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the others prepared themselves for the day’s walk, they scratched their heads as he thrust and gouged his spear into the pitted wood until his hands bled and his strong young body gleamed with sweat. Frog shut the gawkers out of his mind. He did not see the surrounding termite mud hills, or a berry juice outline on the tree trunk. His eyes saw only snarling horror and the death of hope.
    “What are you doing?” Leopard Paw asked from a few safe paces distance.
    Frog’s tree was a spear’s throw away from where most Ibandi were encamped, near the forest of chest-tall, orange-brown termite mounds. When his foot brushed one of the insect trails, he paused to shake a few six-leggeds off his heel.
    “Practicing,” Frog said.
    “Why?”
    “A dream.”
    “Well,” Leopard said, “the tree looks very fierce.” The hunters laughed.
    Frog did not let their mockery touch him. One day they would understand. That day of truth terrified him as no previous imagining ever had, but he could not shut the fear away. Not this time. That had been his tactic through much of his life. This time, he would turn fear into skill.
    When the other hunters drifted away, Snake remained, watching, fingers twisting his thin beard. “I watch you train. You were not seeing boars or lions in your mind. You saw men.”
    “If Mk*tk
are
men,” Frog replied. He stepped sideways, then stabbed and slashed the tree from a new angle as if it had threatened Medicine Mouse.He dreamed of Mk*tk. T’Cori dreamed of Mk*tk. When two dreamed as one … only a fool could deny that tomorrow and today were bleeding into each other. “Are they?” he asked. “Are they men?”
    “Whether or not they are men, they are horizons behind us.” Snake seemed genuinely confused. “We walk
away
from them!”
    “Perhaps,” Frog said, “they run to meet us. What then?”
    “I don’t know,” Snake said.
    “I do,” Frog said. “And I have thought about this.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Snake, in your days with the hunt chiefs, what secrets did you learn?”
    “Many dances,” he said, “and ceremonies. I remember so little.”
    “Try harder.” Frog leaned on his spear. Sweat dripped from his forehead and in the dirt like summer’s first raindrops. “I say we talk to Still-shadow, ask if she remembers the hunt chief’s dances. Or anything we might use against the Mk*tk. If we don’t know more than we did, and we meet them in years to come …”
    Snake shook his head. “But they are
behind
us!”
    Frog gazed up at the clouds. Shapes. Faces. Still. Moving. At one time or another, he had seen everything he had ever known in the sky … and some sky forms he had never seen in the real world at all. For instance, the face of his father—said to be broad and strong like Fire Ant’s but with wider eyes. Frog wished he could have seen his father’s face, felt his kiss, just once.
    Snake had tried to fill that void, and could not. Perhaps his flesh father would not have been able to see the faces and creatures in the clouds, either, or known the voices of the fire people.
    In Frog’s dreams, his lost father could do those things and more.
    This was not fair. Snake was all he had, and Snake wanted to follow Frog. Snake, his elder, should have dispensed wisdom. Frog had never wanted any of this.
    All he had wanted was family, water, a warm fire, a good hunt and a safe night’s sleep.
    Frustrated, Frog screamed his reply. “How can we know what is out there, waiting for us? We cannot. And so we must be ready, or they will eat our children.”
    Snake’s single good eye squinted. “You really believe this?”
    “Yes,” Frog said, “I do. Sky Woman says that there will be blood.”
    Snake bowed his head. Then he lifted his chin, opened his eyes and looked up. “I think the Mk*tk are far behind us, but I trust you, my son, and will prepare for what lies ahead.”
    “I know you will,” Frog replied. “We will all do what we can.”
And his greatest