Prophecy (15 page)

“I have made your meal. Also fed and tended the horse you gave to me.”

Doc was aware of an irritation as she said that. For a moment he did not know where this feeling came from; then it seemed as though he could remember. A hunt with others of the tribe, where they had tracked and killed buffalo before stopping at a waterhole on the way back to their village. At the waterhole, he had seen a horse that he desired: wild, beautiful, with a spotted pelt that was unusual. To have such a creature would mark him apart in the tribe. He had left the others to watering their horses and had approached the horse. He had expected it to bolt, but it had been calm, almost as though waiting for him.

Securing the horse had been no problem, and when he had brought it back to the wigwam in which he lived with Lori, he had given it to her as a sign of love.

They had no children, and he had given the horse almost as a way of compensating. And she, in her turn, had loved it as such.

Except that now, as he walked with her from the crop fields back to their home, he knew that he was starting to resent the time she spent tending the creature. They ate their meal in near silence, swapping few words. It was the easy silence of those who have spent long in each other's company, and feel no need of words to communicate. Doc felt more secure.

But this changed as darkness fell and Lori said, “I must go and feed him before we settle for the night.”

He was not sure who “we” might be: Lori and himself; or Lori and the spotted horse. He said nothing, just nodded at her words. But, waiting until she had left the wigwam, he rose and followed her at a distance, making sure that she could not see or hear him.

The spotted horse was roaming free in a small enclosure at the edge of the village. He had to pass other wigwams and earth lodges in her wake, and he knew that the way she was with the horse was not just his own knowledge. The whole village would grow quiet at his approach.

Yet there was nothing that seemed amiss as he watched her from a safe distance. She called the horse to her, and it nuzzled her as she fed it from her hand. There was a strange intimacy there, but nothing that he could call amiss. When she turned back toward him, it was all he could do to stay in the shadows and reach home before her.

In what seemed like an agony of real time, Doc went
through three days and nights where he toiled by day, then followed her by night. Each night was the same. He was aware that the three days was significant somehow, but it was something that seemed to be just forever out of reach.

That was driven from his mind by the events of the fourth night.

Doc followed Lori, expecting things to be as they had been on previous nights. When she reached the enclosure, however, it seemed empty. With a fear gnawing at his stomach, Doc waited while she called and whistled for the spotted horse. Then, to her obvious surprise as much as his, a man stepped from the shadows. Tall, lean and muscular, he was dressed in buffalo robes painted with pictures of a spotted horse.

For a moment Lori shied away, and Doc tensed, ready to go to her aid. But he was stayed as she leaned forward, as though in recognition.

“Do you not recognize me?” the man said in soft, honeyed tones.

“Yes,” she replied nervously, “but it cannot be.”

“It is. I have been sent to give you that for which you have craved. The barren years are over for you. You have shown me love, and I will show you in return.”

Doc watched, both horrified and fascinated. The man who was about to seduce his wife was the spotted horse he had brought back for her. How this could be, he did not know: yet he was certain.

The man dropped his robes. Naked under the light of the moon, he was finely honed and muscled. Holding
out a hand, he helped Lori climb into the enclosure. He took her in his arms and kissed her. She melted into him in a manner that Doc could not recall her doing to him for many a long year.

The man undressed her until she was naked in the moonlight. He kissed her down the length of her body while she trembled in the cool night air. Then she did the same to him.

The transmuted horse-to-man laid her down in the grass, and Doc crept closer, despite himself. He watched, appalled, while the man copulated with her.

Doc did not wait to watch her rise and dress. He said nothing when she returned. He said nothing as she returned to the horse every night. It was now a horse again, and didn't change. She tended to the horse as the seasons changed and her belly grew heavy with child. The village rejoiced that they should be blessed after so long. Doc said nothing.

Not even when she gave birth, and there, emerging from her, was not a child but a spotted foal.

She was shunned by the village, and when she had recovered from the birth, Lori fled one night, taking her foal-child with her. Doc did not see her go. He no longer lived under the same roof, and although he felt shame for what had happened, he still lived under a dark cloud. He was not shunned by his fellows, but treated rather as an unfortunate who had been tricked by evil spirits. He found this pity almost more shameful, and harder to bear than the shunning that had driven his wife from him. For, despite what had happened, he did not blame
Lori. He had failed her as a husband, and blamed himself for bringing the horse back to the village.

Years passed. Doc felt as though he lived them in real time, even though a part of him couldn't believe this was so. It was a lonely time. He didn't feel that he could truly trust anyone after what Lori had done to him; neither did he feel comfortable with his fellow tribesmen, as they all knew his shame. His wife taken from him by spirits.

