The rich, wet scent of reeds and duck grass rose into the breeze. Burrow's nephew Rye rushed ahead to the edge of the bluff and skidded to a stop, exclaiming reverently. Burrow joined him in gazing down at the wide, lazy curves of flowing water. He did not have to wonder at the youth's amazement. Here was more water than Rye had ever seen in one place--all the snowmelt and runoff and upwellings of springs from the Mountains of the Sunset, sweeping across the Land of the Grasses and dividing it into the northern and southern plains.
Burrow inhaled until he thought his chest would burst. The moisture in the air tempered the grittiness that coated the insides of his lungs. He lifted his hand and tousled Rye's hair. "Well, boy, is it all you expected?"
Rye shook his head. "No. It is more, Uncle. How can there be so much water here, when there is so little in our meadows?"
Burrow's face tightened around his eyes. "Ah," he murmured sadly, "that is exactly it. You see for yourself how far the balance has tipped. Come. Let us go down."
Rye danced down the path in the side of the bluff, adroit as a meadow buck. Burrow followed more sedately. He was far from the greybeard that Rye had expected when he arrived at the Great Crossroads, three nights past. Rye's mother was not yet done with her childbearing years, and Burrow was her younger brother. Still, a shaman had to conduct himself with a certain measure of dignity.
They forged through the riot of cattails and brambles at the base of the bluff, a marsh sustained by the fertile strand of alluvium on this side of the open water. From time to time their feet collapsed through the lattice of old reeds. Floodwater seeped into the hollows, drenching their toes.
Burrow grunted. He pointed to the willows half submerged in the current farther out. "That's the true river's edge."
The afternoon glare dimmed as a towering billow of cloud glided between them and the sun. A behemoth of vapor, as thickly flocked as the animals Rye's father herded across the rangelands of his home in the south. It passed, carrying every drop onward toward the mountains.
Burrow looked back down just in time to see Rye reach out and press the mat of reeds near his feet. Water filled his cupped hands.
Rye did not drink. He rinsed the grime from his face, sighing at the cool caress of liquid. Burrow understood. His nephew had had a quota of water to drink throughout the drought. But enough to spare for washing--that he had not had in a season and more.
"Listen," Burrow said. His heart butterflied against his throat. In the reeds nearby, a frog had started to chirp.
"I hear it," the youth whispered.
"Come evening, you will hear a chorus between his kind and the crickets that can lull a wolf gone rabid."
Hearing just one soothed the ache in the shaman's heart. It took him back to the long seasons when he was younger than Rye, when the meadows grew lush with feed for the herds, and frogs croaked along the pools and watering holes throughout the plains. It reminded him of long walks from range to range, his mother and father at his side, the heart of the southern plains his playground.
Now he was here, at the Great Crossroads, a high shaman now, his only true link to those days the arrival of a sister's son he'd not seen since infancy, the music of frogs calling back a simpler, treasured time.
Burrow knelt near the clump of reeds from which the noise emerged. The croaking ceased. "Now, apprentice," he told Rye, "watch how I do this. I will expect you to be able to do it yourself two summers hence."
The man leaned nearer the clump. "Don't be afraid," he murmured to the unseen frog. He began to chant.
The fine hairs on the back of Burrow's neck rose up as the magic swept into him. He didn't know the original meaning of the words sloughing off his own tongue, but he knew their power. It was his ability to harness this sorcery that had lifted him from his life as a herder. What was new was the observation of his new pupil--perhaps his successor, if his nephew's spark of the talent could be nurtured into a flame.
The chant exuded images of peace, pleas of friendship. The words shaped into lures no frog could resist: Promises of insects hopping onto its outstretched tongue of their own choice. A fine, eager mate. The ability to banish herons, muskrats, and rival frogs with no more than a single bellow from its vocal pouch.
Hop. A tiny, striped frog appeared on a tall reed, slowly bending it over with its weight. Burrow reached out his hand. The frog leaped from its teetering perch into the offered palm.
"A noble specimen," Burrow declared. He opened his belt pouch. The frog hopped within and did not struggle while the shaman pulled the laces snug.
"Must we take him from his home?" Rye asked.
"In seasons such as this, we all must make sacrifices," the shaman replied seriously. He gently patted the pouch. "Even the young and the small."
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