The size of a three-story building, its brilliant feathered ruff was flaming with a thousand hues in that deepening light. I had never seen so much color on one animal. Dazzling peacock feathers blazed purple, scarlet and gold, emerald and ruby and sapphire. Such beautiful plumage was the finery of a creature whose nightmare features should have disappeared from the Earth countless millions of years before. Its brown-black beak looked as if it had been carved from a gigantic block of mahogany. Above the beak two terrible brilliant yellow eyes glared, each the size of a dressing mirror. The mouth snapped and clacked, streaming with pale green saliva. As we watched, the thing lifted a yelping prairie fox in its right front claw and stuffed it into its maw, gagging as it swallowed.

The creature had a hungry, half-crazed look to it. It stretched its long neck down to the ground and sniffed, as if hoping to find food it had overlooked. It then stood upright on massive back feet which had a somewhat birdlike appearance, though its forepaws more closely resembled lizard claws.

Any one of the reptile's neck feathers, erect now as he sensed our presence, was the height of a tall man and layered in rich reds, yellows, purples and greens. Ulric would have called it a dinosaur, but to me it was a cross between a huge bird and a giant lizard, its feathered tail train being by far its longest part. Clearly it was a link with the dinosaur ancestors of our modern birds.

As we watched, the tail slashed back and forth like a scythe, cutting and trampling great swathes in the wild corn. I sniffed and realized it was the sweet scent I had smelled earlier. Suddenly awash with totally inappropriate emotions, I longed for the cornfields of the farm where I grew up during the period of my mother's attempted retirement.

"I think, " said White Crow regretfully, climbing up into the saddle to sit with us, "I am going to have to kill him."

Do you live the tale,

Or does the tale live you ?

WHELDRAKE, "The Teller or the Tale"

"Thy kill him?" I asked. "He is offering us no harm."

"He is an invader here, " said White Crow. "But that is the business of those who hunt this land. He has moved north with the warming. That is not why he will die." He added almost as an aside, "Many years ago, he ate my father."

The shock which came with this news was horrible. The first time I saw this youth, he had called Ulric "Father."

There was nothing to do or say. My reaction was entirely subjective. For all their resemblance it was obvious there was no close connection between Ulric and White Crow.

"But that is not why we hunt him, " Ayanawatta reminded him gently. "We hunt him for what your father carried when he was eaten."

"What was that?" I asked before I thought better of it.

But White Crow answered with apparent easiness, staring at the thing which rattled its huge ruff in frustration and screamed its hunger. "Oh, some medicine he had with him when the kenabik took him."

His tone was so inappropriate that I glanced hard at his face. It was a mask. The feathered dinosaur had our scent, but the blustering breeze was varying and dropping. He kept losing it, turning this way and that and grunting to himself, drooling. He hardly knew what he was smelling. He seemed an inexpert hunter. His nostrils were heavy with ill health. His breathing was a rasp.

The last of the sun now poured over the mountains and drenched the plain with deep light. Big clouds came in behind us with a stronger wind, bringing more rain. Eventually the creature began to lumber away from us, then turned and came back for a few paces. He was still not sure what he scented. He might have been shortsighted, like rhinos. Clearly past his prime, he was scarcely able to fend for himself.

When I mentioned this to Ayanawatta he nodded. "This is not their place, " he said. "The kenabik do not breed. His tribe have all died. Something as beautiful replaces them, we hope."

He spoke distractedly as he studied the beaked dragon, who was still casting bewildered yellow eyes back and forth. "And of a more appropriate size, " he added with a slight smile.

White Crow pulled in our mount. Bes stood still as a rock while her master studied the kenabik. The beaked dragon's feathers were layered, pale blue on green, on gold, on silver, on scarlet. There were subtle shades of brown-yellow and dark red, of glittering emerald and sapphire. When that black maw opened it revealed a crimson tongue, broken molars, cracked incisors. There seemed something wrong with that mouth, but I was not sure what.

Then the sun disappeared. It was suddenly pitch black. From somewhere in that darkness, the kenabik began to keen.

That keening was one of the most mournful sounds I had ever heard. The note was absolutely desolate as the monster cried for itself and for its lost kind. I looked at White Crow again.

His face was still totally immobile, but I saw the silver trail of tears running to his lips. It was hard to know whether he wept for the pain of this creature, the thought of having to destroy it or the loss of his father.

Again, that awful, agonized call. But it grew fainter as the thing moved off. "We will kill it in the morning, " White Crow said. He seemed glad to put off the unsavory moment for a little longer.

How three humans armed with bows and spears were to set about killing the kenabik had not yet been explained to me!

Neither was it to happen as White Crow had said.

The monster determined our agenda.

I was awake when the kenabik became famished enough to attack. I heard it running towards us over the low hills. It went through the camp in one terrible, violent moment, even as I tried to wake my friends.

Ayanawatta found his bow and arrows while White Crow hefted his spears.

"They never hunt at night." White Crow sounded offended.

Bes had stumbled to her feet, still bleary with sleep, her trunk questing about for White Crow. She could not see him, and the feathered dinosaur was coming in rapidly on her left.

Bes was ready. In time to take the kenabik's second attack, she swung her huge tusks in the direction of the noise. The beast came thudding into the camp screaming its own terror at our fire and grabbing about for something, anything, to eat.

Bes stepped forward. A sweep of her great head, and a long, deep gouge appeared along the beast's left side. He shrieked as those ivory sabers began to sweep back the other way.

The old mammoth staggered and was momentarily knocked off balance, but she held her ground, the kenabik's blood streaming from her massive tusk. Her eyes narrowed, her trunk curling, she displayed her pleasure at her own achievement. She was almost skittish as she turned to trumpet after her fleeing foe. "Why would it behave so uncharacteristically?" I was panting, trying to gather up my few possessions while the others retrieved the rest of our scattered goods.

"It is mad, " said White Crow sadly. "It has nothing to eat."

"There must be plenty of prey on the prairie?"

"Oh, yes, " he said. "There is. And as you saw, every so often he devours some. What we probably will not see is the kenabik disgorging most of what he eats. Unfortunately he was not born a meat eater. What he misses is the rich foliage and lush grass of his native south. The transition from herbivore to carnivore is impossible. The meat he eats is killing him. What vegetation grows here is too sparse and too hard for him to harvest. Even if we did not kill him, he would be dead soon, and it would be a bad, ignoble death. His shame would be great. It would weight his spirit and keep him bound to this realm. He would have long to brood on the ignobility he has brought to himself and his tribe. We can offer him better. We can offer him the respect of our arms. You could say it was his own fault for leaving his grazing grounds, but predators were moving up behind his kind, picking them off as they weakened. He was chased from his homeland. I wish to try to kill him mercifully."