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scent.”
    “Tell you a story,” the Raven says. “In the old country there was a felonious two-tusked Boar. Everyone called him Gullinborsti. The brute, well, hated that name. Call him Gullinborsti, and he’d tusk-ram a tree so hard he’d rip the tree out by its trunk. If some fella called him Gullinborsti, he’d stick up his runty tail and pump his skinny legs and throw his fat-back at the Beast. Gullinborsti. It means ‘Onslaughtering Swine.’ Quork! Ha ha! Porkey Pugnacious, I say. Hog of harassment! Ha ha ha!”
    Kangi Sapa laughs. He beats his sides with his wing bones, and falls, and hits the ground like a sack of trash.
    “Oh, I got such a kick from vexing old stiff-bristles! Circled the pork-chop closer and closer until—Well, who knew the Hog could jump? Punched my gut with a tusk, threw me cups-over-teakettles so that I landed bang! on top of his head. The porker raced so fast, ran so bumpity-fast, I couldn’t let go or fly for safety. Gripped both his ears in my claws. Old piggy-grunt started to charge a very big oak, a most massive oak. I covered his piggy-little eyes with my wings. Round and round that sausage ran, and me clinging on for dear life. Round and round, blind as a Bat, till he was running straight at a stony cliff. Ceee- rack! Ha ha! Gullinborsti drove both tusks into that stony cliff. Me, I went spinning, caught myself on my wings and looked down. I figured I was shed of the Boar. But Damn! There was red fire in his piggy-little eyes. Tell you what, pure rage can move a cliff! Well, then I hightailed it out of there. I’m a distance flier, babe. Crossed the ocean and landed here in a brand-new land. What scent, darlin’? What’s this scent you’re looking for?”
    “The scent of my Ancestors.”
    “Hoo! Ancestors? I didn’t know a scent could last that long.”
    “I have a keen nose.”
    Kangi Sapa says, “You know about Cottonwood Trees?”
    “I’ve met them by streams.”
    “The breezes rustle the cottonwood leaves, and the leaves whisper, and I know their language. They told me the name they go by: Waga Chun. ‘Call us the Waga Chun.’ And what then? Then those same Cottonwoods gave me my new name too. Kangi Sapa. The Black Kangi. A new land, a new name, damn!—a new me . Don’t it feel the same to you?”
    “Yes,” says Wachanga. “It feels the same.”
    “Okay, now listen up. The Cottonwoods told me I’d meet a Woman Wolf. Said I’d know her by the color. Sweet as cream. Told me to name her Wachanga. See? It’s the reason you feel just like me.”
    Suddenly Wachanga cries, “Here it is!”
    She drops to her breast beside a black hawthorn bush and rolls onto her back and wallows in the dust.
    “Ravens wash in dusty pools,” says Kangi Sapa, striving to understand. “Y’all do too?”
    “Mr. Sapa, this is the scent of my Ancestors.”
    “Hum.” The Raven considers the point. Then he says, “Where they from?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Where’d they go?”
    “That’s what I hope to find out. Home, I think.”
    “Then where you from?”
    Wachanga pauses. She sits on her haunches and thinks. Then she says, “I can’t remember.”
    “Honeybunch,” says the Raven, “don’t all Creatures know where they came from?”
    “I woke up walking, Mr. Sapa. In a thick woods. It was the howl of a very large Wolf that, I don’t know how to say it. Woke me up. That’s where my memory begins.”
    “Baby,” Kangi Sapa says, blinking with compassion. “I can’t help but notice that there pink scar on your rump. D’you remember how you got that?”
    “If you don’t mind, Mr. Kangi Sapa, let’s don’t talk about that.”

[Seven] The Vultures' Flight
[Seven] The Vultures’ Flight
    Selkirk, the Marten who escaped Chauntecleer’s insanity after he, Selkirk himself, had killed and eaten Ratatosk the Tree Squirrel, has loathed meat ever since. Loathes as well the yearning which that one bloody meal instilled in him. Despises the Creature he has