Apparition Trail, The

by Lisa Smedman

  I touched the silky hair that protruded from the blanket, intending to tuck it back inside. As I did, I thought of White Buffalo Woman, who had until recently shared this frail body. I wondered how the spirit felt about the chiefs forcing her to enter the world of men before her appointed time.

  Foolish men. If they had only waited, I—

  Startled, I jerked my hand away. Had that really been White Buffalo Woman speaking? It had sounded like two voices in one: the husky tones of a grown woman, and the higher pitch of a young girl.

  A spasm of pain wracked my stomach, and as I blinked away the tears from my eyes, I suddenly realized what I had just done. Somehow, I had summoned the spirit of White Buffalo Woman herself. I had contacted her by touching something that, until recently, had been as close to her as anything in this world could be: Iniskim’s body.

  I glanced at Stone Keeper, worried that she would realize what I was doing. I didn’t want her to think that I was using the body of her child, as the chiefs had done. Pretending to be completing the job of tucking in the strand of hair, I focused intently upon my silent words, speaking them with all of the effort of will I could muster.

  Tell me, White Buffalo Woman. If the chiefs had waited, what would have happened?

  There was a long pause, and for a moment I thought she would not answer.

  The Day of Changes would have come when it was meant to — in seven moons more — and I would have led the spirits of the dead buffalo back to the living world. They would cover the land so thickly that it would appear black.

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. My fingers tightened on the lock of hair. If I can reverse what was done today — if I can transform my people back into human form again — will that day still come?

  It will.

  Tell me, White Buffalo Woman — how can I reverse the chiefs’ magic?

  I held my breath, waiting for her reply.

  Close the circle.

  I frowned in puzzlement. What do you mean? I asked her.

  There was no answer. With those words, White Buffalo Woman faded from my mind.

  Try as I might, I couldn’t puzzle out this cryptic message. I could guess part of it — although White Buffalo Woman had used the word “circle,” she was probably referring to the spiral. It could be “closed” — made into a circle — by joining up its beginning and end points, but how?

  Then I remembered the dream I’d had, before our patrol set out from Medicine Hat — the one in which I’d lifted a tombstone from a grave and run with it in a panicked circle, then fallen into the grave. I looked up at the Manitou Stone, and saw that its general outline matched that of the tombstone in my dream. The answer suddenly became clear: by moving the Manitou Stone back to its original resting place I could close the circle — and reverse the Day of Changes.

  I now knew who had written the words I had read upon the cliff at Writing on Stone. White Buffalo Woman had been trying to give me the answer for some time.

  “Thank you,” I whispered.

  I realized now what had to be done. The circle that White Buffalo Woman had spoken of was a metaphor: to reverse the Day of Changes, I had to close the spiral of the ley line. Somehow, I had to haul the Manitou Stone back to its original resting place. This would reverse the flow of magical energy, thus transforming those who had been turned into buffalo back into human beings again.

  I had to do this swiftly. The longer those poor wretches remained in buffalo form, the more chance they had of injuring themselves or of being slaughtered for food by the Indians. I had already thought of how I would transport the heavy stone: if the gun limber and its perpetual motion device were not too badly damaged, I could use the limber like a cart. I even knew how I would find the Manitou Stone’s original resting place: by following the tunnel back to the other end of the spiral. Best of all, I knew that I could accomplish this Herculean task in just one day.

  Strikes Back herself had unwittingly given me the clue. A year ago last May, she had used the tunnels — the currents of etheric force — to travel from Fort Macleod to Fort Qu’appelle in just one day. The Manitou Stone had been at Victoria Mission then, and the flow of etheric current was spiralling in a counter-clockwise direction, down through Fort Macleod in a gentle sweep south of the border and back up into Fort Qu’appelle. Because Strikes Back was traveling with the current, she made the journey in a fraction of the time that was passing in the world above.

