Beneath a Wounded Sky

by Kurt R A Giambastiani

  “I just found out myself,” D’Avignon said, his voice a thin wheedle. “You know I wouldn’t give them a Maxim gun, not after you were so explicit in your instructions to strip the men of any supplies that might point to our involvement.”

  Alejandro’s eyes did not leave the approaching riders. “Nonetheless, they had one, you say.”

  “Yes, that is what Father Velasquez said.”

  “Velasquez!” Alejandro said, turning on D’Avignon.

  “Mais oui,” D’Avignon said, cringing. “I was taking instruction from him this morning and he mentioned—”

  “How did he...” Alejandro started, but stopped, returning his gaze to the natives. He waved a hand absently. “No matter. The damage is done. And now we’ll have to find out how much this slaughter of our purported allies will cost.”

  He put the cigar between his teeth and watched as the Cheyenne rode up the last gentle rise. One of Alejandro’s bodyguards leaned forward, peering, then pointed. The squad came to immediate alert, rifles ready. Bolts brought ammunition into play.

  Alejandro coughed and held up a hand, both to stay his guardsmen and to greet the newcomers.

  “Let them through,” he ordered.

  But the guards did not relax. Suddenly, he saw why.

  Several whistlers had ropes tied to their harnesses, and to the end of each rope was tied a body: bloody, mangled, torn, covered with dust-caked gore and stalks of wild, sun-dried junegrass.

  One Who Flies halted his walker. The whistlers continued forward, their riders cutting the ropes to deposit the bodies in a tumbled heap. The walker roared again, a sound that made Alejandro’s ribs vibrate. One Who Flies tapped the beast down and dismounted.

  He was scratched, dusty, and spattered with blood. He walked forward, his gaze unflinching, unwavering, his demeanor every inch the savage warrior he appeared. When he reached the spot where Alejandro stood, he reached into a pouch and pulled out a glittering handful of gold. Alejandro’s heart leapt, but then One Who Flies opened his fingers and the gold fell to the ground with a singing of bells. Alejandro looked down and saw that it was not gold, but brass at his feet; empty .303-British cartridge shells from the Maxim gun.

  “You are here at our invitation,” One Who Flies said, “and are therefore our guests. But guests must not go to places that are interdicted. And, as we told you when you arrived —” He nodded toward the bodies. “—the penalties are severe.”

  Alejandro’s blood surged upward, pulsing though his neck, flooding his ears, his face. The outrage! The temerity! He looked up and down the man he thought he understood, taking in every raw, uncivilized inch of him.

  “Just what do you think you are, I wonder?” Alejandro growled. “To come before me and—”

  “You wonder what I am?” One Who Flies grinned through smears of dried blood, his blue eyes glinting in the last beams of the dying sun. “I am One Who Flies,” he said. “I am the vé’ho’e who fell with the cloud! I am the son of Long Hair!” His smile rotted into a sneer. “I am a counted man among the People, and I am currently the only thing standing between your men and total, retributive slaughter. We are not children, Don Alejandro, so do not treat us as such.” He turned on his heel and stalked back to his beast.

  “Keep your men to the land we have reserved for them. And keep that dog’s prick tethered,” he shouted, pointing at D’Avignon. “If I see him beyond the limits of this camp, I will bring him back here and make you watch while I feed him his broken teeth, one by one.”

  The walker opened its mouth, emitted a low, guttural purr, and then shut its jaws with a thunk.

  “Now bury your men,” One Who Flies said.

  Alejandro stared, his fury silenced but unabated, his hands trembling as their savage hosts rode into the newborn twilight.

  “Sir,” ventured one of the guards after a minute.

  “Go get Velasquez,” he said. “He has rites to perform.”

  The soldier saluted, realized he shouldn’t have, and scuttled off to find the priest.

  “And you,” Alejandro said, turning to spear D’Avignon with a glare. The rogue had the good grace not to cower, though Alejandro could see that he was visibly shaken and pale. Good, he thought; a little fear will be good for you.

  “Yes, Excellency.”

