned for Adamu to take it until he did as he was bid.

As The Accuser watched, Adamu found another plant that was growing on the edge of the grazing ground for the bison. He duplicated the actions he had seen to kill the intruding plant. Then The Accuser taught him how to restore the keen edge of the ax with a stone.

The theophany of Daughter was identical in form to that of The Accuser but white instead of black. The Accuser joined Daughter as she looked down upon the new garden. And she said, “Here are the servants, as I vowed, brought within reach of your avatar to do with them as you will.”

But the Accuser said, ‘All you have given me is three creatures in a world that will kill them if they try to leave their small garden. You must bring to Kemen forty more such families before I will hold our covenant to be fulfilled.”

There is no native fauna in Kemen but some of the flora moved of its own accord and most of it was dangerous. A whipping tree can render a man down to a pile of broken bones and bloody flesh in a few heartbeats. Some of the leaves formed clenching mouths with teeth.

Thorny ball bushes rolled under their own power by shifting their weight and selectively gripping the ground. Most plants were deadly to touch. For centuries the death rate of the colonists in Kemen exceeded the birth rate, mandating a steady stream of new volunteers.

So Daughter and The Accuser toiled together to plan several dozen gardens in Kemen. The first children to be born away from Earth came to be. But many of the men and women brought to Kemen died before the span of years nature alloted to them by reason of the hostile flora. o

In the first garden when the eldest sons of Adamu and Chava were of an age to have wives of their own the theophany of Daughter emerged from the tunnel escorting a woman from Earth. The Accuser observed from a ledge overhead as Daughter and the woman approached Kayin, who had been born on Earth.

Kayin was harvesting vegetables. He bowed to Daughter and offered the woman his best ones. The woman turned up her nose at the food. So Elyon ignored Kayin's sacrifice and took the woman to see the younger son instead, Hebel, the firstborn of Kemen. He was cooking bison.

Hebel bowed and offered a stick with meat cubes to the woman, who ate the meat greedily. Daughter placed the hand of the woman in the hand of Hebel as Kayin looked on with growing resentment, then departed soon after this. With the rope still in his hand, Kayin glared at all of them with contempt.

Kayin began to braid native vines for a long rope. Near the time of the setting of the white sun Kayin paused to watch the woman preening outside and he looked upon her with lust. Hebel emerged to gather his woman back inside his hut with a haughty glance at his brother.

In the morning Adamu and Chava brought clothes they made for their younger son's wife, but they ignored Kayin, who continued to make his rope. All day Hebel and his wife pawed at each other in full view of Kayin, who smiled calmly until he finished his rope, then he departed.

Only one safe path led away from the Garden. Along this trail was a whip tree which had not yet been cut down. It was bent away from the path and secured by a clever knot to a stump. The rope ended in the hand of Kayin, who hid in a bush and meditated upon a new thing in Kemen.

Near dusk Hebel and his wife walked the path away from the Garden. Hebel saw the whip tree was bent away from the tree and held fast by a rope, and it came into his mind that his brother or father had prepared it in the usual way to be chopped off at the base.

Kayin tugged on the rope, freeing the whip tree as his victims approached. The tree beat them into the ground. It broke their bones and bruised their organs. Blood flew from their mouths as they cried out.

The whip tree only stopped thrashing when Hebel and his bride were not recognizable as once-living humans. Adamu and Chava ran up to investigate their screams and were horror-struck. Daughter and The Accuser arrived soon after. Rope in hand, Kayin glared at them with defiance.

Daughter refused to watch The Accuser’s response to the first murder in Kemen. He returned to the tunnel in the Garden wall, and thence to the hillside cave on Earth. Daughter did not return within the lifetimes of Adamu, Chava, Kayin, nor any of their children.

The Accuser soon joined Elyon atop the high hill and said, “How very instructive of world-dwellers, would you not agree?”

Daughter said in reply, “In the other gardens you have made changes to their bodies which persist in their offspring. Your testing in Kemen is no longer pure. It has little bearing on the original stock here on Earth."

The Accuser said, “Yet after the killing today it is clear to me your precious woken creatures will destroy themselves and leave nothing but ruins, both on Kemen and on Earth. Hebel was not changed as you rightly note I have done in the other gardens.”

Daughter said, “You would raise up thralls who hasten their own extinction, but here I will teach them to live together and survive. In this I will have their willing participation, while in Kemen I foretell you will only heap to yourself the resentment of your slaves.”

The Accuser said, “I have given thought to their survival in Kemen, notwithstanding your own accusation. The changes will over the course of time make the males mighty of frame and sinew, and the females far more fertile and desirous to the eye. Now lower your center of gravity, daughter, it is unbecoming a goddess to have her avatar fall on its face. And do not forget you will never be able to make targeted queries of the Elohim as I have done."

Daughter did as her father suggested and seated her avatar upon the summit of Green Dome. The Accuser seated himself next to his daughter and for a moment they took in the view. "I envy you this world," he told her. "How very much unlike Kemen with its narrow unfrozen band."

But Daughter made no answer, for she was already in contact with the City of Stars. As The Accuser had cautioned her, it was overwhelming. For many years her silent white avatar sat motionless atop the Island in the Sky as the seasons changed, as winds buffeted her and snows blanketed her.

From old the creatures discovered by Daughter looked into the night sky and saw a faint white band. They called it the Backbone of the Night. Elyon knew one day humans would fashioned certain instruments and they would see the mist was really innumerable stars.

