Fur Magic (5 page)

Certainly the brush and scattered trees were all much taller than he remembered. Or was it that he was smaller? But he was following a trail in the earth which bore the print of many paws and hoofs which led down the slope.

Water—He could smell it! Cory's shuffle became what was for this new body a high burst of speed. Smell
water?
asked one part of his mind. You cannot
smell
water. You can hear it, see it, taste it, but not smell it. Yes, you smell it, replied this new body firmly.

The trail led to water and seeing that before him, Cory's new body took command, plunging him forward in a dive. Then he was swimming effortlessly under the surface with more speed and ease than he had known in travel ashore. The feeling of danger was easing. He broke surface again and climbed out where a small side eddy of stream formed a pool in a hollow, the surface of which was troubled only by the skating progress of water insects and the occasional bubble blowing of some underwater dweller.

The pool provided a mirror for Cory to see himself.

“Beaver!” Again the word emerged as only a chitter of noise, which he understood. He leaned closer, straining to see, to know that this was indeed what he had become.

Beaver, yes, but Cory's zoo-remembered image did not quite match the reflection in the water. Gauging his size by the trees and the rocks, while he was smaller than the boy
Cory Alder, he was still about twice the size of the beavers he had seen at the zoo. And in addition to the skin strip with the shell box, he wore several strings of small shells and coloured seeds fastened around his thick neck, while on top of his head was a net of them anchored by his small ears. His eyes were ringed with circles of yellow, undoubtedly paint—though why had that not washed off in the water?

He laid down the spear, which he had carried without being really aware of it all through his swim across the river. Using his claws as wedges, Cory pried open the shell case. There was charred moss inside, and from it the smell of burning, around a small coal. He snapped the shell shut again. So he was a beaver, but one who was armed with a spear, carried fire, and wore paint and strings of beads. How—and why?

The Old People! The story Uncle Jasper had told—about the animal people and the Changer. Animals who had held the world before the white man or even the Indian—who had lived in tribes, gone on the warpath, hunted, and—

Somehow the thought of hunting brought with it an instant feeling of hunger. Cory remembered the lunch he had not so much as tasted, the plates of hot food, both of which had been cleaned up by Black Elk. What did beavers eat? Wood, or bark, or something of the sort? He looked around him, wondering what thing growing along the pool side might be best, and thought that he would have to let this new body decide for him, just as it had when it brought him down to the river.

It pointed him now to a low-hanging willow, and shortly Cory was relishing bark his strong front teeth stripped from
the branches. He ate well and heavily, intent for a moment on the filling of his too empty stomach. And it was not until he was finished that he began to think again.

What had happened to him, he could not guess, unless he was dreaming. If so, this dream was not only longer than any he could remember, but far more real. He could not recall any dream in which he had eaten until comfortably full, or gone swimming and actually felt the touch of water. Now, though, the fright that had sent him running to the river was fading. What he felt was more curiosity as to what was going to happen next.

Absent-mindedly he kicked some remaining shreds of willow bark into the pool and looked around him. The need to explore was part of his curiosity. He would travel by river, instead of clumsily waddling on land. It only remained to decide which way, up or down.

Perhaps it was a desire to make his travel as easy as possible that sent him finally down. But he soon discovered that the waterway was not lonely. It had its own population, and he watched the life he met there carefully.

Fish wriggled about, and there were birds that skimmed above the water or waded out to hunt frogs. There was no sign of any animal, until he came to an untidy mass of dead twigs and the like wedged against a hole under the water line of a clay bank.

“Muskrat!” Cory could not have told how he knew this, but know it he did. The lodge in the clay bank was deserted, however, more so than if deserted by chance. His lips wrinkled back from his chisel teeth as he tracked a scenting of the story to be read there. Death—and something else—

MINK
!

His beaver paw closed tightly about the haft of his spear.