  “In future, you will approve all prospecting sites with me,” he said, looking back at the departing natives. “I don’t want you taking our men within a league of these barbarians.”

  He glanced over at D’Avignon, saw him smile, then saw his smile fade as he, too, looked over the bodies and the distant riders who brought them.

  Chapter 11

  Plum Moon, Waning

  Four Years after the Cloud Fell

  Along the Red Paint River

  Alliance Territory

  Speaks While Leaving sat in the twilight outside the lodge, Mouse Road at her side, singing together as they pounded soaked maize kernels into meal. Her eyes were closed as the song and the rhythm filled her with a sense of peace. She let that serenity seep into her hands, into the stone pestle, into the deep, trunk-wood mortar, and into the pulverized grain that would feed the people she loved.

  She saw him coming, even with her eyes closed. The ghosts infected her vision fully now at this hour, and she could see his ghosts walking in formation toward the lodge. She opened her eyes and saw them all; one man and three ghosts, each one wearing the visage of a thundercloud. Mouse Road’s voice faltered as she saw him, covered with scratches, dust, and spatters of blood, but Speaks While Leaving encouraged her, kept the song flowing. He put down his saddle and ropes near the doorflap and walked over to where they sat. The two women sang the song through to its end, not allowing bad news to interrupt their task, not allowing evil words to infect the food they prepared. One Who Flies stood and waited.

  They finished the song and inspected the condition of the corn meal. One Who Flies remained on his feet, patient, silent.

  “You have changed so much,” she said to him as they scraped the corn meal out onto a piece of clean hide to dry. “The brash young man I met all those years ago, he was incapable of standing quietly by. To know that young man was to know his mind at once; not like this man standing here now.”

  “I think you can still see what is on my mind,” he said.

  “I can see the shape of it,” she said, looking up at his clouded face. “But not the story.” She cleared the last of the ground meal from her mortar and pestle, put them to the side, and stood. One of his ghosts had an arm in a sling. Another still had his rifle slung on his shoulder. They all had seen violence, done violence, but that was not what troubled them. She searched the faces, spirit and man, and sensed that it was not an act or a deed that concerned them, but a question. “What is it you need, One Who Flies?”

  His fixed gaze began to waver. “It doesn’t make sense. The Iron Shirts, they...the greed, the death...” He looked back at her, focused again. “I need to know what you know,” he said. “I need to know how it all”—his brow furrowed, his mind searching—”how it all fits.” His expression softened. The three ghosts of him began to waver and draw together. “It does all fit, doesn’t it?”

  She watched the ghosts of his possible paths begin to coalesce and realized: this was the moment for him, the axis point on which his futures spun, and as that thought hit her mind his spirit selves snapped into place and One Who Flies stood before her, whole, questioning, ready.

  “Mouse Road,” she said as her vision began to swim with the light from the spirit world. “I will need your help with this.” She reached out as her vision went blind and felt her friends each take an arm to support her. “Take me inside, please. They are coming.”

  George took her outstretched hand and steadied her with an arm about her shoulder.

  “They are coming,” she said again as he led her toward the lodge. She stumbled and in another step she pitched toward the ground. He caught her in his arms, and glanced at Mouse Road as she h
eld the doorflap open. Her lack of fear and concern bolstered his confidence.

  He had never seen her when a vision came upon her, but now he understood why she had been given her name. Her face was vacant, her sight empty, her voice a monotone. George could see her pulse quick and shallow along the hollow of her neck, and if he had not heard the tales, if his wife had shown one iota of concern, he would have been sure that Speaks While Leaving was preparing to die, was leaving them all for the spirit world, and was describing her journey to them unto her last breath.

  He laid her down upon the bedding and felt her cheek—cold and wet—and then lifted her wrist to feel her pulse—weak as twice-used thread. “What do we do?” he asked Mouse Road.

  “Do not be afraid,” Speaks While Leaving answered. “I am still here. I am safe.”

  George shook his head to shake away his fear. “What do we do?” he said, asking her this time.

