A tall, lean woman appeared at Doug’s side. She didn’t dress in hides, as did the other girls. A sharp suit, one as tight as any worn by those men who perched atop the glass towers, fell over the woman’s frame, giving Doug the impression that such a woman would fit in very well at that board table that monthly gathered the city’s patriarchs.
“Lady Finch.” Doug offered his hand, and he felt a tingle when the woman gripped his fingers.
“I apologize for your inconvenience, Mr. Stewart,” replied the woman. “I know the dust must be terrible for your towers. All the soot and ash must be even more terrible with all the polishers chasing the herd. I’m sure Satinka will know something that can help you.”
“I understand you’re the proprietor of the Palace.”
“I am, but I have nothing to do with the buffalo, and I certainly have no sway over that herd. If you’ve come to my Palace hoping to find a reprieve from the dust, you’re going to have to speak to Satinka.”
“Who?”
The woman chuckled. “Forgive me, Mr. Stewart. I forget you’re not a polisher. Satinka’s the one who clutches the hearts of all the polishers. She’s the one who danced and summoned that herd. If she can’t help you, than I can’t imagine anyone else can.”
“Summoned? How? From where?”
“I know.” Lady Finch held up her hands. “It sounds crazy. But the buffalo still charge along these shores.”
A purple curtain fluttered as a woman dressed in robes stitched together from buffalo hides of light tans and dark browns walked onto the stage. A thick, black hide fell down her back, topped with a pair of buffalo horns curving from each side. The robes were thick, but they failed to conceal the shape of the woman’s swells and curves. She turned to Doug, and in an instant he knew that woman had to be Satinka, the dancer who had captured the heart of every polisher.
A man seated at one of the adjacent tables rose and produced a curved buffalo horn. He blared the instrument, and all of his compatriots seated about the Palace’s tables went quiet and turned their attention towards the stage.
Satinka grinned. “I’m happy to see the Palace tables so crowded. How many have been lost to the herd in today’s hunt?”
“Three more have been lost this morning,” a man shouted in reply. “Lyle Overbay and Yancy Rayburn fell beneath the hooves and dust. A stray bullet killed Teddy Jackson.”
Satinka nodded. “The herd demands its sacrifices. May the white buffalo escort their spirits to their new home.”
Another man lifted a glass. “They were all brave hunters, happy to have the opportunity to become something other than polishers. A toast to them so our broken bones can mend.”
The men at the tables howled. They threw back their necks and downed their beer before stomping their boots. Several of the girls who floated about the Palace laughed and jumped into many a hunter’s playful embrace.
Satinka’s dark eyes grinned. “And what trophies do my hunters bring me from the herd?”
One after another, the men stood from their tables and presented Satinka with trophies from their hunt – hides of furs, jewelry of bone, daggers and knives shaped from buffalo ribs, fine bows strung with buffalo hair. Every man in the Palace presented Satinka with an offering, and Satinka happily accepted each gift. She gave the men who visited the Palace a reason to sing, to boast, to drink and to feast; and those men, who had for so long been relegated to the humble post of the polisher, worshipped Satinka for her magical dance that summoned, in the dusty shape of a thundering herd, purpose to their days.
Satinka thanked the last hunter to offer her his trophy and stepped down from her stage, the men returning to the food and drink held upon their tables. She smiled as her eyes greeted Doug’s blushing face.
“My dance summons many strange things,” Satinka spoke, “and along with the buffalo, my steps have brought one from the glass towers to my stage. Tell me, what do you think of the men seated all around these tables?”
“They’re very brave. They’re very striking.”
“Yet, I doubt you ever truly noticed them before, even if they spent so much time polishing your shining towers,” and Satinka’s eyes narrowed a moment before her smile returned. “But that’s lost to the past. What has motivated you to come to my stage, Mr. Stewart?”
“Could we speak somewhere more private?” Doug peeked at the men grunting at their tables.
Satinka shook her head. “I conduct my business here on this stage. I’m not interested in keeping secrets from the Palace.”
Doug took a breath to gather his resolve. He hadn’t anticipated to find the Palace filled with wide-shouldered men with powerful hands and strong backs. He couldn’t recall the polishers having ever been so fit and trim when they rose upon the towers and worked to rinse away the soot the wind blew upon the glass. How could the hunting of a herd so transform those polishers, both physical and mentally, in such a short time? Logic itself seemed broken, and Doug wondered if magic, and miracle, was all the explanation he could expect to find along that eastern shore where the Crystal Palace glowed. His colleagues in the tight suits and narrow ties sent him to find a way to vanquish that herd, to ask that the woman rumored to be responsible for that stampeding mass of dust and fur to snap her fingers and erase those hooves from the streets. How could he make such a request surrounded by such men? How would they react when Doug asked that the herd that transformed their lives and gave them such power be taken from them?
