Note: a longer, improved version of this was published in issue #5 of Fang, Claw and Steel.

It was hot again today. Too hot.

Creek-Runs-Dry lay with the rest of the pride of sabertooths in the brush that formed their lair as the mid-morning sun poured heat and light onto the land.

Around her, the pride slept restlessly. Now and then a fearsome head lifted, to flash its knife-teeth in a yawn and perhaps lower to lick a paw, or one golden and spotted body would rise to spray a nearby bush before returning to rest.

Creek's empty belly rumbled. Maybe she should try to coax the true-cats out of their slumber to hunt, even though it was so warm, but it would be difficult.

The true-sabertooths didn't know they were the last of their kind, and Creek couldn't explain. But the pride was dying, one by one. Last night, they had roamed by the black, bubbling tar-seeps in a desperate search for trapped creatures, and she hadn't been able to head them off until a yearling male, the only cub left from last year's litter, had stepped in too far and become mired.

The liquid asphalt trap couldn't have been more than knee-height to her human form, but it was more than strong enough to hold a mastodon. He was caught beyond redemption.

Creek felt utterly human tears slip from her eyes yet again as the trapped, desparate look in his eyes came back to her mind. He would die painfully, of thirst, exhaustion and heat.

She could do nothing, for all of her power, she could do nothing.

The rest of the pride had roared and called, wanting to help the trapped yearling, until finally the gave up and moved on.

There was mercy in a true-beast's lack of memory, that she could not remember her dead long and long in song and legend. She didn't have that mercy.

Creek tried to force the horrible memory out of her mind and fall asleep, but her empty belly would not let her.

Her birth-people, the humans, still told stories about the days when the big animals were common everywhere, and all the tribes had hunted them, and the land was cool and fertile.

Those were also the days when a human had to use caution and consult the shamans often, because any flesh-eater could be one of the animal-people, the skin-turners. It was a trick that came with the blood, not with drumming or chanting or the pale-bloomed Datura plant.

Creek was one of them, of one of the greatest breeds -- the sabertooth cats who struck down even the mighty bison and the wild horses. But she was the last.

As the heat grew beyond the reckoning of any elder and the rains failed, as the pines and cypresses and even the huge sequoias turned yellow and fell and no new ones sprouted, the big game animals dwindled. There were still legends told by those who had actually seen the long-furred, horse-sized mastodon, but the huge long-tuskers were only legend. From thundering herds the bison had diminished to scattered bands.

The human tribe no longer wasted time seeking the great game but hunted the shy deer, the pronghorns and the jackrabbits. Even so, the big game was dwindling, and with it the great hunters. The last time Creek had seen a wolf was eight summers ago, before she had been forced out of the tribe.

Her father, Flash-of-a-Stickleback, had been like her, yet still he had been welcome among his two-legged kin. But as the game grew scarcer, the welcome turned to grudging tolerance. When he died of an infected wound inflicted by a grizzly bear, the tribe's mourning was less than it might have been. In the humans' eyes, her four-legged kin had changed from respected lords to competitors.

With his death, she was the tribe's last skin-turner. Five summers ago, before hostility could grow to the point of her being driven out, she had left and joined the pride.

The future of her kind, if they were to have any future at all in this dying land, lay within her loins. Not by a human mate, for none now would have her. It was only by her four-legged kin that any more sabertooth-people might come into this world.

And her pride was dying. There were only three cats left.

The memory of the yearling male's eyes haunted her. As the sun rose higher, an idea entered Creek's mind. She didn't like it.

But she had to try, for the yearling's sake.

The big male, the one she called Strongclaw, cracked an eye open as she rose and padded out into the heat and light, but he didn't follow her.

She knew where the human tribe would be camped: by the willow-dotted streambed that stayed flowing even in summer, as the heat built and the smaller creeks and lakes dried out.

The camp spread before her as she topped the ridge, a patchwork of conical brush huts with a few people moving around. She saw fewer huts and fewer gray-haired women and children than she remembered.

