As she had cradled his bleeding head, the rock in this white man’s cave was falling on the things that could not be beheld, and the fearsome noise had seemed to her as if all the world was ending. She had bent her head in stark terror, praying to the Thunder Spirit to deliver them from this dark chaos, when the man Henderson had started to crawl towards the mayhem. He had gasped through gritted teeth at the effort of moving, blood oozing through the fingers of the hand that clutched at his blackened breast.

She had not stopped him. The shame was still a hot iron in her. She was cradling her son, and she did not stop the man who had saved him.

She had looked up only in time to see his fate. The thing that was a claw, ripping and tearing and rending his flesh. And the screaming, that hungry venomous wailing that chilled the heart enough to make it stop. No animal had ever made such a noise. She had not known whether it came from man or beast.

Then the rock had fallen. It fell on the abomination, and the man Henderson had made a lunge towards something in the chaos before throwing his torn body back away from the avalanche of stone. Singing Tree had howled from the torment of that noise and the screaming of the things that were trapped.

The dust had been thick, like smoke. She had coughed and spat, cradling Walks Alone to her body to keep him from inhaling the thick, acrid dust. And when she had been able to see and breathe again, both of the nightmares were gone. Lost beneath the mountain that had closed on its secrets again. But the white man’s upper body had been still visible, his lower half buried beneath the rock. His hand was clenched tightly, and from a ripped and mutilated face he had been croaking at her.

Singing Tree had stared like a simpleton for what seemed an age, then gently laid her unconscious son’s head down and stepped cautiously through the rubble towards the dying man.

She had knelt at his head and gently placed the bloody mess on her leg. Singing Tree had bathed his face before. Now there was no face to bathe. Part of a nose and a mouth, but hardly a face.

He had been trying to speak. She had bent her head to hear.

Her tongue. A dying man speaking in her tongue.

He had tried to smile with the words, not seeing, as both eyes were hanging and torn on the things that had been cheeks.

‘James … Jamesss …’

She had held his head more gently, listening.

‘James goes Eden. Eden. Begin again, like Adam.’

She had tried to soothe him, made noises as she would to a baby. He died with his last word as though it were a prayer.

‘Eden.’