Two-thirds of these stars are much more cool and dim than yellowish Daughter and Father, or even than yellow-orange Mother. They contained no stable layer within for a sentient eloah to form, yet they could host one of two species of life more primitive than the elohim.

A distant ancestor of the Elohim diverged into three species. One adapted to the much cooler red stars and even colonized the ubiquitous warm brown stars that burn, ever so dimly, under a different principle than do the visible stars that shine much more brightly.

A second species became adapted for the brighter types of red stars. By necessity they reproduced prodigiously, since a large flare would kill them on the time scale of a few decades. A third species adapted to claim the more stable habitats of the hotter suns.

With much longer lifespans, this third species developed full sentience and ultimately a community. These are the Elohim and the oldest surviving member, named Yefefiah, is over 980,000 years of age. They guess some among them will live for tens of billions of years.

Other suns were blue giants which were as much as a hundred times more massive than Elyon, far too hot to be quickened as one of the elohim. Once or twice in a century these stars died in a vast explosion that for a short span of time outshone even Ein Sof.

From the way Father had spoken of this Ein Sof before she was granted access to the greater community of her kind Daughter assumed he was a powerful lawgiver among the elohim, or perhaps even a deity. Now she knew Ein Sof was nothing more than all the Elohim in aggregate.

Early in the existence of Ein Sof, long before Elyon encountered Earth, another world with sentient life was known to the Elohim. They were aquatic creatures who adapted to cross land when an ice age reduced their shallow world ocean to scattered lakes.

Ein Sof took delight to find the universe looking at itself through different eyes, but the energies unleashed by the creatures hastened the end of the glacial period that made them tool-users. The Elohim watched them slowly revert to silent ocean-dwellers once more.

On ten occasions the Elohim detected evidence coming from civilizations somewhere beyond the reach of Ein Sof. In every case the evidence faded in a few centuries, sometimes as a gradual change to more efficient forms of communication, other times far more abruptly.

More frequently a young eloah exploring her own neighborhood ran across the ruins of an extinct culture which had attained sufficient knowledge to reach beyond the world of their birth.

It was inevitable that the Elohim must cross paths with a similar kind of life once more, but the next time, it was collectively vowed, the Elohim would not sit idly by as the creatures brought about their own extinction. They would be made aware of the dangers.

For Ein Sof knew how truly rare was life, and therefore dear, even life which was so different from themselves. The Watchers looked ahead to the coming of the Students, and Daughter had found them, yet her parents went out of their way to ensure they would remain hidden.

Mother could reach the city of stars through the eloah named Hod. Elyon's discovery would unleash scrutiny that Keter was unprepared to endure. The Accuser knew he must immediately tempt Mother into the same transgression as his own to ensure silence. And Daughter, now with access to elohim lore, guessed the nature of that offense.

The act of giving birth changed an eloah from female to male. This normally happened within a span of time similar to a single human lifetime, yet few Watchers have died a natural death. For every female among the Elohim there were countless males vying for them.

As the ages rolled on this only grew worse, and courting among the Watchers became ripe for abuse. The only way for an eloah to speak with others was through two umbilical cords that always connected a Watcher to his parents, and through them to their parents, and so on.

Individual living suns could be entirely sealed off from the greater community of elohim, simply by never announcing their conception. Two male elohim could conspire to set up a secret harem. They could take turns mating with each other’s offspring. This was considered a great crime by a majority of the Watchers.

Mother's own mother Hod had been one of those trapped females. She was allowed back to full contact with the city of stars in return for mating with Father, but there was a covenant of silence in force. Hod was enjoined from speaking of his captivity up the chain. But nothing stopped him from complaining of this state of affairs down the chain to Mother and thus also to Daughter.

Nothing would forbid Hod of speaking of the Students, if he knew of them. Daughter longed to speak to Hod of them, but access to the city of stars impressed upon her that breaking a covenant, no matter how trifling, was considered the greatest crime by all of the elohim.

Mother did not yet speak of the Students to Hod, by Father’s request, but there was no binding covenant in place ensuring Mother must remain permanently silent about them, and Father had nothing to offer that might bring Mother into such a covenant.

Father knew Hod would quite enjoy announcing the discovery of the Students to the other elohim as a certain way to bring about the judgment and unnatural death the elohim who had imprisoned him without simultaneously violating the pact that still existed between them.

With time pressing, Keter found the sole path out of his trap. Mother was an orange sun very near to the Earth, as the gaps between suns go. Chesed was another such orange sun, somewhat further away. Father arranged their liaison and Mother mated with her fully aware that he was guilty of breaking the second-highest law of the elohim.

In the mating of elohim eight ripples fly out into the void. It took over four years for the first ripple from Chesed to reach a wild but cool orange-red sun and quicken into a living and conscious being. The second ripple from Chesed arrived a month later. But Netzach was already well along in becoming the newest female member of the Watchers, so the ripple did not tarry. Instead, four months later, it reached a very small red sun and began to quicken life there.

This sun and two others beyond it were too cool. The three red suns formed a trap for the six remaining generative waves. They repeatedly quickened into newborn elohim, only to result in a stillbirth soon after. At the end of the mating Chesed, the mother of Netzach, had become forever male.

