My undersheriff shook her head. “Distinctively screwed is what she is.”
Henry looked at me, and I filled him in. “The sewage people are going to be here any minute, and they’re going to pump the vault out, owl and all.”
The Bear straightened, and it was not unlike the other bear on-the-fight that we’d just confronted. “You cannot do that.”
“Henry . . .”
“This may not simply be an owl.”
I shook my head at the ridiculousness of the situation. “Henry, nobody wants to see this owl killed, but . . .”
“She may simply be a Messenger from the Camp of the Dead, but she may be something else as well.” He took a deep breath and tried to explain. “Within my nation there are traditional beliefs that certain people, both male and female, who practice Medicine are believed to have the ability to shape-shift, and the form they choose most is that of an owl so that they might move silently through the night and cast spells on people while they are asleep and vulnerable to spiritual forces.”
Vic looked at the Bear, then at me, and then back to the big Cheyenne. “If that’s the way you’re trying to convince us to save her, it isn’t working.”
“Among my people there is only one owl even considered to be a bird and that is the short-eared owl or snake-eating-owl, an important source of medicinal power for shamans.” He pointed toward the toilet. “But this is not that type of owl, so it is Mista, or a spirit-of-the-night. Even the Hohnuhke, the Cheyenne Contraries of the buffalo days, wore the feathers of the owl but never that of the great horned or the screech—their power is too strong. So it was lesser owl feathers that were attached to the warrior’s shield, lance, or headdress to protect them, help them to see in the dark and make them deadly silent.”
Vic shrugged. “Well, this one’s going to be silent but deadly here in a few minutes.”
Henry held up a hand. “I am not a shaman and cannot tell the difference between the Messenger and an ordinary owl, but the holy men and women frequently seek spiritual help from these owls in conjunction with healing practices. It is believed that the owl has medicinal powers, soft and gentle, similar to their feathers.”
I held up the stick and showed him the broken end. “Soft and gentle? She did this.”
He shook his head in dismissal. “This is a young great horned owl and most likely the spirit of a transformed holy person, the unquiet spirit of the dead. The tufts on their heads are symbolic of horns, the signs of spiritual beings like the horned water serpents or chiefs of the underworld.” He glanced at me as if there were more, more that he did not want to say. “Or, it is possible this owl is something else.”
“What?”
“Being as young as she is . . .”
“What?”
He sighed and looked directly at me. “The Spirit Messenger of an unborn soul, the herald of a young one who has yet to enter this world.”
I thought about Cady, my pregnant daughter. “You can’t be serious.”
“I am.”
Vic folded her arms and leaned against the inside wall. “Oh, now for fuck’s sake.”
His face was still in all seriousness. “In my belief this Mista or Hiha’n Winu’cala is the spirit of . . .”
I could feel a shudder run through me, and I thought about all the prophecies that Virgil White Buffalo, the last shaman I had encountered in these mountains, had made concerning my daughter and granddaughter. “My granddaughter.”
“Lola?” Vic ventured.
“Exactly.”
I looked at the two of them. “We have to save this owl.”
Vic stared back at me. “Have you lost your mind?”
“Maybe, but we have to save this owl.”
She shot a look up at the Bear. “Look, no offense, Henry . . .” His eyes clicked to mine. “If you believe this mumbo-jumbo that’s fine, but I don’t see how we’re going to do it before the shit wagon gets here.”
I reached over and lifted the lid—the diameter of the formed plastic stool was about eighteen inches across at the widest part from front to back. “We have to try and get in there.”
She made a face. “And then what?”
I pulled the copper-colored scarf from my shoulders. “We can use this to wrap around her so that she doesn’t attack and then scoop her out.” Ignoring the smell, I stooped by the toilet and reached in with both arms, my progress impeded where the width of my shoulders lodged against the edge of the plastic sides. “Unh-uh.” I looked up at the Cheyenne Nation, but knew his shoulders were every bit as large as my own; finally, the two of us looked at Victoria Moretti.
She didn’t move. “No fucking way.”
“We can grab you by your ankles . . .”
“And kiss my ass! There’s no way I’m crawling into that thing.”
Henry leaned forward to get her attention, demonstrating the technique by raising his arms in a diving position. “If you raise your arms.” He demonstrated. “It will narrow your shoulder width, and we can lower you in.”
She went so far as to rest her hand on her high-riding sidearm. “I’m not toilet diving for an owl.”
I stood and gestured toward both Henry and me. “We don’t fit.”
“Yeah, well I don’t give a rat’s ass.”
I placed an arm across the open doorway. “With both of us holding on to you, there’s no way anything can happen.”
She folded her arms. “I’m not climbing in that toilet.” Her eyes flicked between us, and I could tell she was weakening, probably thinking of the things I had told her that Virgil White Buffalo had said. She took a deep breath and gagged a little at the smell but began unbuckling her belt, unclipped her holstered Glock, and lowering it to the ground, and began pulling her iPod, pens, notepads, keys, sunglasses, and other assorted items from her pockets. Pausing in the action, she shot a finger at the two of us. “You drop me, and we’re all three going to be in a world of shit.”