His life continued. He farmed, hunted, and somehow managed to get along with a tribe of which he no longer felt a part. But there were days when he wished that his life would just come to a close. It wasn't that he was miserable. It was worse. It was that everything felt empty.

Then, many years after Lori had run away with her foal-child, Doc joined the warriors on a hunt. It was spring, and the buffalo and deer were moving across the plains. Those who had been following the herds had returned with tales of a strange creature they had seen, but only at a distance. It was like a horse, yet no horse they had ever seen before. With it were a small group of other horses, that seemed to be more like the norm. The herd was unusual, as they were all spotted.

Much time had passed, and the fact that these horses, and the strange creature that led them, were spotted, didn't register as significant with many. But for Doc, it had a resonance. It was as though this was what the Grandfather had kept him alive for: when the next hunt party sallied forth, Doc made sure that he was a part of it.

It was three days before they came upon the herd. An
other two as they followed at a distance. Doc knew, as soon as he set eyes upon them: the strange creature, mostly horse but still bearing some resemblance to her former self, was Lori. Almost entirely transformed, but still with a human face, and with the breasts that he remembered so well.

He didn't know what he would do when the time came to confront her, but as he saw her with the horses, he realized that one of them was the foal-child with whom she had fled the village. The others, he knew, were also her children by the horse-man-spirit that had caused her to flee.

The men hunted the horses, determined to take them back to the village and tame them for mounts. On the fourth day, they approached them. The horses did not bolt. To the surprise of the tribesmen, the horse-woman approached them. Doc knew her, of course, but the shock of the others as she came close enough to be recognized was unmistakable.

“You have come for me, husband?”

“No. I have come with the others to round up your children, so that they may serve us.”

“I cannot allow that. They must stay free. They are not welcome anywhere because of my shame, and the manner in which I was tricked. Even you, my husband, deserted me. And now I am this.”

Doc realized that he had felt the wronged one for years, where in truth Lori had been equally, if not more, wronged.

“Wife, I have been wrong. I should not have let you go. You should not have been left to come to this state.”

“Then do what you must,” she said simply.

Doc understood. He raised his bow, and with a clean shot pierced her breast. As she slumped, and life flowed from her, Lori returned once more to her human state, a smile upon her face.

The rest of the warriors stood back. Doc dismounted and walked toward Lori's children. They waited until he was among them, then nestled close. In a way he could not explain, he knew that they had been waiting for him. He would atone for his desertion of their mother by caring for them. They were outcasts through no fault of their own, but he could give them a home where they would be safe and secure.

And he knew, too, that he would no longer be alone.

This knowledge was the last thing he could recall, although he could never explain how things, once more, changed at this point and he became, once more, the man that he had been before.

Ryan had changed. He didn't know quite how, but he knew that he was somehow different. He had been on the plateau, on his hands and knees, crawling to find some kind of shelter from the relentless rays of the sun. Krysty had been there, close by; she, too, had been on all fours. He could hear her breath, shallow and harsh, at his rear. His own breath had come with razor-sharp edges that sawed painfully at his throat. To make even the gasping rattle that begged expression would have been a pain that was unnecessary right now: he focused on keeping that pain down, using it as the wedge to drive between himself and the pain that racked his whole body.

He had felt as if all the moisture had been sucked from his body by the sun; as if they had been laid out on the dust- and dirt-covered rock surface to fry like pieces of meat. This was supposed to show them the way of the spirits? It would be funny if the test that was supposed to set them up for the fulfillment of the prophecy did nothing more than chill them. The Grandfather spirit Wakan Tanka wouldn't find that so amusing. Nor would the tribal elders. Ryan would, though. Fireblast, it would slay him…

He knew he was thinking stupe thoughts, and not concentrating on finding a way in which they could shelter, maybe find some water. The scrub plants up here were weak and pathetic, but they still managed to cling on somehow, which meant there had to be some moisture to be found up here. That could make the difference between buying the farm and surviving a little longer.

How long had they been here? How many days, months, years…hours? He had no idea. Time seemed to stretch out and curl in on itself so that he was not sure how long it was since yesterday or the day before that.

That was when he realized that he was different. How and when it had happened he could not tell. One moment he was Ryan Cawdor, and the next he was and yet was not.

It was still hot, but a different kind of heat. Not the relentless pounding of the sun, but a kind of diffused, all-encompassing heat that came only from a fire within an enclosed space.

