Dejunga is squatting by the edge of the swamp beside a roaring fire as tall as a man, with only a loincloth tied around his slender hips. His hides, other belongings, and totem heads dry by the fire. On a crude rack of branches, a slab of snake meat roasts and sizzles, dripping fatty oils into the flames. Blood Dawn is rising above the trees.
He had found medicines in the swamp, made a poultice, and filled the puncture wounds on his stomach from the snake’s fangs, and the wounds from Glooscap’s arrows. He knows if he returns without the Boy with the Scar, Ragaroo will be angry. Dejunga will taste his fury and have to pay for the failure with his spirit. And Dejunga is fond of his spirit.
He rubs the lump, where the boy stung him with the stone. He had been so close, so close he could taste the boy’s fear, could see it in his eyes, could smell it on his skin. But he had underestimated his prey. That will not happen again. He will not return to Wendo until he has the boy. He cannot. There is no choice. One Who Sees All wants him, and so he shall have him.
Traveling by himself, he will be quicker and more silent. He always hunts better by himself. This time will be no different, he thinks. A light flashes on Anna from Earth’s shine box: a song begins to play, a song unlike anything ever heard in all his years on Earth or World of Dawn. There are drums and horns and what he thinks are flutes like the Sawnay play. He stands up and walks over to listen:
Don’t ask me
What you know is true
Don’t have to tell you
I love your precious heart
I, I was standing
You were there
Two worlds colliding
And they could never tear us apart
Dejunga picks up the shine box, stares at the girl’s white face, her red lips. Yes, her head will make a nice totem on his hip, after he takes her, after he fills his own hunger.
He begins swaying side to side with the music, then he gazes at the Three Brothers that shine as fiercely as ever before. He grins for the fifth time since he came down from his village. And among the Wendo, Dejunga is not known as a man who grins.
END OF BOOK ONE