And Daughter, noting the appearance of a newborn half-sister, thought to herself, “My own parents have become enemies not only of myself, but enemies of our whole kind. They have fallen into the Forbidden Way, and now they will strive to hide the Students, or even to destroy them if they can contrive it.”

Daughter had been overwhelmed by sudden access to the chatter of Ein Sof, even as her father had warned, but over time she learned to separate her identity from the truly endless stream of information. Atop the mountain her avatar stirred to action once more.

When Daughter returned to full awareness she saw The Accuser waiting for her on the summit. "You are a liar, Father. This is not a research project, merely part of your harem!"

Father did not deny that, he only restated there was a covenant and Daughter must abide by the terms.

She said, "Have no fear that I will break our covenant, for I will do what my own parents could not, and obey every law and custom of Ein Sof. But one day these creatures will make such a noise that every Watcher will hear them. That is what you should fear."

"It will never come to that, daughter. While you were immersed in the lore of Ein Sof this world made two circles around yourself, and there was another killing. It is clear your precious woken creatures will destroy themselves and leave nothing but ruins."

Daughter replied that Keter's colony would raise up thralls who worked to hasten their own extinction, but she would teach her own students to survive.

Keter said, "You can do nothing but fail, since you can only listen to Ein Sof as an outsider while I make queries."

But Daughter did not despair. Vowing to preserve the sentient creatures she found, Daughter knew she would have the willing participation of those she called the Students, while Mother and Father would only heap to themselves the resentment of their slaves.

KUWAPI

The Kuwapi people were more significant than a mere band of nomads scratching out their existence on the Great Plains of North America, yet they did not have the numbers nor the blood ties to mark them as a tribe or even a clan. They began as outcasts from among the Oglala Sioux. In Lakhota, kuwapi means "they follow". These outcasts wandered the tribe's hunting grounds as a kind of punishment detail for religious offenses, with the level of Oglala displeasure permanently tallied by the number of whip scars each one bore on their back.

To the north the Kuwapi were beset by the Dakotas who held the entire Black Hills and the plains around them. The Kuwapi named them the northern raiders and if the mainline Oglalas helped fend them off from time to time it was more to ensure their own food supply than to do favors.

In the richer grasslands eastward the Kuwapi had the fierce Pawnees to contend with. To the south along the Oregon Trail the Kuwapi were buffeted by the Arapahoes and also ran the risk of encountering white settlers moving west and the US Army troops who protected them.

In the scrubby furrowed lands westward they had the Cheyennes to fear. The whole northwest was put out of their minds by dread of the Crow and Blackfeet. But in the ever-moving sliver of meager grasslands left in the wake of the Oglala the Kuwapi wandered, and here their hunters rode.

Wanica led them downwind of a herd of bison drinking water at a ford in a large creek named Squaw River by the whites. When he signaled a halt, they tied their horses off to the roots of sun-bleached stumps and crept unseen through brush to approach the herd.

Some of the animals grew nervous though they could not see any of the men. As Wanica and his hunters crept through the riparian zone to watch the herd they cast no shadows. This day was darker than most, with a low overcast. It was cold, but it did not rain.

The bull stopped drinking and stared downstream, sensing danger. Judging the moment to be right, Wanica stood from behind a shrub and loosed an arrow. The bolt struck a cow in a flank but it was not a lethal shot. All the bison heard the cry of the victim and panicked. A rapid series of shots were made by other hunters but all of their arrows missed or made non-lethal wounds.

The bison fled to a slope north and west and made for the cover of the low cloud bank, although they were too stupid to have planned such a move. Led by Wanica the hunters returned to their horses and followed the herd away from the river.

The cloud bank enveloped the hunters as a thick fog. They kept their bows at the ready, turning left and right, but none of the bison were visible to the men in the complete whiteout. But further uphill the fog cleared and patches of blue sky were seen. Three of the bison were isolated and exposed. Arrows were loosed and struck home, dropping one of the animals. The two surviving bison ran back down off the hill into the fog, seeking the safety of numbers.

Wanica ordered his youngest braves to carve up the body of the fallen animal. Meat was loaded on skids made of wooden staves and animal skin to be dragged away. Nothing of the bison was wasted. Satisfied with the progress of the young men, Wanica turned away with the older hunters. They rode up the slope until they could go no higher.

The summit of the high hill stood alone over a sea of clouds that reached the horizon. It was a rare and beautiful moment. Wanica was deeply moved by the sight. He said, "I name this place the Island in the Sky."

The herd of bison slowly wandered back out of the fog, grazing warily on the mountaintop even with the hunters close at hand. The animals sensed that the humans had done their worst and would leave the rest of them alone. But what followed scattered even the humans.

Something taller than a tree emerged from the sea of clouds on six pillars of flame. Only Wanica and his fearless steed remained to watch it touch down on the summit of the hill. At first he thought it was just white men doing one better than their smoking horse of iron. But the object grew much smaller in size and changed shape to resemble a faceless white man. Not like a European, but white as snow, with no eyes, ears, nor mouth. It shifted postion on the hilltop, and the very ground thundered and shook under its feet.

Wanica nudged his horse a bit closer as the white man-shape sat on the ground. Its head opened in six petals to reveal a gold object that rose as though it were being offered to Wanica.

He dismounted to take a closer look, approaching the shape cautiously on foot. Tentatively, respectfully, he withdrew the golden object from the splayed head while the limbs of the man-shape remained motionless at its side. The object fit neatly in Wanica's palm like the hilt of a knife. The head of the white man closed.

