"Missing bodies make men nervous. A body means you know someone's dead. No body, and you wonder if someone lived to tell the tale or seek revenge for leaving them behind." Taking his breakfast of bacon and scrambled eggs from her hands, he nodded. "Thanks Els, and relax, you killed your two clean, compared to the mess Ivan the Terrible made."
Elisa mere smiled and nodded. It would set her behind schedule, but revenge worked at its own pace, unfolding for those seeking it in its own way. Or so she had read in some book of philosophy. Out here in the west, other philosophies existed, one yet to be set to paper and ink. Ones carved in the bones of the land, stating survival went to the fit and quick.
Looking over the eroded hills around them, rolling monsters that were carved by deep valleys, all interrupted from time to time by small table lands that remained of the ancient prairies, Elisa realized she was in the territory needed to be near. Now all she needed was luck and her skills as given by her mother and refined by her schooling. Every step until now built to this moment, finding her own bone field, claiming it and using what she found to create machine versions to make her name.
The storms of the night before still could be seen, white and grey streaked with black on the southeastern horizon. Rivers and streams ran full of rains, carving into the land of the valleys new channels when blocked. Each new braid moving the sand and silt around, creating levees and channels over the ages, even as she watched. The hills had shed their load in the night, and only small streamlets remained flowing down the hills, from permanent and sporadic springs the area was known to have.
Amid those draws, gullies and steep valley walls, Elisa sensed the potential, the layers so briefly exposed after a rain storm, until the land used the hands of wind and collapse to clothe them again in topsoil and loess. Inside those layers, lay what she looked, if she could find one of the key layers at one of those sweet spots where some disaster claimed lives, protecting the frameworks that supported the flesh for her to retrieve. Uncle Ivan's skill in reading the land to expose those layers, and then finding one of the prized locations within it was legendary, even in her schooling his name topped lists of "locators". But, most thought him dead.
"I have a feeling." The look the men gave her was worried. "Uncle, look around."
The lone eye roamed the terrain, looked back at his niece sharply, then began a slower examination as something not used in years engaged within the mind behind the orb. Every fold and dip, each gully, draw, spur or saddle spoke in some way to him. Elisa could just touch the edges of what Ivan Geranof read from the ground they stood amid, hoping her Uncle was not one of the savants who could do but not pass on the skills he had.
Ruined face turned first, then the whole body began to move. "Tuffs. Several of them, deep ones. Good eye, Elisa, good eye." His voice rasped from his old injuries, but the stream of tears from his good eye told the young necromancer more was involved. "You remember what your mother and I told you. Now, we must see if you have the gift to see what once could be smelled."
"That is why I am happy you are here, Uncle. Your skills, your support, and mostly, your love." The last broke the spell, Elisa saw. That old male roughness of all men emerged, shrouding the pride and love the old man let show through, if only for that moment.
"Pcha! You have the touch, I now this. You found several sites with only a little guidance from me, debeitsa. Look around, think upon what I once said, what you have surely added to in your school. Feel the bones of the land, and then open yourself to its speaking." His good hand moved as he came beside her, describing in its motions the lay of the land now, then coming back to mimic what portions of the layers exposed by the rains had to say of the higher grounds. He moved down by each layer shown, slowly, with greater care as he reached the grey soils he had named earlier.
"This is the one, Elisa, the thickest tuff. Some ancient volcano lay it over all this land. Here it is thinner than further north, yet still it stands arshin thick, feet as they call them here." The hand flowed form each of the few spots that band of soil was showing. "See the differences, the low spots, the high. Read them as the world was when they were lain upon it by the hand of Bog. Feel that land, picture it in your mind, child. Let your mind see the world as it was when the bottom of that color of soil was the surface."
His hand stopped moving, as Elisa's stretched out to take over the motions, more soft, gentle, as if she painted the landscape that lay beneath the world as it stood in her day. No longer was just the lay of the land in their minds, as the vegetations, terrains, streams and beasts began to form inside skulls still wrapped with flesh, seeking skulls and bones long since denuded of any covering save the earth and stones made since. Eyes closed, as she sunk deeper into the trance laid upon her by her imagination and Uncle's guidance, more details emerged. Details of the paths the beasts followed in her mind, where they had been as the ash cloud approached, which places each type of beast in her mind would have fled to, or stopped at, seeking some shelter form the snowing of blasted earth tossed high in the air by some catastrophe.
Three times, her body stopped suddenly, worrying Black Coyote that she suffered from some disease or illness from the process, until the eyes opened, clear, focused, and very determined. "Three spots, there in the gully, I think was a grove of trees by the land, the mammuts would be in them. To the west just below that ridge, was a small swamp, headwaters or spring I believe, with would have thrived with the elanotheres, and perhaps some horned ones would seek for shelter, and above those trees where the branch stream leaves the river to drain the north hills, there was once a cave I think."
Ivan looked impressed until the last statement, looking over the land himself, not sure how or what had led his niece to that conclusion. Doubt clouded his face, kinking the already steam burnt twists and folds into a truly bizarre and ugly look. A look others would have taken as anger or rage, but those who knew him understood to be puzzlement. Resuming the assay of the topography he had begun, then handed over to Elisa, things seemed similar and different. He sensed no caves, no place in the hills this side of the Elkhorn that the limestone beds came this close to the surface.
"Let us both make sketches, while this young man learns of our craft. We should make real and what we feel it was like at that band level.."
Elisa broke in quickly. "All the levels, I have a feeling about this place. We are near where other fossils have been found." She looked around, imprinting the view her mind crafted onto the canvas of her memory. "This place will be important. There will be many finds here, Uncle. Many, many finds will come from these hills."
"It is a ground that is used but not holy to the tribes. This would be a great place to work for now, but the money will be nearer the Sacred Black Hills. That is where the big mining will occur, the tribes will have to accept some amid the special places. Otherwise we will have no ability to hold what we gained by the Treaties." Black Coyote's words were somber, slow in pace. What hesitation existed in his speech originated in deep thoughts, not a search for words.
It bothered Elisa, who still looked around. "Yes, the money will be there, but our means to that money, it lies here, and in one other place I can think of further west, one I passed when sent home. For now, we will work here. I have fossils to find to create the automata we will need."
Five eyes searched the land again, three seeing the past, the lay of the land then and now, with hope. Two brown eyes glanced at the sky, then the horizon, taking in the many hiding places which might harbor dangers of their own, or hunters from the more recent past, seeking to keep secrets buried in the Badlands to the north.
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