“They planned to steal our children? All of them?”

“To liberatethem. Because they’re all Shaftali children, they say. You Sainnites don’t bear children, so every last child you’ve got is a stolen child. But that’s not true, is it?”

“It’s not true,” she said, outraged.

He seemed relieved. Bad enough that he was allowing nearly forty of his neighbor’s children to remain imprisoned while his was rescued. No wonder his family had abandoned their farmstead rather than endure the public shame! And no wonder he clutched his girl so tightly now that she protested, and then complained that she was hungry.

“She wouldn’t eat her porridge,” Clement explained. “She wanted milk, but we don’t have any.”

“Have you been fussy, love?” The man produced a neat packet of oat cakes from his pocket, and Davi was as contented with these as Clement had ever seen her. “You haven’t fed her right,” he said.

“She’s been very sick. I nursed her back–she would have died otherwise. So don’t complain.” Clement bit the thread and tested the button. “When are these kids to be ‘liberated’? And how?”

“On Long Night. The people of Death‑and‑Life figure that by midwinter, the children will be so isolated by weather that when the initial battle is over, they’ll have a couple of months to haul the kids away to their new homes, at households scattered all over Shaftal. A surprise attack, at night, sure to succeed. The children aren’t well guarded, they believe. And Long Night’s an important holiday to us, you know.”

Clement said nothing, but she did not doubt that with enough attackers the plan he described would probably succeed. The only weapons at the children’s garrison were carried by the seven soldiers she had abandoned there. Unless one counted the practice weapons the children used.

“That’s all I know,” the man said. “Shaftal forgive me! Can I go?”

“Tell no one what you’ve told me.”

“You think I would? I’m a traitor to my people, now.” “Maybe you might try to clear your conscience by alerting Death‑and‑Life that their secret ambush isn’t a secret anymore.”

The man said stiffly, thoroughly offended now, “Those people? You think I owe them something? There’s nothing to admire in them, no more than there is in you.” He stood up with some effort, and said to Davi, “Let’s get you into your jacket and hat. It’s time to go.”

Clement helped bundle her up. “What’s going to happen to her, come spring?” She did not want to say in front of Davi that her father was dying, but he knew what she referred to.

“I’ve got a plan. I don’t have to tell you what it is.”

As Clement tied Davi’s cap strings, Davi blinked at her. “Aren’t you coming, Clemmie?”

“No.” She couldn’t manage to say more.

“But Daddy,” Davi protested, as her father picked her up again, “why isn’t Clemmie coming?”

“She isn’t in our family,” he said. And they were gone.

Part 4

What’s Inside The Buffalo

“You are slow and stupid,” the grasslion said to his friend the buffalo one day. They always shared the shade on hot summer days and were lying together, the buffalo chewing her cud and the grasslion licking the blood from his paws. “I wonder sometimes why I don’t just eat you.”

The buffalo looked up at her friend and coughed up another lump of cud. “Who would dig the water hole for you?” she said.

Looking at the buffalo, the grasslion decided she was disgusting. Her fur was clotted with the dried mud she rolled in to keep off the flies. Grass mush dripped from her mouth. Her eyes were big and watery and contented. “I can dig,” the grasslion said. “I can dig better than you can.”

“Well then, who would eat the grass to exactly the right height for stalking rabbits?” said the buffalo.

Looking at the buffalo, the grasslion decided she was ugly. Her horns sat up on her head like an ugly hat. Her fur hung to her knees like dead grass. Her hooves looked like gray turds that when broken open have maggots inside them. “I can stalk rabbits in grass of any height,” he said.

“Well then, who will sing to the stars with you, to please the ears of the gods?” said the buffalo.

The grasslion looked at the buffalo and decided she was ridiculous. Her legs were short and her body fat. Her mouth was wide and her tail had a puff of hair on its tip. It was difficult to imagine that anything she did could please the gods. “My voice is so much sweeter than yours,” said the lion. “Maybe the gods would like me better without you bellowing beside me.”

“Well then,” said the buffalo. “If you don’t want to be my friend that’s fine with me. But I have to warn you that if you try to eat me, it’s me who will eat you in the end.” And she got up and walked away.

So now the grasslion had to dig his own water hole and chase the rabbits in high grass and sing all by himself and all this made him angry. And he watched the silver buffalo from afar and thought about how much meat was on her bones, and how it would keep him fat and contented for many days. And finally he was in such a fever of anger and bloodlust that he went sneaking up on the buffalo in the tall grass, and jumped onto her back, and dug his claws in.

Now, the buffalo set to work trying to get that lion off her back. She jumped and twisted and kicked, but she couldn’t dislodge the lion, who kept ripping away with his claws until he had opened up her back like a shirt. Suddenly the buffalo’s skin fell off, and out of the buffalo hide stepped a man. He shook his head as if he were waking up from a long sleep, and then he took a look at the lion, who certainly was feeling somewhat surprised. “Oh, it’s you, trying to eat me,” the man said. “Well, I have to warn you that it’s me who will eat you in the end.”

The lion was annoyed at the man’s arrogance. “We’ll see who eats and who is eaten,” he cried, and jumped onto the man’s back and dug in with his claws.

The man didn’t like having the lion on his back any more than the silver buffalo had. He yelled and he rolled on the ground and he tried to hit the lion with a rock, but the lion hung on, ripping with his claws, until the man’s skin had opened up like a shirt.

Suddenly, his skin fell away, and out stepped a big yellow hare. That hare yawned and scratched her chin, and then she noticed the lion standing there, so surprised he didn’t even try to lift a paw and grab her. “Oh, it’s you trying to eat me,” she said. “Well, I have to warn you that it’s me who will eat you in the end.” And then the hare took off, kicking her yellow feet in the air, taking great bounds over the high grass. The lion chased her, of course, all up and down the length of the grassy plain, from the ocean in the east to the mountains in the west, from the forest in the north to the wasteland in the south. At last, the hare was so tired she fell down gasping, and the lion fell down right on top of her, with his red tongue hanging out of his mouth. “I’ve got you now,” he gasped, and ripped with his claws until the hare’s back opened up like a shirt.

Inside the hare’s skin was a pool of darkness, and then that pool began to move, to uncoil, and out slid a fat black snake with a flickering tongue. The lion lay exhausted, panting and weak from the long chase, looking into the hard black eyes of the black snake. “You warned me that you would eat me in the end,” said the grasslion.

“Oh yes, I almost forgot,” said the snake. And he opened his mouth, bigger and bigger, until his mouth was as big as the lion, and he swallowed the lion whole.

And that’s why the grasslions never hunt the buffalo.

Chapter Twenty‑Three

The sun rises and falls like a ball tossed from a hand, and Zanja na‘ Tarwein walks steadily across barren mountaintops. The owl floats ahead of her, a feather‑down guide lit faintly by a sun that is always in twilight. As long as she can see, Zanja follows the owl. When it is dark, she squats down wherever she is, and takes a handful of twigs and dried grass that she has managed to gather among the rocks, and with it builds a fire no bigger than the palm of her hand.