Wanica squeezed the gift to produce a hissing opaque black beam. When he swept the beam around it carved trenches in the stony ground of the hilltop entirely without effort. He watched the white man change again to become a dome on the summit, like a smooth igloo.

Wanica discovered that when he no longer actively squeezed the Golden Gift the immaterial black shaft retracted and disappeared. He squeezed it again briefly to be sure it still worked, and tested how long he could make the beam. He found it could also make a shield.

The curiosity of Wanica's companions overcame their fear. They slowly returned to the summit, together with some of the bison. There the hunters saw the white dome on the very summit of the hill, and they also saw Wanica standing next to it with his horse. Wanica lifted a large stone and set it down near the white dome. The companions of Wanica joined him stacking stones around the dome as though they were building a second igloo out of rock. When the men finished they stood back to look. The shape was concealed by a cairn.

None of the Kuwapi hunters understood what happened on the summit of the Island in the Sky, but they all believed it was fitting to build a hallowed lodge for Wakan Tanka after his manifestation to them, which they understood to be his divine blessing for the hunt.

By the time the People were feasting on bison the animal's horns had been fastened to leather thongs. One of Chief Tatanka's women pinned the horns to his shoulder as though he had actually departed the tipi where he roiled in womanflesh and killed the animal himself. Briefly Tatanka and Wanica eyed each other, but there was with no mutual respect whatsoever.

The chief said, "There are five stories how this animal was taken."

Wanica looked away and blew a ring of smoke.

"About the hunt, then. What say you, Squaw Who Hunts?"

Wanica's gaze returned to the Chief sharply as though he had been slapped, but he controlled his rage and answered. "We followed the herd into a low cloud. I could not see the other hunters. Each man ascended alone. When the clouds parted we took the animal."

"And the Great Spirit appeared out of the cloud to bless our hunt!" blurted Plenty Lice out of turn.

"You have taught your hunters to lie so easily, Squaw Who Hunts," said Tatanka. "I should give you another name."

Even Wanica was annoyed by the outburst of Plenty Lice, but he said, "Wakan Tanka was white like snow. He sat on the top of the mountain. His head and arms and legs shrank until he became an egg.

The hunters who had been with Wanica nodded their assent and grunted. Chief Tatanka refused to believe the tale his hunters were telling. Staring at Wanica with his perpetual sneer, he demanded to know what they did after they saw the 'egg'.

"We built a lodge of stones for the Great Spirit to honor him for his blessing."

Tatanka pulled out his knife and drew near to Wanica.

"You built a lodge of lies. There is no white egg!"

He flicked just the tip of his blade across Wanica's face. Tatanka was satisfied to draw only a little blood. Maiming his best hunter wouldn't do. He said, "I name you Hole In Cheek!"

Wanica put his hand to his face to staunch the bleeding and walked with dignity out of the range of the fire's light. Chief Tatanka laughed but nobody else did.

Wanica's wife Yuha left the circle of light as well and followed her man to their tipi.

While she dressed Wanica's wound his son Shy Bear said, "Father, did you truly see the Great Spirit, or did you just want to annoy Bad Heart Bull?"

Wanica shifted his eyes to the boy and appraised his son but did not answer until Yuha finished staunching the cut. At length he said, "Yuha, what we spoke about before, now it is time."

Yuha nodded that she understood and retrieved a leather pouch. The pouch contained many pigments and the implements to apply them. Using what she had stored in the pouch, Yuha began to paint the face of Shy Bear.

For his part Wanica retrieved a ceremonial dress made of bison skins and feathers and many beads.

Shy Bear turned his head to look at what his father held, which smeared some of the paint caused his mother to grow annoyed. She said, "Stand and be still, son."

Wanica laid the ceremonial dress on Shy Bear and fastened it as his wife continued to work. he aid, "You will get no answers from me." He put the boy's own bow in his hands and said, "I will give you no morsel of food."

Yuha finished painting her son's face and stood apart from him. His father said, "To this day I only lent you the name Shy Bear." Wanica opened the flap door. "Go now, into the night, nameless one. Kill your own food, if you can. And if you cannot?" Wanica shrugged. "Perhaps in your hunger Wakan Tanka will give you a vision."

Astonishment marked Shy Bear's face at all these words. Shy Bear glanced from his fathers face and traced along his arm to the finger pointing outdoors and he nodded, understanding at last. But he could also see his mother did not understand, not really. She was doing this under duress. This was a ritual, with a strict form.

As was required of her, she said, "The boy will go out from us. The man will return."

Shy Bear sincerely hoped the worry on his mother's face was not rooted in another one of her well-known premonitions. He obeyed his father and stepped out into the night.

In the moonless dark Shy Bear stumbled across the prairie until the fires of the Kuwapi people were like flickering orange stars far behind him. By midnight he reached the first slopes of the Island in the Sky and ascended slowly, reaching the summit just before sunrise. In the light of dawn the boy sat to let his shadow fall upon his father's stone cairn. He watched all morning until his shadow no longer touched the rocky mound. Then the shadow of the cairn began to touch him.

By dusk he had not received a vision from the Great Spirit. There was a strong breeze. When the sun sank below the horizon the boy grew cold. He gathered woody brush growing on the summit and cut it with the edge of a flint scraper, which he also used to spark a fire to burn them. But the flame and smoke kept changing direction. The boy took the changing winds to be an invitation to spend the night with Wakan Tanka within the lodge that his father built. He removed stones from one side to create a door.

