by Caleb Fox
We got away with it.
Shonan looked back toward Yah-Su. The buffalo man had heaved the cutter’s body onto the bank. Unless someone found it this afternoon—unlikely—the high tide would probably take it to sea tonight.
Yah-Su himself was already back in position, floating downstream. Shonan followed suit.
When they came into the bay, at first they couldn’t find the log. Then they saw it, beached on the sand, probably by tidal action. They swam to it—nothing to do except take the risk—and pulled it into the bay.
Communicating by nods, they decided to swim the log very slowly, so that an observer wouldn’t realize it was moving, to some reeds on the village side of the bay. This was close to where Maloch customarily undressed and came into the water. The tide was sucking water out to sea, so the movement of the log from the reeds toward the middle would look natural. This was the way Shonan planned it. Silently, he thanked his comrade for showing him how the tides worked.
Nothing to do but wait.
Some fighters hated this part. Shonan loved it. He taught his young men—would have taught Aku if the boy had let him—how to be patient. Patience was one of the warrior’s critical skills. To be still, to be quiet, to observe. To watch all day if necessary, in a relaxed but alert way. If you were still enough in mind and body, the creatures of the forest ceased to notice you. The birds started singing again, the rabbits foraged, the deer browsed, everything went back to normal.
Then, when your enemy came, he would have no warning, no signs.
The quality yoked to patience was readiness. Shonan crouched in the reeds, head behind the log, ready.
The bay fell into shadow, and deeper shadow. The light faded to almost nothing. Just as Shonan was deciding the bastard had decided to skip his daily bath, Maloch came over the dune. He took off his clothes—That disguise of human skin is stupid!—and clomped into the water. Shonan noticed what he had forgotten, how huge the dragon’s hind legs were—how huge the man-monster was.
Fear trilled up and down him. He looked sideways at Yah-Su. He was sure the buffalo man knew as well as he did that when you’re scared, use that feeling to propel yourself.
A quick glance and the two killers began to push the log toward the monster, at the speed a nearby leaf was floating toward the sea.
Wait for twenty paces. All I have to do is get the spear thrower ready, stand up, and I will kill you.
Maloch first dipped himself several times. In this shallow water, at ebb tide, he had to lie down to get all of his body into the water at the same time. Once he lay underwater for several seconds, then raised up and shook himself like a dog. He was like a dog playing in the water. A monster dog.
Down to forty paces.
Maloch began to cavort. He splashed water on himself with his hands. He kicked the water in every direction, yelling on every kick.
Down to thirty paces. Poor light. Breath hard to get.
Suddenly Maloch did a stroke like a dolphin, or maybe a serpent monster, straight toward them.
Twenty paces.
Both men got their weapons ready.
Ten paces. Is he charging us?
No, the angle was off to the side.
Still ten, still about ten.
Suddenly, Maloch turned and his chest faced straight toward Shonan. Better than anything I hoped for.
Shonan hurled his dart with all his strength, straight into the chest.
It hung there for an instant and dropped into the water. The human skin ripped, and green scale showed underneath.
Maloch roared, and his face began to change. Immediately, a diamond shone on his forehead, but in the twilight it didn’t reflect enough light to blind anyone.
Yah-Su threw his dart like storm winds fling a heavy branch of a tree. It rammed its way between the monster’s teeth and into the roof of its mouth—a sure death shot.
Maloch bit the dart and broke it like a toothpick. He launched himself through the air at Yah-Su.
Yah-Su dived to the side.
Shonan jumped onto the serpent monster’s neck, drew his knife, and stabbed furiously, over and over, at the beast’s heart.
Maloch roared at every blow. He tried to reach for Shonan, but his little arms wouldn’t reach far enough backward.
Maloch writhed and shook violently. Shonan flew back a dozen paces and splashed into the water on his butt.
Yah-Su gripped his second dart and hurled it as far down Maloch’s gullet as he could. Then he yelled, “Run!”
