Hold On had finally fallen into a dreamless sleep, a dark void with no flames, no singed manes, when the scent of smoke jolted him awake. Fire! He began to tremble so hard, he thought his legs might buckle. The blackness was still thick. He took a step forward and bumped into the trunk of the piñon tree. He backed away and began to walk slowly in circles. He heard a dry rapid clatter. Snake! he thought, the bad snake whose bite was poisonous. He reared slightly and jumped aside only to knock his hindquarters against another tree. But now there was something worse than the clatter snake. Another scent. That of a human. He froze and opened his eyes wide and stared into the emptiness.

When Tijo was finished, he tucked the pipe away, pulled the thick sheep hide around his shoulders, and sat down to think. Where should he go? Back to the clan? Without Haru he would become omo, not cast out like a malformed baby but turned into a living ghost. No one would speak to him. No one would share food with him. At first, they would avert their eyes or pretend not to see him, and finally they would actually look right through him as if he were transparent. He would become air and then he would finally die.

A person normally became omo as punishment for some transgression — not a serious crime like murder but after violating some code of behavior. The shunning would commence in a small way, then it was like a contagion. Other people would join in, or else it might suggest the misbehavior was acceptable, which would threaten the integrity of the band. Tijo looked down at his crooked leg. It was enough to threaten the sturdiness of the band. No parent would want their daughter to become friends with Tijo. Marriage would be forbidden.

That had always been clear. For as long as he could remember, he’d been kept separate from other children. He could not play their games or learn to hunt alongside them. Haru had been his only playmate and his only teacher. He knew practically nothing of the communal life of the band. He and Haru lived always a short distance away from them. They made their own cooking fires. Dug their own latrine. Stood apart at the ceremonies. That had been his life, and now if he returned, it would be worse.

He could not go back to the band. It would be an insult to Haru. If Haru sat in the lap of the Spirit Mother at the end of the spirit trail, did she want to look down and see the boy she had raised for eleven years treated so miserably? It would make her cry. Tears from the spirit world caused bad things to happen — drought, sickness, famine — even tears shed for a lame boy. He got up to stretch. If the people of the band wanted a ghost, they would have one.

The ground was still damp and he noticed the prints of an animal he did not recognize. He crouched down and ran his hand over the impression in the mud. The creature had no toes. The hoof, or whatever this strange shape was called, was not cloven and it was big and sank deep into the mud like that of the big-horned mountain sheep. What could it be? Tijo recalled how Haru’s nose had twitched just before she died. He bent down and picked up the faintest trace of a scent he had never known. Haru had smelled this creature!

The tracks were pronounced and easy to follow, but they seemed to be going in circles, as if the creature was lost.

The rain finally began to taper off. Mist rose from the thinly wooded stand of piñon and birch trees. Tijo halted abruptly and stared in disbelief. Beneath a piñon tree stood the most immense creature he had ever seen. It was shivering and at intervals its entire hide appeared to flinch. Its pointed ears were laid back. Tijo approached quietly, but the creature jerked its head around and snorted. Its odor was different from the oily one of sheep or the meaty one of mountain lions, and there was a more powerful overlying smell of charred hair or fur. His coat was a silvery gray but streaked with smoky marks. This creature had passed through a fire, one of the canyon fires that sometimes ignited at this time of year. It turned its head toward Tijo and peeled back its lips in a strange manner.

Tijo could tell that the creature was frightened. Frightened and lost. As the mist swirled about, it appeared like a specter before the dawn. And I believed I was the ghost here, Tijo thought. This animal truly looked as if it had fallen off the trail to Otang. It seemed lost between two worlds. The mist billowed around them more thickly. The light of the moon gave this place an eerie luminosity. Tijo felt as if he were standing nowhere but everywhere, a place that was suspended in a fold between air and water, cloud and earth. A strong gust suddenly rustled the trees, and a swarm of clouds stampeded across the moon as utter blackness descended. When it cleared off, the creature had vanished. I must have dreamed it, Tijo thought, and blinked. A dream snatcher must have come and ripped the cloth of his sleep. It could happen. Such a wind could tear the strongest filaments of a spider’s web. His vision of the creature could not have been real. Creatures like that appear only in dreams.