She felt a vague regret, and a dim sorrow, as she saw how David was weeping over her, even as he continued to blow futile air into lungs that would get no use from it, and tried to force life into a heart that had ceased to beat.

But Eagle’s point needed to be addressed. Great One, I fear that the time for action is gone for this one. The spirit-house below is beyond repair; there will be brain damage after so much time without heart beating and lungs breathing.

Again, she felt a vague emotion, this time anger. If Wah-K’on-Tah wanted her to do something about Calligan and the Evil One, shouldn’t he have brought help a little sooner?

But Eagle laughed, silently, his beak open and his thin tongue showing. Would I have come to remind you of your duty if the spirit-house were unusable? he asked. You know how chill the water is. I need not explain it to you. And whatever else is wrong, I will see it taken care of.

As he spoke, a warm golden glow haloed him, a hint of the sunlight in the midst of the night.

She bowed her head down to her toes at that, humbly, overcome with deep awe. There was no doubt in her mind that she was in the presence of one of the Great Spirits; a messenger of Wah-K’on-Tah, as she had named him. What he pledged would come to be, for he had the authority to make it so.

He turned his head to look down below, and sighed. There is the small matter of Ta-hah-ka-he, as well, he observed. David was clearly at the end of his rope; she had never imagined him losing control to anything but anger, and to see him in hysteria was something of a shock. Small, perhaps, in the larger view, but if you are gone from his life—he may lose his way, and he will surely lose his focus. He loves you; you love him. Together, you form a balanced whole. Should this not count for something? But there is a larger matter at hand, as well—

He spread his wings, and in their shadow she saw What-Might-Be.

She saw Toni Calligan, dead, and dumped into an oil pit by the same men who had murdered her. She saw Rod Calligan galvanizing opinion against the Native Americans, as she had already imagined. She saw Calligan and another man turning the abandoned mall site into a dumping ground for toxic waste; saw the entire ecosystem along the Arkansas River destroyed, poisoned, with the first to go being the bald eagles nesting here. She saw the toxins spreading all through the ground water, until even the local wells were poisoned, and wildlife vanished. But then she saw what was behind it all.