She felt a stab of fresh unease, one not due to her concern over how she would be received. The men were out hunting, she knew, and the younger women were gathering roots, seeds and acorns. Even so, the children weren't playing as loudly as they should be. When she changed to human form, emerged from the bushes and looked more closely, she saw how prominent their ribs were.

Creek braced herself, and strode out from behind a laurel sumac bush to greet them.

A small boy spotted her first. His eyes widened and he called to the others, "A stranger! Look! A stranger comes!"

Then he turned and ran into the camp, still yelling.

There was a flurry of motion then as children and women spotted her and reacted. It was worse than she'd feared. Women snatched up toddlers. They and the older children ran for the wickiups.

She stood there in the open, at the edge of the village, not sure what to do. She knew she wouldn't be welcomed with open arms. She hadn't expected them to be afraid of her.

Then several of the oldest women emerged from one hut, four of them, and walked toward her. No old men. Were there any?

She recognized them: Leaps-Like-a-Fox, Moon-Bright, Coyote-Jump, and Hair-Like-a-Wolf's Pelt, but it had been five summers since last she had seen them. Their faces were set, closed.

A cold feeling rose in her stomach, as if a chill smooth rock were pressing there.

Coyote-Jump reached her first. Creek opened her mouth to speak.

"Leave, skinchanger," Coyote-Jump snapped.

"Were you not Chieftain's Wife when I was born among you?" Creek protested. "You cannot refuse me the village, at least. I need your help."

"To hunt?" Jump said. "We have not enough for ourselves, let alone you and your kin."

Her kin? Creek realized they considered her one with the sabertoothed cat-kin, no longer human.

"Not to hunt," she promised. "At least let me speak with the men when they return. It is their help I need, not yours."

Jump's eyes narrowed. Creek looked at the faces of the elder women. They were still closed in rejection, but there was a hint of yielding. They couldn't speak for the men.

Jump began to speak, but then Leaps cut across her, saying, "Wait at the edge of the village until the hunters return."

They turned their backs upon her and walked away before she could even reply. She went over to the shade behind a boulder, sat down and waited for the young men to return.

Male voices approaching signaled the return of the hunters to the village. Creek's heart sank when she saw how little they carried -- a few jackrabbits. No deer, nothing larger. They would not be in a generous mood.

Creek's stomach rumbled again, but she refused to give heed to it.

She approached the hunting band. There were only ten men in it. To her relief, her birth-father's uncle, Flying-Leaf, was one of them.

As she reached him, her eyes met his. His expression clouded.

"Wait," he told her. "When we are settled, I will speak to you."

When the rabbits had been taken by the women for cooking with their own meager harvest of roots and seeds, he motioned for her to come over and speak to him. Four other men sat with him. None of them looked friendly.

"What did you come back for, Creek?" he asked.

At last, a chance to speak.

"A younger brother needs my help," she said.

"You wish us to help a longtoothed cat," he said.

"One of your four-foot kin, as he is one of mine, Uncle," she reminded him.

"Once."

They stared at each other without speech for several breaths.

"He is caught in the black devil-stuff, Uncle," she explained. "I cannot save him, nor even speed his death. So I have come back to my two-foot kin to beg your help."

His expression softened for a moment.

"We cannot help him either, Creek," he said. "You know that. We can only ease his path to the Green Land."

Creek's shoulders slumped, though she'd suspected this all along. "Then that is all I ask of you, Uncle."

They stared at each other again.

"I will consult with Rock-Shimmers and the others," he said, and left her.

No one offered her any food, not even an acorn-meal cake. She sat in the waning daylight and waited, hugging herself and feeling her hunger.

Flying-Leaf, the new Chieftain, came for her as dusk fell, ordering her to come with him to the clear space in the middle of the village, around the communal fire. The elders were already there, seated, waiting for her. Now she saw two older men, but that was all.

Creek looked at their faces, but they were as unyielding as the women alone had been. Even their smell was unyielding.

She sat down in the place left open for her, and waited until Leaps gave her permission to speak.

"I ask your help," she repeated, at the end of her story. "I am one of you, and my four-foot kin once helped you in your hunts."

