Long after Odawa had left him on the cliff top, Rabedy remained behind, staring down at the monstrous gathering of buffalo soldiers. Just looking at them started him trembling until he had to sit down on one of the slabs of granite at the edge of the drop-off, he was shaking so bad. He drew up his knees and wrapped his arms around his legs. He wanted to look away, but he couldn’t.

This was horrible, horrible, horrible.

He’d known bad things were going to happen when Big Dan first had the gang take up with Odawa. He’d just known. But he could never have guessed it would be this bad.

And who was left to deal with it? Not Big Dan. Not any of the gang. Not Odawa, for sure.

There was just him.

And what was he supposed to do? Go down and wave his ears and tail at the buffalo and say, look at me, I’m part animal, just like you. Listen to me.

They’d stomp him under those hooves of theirs like he was a bug, and that would be the end of him.

He sighed.

Well, it wasn’t as though there was anybody who would miss him. Too bogan for most fairy, not bogan enough for his own clans.

He tried to pick out individuals in the mass of stomping brown figures below, but it was impossible. They were too far away and moving too much. From this vantage point there was only the carpet of brown.

Would any of them listen to him?

What could he even say if they did?

There was no excuse for what the gang had done. No explanation that would justify killing those cerva, and certainly nothing that would bring them back.

It was hopeless.

Hopeless, hopeless.

Unless . . .

It suddenly occurred to him that there were an awful lot of buffalo gathering down there in the valley below him. And if some of those warrior cerva were spirits, called up from their graves, or the ground where they had fallen . . .

He stood up.

Maybe there was someone he could talk to. Somebody who might listen. Somebody who would agree that the responsibility for the recent deaths lay not with all fairy, but only with one gang of bogans.

He needed to go, and he needed to go quickly. Much more quickly than two short bogan legs could take him. As quick as salmon swimming through the air. Oh, where was that damned blind green-bree when he was needed?

He lifted a hand to his flopping dog ears.

Four legs were quicker than two. But he was too stupid and useless and just couldn’t master the change . . .

Odawa made it sound so easy. He said it wasn’t changing into something you weren’t, so much as remembering something you’d never been, which made absolutely no sense at all. How could you remember something you hadn’t known in the first place?