• • •
“What do you weigh, Vic?”
“Fuck you, that’s what I weigh.”
I glanced at the Cheyenne Nation and he nodded, both of us figuring we could handle her amount of weight all day without any problems. I handed Vic the scarf, which luckily was made of surprisingly thick yarn. “I’d wrap this around her as quickly as I could just to make sure she doesn’t get at you.”
She pulled on the gloves she’d retrieved from the cab of Rezdawg, a wise precaution to all our thoughts. “You’re damn right.”
Henry glanced into the hole and then stooped to pick Vic’s sunglasses from her pile. “You might want to wear these.”
She looked at the Bear. “That is a pair of two-hundred-and-twenty dollar Oakley Fast Jacket sunglasses, and I am not about to lose them in there—anyway, don’t you think it’s going to be dark enough?”
Henry unfolded the expensive eyewear. “I would want some eye protection, if I were you.”
Vic took the sunglasses and reluctantly put them on. “If I drop them, I’m going to want to fish them out.”
The Bear nodded. “Deal.”
Vic walked over and stood in front of the toilet, and I clicked on the game warden’s Mag-Lite to check on the location of the owl—she hadn’t moved. “You want me to try and hold the flashlight while . . . ?”
Her voice went up a few octaves in response. “You fucking well better hold on to me; I don’t want you assholes concentrating on anything other than hanging on to my legs and not letting go!”
“Right.”
She glanced up at me. “I’m serious.”
“I can tell.” I looked at the hole and added, “I would be, too.”
She stared into the abyss. “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”
“It is for a greater cause.” Henry placed a hand on her shoulder. “I would also keep my mouth closed.”
Vic looked at him, smiled a fake smile, reached over, and unrolled a few sections of toilet paper, rolling them into impromptu nose plugs, and stuffing them into her nostrils; then she held her hands up and wrapped the scarf between both of them. “Ready.”
Henry and I reached down and gripped her legs at the knees and ankles. We easily lifted her and flipped her over. “You okay?”
She nodded, and we began lowering her into the vault, outstretched arms and the scarf first. There was a fluttering noise, and Vic struggled, but our grip remained firm. “What’s happening?”
Her voice, muffled and nasal, echoed up from the chamber. “She’s moved over to the other side. Can you turn me so I’m facing her more?”
The Bear and I looked at each other, trying to imagine how we were going to accomplish that; finally Henry straddled the back of the toilet and stepped over as I pivoted to the right. “That better?”
There was another fluttering from below, and Vic’s voice sounded against the concrete that was underneath the floor. “I think. It’s so dark down here I can’t see anything..” There was a pause, and then she spoke again. “You’re going to have to lower me more; I can’t reach into the corner where I think she is.”
“How much?”
The voice echoed up. “Maybe another foot—but no more than that.”
“Right.”
Henry and I started lowering her when she called out. “Stop!”
“Right.”
“It’s going to take me a minute to get ready, so just hold me here.”
The Cheyenne Nation and I stood over the toilet with Vic Moretti’s feet in our faces, and I thought that even her feet smelled nice, but maybe it was comparative to the environs. There wasn’t much else to do, so I broached the subject again. “Lola?”
He nodded with a sense of finality, the kind of finality that usually meant The Greatest Legal Mind of Our Time had made up her mind. “Lola, short for Delores, taken from the title of the Virgin Mary: Virgen Maria de los Delores.”
“Our Lady of Sorrows?”
He thought about it. “Well, yes . . . technically.”
Vic’s voice echoed up again. “Great, that can be her stage name.”
He shook his head at me, and we felt Vic move in our hands again, probably preparing for the monumental grab. “You still all right?”
Her voice echoed up again. “Hang on—this might get a little hairy here in a second.”
“Okay.” I gripped my undersheriff’s leg a little tighter. Henry grunted. I looked up at him. “What?”
His dark eyes rested easy on mine. “What what?”
“You said something?”
“No.”
I shrugged but then heard the grunt again, this time while looking directly at his face—his mouth hadn’t moved. Both of us looked at each other with eyebrows raised before pivoting our heads in unison toward the propped open door of the restroom where the sow black bear was sniffing the ground just off the concrete pad. “Vic . . .”
“Hold it steady, I’m making my move . . .”
The black bear raised her head up and looked into the restroom at the sound of my voice. You really don’t get a sense of how big the things are until you’re up close and personal with them. The sow was roughly our height, but the months of summer bounty had helped her to pack on the weight, and I was betting she weighed as much as Henry and me together. Their eyesight isn’t the greatest, but their sense of smell is extremely acute and the things that repulse us smell like the Usual at the Busy Bee Café to them.
I spoke voce sotto. “I thought you said they wouldn’t double back?”
The Bear’s whisper was low and steady. “They did not, but evidently she did.”
“I think we should pull Vic out.”
“I agree.”
We were about to do it when Vic made her move, a jarring lunge that made for a mad fluttering and some vicious swearing along with a certain amount of animation translating up her legs to us.