When he crawled inside he saw the white egg that Wanica spoke about to Bad Heart Bull. The boy was hungry but it was too dark to try to kill a hare. No heat came from his fire outside but least he was shielded from the wind. There was no room to lie down straight, but he could sleep on his side if he curled around the white egg, careful not to touch it.

But sometime in the middle of the night while he was asleep he touched the white artifact anyway and was awakened by the sting of a needle pricking his hand. Taking even more care not to touch the manifestation of Wakan Tanka the boy stood up and went outside. Shy Bear saw that his fire had become glowing coals, but that earlier the wind must have carried embers halfway down the slope and kindled a brush fire that threatened to form a ring around the whole small mountain. He knew that if he stayed on the summit he was dead. Small game was running up and over the summit to flee the fire and the boy could have shot his dinner then, but with every wasted moment he risked being roasted himself.

He moved toward the fire to have enough light to see, then moved west to get around the flames. But the boy could go no further. A chasm of the Squaw River lay before him. He could hear it flowing over rocks far below as wrapped around the entire southern half of the mountain. He needed light to try to cross it. The fire spread to cut off any escape north.

The boy looked down into the canyon of the Squaw and saw a tiny light of purest white, like the brightest star he had ever seen, bobbing along the west slope as though it were walking. Sometimes it would move north, then at times south, but it always rose higher. At length the light reached the rim on a level with the boy and he saw it was actually worn on the head of a human figure even taller than he. The prairie fire behind it outlined an hourglass shape.

A female voice speaking his tongue said, "Follow me and you will live." Sha turned and went back the way sha came, and the boy did follow, if anything to reach the creek where he could stand a chance of surviving when the wildfire reached the canyon.

The path was free of obstructions, but the female frequently checked the progress of the boy. When sha resumed walking the boy admired the patterned skintight leather sha wore, even in the dim light of the fire, which made har ass look like a big ripe plum. But the sound of the water grew quieter the closer they approached, which was strange.

By the time they reached the creek the water wasn't flowing at all. It had become a wet staircase of puddles that led up to a low cave entrance in a wall of dark shale. The femaler crouched to splash har way inside the cave with har tall boots, and the boy followed.

Inside the cave the boy saw a pool of water with a narrow stone ledge all around it. The light from the stranger's headband filled the space and he saw that she looked very much like a young Kuwapi woman but much taller, and sha was not much older than he. Sha laid har hand on har chest and said, "Leliel."

Sha expected him to give his own name and he did not want har to think him addled, so he said, "My father once named me Shy Bear, but now he has cast me out of his tipi with no name." He clearly saw that sha did not understand his words so he laid his hand on his own chest and said, simply, "Shy Bear."

The sound of that name seemed to please har. She removed her headband light and dropped it into the water. It faded as it sank. Shy Bear saw the water began to glow with a dim green light.

Leliel knew that Shy Bear could not understand har words, but sha tried to make him understand with simple hand gestures to follow har. She made this imperative, as there was danger if he did not follow.

Leliel jumped into the cistern, turned turtle, and disappeared from view. The boy waited for her to come back up for air as he knew she must, but she did not. The water then began to stir and overflow its bounds. Shy Bear took a leap into the unknown and followed her.

When Shy Bear reached air again there was much more light than the alcove at the source of the Squaw River. Many hands reached down offering to pull him from the water, as his ceremonial dress was soaked and weighted him down greatly. Two of the hands were those of Leliel.

Shy Bear saw that he was standing next to a large pool of water surrounded by a surface of polished planks of wood, and beyond this, a circle of small hut, Behind the huts was a lush forest. Shy Bear could see the sky through branches in these trees, and it was purple. But it was also rather cool, and Shy Bear, being soaked, began to shudder with a chill. Leliel was just as wet as he. Sha took his hand and led him into one of the huts on the perimeter of the pool.

Shutting the door, she disrobed both Shy Bear and harself. This sha did one garment at a time, first his, then har own. Leliel opened the door once to pass through his ceremonial dress to waiting hands.

Shy Bear saw that har legs were sculpted far more than he would expect a woman's legs to be. She was obviously a runner.

Leliel in turn took in the sight of Jashen as sha thoroughly dried both harself and him with linens. Sha held a ribbon with strange markings against Jashen's body, here and there, then opened the door to speak some words to those were waiting outside. There were dry clothes folded neatly inside the hut, specked with green and dark purple, which Leliel donned. By the time sha was fully dressed, the servants outside passed another set of identical clothing through the door of the hut, but they were cut smaller, selected to fit Jashen perfectly. Taking mute encouragement from Leliel, he slipped into the new clothing. And Shy Bear saw there was wisdom in the color and pattern of the clothing. With face and hands painted, a warrior would be almost invisible in the forest. He wondered if women in this strange place were accepted as warriors.

Outside of the hut, seated near the water, a man said to hym, "Welcome, Shy Bear. I am called Yeshua, and I am also called Teacher by some. You may call me Chief Yeshua, if you wish. Everything you see around you is the lodge of my father, who is known to your people as Wakan Tanka."

The man fell silent and Shy Bear felt he was invited to speak. He said, "Chief Yeshua, you speak strange words, yet somehow I know what they mean. How can this be?"

