River Marked

by Briggs, Patricia

  “I thought this wasn’t the rude version,” I said.

  Calvin grinned but kept going. “Beaver was the last to leave. He just barely escaped out the beast’s sphincter—and that is why the beaver’s tail is flat and has no hair.”

  I groaned.

  “At last it was only Coyote and the monster in the river, and Coyote had the upper hand.

  “‘I will let you live,’ said Coyote, ‘only if you promise never to eat anyone ever again.’ The monster promised, and Coyote let it live. The beaten river monster sank to the bottom of the Columbia and never was heard from again. The grateful people threw a feast for Coyote, and he ate twice as much as anyone else.

  “‘ Tell us,’ the people said. ‘How did you come up with such a clever plan?’

  “And Coyote forgot the promises he made because he is vain and forgetful. He claimed all the credit for rescuing the people.”

  Finished with his story, Calvin turned to look at the river devil hovering on the rock. “There’s no saying that the river devil and the monster in the Coyote story are the same beast, but I was told to tell you the story after you saw the rock.”

  “And about Benny,” Adam reminded him.

  “He’s going to be okay,” Calvin said. “Physically. The police are giving him a little bit of a bad time because he told them he doesn’t remember what happened or where his sister is, and the doctors are having trouble with figuring out what happened to his foot. But Benny’s not talking to them because it is none of their business, and they wouldn’t understand anyway.”

  Calvin leaned against the fence that protected the petroglyphs. He looked at us. “I don’t see what this has to do with you. Why my uncle and my grandfather think it has anything to do with you. I mean, I understand why he thinks you won’t run away from the crazies when we start talking river monsters that eat people. But why is it your business?”

  “Good question,” I agreed. “I’d be happy if someone had some answers.”

  “Tell us about Benny,” said Adam, who was used to taking responsibility for the world on his broad shoulders. If there was a problem, and he thought he could help, he would.

  Calvin looked at him as if he were seeing him for the first time. Maybe he heard Adam’s willingness to put his life on the line for a bunch of people he didn’t know, too. After an awkwardly long moment, he said, “Benny told my uncle that he and Faith were out fishing, like they do a couple of times a month in the summer. They’d caught a couple of fish yesterday and were about ready to pack it in when something hit Faith’s line hard enough that she thought they’d snagged some garbage. She could have just cut the line, but she and Benny, they’re good folk. They don’t like leaving hooks and line in the river if they don’t have to.”

  A truck was pulling into the parking lot next to Adam’s. It was battered and sported three colors in addition to the bright orange primer, and its motor purred like a happy lion.

  “My uncle,” said Calvin unnecessarily, since we could all see him getting out of the truck. “So maybe all of us will get some answers.”

  Adam glanced over his shoulder, then looked at Calvin. “So what did Faith do?”

  Calvin, like most people, obeyed Adam’s tone of voice without even thinking about it and continued the story as his uncle approached. “She reeled it in, and the line kept coming. She leaned over the boat. Benny, he was leaning the other way to keep the boat from tipping, so he couldn’t see what she did. But she said—”

  “‘There’s something funny on the line, Benny. It looks like tentacles. What do you suppose . . .’” Jim let his voice trail off, and then he said matter-of-factly, “And the next thing Benny knows, Faith is in the water. He jumps in after her, and something bumps his leg—he figures that was when his foot went. The water started frothing, and he got the impression that there was something really big in the water. Faith came up to the surface, and he grabbed her in one arm and grabbed a gunnel of the boat in the other. She opened her eyes, and says to him, ‘It’s so peaceful here,’ then her eyes go fixed. Benny, he’s seen people die before, so he knows she’s gone. About that time, he realizes that there isn’t any of her below her rib cage. So he makes the smart decision and drops her body so he can vault into the boat. He lies down on the bottom and feels something that bumps and bobs his boat all over the place. He’s gone shark fishing in the ocean, and he said it felt like when there’s a fish out there a lot bigger than your boat. At some point he passed out and woke up here and there until you found him.”

