Sunrise broke through the last in a series of thunderstorms that had rumbled across southern Louisiana all night and sudden heat produced wisps of steam on the badly weathered Latham Highway near the village of Lafayetteville. Huge drops of water glistened on clumps of black willow and elderberry. Jungle-like swamps crowding roads that ran straight as strings through the Mississippi Delta served notice that nature was ever poised to re-take the land.
About two miles south of the town, the road passed a parking lot of crushed shell in front of a run down single-storey roadhouse in a rank field of rusted-out car hulks. A neon sign on a crumbling wood facade proclaimed the place "Christabel's". At night the sign, which sported burned-out sections, fizzed and spluttered and re-named the roadhouse "Christ el", but nobody cared enough to have it fixed. Hidden in a nearby elderberry thicket was a large, corroded metal cutout of a once-proud rooster, head back to crow at a morning sun that no longer shone on it, bearing the faded, blistered legend "Red Rooster Inn".
The pallid winter sun was near zenith when Jonathan Steele took his first break since resuming his search in the grey light of dawn. He was standing on a huge, sloping rock that lay half-buried in talus at the foot of a sheer cliff. A sluggish, shallow and opaque emerald river took up most of the canyon floor, and scarps on both sides seemed to touch the watery sky.
As he rested his pack against a rock outcropping, Steele's panting breath was a constant white fog that steamed his rimless granny glasses. It was his third day of searching the rugged Sawhenny Gap and, that morning, he realized he was losing his fear. There had still been nightmares, but they hadn't been as bad.
In fact, if there were one overriding feeling, it was surprise that it had been so damned easy to get into the place. He had just walked in. Like he was in one of those damned malls. And surprise that there was nothing in the Gap but rocks, a few bushes leaching out a livelihood from tiny pockets of soil, and the sluggish Little Sawhenny River. A lifetime of hating and fearing the place, all for nothing. Christ, you could bring kids here for picnics.
Don't you ever, ever go into the Sawhenny, Jonathan, or mommy will whip you. Till you bleed, you little bastard.
Yuh never git near th'Gap, boy. She's death t'mess with th'Gap.
But it had turned out to be so easy.
Under the baking sun of a late winter morning, a small group armed with sharpened sticks and large flint flakes dug around brush and boulders on a shallow river valley slope. Their clan had eked out a marginal existence on roots, berries and seed pods for a dozen years since the Great Wrath when S'Alan'Drith melted stars and threw them upon earth and waters. When oceans rose high as mountains and fell upon vast lowland forests that had been their home and freezing darkness descended upon the world. After more than a month torrential rains at last stopped and Great Night ended, but scattered clans that survived faced a harsh new way of life on vast, open grasslands of the high interior plateau.
Several males, gathered near a large bush, tugged at a root. They were hot, filthy and nearly exhausted. Finally one, hands slipping on slick wood, sat hard on his rump. Others eased sore backs and assumed apprehensive expressions at the approach of a young, powerful alpha female. Rump-sitter scrambled to his feet. All quickly placed palms on knees and stared hard at the ground. S'Alith'nn, while Clan Mother remained alive, was still a Lesser Mother, but she had been named successor to Clan Mother and already carried the weight of her new rank.
"What's the matter?" she asked.
"It's... too tough, Mother," Rump-sitter quavered, "we keep... slipping...."
