by James Axler
Jak was puzzled. Without his jacket, where could he keep a knife? Twisting his head back, he nuzzled in his fur. There, halfway down his back, was a knife. He was sure he would have felt it when he fell, but…Pulling it out with his teeth, he found that it was not one of the leaf-bladed knives, but a more ornate blade, with a carved bone handle. He laid it down in front of the stone.
“Now go, young coyote, and feast.”
Jak left the stone and set off in the direction he had been instructed. Was it his imagination, or had the stone sounded like Doc? But how could that be? Doc was not here. Like walking on two legs, he was something that seemed to be a dream.
After some time, Jak came to the hill. Breasting it, he saw the village on the other side. The earth lodges and wigwams were richly decorated. Cured meat was hung out to dry in the sun. As he approached, he was greeted by tribesmen who recognized in him a hunter of great repute. The stone had not lied. He was revered and welcomed here.
Sitting to feast with the tribe, he tore with his teeth at the meat that was offered to him. It tasted good and filled his belly. Yet he was aware that he could not eat with the speed of the men around him. They were paring at the meat with knives. Ornate, beautifully carved knives like the one that he had given to the stone.
“Wait. Thankful for meat. Must do something important, but back soon.”
Jak left the puzzled men and ran back, away from the village, and toward the stone. Why had he given the knife to a stone that could have no use for it? It would, at least, be performing its intended function if he took it back.
Reaching the stone, he took the knife in his teeth, from the place where he had left it, and placed it back in his fur, from whence it had come.
“Forgive, Grandfather, but have need.”
The stone was furious. “Do not take back that which is given freely and as a gift. Disrespect to the spirits. If you have no respect for them, then they cannot be of aid to you.”
“Spirits cannot fill belly,” Jak said as he began to run back toward the village.
He thought it was over. He had taken back the knife. He did not expect to hear the stone rise up from the earth and begin to follow him, yelling curses as it came after him.
Jak knew that he could not lead the stone back to the village. Not because he wanted to spare the villagers, but because he did not wish to be dishonored in their eyes. Even as he turned and ran in the opposite direction, away from the hill, he knew that there was something wrong in this notion.
But right now he did not have time to consider this. The stone moved fast, though how it traveled he could not tell. He knew only that it seemed to be gaining on him. So he pushed himself harder, running until he felt that his lungs would burst and his legs would go skittering from beneath him.
He came upon some caves, where bears were sitting in the shadows. Breathlessly he yelled at them as he approached, pleading for their help as he knew he could not best the stone on his own.
“Keep on running, coyote,” one of the bears yelled back. “We do not want anything to do with the stone. We will not offend the Grandfather.”
Cursing them, Jak kept running. He passed a group of trees where mountain lions idled in the branches, awaiting the arrival of prey. Normally, he would have considered himself to be fair game for them; but they did not move from their perches. He called up to them, pleading for assistance.
“Keep on running, coyote,” yelled one of them in return. “We will not interfere with the wishes of the Grandfather. The stone will do what it must with you, and that is the way it should be.”
Yelling curses back at them, Jak kept on running, aware all the time that the stone was gaining on him. It called out to him in a voice that seemed to grow louder and more resonant with each call.
Ahead of him, on the plains, buffalo grazed peacefully. Jak ran for them, screaming for their help. Normally they would scatter from him; this time he hoped they would rally to him. But they did neither. Instead they stood calmly and peacefully, allowing him to run through them, and allowing the stone to follow.
“Keep running. Away from us, for we have no wish to argue with stone,” one of the buffalo cried.
Jak would have cursed, but he was short of breath. It seemed as though his time was now up.
But yet there was the promise of salvation. A flock of Bull-Bats, not normally seen at this time, flew overhead.
“Hide, coyote, and we will help you,” one of them cried down to him. Jak did not look up, nor look back. He was just grateful for their aid. His eyes searched rapidly for a place to hide, and seeing a small crevice in a group of stones, he dived into it, squeezing himself into the dark place.
Outside, the Bull-Bats swooped, with each pass unleashing wave upon wave of guano on the stone. The acid guano hit with force, chipping at the stone, breaking off more with each revolution, until the stone rolled to a halt, nothing more than a trail of pebbles.
“Come out, coyote, all is safe,” the Bull-Bats called.
Jak emerged from his hiding place. “Grateful. Why do this?” he asked.
“Because it is funny,” one of the Bull-Bats replied. And as Jak watched in horror they swooped, gathering the pieces of the stone. Each pebble and shard was clutched in their claws and placed in a pile. The guano that had previously acted to break up the stone now became like a glue, and welded the pieces together so that the stone was once more complete.
“Did you think that anyone could help you when you have gone against the spirits?” roared the stone. “There is no escape from the path you have chosen, coyote. You made the decisions, and you must stand or fall by them.”
And the stone began to roll, coming after Jak once more. In a blind panic, fear overcoming every instinct that he usually relied upon to guide him, Jak found himself turning and running. Somewhere, deep in the recesses of his mind, he knew that this was not what he would usually do, that he would use instinct with rational thought to work out a plan that would at least give him a fighting chance. But he was not Jak the man, he was Jak the coyote, and animal fear now consumed him. Running blindly, he did not see the steep bank ahead of him. He did not think about what lay over the lipped edge. He just ran and jumped, hoping that he would be able to reach the other side.