  Jim paused and looked at Adam and me. “After I heard his story, I called in Gordon Seeker because he knows more about this kind of stuff than anyone I know. He listened to Benny’s story and decided nothing would do but that he go down to that new campground and check out the werewolf. Whatever he found in your trailer made him believe that you are right in the middle of it. Part of it seems to be that you”—he centered his gaze on me—“are river marked now. Whatever that means.”

  He didn’t sound nearly as friendly as he had last night. But that seemed only natural. For all that he was human, and his cheerful manner was out there for all to see, Jim Alvin had all the hallmarks of an alpha, and we were intruders in his territory.

  “So,” he said heavily, “now you know what we know. What do you know?”

  “We told Calvin a few things,” said Adam. “Why don’t you give Mercy and me a little time to sort out what we know, and we’ll do the same. We have food enough for an army. Get Gordon and whoever else you think might need to know and come down to our campsite in two hours. We’ll feed you and talk.”

  WHEN WE WERE DRIVING BACK TO CAMP, ADAM SAID, “Did I read you wrong, or do you know more than I do about this?”

  “I think knowing more might be a misnomer,” I said. “Maybe I have a better handle on the scope of the questions?”

  He made a noise halfway between a grunt and a growl.

  For thirty-odd years, I’d been alone. For a season, I belonged to Adam and he to me. Sometimes the relief of it was almost more than I could bear.

  “The woman I saw at the museum and at Horsethief Lake, I suspect is Faith, Benny’s sister. She could, I suppose, be a random ghost, but she seems too interested in us not to be connected to us in some fashion. Benny’s sister is the best candidate. I’ll ask for a description of her before I tell them—if you think I ought. The only thing knowing who she is might do for them is confirm that she is dead, but I think Benny’s story is clear enough.”

  “I agree,” Adam said. “Probably, if she doesn’t reappear, there’s no reason to bring her up.”

  “Besides,” I said, looking out of the truck at the small orchard we were passing because I didn’t want Adam to see my face, “if they have a walker, he’ll be able to see her just fine, and she can talk to him.”

  But Adam knew me, and he put a hand on my knee. “Gordon is probably a walker.”

  “Right,” I agreed.

  “And he knew about you before he came into our camp. He just didn’t know that you were going to be with me until he saw you.”

  “Yep,” I agreed. The river had a scattering of fishing boats that were dwarfed by a pair of barges traveling upstream.

  “They left you to be raised by a wolf pack,” he said. “Their loss. Would you rather have had them, or Bran and his pack?”

  He wore the pair of dark sunglasses that he sometimes did while driving. He used to wear them more often when the wolves were still trying to hide what they were. And his face was as bland as his voice.

  “You have an irritating way of pointing out the obvious,” I told him, touching his arm to let him know I was teasing. One of my favorite things about being mated and now married was that I got to touch him whenever I wanted to—and the more I touched, the more I wanted to.

  “Good that you find it obvious,” he said. “Maybe Gordon and the other walkers had their reasons for staying away, but it doesn’t matter anymore. Who do you think is the second walker, the hawk? Is i
t Jim?”

  “Could be,” I said, thinking hard. “But I don’t have any medicine-magic, almost the opposite, because magic doesn’t work on me like it does everyone else. I suppose he could be two things at once. It could also be someone we haven’t met as a human yet.”

  “What bothered you so much about the river-devil petroglyph?” He made the turn into the campground and swiped the card on the box that opened the gate. “All I caught was your shock. I couldn’t pick up anything else.”

  “Remember that nightmare I had on the way to Horsethief Lake?” I said. “I saw something that could have inspired a drawing like that.” And I told him what I remembered of the dream.

  By the time I’d finished, we were at our campsite. Adam didn’t say anything for a while, and I helped him set up to feed an unknown number of people.

  “Do you often have dreams like that? About people you don’t know?”

  “No,” I told him. “Usually the people I do know are sufficient to spawn any number of nightmares without inventing any.”

  He stopped what he was doing and pulled out his magic phone.

  Okay, the phone isn’t magic, but it does things my computer struggles with.