“I’ve been sent from the towers to ask if you can chase away that herd.”
The Palace fell silent. Doug held his breath as all of those men set down their legs of meat and their tankards of beer to face the interloper from the opposite, western shore, who had come, not to hunt the buffalo, but to simply ask that the creatures disappear. Several stood from their benches, pounding fists into palm, their eyes blazing at Doug.
Satinka held up her hand, and the men returned to their seats, though they didn’t turn their heated gazes away from Doug’s trembling face.
“I’m a little surprised you had the courage to ask that question here within the Palace. But you might be very surprised to know that I understand. It’s never been my intention for the buffalo to always remain after summoning them with my dance. I might dispel the herd, given a couple of conditions.”
Doug jumped. “Name them. Those of us seated atop the glass towers are very wealthy.”
Satinka snorted. “I’ve no interest in shiners. I want to own the very reflection of your towers. I want everyone who looks into all that glass to see my face and shape. I’m well aware of how carefully you wizards in your suits and ties cultivate the faith invested into those spires, and I want my figure to play a part in that religion. I want my face and my body to be there whenever a polisher has to stare all day at that glass. I want my shape to give a polisher a reason to clean away all the dust and the grime, a reason that will make a polisher’s heart happy. I demand that my dance will be projected upon that glass, so that something meaningful replaces the emptiness all of you in the tight suits and narrow ties so carefully cultivate.”
Doug swallowed. He reminded himself that it wasn’t his place to decide whether or not to accept whatever terms were given to rid the streets of the buffalo herd. He reminded himself that it was not his role to determine if such request would be possible, or to gather the machinery and means to project Satinka’s image across that glass skyline. It was only his job to ask, and to report.
“And your second condition?”
Satinka strolled to a wall crowded with mounted weapons. No one in the Palace made a noise while Satinka considered those sharp instruments. Her hands a few minutes later took a long spear from that wall, a spear carved in intricate runes, with feathers tied to the shaft just before it was topped by a gleaming tip of bone. Doug winked as Satinka turned and swayed back to him. She looked much taller. With that spear gripped in her hands, she looked as terrible as she did beautiful.
“My seco
nd condition, Mr. Stewart, is that you take part in the hunt,” and before he could voice a protest, or before he had the sense to take several steps back, Satinka pushed the long spear into Doug’s hand. “My second condition is that you use that spear to kill the sacred, white buffalo. You need not bring any trophy back. I will know when the white buffalo’s blood flows.”
Doug almost collapsed as the men roared at the tables. The spear’s weight nearly dragged his knuckles to the floor. The mass of that weapon settled into his shoulders, and his imagination couldn’t stretch so far as to imagine how he might possibly wield the weapon against any kind of sacred creature. The laughter of the men seated at their tables crowded Doug’s ears. Satinka was very clever. She had told him what he might do to rid the land of that herd, but she had also made him compete against those stronger hunters to claim the trophy of that white buffalo Satinka demanded from him. How would he compete against such rivals? How would he survive if any of those hunters decided to protect the herd by killing him? His knees knocked.
Doug thought he trembled in fear, but he realized that the walls of the Crystal Palace were shaking as well. A vibration pulsed through the floor. He felt the murmur rising up through the soles of his shoes. All of the men at the tables roared another time before rushing to walls and quickly grabbing at weapons. In a blink, they rushed through the Palace’s entrance, their abandoned plates and mugs still rattling as those men gave chase to the returning stampede of Satinka’s buffalo herd.
Satinka nodded at Doug. “You’re welcome to start your hunt right away, Mr. Stewart. None of those hunters will harm you if you decide to join them. They might well compete against you, but if you’re to be hurt, those hunters realize that it’s the herd’s right to do you injury.”
“I must return to the towers,” Doug stammered.
Satinka smiled. “Of course, but know that the herd will not be going anywhere until you join in the hunt.”
Satinka turned and stepped once again through the fluttering, purple curtain. Doug stood with that tall and heavy spear clutched within his hands. He felt the fire in his blood. Was it because the herd thundered outside and lit some flame even within him? Was that such a strange thought? Hadn’t the polishers also been timid before the herd’s arrival? Did that heavy spear revive some ancient impulse in his hunger? Or, Doug wondered, was the way Satinka’s hips swayed as she strolled back behind her purple curtain the true reason why his heart thundered?