Mink and danger . . . but not recently. . . . The war party that had raided here had been long gone—at least two suns, maybe three dark times. Without realizing how or why, Cory's thoughts began to follow another path. And then, it was almost as if he had opened a door—or perhaps it would be better to say the cover of a book—so that he could read—not much, but enough to warn him.

Mink warriors raiding upriver. And a beaver scout—that was he—questing down. Not in advance of a war party—no. Rather to seek out a new village site because shaking of far hills had opened a path in the earth to swallow up the pond that had held their lodges for a long time.

Mink—one mink he, Cory-Yellow Shell could grapple with—could gain battle honours perhaps just by touching without danger to himself. But a war party of them—that brought the need to go softly and avoid notice. And he had been in the open, swimming as one of the finned ones with no need to fear except from the long-legged walkers.

He raised his head well out of the water, shadowed by the mass of bedding that had been cast forth from the muskrat den. Some of that had been clawed over by the mink; their scent was all through the top layer. And the strong musk of the lodge's rightful owner did not hide it completely. Now Yellow Shell listened and a distant cawing made him tense, very still.

The Changer! Or rather one of his crow scouts. The beaver did not so much as twitch a whisker until he heard a second call, farther from the river and to the north. When he
took to the water again, it was with all of Yellow Shell's skill and not Cory's blundering. Yet Cory's wondering, his fear, his need for knowledge was still there, sharing the beaver's memory.

Yellow Shell worked his way along the riverbank, using every bit of cover. Twice more he scented mink. And then another and more pleasing and friendly odour—otter. There was a slick mud slide down the bank and to that the otter scent clung, though over it the mink taint was strong as if the enemy had nosed up and down that clay surface for some time.

Half buried in the mud at the edge of the water, Yellow Shell nosed out a broken necklet of shell beads. There was a spot of blood on its stringing thong. So the mink had counted coup, killed or taken a prisoner here. He climbed out on the bank and went scouting.

One otter, he decided. Perhaps young. And the minks had lain in ambush beside the slide. They had rolled in sage to cover their scent. He finally found the scuffed marks of battle, two more splashes of blood, and followed that trail back to the water's edge. They had taken a prisoner, then.

Again Yellow Shell snarled silently. Slinking mink! He dug the butt of his spear into the soft earth of the bank with a quick thrust. By now the otter was dead, or had better be. The mink had evil ways of dealing with captives.

This was no beaver affair. Only mink was enemy all along the river, for long ago beaver and otter had smoked a pipe in a lodge they had both had a share in building and made peace, which had thereafter lain between their tribes. They were no menace to each other, though both were water peoples.
For the beaver liked roots and bark, the otter hunted meat. And sometimes it chanced that they camped together and had gift givings and song dances.

Cory stirred. How did
he
know all this—what otter smelled like, or mink? And those scraps of memory about things that seemed to have happened to Yellow Shell before he became Cory, or Cory him? This was the strangest dream—

He turned his spear around in his forepaws. Maybe if he went upriver again, right back to the place where the fire had been—he could wake up in the right world, stop being Yellow Shell, be Cory Alder again.

Then a shadow swept overhead, making a dark blot first on the bank and then on the water. Again, for the third time, that chilling fear gripped Cory. He screwed up his head, which was never meant to rise at such an angle from a beaver's shoulders. A big bird—black—coasting along—crow!

And with that recognition his fear grew stronger. He was no longer the beaver Yellow Shell with powers of scent, hearing, sight. He was Cory in a strange body and in a frightening world.

And he was Cory just long enough to be betrayed.

Out of nowhere—for he still watched the crow wheel over the river—fell a rope of twisted hide. It looped about his chest, jerked tight enough in an instant to pin his forelegs to his body, and dragged him back from the water towards which he made an instinctive start. The force of the pull overbalanced him so that he toppled on to his back, scraping across the ground, striking the slick clay of the otter slide, up which he was drawn, still on his back.

Before he could gain his feet at the top or make use of his quite formidable beaver weapons of teeth and tail, he was struck on the head, and both sun and day vanished completely in the bursting pain of that blow.

