Bailey, Hat-killer, Hound-skinner, of Pack Coyote had somehow, during the course of rising from out-runner scout to bane of his pack’s hereditary Hat enemy, had become a Hat-friend as well. Sure the Hat he had had lost his big floppy black hat with the cumbersome buckle so good for drawing an arrow between a Hat’s eyes as he squinted through the gunsmoke of his equally cumbersome weapon. But still, a Hat was a Hat and this Hat was as pathetic as the rest when it came to woodcraft. Raised in his Hat-pen like a squealer this one was pale, overfed, and not of good stride. Bailey literally circled this young Hat he had saved from the old mean hound-driving Hats, like a dog circled a clan woman.
Oh, me, am me dog and he woman, helping her stumble along trace?
Appraising his harried Hat-friend, plodding on, twig-crunching, rock-scraping and dirt-clawing all the way along the trace Bailey had set toward the fallen star—which they both seemed to be obsessed with for their own reasons—Bailey found him to be strong and stout, like a little young bruiser, not a tetaless cuddler at all. He was nearly moved to ask his harried Hat-friend if he had a plumper for a sister that they might be able to steal in the next night—an agreeable plumper that he would not be obliged to haul over his narrow black, but who would walk with her brother to the appointed place of his dreams. But his Hat-friend had a manic pulse in his eyes, glaring as fixedly toward the destination of the fallen star as Bailey imagined himself doing at a bathing party of plumpers let loose from their Hat-pen in his mate-stealing raider dream.
As they progressed through the day—Bailey dipping his coyote tails into the swift creeks, all tumbling toward the same big water run, and sucking the water from their fur—it occurred to him that this was some Hat indeed. This Hat was bruised, and cut, his Hat-hides of the women-weaved stuff of legend said to grow on Hat-pen bushes, hanging from his cut body in tatters. One would expect such a torn up Hat to fall off the trace. But no, this Hat was strong, un-thirsty, and for all its clumsiness, as determined as any old bruiser going on the vengeance trace.
Quite a Hat-friend me has, me thinks.
“Ye doesn’t drinks, Hat-friend. Drinks, Hat-friend, next sink. Me poor fool Hat, drinks, drinks up! Sip me coyote tails, Hat-friend ye’ll burn up be mud-out.”
Bailey was now standing before his Hat-friend on high ground—a ridge covered with moth wood and sweeper pine, big rocks jutting here and there where the fleshy dirt had been stripped by the hard pounding rain of the Oldie Ages.
The Hat looked at him nicely—tears in his eyes—then looked out to his right to where the sun would rise on a slightly crooked world, down into the big drink that smelled like wet salt tea, where all creeks this side of the saw-toothed hills sank. They looked down at more water than a star-filled sky worth of fat thirsty Hats could drink in a lifetime, and saw the slanting rays of the falling sun streaking a water that once housed a big canoe, now splintered and drifting in pieces while spiky vines of clam meat and fish parts, that must have been bigger than trees, picked things from the water where they floated and dragged them under.
And the Hat cried, sniffed the air, and finally said a word. “I am Josiah, Josiah Chowning, of Samara—exile of Samara—and I so thank you, I do. My people have cast me out because of something a friend uttered when he saw the star fall during Sermon. I seek the place where it fell, feel it drawing me in my bones, though it makes me sick to consider finding it. My nightmares have been terrible and I recall not how I came to be tumbling down the hill with the hounds at my heels. Something inside tells me that Star Fall is a terrible place. Please take me and leave me, lest no evil take you as it must me. The Fallen Angel calls me to my doom.”
“Ye queer Hat—me thinks fire-seer. Me looks be me pack leader, lost toward be Squib Trace. This Squib Trace point. Me thinks Star Fall lucky—me wants me squib to skin and bring back to me pack”
“What is a squib, my heathen friend?”
“Monkey-pet, dogs Oldie be. No hunter kill squib in memory. Oldie stories tell walks be spiders, crawls be vines—live be cave. Me pack leader Roger hunt magic dream squib—he no come back.”
The Hat named with such complexity that a pack member could scarcely hope to say his name out loud, extended his hand and they clasped them firmly, as he said the Hat ritual of friends.
“Let us take our cup together until you find your squib and I find my Fallen Angel.”
Bailey squeezed the strong friendly hand and felt his heart warm to be the maker of an alliance with a renegade Hat seer, and said the words of trace-binding between pack members.
“Be trace, ye be me, me be ye.”
He then added his own heartfelt pledge. “Ye poor fool Hat—a fire-seer, me thinks. Ye needs learn sip ye drinks. Much-much bruiser me drag.”
The short broad face of the Hat-friend split into a soft smile under his moony eyes. “You are our pathfinder, whom I swear to abide. Drink I will.”
Bailey then hugged him as is pack custom, though he had liked the hand clasp ritual. “Trace ridge behind sweeper pines Hat-seer, behind me. Miss crunchy twig if ye do.”
And they were off, just like pack leader Marsha and fire-seer Hertz in the Oldie story of Snow Fall Finding. Bailey, though only having four arrows to his name, felt like a story maker, a plumper taker, a pack raider!
Me be first squib bringer in living time—Bailey, call me Star Fall, me thinks.
Then the loud crunch of Hat-freind of the unutterable name stepping on an arm-thick deadfall and cracking it like a falling tree, sent a chill up his spine, a chill rendered warm and cozy next to the chill caused by the sound of the hillsides below coming alive with vine-like, hopping, sucking, slurping, slathering life.
Bailey looked down into the wooded hollow to see countless many-legged creatures that seemed a squib of nightmare, monkeys made of fish parts with legs like vines with sucking mushroom caps inverted along their length, all converging upon him, like dogs coming for the cook scraps.
Hat-seer shuddered and whimpered, holding his hands together in a queer way as he spoke to the sun streaked-sky.
Bailey, at the least, wanted to take some squibs with him to the Afterwalk—into the death dreams of the oldies, so un-slung his bow and knocked an arrow.
“Talk ye Oldies good, Hat-friend fire-seer. Me be four arrows send.”
