Prologue

"Red Arrow? Where are you, man?" Major Ellis spat on the ground.

They had come upon the village at the base of the river and the major, sensing danger, halted his companies' advance one hundred yards out. Soon the Lakota, Cheyenne and Ixopaw began to fire from their cover. Bullets whizzed by and bit the earth, the trees and flesh. The skirmish line established on his right did well enough at first, but was now disintegrating before his eyes. He wanted to ask the scout, Custer's favorite, if the village's defenders would pursue them should they withdraw. Evidently the Crow had not heard him.

"Red Arrow!" He barked.

"Here Major!" Came Red Arrow's voice at his back.

He heard the scout's stallion trot up beside him. Scanning over the village defenders at the mouth of the Little Bighorn, Major Ellis smelt death in the air. He asked Red Arrow his question and awaited the response.

None came.

Already as angry as he was skittish, he turned to curse the deaf Red Arrow and was splashed with water. It happened suddenly that his face was wet.

His disbelieving fingertips graced his cheek and came away painted with blood. It was then he saw that Red Arrow had lost his face, and soon lost his stallion as well when it reared and galloped away. The scout's body hit the ground with a thud.

"Retreat!" Major Ellis screamed. He bellowed it again and once more after that. Then he turned to run.

Cheyenne and Sioux poured out of the trees at his exposed left flank. Women charged waving brightly colored blankets, scaring off the horses. One man riding his mount was bucked off and three Sioux lept from the bramble and started stabbing at him with their bayonets. Red Arrow had told him the village was defended by a large force. He had told General Custer as well.

Then he was shot, too. It was liking getting kicked in the back by a mule. It began as a small, irritating pain, but soon he could hardly breath. When he did, his breaths were wet and raspy. Blood dribbled from his lips. He fell.

All fell silent around him. There were no more gunshots, screams or thundering hooves. The explosive cocophany of war and slaughter was replaced with a final, lethal quiet. He did hear the miserable rattling of his lungs, amplified against the silence. He almost could have laughed. Everything he'd seen and done, from fighting Apache at Nacogdoches to the Mexicans in Texas, or hunting Moon bears and giant sloth in Montana territory, this would be how he died. Caught in a trap he smelled a mile away.

He stared up at the sky as it began to darken. Thunder erupted as if it were storming inside his ear. Black clouds chased away the blue and the sun as a gentle rain started to fall.

A little girl appeared, an Indian girl. She wore a little dress of cloth and her dark hair was sticking to her face in the rain. In her right hand dangled a severed head. It wasn't hard to tell whose head it was. She came over and knelt beside Major Ellis, setting the head next to her. Her little hands began darting quickly in and out of his pockets, clutching at anything they touched.

Soon she was joined by a man. He was an Indian too. He wore a buckskin shirt and a white man's beige hunting coat. He wore a headdress of eagle feathers and a golden rifle was slung across his back. He and the girl spoke in English.

"He doesn't have it," said the girl.

"Seems none of these men do. It is too late anyhow. He has summoned it."

The girl looked down. The man stepped forward and put his arm around her. Then he sent her off towards the village with the head. He looked at Major Ellis for the first time, and in his face there was no trace of smug victory. Then he looked up at the sky.

One of Major Ellis's dying eyes rolled upwards. The sky was now black with stormclouds, illuminated only by flashes of lightning. During one of these flashes, the major thought he saw something terrible. Something unbelievable. A giant, black bird.

His panicked eyes flew back to the chief. The man looked back at him with grim pity. "Count yourself fortunate you have died before the storm. Your fellows are not so lucky." Before he left he stopped to say something else, in an offhand way.

The last words Major Ellis ever heard were these: "Poor girl doesn't know it, but she carries the head of her uncle."

Chapter 1

The boy wakened in the deep night.

Rubbing at his sleepless eyes, he looked out the train window at the dark fields rushing past in a blur. The moon loomed in the distance like a pearl in a bed of dark seaweed. Somewhere behind him the lights of Chicago shrunk into the lustery night.

His stomach roiled with nerves. The train floor shook at his feet. He wanted to put the events of his evening out of his head, to think only about New Attica and forget Chicago. Suppose everyone else was escaping something also, for why else would they be here on this train and at this hour? The boy kept his head down and his satchel filled with hastily-packed necessities firmly in his lap. There was money in here, a fair amount, and a gun. His father's old peacemaker. He was escaping and he was prepared.

He wished that his mother was alive. He never would have boarded this train if she was. It had been long enough that the thought of her did not bring tears, but it would never be long enough that the waves of melancholy and longing wouldn't overtake him when he did. His eyes went back to the window. They searched the moonlit night sky for her, then the dark rushing fields. In church they told him she was with him, watching him. If so he never saw her, and he would much rather she made herself appirate so he knew it was true.

And if she was really watching, what must she think?

"Hey kid, you got a light?" the voice startled him. It came from his right.

The boy turned and looked across the aisle. In the seat across from him lounged a rough-looking youth. He wore a tattered dark coat, a pair of torn jeans and a shorn cap doffed his head of long curls. His hair was like a woman's hair and his eyes, even in the dark, were also like a woman's.

