The Man from Forever

by Vella Munn

  Chapter 8

  It had always been said that dreaming of the dead meant more death would come, but Loka often dreamed of his son, and in the morning felt comforted because that meant his child continued to live within him. It had also always been taboo to speak the name of the dead, but whispering “Kina’n” over and over again had given him as much comfort as dreaming of the boy.

  Maybe, Loka thought, not everything the shaman taught his people had been the truth.

  Tory walked behind him, her breathing quick and soft, her shoes making almost no sound. She might never learn how to move as silently as he did, but at least she wasn’t like most of her kind, unthinking in the way they traveled over his ancestors’ land.

  Wolf understood her, maybe trusted her. If he hadn’t, he would have remained silent instead of revealing his existence to her. That was why he’d decided to bring her to Spirit Mountain. If she betrayed him, if Owl and Coyote warned him not to trust her, he would heed their wisdom, ask Eagle for the truth behind Wolf’s howl. And, if they so decreed, he would end her. Somehow.

  “Loka?”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know how you do it. You never get tired, do you?”

  He looked back over his shoulder at her. Her cheeks were flushed; sweat glistened on her temples and her lips looked dry. He should have known she couldn’t keep up his pace, but when he told her there was something she had to see, she’d agreed and he’d led the way across The Land Of Burned Out Fires.

  Maybe the truth was that he should have walked away from her.

  But she hadn’t fought his embrace, and when she touched her mouth to his, a fierce need for her had taken hold of him and he hadn’t been able to think beyond that. He wouldn’t take her as a buck takes a doe. He had watched and listened and learned and knew that that was not the way of her people. Even if this was the only day they would spend together, he wanted to step into her world.

  Her world? He was taking her into his.

  “You do not want this?” he asked when she stopped, planted her hands on her hips and took several long, deep breaths.

  “This? Loka, you haven’t told me anything. We just keep walking. I thought—I don’t know what I thought. But I have to know.”

  “Wolf lives on Spirit Mountain. We go to find him.”

  “That’s what you said.” She shook her head, eyes tired and determined and confused. “But I don’t know what you mean. Spirit Mountain.” She pointed in the direction they’d been going. “That’s Schonchin Butte. At least I think that’s what they call it.”

  “Schonchin Butte.” The unwanted words lay heavy on his tongue.

  For a long time she said nothing. Then she touched his forearm. “Nothing’s the same, is it? That’s what you’re thinking.”

  He didn’t answer because she’d spoken the truth. Although he knew she needed to rest, he spun back around and began walking again. As he always did, he kept his eyes on the land around him, watching for a sign of the enemy. He saw cars moving along the road far to their right. There were several hikers ahead of them, but they were so far away that they would never spot him. She could call out to them, with a few words put an end to him.

  “Loka? I’m sorry. But I need some water. I can’t—I’m not as used to this climate as you are.”

  She would never be. Instead of telling her that, he pointed off to the left, then headed in that direction. She didn’t fully trust him. If she had, she would have started walking as soon as he did. Still, he didn’t blame her, because he didn’t truly trust her and maybe never would.

  It wasn’t the same for his body, he admitted a few minutes later, as he lowered himself into a cave opening that led to an underground stream, one of several that had once sustained the Maklaks when they couldn’t reach the mother lake. His body cared nothing about tomorrow. It knew only that it wanted and needed her.

  “What is this?” she asked once she joined him underground. She glanced around her, then her gaze settled on him. Too much white showed in her eyes; he wondered if she was afraid of being beneath the surface. Maybe the cave increased her sense of isolation, her dependence on him when she didn’t want that. “I hear water running.”

  “Earthriver,” he explained. “When the great fires cooled, the river was driven underground. In winter it freezes.”

  “I’ve heard about that. My God, this land—it’s absolutely incredible.”

  He’d begun walking again, bent over in the confining space, but stopped when he realized she wasn’t keeping pace with him. As before, her eyes spoke for her. He knew this place of cool, damp air and the sound of rushing water, but to her it was nothing except darkness. Retracing his footsteps, he reached out and took her hand. She drew back, turned her body toward what she could still see of the opening.

  “You are safe,” he said.

  “Am I? All right,” she said with a sigh. “I’ll—follow you.”

  It wasn’t far from the cave entrance to where the stream cut its way through rock, but the path down to the water was steep and narrow. Clinging to him, she kept up with him until he brought her to the water’s edge. No light ever reached this place, something he gave thanks to because it kept the enemy from invading his privacy. Her breathing had quickened, telling him better than words that she felt trapped and helpless.

  He could keep her here. She would have water and he knew of a level spot where she could sleep. He’d bring her food, and she would never leave him. Never betray him. Answer his body’s needs.

  But if he did, she would hate him just as he hated those who had taken claim of his people’s land.

  “Loka?”

  “What?”

