A weary hunter shivered beneath a cloak of rotting hides, his feet bare, a spear his only companion. To his left and to his right, a canyon's walls loomed against the predawn sky. Ahead, the Spirit Way climbed through glittering stars, drifting rightward like a pillar of smoke.

With a little saliva the hunter moistened his nostrils and sniffed the brittle air, traced with autumn must and the fishy scent of a lake somewhere off in the darkness. The thought of fish set his stomach growling. He had eaten nothing but dried roots and berries for a week. But that would change soon enough.

His pulse quickened as the sky behind him warmed, pale yellow. Setting aside the spear, he got down on his belly and pressed an ear to the chilly ground. Once the sting of it had eased, he closed his eyes and listened. At first, he could hear nothing but the whoosh of his own blood. But as his heart began to slow, he thought that he could feel something between the heartbeats, a distant tremor, the rumor of hooves.

He sprang to his feet. The sky had brightened. He could see the canyon now: a broad corridor of pale, frosty grass flanked by cliffs of sheer umber rock. Stunted willows marked the path of a stream meandering down the canyon to a vast lake, calm and dim. Beyond the lake, to the west, gloomy mesas awaited the first rays of dawn.

And when they finally came, it was like a golden seam opening up between earth and sky. Out poured the light, seeping down the mesas, flooding back across the lake. Countless birds glittered and flashed, white swans sailing, sandpipers skittering, pelicans circling skyward, rowing the air with their great wings. It was all so beautiful that for a moment the hunter forgot his grumbling belly, forgot the rumor of hooves.

Morning light filled the canyon, drawing a mist from the frosty grass. High on the northern cliff, a raven ruffled its glossy feathers and cawed at something in the grass below.

The hunter saw it too, a shock of blue caught in the sudden light. Not the blue of water, or flowers, or of sacred stones: it was as if a flake of sky had fallen to the ground.

He crept close and spied out through the waist-high grass. It was not a flake of sky, or water, or flowers, or even sacred stones. It was a person, a man it seemed, lying in the grass. Blue was the color of his raiment, a fine tunic that shimmered like a fish's scales.

The hunter watched with amazement as the man in the blue tunic sat up, yawned, and stretched his long arms, brown and muscled. He swiveled his head from side to side, shiny black hair brushing across his broad back. He got to his feet and stood tall, taller than any man. He was a giant.

The raven watched from its perch.

Slowly the giant turned about, taking in his surroundings. Then he strode off toward the southern cliff to a narrow side ravine choked with angular boulders. There the ground was littered with bleached and broken bones. The giant picked one up and peered through its empty marrow chamber. Tossing it aside, he continued on, snaking his way through the boulders up the ravine and out of the canyon.

The hunter followed, but only as far as the boulders. Veering left, he came to a narrow crevice that split the canyon's wall top to bottom. Slipping inside, he shimmied up. Just below the top, he paused with his back pressed against the frigid stone. Again, he felt the tremor, closer now.

Peeking out of the crevice, he saw the giant just a few paces away. He was standing with his back to the cliff as he gazed across the endless plain of tawny grass, rolling beneath a flawless sky. Not far off, a pair of low hills rose from the earth like breasts.

The hunter inched out of the crevice and crouched low, his spear ready, the morning sun warm on his back. He stood slowly, his shadow stretching out, reaching toward the giant's bare feet.

The giant spun toward the shadow, his gray, flinty eyes blinking in the brilliant light. Shading them with his hand, he stared down at the hunter.

For a long while, neither man moved or made a sound.

Somewhere in the sky above, the raven cawed twice.

A quick breath slipped the giant's lips, and he let his hand fall to his side. He dropped to his knees and bowed his head, shoulders draped in black. His hand went to his chest, fingers caressing the blue skin of his tunic. It shimmered like water. He reached inside the tunic's collar, withdrew a small leather pouch, and emptied its contents into his open hand: five tiny seeds, each like a grain of mustard. But even as they settled into the creases of his palm, he clapped his hand to his mouth and swallowed them all.

A tremor rippled the ground, and the hunter's body tensed. He jabbed his spear at the twin hills to the south, and dipping a foot into the crevice, gestured with his head for the giant to follow. He gestured again, hissing now. Then he turned away and hid himself deep within the crevice.

The giant struggled to his feet and looked out at the twin hills, each gilded now along its sunward flank. On the left-hand hilltop, there appeared a figure, a person cloaked in heavy furs. Another appeared beside it, teetering beneath an enormous horned mask, dark and wooly. People were gathering on the opposite hilltop now, and more still on the left. Soon, both hills were crowned with people. Silently, they streamed down toward the giant in two parallel ranks, one to his left, the other to his right.

The ground began to shake.

From behind the hills, a cloud of dust mushroomed up and spilled over the low saddle between them. A lone bison emerged from the cloud, galloping down through the grass, swinging its deadly horns. Seeing the people on either side, it dug in its hooves and came to a snorting stop. They whooped and hollered, goading it on. But there was no need. With a peel of thunder, the entire herd came crashing over the saddle, sweeping away the lone bison with it.

