The mammoths of the new lands were bigger, and slower, and more foolish than the mammoth of the Siberian plains, and the pungh mushrooms, with their seven spots, were not to be found in the new lands, and Nunyunnini did not speak to the tribe any longer.
And in the days of the grandchildren of Dalani and Kalanu’s grandchildren, a band of warriors, members of a big and prosperous tribe, returning from a slaving expedition in the north to their home in the south, found the valley of the first people: they killed most of the men, and they took the women and many of the children captive.
One of the children, hoping for clemency, took them to a cave in the hills in which they found a mammoth skull, the tattered remnants of a mammoth-skin cloak, a wooden cup, and the preserved head of Atsula the oracle.
While some of the warriors of the new tribe were for taking the sacred objects away with them, stealing the gods of the first people and owning their power, others counseled against it, saying that they would bring nothing but ill luck and the malice of their own god (for these were the people of a raven tribe, and ravens are jealous gods).
So they threw the objects down the side of the hill, into a deep ravine, and took the survivors of the first people with them on their long journey south. And the raven tribes, and the fox tribes, grew more powerful in the land, and soon Nunyunnini was entirely forgot.
Part Three
THE MOMENT OF THE STORM
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
People are in the dark, they don’t know what to do
I had a little lantern, oh but it got blown out too.
I’m reaching out my hand. I hope you are too.
I just want to be in the dark with you.
—Greg Brown, “In the Dark with You”
They changed cars at five in the morning, in Minneapolis, in the airport’s long-term parking lot. They drove to the top floor, where the parking building was open to the sky.
Shadow took the orange uniform and the handcuffs and leg hobbles, put them in the brown paper bag that had briefly held his possessions, folded the whole thing up, and dropped it into a garbage can. They had been waiting for ten minutes when a barrel-chested
young man came out of an airport door and walked over to them. He was eating a packet of Burger King french fries. Shadow recognized him immediately: he had sat in the back of the car, when they had left the House on the Rock, and hummed so deeply the car had vibrated. He now sported a white-streaked winter beard he had not had before. It made him look older.
The man wiped the grease from his hands onto his jeans, extended one huge hand to Shadow. “I heard of the All-Father’s death,” he said. “They will pay, and they will pay dearly.”
“Wednesday was your father?” asked Shadow.
“He was the All-Father,” said the man. His deep voice caught in his throat. “You tell them, tell them all, that when we are needed, my people will be there.”
Czernobog picked at a flake of tobacco from between his teeth and spat it out onto the frozen slush. “And how many of you is that? Ten? Twenty?”
The barrel-chested man’s beard bristled. “And aren’t ten of us worth a hundred of them? Who would stand against even one of my folk, in a battle? But there are more of us than that, at the edge of the cities. There are a few in the mountains. Some in the Catskills, a few living in the carny towns in Florida. They keep their axes sharp. They will come if I call them.”
“You do that, Elvis,” said Mr. Nancy. Shadow thought he said Elvis, anyway. Nancy had exchanged the deputy’s uniform for a thick brown cardigan, corduroy trousers, and brown loafers. “You call them. It’s what the old bastard would have wanted.”
“They betrayed him. They killed him. I laughed at Wednesday, but I was wrong. None of us are safe any longer,” said the man whose name sounded like Elvis. “But you can rely on us.” He gently patted Shadow on the back and almost sent him sprawling. It was like being gently patted on the back by a wrecking ball.
Czernobog had been looking around the parking lot. Now he said, “You will pardon me asking, but our new vehicle is which?”
The barrel-chested man pointed. “There she is,” he said.
Czernobog snorted. “That?”
It was a 1970 VW bus. There was a rainbow decal in the rear window.
“It’s a fine vehicle. And it’s the last thing that they’ll be expecting you to be driving.”
Czernobog walked around the vehicle. Then he started to cough, a lung-rumbling, old-man, five-in-the-morning smoker’s cough. He hawked, and spat, and put his hand to his chest, massaging away the pain. “Yes. The last car they will suspect. So what happens when the police pull us over, looking for the hippies and the dope? Eh? We are not here to ride the magic bus. We are to blend in.”
The bearded man unlocked the door of the bus. “So they take a look at you, they see you aren’t hippies, they wave you goodbye. It’s the perfect disguise. And it’s all I could find at no notice.”