Fur Magic

by Andre Norton

  His walk became a run as he knew that he must hurry before he lost the will to go and would have to return to the jeep. He ran with his head down, his eyes on the ground, with the small brook from the spring to guide him to the larger stream.

  He was past the rock now, and the taller grass whipped against his legs. All the time he listened for that sound that the dancer made. But what he heard was just the distant call of some bird.

  Cory dodged about a tall bush and nearly fell as his toe caught against a root. He managed to keep on his feet. But that taught him caution and he slowed, made himself look around. Somehow, even though he was now away from the jeep, which had seemed the only anchor in a suddenly threatening world, he felt better. The sun was bright as well as hot and the quiet promised that perhaps the dancer was gone.

  He came out between two bushes on the stream bank and knew that chance rather than any plan of his had brought him out just across the water from the point where the buffalo had drunk. The water looked shallow. It was so clear he could see a fish below. And there were some stones in it standing dry-topped to offer a bridge.

  Cory sat down and pulled off boots and socks, wadding the socks into the boots. Gripping those in one hand, he jumped to the first of the stones. Water lapped up a little over his toes, so cold he gasped. But the next stone and the next were wholly dry. Then he was on the other side.

  There was a clay bank with tracks cutting it. He did not wait to put on his boots, but padded on, stepping gingerly as sharp bits of gravel made him hop, to look at those tracks. They had been made by hoofs, he was sure, though he was no tracker. And not too long ago. But he could not have told whether a buffalo or a steer had cut them.

  Cory sat down on a weathered log to put on his boots again. He took a long time, but at last he could stall no longer. There had been hoofed animals here, but would he find any traces of the masked dancer if he looked farther?

  He did not want to. But he got to his feet, made himself face in that direction, take one step, then another—

  The grass was so tall—Cory halted. That grass was waving, and not because of any wind. Something was moving through it towards the river, towards him! He took a step backward and his feet slipped in the clay. As he had fallen before into that crevice beside the spring, so now he went down into the river, the flood of cold water splashing up and about him as he sat in it waistdeep just below the bank.

  For a long moment he was shocked into just sitting there. Then a sound from the bank brought his attention back to the hoof-scarred rise. Yellow-brown head with sharply pricked ears, yellow eyes fast upon him, a muzzle open to show a tongue lolling from between fanged jaws—

  Cory yelled. He could not have bitten back that cry. He threw himself away from the bank and from what stood there, flopping back into the river, somehow getting to his feet and splashing on, to put the width of the water between him and that animal.

  He fought his way up the opposite bank and ran, not daring to look behind to see if that thing followed. It was no masked dancer; his glance, hurried as it had been, told him that. A wolf—a coyote—a huge four-footed hunter had stood looking down at him. The worst his imagination had pictured for him now seemed to have come alive.

  Cory’s breath whistled in gasps as he took the rise into the narrow end of the valley where the cabin stood. The phone in the cabin—what had Uncle Jasper said—that someone would come if he called?

  Water squelched in his boots, and he found that the unaccustomed high heels made it hard to balance as he fought his way up the slope. He grabbed at bushes, even at large tufts of grass, to pull himself ahead. Then he rounded the rock from which he had used the glasses, saw the cabin and the jeep ahead, and threw himself at the promised safety of both with all the strength he had left.

  But as he brought up with force against the side of the jeep, he heard the nicker of a horse. He turned his head to look wildly at the corral—Uncle Jasper—Ned—somebody—

  There was a horse standing there right enough. The vividly marked spots of an Appaloosa were half hidden by a brilliant Navajo blanket, draped over the saddle instead of under it. The horse was not tied, but stood with dangling reins.

  Cory, panting, turned his head farther. The rider of the horse rested on the beaten earth of the cabin porch. In spite of the heat of the day, he had another brightly coloured blanket folded cloakwise about his shoulders. He was sitting cross-legged and there were moccasins on his feet, the sun glinting on their beading, fringed buckskin leggings showing above them.