The people broke ranks and scattered.

But the giant stood still, rapt by the spectacle unfolding before his pale eyes. Too late, he realized his danger. He turned to follow the hunter, but a bison galloped by, brushing his shoulder, spinning him around and knocking him to his knees. He looked up in time to see the beast hurtling over the edge, legs pumping wildly as it arced down to the rocks below. Now the bison came on all sides, rushing toward the cliff, snorting, bellowing, piling up before tumbling over the edge.

The hunter stole a final peek at the giant and his blue tunic as it flickered and faded through the rising reek of crushing hooves and gnashing horns. There was nothing he could do now. Retreating deep into the crevice, he wedged himself against the heaving rock, covered his ears, and waited.

When at last it was over, he shimmied up and peered out through the settling dust. What remained of the herd had scattered, leaving behind a sea of trampled grass. The giant was gone, swept over the edge to the rocks below. There, the people would find his broken body beneath the heap of bison. Already he could hear the women and the children singing as they butchered the animals and relished the taste of warm meat.

He was about to climb down and join them when he saw the raven again, gliding in low. It landed near a patch of bare rock stripped of soil by the stampeding herd. The raven hopped twice then cawed at something on the ground. It was the giant. His blue tunic was all gray with dust, his body twisted and crushed. But he lived still. With his arms, the giant pulled himself toward a jagged hole in the rock. There he paused, his blood-soaked hair dangling into the darkness. Then, with a final effort, he pulled himself over the brink and fell.

***

Peter loaded his car and headed east over the Cascade Mountains, his destination a childhood memory stirred to mind by the meeting with his father a week before. Like snapshots from an album, Peter recalled bits and pieces of that family road trip: the aromatic scent of greasewood and sagebrush, the sound of his parents' laughter, a lonely mountain rising in the distance, and a desert stream full of speckled trout.

He reached the Columbia River before noon, and crossing into Oregon at Umatilla, he continued south-southeast through the smoky pall that shrouded the state's arid hinterland. By late afternoon, he reached Frenchglen, a dinky roadside oasis comprised of a few barns, a general store, and an old white ranch house inexplicably converted into a bed-and-breakfast. The only living thing, it seemed, was a rooster strutting beneath the shade trees.

Peter pulled up to the lone gas pump and stepped out into the lingering afternoon heat. Mounting the store's rickety wooden steps, he entered the darkened interior, a maze of shelves stocked at random with cans, dried goods, and sundry wares. The only things kept in fresh supply were fishing bait and beer.

Peter grabbed a frosty six-pack and set it on the counter next to the antique brass cash register. A white, middle-aged woman sat reading a magazine. She looked up and gave Peter a once-over with her lazy blue eye.

"That everything, sweetie?" she asked.

"Plus twenty dollars in gas, eighty-seven octane."

Setting aside her magazine, she got up, leaned over the counter and peered out the screen door at Peter's car, the brown 1988 Toyota Corolla wagon he had inherited from his mother. "Where you in from?"

He handed over his credit card. "Seattle."

She worked the antique cash register's buttons just for show, it seemed. Somewhere inside the machine, a brass bell chimed, and Peter remembered standing in this exact spot with his parents, the tang of lime Popsicle in his mouth. He must have been nine or ten.

"Fishing?" she asked, swiping the credit card.

Peter glanced at his clothes: T-shirt, cutoff shorts, and ratty Chuck Taylor low-top sneakers. "How'd you know?"

"You don't look like a hunter or birder, or a reporter neither. They stopped coming once the standoff at the wildlife refuge ended." She ripped the credit card receipt from the printer. "You need bait?"

"No thanks. I'm fly fishing."

"Right." She seemed to disapprove.

Peter headed out with his beer, and she called after him. "Don't go pumping your own gas, now. Wait for me, sweetie."

Car filled with gas, Peter lowered himself onto the scorching vinyl of the driver's seat. Then he took the rusty butter knife he kept behind the sunshade, inserted it into the gouged-out ignition switch, and gave it a twist. The starter whined, and with a belch of black smoke from the tailpipe, the engine rumbled to life. His mother had not driven the Corolla much before she died, but reminders of her were everywhere, a credit union pen, a bottle of antacids, a tube of vanilla hand lotion—and all those bootlegged cassette tapes stuffed into the glovebox.

As Peter drove through the parched scrubland outside Frenchglen, he listened to his mother's favorite composer, Edvard Grieg, and her favorite piece, "Solveig's Song" from the Peer Gynt Suite. She used to say that its dark, remorseful tones reminded her of the mountains of Trøndelag, where she was born, where she met Peter's father.

The narrow highway plunged over the edge of a mesa and followed the base of a low, ruddy cliff. Not far off, a conspicuous puff of leafy shrubs marked the spot where a natural spring erupted from the base of the cliff and ran under a culvert to nourish a pasture on the other side of the highway. In the shade of the poplar trees growing there, a group of twenty or so people had parked their cars and gathered to dance in a broad circle. Peter guessed they were Native Americans.