They waded, splashed, and ran. At the far end of the bay, where the river entered, Shonan looked back. The serpent monster was walking back toward the village, pulling at the dart with his puny arms, unable to jerk it out of his throat.
They hadn’t killed it. Shonan wasn’t even sure they’d hurt it.
17
The owl man Aku flew for four straight nights—across tidal plains, through the hilly piedmont, and toward the distant Galayi Range. No human being could have kept up. He followed the big river upstream, and up, and up, all the way to the base of the Galayi Mountains, which his people believed to be the center of Turtle Island.
He flew over Equani and over his home village, Tusca. Three generations ago his hero-ancestor Zeya, the Hungry One, had defeated a Tusca army of overwhelming numbers here, using his marvelous power as a shape-shifter. Then he restored the village of his enemies, a humanitarian act that made his memory live forever.
And there Aku was born and raised. His lifelong friends and members of his family still lived in the huts below. Part of him wanted to drift onto a branch, change into the form everyone knew him by, and walk into the town. He would eat a good breakfast, catch up on the news, hug his women relatives, and slap the shoulders of his uncles, cousins, and the comrades of his youth.
Another part of Aku the owl man, though, wanted to avoid all the people who once knew him. He could feel inside that he was different. They might recognize his face but would not know his spirit. He did not fully know himself. He cruised over the shadowy buildings, soaking up the sights with his owl eyes, filling the dark spaces with warm memories.
Then Aku left the river and followed an ancient trail up the steep mountainside. At night there were no thermals to ride, so he labored up into the range, and then across several canyons and more ridges to the Cheowa River and upstream. Here in a broad valley spread the tribe’s principal village, Cheowa, four separate circles of wattle-and-daub huts, smoke drifting out of holes at the tops, the fires glowing to keep away the night freezes of autumn. Aku the owl hoo-hooted in honor of this sacred town, the breeding ground of the tribe’s chief shamans, the Wounded Healers.
Behind the village on the western side loomed Emerald Mountain, and halfway up its forested side, the entrance to the Emerald Cavern. Deep in this cavern lived Tsola, the woman he called Grandmother, though she was actually his mother’s grandmother. Here, since before the memories of the grandfathers of the oldest men, had lived every Seer and Wounded Healer of the Galayi people.
Tsola would know this human owl man. He wing flapped straight up the mountain.
Aku was queasy. First, he was coming to confess he had a gigantic favor to ask, and he hated to be a beggar, especially before this powerful woman. Second, he had to humble himself and admit to his mother’s grandmother that he had never known himself as well as she had.
Now he approached the Healing Pond, the pool of waters just outside the cavern. Here seekers came to ask the help of the caretakers who lived in the little hut. For a day or two they dipped themselves in the cold, fizzy water and then went home with their aches and pains eased. Aku lit in a great chestnut tree to look not at the pond or hut, but beyond them at the entrance to the cavern. His feathers ruffled, and he felt a chill that did not come from the breeze.
Like many holy places, the Emerald Cavern was mostly unknown. As a center of power and magic it was as much feared as loved. The reports of its mysteries passed from mouth to ear in whispers. It was a vast spi
derweb of earth and stone hallways, flowing black waters, and weird shapes from the darkest of night-haunted dreams.
Like the cavern, the shamans who lived in its depths were strange, eerie, tinged with danger. These men and women had explored the odd fingerways, the passages that seemed to be not only the inner mountain but somehow human consciousness itself—they had come to know this vastness over many generations by wandering through the passages, crawling and squeezing through some of them, and swimming through many.
Nothing made people shiver like the rumors that the cavern arteries were subterranean rivers. Who knew the source of such rivers? Perhaps the Underworld itself, the Darkening Land. Yet the stream that issued from the main entrance to the cavern brought healing to human beings.
The cavern was honored and feared—its masters and mistresses were honored and feared.
Aku looked at the entrance and wondered. Or was it the owl man who looked and wondered? He and Aku didn’t seem identical at that moment. Aku’s knowledge was the merest shadow, his ignorance vaster than caverns.