  “Good,” he said. “We have a signal. What was your teacher’s name? Do you remember?”

  “Janice Lynne Morrison,” I said.

  He glanced at me, a little surprised by my ready answer. I had trouble remembering the names of people I should know. An unfortunate number of my customers were known to Zee and me as Yellow-Spotted Bug or Blue Bus. I’ve had to check my paperwork to make certain of the names of people I’d known for years.

  I shrugged. “Horror has a way of making things stick.”

  He tapped into his magic phone for a while. If I had a phone that complicated, I’d have to bring Jesse along to run the damned thing.

  “There’s a Janice Lynne Morrison who teaches third grade at a school in Tigard, one of the Portland suburbs,” Adam said with a frown. He turned the phone so I could see its screen. The face that looked back at me was grainy and too formal.

  “That’s her,” I said, my heart sinking to my feet. “What am I doing dreaming about real people, Adam? What am I doing dreaming about their deaths?” I gripped his wrist because I needed to hold on to something solid. “Is it a true dream? I don’t do true dreaming. Did I see the future, so I should warn her somehow?” I knew I was babbling, but this was Adam I was babbling to. He didn’t mind and wouldn’t think I actually expected him to have an answer.

  He tucked his phone away with his free hand and let me hold on as tightly as I needed to.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “But we’ll find out. Warning her without more information won’t help, either. People don’t tend to take warnings about monsters who are going to eat them very seriously. Especially when they come from total strangers.”

  “This is true,” said Gordon heavily as he walked around the end of the trailer. “It is why those who know things must sound mysterious. It is like fishing. The mystery the bait, the truth the hook—which is why it sometimes hurts.”

  “The fish ends up dead,” I said dryly.

  “Not the ending we are hoping for,” Gordon said with a sigh. “But always a possibility.” Today he wore jeans and a Dresden Dolls T-shirt.

  He looked at me. “Who was your father, Mercedes Thompson?”

  “Hauptman,” said Adam coolly. “Mercedes Athena Thompson Hauptman.”

  “Joe Old Coyote,” I said, leaning against Adam a little and relaxing my grip on his arm, both signals that I was okay, and he needed to ease up the protection deal, as much as I appreciated it.

  “Ayah,” said Gordon. “Killed by a car wreck and finished off by vampires. I told him he drove that thing too fast, but he seldom listened to good advice. Do you know who your father was?”

  “Just hit me on the head and put me in your basket with the rest of the dead trout,” I told him. “Get to the point.”

  He smiled at me.

  “Some people like fishing,” said Adam dryly. “Necessary or not.”

  Gordon laughed. He had a good laugh. “I do. That I do. Still, sometimes in the struggle much is gained that would not be otherwise.” Then the amusement faded out of his face. “Sometimes the fish gets hurt. I will tell you a story while you get ready to feed the people who are coming. There will be just three more in addition to those of us who are here.” He smiled at my frown. “I am an old man. And old men get to act mysterious. I talked to Jim about ten minutes ago. He and the Owens brothers are coming. Calvin has been set to watch at the hospital, where Benny is showing signs of not being as well as they previously thought. He keeps trying to get out of bed, and they have had to restrain him.”

  I thought of the way Janice Morrison, whom I would never meet, had walked willingly into the river with her struggling children.

  “What do you know of how those who are like you came to be, Mercy?” Gordon asked.

  “I don’t, much.”

  Adam encompassed us both with a single sharp look, then went to the campsite grill and stuffed newspaper and charcoal into the charcoal chimney. He granted us the illusion of privacy because Gordon obviously wanted to talk to me—but he would listen.

  It made me itch, that protective streak of his. But one of the things the past few months had taught me was that it ran both ways. Anyone who tried to hurt my wolf had me to deal with. I might be a thirty-five-pound coyote, but I played dirty.

  Gordon grunted in approval. “One time before this, Coyote came upon a village where the chief had a beautiful daughter. Coyote disguised himself as a handsome young hunter. He killed a deer, slung it over his shoulders, and took it to the chief as a gift. ‘Chief,’ he said, ‘let me court your daughter for my wife.’ ”

  “Is this the polite version?” I asked dryly.