  The dancer?

  But when Cory looked beyond the clothing to the man’s face, he lost any certainty. He had never seen such an old man before. The dark skin covering the prominent bones was seamed with great ridges of wrinkles, the chin jutting out in a sharp curve that matched the heavy rise of the big nose above.

  Hair, grey and long, had been reinforced with bits of furred skin into braids that hung forward on the blanketed chest, each braid ending in a beaded tassel of yellowish fur. On the deeply wrinkled face were dabs of yellow-white—could it be paint?—that stood out sharply against the weathered skin.

  The eyes, which were so hidden among the wrinkles that Cory could not really see them, seemed to be turned on him. And under that regard Cory tried to pull himself together, a hot flood of shame, worse than any he had known before, flushing through him. He stood away from the jeep very conscious not only of the way he had burst into the clearing but also of his drenched clothing.

  But the old man on the porch said nothing, made no move. He must see Cory, but it was as if Cory had to make any first advance. Very hesitatingly the boy moved forward. This must be Black Elk, but what was Cory to do or say now? For want of any guide, Cory finally spoke first.

  “I am Cory Alder. Uncle Jasper—he said to phone for the jeep, for Black Elk. You are Black Elk, sir?”

  The old man did not reply and Cory stopped. He would have to walk around him to get into the cabin and phone. And supposing this was not Black Elk? How could he be sure if the old man would not answer?

  “Please,” to Cory his voice sounded very weak and unsure, “are—are you Black Elk?” It was almost, he decided, like trying to talk to Colonel Means. Only somehow this old Indian was even harder to face than Colonel Means, who had once come home with Dad.

  “Black Elk—yes.”

  Relief flooded through Cory at that answer. So he had understood! Why, then, all Cory had to do was call for the jeep, and maybe he could ride back with Black Elk and whoever drove it to the ranch, leaving a note for Uncle Jasper. That would work out all right. And he would not have to stay here any longer.

  “I’ll call the jeep from the Bar Plume.” Confidence returned and Cory started on, but a hand of brown, wrinkled skin drawn tightly over bones came from under the blanket and gestured him back.

  “No. I stay here. Eat—drink—”

  “Yes—yes, sir.” Cory looked to the seat of the jeep where he had left his lunch—how long ago?

  There were crumbs and smears on the seat, but no sandwiches. And ants were thick about a blob of spilled jelly. Had Black Elk helped himself? No, there was a piece of ragged bread on the ground between the jeep and the nearest tree, as if the food thief had been frightened off, perhaps by the coming of the Indian.

  Cory remembered the cupboard in the cabin; perhaps there was something there. At least he knew how to make coffee and fry bacon, if he could find coffee and bacon somewhere inside. He made a careful detour about the visitor, who did not move either head or body, and entered the cabin.

  To his relief there was food in the cupboard. He chose quickly: tinned corn, bacon, a tin of peaches, some coffee in a sack. Not much, but maybe enough. He returned to the open, to build up the fire and turn out bacon in the skillet he had earlier washed by the spring. He could not tell whether Black Elk was watching his every move; the old man might just have gone to sleep. But at last Cory was so intent upon his cooking that he was startled when a shadow did fall acro
ss the stone where he had set out plates, and he looked up to see the blanketed figure.

  Perhaps once Black Elk had been as tall as Uncle Jasper, now he was bent forward and the blanket fell about him in heavy folds, hiding most of his body. Cory, wiping the back of his hand across his sweaty forehead, wondered how the old Indian could wrap up so in this heat. His own clothes were almost dry now, though they felt uncomfortably wrinkled. And his wet boots pinched his feet.

  He hurried to pour out a tin cup of coffee and offer it to Black Elk. Once more that skeleton hand appeared, to accept the cup.

  “It’s pretty hot,” Cory warned. But if Black Elk understood him, it did not matter, for the old man gulped it down in two long sucks, then held the cup out for more.