The boy squirmed in his seat. Looked once more to the window. "I think I might," he mumbled, digging into his satchel. His fingers brushed past his gun and wrapped around a book of matches. The boy had spent months planning his dash from home. He'd tried to consider everything when packing his bag. "Here," he said, holding the matchbook out of the aisle but not turning his head. He didn't want conversation.

"Why thank you," said the stranger, taking a single match and leaving the rest. He struck it, lighting up his face. The boy glanced the visage of a young man. His eyes had long lashes and his hair was a flaming orange color. The stranger lit a pre-rolled cigarette. "I don't suppose you smoke tobacco yet?" This young man spoke with the conviviality and mirth of a mid-afternoon visit rather than a middle-of-the-night train ride.

"No," the boy answered, returning the matchbook to its place and keeping his eyes on the window. It wasn't exactly true, he smoked cigarettes with his friend back...back in Chicago. But the stranger didn't need to know that.

"You all by yourself?" the young man continued, undeterred. "If so, I wonder what you're meaning to do in Deerhead. This your first trip out there?"

"First trip? Yes. I mean no. No, I've been there lots of times."

To his surprise, the stranger laughed. "Oh, I'd assume so. I been there a time or two myself. Worked in the mines between Deerhead and Henry. You been to Henry?"

The boy acted like he hadn't heard.

"You got shit in your ears or what? Has you been to Henry? Well I have. Ain't nothing like New Attica, and I'm from East Andrea. I know you ain't been there before."

The boy shrugged.

"Can't say as I blame you for your reticence. I was just a kid myself when the northerners killed my daddy. I don't know where your daddy is, but I can tell by your whole act what's up. It's a dangerous business, traveling on your own. I ought to know."

"I got friends waiting for me in Deerhead. I ain't scared." It felt strange to lie. Strange but also fun. The boy realized that in this moment he could be anything and anybody. "I killed a man in Chicago, so I was sent away before the law locked me up."

"If that's so you may want to keep that to yourself. Tell me kid, what do you make out of that city? I mean that was my first trip, and I made a little money, but I don't mean to go back ever. Got too much country in me, I guess. But a place like that frightens a fella, to his soul if he muses on it too much. Imagine all the world covered in paved streets, bustling with prudish cocksuckers who act as though you are lesser for merely being in their way..." his words trailed off and smoke rose in a skinny column from between his fingers.

The boy thought the smoke smelled funnier than what he smoked, or what his father smoked. He thought about what the stranger had said. "I liked it ok, Chicago. But I hated it too. I grew up there." He forgot his lie to the stranger, as the sobering memory of home imposed on him. "It was where my mom got sick. Before that, I loved the city. Guess after she...I guess it just got boring. And lonely."

"Imagine, all those people living together as neighbors and probably each and every one is lonely. You seem like an okay guy, kid. Got a name?"

Now the boy allowed himself to show the young man his face. He didn't want to give out his name, for reasons he didn't quite fully understand. "Y," he heard himself answering. "I'm Y."

The man smiled and nodded his head. When he inhaled the tip of his cigarette lit up his face. He could not be much older than Y.

"I'm Hollis. Dean Hollis. Adventurer extraordinaire. Prospector. Gunslinger. Drunk." Hollis laughed. "I been everywhere, from Tennessee to the Metal Lands. I seen it all, man."

Y was suddenly fascinated. "You've been to the Metal Lands?"

"I seen them, anyway, sure. Can't exactly go there, you know. But they sure was a sight. All them towers and spires. You can see why people go exploring there. You can also see how nobody that does comes back."

"I've read about them before. I always wanted to see them, at least. Maybe someday."

"How old are you, anyway? 16, 17?"

"I'm fourteen."

"All out on your own, striking out across the country to Deerhead. You'll be real close to New Attica. You got cajones. You know what those are?" He knocked on his crotch.

Y laughed and shrugged again. "I suppose. Truth be told, my dad's stationed at Fort Abraham, in New Attica. I mean to join him."

"He's fighting injuns? Christ me."

"What? He has to. He's in the Calvary and all. He fought with Custer."

"He did, now?"

"Yes, why?"

"You do know what happened? I don't, erm, well I don't mean to cast aspersions or anything but...well it was a devastating loss you know."

The boy Y shrank back into the shadows cast from his window. His voice, when he spoke, came back small and airy. "He's alive. I know he is. I can't tell you how or anything, but I just know it."

Dean Hollis nodded and said nothing else on the subject. He smushed the burning end of his cigarette into the seat in front of him. "Best get some sleep now. We'll hit Sioux City by morning."

Y said nothing else, retreating into a sleepy trance that was not yet sleep. Hollis' words brought him haunting visions of his father, wreathed in haloes and wrecked with bloody bullet holes. No family left. No home. No Y. He hadn't thought about his father being dead because he didn't like to. But if Hollis was right, what would he do? He tried to put it out of his mind and invited sleep, but it would not come.

Rather he brooded in a trance that swept in and out of consciousness, a process which he lamented to have no control over no matter what he did.