Yelloweye
15
The Letter
Stig Wolfe: The Truth About Dying
I REMEMBER DYING.
I guess when I was Phile, I started this by telling you I remembered being born. But there are more important things to remember now. I remember the births of my children. I remember my lovers. I remember living as a wild ranch kid in Wyoming and as a renegade in the nineteenth century. I remember holding my sweet sister in my arms at night and knowing there would never be a more perfect match. I remember Mandy welcoming me in both my bodies into her heart and soul.
And I remember dying.
I’ve decided to write this little letter and put it in the box with the last pages Caitlin and Phile wrote. I know that someday—maybe a long time from now—one of you will open the box again. Perhaps you simply won’t believe what happened and need to hear it again. Perhaps it will be one of our children exploring for the first time and trying to dig out the family secrets.
I need to tell you about dying.
It was fast and brutal and painful and unexpected. I rode into battle thinking Yelloweye would protect me. We were confident in Earth Mother and the Old Ones. They chose us for this task. You’d think they’d take care of us.
Imagine having your arm ripped off your body by a ravening beast and then double it. Triple it. It still wouldn’t be adequate.
Phile’s last thoughts were of Caitlin. For a moment, he imagined them coming home to the land and the family. Of sharing the grandchildren with Moms and Pa. And then it was gone.
Yelloweye was staring at me. Tears were running down my cheeks, but as Wolf Rising, I had to keep pounding that fucking drum or the herds would be lost. We had to return them to their times and places. Wolf Riding Woman, beating on the other side of the drum looked stricken. It was the first I realized that Caitlin had been killed, too, and that she’d experienced that wrenching severance of her other body.
To deal in death, you must know it. Yelloweye swiveled his head from one to the other of us and then fixed Mandy in his gaze. You must hold them together.
And poor Mandy! Weeping between the two of us as we pounded the drum and brought death to so many people. We didn’t want to deal in death! Merv and Little Elk held the beat steady when we faltered and reached out for our other bodies—to snatch them from the stampede where they’d fallen. When it was over, and our drums fell silent, we collapsed.
I walk in the fields here at the ranch, so familiar in Phile’s memories yet so new to this body and my senses, and I am still angry at the Old Ones for their betrayal. What right did they have to take away half our being because we were doing what they asked of us? They made us two souls in four bodies and then ripped away half our senses. I hold my daughters in my arms and weep because the body that planted the seed cannot touch the child that grew from it. Rita cries because the body that gave birth to Colin cannot give suck.
So, we spend a lot of time in the fields, riding in the heads of the horses, jumping to the antelope, sometimes catching the lonely cry of a wolf. And we lose ourselves in our precious Talia when we return. She holds us together.
What the media cleverly dubbed ‘The Oil Field War’ or ‘The Indian Uprising’ isn’t over, nor is it limited to oil. Eventually, maybe people will figure out that it is Mother Earth who has decided to fight back. Aside from a few earthquakes, volcanoes, and hurricanes, she’d been silent for thousands of years. And those ‘acts of nature’ weren’t targeted. They were the result of constant irritation and sometimes growth, but they weren’t directed specifically.
That’s why the spirit animals got involved. Her children. Mother Earth can’t just open a crevasse and swallow all the bad people. But her children can be and are more direct. When Creator Wolf sprang at the chairman of Shale Oil Company, it was a direct and targeted attack. I stood in the shadows, riding the mind of Creator Wolf and I felt the death of that evil man. Rita and Talia have children at their breasts and two more on the way. They would suffer any pain to protect them. They understand Mother Earth better than I do. I would also do anything and suffer any pain to protect my children and to protect my wives and to protect the land. But I experience dying each time I act.
I guess there would be fewer wars if we all had that curse. Or blessing. With two more children on the way—and Ramie pregnant, too—it is more important than ever to make the world a better place.
I guess that’s all I can tell you.
We won that battle, but the war isn’t over.
This land is forever ours. Even when we are dead and buried, we are here to protect our pack and our land. The spirits of this land do not rest. And we are deadly when we hunt.
Still your loving children, Stig, Rita, and Talia.
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