“Hey.”

“Hey!”

Someone shook his shoulder, and Kellen felt something wet on his nose. He opened his eyes. Vex filled his entire vision. He gasped and sat up, and the little fox tumbled off his chest. Shani jerked back. as well Kellen realized she’d been kneeling over him, talking and shaking him.

He was about to ask what had happened when the scene around them took his breath. A semi circle of dead and dying fire bison surrounded them, their broken bodies heaped into a windrow. Kellen’s eyes widened. Had his shield done all this?

“The dead ones formed a wall,” Shani said. For once, she didn’t seem angry and appeared as amazed as Kellen. “I have never seen anything like it. They hit your shield and were knocked aside into the rest of the herd.”

“How — how long?” Kellen managed.

Shani shrugged. “Hard to say. Vex held your shield after you passed out for a little while before the stragglers finished passing by.”

Kellen blinked hard. What little grass wasn’t covered by dead buffalo smoldered. Though the sky remained full of dark clouds, they looked to be parting and the wind had died to a gentle breeze. The plane-sized birds were gone. In place of the scent of metallic ozone, scorched earth and burnt hair filled the air. The world was calm, save for the unnerving moans of injured and dying buffalo.

A wave of dizziness rocked Kellen even though he was still sitting. His head pounded and his entire body felt like he was trapped inside a puppet. It took serious concentration and effort to get anything to move. “Are you both okay?” he asked Vex and Shani.

Vex nodded, though his ears and tail drooped. In place of his normally bright, energetic aura, Kellen felt a faint glow. Shani nodded too, though when she glanced at her fallen horse, Kellen realized it wasn’t moving. He realized the strain had done it in.

“I’m sorry about your horse,” Kellen said to her. “You saved our lives.”

A scowl crossed Shani’s face, though it didn’t last. If anything, she seemed embarrassed. “And you saved mine… again.”

“Well, I think we can call it even,” Kellen said. “If you hadn’t —”

“Over here!” A shadow passed overhead and Ira landed on a mound of dead buffalo. Relief filled his normally weary voice. “Thank the Wild Mother.”

Soon after, the others arrived. It surprised Kellen that everyone else not only alive but unharmed as well. The warriors shouted in joy when they found Shani and were even glad to find him okay as well. Before he could ask how they’d avoided the mass of buffalo, however, Nokom and Tama had plenty of questions for him. Kellen explained how he’d tried to conjure the first shield before Shani arrived and then how he’d created and maintained the larger one when the horse slowed, then fell. Shani watched him throughout the retelling, her expression unreadable. She wasn’t angry, but she didn’t look grateful or impressed.

“I…” Whatever Vex had to say was cut off by a long yawn. His ears and tail still drooped, and he fought to keep his eyes open. “I knew all along we’d be fine.”

With that, the little fox drifted off to sleep. It seemed for the time at least, Kellen was forgiven for his words before the stampede. At least he hoped Vex understood that he cared for him, too. They could deal with that complication another day. For now, being alive and relatively uninjured was enough.

Now they knew Shani and Kellen were safe, the other warriors drifted away from the group, using spears and arrows to finish off any fire bison still alive but too injured to survive. Tama stayed with Nokom while she examined Kellen and Shani. Kellen felt battered from head to toe. If something had been broken, he doubted he would have felt it. Aside from his knee, he thought he had come out lucky and mostly unscathed.

“How did you stay out of the stampede?” he asked Nokom. Now most of the wind and smoke had cleared, he could see the rock in the distance ahead of them from a gap between the dead buffalo. It didn’t seem to have any ledges or high ground that would have fit people, let alone the storm horses.

“I told you, the Tall Spears offer powerful protection from the many dangers of the plains,” Nokom explained as she felt Shani’s arms and legs. “Even in a stampede, the fire bison avoid them. We had just enough space around the bottom to keep us out of their way, although your horse kept running and is likely lost.”

Kellen felt a pang of guilt. With his horse and Shani’s gone, there was only one free horse left, and that had been carrying extra supplies. The sense of calm and control he’d wielded during the stampeded was gone and his grip on his mana felt more tenuous than ever.

