“I’d appreciate that,” Selena said. “Very, very much.”
She woke into a dream that seemed horribly familiar—a dark place, lit by fire, and another presence beside her. But before Selena could gather her wits to panic, she looked over and saw that it was Yellow Dog, wiggling on his back in the blankets and shedding little tan hairs all over everything.
“Why am I back here?” Selena asked. “I thought Snake-Eater was dead!”
“Dead’s a bit of a stretch,” Yellow Dog said. “Very much weakened, though. He won’t be able to possess an egg, let alone a full-grown bird, for a good long time. A century, at least.”
Selena relaxed. She’d be safely dead by then, and presumably beyond such concerns as deranged bird gods. “But why am Ihere? This was where Snake-Eater was ... um ...”
“Trying to hump your leg?” asked Yellow Dog, and grinned. “Simple. This wasn’t ever his place, it was yours.”
“What?”
The dog dug his shoulder blades farther into the blankets, which, now that Selena was looking, appeared to be furs. “Sorry to tell you, but this is where your dreaming mind thinks leg humping ought to occur.”
Selena looked around the scene—fire, darkness, furs—and put her face in her hands.This is what comes of readingThe Clan of the Cave Bearat a formative age.
“Eh, don’t feel so bad. You’d be amazed what places people dream about. That priest friend of yours has a recurring—”
“No,” said Selena. “I don’t want to know.”
“Fine, fine.” Yellow Dog sat up and scratched vigorously behind his ear. Selena suspected that if she ever dreamed about this place again, she’d find fleas in the blankets.
“Thank you, though,” she said. “For helping me back there. I couldn’t have done it without ... well, actually I don’t feel like I did much. It was all of you. I just stood there and wrung my hands.”
Yellow Dog’s perpetual smile faded and he gazed at her intently. “Don’t do that.”
“Don’t do what?”
“Don’t talk down what you did.”
“But Ididn’treally do anything! It was all my friends—I wouldn’t even have known how to pull the trigger if Grandma Billy hadn’t shown me—”
Yellow Dog snapped his teeth in the air, cutting off her words. “Making friends,” he said, very deliberately, “isdoing something.”
Selena stared at him.
“The tide wasn’t turned because you were a great warrior. It was turned because you put scorpions outside without killing them.” Hestretched, full body, like a cat. “And because your dog loves you. Don’t forget that.”
“... oh,” said Selena, feeling things shift around inside her head.
“Anyway,” said Yellow Dog, “I didn’t come here to talk about that. I came to tell you that you probably ought to rename your house.”
“Jackrabbit Hole House?”
“Yep. The name made a connection to Snake-Eater’s home ground. It was why he was able to come here, so far away.”
“And my aunt renamed it three years ago. That was deliberate, wasn’t it? So he could come here and be with her?”
“Seems like it.”
Selena took a deep breath. “Did he mean to kill her?”
“Eh.” Yellow Dog shrugged. “I’m not a doctor, but I doubt it. Snake-Eater did love her, and by all accounts, she liked him well enough. He wasn’t quite so bad, you know, until she died and left him alone.”
“It wasn’t her fault!” Selena said, bristling. “She didn’t dieathim.”
“Peace,” said Yellow Dog, falling over on his side and showing his belly. She could tell he was laughing at her. “Not all spirits understand how dying works for your people. The ways we die tend to be very different. Snake-Eater very likely expected your aunt to simply come back in another body, and when she didn’t, it felt as if she’d abandoned him. And then you showed up, and he couldn’t figure out if you were her again or something new.”
