“Sure there is. It was in all the local papers. They found it round about two years ago, when they were digging the tunnel along further. It’s only scratches. What they call picture writing.”
Harry said, “Of course. In Misquamacus’s time, it must have been still hidden under the rocks.”
“I beg your pardon?” asked the girl.
“It’s granted,” said Harry. He felt ridiculously excited. For the first time since he’d flown over to help Neil, he felt he was making some headway. It wasn’t much, but it was something. It was an advance against Misquamacus, instead of another terrified retreat.
“I want to ask you a favor,” he said. “I know you’re closed, and everything, but I really need to speak to Professor Thoren.”
The girl looked suspicious. “Do you know him personally? I mean, are you a friend of his, or something?”
“No, I’m not. But that picture writing he’s looking at is something my friends and I have to see.”
“Well, I’m sorry. You’ll have to come back in the morning.”
Harry gave the girl his deepest, most sincere expression, the expression he reserved for elderly lady clients who threatened to cross his palm with insufficient silver.
“You have to believe me,” he said, “this is the most important thing in my whole life.
I’ve been searching for ten years to see picture writing like this. Across Alaska. Down through Arizona. Everywhere. Ten years of hardship and struggle. And you’re telling me to come back in the morning?”
The girl frowned at him, sympathetic but confused. “Well, I guess you could take a quick look,” she told him. “But you’d have to pay the regular admission.”
“I’ll do it,” said Harry. “And I’ll pay for my friends, too.”
“Friends?” she queried, but he was already peeling off six dollars.
Once the girl had reluctantly handed over three tickets, Harry walked quickly back to the pickup and rapped on the window. Neil and Singing Rock had been listening to the radio news, and they hushed him for a ‘* moment. Then, when the news — was over, Singing Rock said, “They tried to get to the bus with half-a-dozen specially trained men. As far as they can tell, all six of them were struck down and killed.
They’re just lying in the road.”
Neil said, “It sounds hopeless. How the hell can we fight against something as powerful as that?”
“I think I’ve got a clue,” said Harry. “There’s a Professor Thoren working up here, translating some Indian picture writing they found on a petrified tree about two years ago. Apparently it was all in the papers when they discovered it, but I don’t remember reading it myself. Mind you-that was before I met Misquamacus. I wasn’t much interested in Indians then.”
“But Misquamacus said the writing was still hidden,” said Neil.
“What did he know?” asked Harry. “I don’t suppose they get the San Francisco Examiner in the great eut-side. And this petrified forest was only discovered around 1860, after his last reincarnation.”
“How do you know that?” asked Singing Rock.
Harry turned and pointed. “It’s painted on a sign right up on that tree over there. I thought Indians were supposed to have sharp eyes.”
Singing Rock grunted in amusement. Then he climbed out of the pickup, and the three of them walked through the turnstile, under the shade of an ancient oak, into the park itself.
To reach the Tunnel Tree, they had to walk around a sloping path, up past a hilly meadow, and along the edge of a ridge. It was silent in the forest, except for the rustling of leaves and the scurrying of squirrels, and then- footsteps sounded loud on the dry, leaf-strewn ground. Neil had brought along the flashlight from the pickup, but the woods were still dark and shadowy under the cloudy sky.
Halfway along the ridge, they came to an enormous fallen redwood, fenced off with chain link. Neil shined his torch on it, and the wood glistened and sparkled. Like all the petrified trees in the forest, it had been infiltrated with silicas from volcanic lava, which had turned it gradually into stone. The massive trunk, over four feet across and hundreds of feet long, disappeared into the rocky hillside, and beside it ran a narrow tunnel cut into the limestone and shored up with planks.
From within the tunnel, they could see lights.
“Okay,” said Harry. “I think I’d better lead the way.”
They entered the tunnel, heads bent, and walked along the boarded floor until they reached the end. There, sitting on a campstool in front of the petrified tree, with a battery of flashlights and cameras and drawing equipment, was a middle-aged man in jeans and a lumberjack shirt, peering closely at the bark through magnifying spectacles.
