And maybe the Elementals were never meant to stop this fight between Others and humans any more than they were meant to interfere with any two predators who were fighting over the same territory. But the Elementals at Lakeside had helped Simon. Elementals in another part of the Midwest had helped destroy the Controller and the terrible place where he had caged some of the sweet blood. Maybe the Elementals here would work with him now. After all, Air had helped Joe when he shipped the bison meat to Simon.

“The humans,” Tolya said. “They’re going to burn down the Intuits’ town. They’re going to try to kill all the young Jesse Walker is taking into the hills for protection.”

“How do you know this?” Fire finally asked.

“Meg Corbyn spoke prophecy and warned Jesse Walker.”

“Broomstick Girl?”

So Charlie Crowgard’s song about Meg defending a Wolf had reached this far west. “Yes. Meg, the Trailblazer. Friend to the terra indigene in Lakeside.”

“Our eastern kin know her,” Air said. “She saved the ponies who live in the Lakeside Courtyard.”

Tolya nodded. Then he waited.

Air looked up as some of the Ravengard flew by. “The humans who killed the Wolves. The Ravens say some are from the town and some...” She looked at Fire and smiled. “How many bison died?”

Fire just returned her smile.

Something about those smiles gave Tolya a sudden understanding of why the Elementals shouldn’t be encouraged to become too involved in the lives of beings who were more anchored to flesh than their form of terra indigene.

Air and Fire said nothing as they turned their steeds toward the ranches that lay between the Intuit town of Prairie Gold and the human town of Bennett.

Shifting back to smoke, Tolya continued on to Prairie Gold. As he reached the truck stop at the edge of town, he saw a bolt of lightning strike the ground in the north and judged that it had hit something near the crossroads.

He kept going until he reached Walker’s General Store. Men hurried over to meet him as soon as he shifted to human form.

“They’re dead,” he said. “The Wolves are dead.”

“Ah, damn,” Floyd Tanner said softly, sorrowfully. “Even Joe?”

Tolya nodded. He wouldn’t tell these men how the Wolves died. Not yet.

“We’re sorry for your loss,” Kelley Burch said after a moment’s silence. “We all liked Joe.”

“He was a good leader,” Tolya said. And maybe, in the same way that Simon Wolfgard is with Vlad, he could have been a good friend.

He didn’t appreciate how much the loss saddened these humans until he saw the change in their faces and bodies and realized that they were, for now, setting aside grief.