Free The White Bone by Barbara Gowdy

upon a Rogue’s web and had to detour north, fifty miles out of my way. I continued to walk north-northwest, in and out of two riverbeds. Then came a cluster of hindlegger nests, and then a desert, a four-day trek that was. At the end of it all were hills. East and west and north, range upon range, and at the base of the hills were forests.” His voice rose in a kind of indignation. “Huge feast trees. The leaves still green! I ate until my gut groaned. By the She, I did!”
    “I dare say,” Tall Time rumbled.
    “By the She!” Torrent bellowed. He made another test of the air. Shut his eyes. But he stayed where he was.
    “I’m surprised you didn’t remain,” Tall Time said.
    “Are
you, son?” An insane shine in his eyes.
    “With all that lush food–”
    “On the seventh day,” Torrent roared, “I heard the singing of the Lost Ones! And do you know
what
they were singing?”
    Tall Time carefully shook his head.
    “It was not a glad song,” Torrent said, infuriated, sarcastic. “It was not a welcoming song.” And in his tuneless bass he thundered:
    We, survivors of the slaughter,
Mourning sister, son and daughter,
Warn all Lost Ones close by High Hill,
Hide at once or end up gut swill.
    Brutal hindleggers seek big feet,
Tusks and tails; your flesh they then eat.
Heed us, Lost Ones, of your own will
Hide at once or end up gut swill.
    “Gut swill!” Tall Time said, appalled by the butchery, of course, but also that a song would contain such uncouth lyrics.
    “You doubt me?” Torrent trumpeted.
    “No, no, not at all!” Which wasn’t quite sincere. Yet even with the gut swill there was nothing addled or suspect about the story, and Tall Time was beginning to entertain the staggering notion that Torrent had indeed met the Lost Ones.
    “I found them in a big-grass grove,” Torrent said. “A family of eight, which is large by their standards, but they had been near to twice that number before hindleggers massacred seven of them in a pit. A dreadful way to go is a pit slaughter. Dreadful. Have you ever witnessed it?”
    “I’ve heard stories–”
    “Not the same thing. Cows dropping out of sight ahead of you. They’re running on the path and then they’re gone, you think they’ve dropped over the edge of The Domain. You stop just in time, at the very brink, you almost fall in yourself, you don’t see because … because… .” He broke off, agog.
    “The hindleggers camouflage the pits with branches and leaves,” Tall Time offered softly.
    “You’re all running, your mother in the lead. She falls in first. Your newborn sister falls on top of her. Your mother screams. You see that one of the sticks has pierced her through the neck. Those sticks that they plant in the bottom of the pit, the sharp ends pointing upwards. Do you know about them?”
    Tall Time nodded.
    Torrent nodded. “She is still alive,” he said in wonder. “Your mother. Pierced through but still alive. She screams. Your sister"–he started to weep–"screams. Blood shoots up. You have to save them. How? Nobody knows what to do. Your mother is the matriarch, she’s the one who knows what to do but she’s down in the pit, and the hindleggers, you can hear them, they’re right behind you.”
    Tall Time was now weeping, all of his uncertainty about Torrent’s having met the Lost Ones transformed into wrath and grief that seven of them perished in the same way that Torrent’s mother did. “I didn’t know you had a sister,” he sobbed.
    Torrent blinked.
    “Did she also die?” Tall Time sobbed.
    “Quit your blubbering!” Torrent bellowed. He tossed his head, and Tall Time cringed–here came the tusking–but Torrent threw his trunk behind himself and went still. He shut his eyes, inhaled with rapturous concentration. His penis flung urine, which in this late-afternoon light twinkled orange, and then his trunk swung to the front and took on a gentle undulation while he regarded Tall Time with a demented look of