Yeshua replied, "It happened after you were pierced by the white egg. It has already changed your mind, but there are also changes to your body which will come. Now you can speak and understand many tongues. The changes to your body that can be seen will not be great. Perhaps even now you can feel a hard lump behind your head."

Shy Bear touched the back of his head to confirm this, and said, "I did not want to be changed in these ways, Chief Yeshua."

"It is a consequence of touching the Artifact. Those changes are not a matter of your choice. Yet you are free to choose to return to your People. I would ask you to teach the Kuwapi the language of the whites that you now know."

Shy Bear said, "But they will grow afraid, and flog me, or try to put me to death, thinking I am Coyote come in a human shape." Yeshua replied, "Do not fear those things, Shy Bear. Your father Wanica will protect you. After you return he will become chief of the People."

"All of these things, Chief Yeshua, the changes to me, what is the purpose? Is there a purpose to them?"

Yeshua said "A group of whites will meet the People in three years. They will be led by a man who has already been brought here even as you were. Wakan Tanka would that these white settlers and your people live together in peace." Shy Bear said, "You spoke of a choice, Chief Yeshua. What then will become of me if I do not return to my parents and my people?"

Yeshua said, "If you do not return, Shy Bear, you may stay here for the rest of your life, and you will be treated well, but your parents and your people are very far away. If you do not choose to return to the lands of your birth they will never see you again."

Already Shy Bear had seen wondrous things beyond any of his dreams, and he longed to stay in that place and experience even more wonders, and here he stole a quick glance at Leliel. But his desire to see his father Wanica and mother Yuha again proved the greater. Hy said, "I will return, Chief Yeshua, and teach the People the tongue of the Whites as you bid."

"I am very pleased," said Yeshua with a smile. "No more shall you be called Shy Bear. Now you shall be called Jashen. When you go home Jashen shall be your name of manhood. Yet do not think I will send you home very soon, Jashen. The one you have met named Leliel has written many words upon a white scroll in the words of har tongue. I would have you copy these words in the tongue of the whites."

"Are there many words on this scroll, Chief Yeshua?"

"A great number of them, Jashen. It will take perhaps ten or twelve moons to complete this task."

"But soon my father and mother will think me to be dead."

"Take no thought of that, Jashen," said Yeshua. "No matter how long you remain here, when you return to the land of your people it will seem to Wanica and Yuha that you have been gone for less than a single moon. One day you will know how this is not even magic." "Such a thing would always be strong magic to me, Chief Yeshua."

"Others have been changed like you, some were Begotten, and some were Made. They call me Teacher. And when I teach, great magic becomes small, and small magic becomes a known thing, not even magic at all."

Leliel felt no urgency to rush her recital. Yeshua had told her when she was finished she would be sent to Earth and leave all that she had known far behind.

For his part Jashen, too, did not feel rushed, though he longed to return home. He believed that Yeshua would return him to his parents after only a single moon passed for them, no matter how long he tarried here in this place he called Kemen. Yet he felt no urge to speak of this promise to Mark Lange. It fell to Mark to drive them along in their task of translating the scroll, as he wished to be reunited with his wife, and was filled with rue for every day that she thought him to be missing or dead. And at times the labor grew tedious, yet it was Jashen who seemed to be most easily annoyed.

When he translated the passage of the refugees trodding west from Rumbek he asked Leliel, as though in unbelief, “Were you really this running girl?”

She told him to fetch his bow in one hand, took his other hand, and led him through the woods to a large flat clearing. The place served as a kind of parade ground in Nyduly. There Leliel stood twenty paces from Jashen.

“Fire an arrow at me,” she said, and when Jashen howled in dismay that she was wasting his time she said, “I am serious. Do your very best to try to kill me.”

He released the dart. Leliel’s muscles seemed to explode into motion. She ran backwards across the grass of the clearing faster than the arrow could follow. Then she turned and disappeared into the thick wall of trees at the far side of the open space.

In short order Leliel came to Yeshua by woodland paths well-known to herr. He was alone, and when he saw Leliel he made a gesture of welcome and bade her to sit.

Sha said, “Teacher, you have said you have put Jashen in close proximity to me that nature will take its course. But I have already recited the White Scroll up to the war of the dragon and Jashen has shown not the slightest interest in me."

Yeshua asked Leliel, “But what are your own feelings on this matter? Do you not find young Jashen to be pleasing to your eye ?

“He is a vision to drink in,” sha replied. “I could imagine spending more than a lifetime with him. Yet I do not think he feels the same way about me.”

Yeshua replied, “Jashen feels as though he is swimming in water over his head. He’s felt that way ever since he jumped in after you at Green Dome. I’ve given him a new name to acknowledge his manhood, but he lacks the full confidence of a man. Jashen was whisked from the land he knows to this place, which is surpassingly strange to him, just as I imagine Earth would seem strange to you. He has been given new abilities that he never dreamed of.” Leliel told Yeshua that most of all she just missed her mother.

“Take heart, child,” he said. “Things are rushing to the point when my parent will bring Lilith back to the world of the living again, although she will return as a human woman, not as an angel. But you will both rejoice to see each other once more.”

In her tipi Yuha had been sobbing quietly for days. Wanica tried his best to comfort her, but there was really nothing he could do. She said, "Nearly a full moon has passed since we have seen our son. Has the Vision Quest ever taken this long?"