  By the time I first entered the tunnels, the Manitou Stone had been moved: the current of etheric force was flowing in a clockwise direction. I’d been fighting against the current as I traveled from Victoria Mission to the cliffs at Head Smashed In, and so time had flowed more rapidly in the world above.

  With luck, the opening I’d created with Stone Keeper’s feather was still in place. Since I now knew the Manitou Stone to be the beginning of the spiral, I could be confident that we would be traveling with the current. If the gun limber could be used to haul the Manitou Stone through the tunnel, we’d close the circle in no time.

  Getting the Manitou Stone onto the limber, however, would be no easy task. The stone weighed close to four hundred pounds. Even though the slope of the hill would allow me to position the limber just below it, I’d need Stone Keeper’s help to topple the Manitou Stone onto it. She had no reason to help me — there was no gain in it for her. Iniskim was dead, and moving the Manitou Stone wouldn’t help her.

  Suddenly, I realized that I was wrong. In the premonitory dream, the occupant of the grave had awakened when her tombstone was moved. The dream had contained a second message for me: moving the Manitou Stone back to its original resting place would bring Iniskim back to life.

  The Manitou Stone was a portal to the astral plane — one that Iniskim’s astral body could use to return to the world of the living, allowing soul and body to become one again. White Buffalo Woman had told me as much herself, when she wrote the words on the cliff face. I could remember her words precisely, as if they had been engraved upon my heart: “Manitou Stone sits on apparition trail. Birth and death are the beginning and end of the trail.”

  I had to follow the apparition trail — the ley line — to the point that was both its beginning and its end. This would bring about the end of Iniskim’s death and the beginning of a new life for her.

  Following it would also be a beginning and end for me: an end to life, and the beginning of my death. Now that I had a taste of the afterlife, however, I was ready for it. If an eternity in the Big Sands was to be my fate, I would meet it manfully.

  “Stone Keeper,” I said softly. “I have spoken to White Buffalo Woman. She told me that, if we can move the Manitou Stone back to its original resting place, Iniskim will be restored to life.”

  Stone Keeper sniffed. The look she gave me was cold. “You want make Day of Changes go away,” she said in a voice filled with bitter accusation.

  I couldn’t lie. She’d suffered hurt enough.

  “That’s true,” I said. “But it’s also true that moving the stone will bring Iniskim back to life. And the Day of Changes will still come — in spring, when the moon has fully turned. White Buffalo Woman will return — on her own terms, this time — and she’ll bring the buffalo back with her.”

  I thought I saw a glimmer of hope in Stone Keeper’s eyes. She could hear the certainty in my voice, and must have realized, by my own return from death, that I had powerful “medicine.”

  “Winter that come will be cold,” she said. “Like before, no buffalo. Many people die. What good Iniskim live again, if only starve?”

  “I’ll see to it that you and your daughter do not starve. I’ll be dead long before winter comes, but there is something I can do this very day.” I nodded at the buffalo that was Superintendent Steele. “I’ll write a note to my commanding officer, instructing that my pension be delivered into your hands, as if you were my wife. I’ll say that Iniskim is my daughter, and must be provided for. I’ll lie and say that you and I met more th
an a year ago, and that I fathered the girl during our brief meeting. When my superiors read that, they will be honour-bound to abide by my wishes. Will that satisfy you that your daughter will not starve? Will that persuade you to help me move the Manitou Stone?”

  When Stone Keeper nodded, I heaved a sigh of relief. Then her mouth fell open, as if she had just realized something, and she laughed out loud.

  “You!” she said suddenly. “You speak true. Iniskim your daughter. We make baby.”

  I threw my hands up in alarm. “No,” I said. “You’ve misunderstood. It’s just a story I would tell my commanding officer — a lie.”

  Stone Keeper shook her head vehemently. “No. You Iniskim’s father. I dream you. Make baby in dream, Red Owl.”

  When I realized what she had just called me, I nearly swooned. I’d never told Stone Keeper that my guardian spirit was an owl, and now here she was, using the same name that Strikes Back had bestowed upon me in the Big Sands. Then I remembered how naggingly familiar Stone Keeper had looked when we had first met — just like the Indian woman I had once dreamed about.

