“Yes, but, my son,” said Blue Shawl Woman, “the Thunderer? I ask you, did these hunters say a prayer over the dead carcass of this bird?”
White Claw nodded. “They did.”
Blue Shawl Woman breathed out a sigh. “Then there is no need for alarm. The hunters did right; the people must have sufficient food. They must eat.”
“Yes. Yet we had already killed more than two hundred buffalo. Had we not taken all the meat that our people could eat? Was it not enough to sustain us through the winter and well into the spring?”
“True, but having more than one believes he needs is not a bad thing. One can never be certain of the length of the winter snows.”
White Claw shook his head. “Nay. I disagree.”
Blue Shawl Woman would not be swayed, and she shrugged. “It is our right to take what is here to take, so long as we say the proper prayer. Do not the wolves feast on a juicy morsel of rabbit? Does not the mountain lion kill meat enough for her young? If we do not seize what is here to take, someone else, something else will. Better for our people that we have it.”
“Is it?” White Claw questioned. “Do you forget the teachings of our wise men? Is not overkill a sign of greed?”
Glancing up toward him, Blue Shawl Woman reached out to pat his hand and smiled gently. It was the same sort of gesture that White Claw had always cherished. She said, “You worry needlessly.”
Even as the words left her lips, the skies filled with rain—not the gentle downpour of a spring rain that blesses the earth, but rather a heavy, pounding torrent of impending winter. Though most of the people abandoned their projects to seekshelter, White Claw’s mother did not. Instead, she continued folding her skins, seeming to have time to spare.
“Please, I urge you to hurry.”
Blue Shawl Woman shook her head. “Go along and cease this worry.” She waved him away. “I will join you shortly.”
There was nothing else he could do without disobeying his mother, a thing no Indian youth would ever consider. So White Claw spun around, not to leave, as his mother urged, but rather to find his uncle, for the man could not be far away. Perhaps his uncle would lend support to White Claw’s plea.
He was gone but a moment. No more. But in that interval, a crack of thunder burst down upon the land; so loud it was, that White Claw felt a deep chasm split through him. His hands flew to his ears even as the ground shook all around him.
It was the Thunderer.
A foreboding filled him. And without looking, he knew…
It was the Thunderer…and his mother…
Stunned, fearing what he might discover if he looked behind him, White Claw turned slowly around, his movements, for all the youth and strength in his reflexes, seemed more dreamlike than real.
And that’s when he saw them.
His mother—though she was in a misty, spirit form—and the Thunderer.
Briefly, the image that was his mother turned to White Claw and, raising her hand, motioned him to stay away. And then they were gone, the Thunderer and his mother, leaving the shell of his mother’s body lying there upon the ground.
“Mother!”
Emerging from a haze, White Claw rushed forward, toward his parent, and knelt beside her body. His stomach twisted painfully.
“Mother, come back!”
Shaking his head to clear it, White Claw took her lithe forminto his arms, his fingers traveling over her face, her neck, her arms. As her flesh molded softly beneath his, he knew it was no use. He could feel no life within her.
She was gone. Stolen by the Thunderer.
The knowledge was almost more than he could bear. Unabashedly, tears gathered in his eyes. He glanced down, noticing that those skins his mother had been folding were strewn around her, their importance now insignificant.
Rising onto his feet and with his mother’s body held fast within his arms, White Claw turned around and paced toward their home.
Another crash of thunder sounded behind him, along with a shattering rumble in the ground. A scream followed. No! Had the Thunderer claimed someone else?
Though at some other time, White Claw might have experienced sympathy for another’s desperate plight, he felt no such thing.Haiya.Not now. Now, where in the breadth of his arms lay the woman he had loved deeply all his life, she who had given him life. “Mother,” he cried over her body, “come back. Please do not leave me.”
