Free The White Bone by Barbara Gowdy Page B

to The Safe Place. The Safe Place is a paradise. No droughts there, ever. No perils. To be accurate, it is The Second Safe Place, but as I’ve never known a First Safe Place, I’m thinking of it as
The
Safe Place. At any rate, you throw the white bone, and when it lands it points you in the right direction. For two nights and two days, which is how long the newborn lived, it is in your possession. After that, it disappears, gets scooped up by a sky-diver or a trunkneck who takes it somewhere else and drops it in order to lead others to The Safe Place. So you’d better have figured out your route in those two days and nights.” He blew out a contemptuous breath. “By the She,” he bellowed, “if you can’t hold to a true course by then you don’t deserve to find The Safe Place to begin with!”
    “I dare say,” Tall Time rumbled. He was being won over again by Torrent’s conviction.
    Scowling, the old bull kicked at the earth. “This very bone is what saved the Lost Ones from the hindleggers generations ago. It was not by accident that the Lost Ones disappeared. Theywere directed into that forest, The First Safe Place, as they call it, which accounts for all this first and second business. As soon as they arrived there, the white bone disappeared, but they weren’t too distressed, not then, because they thought that there were no hindleggers in their new territory. And there weren’t for centuries, not until a hundred and eighty days ago.”
    “Which end of the white bone points you–?”
    “The end of the white bone that points you–!” Each word an over-enunciated explosion. He paused. “That points you in the right direction,” he continued calmly, “is, naturally, the pointed end. But without the white bone, there can be no throwing and no pointing. So the search is on everywhere, all the Lost Ones–not only the We-F’s, all of them–searching. I myself am searching, or I was before this … before this"– he flailed his trunk at his temporin, his flagellating penis–"madness,” he said miserably.
    “But why are you searching?”
    “The hindleggers have renewed the slaughters!” Torrent roared.
    “In the hills where you say the Lost One are, yes, I understand, but not here.”
    “Are you a visionary, then? Are you prescient?”
    “Of course I’m not,” Tall Time murmured.
    “Then stop interrupting and listen. I-Flounder said to go to the hills and the most barren places and to look for an extremely large standing feast tree. The white bone is invariably dropped near an extremely large standing feast tree. So here’s the plan: I go to the hills, you go to the most barren places.”
    “I?”
    “Why do you imagine I am taking this risk?” Torrent roared.
    Inches in front of Tall Time’s face Torrent’s monstrous trunk writhed.
    “What risk?” Tall Time asked finally.
    Torrent’s trunk drooped. “Every time the white bone is spoken of directly it loses some of its power.” He was back to his conversational voice. “That is why I-Flounder says it is better to refer to it as the that-way bone.” He looked uncomfortable, as if he should have taken this into account before now.
    “The that-way bone,” Tall Time said.
    “Tell nobody,” Torrent said. “Not yet, at any rate. If we have this cow whispering to that cow, the power of the thing will be gone before we know it. I myself have told only three other bulls. Master trackers.”
    “Who?”
    “What does it matter who?” Torrent trumpeted. “Now you,” he said gruffly, “you’re no master tracker but you wander far afield and you generally keep your mouth shut. If we fail to find the that-way bone over the course of the next year, then we’ll be obliged to tell others. Widen the search. Bear in mind that there’s always the possibility of one of us stumbling upon The Safe Place itself, with or without the that-way bone.”
    “Are there no hindleggers there?”
    “There are, but they are of a different breed