Shadow Valley by Steven Barnes Read Free Book Online Page A

all!
    They crept closer to the tree, spears tilted at the ready. He had never been so close to a lion before, barely three paces from the tip of the killer’s languidly lashing tail. Its sleepy yellow-green eyes blinked at him, but it didn’t move. Hunger, fear and curiosity all battled in Frog’s mind, and curiosity won.
    The greenish brown fruit was clustered in bunches along the branches. They plucked several up from the ground, then crept back away while keeping an eye on the drowsy cats.
    Once he and his men had retreated to safety, Frog bit through the skin, exposing sweet, pulpy flesh. He nibbled, then gobbled.
    “Are you still hungry?” Snake asked after they had waited awhile.
    The very word turned his belly into a fist. A sour belch affirmed its emptiness.
    “I smelled that,” Snake said. “A good answer. But very bad fill grass.”
    “Maybe it is the water.”
    Again, they crept up to the pond’s edge and sipped. The taste was a blend of sweet and spoiled, a bit like figs rotting on the ground. Frog wrinkled his nose.
    Beside him, Leopard Eye sipped. “It is not good,” he said. Another sip. “But not bad either.”
    He lapped some more. Two other hunters crept up next to him and sipped, keeping their eyes on the lions, who merely watched them woozily
    Frog’s head felt hollow, his belly snarled and sour. He rolled onto his back and closed his eyes. In the darkness, his heartbeat seemed to slow and deepen. Around him, sounds seemed both muffled and intensified.
    Around him, his fellows were drinking the water, laughing, joking, as if casting aside moons of worry and woe. Laughter bubbled up from deep within him, and he could not stop it. The world behind his closed eyes began to whirl. He remembered being a boy, spreading his arms and spinning around and around until he tumbled to the ground, the world atilt, nothing in all creation save giggles and soft grass.
    He was that child again. He felt
… good.
    “I am a great hunter!” Leopard Eye called. Frog opened his eyes to see his friend slapping both broad hands on his muscular chest. “Yowwww!”
    A spotted gazelle lurched clumsily to its feet, staggering a few steps before its front legs folded. It collapsed onto its side, thick saliva bubbles welling from the corner of its mouth.
    The hunters roared with laughter and beat on their chests. They ran and fumbled and tumbled as if their legs had fallen asleep.
    Leopard thumped down beside Frog, his face alight with a huge and foolish grin. “I must tell them!” Leopard Eye said, his voice slurred. “I will run and tell them all of this great thing. This great, sacred, wonderful thing.”
    Leopard Eye pushed himself up and stumbled off toward the east. Frog smiled. A miracle indeed.
    Now
this
was a new thing!
    By the time that others arrived, dragging Stillshadow on her sled, T’Cori at her side, most of the animals had wobbled away, annoyed if not alarmed by the raucous humans.
    Stillshadow sipped and wrinkled her nose. Then she drank more greedily. After a while, she was heel walking in slow circles, chanting and singingto herself. She raised her wrinkled arms. “I foresaw this place,” she declared. “This is the place of my vision.”
    “We have meat!” Snake crowed. An ibyx hung loosely across his shoulder, its slashed throat drooling blood onto the ground. “We have meat! It did not even try to run!”
    Stillshadow raised her hands to the clouds, the loose flesh sagging from her arms’ undersides. Her eyes were as bright as a child’s. “Of all signs that you might have given us, this is the strangest and surest.”
    The people ate and drank and danced, shouting up at the half-moon. Those with no partners pranced with their shadows. “This place could be our new home.” Frog said, watching as they hooted and pranced.
    “Let us make camp,” Stillshadow said. “Perhaps Great Mother will give us signs.”
    “There is meat here,” Frog said, “and the magical water. What