Further on, a primitive Jeep trail left the highway and climbed a bluff overlooking the river's canyon. At the top of the bluff, Peter stopped and got out to look around. The air was still hot, perfumed with sagebrush, sleepy with the buzz of cicadas. The river remained hidden in the canyon, but far to the north, it could be seen as an apple-green ribbon wending toward Malheur Lake, just a slate smudge in the distant haze. To the east, the land rose steadily toward the long, craggy summit of Steens Mountain. Peter had read that it was a fault-block mountain, a giant slab of rock thrust skyward along its eastern edge to form an escarpment five thousand feet high and forty miles long. During the Ice Age, glaciers had carved deep U-shaped valleys that now drained the mountain of its living water. These were the waters Peter had come to fish.

The Corolla bucked and creaked down into the canyon, its brakes stinking, engine whining against the steep grade. At last, the Jeep trail met the river, and Peter parked in a dirt turnaround. But before he could retrieve the butter knife, the engine began to cough and sputter. Then, with a violent heave and thump, it died. Peter jumped out and threw open the hood. Reeking shreds of timing belt lay melting on the engine block. The Corolla was going nowhere.

He took out his phone. No reception, not a single bar. He would have to camp for the night, hike out in the morning, and hitch a ride. Until then, there was still enough light for a little fishing.

The river was more like a creek, shallow, thirty feet at its widest, a series of willow-shaded pools and riffles strung along the bottom of a ruddy-walled canyon.

In his cutoff jeans and old sneakers, Peter waded into the cool, clear water and worked his way upstream. At the foot of the first pool, he crouched and cast his little brown fly to the upstream edge. It settled in a dimple of water and drifted slowly back. Not a second had passed before the fly vanished in a dainty gulp. Peter hesitated—one beat of the heart, his mother used to say—before he raised the tip of his rod and set the hook. And it was like the closing of an electric circuit: fish to hook, hook to leader, leader to line, line to rod, rod to hand, hand to arm, arm to pounding heart.

They were not big fish he caught that evening, but they were certainly beautiful, each a trove of ruby, emerald, and silver not meant for the light of day.

When it was so dark that bats started going after his fly, Peter returned to his starting spot, leaned his fly rod against the trunk of a gnarled tree, and waded back out to retrieve the six-pack of beer he had stashed in the river to cool.

"Hey-o!" said a voice from the tree's shadow. Out stepped a young woman, tall and lanky, her black hair gathered into a long ponytail.

Peter sloshed ashore. She was even taller than she had first seemed, six feet probably, and younger too, just a teenager. Her downcast face was shadowed, but her eyes glinted with what little light remained in the sky. Despite the evening's warmth, she wore hiking boots, jeans, and a man's flannel shirt, untucked.

Peter laid the six-pack of beer in a tussock of grass.

She stood there for a moment, staring down at her feet, hands at her sides, rocking back and forth on the heels of her boots. "I saw you fishing from up on the rocks," she said in a deep, cool voice. "Any luck?"

"A few. Nothing very big though."

"Yeah, that fly you're using only catches the little ones."

"How'd you see what fly I was using from up on the rocks?"

She glanced at the tree and raised her brown face. Then she pointed at her eyes with split fingers, as if to say, "With these, dummy." But maybe she meant something else.

It was then Peter noticed the rifle leaning against the tree, right next to his fly rod. "What's the gun for?"

She went over, picked it up, and worked the bolt a few times as she walked back. "It's not loaded. Grandpa Del says I need to get used to carrying it if I want to go hunting by myself."

A little chill settled in Peter's spine. "Hold on. Is Del short for Delbert?"

She glanced up from the rifle, her eyes flashing. Then she looked down at her boots again. "Yup."

"Your last name's not Mac-something, is it?"

"Mackai."

Peter gaped at her. "This is so weird. I think I've met your grandpa before." He quickly introduced himself, explaining, "It was a long time ago, probably before you were born. My whole family came out here to visit him."

"Why did you come to visit?"

"I don't remember."

"Are you Indian?"

"No," said Peter, puzzled by the question.

The young woman just shrugged and eyed the tussock of grass. "Well, my name's Demi. It's supposed to be short for Demetria, but I checked my birth certificate once. It just says Demi."

Peter nodded. "Hey, do you happen to live close by? My car's broken down."

She thumbed the steep hillside behind them. "Our house is just up the road."

"Do you have cell reception up there?"

"Nope."

"Do you have a landline?"

"Nope. Just satellite." She slung the rifle over her shoulder. "Are you going to be OK out here by yourself?"

"Yeah, yeah. I'm fine." He had all the gear he needed in the Corolla.

"If you stop by in the morning, we can give you a ride into town."

"That would be great, thanks."

She gave him directions and was about to leave when she eyed the tussock of grass. "You can't take those beers with you. Grandpa Del will make you pour them out."

"Why?"

"We don't talk about that." She turned and walked off into the dark.

_________________

Header Photo: fall foliage on Steens Mountain

Photo credit: Tom Wilcox, BLM

https://www.flickr.com/photos/blmoregon/15467118216/in/photostream/