Harry stood beside him and waited. But the professor was so engrossed in what he was doing that he stayed where he was, his head bent, his heavy eyebrows drawn
‘together like aggressive caterpillars, his hairy hand poised to draw a line of India ink on his drawing pad.
It was clammy and warm in the tunnel, and Harry tugged at his collar.
“Excuse me,” he said. “Are you Professor Thoren?”
The professor’s body flinched. Then, very slowly, he sat back on his campstool and turned toward them. His eyes were so grossly enlarged by his magnifying lenses that Harry felt a ridiculous momentary shock. But the professor took the glasses off, and replaced them with a pair of normal eyeglasses.
“Do you have any idea of the concentration it takes to make sense of these hieroglyphs?” he said, in a deep, New England accent.
Harry grinned and shrugged, and the professor sighed, “No, you obviously wouldn’t.
But your interruption, let me assure you, has cost me two hours’ train of thought.”
Singing Rock said, “We wouldn’t have interrupted you at all, professor, but it’s desperately urgent. Many lives are at stake.”
“Urgent?” queried Professor Thoren. “How can anything to do with these hieroglyphs be urgent! They’ve been here for two thousand years, or even longer. This tree has lain here for six million years. In this sort of business, nothing is ever urgent. How can it be?”
Singing Rock said, “I can’t explain, professor, and I think if I did you would find the situation too difficult to grasp. But I must assure you that we are serious, that we are perfectly sane, and that we must know urgently what it says in that prophecy.”
Professor Thoren looked at Singing Rock carefully. “You’re an Indian, aren’t you?
This is nothing to do with Indian rights, is it? Nothing to do with that Wounded Knee business?”
“I was there, at Wounded Knee, advising and helping,” said Singing Rock. “But this particular problem has nothing to do with it whatever. This is a problem of Indian magic.”
Professor Thoren got up off his campstool and folded it away. He was a tall, broad-faced man, and he had to stoop inside the confines of the tunnel. He said, “What makes you think these hieroglyphs are a prophecy? Do you know anything about them?”
“Nothing at all,” said Singing Rock. “But they were mentioned in the context of an Indian legend.”
“Well, you surprise me,” Professor Thoren told him. “I thought I knew all the Indian legends there are to know. But nobody’s ever mentioned to me that this could be a prophecy, and I’m only just beginning to come around to believeing it could be some kind of mystical prediction myself. Either you know something I don’t know, or else you’re way ahead of me.”
“Let’s just say we have inside information,” said Harry uncomfortably. He didn’t like runnels much, they gave him claustrophobia, and he was praying that Professor Thoren would finish saying what he had to say and let them get out.
The professor looked at him quizzically. “Inside information? It sounds as if you heard it from Gitche Manitou himself.”
“Not quite,” said Harry. “But near enough. You know how these manitous gossip.”
Neil said, “Professor Thoren, I have an eight-year-old son. He’s in terrible danger right now,
and these men are trying to save his life. If you could see your way clear to cooperating with them-well, I’d appreciate it.”
Professor Thoren looked at their faces in the lamplight. Then he said, “I suppose I’ve heard of nuttier things. What do you want to know?”
Harry pointed to the hieroglyphs scratched on the rock-hard surface of the giant redwood. “Do you know, basically, what all of this means?” he asked the professor.
The professor ran his fingers over the lines of hieroglyphic script. There were triangles, curves, figures that looked like birds, circles, and dots. He said, “Basically, I suppose I do. I’ve translated it into literal English. The hieroglyphs are remarkably close to the inscriptions found on ancient stones in New England and middle America. I don’t know who carved them, or why, or even how, because this petrified tree is as hard as anything you’ll ever find. But it must have been an important message, because somebody took a lot of trouble to make sure it was preserved. It could have been here for two thousand years, or maybe a hell of a lot longer. It comes right out of the ancient past, right out of a time when this land was Indian country, all the way from the east coast to the west.”