  “Wait. This is how they come to me,” she said. “Nevé-stanevóo’o, guardians of the way between the worlds. They are the bringers of my visions.”

  “Another vision?” he asked. “But what about the last—”

  “No, not another. The last one. The same one. The one you asked about.”

  She grabbed his hand. Her grip was steel, tensed, menacing. Mouse Road rushed closer and the other hand darted out to grab her as well. George looked to his wife and now he saw concern.

  “This vision,” Speaks While Leaving said, her voice dreamy, “is unlike any other vision.”

  As she spoke, George’s sight began to fade, but not with the growing black of waning consciousness. Everything grew brighter, more luminous, as if the sun was emerging from behind a massive cloud. Mouse Road rubbed her eyes and blinked, seeing the same.

  “What is happening?”

  “This vision cannot be danced into being,” Speaks While Leaving said. “It cannot be described. It must be seen. I must take you with me, so that you can see it. And then...”

  George’s body refused his command. His heart raced. He heard a whimper from Mouse Road. His vision went white.

  “You will see. And then you will know.”

  The light grew to an astonishing brightness, filling his mind with a glare devoid of warmth, intensifying beyond mere brilliance into a shimmering, coruscant song of light and power. It consumed him, suffused him, until he could see nothing but the light, hear nothing but the light, think of nothing, ever again, but the light.

  And then, with exquisite slowness, it began to ebb.

  The light receded, stranding him on a barren plain. Clumps of pale grass studded the powder-dust land around him. The sky continued to dim, its light changing from white to orange, gathering overhead into a swollen orb that sunk down behind him toward the vague horizon. Clouds built, piling up into the ruddy light as the newly-formed sun bled out against their bulk. The setting sun behind him, he looked down from the heavens and saw, beneath this wounded sky, three tracks leading off through the wilderness.

  The first, the middle track, led straight away east and before he could think he was flying down its length, speeding through a sere, wasted world. He felt the wind, felt the pelting sand, saw dunes stand up and slough down on either side. The moan of the wind split, became voices, and he saw ghosts along the roadway. He squinted to focus through the grit, and the ghosts became dancers before a Spirit Lodge, became women trekking across the prairie, became soldiers on whistler-back fighting an even ghostlier enemy. He saw only People; no vé’hó’e, no Iron Shirts, no bluecoats. The dance became a Vision Dance, the dancers’ movements growing ecstatic and fervent; the women on the prairie began to run, looking back over their shoulders as they fled a threat only they could see; the soldiers’ paint and equipage shifted from raid to war party, and veteran soldiers fell beneath the spectral slaughter, replaced by more soldiers who also fell and were replaced in turn by the old, the young, until at last they, too, fell and the ground was carpeted with their bodies.

  The road ahead reached onward, onward, carrying him forward until it began to diminish, thin out, fade, the ghosts dwindling until he was alone, flying through nothing, through emptiness, toward the end of all things, toward oblivion.

  He cried out, was jolted back to the start of the paths, and in a blink sped down the right-hand track, faster than a skyrocket. He swung in a massive southbound curve, skimmed across the sands, flew off the cliff edge of a steep shoreline, and sped out over a broad sea of sapphire waves crested with bloody foam. His course lowered toward the water as he spiraled inward and back around through west, north, and east. He stopped and fell, plunging toward the waves, was dragged back upward by an invisible hand, and sped off again in another retreating, south-bound curve.

  On the waters below he saw ghostly ships, pale as death, heading north toward the cliff shore. The path repeated itself, each final drop bringing him closer and closer to the midnight water, and as he neared the surface he saw Iron Shirt soldiers and cassocked priests aboard the ships, saw the Bourbon crest flying from the masts. Another drop, another southward curl, he felt the bloody spray from the red-capped waves, and now it was not soldiers who stood on the decks, but a press of civilians—men, women, families—all heading north toward the prairie.

  But the pattern was not complete, and he was pulled onward, inward, downward. He hit the surface and plunged beneath the waves, curving ever deeper. He saw bodies drifting in the water, men in fringed leggings, their hands bound by chains, women in deerskin dresses, all floating, sinking, until the waters closed above, eating the light and swallowing them all.