“Foolish boy — you shouldn’t have turned around,” Nokom said. Now she knew Kellen and Shani were alright she had a much sharper tone. “Vex would have survived. A bonded Mana Beast cannot die unless its human does, remember?”

Kellen looked down at the sleeping Vex on the ground beside him and imagined the little fox kicked around under thousands of hooves like a soccer ball. “He still would have been hurt,” he said.

Nokom scoffed but Ira came to Kellen’s defense. “You would have done the same for me, Nokom,” the coyote pointed out.

“When I was younger and dumber,” Nokom snapped, then turned her attention to Shani. “And you, girl. Did you think you could outrace the wind itself?”

“I owe the traveler my life,” Shani said. “If he is in danger, I am bound to help him.”

Nokom scowled. “To be young and immortal again. Now both of you sit here until I tell you to move. We’re making camp near the Tall Spear tonight. I don’t have the healer’s touch, but I can tell a beating when I see one. Neither of you are going to so much as a stretch a leg unless I say so. I’ll be back soon.”

Tama watched Nokom go, then squeezed Shani’s shoulder and nodded at Kellen. “Well done, both of you. We will eat well tonight. While the others butcher one of these buffalo, rest as Nokom instructed. Tomorrow, we will try to find Ubira’s trail again. Between the storm and the charging buffalo, it will take some time.”

A terrible feeling struck Kellen as he realized Allison could have been caught in the same stampede. “Do you think Ubira would have known about the protection of the Tall Spears?” He didn’t want to think about what had happened if stampede had caught the slavers out in the open.

Tama nodded. “Even on the southern edge of the Thunder Plains, the Tall Spears are not rare. Ubira knows of their powers, I suspect. He will not wish his slaves to be killed before he can make a profit from them. Right now, we must hope to the Wild Mother that they continue their course southwest. Otherwise, finding their trail will be almost impossible, and we no longer have enough Storm Horses to go around. You will ride with Nokom.”

The chief left, and Kellen felt temporary relief. He’d wondered for a moment if he would have to ride with Shani, which made running all day seem a preferable option. He looked at the young woman, who knelt next to her fallen horse, whispering something Kellen couldn’t make out and running a hand down the dead animal’s neck. When she finished, she pressed her forehead to the horse’s still body and looked up.

“I think we’re even,” Kellen blurted out. If lifting the life debt Shani owed them would improve their relationship, it was as good as gone, in his opinion. “You don’t owe me anything.”

Shani narrowed her eyes, suspicious. “Why are you doing this?”

Kellen pointed around them. “Vex and I would have died if it wasn’t for you. The only reason you were in danger was because you saved us. As far as I’m concerned, we’re good.”

He’d hadn’t expected Shani to jump for joy, but she seemed offended by his suggestion. “No. You do not know what you speak. You are not one of us. You do not understand us. I do not know why the Wild Mother thought you were worthy to be a beastcaller, but it is wrong.”

With that, she rose and limped toward the rest of the warriors, now busy butchering one of the fallen buffalo.

“But Nokom told us to stay here!” Kellen called after Shani. “Wait — I’m sorry! I didn’t mean…”

His words trailed off. If she heard him, Shani gave no notice.

Kellen sighed. Well, at least he knew where he still stood. He supposed he was foolish to think things could have changed that easily between them. No matter what he did, he suspected he would always be an intruder to Shani. Once he found Allison, he’d be happy to leave the band, even if he didn’t know a way home. There had to be a city or town somewhere — a place they could live while Kellen worked out to get home that didn’t pose a different threat of death each day.

Soon after, Nokom returned. She didn’t ask Kellen where Shani was, but her eyes turned to the butchering group and she frowned. Rummaging through her pouch, she produced a small bundle of leaves bound by a long piece of grass. “Chew on that — it will ease your pains and aid your mana in healing the body. Now come, your beast heart is dry as the dust — you are lucky we have a Tall Spear to rest and recover beneath.”

