Ruth looked at him like he was crazy. Me, I was more inclined to pity. He found something he shouldn’t have, like so many people the girls met on Sabina’s missions. But I wasn’t going to let pity stop me.
“Show her to us,” I said.
“I…” he finally looked up, looked me in the eyes. “Those other men, they found her. Tracked us all the way to the cave.”
“Oh, I’ve seen things far worse than that,” I said. “Come on.”
* * *
I wasn’t telling the truth, not then, probably not ever.
I heard her speaking when we came in sight of the cave cut in the hillside, though “hear” isn’t the right word for it. More, a thickness to the air, a current of textures and colours. The relief that passed over Jack’s face made me twice as wary. Coming closer, I saw in the darkness the gleam of platinum and amber, unknown alloys swaying slow like seaweed. I saw things flitting like Lady Amery’s automata, only lacking solidness. Just frames of filament writhing into forms like dragonflies and bats. A glow, pure and white, suffused the tunnel’s end, beckoning.
“Keep him still,” I said to Ruth, and she tightened the ropes.
Me, I let fall my backpack and took hold of a canister, twisting the cap.
“Shouldn’t go in there,” Ruth warned.
The currents were stronger, snatches of memory invading my brain but nothing like the memories a person ever had. Hit your feelings, though, warm and seductive; hit your wants and desires and ambitions. I bit my lip.
No, I thought I’d be prepared for this and I was wrong, well and truly.
“You’ve been helping, this…” I didn’t know what to call it and didn’t bother coining a name, “build itself a form. But,” – the strange voice was shifting towards frustration, hatred, a bit of anger – “there’s something wrong. Incomplete. Lost.
“You were right,” I said, the currents pushing from the cave growing stronger, making me weak-kneed, light-headed. “Whatever she brings to the world, it won’t be good.”
“What are you planning?” Jack asked, his voice catching.
“I’ll disable it. Then I’ll talk to it. Just talk,” I said, so quiet I didn’t even hear myself. I could barely move then, and all of me wanted to head forward, but I took a quaking step back instead. “You should have let it lie…” Whatever was there wasn’t from Earth, and it wasn’t whole. Everything about the thing in the cave raised the hair on my skin, made my stomach churn and bubble.
Something was moving out too, a skittering noise of barbed wire scraping stone.
I made ready to throw the canister. Only when my arm went back Jack leaped forward. I’d come too close to him, and somehow he got the strength to throw himself out of Ruth’s grasp and sink his teeth into my wrist. The canister dropped to the dirt but didn’t hit hard enough to break, and he was biting, drawing blood as he went. I jammed the barrel of my gun against his forehead and fired, spattering brains out the back of his skull, and that loosened his jaws well enough.
Not before a grasping hand caught me, not flesh but steel, life pulsing through it, the touch plunging me somewhere, elsewhere.
Shapes slick and graceful, moving between the stars, innards filled with thousands of seeds. At the heart of a great leviathan sat a crystal, throbbing and bright, patterned like the fragment I’d found at Jack’s camp. I followed the one, steering the way, before something came crashing through, some blast of pink and purple dust. The crystal cracked and the leviathan broke and the seeds scattered in an expanding cloud and one piece of the vessel, the largest piece, came streaking down after a thousand years to the Klondike as a shooting star.
The visions shifted, taking me to mankind in those great black shapes. Ships, I realized, and the world beneath, crashing, clanking, suffused with tiny lights and moving pictures on a million screens of glass.
I drew in a deep breath, remembering I had a body again, saw how the wires tightened around my hand but not hard enough to cause pain. Jack’s blood was still hot on my bodice, and then I knew – he said he’d bonded with it, with her. And she’d sensed that bond break when he died so she was drawing me in, trying to speak like he’d said. She had no voice but it was beautiful just as it was, beautiful and broken.
I hate to think what might have happened had I waited a moment longer. That thing was pointing a way, promising I could be a messenger, a prophet, trying to dig into my thoughts so it could adapt and use what I knew. The nearest thing that could think, because it needed a master just as much as it needed a slave.