  A gasp and sputter brought him back to the start, and the left-hand path pulled him northward. Walls grew on either side, dark, blurred by velocity, rising to the height of a man, of a house, upward, until he saw only the dark walls, the pale path, and the bloody sky above. The path turned, twisting right, yanked and turned left, sped on, wheeled right, respite, swung left, adding elevation, rising, the dark walls towering, so close above they nearly shut out the sky. The indistinct barriers to either side were just a blur, but he realized he could see past them, through them, into the darkness behind where ghostly figures moved between the pale towers. As he switched back and forth, right to left to right to left, rising, rising, he realized he was in a forest, trees ever taller, the road climbing ever higher, and the figures took shape.

  He saw a soldier on whistlerback flanked by a group of Iron Shirts and a group of bluecoats. The road jerked left, and the soldiers fought with the Iron Shirts against the bluecoats. The road wrenched him back to the right and the soldiers fought with the bluecoats against the Iron Shirts. Back and forth the road slammed him, side to side, and with each turn he saw the scenarios play out, the tactics, the strategies, until the truth, the unbelievable and unpleasant truth, developed and became solid, the ghosts became men, features became faces, figures became people he knew. He saw a chief with a grey feather and a bluecoat general with white gloves.

  He looked up, and the walls, the treetops, were lowering. Right. Left. Higher. Higher. Until he came through to a rocky mountaintop and circled it, slowing as he spun higher, up to its peak, where he stopped beside two poles, one topped with a fox tail and eagle feathers, the other with a bluecoat cavalry guidon, both tall beneath a sky of orange, red, and purple clouds.

  His skin tightened and his breath grew short as he looked out from the height. Below, the three paths glowed across the dark land, each painted with a silver light while the last scarlet rays were doused as the sun’s limb slipped over the edge of the world.

  He saw them all laid out before him: the straight path to oblivion; the spiraling descent to suffocation; the erratic, tortuous climb to understanding. His mind was crammed with sights and symbols, things he had seen but could not fully describe, but the sense of it all was clear, the meaning of it was clear.

  What had to be done was clear.

  Light deluged the world, knocking him aside, overwhelming his mind, his sense of self.

 
; He stared up at dark walls of his lodge, back in his own body, covered in sweat and stiff in every joint. It was nearly dark, the sky a circle of indigo through the smokehole above.

  He tried to rise, heard Mouse Road’s groan echo his own. Speaks While Leaving was already sitting up, reaching over to help them.

  “Slowly,” she cautioned.

  He crawled over to Mouse Road, took her hand and looked into her eyes. She gave his hand a squeeze and signed that she was well. Then they both turned to look at Speaks While Leaving. She had gone to get the tinder bag, and was preparing the flint and tinder to make a fire. George stared at her, unsure of whether she was deranged, or he was.

  “What are you doing?”

  She raised an eyebrow and chuckled. “What does it look like? I’m making a fire.”

  Mouse Road struggled to her feet. “Let me help.”

  George stared at them both. “You must be joking. After what we just saw, you want to make a fire and act as if nothing unusual has happened?”

  Speaks While Leaving waggled her free hand at him. “You really should eat something.”

  “I’m very thirsty,” Mouse Road said.

  “I thought we could make a quick porridge.”

  “That would be good. I’ll fetch some fresh water.” And she grabbed a waterskin on the way out through the doorflap.

  George blinked. “You are both insane.”

  Speaks While Leaving chuckled. “No,” she said. “Just practical. That was quite a trial, and without warning, too. Mouse Road has seen me through several visions, and knows what I usually need after the spirits leave.”

  “But don’t you think we should talk about it? Don’t you think we should discuss what we just saw?”

  She smiled. “Yes. I do. And we will.”

  His sight blurred suddenly and he put a hand to his head.

  “But this was your first vision,” she went on, calmly. “And very soon now the exhaustion will hit you. When you awaken, I will have some corn porridge with stewed berries ready for you.”