  I stared down at the lifeless body of Iniskim as the realization dawned upon me. I had visited Stone Keeper in my dreams — in astral form. Our two souls had known each other intimately on the astral plane, and here lay the result. I had unwittingly spoken the plain truth: Iniskim was my daughter.

  I clutched my stomach as another wave of pain washed through it, and fought down the bout of nausea that followed. Staggering to my feet, I silently vowed to live for at least as long as it took to carry the Manitou Stone back to its original resting place.

  The life of my daughter depended upon it.

  Chapter IX

  Farewell to a friend — Fixing the limber — Steele awakens at last — Into the tunnel — Closing the circle — An unexpected encounter — A fight to the death — The Manitou Stone — Big Bear speaks — The cure — The treaty negotiations — A hand of cards — A friend reappears — Preparing the manuscript

  I walked slowly past the buffalo-skull pound and climbed the opposite hill, my guts twisting in agony with each step. I could feel the cancerous tumour quite plainly now — it was a large, hot lump that visibly distended my stomach. It wasn’t just the cancer that was slowing my steps, however — I was also dreading what I would see on top of the hill.

  I reached the top at last, and saw the ruts that the wheels of the limber had left in the grass, and the barrel of the gun a short distance away. Buck lay dead on the ground in his makeshift harness, the bit still in his mouth. Chambers lay on his back near the barrel of the gun. One hand still clutched the brand he’d used to ignite the artillery piece. I didn’t see any mark upon his body, and for an instant I thought he might yet be alive, but when I knelt on the grass beside him and lifted him in my arms, I could feel something shifting inside him. His chest had been crushed by the weight of the gun barrel, which had then rolled off him. Now that I looked closer, I could see the oily mark it had left on the front of his pyjamas.

  I held him a moment more, wishing I had the time to give him a proper burial. Although we had gotten off on the wrong foot in our initial meeting, I had come to like Chambers. After years of keeping to myself, fearful that my fellow policemen might find out about my illness, I had finally found a kindred spirit — a man who had also joined Q Division under false pretences. I suspected that, had Chambers lived, we would have become fast friends.

  The agony in my stomach reminded me that my time was too precious to spend grieving. Waving to Stone Keeper, who stood on the other hill beside the Manitou Stone, I turned to follow the limber’s tracks.

  It hadn’t rolled far. It had come to a stop halfway down the hill, one wheel fetched up against a large rock. I was relieved to see that the perpetual motion device was still working. The round brass pendulum that drove the engine’s pistons was still swinging back and forth, completing a smooth arc despite the angle at which the limber sat. Its tick-tock sounded regular and steady; I wondered why Chambers had used Buck to draw the limber up to the top of the hill.

  I saw why in another instant. The perpetual motion device itself was intact, but the main gear that drove the wheels had broken in two. Fixing it would require the services of a machinist and a fully equipped blacksmith’s shop, at the very least.

  Or would it? I peered closer at the spot where the gun itself had been mounted. The barrel had been torn from its moorings by the force of the explosion that had killed Chambers, but three of the gears that had connected it to the perpetual motion device, allowing the barrel to be rotated and elevated, were still in place. One gear had been twisted back upon itself when the barrel ripped free, and another had several teeth stripped, but the third was intact, save for a very slight warp. It was slightly smaller than the gear that needed to be replaced, but I thought it might do the trick.

  It had been many years since I had set foot in my father’s watch making shop. When I was a boy, he had at first been proud of my fascination with the workings of the watches and clocks he repaired, and had invited me to the shop, allowing me to look on over his shoulder. After a time, however, he noticed a pattern. Whenever I stood next to him in the shop, the workings of the watch or clock he was working on either sped up, inexplicably, or slowed down — or stopped working altogether. Unwilling to believe that some supernatural force might be at work, he insisted that I must have been tampering with the workings when his back was turned. When I seemingly refused to stop these “childish pranks,” I was given a good strapping and banished from the shop.