But the bank gave way to a ravine, with a wide gap between this side and that. Jak found himself floundering in space, his momentum not enough to carry him to the far bank. Instead he began to fall, yowling in fear as he fell faster, knowing what was about to happen and yet being able to do nothing about it.
The pain as he hit the bottom was immense. Every bone broke. Nerves screamed. Organs felt bloodied and pulped as the weight and momentum of his body crushed him against the floor of the ravine.
Yet he was still alive. He could still see, hear and feel through the fog of pain. And he was aware of the rock, rolling to the edge of the ravine, far above, and hurling itself off. The Bull-Bats hovering overhead, laughing.
“This is what happens to those who try to deceive the spirits and the fates,” the rock intoned as it fell.
They were the last words Jak heard before the rock landed on him, and all went blissfully empty and black.
FOR A MOMENT, Doc felt that he was back home again. The skies were blue with a smattering of white cotton that carried none of the taint that he was now so used to; rather, it had a purity and beauty the like of which he had not seen for many a year.
The land around him, as he stopped and looked, casting a gaze all around as though seeing for the first time, was lush and verdant—pasture with grazing horse and buffalo, trees waving in a distant breeze, the speckle of faraway birds in flight. It was as though the recent times were nothing but an insane nightmare from which he just awoken, fully refreshed.
He heard a cry from behind him and turned. It was a woman’s voice, and he expected to see his beloved Emily coming toward him, perhaps with the children playing happily around.
What he saw told him that this was not real. I
t may seem that way, but it was far from being concrete and actual. Doc was familiar with hallucination and madness: so much so that he was able to almost detach a part of his fractured mind and view from two angles. So, although everything seemed to be as real and as beautiful as the world he had so long ago left behind, he knew it was artifice because of the glaring anomaly that now confronted him. It was not his Emily who came toward him, but the vacuous blond Lori Quint, whose childlike demeanor had so enchanted him until she had bought the farm, and left him alone. Like all the others.
She was not dressed as he remembered her. Gone was the miniskirt, the high boots…gone, too, was the mane of blond hair. Still the color of ripe corn, it was now hacked short. She was dressed like the Pawnee woman that he had been around until…recently? How recently? That part of Doc’s brain that could detach started to wonder what was happening to him. A curiosity that was crushed rather than piqued when he looked down at himself for the first time and realized that he was dressed not in his usual frock coat and vest, but in skins and furs. He felt the side of his head; his hair was in long braids.
Still feeling outside the situation, he yet knew that he had spent all day farming, tending to the crop that was growing around him. And that his wife—he knew somehow that Lori was his wife—had come to fetch him.
“Good day, husband?” she asked. Her voice was the same as he remembered it, but her words sounded strange and out of character.
“Tolerable,” he answered. Ah, at least he was still himself. “What have you been doing, my dear, while I have been out here?”
“I have made your meal. Also fed and tended the horse you gave to me.”
Doc was aware of an irritation as she said that. For a moment he did not know where this feeling came from; then it seemed as though he could remember. A hunt with others of the tribe, where they had tracked and killed buffalo before stopping at a waterhole on the way back to their village. At the waterhole, he had seen a horse that he desired: wild, beautiful, with a spotted pelt that was unusual. To have such a creature would mark him apart in the tribe. He had left the others to watering their horses and had approached the horse. He had expected it to bolt, but it had been calm, almost as though waiting for him.
Securing the horse had been no problem, and when he had brought it back to the wigwam in which he lived with Lori, he had given it to her as a sign of love.
They had no children, and he had given the horse almost as a way of compensating. And she, in her turn, had loved it as such.
Except that now, as he walked with her from the crop fields back to their home, he knew that he was starting to resent the time she spent tending the creature. They ate their meal in near silence, swapping few words. It was the easy silence of those who have spent long in each other’s company, and feel no need of words to communicate. Doc felt more secure.
But this changed as darkness fell and Lori said, “I must go and feed him before we settle for the night.”
He was not sure who “we” might be: Lori and himself; or Lori and the spotted horse. He said nothing, just nodded at her words. But, waiting until she had left the wigwam, he rose and followed her at a distance, making sure that she could not see or hear him.
The spotted horse was roaming free in a small enclosure at the edge of the village. He had to pass other wigwams and earth lodges in her wake, and he knew that the way she was with the horse was not just his own knowledge. The whole village would grow quiet at his approach.
Yet there was nothing that seemed amiss as he watched her from a safe distance. She called the horse to her, and it nuzzled her as she fed it from her hand. There was a strange intimacy there, but nothing that he could call amiss. When she turned back toward him, it was all he could do to stay in the shadows and reach home before her.
In what seemed like an agony of real time, Doc went through three days and nights where he toiled by day, then followed her by night. Each night was the same. He was aware that the three days was significant somehow, but it was something that seemed to be just forever out of reach.