He glanced up at Singing Rock. “I don’t particularly sympathize with Indians who want to change things back the way they were,” he said. “But I know what you probably feel about America. If it had once been my country, I’d feel the same way.”
Harry took out a handkerchief and mopped his face and neck. The tunnel seemed closer and hotter than ever, and quite apart from that, it was almost six-thirty, and there wasn’t much time left before the moon rose.
“Professor Thoren?” he said. “The translation?”
“Well, I don’t know how it’s going to help you,” shrugged the professor. “But here it is.
The first hieroglyph here is a kind of opening announcement. You could almost say it means ‘Now hear this.’ But the rest of it reads: ‘After the days when the greatest of the chiefs has passed beyond, and after the days when all the lands and the beasts that run on the land have been lost, then the magicians outside shall wait for nine hundred ninety-nine moons in darkness, until the day of the invisible stars, when they shall unite and call down Pa-la-kai and Nashuna and Coyote, the terrible ravager, and also call upon Ossadagowah, son of Sadogowah, and those outside who are in no human shape.’ ”
Professor Thoren paused, and looked up. “I don’t suppose it makes any sense to you so far,” he said. “But I can explain it if you want.”
Harry, pale-faced and sweating, shook his head. “We know what it means, professor.
Just get on with it.”
Professor Thoren was about to say something, but then he assumed a resigned face and turned back to the petrified tree. “Okay. Right here, on the sixth line, it says: ‘The wonder-workers shall take their due for the stealing of their lands and the beasts that run thereon, etcetera, and they shall also raise for this purpose that *which sleeps below the surface of the waters and which has been waiting since elder times.”
He looked up. “There is no corresponding word in the English language for that which sleeps below the surface of the waters, although it’s represented here by just one glyph. It doesn’t mean a fish, or a prehistoric monster, or anything like that. If you translated every nuance of this character, it actually means ‘the great and feared god of ancient times who was banished below the waves and has been dreaming ever since of his return to the shores of earth.’ ”
Singing Rock’s face was strained. He said, “Is there any more?”
Professor Thoren frowned. “You really take this seriously, don’t you? You’re not kidding around.”
“Professor,” insisted Singing Rock, “can you please tell me if there’s any more?”
“There’s one more line,” said the professor. “It says something like: ‘That which sleeps below the surface of the waters shall rise on that day on the bidding of Ossadagowah, and the massacre of the thousands shall begin.’ The word they’ve used here for ‘massacre’ could mean ‘butchery’ or ‘dismemberment.’ It’s a very ancient glyph which was often used to describe sacrificial rituals.”
Singing Rock was silent for a while. He seemed to be searching deep down inside of himself for something he had heard years and years before, from the lips of the medicine men who had taught him when he was young. Professor Thoren glanced at Harry inquiringly, but all Harry could do was shrug.
At last, Singing Rock said, “Professor, I think we have to leave now. I’m very glad we found you here, and I want to apologize for sounding so abrupt and demanding.
You’ve been most helpful.”
“Hold up,” said Professor Thoren. “You can’t just waltz in here and take a whole year’s work and then waltz out again without offering something in return.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Singing Rock, and he reached into his coat pocket. “Would an ounce of chewing tobacco do?”
“Mister,” said Professor Thoren impatiently, “what I’m talking about is a little cultural cross-pollination. I know what these hieroglyphs say but I don’t know what they mean. I’ve never heard of anything like this. You can’t simply walk out without telling me what you know about it.”;
“Professor,” responded Singing Rock seriously, “the reason you don’t know what they mean is because of all Red Indian legends this is the most feared and the most secret. It is the legend of the greatest of the elder gods and it has been kept from the white man for centuries, because of what the white man might unwittingly raise up if he spoke the sacred spells.”
“You believe this?” asked Professor Thoren. “You actually believe that if the spells were cast, you’d raise up some kind of ancient god?”