  I never did lose my fascination for machinery, however — and now I had my chance to prove my father wrong. I could be as good as he was.

  The limber still had its toolbox, and I set to work with the wrenches and screwdrivers inside it. It took all of the strength I had to undo the nut that held the gear I wanted to remove; I was drenched in sweat by the time I got it off. Gritting my teeth against the stomach pain that made me feel as weak as a girl, I at last worked the bent gear free and shoved the smaller one into its place. I had an anxious moment when the pendulum missed a beat — perpetual motion devices are nearly impossible for the lay mechanic to start up again, requiring a specialist’s touch — but by working feverishly to tighten the bolt again, I got the gear in place before the pendulum lost its momentum entirely. When I was finished, I wiped a greasy hand across my forehead and heaved a sigh of relief.

  I climbed up into the operator’s seat, and cautiously pushed the drive lever forward. The gears engaged with a grating noise and a screech of metal, but the limber lurched forward. In another moment, it was climbing the hill, the pendulum clicking out a steady beat.

  I drove the limber down past the pound and up to the place where the Manitou Stone stood. The limber moved only slowly and its mechanism squealed so loud that I wondered for a moment if the smaller gear was up to the strain, but at last it made it to the top of the hill. Positioning it just under the stone, I unfastened from the side of the limber a large iron bar — a tool intended to lever the limber out of mud holes. With Stone Keeper helping me, I levered the Manitou Stone away from its resting place. It teetered for a moment, then fell with a heavy crash onto the limber.

  I helped Stone Keeper up onto the seat at the rear of the limber, then passed Iniskim’s blanket-wrapped body up to her. I climbed up beside Stone Keeper, stumbling as my foot missed its mark. I was weaker than I thought, my mind clouded from pain. When we set out, I accidentally threw the lever into reverse, and the limber began to roll backward down the hill. Frantically, I shoved the lever in the opposite direction. Behind me, the perpetual motion device seemed almost to sense my urgency, and the pendulum picked up its pace. With a sudden lurch, the limber came to a stop, then began to roll forward again. We were on our way! Soon we’d be in the tunnel, and the going would be smoother.

  Something was wrong, however. I could feel it in the vibrations beneath my seat. The perpetual motion device was ticking faster now, and when I cran
ed my head around to look, I saw that the pendulum was swinging back and forth with a distinct wobble. Suddenly, a wrenching shudder ran through the limber. I heard a large spanging noise and a clatter as something metal broke — and then the limber was rolling down the hill. Try as I might to stop it, I could not. The perpetual motion device had disengaged, and the brake was not working. The limber hit a bump that sent the Manitou Stone several inches into the air, nearly sending it flying, but it crashed back down onto the limber again. The limber smashed through one of the piles of bones at the bottom of the hill, and then rolled, at last, to a stop. The pendulum was still ticking — but the gear I’d replaced was hopelessly broken.

  I cursed, and then began to silently weep. The cursed bad luck that caused every mechanical thing I approached to go awry was my downfall. There was no way I would get the Manitou Stone to its original resting place now — no way for me to save the settlers and bring my daughter back to life. All of my efforts had been for naught.

  Stone Keeper shifted on the seat beside me. The blanket in which Iniskim was wrapped had come partially undone in our wild ride down the hill. Stone Keeper tucked the blanket back around Iniskim, then sat in silence, staring straight ahead of her.

  Suddenly, her head turned. I heard her gasp, and looked up to see what she had spotted. My mouth fell open as I saw a yellow-haired buffalo descending the hill where the Manitou Stone had stood. There was only one person it could be.

  “Steele!” I shouted, waving my arms.

  As the buffalo trotted toward us I wiped my tears away with the back of my sleeve, and climbed down painfully from the limber. Steele came to a halt a few paces in front of me, and shook his mighty head, as if in disbelief at the fate that had befallen him. He bellowed, then lashed his tail back and forth in frustration at his inability to speak.