He was no longer outside. He was inside. He had no idea how that had happened, only that he felt like he had been here for a thousand years. Perhaps longer.

His eyes focused. What had seemed at first like blackness had been the dim light of a cave lit only by a fire. Now that his vision was adjusting to the gloom, he could see that in front of him stretched fur-covered legs, ending in huge black paws. He started to lick them, knowing that he had always done this, and would continue to do so for as long as time existed.

The mouth of the cave was in the distance. They
were far back within, hidden from the world outside and sheltered from the elements. It was a long way to see, yet his new eyes were good enough to view the world beyond the cave. He could see a vista of lush, verdant plain in the distance. But near to where the mouth of the cave entered the outside world, the land was more desolate. Stony, with little scrub, and no sign of growth or life. He knew—again, he was not sure how—that the cave was situated where the Macha Sicha and the prairie met. The badlands where nothing could live, and the lands where all could prosper.

The cave stood at the point where life and death were poised, facing each other.

And he had a task to perform.

Inside the cave, by the light of the fire, he could see a woman. She was immeasurably old—as old as himself, and he could not measure the time that he had been here—and sat hunched and bent about her task. In the reflection of the flickering flame, he could see that her face was lined and weathered, her skin the color and texture of a shriveled walnut. Indeed, her whole body resembled nothing so much as this, as she seemed to disappear into herself.

She was dressed in rawhide, and it gathered in folds around her, emphasizing how old and small she had become. For a thousand years she had sat in this same cave, and she would sit a thousand years more if that was what it took.

On her lap she had a buffalo robe. She was measuring against it a blanket strip that was decorated with
dyed porcupine quills. It was two-thirds complete, but there was still much work to be done. Her eyes glittered in the firelight as she counted, her lips moving soundlessly as she calculated what remained to be done.

Ryan watched her intently. No, not Ryan: he knew that his name now was Shunka Sapa, and that he had sat here since she had begun the blanket strip. Sat here because he had an important task to perform, but one that he could only do at certain times. So he had to wait, bide his time, and then be ready to act swiftly when he was called upon.

The old woman put down the blanket strip and the buffalo robe, and took up the skin of a porcupine. There were many skins by the side of where she sat, and the floor of the cave was littered with the bones from which these had come, as well as the bones of all those who had been used before. The air was sweet with the decay of their flesh. Some scents were fresh and pungent, others older and just a faint suggestion that lingered in the close, still air of the cave.

While Ryan watched, the old woman took the quills from the skin and placed them in her mouth, gradually flattening them so that they would be easy to work into the blanket strip. It was a slow, laborious process, and it took her forever to flatten just a few. That she had been doing it so long showed when she took them from her mouth and, satisfied, smiled to herself. Her teeth were nothing more than stumps in her mouth, flattened like the quills by years, decades, centuries of chewing. Flat almost to her gums, they were discolored and slablike.

This first task having been completed, she took the bowls of juices and dyes that she kept by the side of her seat, and worked the quills into them, dividing the numbers so that she had the right amount of each color to add to the pattern she was forming. The dyes took some time to take hold, but she appeared to be in no hurry.

Ryan was content to wait. He watched her, still licking at his immense black paws.

When the dyes had taken hold, the old woman grunted and nodded to herself. Taking up the blanket strip once more, she began to work the dyed and flattened quills into the design, filling up more of the space that had been left blank and open. It was a beautiful design, possibly the single most beautiful thing that Ryan had ever seen. Yet it was also awful in its beauty, as it was a design of the universe, and to see it complete would mean that everything was finished, and so would all come to an end.

The finished blanket strip would mean the end of the world.

She worked slowly and assiduously, investing in her work a care and attention that meant time was immaterial. She would take as long as it took, and nothing would deter her. She would work until there was nothing left of her, until she had shriveled into nothing. She would give her all to this blanket strip.

Still Ryan watched, his eyes never wandering from her hands as they moved across the blanket strip. Every quill that went in, Ryan knew its exact position. He understood that it was important he know this.

When she had finished with the dyed quills, she sat back for a moment, nodded and sighed to herself. She mumbled a few words, chuckling softly. Ryan did not understand them; they were in a language that made no sense to him, though whether that was because it was a native tongue, or because he was now a dog, he did not know. Perhaps it did not matter. He would have liked to have known what she said, nonetheless.

She took up another skin and began to slowly strip it of quills. In the oppressive heat of the cave, it seemed as though she did that with an infinite care; almost as if she slowed down the longer she carried on. Ryan felt the air grow heavy around him. He kept licking his large black paws, his eyes unmoving from her. The heavier the air grew around him, the more he was aware that he needed to stay focused. That the time to act would soon be upon him. He did not wish to be found wanting.