Singing Rock stared at him defiantly. Then, in a slow voice that was rich with dignity, he said, “Yes, professor, I believe it. I believe in the gods because they have often come to my aid when I was weak and uncertain. I believe in the gods because they still live and breathe and speak to me from the lands that once belonged to my people. I believe in the gods because they will care for my manitou when I pass to the great outside.”
“Very well,” said Professor Thoren, a little abashed. “Then what god is this, the one who sleeps below the waves?”
“There are many stories about him,” said Singing Rock. “He was said to be cloudy and amorphous, and sometimes to be of such a size that he would tower over the earth. His face was a hellish confusion of serpents, and his jaws were like a chasm.
So the stories say, anyway.”
“He sounds pretty alarming. Who managed to banish him below the waves? It must have been someone with real magical talent.”
“It was,” agreed Singing Rock. “But in those days, almost every Indian wonderworker was amazingly powerful. It was said that many of them could juggle with miniature suns, and cross the waters without a canoe. The wonder-worker who banished this particular god, though, was the greatest of all the wonder-workers.
It was Misquamacus, sometimes known as Quamis, or Quanquus. The stories say that Misquamacus dismissed him below the waters of the earth and placed a spell on the waters so that the god could never emerge again through the watery portal into the world of humans. He couldn’t send the god back to the great outside, of course.
Gods of that magnitude will only return of their own free will. But Misquamacus protected his people sufficiently well for them to flourish and grow, without being molested for human sacrifices or massacred as they slept.”
“But it says here that the god is going to be raised again,” Professor Thoren pointed out. “If he preyed on red men as well as white men, why would the wonderworkers want to do that?”
“A god who is released from a spell bears a debt of gratitude to those who let him out,” said Singing Rock. “That is part of the exact balance of Indian magic.”
“Even if whoever lets him out is the same person who put him under the spell in the first place?” asked Harry.
“It makes no
difference,” nodded Singing Rock. “You see, the god wouldn’t have been put under the spell at all if he hadn’t been savaging or frightening the wonderworker’s people, and so the balance would be maintained.”
Professor Thoren said, “Does this elder god have a name? Something I might recognize?”
“Most of the elder gods have hundreds of names,” said Singing Rock. “The Natick Indians of Boston used to call this god Paukunnawaw, the Great Bear, because he came at night like a bear and left their people hideously mauled. When Cotton Mather talked to the Na-ticks in the seventeeth century, he asked them what they knew of the stars, and they pointed up to the sky and said Paukunnawaw. Mather was delighted, because he thought the Indians miraculously knew the European name for the constellation of the Great Bear. What he didn’t realize was that they were telling him about the elder god who came from the stars and devoured them.
“Some Indians called him a long unpronounceable name which means The-Being-Without-Shape of-the-Estuaries. But I guess the most widespread name was Ka-tua-la-hu. It’s hard to tell you what it means exactly, just like those hieroglyphs are hard to translate. The Sioux say it means ‘he who lurks in the deepest lakes.’
Harry said, “I think I’m going to go for some fresh air. This is like holding a seminar in a subway train.”
Neil chimed in, ‘I’ll join you.”
Singing Rock held out his hand to Professor Thoren. “I must leave, too. We have a crisis on our hands tonight. But please understand how much you have helped us.
When this is finished, we will return, if that is possible, and I will tell you everything I know of Ka-tua-la-hu. You deserve to know.”
Professor Thoren gave a lopsided smile. “From what you say about him, I don’t know whether I do.”
They shook hands, and then Singing Rock turned and made his way back along the lighted tunnel into the darkness of the Petrified Forest.
“Well?” said Harry, as he emerged.
“It’s much worse than I thought,” said Singing Rock. “Ka-tua-la-hu was always the most grotesque and bloodthirsty of the elder gods. He was so feared that his name outlived the religion itself, and you can still hear some of the coastal Indians call someone they fear ‘a ka-tua.’”
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