  He drank the pot dry while Cory sizzled the bacon, added drained corn to the fat, and piled the result on their plates. Then he ate, not greedily, but steadily, not only the contents of the plate Cory gave him but reached out and took Cory’s portion also, while Cory was busy making more coffee.

  Then Black Elk finished by cleaning up the whole tin of peaches. Cory, licking his lips and more aware than ever of his own hunger, gathered the empty plates together and stood up, to head for the cabin and the phone.

  “No jeep now.” The old man, who had not spoken during the meal, leaned forward to face the fire now dying back into ashes. The forefront of his blanket fell open and Cory saw what must have been hidden there earlier. Held in his hands, almost as if it were a living animal that must be restrained from escape, was something Cory had seen before—the bundle of skin he had put back into the broken basket in the crevice.

  He did not know whether Black Elk heard his small gasp as he recognized it. But he was sure that the other was watching him intently for some purpose.

  “Medicine.” The old man’s voice was thin and high. “Strong medicine.” He waited as if for some comment from Cory, and minutes dragged on while Cory felt more and more uncomfortable.

  “I fell,” he said at last in a rush of words “I slipped and fell. I didn’t know that was in the hole, and I didn’t mean to break the basket—or do anything wrong!” This was like watching the masked dancer all over again, Cory thought. And he was afraid again—just as much as he had been before.

  “You held it—this medicine!”

  He thought that was meant as a question and he answered, “Yes, I didn’t mean to do anything wrong, sir! I fell, and then it was under me. I—I brought it out in the light, just to see what it was. But then I took it right back again and put it in the basket—honest, I did.”

  “You touched. Very wrong. Now must be made clean again.”

  Black Elk held the bag against his chest with his right hand. The left disappeared inside the shield of blanket, to emerge with the fingers tightened into a fist—a fist which was first shaken and then opened over the fire. He must have thrown something into the midst of the coals, Cory thought, for there was a puff of smoke that shot up and then became a column.

  “You”—Black Elk looked to Cory—“touched. Now you make clean. Take medicine bag, hold it in smoke, hold tight. You do wrong; now you do right.”

  It was an order Cory could not disobey. He came reluctantly to Black Elk, accepted the bundle, edged forward until he could hold it into the full stream of the smoke. It broke and eddied about the bundle, floating around Cory’s head. He smelled a strange scent, tried to jerk his head one way or another to rid it from his eyes and nostrils. But he could not, and the smoke grew thicker and thicker until he could see nothing at all but its billows.

  War Party Captive

  Cory blinked, and blinked again. There was still smoke before him, but it no longer filled his nose or smarted his half-blinded eyes. This vapour rose in a straight column to the sky—a signal column.

  And he had something very important to do. His hands moved and a thick branch of pine cut across that column, purposefully breaking it.

  His hands!

  But those were not hands holding the branch, those were paws—with claws and a coarse brown fur covering them! And his body—He was no longer standing on his two feet; he was squatting back on rounded haunches, his hind feet big paws with webs between the toes. Over all his body was thick fur.

  Frightened, he tried to screw his head around farther to see over his shoulder. There was a broad, flat tail lying in the dust behind, balancing him as he stood, or rather crouched, before the fire. It had no fur, but was scaled instead.

  Cory dropped the branch of pine, put his paw-hands to his face—to touch great teeth in an animal’s jaw.

  “What—”

  He had said that, but the sound in his own ears was a kind of chirp. And he was alone—no Black Elk, or cabin, or jeep, or corral, or horse. Even the valley was not the same. He was up among some rocks with a small pocket of fire before him that was again sending its unbroken thread of smoke into the sky. What had happened to him, and to the world he had known?

  Cory dropped down, to plant his forefeet against a rock. Suddenly he felt so frightened he was weak, unable to move. He shut his eyes, keeping them so with all his strength. Now, when he looked again everything would be all right—he would be safely back at the campfire. He was afraid to open his eyes, to take the chance that this was no dream but somehow real. But it could not be! It just could not be!