I could have brought its plans to pass and I knew, even in that muddled space of time, I’d do a far better job of it than Jack, poor Jack, who just wasn’t up to a secret like this.
Only I didn’t wait. I lifted a foot and smashed my boot down on the ferocient canister and all the visions went dark.
* * *
It wasn’t a thinking thing, not truly, else it would have survived the blast like me and Ruth did. The crystal was a machine of some sort with parts so small you couldn’t see them move. Commands fed in like a slip of paper in a golem, save this one only held echoes and fragments and its purpose was drifting dead between the stars.
I lay on my back with Jack’s corpse beneath me and I sat up slow, rubbing my head and still sensing a faint pulse and rhythm shaking my innards. In front of me the cave was wilting, those fine metal meshes sloughing from the walls and chiming as they did.
I never felt such a headache before, all the blood squeezing away my brain.
Never felt so much sorrow before, either.
Not sure what someone else might have done, someone better than I am. A part of me still wanted to be with…well, Jack had called it her. Part of me still wants that, all she offered, all she promised if only you could understand and put her back together.
She’d reached for me as guide and saviour and I’d killed her.
Ruth was lying a few feet off uncurling from her ball, eyes wide and dazed. “You’re not going in there, are you?” she asked in a high reedy voice when she saw me stumbling closer to the cave-mouth.
“Just…finishing the job,” I said. My hands were shaking so bad I almost dropped the last canister while trying to make the twist. I limped closer and threw it hard as I could down the cave mouth, this time turning and ducking when the shock wave came screaming past.
The headache was still there after, but that floating sense of loss and sadness was gone. I bent down and hobbled into the cave, sharp metal biting at my boots, iron still hot from the surge. Their fading redness gave enough light to see by as I followed the slope into the hillside.
There it was, white crystal the size of two fists held together, the last few pinpricks of light tracing slow lazy spirals like dandelion fluff over its rough surface before winking into nothing, leaving just a blank pale stone like uncut quartz with no life in it at all. It was only a piece of something greater, you could see the ragged edges where the rest had torn away. Around that, fine gold and silver mixed with black cast iron and dull copper carefully arranged in an emerging skeleton.
She’d been trying to make another body. One that looked halfway human.
* * *
I’m here in Dawson City waiting for a steamer after my letter went through to Lady Amery’s agents arranging payment for Ruth. I’m not sure what I’ll say when I get to Prince Rupert, if I get there at all. I have this dead crystal mind stowed in a dull grey sack and I don’t know what to do with it.
I can disappear, I think. Abscond, if I really wanted to. Annabelle taught us how to do that, it wasn’t even hard compared to the other things I’d done in my life.
Because there was one thing Lady Amery was right about, and mind it’s just the one: The world wasn’t ready for this.
Maybe it didn’t have to be. Maybe that intelligence had to be made ready for the world.
And if that was true, maybe I was the one to guide her.
BUFFALO GALS
COLLEEN ANDERSON
“Them buffalo gals stampede through at least one night a week. See there.”
The prospector’s voice came from behind Chex’ináx yaa wunagút(1) as she peered at the churned up moss and soft earth. She ran her fingers over the dentalium shell buttons that bordered her red serge jacket as she examined the ground’s pattern. The harsh alcohol tang wafted on the man’s breath and she wondered if it was another case of being alone for too long or too much drinking.
(1) A note on English pronunciation: The letter “x” is a raspy h sound in the back of the throat, and “x’ ” is that sound, but cut short, thus “chay- kee-nah a nah ya wun-a-goot.” (The line under the letter is part of being rendered in English.)
She debated dismissing his claim as hallucination. No crime was evident and she had more pressing matters. But it would be foolish to disregard anything unusual. “Why do you call them buffalo gals?” she asked the bearded prospector.
He smacked his lips and scratched at his unkempt hair, as if reluctant to reveal more. “Well, they’s got these hoofs and steam comes outta their noses. Oh yeah, and horns of course.”
“Of course,” replied Chex’ináx yaa wunagút. “Then why do you think they’re girls?”