Wanica replied, "I will not lie to my own wife. Ten nights the test was for me, and no more."Hearing this, Yuha let the full force of her grief wash over her, and all Wanica could do was hope she didn't blame him personally for going through with the ritual.

Yet there had been no choice, really. The Kuwapi were already the outcast dregs of the Oglala Sioux. If Wanica had denied the boy his test of manhood, he would be outcast even from the Kuwapi, forever a boy. And he would have never forgiven his father.

When she recovered a bit she said, "Shy Bear's last memory of us was that even his mother had a stony heart."Wanica said, "A heart of stone is part of the ceremony. There must be a...cutting off. There is no way around it. This as always been the way of our People."

He remembered how Shy Bear always called the leader of the People "Bad Heart Bull" and how even he had to agree. Tatanka piled upon Wanica daily indignities, until even his great inborn patience had been tested nearly to the breaking point. This day was no exception.

Chief Tatanka barged into the tipi unannounced and pointed a finger at Wanica. "You have brought no food into this camp for a moon, Hole in Cheek!""It is the fire," Wanica said. "It still burns the grasslands to the south. The animals are on the other side of it."

"Then take your hunters and go around the fire or you will be Hole in Neck.""It will take two days' ride to find the animals," Wanica replied. "Then a day to kill and field-dress them, then two days' ride to bring the carcass back. The meat will go bad."

"The nights are cold now. The meat will keep. I grow tired of eating jerky. Go!"Before the Chief left the tipi he let his eyes wander over Yuha's legs. She saw his gaze and tucked her legs under a bison-hair blanket. When Tatanka departed, Wanica retrieved the Golden Gift from the place he had hidden it. He had shown no one the weapon he received from Wakan Tanka, not even his wife Yuha. He knew that while he was hunting, nothing might restrain Tatanka from pillaging his tipi.

Wanica and his hunters prepared their horses for the journey, and packed their share of the People's dwindling supply of dried meat. Wanica mounted his own horse, Kaleetan, and for the first time he pondered that his horse had a right name but his own son did not.

The fires were burning far away, even from the vantage of the Island in the Sky, but Wanica led the hunting party away south toward that small mountain to better survey the devastation and to see if the cairn they built to Wakan Tanka was in need of repair.

The party crossed over an abrupt line to the grasslands that were burned and ascended the Island in the Sky, which was entirely seared black. When they reached the summit Wanica saw that his son Shy Bear was restoring the stone he had once removed to take shelter.

He was still dressed in the ceremonial dress that Yuha had made for him, but it was altered in a curious way to fit better, and had been covered in a riot of colored beads that was clearly no artifice of the Kuwapi, though it echoed the craftsmanship of the People.

Leliel stood next to him. Wanica and the hunters found har to be striking. Although sha appeared to be a young woman of the People sha was a full head taller than the tallest of any of them. Sha, too, was attired in something much like Jashen's raiment, but more simple.

Before Jashen sealed the cairn, Wanica saw that the white dome was still contained within. A tame bison was also trodding slowly on the summit of the Island in the Sky amid the blackened ground, wondering perhaps if there was any green thing lying around to eat.

Wanica searched his son's face and saw that he seemed a little taller himself, and a little older. He was so overjoyed to see him that he forgot he took away his name and turned him out into the night. "Shy Bear!" he exclaimed, and ran toward the boy to embrace him.

But Jashen was having none of that. His body language halted his father at a single pace. He extended his hand and gripped his father by the lower arm near his elbow. "You forget yourself, Father. No more am I to be called Shy Bear. My name of manhood is Jashen. I have brought my wife Princess Leliel, who is the daughter of Wakan Tanka and Queen Lilith. Her father has commanded us to return to the People and live among them for a season, but there will be much coming and going between here and his lodge in the sky." Leliel bowed to Wanica with respect and said, haltingly, using the tongue of the People that Jashen had instructed har over the course of a year, "I greet you, Wanica, and convey the command of my father that the Kuwapi people should ever dwell near this place."

Wanica was rendered speechless by the words of Jashen and Leliel at first. He was not displeased. Yet immediately he saw that was a problem. "Chief Tatanka will never believe that a stranger, a woman no less, communicates to him the will of Wakan Tanka."

Jashen longed to tell his father Bad Heart Bull would not be an obstacle for much longer, but he had been urged by Chief Yeshua to say nothing of the matter, lest events were diverted to a path that sealed the Chief in place rather than rushed him to his fate.

Wanica realized there was another problem with what Leliel claimed. He said, "The People must always go where the animals go, lest we starve. The People will never believe the will of Wakan Tanka is to dig our own graves in this place and lie down in them."

Jashen answered for Leliel. "The holy one whom the Sioux have named Wakan Tanka has sworn to make the Kuwapi thrive. He has many servants, as even I now am, and Father, do I not speak truth to say he has already shown his favor to you in a way you alone know?"

Then all doubt fled from Wanica, as he realized Jashen was speaking of the Golden Gift in a way that revealed he had met the one who gave it. Wanica said, "My heart leaps to see you again, son, if you can forgive me for thrusting you out of the presence of Yuha."

Jashen replied, "And it is good to see you again Father. I bear no ill feelings toward you for sending me out from your tipi, as I would never have found Leliel otherwise, nor been given the name of manhood, and many other gifts that would be long in the telling."