Something near the entrance shifted. A strange feeling came into Aku’s chest, like a cloud of ice crystals.
Across the pond came a deep voice. “Good morning, Aku.”
Aku was speechless.
“You could try being friendly,” said a similar voice.
Still speechless.
“Get your tail over here.”
“Wing feathers, too,” echoed the other voice, teasing.
“You know us, Aku,” said the first voice. “I’m Bola, my son is Bota.”
Aku remembered. He could also make out their shapes faintly, ink against the black of night, the panther son and grandson of the Seer, her guardians. He remembered that the Powers gave the ability to see at night only to Panther and Owl, because of all animals only they passed the test.
“You could shed those feathers, Aku,” said Bola.
Here came the Feeling again. One previous visit and the panther remembered his name?
“Hoo hoodoo hoo hoo,” called Bola. “Get over here.”
Human owl man fluttered over to them and lit on a waist-high boulder, carefully out of reach.
“So,” said Bola, “are you a human being or an owl?”
Neither Aku nor owl man knew what to say, and he couldn’t tell the panthers apart.
“If you’re the Seer’s great-grandson, you have a claim to see her. If you’re just any old owl, you’re …”
Bola leapt as fast as sunlight glances off water and into an eye. In that flicker owl man was in the panther’s mouth, pricked by cat teeth, pain shooting from talons to skull.
The other panther, Bota, said, “My father was going to say, ‘You’re a snack.’ Maybe it’s time to tell us that you’re a human being.”
“Human being,” squeezed out Aku.
Bola dropped him like a hunk of meat. “Show us,” he said.
Orange feathers to face of flesh, beak to nose and mouth, wings to arms … Aku had never changed so fast.
“We know your gifts,” said Bola, with deliberate indifference. “Don’t try to fool us.” Then, sharply, “What are those things in your hand?”
“Gifts from the Little People.”
“The red and green flutes,” said Bola.
“That’s a lot of respect from the Little People,” said Bota.
Bola cut off the talk. “No need to wait for light, let’s go.”
The Feeling raged now.
Bola motioned with his feline head, and they were off. The first cave room was twice the size of any house Aku had ever been in. The panther leapt across the stream that formed the pool below. Aku jumped, dunked one foot, slipped on an algaed stone, and soaked his moccasins, breechcloth, and leggings. Though he couldn’t see the panther’s face, Aku heard his chuckle-growl.
He felt the flutes to make sure they were all right. Their wood was thick, unlikely to break.
They turned right, out of the big chamber, into a tunnel. Within a hundred steps the light disappeared. He couldn’t see how big the passage was, or how small. He bumped his head on something stony overhead.
“You can’t see now, can you?” said Bola. “That’s why we don’t invite your owl eyes in. Even Tsola doesn’t see as well as an owl.”
Aku bumped his head again.
“Better get down on your hands and knees here.”
The trip Aku made into the cavern as a child hadn’t been this scary. His mother had carried a torch. Now he was blind and lost. He’d crossed into a different reality-darkness, an absolute, soul-numbing darkness. Here the Feeling was breath itself.
“Now grab hold of this rope and use it for a handhold,” Bola said. He thrust it against Aku’s hand. “You’ll need it, I won’t.”
Aku heard scratchings on rock from below. Not only could the cat see in the dark, he was ten times as surefooted as Aku. He wound the rope around both hands. It felt like thongs of rawhide twisted together. He hesitated.
“Just trust it. Step off and work your way down.”
Into pitch blackness, his feet groping for holds, his hands and arms his lifeline. The slope felt almost vertical.
Suddenly his feet pawed at nothing but air.
“It’s all right,” said Bola. “Just slide down the rope itself for a way.”
Aku squeezed the rope for dear life, rubbed his forearms and thighs raw as he slid, and was surprised to land on sand in a stream.
“This way,” said Bola, and Aku followed his voice. He’d never been turned so topsy-turvy.