  At last he counted, to fifty, to one hundred, to one hundred and fifty, telling himself each time that when he reached the last number he would look. At two hundred he fought his fear to the point where he could open his eyes.

  There was the same rock before him, and the two furred paws resting against it. If this was a dream it still continued. A scream was in Cory’s throat, but the sound he uttered was not a boy’s cry; it was a guttural animal noise.

  Bracing himself back on those forepaws, he tried to look about him once more for some clue as to what had happened. Staring down at his plump body, he noticed for the first time that there were things that did not belong to an animal. He was wearing a band of skin that crossed from one shoulder to under the opposite foreleg. It was covered with small, overlapping scales that glittered in the sun, and it supported a kind of box made from a pair of shells fitted together. In addition, from the outer edge of the shell container dangled short strings of colourful seeds.

  By the fire was a pile of pieces of wood, all showing marks, not of an axe, but of having been gnawed to the proper length. And by them was a spear with a wooden haft and a point of bone, sharp and dangerous looking.

  That, too, was ornamented below its head with some small shells threaded on bits of grass or reed. When Cory reached for it, he discovered it was just the right length and shape for his paw to grasp easily. It must be a weapon intended for this animal body to use.

  But whose body? Not his!

  Once more fear churned in him and he wanted to run as he had from the river when the coyote had stood on the bank watching him.

  River—water—He must have water! That was safe, a place to hide. Water!

  Cory, still holding the spear in his paw, turned away from the signal fire, padding around the pocket among the rocks, hunting an open way through which he could reach the safety of the river. He did not know how he was so sure that it was near him; he was just certain that it was and that he must reach it soon, or a greater danger than any he had yet faced would catch up with him.

  He found at last the narrow space that formed a gateway, and scrambled through. He discovered now, somewhat to his surprise, that he did not naturally walk four-footed as his animal body might suggest was the proper way to travel, but that he stumped along on his hind legs, his heavy tail held a little aloft to keep it from dragging, though now and then it thumped against the ground.

  Certainly the brush and scattered trees were all much taller than he remembered. Or was it that he was smaller? But he was following a trail in the earth which bore the print of many paws and hoofs which led down the slope.

  Water—He could smell it! Cory’s sh
uffle became what was for this new body a high burst of speed. Smell water? asked one part of his mind. You cannot smell water. You can hear it, see it, taste it, but not smell it. Yes, you smell it, replied this new body firmly.

  The trail led to water and seeing that before him, Cory’s new body took command, plunging him forward in a dive. Then he was swimming effortlessly under the surface with more speed and ease than he had known in travel ashore. The feeling of danger was easing. He broke surface again and climbed out where a small side eddy of stream formed a pool in a hollow, the surface of which was troubled only by the skating progress of water insects and the occasional bubble blowing of some underwater dweller.

  The pool provided a mirror for Cory to see himself.

  “Beaver!” Again the word emerged as only a chitter of noise, which he understood. He leaned closer, straining to see, to know that this was indeed what he had become.

  Beaver, yes, but Cory’s zoo-remembered image did not quite match the reflection in the water. Gauging his size by the trees and the rocks, while he was smaller than the boy Cory Alder, he was still about twice the size of the beavers he had seen at the zoo. And in addition to the skin strip with the shell box, he wore several strings of small shells and coloured seeds fastened around his thick neck, while on top of his head was a net of them anchored by his small ears. His eyes were ringed with circles of yellow, undoubtedly paint—though why had that not washed off in the water?

  He laid down the spear, which he had carried without being really aware of it all through his swim across the river. Using his claws as wedges, Cory pried open the shell case. There was charred moss inside, and from it the smell of burning, around a small coal. He snapped the shell shut again. So he was a beaver, but one who was armed with a spear, carried fire, and wore paint and strings of beads. How—and why?

  The Old People! The story Uncle Jasper had told—about the animal people and the Changer. Animals who had held the world before the white man or even the Indian—who had lived in tribes, gone on the warpath, hunted, and—