It was with Cory's bewilderment that he awoke again. His head ached and there was a sticky mass on one cheek that his exploring tongue was able to touch enough to tell him it was blood. His forepaws were tightly roped to his sides, his tail fastened with a loop the other end of which was about his throat, so should he try to use his tail as a weapon the movement would strangle him.

He lay on his side under a bush and there was the stink of mink all around. Also, there
was
a mink curled up not too far away, a plaster of fresh mud and leaves across foreleg and shoulder. The warrior faced away from Cory. He had several thongs around his neck, now pushed to one side by the plaster on his wounds, and those were strung with rows of teeth, among which—Yellow Shell brought his front teeth together with an angry click—were several from beaver jaws.

The mink kept shifting position and it was plain that his wound pained him. Now and then he turned his head a fraction and snapped at the edge of the plaster, as if that gesture gave him some relief from his misery.

By the wounded guard's side Yellow Shell counted at least five war pouches, three of them fashioned from turtle shells. This told him that he faced an experienced and wily adversary. For those who counted turtles among their dead enemies were the best of their tribe. As well as he could, Cory tested the strength of the cords that held him. They were of
hide, braided, and there was no breaking them. Now his fate would depend upon chance and upon the very important point of how far they were from the mink village. For it was apparent he was not to be killed at once, but saved for some unpleasant later purpose.

It must be, beaver knowledge told Cory, close to evening. And night was mink time, even as it was normally for beaver also. If they went on by water in the dark, his captors might have to loosen him to do his own swimming, and that would give him a chance—

But he was not to be so lucky. The wounded mink suddenly raised a war club, a knot of stone tied to a shaft, the ball having several ugly, stained projections. Perhaps that was what had brought Yellow Shell down. Crouching, the mink listened.

Beaver ears caught what human ones might have missed, a stealthy slithering sound. Then three more minks appeared, as if they had risen out of the earth.

They did not speak to the guard, but half ran to their prisoner, the last one dragging something. What that was, Cory discovered a moment later when he was roughly rolled on to a surface made of saplings still studded with branch stubs. To this his captors made him fast by vicious pulls of rope. Then he was dragged along and dropped, to land with punishing force at the bottom of a cut, again to be pulled along.

Here the drag did not catch so easily, but slipped better behind the two minks pulling it, giving the two coming from the rear little need to lend a push. The sled balanced on the top of another incline, was given a vigorous shove by the
minks behind, and plunged on down what could only be the otter slide, to land in the stream.

Travel by land became travel by water, and the push and pull of the mink party appeared to be taking them along at a swift pace. Cory, unable to move, the painful up-twist of his tail beginning to hurt almost as much as the pounding in his head, felt himself borne along on the surface of the river, eyes up to the night sky. Though he could not turn his head far enough to see, he was aware, shortly after, that the first party of his captors had been joined by more of their kind. He wondered if they had an otter in their paws also.

A moon rose soon and its clear light on the water did not appear to alarm the mink party. If they had any enemies in this part of the country, they did not fear them. Perhaps they claimed this whole section of the river as their territory and had long since cleared it of any who might dare to challenge their rights to it as a hunting ground.

Cory was carried on under a place where long willow branches hung close to the water, reminding him that it had been some time since he had eaten. A long—How long
would
this dream last?

Dreams—what had someone said way back at the beginning of this day which had ended so strangely—about dreams? Something about someone who dreamed? Oh, Uncle Jasper—He had said it about Black Elk. Medicine dreams—Didn't the Indians believe that a boy must go out and stay without eating until he dreamed about an animal who was to be his guardian for the rest of his life?

Black Elk—and that bag he had said was strong medicine.
The bag and the fire and the smoke, and Black Elk making him hold the bag into that smoke. This dream had started with that—as if it were a medicine dream. Only Cory was not an Indian boy, and these minks were certainly not guardian spirits out to help him. What he had of Yellow Shell's thoughts told him that they were exactly the opposite.