That was driven from his mind by the events of the fourth night.
Doc followed Lori, expecting things to be as they had been on previous nights. When she reached the enclosure, however, it seemed empty. With a fear gnawing at his stomach, Doc waited while she called and whistled for the spotted horse. Then, to her obvious surprise as much as his, a man stepped from the shadows. Tall, lean and muscular, he was dressed in buffalo robes painted with pictures of a spotted horse.
For a moment Lori shied away, and Doc tensed, ready to go to her aid. But he was stayed as she leaned forward, as though in recognition.
“Do you not recognize me?” the man said in soft, honeyed tones.
“Yes,” she replied nervously, “but it cannot be.”
“It is. I have been sent to give you that for which you have craved. The barren years are over for you. You have shown me love, and I will show you in return.”
Doc watched, both horrified and fascinated. The man who was about to seduce his wife was the spotted horse he had brought back for her. How this could be, he did not know: yet he was certain.
The man dropped his robes. Naked under the light of the moon, he was finely honed and muscled. Holding out a hand, he helped Lori climb into the enclosure. He took her in his arms and kissed her. She melted into him in a manner that Doc could not recall her doing to him for many a long year.
The man undressed her until she was naked in the moonlight. He kissed her down the length of her body while she trembled in the cool night air. Then she did the same to him.
The transmuted horse-to-man laid her down in the grass, and Doc crept closer, despite himself. He watched, appalled, while the man copulated with her.
Doc did not wait to watch her rise and dress. He said nothing when she returned. He said nothing as she returned to the horse every night. It was now a horse again, and didn’t change. She tended to the horse as the seasons changed and her belly grew heavy with child. The village rejoiced that they should be blessed after so long. Doc said nothing.
Not even when she gave birth, and there, emerging from her, was not a child but a spotted foal.
She was shunned by the village, and when she had recovered from the birth, Lori fled one night, taking her foal-child with her. Doc did not see her go. He no longer lived under the same roof, and although he felt shame for what had happened, he still lived under a dark cloud. He was not shunned by his fellows, but treated rather as an unfortunate who had been tricked by evil spirits. He found this pity almost more shameful, and harder to bear than the shunning that had driven his wife from him. For, despite what had happened, he did not blame Lori. He had failed her as a husband, and blamed himself for bringing the horse back to the village.
Years passed. Doc felt as though he lived them in real time, even though a part of him couldn’t believe this was so. It was a lonely time. He didn’t feel that he could truly trust anyone after what Lori had done to him; neither did he feel comfortable with his fellow tribesmen, as they all knew his shame. His wife taken from him by spirits.
His life continued. He farmed, hunted, and somehow managed to get along with a tribe of which he no longer felt a part. But there were days when he wished that his life would just come to a close. It wasn’t that he was miserable. It was worse. It was that everything felt empty.
Then, many years after Lori had run away with her foal-child, Doc joined the warriors on a hunt. It was spring, and the buffalo and deer were moving across the plains. Those who had been following the herds had returned with tales of a strange creature they had seen, but only at a distance. It was like a horse, yet no horse they had ever seen before. With it were a small group of other horses, that seemed to be more like the norm. The herd was unusual, as they were all spotted.
Much time had passed, and the fact that these horses, and the strange creature that led them, were spotted, didn’t register as significant with many. But for Doc, it had a resonance
. It was as though this was what the Grandfather had kept him alive for: when the next hunt party sallied forth, Doc made sure that he was a part of it.
It was three days before they came upon the herd. An other two as they followed at a distance. Doc knew, as soon as he set eyes upon them: the strange creature, mostly horse but still bearing some resemblance to her former self, was Lori. Almost entirely transformed, but still with a human face, and with the breasts that he remembered so well.
He didn’t know what he would do when the time came to confront her, but as he saw her with the horses, he realized that one of them was the foal-child with whom she had fled the village. The others, he knew, were also her children by the horse-man-spirit that had caused her to flee.
The men hunted the horses, determined to take them back to the village and tame them for mounts. On the fourth day, they approached them. The horses did not bolt. To the surprise of the tribesmen, the horse-woman approached them. Doc knew her, of course, but the shock of the others as she came close enough to be recognized was unmistakable.
“You have come for me, husband?”
“No. I have come with the others to round up your children, so that they may serve us.”
“I cannot allow that. They must stay free. They are not welcome anywhere because of my shame, and the manner in which I was tricked. Even you, my husband, deserted me. And now I am this.”
Doc realized that he had felt the wronged one for years, where in truth Lori had been equally, if not more, wronged.
“Wife, I have been wrong. I should not have let you go. You should not have been left to come to this state.”
“Then do what you must,” she said simply.
Doc understood. He raised his bow, and with a clean shot pierced her breast. As she slumped, and life flowed from her, Lori returned once more to her human state, a smile upon her face.
The rest of the warriors stood back. Doc dismounted and walked toward Lori’s children. They waited until he was among them, then nestled close. In a way he could not explain, he knew that they had been waiting for him. He would atone for his desertion of their mother by caring for them. They were outcasts through no fault of their own, but he could give them a home where they would be safe and secure.