"You left us for the big cats five summers ago," Moon reminded her. "In all the seasons since then, the longtoothed ones have been our enemies. They ate the meat we could have caught, until they grew so scarce we saw them no more, and one of them snatched away Black-Sage-Flower's daughter. Yet you chose to live with them, not with us. We would be better off if they were all dead."

"My own pride has stolen none of your children," Creek pointed out. "It was your fear and anger that drove me away, so there would be no dispute between us. I don't ask for meat, or to return and stay with you. I only ask help for my kin -- a quicker death for him, at least."

"You are one of the demon-folk, the skinshifters, with spirit-magic in your blood!" snapped Jump. "We owe you nothing. You should never have come here."

Creek stared at her.

"Yes, demon-folk," Jump sneered. "Your magic is evil and will bring us nothing but more ill luck."

Still at a loss for words, Creek looked pleadingly at her uncle.

"Things have changed with us, Creek," he said, his voice weary. "You do not know how much."

Creek looked around at the circle of faces hard as granite. There could be no reasoning with them, it dawned on her....

And the anger of her cat-side welled up in her, blazing out of her eyes and in her words.

"I was one of you once! But if I am to be no more, then I will call only the cats my kind. I will lead them against you."

There was a shocked intake of breath around the circle. The granite had been cracked -- by fear.

"Yes," she snarled, feeling a nonexistent bobtail twitch behind her. "I will guide my pride to stalk you and hunt you down, one by one. You will learn to fear every bush, every rock where we could be waiting."

Jump's eyes were wide as a jackrabbit's. Even stolid Moon's face paled.

What she had just said filled her belly with cold. Her rage ebbed.

"But if you will aid me in this, when my brother is freed or sent to the Green Lands, I will take my pride and we will leave these lands. We will not return, ever. We will leave you what is left of the game."

Later that night, when the quick beast-rage dwindled and she looked back on it, she would marvel that they let her leave the council alive. But in the end, they agreed to go to the trapped longtooth cat in the morning.

She spent the night with her pride hunting in beast form, not caring if it interfered with the tribe's eating, but found only a little deerlike camel to sate her hunger with.

In the morning, she went back to the village in human form.

Her uncle's face was now as closed as the others'. The other hunters, the young men, stood ready with their spears and she felt a pang of fear, but they only waited for her to join them.

"Take us to your brother," Flying-Leaf said.

It was only a long-walk away, and the sun had not reached the zenith when they reached the place. All over this area, lethal tar welled out of the ground to trap unwary animals. They heard the cries of the young male, deep roars, and she could hear his desperation, his fear.

Couldn't the men? How could they not be moved by them?

She reminded herself they were human, and didn't know the speech of the cat-kin.

They stank of grim determination -- a human smell. She wasn't sure what it meant, and realized that she'd been too long away to understand *them.*

They emerged from a long thicket of bushes along a narrow deer trail to enter the meadow where her brother suffered. He lay there in the tar, his coat stained and disheveled, his head low, panting. In his exhaustion he had sat down in the asphalt, and now his hindquarters were mired, leaving him unable to rise.

He lifted his head and saw them -- and her. He managed to greet her with a sonorous call, mingling relief and demand.

She walked to the edge of the big seep, as close to him as she could get, and crouched down to look at him. Her eyes welled with tears, human tears, and she could barely see him.

Behind her, several of the hunters moved into position, unseen.

She uttered soft cat-calls, seeking to comfort him. He was too well-mired to be gotten out, she saw, even if the humans had been willing to do it.

One hunter stepped out as far as he dared into the tar, raising his spear, and hurled it. It caught her brother in the flank -- a fatal blow.

He roared in pain as others followed, but he was already dying. Creek couldn't turn her head away, only her tears mercifully blurring the sight.

She didn't sense the hunter stepping up behind her. The first she knew of it was the blinding pain when his spear struck her in the back.

Her own death-scream sounded in her ears. She shapeshifted even as she fell, numbness filling her hindquarters. Her scream turned to a roar of rage and pain as she turned her head. The young men were all around her now, driving their spears into her, and she caught a glimpse of Leaf turning his head away, a wet glistening on his own cheeks.