Gathering Vex in his arms, Kellen limped after Nokom. As they walked, Kellen’s gaze moved around the fallen buffalo and the mashed earth. The grass still smoldered in the few parts where it wasn’t pounded into dust. Overhead, the storm was already gone — a thin line of clouds and lightning flashes off to the west. Kellen hoped that meant the storm and stampede had missed Allison, though if so, the gap between them would certainly grow wider. High above, Kellen made out Ira perched on the peak of the Tall Spear rock, no doubt on lookout while they made camp.

“I haven’t seen a storm like that in years,” Nokom said. “Or a herd of fire bison that large. And thunderbirds, too!”

“Did the storm make them run?” Kellen asked. He realized now why a perpetual blanket of wildfire smoke hung over the Thunder Plains if stampeding buffalo that breathed fire were the norm. At least now the winds of the storm had pushed the smoke away. The sky was clear for the first time since he’d awoken in Oras, though the air still stank of burnt grass.

“Most likely, though they need little persuasion to. The great herds rarely leave the north of the plains, just as our storm horses do not venture out of the south in large numbers. It was probably the thunderbirds that spooked them. They can snatch a full-grown bull in their talons and fly away with him. They are among the strongest and most dangerous wild Mana Beasts on the Thunder Plains. Their gathering likely caused the storm to begin with.”

Kellen shook his head. Just when he thought he had a sense of Oras, a new way to kill him popped up. If he thought about magic creatures and shooting spells of light from his hands, he still got dizzy. There was just so much to learn, and to be on the lookout for, aside from the impossibility of it all. Kellen’s blind acceptance was all that kept in him reality — if what he’d experienced could be considered reality.

“What you did was foolish, but you are alive to tell the tale,” Nokom said, patting him on the shoulder. “If that had been a regular thunder storm instead of a mana storm, you would have failed to create the shield and been trampled to death. But you did well. We have a saying on the plains —”

“Another one?” Vex asked, cracking one eye open to look at Nokom. “Doesn’t happen to be about letting sleeping Mana Beasts lie, does it?”

To Kellen’s surprise, Nokom’s lip twitched in a smile. “I’m afraid not, little one. We say that sometimes the lucky survive where the strong do not. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must tend to my stubborn granddaughter.”

Kellen watched Shani help to peel back the thick hide on the fire bison while the others skinned it away from the carcass. “I know you said it wasn’t my business, but what’s her deal? I’m trying to get along with her but everything I say seems to make things worse. If she’s so set on chasing after the slavers alone, why doesn’t she?”

Nokom’s eyebrows raised. “You do not know by now? She is loyal to Gray Dawn, yes, but her life is owed to you. That is what keeps her here.”

The old woman cut off Kellen’s protest. “It is not a debt that can be excused, not even by you. If she had rescued you from the buffalo stampede, it would have been forgiven. But then you saved her, yet again and the debt is yet unpaid.”

“I don’t believe that’s all of it,” Kellen said. “You all want to catch the slavers but Shani…”

“Before we left camp, Shani swore a death oath against Ubira and his slavers. That is what the black marks on her face mean. She will kill them all or die in the attempt. That is what tears at her — her life is no longer her own to sacrifice and death is all she seeks.”

“Why did —”

“I have told you,” Nokom said. “It is not for me to tell. You must ask Shani if you wish to know why she has made a death oath.”

“Is there anything I can do to make her… not hate me?” Kellen asked. He felt like an idiot for even asking and wished immediately he’d let the subject drop.

Nokom’s face softened. “You are what we call a gentle soul, traveler. It is hard for you to understand the ways of war and vengeance. By now, you have realized that my beastcaller bloodline did not pass to Tama or Shani. Not only does Shani owe you her life, but you represent that which she will probably never be or have. It is a hard thing for her to swallow. In her heart, I believe she thinks if she had been a beastcaller, Ubira’s raid would have had a much different ending.”

“There’s no way to say that for sure,” Kellen said. “I wasn’t there, but after fighting that bird it makes me think it wouldn’t have made a difference.”

Nokom shrugged. “I have lived many years and seen many things. In all that time, one of the few things I can know for certain is that truth is different for all of us.”