  Gordon displayed his missing front tooth but didn’t slow down his retelling. “The chief didn’t know it was Coyote who looked at his daughter. ‘Hunter,’ said the chief, ‘you can court her, but my daughter chooses her own husband.’

  “So Coyote began to court the chief’s daughter. He brought her fresh meat, tanned hides, and beautiful flowers. She thanked him for each of his gifts. Finally, Coyote went to her father, and said, ‘What gift can I bring her that would impress her enough to take me as her husband?’

  “‘Ask my daughter,’ said the chief.

  “So Coyote the Hunter went to the daughter and asked her what gift she wanted most of all.

  “‘I would most like a pool of quiet water where I could bathe in private,’ she told him.

  “So Coyote, he went out to a quiet place in the woods, and he built her a pool at the base of a waterfall. He diverted a stream so that it flowed down the fall and into the pool. When the chief’s daughter saw the pool, she agreed to marry Coyote—still in his guise as a hunter. She welcomed him to her pool, and they laughed and played in it until the woods rang with their happiness.” The old man paused. “I think that is enough of the story. It ends tragically, as it usually does when two such different people love each other.” There was a sharpness to his tone as he said the last sentence that made it obvious he wasn’t just talking about Coyote and the chief’s daughter.

  I frowned at him. “Lots of people who have more influence over both of us than you do have made that observation. We didn’t listen to them, either.”

  “Is it the werewolf or the Anglo that bothers you?” asked Adam, bringing a bag of premade hamburger patties out of the trailer. Other than his question, he didn’t pay any attention to us as he passed by on the way to the grill.

  “Wolves eat coyotes,” Gordon said, but from his body language, I could tell that our marriage really didn’t bother him one way or the other; he just enjoyed stirring the pot.

  If he weren’t an old man, I had some rude things I could have said to that.

  “Yes,” observed Adam blandly. “I do.”

  Yep. That was the one that came to mind. And he didn
’t even blush when he said it. Maybe Gordon would miss the double entendre. But he grinned cheerfully at Adam.

  “Do you know,” I said casually, “that the Blackfeet tell Old Man stories and not Coyote stories? The Lakota’s trickster is Iktomi—the spider—though he tends to land more on the side of evil than simple chaos.”

  The old man smiled slyly. “That’s because Coyote goes in many guises. And”—he shook a hand at me—“chaos is never simple unless you are Coyote.”

  “So what did the story have to do with me?” I asked, not really expecting an answer.

  “The chief’s daughter, who was, for a while, Coyote’s wife, had a daughter—and she could walk as coyote or human, as could her sons.”

  “So I am descended from Coyote—and that red-tailed hawk we saw at Horsethief Lake”—I somehow didn’t doubt that Gordon knew about it—“is descended from Hawk.”

  “Ayah,” he said. “A walker”—he gave a studied emphasis on the only term I knew for what I was; “avatar” sounded like something that should be running around an Internet multiplayer game or covered with blue paint and CGI’d into a movie—“is descended from one of these matings of mortal to immortal. But it has been a long time since they walked so freely among us, and for many years now the only way one is born is for both parents to be descended from such a coupling.”

  “Which is why Calvin was so certain I couldn’t be a walker,” I said. “My mother, as far as I know, is Western European—mostly German and Irish in descent.”

  “Ayah,” agreed Gordon. “I do not doubt it. Which is why I ask you, do you know who your father was?”

  I heard what he wanted me to. I didn’t know why he’d decided to play games with me, but I was done. My father had nothing to do with whatever it was that had attacked poor Benny and his sister. Gordon Seeker, whatever he was, was nothing to me.

  “He was a rodeo cowboy,” I said. If I’d been in coyote form, I’d have had my ears pinned back. “He rode bulls and was moderately good at it. My mother was riding her friend’s horse and trying to win enough money to survive. He gave her a place to stay for a while. He was killed in a car wreck before my mother even knew she was pregnant with me.”