Free The White Bone by Barbara Gowdy Page A

friendly interest. “It is true what you’ve heard,” he said conversationally. “The Lost Ones
are
calf-like, except for the length of their tusks. A bull your age wouldhave tusks twice as long as yours, that’s no exaggeration. Not nearly as thick, though. And they all have those green eyes but brighter than our visionaries’ eyes by a hundred times. Like little green suns, they are, beaming light.”
    “Extraordinary.”
    “So they are. So they are. They call themselves We’s, as you’ve no doubt heard. We-B’s, We-S’s. Individuals prefix their names with ‘I.’ ”
    He hadn’t heard this. “Why?” he said.
    “Well, for one thing, cow calves choose their own cow names. Out of a number of names offered by the big cows.”
    “That is a terrible responsibility to place upon a young mind.”
    “It panders to the calf’s vanity. They think very highly of themselves, the Lost Ones do, every one of them, even the newborns. The family I am speaking of now, the We-F’s, they may be exceptional, but I got the sense that self-importance is a trait common to the whole breed. It tried my patience, as you might imagine, all that preening and talking-down. As if I were a suckling calf! But the matriarch, I-Flounder, she was cordial enough, despite her sorrow and my being so gigantic, compared to them especially, and here I was a bull, sneaking up on them in the middle of nowhere, the first of our kind they’d ever encountered. Naturally, one of them had had a vision of me. It’s hard to surprise that lot.” His expression became one of amused remembrance. “I said to I-Flounder, ‘With a name like that I don’t hold out much hope of your finding what you’re searching for, not straight away, anyhow.’ But she has her talents.” As if reminded of She-Snorts he lifted his trunk her way and his penis elongated and shot urine everywhere, and then he backed into a termite mound and gave his rump a vicious scratching.
    “What were they searching for?” Tall Time asked.
    “The white bone,” Torrent said agreeably.
    “Whose white bone?”
    “Let me ask you this. Have you ever heard of a race of white she-ones? By which I mean
all
white.”
    “No. Never.”
    “Nor had I. But according to the We-F’s such a race lived on The Domain up until twenty generations ago.”
    “Is that so?” Tall Time murmured, becoming doubtful again.
    “The White Ones, they were called,” Torrent said.
    Tall Time waited.
    “At any rate,” the old bull continued, “they are long gone. Long gone.” He sighed. He might have been weeping. “Their bones, too,” he said. “Their bones are dust. Except–”
    The pause continued until Tall Time realized that he was supposed to speak. “Except what?”
    “Except for one bone. The magical white bone.”
    “It survived,” Tall Time ventured.
    “Perfectly intact, not a mark on it after all this time, not a hole. And it never dulled. On the contrary, it bleaches whiter all the time. By now it would be the whitest thing you’ve ever seen. That’s how you’ll know it. It’s not big, mind you. It’s only a rib, and a newborn’s, what’s more.”
    “Have the We-F’s seen it?”
    “No, not them. Their ancestors.” He twined his trunk around a clump of grass and pulled it out by its mucky roots. Absently he knocked the clump against his leg, a wistful look on his face.
    “When you say magical–” Tall Time prompted.
    Torrent peered at him sidelong. “The Link Bull perks up when magic is mentioned,” he said. “The Link Bull is greedy for magic.”
    Tall Time braced himself.
    “The Link Bull!” Torrent roared. He stopped. Shook his head as if struck by an extraordinary notion. He turned in circles, rumbling incoherently. Sniffed the ground, the air, uprooted a poisonous angel’s trumpet shrub and hurled it over his head, wove back and forth twirling his trunk, and at last collected himself and in a measured voice said, “The white bone has the power to direct you