They wandered. That was the only sense of it Aku had—they wandered. He lost all sense of place. Though the sky was trackless, a flier could see exactly where he was in a vast panorama. The cavern was genuinely trackless. Here the traveler didn’t know what was a hand span from his face. This was a new meaning of lost. You could walk a day and touch nothing but the stone and clay under your moccasins, not knowing whether the walls were a breath or a hundred steps away. You could move an inch and fall off a precipice.
Lost. Occasionally, a word from Bola reminded Aku that he was not alone in the world. Otherwise he was utterly disoriented. The feeling of ice crystals in his chest was more real than the cavern.
“We clamber up some rocks here,” said Bola. Climbing by grope—another new experience for Aku. Climb on and on—he pulled himself up forever.
And at the top a shock. He could see dark shapes. Gradually, his eyes put together recognition. A large room opened to shadowy sight. Slender columns of stone ran from floor to ceiling, or ceiling to floor, as though holding them apart. He remembered this room, and knew where to look. Far to the left he saw a faint glow, and a dark figure beside it. Grandmother’s fire. Beyond it, he recalled, a flowing stream formed a pool of water the shape of a maple leaf.
“Welcome, Grandson.” Her voice was soft and gentle, like the flutter of wings.
“It’s good to see you, Grandmother.” He and Bola padded toward her.
“I imagine being able to see anything is a relief.” He could hear the smile in her voice.
When he got close enough to make out her face, she embraced him. She was elfin, slender, silver-haired, and had a graceful carriage. Her face was like the tobacco she was named for, a leaf that had been wadded up and pressed flat again. He felt a welling of love for her—or was it for any human creature? He hugged her back.
She sat back down near the fire and patted the ground. Bola curled up beside her. She looked up at Aku. “Sit,” she said, “and we will eat and drink.”
He folded his legs in front of the fire. He knew that she didn’t keep it for light or warmth—the dark, cool cavern was home to her, had been for more than a hundred winters. No, this fire was sacred. It had been carried as coals from the council lodge at the Cheowa village, and that fire was said to be descended directly from the fire given to Earth creatures by Thunder, and never allowed to go out.
She brought him tea and a bowl of acorn and berry mush. All the Galayi people broug
ht her food, in return for her guidance and in thanks for the benefit of the Healing Pool.
When they had eaten and traded pleasantries, Tsola said, “All right, Grandson, you haven’t come all this way to gossip with your ancient relative. You want something. Before we can begin, I must ask you a very important question. Are you afraid?”
Aku hesitated. He had to show some gumption. He bumbled out, “No.”
Her words were like stones being cracked together. “Of course you’re afraid. Human beings are naturally afraid anywhere they can’t see. I took your owl eyesight away from you and then told Bola to make the trip as frightening as possible.” She patted the big, black cat. “That trick of grabbing him with your teeth was a devil of an idea.”
“Thought you’d like that,” said Bola.
“I asked Bola to bring you here a roundabout way, to put the fear of the cavern into you.
“Everyone of good sense who travels in the cave is half-terrified. They sense that they have entered an alien world, a place that is exotic, fantastic, and mysterious. Which is true. Physically, the cavern is incredible. In its curling passages you could walk all day every day for six moons and never take the same step twice. There are wonders here more amazing than sunsets, more beautiful than rainbows.
“The cavern is dangerous, too. Cliffs, rivers, every trick of direction you can imagine.
“Also, after the death of Zeya, an earthquake changed its shape completely. The sacred chamber, the Emerald Dome, was shut off. The course of the main river changed. Almost every passage was altered. Where the ground had been level, suddenly there were drops taller than an oak tree. Except under the sea, the cavern is the most dangerous place in the world to travel. And the earthquake destroyed all our knowledge of it. Bola, Bota, and I have had to re-learn it.”
Wounded Healers sacrificed their eyesight in the outside world to be able to see in the cavern.
“I wanted you to sense the danger as vividly as you feel a knife wound. I wanted you to be scared.” She smiled. “Well, what do you think of your great-grandmother now?”
“I’ve had an awful sense of dread since I arrived.” The Feeling.