"Your mother will be as joyful as I am to see you again, son, all the more so that you bring her a beautiful daughter. We had both thought you to be dead. The moon has made a full cirle in the sky since you left. And she will wonder about your new breastplate."

Jashen said nothing of the year he spent in Kemen, time enough to come to love Leliel and make har his wife. He saw that the eyes of Wanica's hunters drifted to the animal that came with him said, "This is the gift of Chief Yeshua, the son of the Sky Father." Wanica's hunters drew back their bows to kill the animal Jashen described as a gift, but Wanica said, "Hold!" and the men lowered their aim. "If we kill this animal and take its meat back to camp, Chief Bad Heart Bull will disfigure this gift of the Great Spirit.

Tatanka will add the horns of this animal to all his other false trophies of stolen merit. But there is another way." Wanica reached into his raiment close to his heart and withdrew the Golden Gift. The black shaft licked the whole head of the bison to nothing.

His hunters were stunned at the sight. Jashen, who knew the whole history of the Golden Gift, already knew it had been given into the hands of his father. Leliel's eyes brimmed with moisture at a memory of har mother Lilith, who had also possessed it once.

In the camp of the People word spread that the hunting party was arriving days before they were expected, and it was feared they would bring news that it was impossible to reach the roaming herds by reason of the fire. Yuha was among the women who went to greet them.

What she saw brought her joy beyond measure, such that she, too, forgot herself and cried out the boyhood name of her son, "Shy Bear!" which she repeated many times as both mother and son embraced. "Jashen, mother," he told her gently. "I am to be called Jashen."

Yuha's hands roamed over her son as she tried to assure herself he was not a spirit. When they stopped at something hard at the back of Jashen's neck he gently took his mother's hands in his own and stood apart, so that she could see what had been added to her beadwork.

Her eyes then turned to Leliel, who stood over even the tallest men in the camp, wearing something like a ceremonial dress of har own but skillfully fitted for har curves. "Mother," said Jashen, "this is my wife, Leliel, who is a princess among har people."

"I greet Yuha, mother of my husband," Leliel said. "In the lodge of my father not a day passed that Jashen did not speak of both you and Wanica with a love that could not be hidden. It was not long before his love for me could not be hidden, much though he tried!"

The return of Wanica with his hunters was news big enough, the return of the boy Shy Bear as the man Jashen after a full moon was bigger news, and that he brought a giantess of a wife was the biggest news of all, but Chief Tatanka cared little for all these things. That evening, when the People were sharing their communal meal once more, the Chief wondered why his women did not bring the horns of the bison to add to his war regalia as before. He said no words of gratitude to Wanica for bringing the kill in one day rather than five.

Instead the missing horns occupied his mind and pushed out all else. He waxed more and more angry, until he flat out accused Wanica of hiding the bison's head. Wanica said nothing in reply, but he did not take his eyes away from the Chief after this accusation was made.

Tananka, already wroth, grew infuriated at the defiance. The leader of the People took out his knife once more. It was an genuine steel blade he claimed he took as war booty from a white trapper, but he really took it from a corpse he had stumbled upon by mere chance.

It was, at any rate, the only such blade among the People. "This will loosen your tongue, Hole In Heart!" he cried, and he moved toward Wanica, fully expecting the hunter to run as he had done so many times before. But Wanica knew he had the favor of the Sky Father.

So Wanica stood his ground fearlessly, which unnerved the Chief. Everyone saw him hesitate. The Chief lost precious "face' with each passing heartbeat, and he knew it. Wanica calmly reached into a hidden pocket in his leather garments and withdrew the Golden Gift.

Tatanka's rage boiled over. He closed the gap between himself and Wanica but he never reached striking distance. At the Island in the Sky Wanica only took the animal's head, offering it to the Sky Father rather than allowing it to be dishonored by Tatanka.

But here before the eyes of all the Kuwapi he took away the Chief, the whole Chief, and nothing but the Chief, all the way down to his moccasins, leaving the very ground he stood upon untouched. The People fell into a state of shock and greatly feared Wanica.

The group of men who had been with Wanica on the recent hunt had seen the Golden Gift in action, but the rest of the People had never seen such an obvious and deadly display of real magic. Even his own squaw Yuha was afraid. Even so she came to stand at Wanica's side. To Wanica's left stood his son Jashen, arrayed in the fine ceremonial dress that had been painstakingly embellished by artisans in Nyduly Wood over the course of a year. And towering over them all at nearly seven feet in height was his wife, the Ophan Leliel.

"I sent the Chief to answer to the Great Spirit," Wanica said in a loud voice, and none of the Kuwapi save Jashen doubted he had done precisely what he said. "I will lead the People now." Wanica crossed his arms regally, with the Golden Gift cradled in one of his hands. One by one the hunters, warriors, and braves of the Kuwapi sank to their knees before Wanica, with hands open to show they carry no blade. Their wives, the widows, and unmarried girls of the People hit their knees before Wanica and before his standing family as well.

Wanica then gave his first command as the new Chief. "In the morning we will decamp and march south, to dwell at the Island in the Sky, near the place where the Great Spirit came and made himself known to us and where my boy Shy Bear came back to us as the man Jashen."

So it came to be that the Kuwapi, first among all of the original inhabitants of the North American high plains and the only ones to do so of their own free will, ceased to be a wandering people and awaited the coming of the followers of Mark Lange.