The sow huffed a few breaths and then moved as she’d done when we pulled up in Rezdawg; she bounced twice and stood up to her full height, the bunching of muscle mass in her shoulders and back threatening without so much as a gesture. I’d heard it said that the beasts were about six times as powerful as a man and looking at the sheer girth of her, I didn’t have many doubts—it also meant that Henry and I were outmanned by four.
She sniffed the air again and peered into the semidarkness of the enclosure, perhaps four yards between us.
I spoke as quietly as I could. “Henry?”
“Do not move.”
Vic’s voice rose again at our boots, a little more frantic this time. “I’ve got her! I’ve got her! Pull me up before she gets away, damn it!”
I figured I could get at my sidearm, even holding Vic, since I had Henry’s help, even if all I wanted to do was fire off a warning shot. The bear cocked her head like a dog, and all I could think was that as horrible as Vic’s predicament was, she was the one most likely to survive this situation without getting mauled.
Vic kicked a little. “Hey, get me the hell out of here!”
The bear took a step toward us, still sniffing the air.
I spoke through the side of my mouth. “Vic, stop kicking and . . .”
“What? Hey, this bitch bird is sinking its claws into my boobs!”
The sow took another step toward us, chuffing and ducking her head down like she might charge.
The Bear’s voice remained calm. “She will bluff at least once, maybe twice, before she really charges, if she does.”
“Ouch, damn it! Motherfuckers, this isn’t funny!”
I continued speaking out of the side of my mouth. “Do you think if she realizes there are three of us, she might back down?”
“That or we can feed her Vic.”
The sow lunged forward, even going so far as to swipe one of the support poles at the edge of the pad, which sent a shudder through the structure. At the same time, we yanked as hard as we could, sending my undersheriff up and out of the hole. The bundle she was carrying exploded in a flurry of copper yarn and wing flapping as the great horned owl wasted no time in freeing itself, sending Vic to the floor and the two of us against the walls.
Up close, she was an amazing thing to see—the radiating feathers splayed out like a serrated sunburst, and even though she was only an adolescent, her wings seemed to fill the room. Three powerful swoops, and she levitated and blew out the open door straight into the bear.
It was as if Henry’s prophecies had come true and a possessed soul of the underworld had exploded from the depth with all the fury of a feathered banshee.
The sow didn’t know what hit her, and she didn’t care; as soon as the owl started out, the bear beat a hasty retreat as fast as four legs could carry her and the last we saw of her she was headed through the red willow thickets and back up the valley.
We all lay there in the aftermath, Vic looking like she’d had the worst of it, her face still red from hanging upside down for so long. “What the hell just happened?”
I looked through the open doorway and could see the scarf reflecting copper on the ground between us and Henry’s truck, but there was no sign of the owl; it was as if she had simply disappeared.
I glanced at the Cheyenne Nation, and watched as he walked out of the structure and kneeled in the gravel out front, carefully picking up an extended brown and white feather, rolling the quill of it between between thumb and forefinger. “I think we just witnessed the Mista.”
Vic felt her head, glanced around on the floor, and then looked back at the toilet. “I think I dropped my sunglasses.”
• • •
Coasting to let Rezdawg’s brakes cool on the slow drive down the mountain, Henry and I discussed the finer points of what had happened and their exact mea
nings. Vic ignored us and continued listening to her music
“So, you think the owl was there to save us?”
“I do.”
“And that it was a herald of my granddaughter?”
“Possibly.” He nodded curtly, as if the question was settled. “It is their connection with death, the afterlife and rebirth, that mark the owl as an embodiment of spirits; I think she was the herald at the fork of the Hanging Road, the Milky Way, which leads to the Camp of the Dead. She has the power to decide who shall pass and who will be stillborn or condemned to wander the earth as spirits or wana’gi forever. The Mista or Hiha’n Winu’cala is responsible for this transition, and you must cry your name to her and she assesses the merit of your attached soul. If you have a good name, you may pass the junction of the fork, but if your name is bad, you are shunted onto a dead-end branch.”
Vic, her earbuds back in and her eyes closed, continued to ignore us, and I leaned a little forward so that I could see the Bear. “So, according to Cheyenne beliefs you have a name before you arrive in this world?”
“Yes. We always have a name, both before and after our time here.”
“Can you change your name?”
He nodded. “Yes, but you risk changing your path, and the Mista or Hiha’n Winu’cala may deny you.”
“You mean not let you in or out of the world?”
“Yes. It can be complicated.” He sighed as he pulled back out onto the main road in a low gear, lugging Rezdawg down the mountain as his fingers came up to stroke the feather, now hanging from his rearview mirror. “My father lived with death for a very long time, and I remember the night he died a great horned owl was sitting on the poles of our family teepee outside the house. When I would go and visit his grave, there was always an owl feather there and still is today.”
I was about to say something more when Vic, who had adjusted her iPod, leaned forward and began drumming on the dash very softly.
Lola, Lo-lo-lo-lo-Lola . . .
Lola.
READ ON FOR THE FIRST CHAPTER OF A SERPENT’S TOOTH, AVAILABLE FROM VIKING IN JUNE 2013
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Messenger: A Walt Longmire Story Page 3