* * * * *
Chapter 7 – Hunting the White Buffalo
The foundations of those tall spires moaned as the mighty buffalo herd rampaged through the city, shaking clouds of dust into the air to suffocate any reflection the glass might offer. The buffalos’ numbers multiplied, no matter how many trophies the hunters claimed for their magic dancer. The herd streamed through the city streets, congesting traffic and bringing the civilization overseen by the men in the tight suits and narrow ties to its knees. Those overseers perched atop their glass towers worried that the herd would soon erode the world’s faith that their glimmer held value.
Doug Stewart, who had counted those polishers who jumped to their destruction before the herd’s arrival, understood that he sought to cleanse the land of the inspiration that motivated those polishers to transform into hunters, that he strove to destroy the miracle that had set ablaze so many hearts. He couldn’t guess how he was to find a white buffalo amid such a dense herd. Yet Doug couldn’t imagine a world where the glass tower his great-grandfather erected held no value, and so he knew he had to have faith that some kind of magic, or miracle, would see him to the completion of the duty those men in the tight suits and narrow ties had assigned him.
When, and how, had his world turned so strange?
How could he possibly wield that long, feathered spear Satinka had told him must be used for the killing of that white buffalo? Doug was not an athletic man. When younger, he had never played sports with his friends. Doug’s family had never encouraged him to exercise. Time was always better served in managing the enterprise of their family’s tower, and Doug had never come to wonder if their might be a pursuit more nobler than the cultivation of glass reflection and value. Doug’s knuckles turned white as he clutched that spear in the backseat of the luxury sedan, his heart thumping as his driver cursed behind the wheel, tugging the car to the left and to the right, slamming on the brake, pressing against the gas pedal to guide the vehicle along the edges of the herd while buffalo jarred against the bumpers and covered the windshield in dust.
“Do you see anything white?” Doug asked as his eyes darted back and forth across the car’s cracked windows.
The driver grunted as the windshield wipers made another vain pass through the gathering dust. Gunfire echoed over the roof, more bullets fired into the herd by other frustrated, rival hunters.
“I can’t see much of anything for all this dirt. I don’t know how anything could be white in all of this mess. Maybe we should be looking for a buffalo that’s just a bit lighter brown than the others.”
“She told me it would be white as snow.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
Doug choked on a laugh. “Of all of this, that’s what you find hard to believe?”
“Point taken,” and the driver wrestled against the wheel and roared the engine to keep up with the thundering herd no more than several feet beyond the passenger-side window. “ Maybe the white buffalo is in the center of that herd.”
Doug grimaced as he felt the wheels bump over the curb. “Any idea how I’m supposed to get closer to the heart of that mass?”
“Oh, I’ve never been much of an idea man, Mr. Stewart. Afraid I’m only a driver.”
Doug frowned. He recognized the satisfaction in the driver’s voice. The world believed that those men of the tight suits and narrow ties sat so high upon their towers of glass reflection because of their unrivalled minds. The driver, no doubt, took a great amount of satisfaction from knowing that Doug Stewart stammered in the backseat to think of any idea he might employ in his absurd hunt. Doug knew that the driver’s heart laughed to see the fear in his face. He doubted the driver would much care if that herd should trample him. Doug doubted his peers perched upon those glass spires would much miss him if he should be lost beneath so many stampeding hooves.
“Pull the car over.”
The driver’s face turned white. “You want me to do what, Mr. Stewart?”
“I said pull over.”
Doug’s stomach rose into his throat as he stepped out of the car and felt the way the ground rumbled beneath his feet. He must’ve looked absurd as he gripped Satinka’s spear while dressed in his tight suit and his narrow tie, with the dust already gathering upon his shoulders. He must’ve looked very odd to the hunters who roared passed him as they raced their motorcycles and pickup trucks after the herd. He must’ve looked like a fool as he stood upon that sidewalk, choking in dust and holding a primitive weapon to wield against the powerful buffalo.
“Get out of here.” Doug shouted back at the sedan, and the driver didn’t hesitate to roar the engine and speed away from the billowing cloud of the herd.
Doug’s eyes widened as the herd double-backed upon itself at the end of the street, like some strange wave of fur and hides, and turned to stomp back in Doug’s direction. The hunters scrambled to steer their cars and motorcycles away from the mass, and Doug gasped as he watched a pair of men topple off of their bicycle and fall beneath the herd, whose hoofs and hides gave no indication in the least of noticing the men trampled beneath so much weight and dust.
Doug’s knees knocked, and he worried his bowels would revolt. He feared he would soon join many a lost hunter, that at the end of that day’s hunt his name would be proclaimed among the list of those lost in pursuit of the buffalo. He reached behind his back, hoping to feel the walls of a tower, against which he might press himself before closing his eyes and praying for the herd to thunder by him. But he felt nothing and realized what scant
shelter was provided by that spot where he had demanded the driver stop the vehicle.
Polish, Dust and Sparkle Page 6