If he’d been reluctant before, he now proceeded to tuck in his undershirt, walk back and forth, and flap his one hand as he spoke. “Well, they’s look like gals, despite them horns. They have girl shapes, you know.” He looked at the ground as he motioned at his chest, with a rounding motion. “And legs, but with hoofs, and they’s all buttery shiny, like brass or gold.” Chex’ináx yaa wunagút cocked her head, looking from the man back to the ground. There were a few circular imprints that could be hooves but spring runoff made the ground too soft to tell for certain. And his story was very elaborate even for a whiskey-fuelled imagining.
The North-West Mounted Police had only formed a year before and Chex’ináx yaa wunagút was as experienced as anyone else on the force. One thing she had learned long before she left her northern village of Kadukxúká – after the trading post had been built and the dleit Káa, the white men, renamed it Tongass Island – was never to ignore her intuition. She didn’t know what these “buffalo gals” were but it sounded like they were constructed. That meant someone had built them, and that took money.
“If you see anything else, please send for me. You will be able to find the office in Senákw.(2) Your name is?”
(2) Se’nákw is to be read as Snawk, Snawq, Sneawq, or Snawkw – formally known as Kitsilano Indian Reserve 6, a site of the Indigenous Squamish band government, located near what is now the Kitsilano neighbourhood of Vancouver, British Columbia. Other words contain “k” or “?” as implied phonetic intention. Google for more.
“Umm, Ben McCready. And who should I ask for?”
“Constable Chex’ináx yaa wunagút.”
McCready tried but mangled it so badly she winced. She actually found it funny when the dleit Káa could not pronounce the Lingit language. “My name in your language is ‘Walks Through Shadows.’”
He stammered and blushed. “Thank you, Miss Shadows – I mean, Constable Walks Through Shadows.”
Chex’ináx yaa wunagút left the prospector and mounted her horse, returning north to the village of Senákw, but first she detoured to the Musqueam village west of her office.
A telegram from the North-West Mounted Police outpost in Fort Calgary had indicated that one Peter Stanton had robbed the Canadian Pacific train near the settlement. Chances were he was headed toward the dleit Káa townsite of Granville in the Musqueam community of Xwá?xway, or Whoi Whoi, as the dispatch indicated. The nations of the people, including the dleit Káa, had worked hard to bring in the steam trains early, by 1866, and now, less than ten years later, there were those who thought the trains were great beasts to be gutted for their riches.
As she rode, she took in the sharp scent of cedar and fir trees. Pale pink bleeding hearts and the bright yellow petals of woolly sunflowers dotted the ground. Always observing, she gazed along the trail into the cool shade of the great trees.
As the villages came into sight, Chex’ináx yaa wunagút saw a wisp of a wraith off to her right, lingering by a rough-trunked cedar. She pulled the reins and the horse stopped. Watching the spirit, Chex’ináx yaa wunagút tried to sense its past. It was this unusual gift that had pulled her to travel, far from Kadukxúká. She would always be of the raven Taant’á Kwáan and proudly bear the clan crest of three eggs on a shell on her red serge. In the new townsites, she thought her skills could aid people, while in her village everyone had grown uncomfortable, earning her her current nickname. She had searched out the upholders of peace, always believing in a need for all peoples to live in harmony. A dream perhaps, but she would strive for it.
The spirit wavered between green and grey, solidifying, then turning to strands of mist. The other half of her skill was to disperse the ghosts to the world beyond. She urged the horse forward but the wraith spun up and away, and all she felt was an exuberant bubbling lightness as joy. Not a murdered soul then. She moved on.
The only member of the North-West Mounted Police stationed on the coast, her greatest concern was the murders of women from the townships of Granville, Hastings and Senákw. There had been six so far; Musqueam, dleit Káa, and Squamish. Another woman had gone missing three weeks before, and was presumed murdered as well.
