The session begins with an introduction:
Well…where do I start? Let’s see…
I suppose, in Kansas, you always have to start with the wind, cuttin’ across the plains like a knife, cold as a witch’s tit, with nothing to stop it from the Rockies to the Mississippi.
Except this guy…frozen in time…dressed nice, running for his life through a field of winter wheat, suspended mid-stride, flurries of snow drifting in the wind. He’s got the look of a man who’s about to die and knows it.
The same guy sits in a smoky lounge across a poker table from this guy….
There’s a game on, but it’s not going well for our guy, his chips are down and the suit across the table is starting to look smug as he lays down his hand, fanning it with such an artful grace the devil ‘imself would be jealous.
“Full House,” says the suit.
Our guy has a sheen of nervous…no…terrified sweat as he folds his cards.
“Wait,” he says, as the suit gets up to leave. “A trade….”
“I don’t barter, kid,” replies the suit.
Our guy puts a small box on the table, a simple cedar thing, about the size of a cigar box, and slides it across. The suit settles back into his seat, raising an eyebrow and opens it. His face is bathed in a pale green light, shining from the box in the dim room. He gently closes the box, almost reverently.
“You know,” he says, “if you do this, you won’t remember it. Any of it.”
“Explain to me, sir, how that will help me when I’m dead.”
“Yes…well…. For this, I think I can provide you some assistance out of your…predicament….”
He stands, picks up the box, and steps behind the curtain and is gone.
Our guy sits uncomfortably for a moment, waiting for something to happen, and just when he’s about to speak, he feels a burst of that damned wind on his face, and the real world pulling him out of the Nevernever….
And then our guy…well…he explodes….
Most of the party is on the road a short distance away form the explosion, Seri having led Onesimus and Jacob on a chase ending at Ahiga and Chinese Ed. After recovering from being knocked down by the explosion, and after some brief attempts at communicating with each other and failing, the entire group moves to the site of the explosion.
They find a wide, smoking crater, and laying in the center is Holden, clothes tattered and smoldering, but apparently completely unharmed save for unconsciousness. At the edge of the crater are two natives, their bodies torn and pulped by proximity to the explosion. Standing there also is a teenage boy, his ears bleeding a bit, obviously in shock from being too close to the explosion. Within moments, William and Olivia arrive from the farmhouse, visibly relieved that the teenage boy “Junior” is well. Holden regains consciousness, but has no memory of where he is or why he’s in a smoking crater.
William points out silhouettes on the horizon, rifles, feathers, and while the party discusses taking shelter at the farm, Seri mutters some gibberish and transforms into a hawk, soaring into the air in the direction of the riders.
I found my sister some days south of Tsézhin Dilkǫǫh. They had killed her and left her body in a building there. Alone, I could not bury her properly, so I left her there, leaving the burial to the people who owned the building. They were not of the People, or I would have asked for their help.
The trek through the desert was tough. Far more than I’d expected. I fell sick in the desert. A Hopi man and his grandfather took me in and nursed me back to health. I thought it might be the ghost sickness, or maybe because I cut my hair. That is not the custom of our people, but it is the custom of the people of my mother. The grandfather claimed it was bad water, not chindi, ghosts, that caused the sickness.
When I was about to leave, the grandfather introduced me to another man. He was not a white man, but nor was he one of us, neither the People nor any other tribe. His people come from far away across the sea. The grandfather told me we were to travel together. We were to go to Abilene, where I would find a guide. He told me I would find what I was seeking, but to beware of the howling wind.
We travelled for many moons, and during that time, we learned a little about each other’s languages; enough to get by. He was hunting the man who killed his bizhé’é, the man who raised him. He also said that if my shich’ooní were dead, he would help avenging her.
We were close to Abilene, when we met them. A young girl was the first one. She had a rat on her shoulder, and I remember thinking this might be my guide. A strange one, if that was so, but it might. She looked at the rat, then at me, as if it had told her about me. So perhaps she was the guide, or the rat was.
Then there was an explosion. When we went to see, at the heart of it, was an unconscious man and a young man, little more than a boy standing near the crater, and the bodies of two others, probably from one of the tribes of the area. We had been joined by a couple of other men, white, all of them.
On a hill, we saw more people from the local tribe, or so I assume, mounted, armed, and clearly not white. Then the girl turned into a hawk and flew off towards the riders.