The old woman began to flatten the quills with her stumps once more. It was something that he knew he had seen thousands of times before, and that he would see yet many more thousands of times before the end of all time.

Yet this time it was a little different. Halfway through her task, the old woman paused. She took the half-chewed, half-flattened quills from her mouth and laid them upon the blanket strip. She rose from her chair. This alone seemed to take an infinity, as her extreme age and the amount of time that she had spent seated caused her to seize up, and her aged body took a long time to unbend.

When she was finally on her feet, watched all the
while by the black hound that Ryan had become, she shuffled her way across the cave floor to where the fire burned. A large earthenware pot rested on the flames, supported by a structure of crossed sticks, rooted in the stone circle that contained the fire.

The pot was full of a bubbling liquid. Wojapi. The sweet red berry soup sustained the old woman, and was the stuff from which life itself was sustained.

The old woman grasped a stick that protruded from the pot and began to stir. She intoned and chanted to herself as she did this. It was almost singing, except that her voice was flat and toneless, so no notes could be discerned.

She kept stirring. Her back was turned. If she took as long over this as she had over any aspect of the blanket strip, then Ryan knew that he had the time in which to act. And he knew what he had to do.

Rising to all four feet, he stealthily padded the few yards between where he had lain watching, and where the old woman had worked. The blanket strip lay upon the buffalo robe. With his forepaw he scattered the quills that she had been flattening, and then set about worrying and working loose some of the colored quills that she had spent so long inserting into the blanket strip.

Her work was good. It was almost a pity to discard so much of it. Yet he knew that he had to. The longer the blanket strip took to finish, the longer the world could live. He was all that stood between life and the end of all things. The thought of that did not help him, nor make his work any easier. If anything, it made the clumsy paws fumble all the more; the unfamiliar teeth
bite and catch on the quills, each miss-hit making his mouth raw, salt blood mingling with the taste of the dyes and the old woman's spit.

He heard her move behind him. He scattered those quills he had unpicked until they were lost in dust and shadow, then returned to his position in time to see her turn around. When she saw what he had done, she screamed and cursed at him in that tongue that he could not understand. Her manner, though, was unmistakable.

Almost crying, she returned to her seat. Seating herself, she surveyed the damage to her blanket strip. He had removed all that she had done while he had been watching her, and this time a little more besides. He knew, though did not exactly remember, that it had not always been this way.

With a resigned sigh, the old woman picked up a porcupine skin and began to pull out the quills. When she had enough, she placed some in her mouth and began once more to chew.

As it had always been.

As it would always be.

 

K
RYSTY HAD NOT SEEN
them before, so she could have no idea why they would wish to do this. Why the spirits would be so mischievous, and wish to scare her so. She did not realize that her reputation as one who was scared of nothing had spread from this world into that of ghosts and spirits, and had angered those who lived in this realm.

She had not seen the four of them, gathered high in
the rocks by the light of the moon, sitting in a circle and swapping ghost smoke while they talked.

Their chief drew long on his smoke, then blew it out into a pattern that lingered on the night air. “This woman, she is brave. She fears nothing. That is what they say about her. But there is always something that causes fear. It is our job to do that, and as long as she walks, seemingly afraid of nothing, then there will be no fear of us among the others of the tribe. That is not how it should be. We must change that.”

“How can we do that?” asked one of the other three.

“We must find a way. Let us now make a wager. The one of us who succeeds in scaring her will have the advantage of being chief.”

The other three ghosts looked at the one who had spoken.

“You must feel sure that you can succeed. No one would willing give up their position, or wager idly upon it,” he said to the chief.

The chief said nothing. He smiled and blew more smoke at the moon.

“Very well then,” said the others, “we will take you up on this wager. And whichever of us wins,” they continued, each thinking that he alone had the best chance, “will take your place.”

The chief ghost smiled at them in a way that made them eager to beat him. “Then let us see,” he said simply.

So it was that, later that night, Krysty was returning home when she saw a most unusual sight.

She had been walking alone, as was her custom. Oth
ers in the village were scared of the ghosts that stalked in the night, but Krysty did not fear them. That which was not alive could not touch you, let alone chill you. So she was surprised, rather than scared, by the skeleton that jumped out at her as she walked down a narrow passage between some rocks. Under the light of the shining moon, chosen by the ghosts as it would reflect most upon their ghost skin, or in whatever form they chose to appear, she could see that skeleton shimmered in the dark.