The mossy ground held some imprints at this time of year and any change might give her a lead on the killer. She was but a half hour from the villages and the newly built Granville townsite. The Musqueam were worried about maintaining the rentals for Granville and Hastings as the areas grew with the dleit Káa hunger for lumber. The fact that women of both races had been murdered indicated that those crimes were probably not from racial tensions. After visiting the Musqueam, to no avail, she rode back to Senákw, smiling at the children running up and hoping to earn a coin for an errand. She dismounted, paying a penny to a boy to stable the horse as she entered the North-West Mounted Police office, a grey clapboard shack with one window. Two telegraphs had been dropped off by Yune’s girl. Only the detachment, or distant villages sent anything of concern.
“Stanton last seen in Hope four months ago." A wanted poster followed.
The second telegram read: “Cannot spare extra men to help with murder investigation. Do what you can.” Chex’ináx yaa wunagút’s lips pressed together. She wondered, if it had been some rich banker would she have received more aid? She was one person handling three native villages, including the Capilano across the inlet, and two burgeoning dleit Káa townsites, trying to keep the peace when tensions or alcohol ran too high.
She had no leads on Stanton, where he might hole up or even where he would spend the stolen money. In order of importance, he came second. She couldn’t dismiss that the buffalo apparitions came after the murders and train robbery, and she wondered if they were all connected.
It was time to start asking more questions, and the saloons, blacksmiths, dry goods store, and bank were the places to start. She poured a cup of the bitter coffee the dleit Káa had brought from their country. Sipping it, she winced at the first taste though she enjoyed the clarity of thought and burst of energy that shivered through her body.
Chex’ináx yaa wunagút put the enamelled cup down, locked the important papers in the safe and left her one-room office with a poster of Peter Stanton in her hand. She pulled her long dark braid over her shoulder, its tip brushing against her brass buttons. As she walked through the village of Senákw, she greeted elders and women hauling fish to drying racks.
Moving between humps of grass and low brush, she approached Faro and George Wednesday carving out a new canoe at the water’s edge. The water lapped sullenly at the small pebbles.
“What brings you here, Walks Through Shadows?” asked George Wednesday, his hair worn long in the traditional way. He sharpened an adze against a whetstone. They all kept to nicknames.
She showed them the poster, and Faro straightene
d from running his hand over the cedar prow. His hair came to just below the ears like many of the dleit Káa and he wore a blue cotton shirt but kept to deerskin leggings. “It’s still too rough. We need to take down another inch of thickness or we may as well go out on a stone.”
George Wednesday grunted, rubbing his wide nose. “Sorry, Walks Through Shadows, not seen his likes around but then I stay in Senákw most of the time. Have you checked in Whoi Whoi?”
“They haven’t seen him,” she replied.
Faro smiled. “Not seen him either, but then they all look alike.”
She suppressed a sigh, knowing that Faro liked to joke. “You know that’s not true. Still, if either of you see anything, please let me know.” As she turned away, she stopped as if just remembering. “Oh, have you seen any unusual activity; men watching women for too long, following them, someone who just doesn’t feel right?”
This time neither of them joked. They looked down at their feet in silence.
“One of those girls was my cousin’s neighbour’s wife. She never hurt anyone,” Faro commented softly.
George Wednesday sighed. “Her husband spends too much time in the white man saloons now.”
Which could be because of his guilt, but she doubted it. He would have had to kill the others as well, and anyone who took so many women was well past guilt. She thanked the canoe builders and walked over to the Granville townsite, which abutted on Se’nákw’s eastern border, but the line was obvious, for the trees thinned noticeably. She dropped off the wanted poster at the newly minted printer and asked for ten copies to be printed and posted.
* * *
For three days, in between breaking up fights and investigating some minor thefts, she canvassed the villages of Senákw and Whoi Whoi, as well as the Granville and Hastings townsites. She took her horse to cover more area, and still the lack of information disturbed her. The women had been murdered over a span of six months. Who was this person? Some people had said it was a spirit, but Chex’ináx yaa wunagút had learned that more often than not, it was the flesh responsible for most crimes. The spirits that were left behind sometimes pointed to the perpetrators but they could not give her names.
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