  “You were so quiet. I have to admit this, I don’t like it down here. I keep thinking how dependent I am on you. I can trust you, can’t I?”

  “Trust? That is for you to answer.”

  What did he mean by that, Tory asked herself for the umpteenth time. Thank goodness they hadn’t stayed in the underground cavern for longer than it had taken to satisfy their thirst. He seemed to be at home in that claustrophobic place with the unseen stream rumbling and roaring past. Maybe—she stared ahead of her to reassure herself that they were indeed getting closer to the top of Schonchin Butte—maybe her moment of raw fear hadn’t been directed at him at all. Given where they’d been, it was a distinct possibility that the place itself had everything to do with her mood.

  And maybe he was more responsible than she wanted to admit.

  When they emerged from the cave, he’d gestured at her to remain sitting while he scrambled onto a boulder and looked around. She’d caught the echo of far-off voices and guessed that distant hikers had been responsible for his caution. She could have called out to them; they both knew that. But she hadn’t—maybe because being with him was more important than life itself.

  And maybe because she no longer controlled her own will.

  The hikers had gone off in another direction, leaving them to continue toward whatever it was he wanted to show her. She’d had to stop and rest several more times and would have told him she couldn’t go on if he hadn’t reassured her there was water at the top.

  They’d made it. At the moment, that was all that mattered.

  “It’s all right, Loka,” she whispered when he looked around for the third time. “There’s no one here. There’s so little vegetation, there’s nowhere anyone could hide.”

  Leaving his rocky lookout, he returned to her side. Although the sheen of sweat on his body distracted her from her surroundings and the endless view of what seemed to be a vast chunk of the world, she was glad to see that he, too, felt the effect of their climb. “I must be careful,” he said. “Always.”

  “I know.” Were they insane? There was no earthly reason for them to hide. No earthly reason except that he was a man out of his time, a man no one but she understood. “Loka, do you come here much? I mean, there are several trails leading up here. And that structure I spotted. What is it, a fire look
out? People must be around all the time.”

  “I know when the enemy walks on sacred land. I wait until they are gone.”

  “Oh.” Her reply sounded so inadequate, but what else could she give him? The wind seemed to whistle up here. Maybe it loved the sense of freedom and space and agelessness and that was how it expressed itself. Mesmerized both by the sound and the realization that she and Loka were utterly, completely alone with the world spreading out all around and below them, she slipped closer to him and wrapped her arm around his waist.

  At the touch, all her weariness faded, leaving her aware of a man in a way she’d never been before. Instinctively fighting his impact, she struggled to take note of her surroundings. After all, he’d brought her here because this place was special to him.

  But he mattered more to her than any place ever could. Claimed her awareness in ways she’d never imagined.

  He slid his hand over her shoulder and pressed her against his side. She could hear him breathing, the cadence quick when he should be rested from their climb. So he was no more immune to her than she was to him.

  So.

  “It’s beautiful,” she whispered, hoping that was what he wanted to hear. “Stark and yet—I can see forever.”

  He turned her slowly, their bodies meshing and moving in perfect unison. She’d thought she’d seen everything there was to see while climbing up here, but the butte had always been between her and distant Mount Shasta. Now she could see, fully see, the massive peak. Even though it was so far away that it seemed more illusion than substance, it still dominated the landscape. Yes, the world below stretched out until it seemed to slide off the ends of the earth, but she would put her mind to concentrating on that later.

  For now there was only the mountain and Loka, who had brought her here to see it.

  “Yainax. Home of the gods,” he said softly.

  “Y-ainax. Your gods. Of course. It’s perfect. Loka, did you ever think what it must have been like for the first Indian who saw this? How overwhelmed he must have felt. How—maybe it frightened him.”

  Loka’s attention had been riveted on the mountain. Now he stared at her, blinked as if still trying to make sense of what she’d just said. “I do not know.”

  “Think about it. I mean, I’m trying to imagine a small group of people traveling for weeks, maybe months for whatever reasons, finding this place. Their reaction to it. Loka, how did they know that this land had been created by volcanic activity? You call it The Land Of Burned Out Fires, which means your ancestors understood its origin. Those first Indians—were they here during the eruptions or did they come afterward? Why? What brought them and where did they come from?”

  She pressed the palm of her hand against her forehead. So much of her professional life had been spent trying to answer questions exactly like what she was now asking Loka. Before, everything had been part of hypothetical observations, a matter of taking bits and pieces of the past and molding them together into a logical, practical whole. It felt different today—not just because she was talking about Loka’s people, but because, maybe, he was the link.

  “What do you know?” She kept her voice soft and low but couldn’t still the excitement she felt. “Your people’s legends… What do they say about the first to come here?”

  “You want to know this?”

  “Of course I do. Please tell me.”

  “Tell? The Maklaks were created by Kumookumts. That is our beginning.”

  She reeled from what felt like a door being slammed in her face. She was asking for fact and he was giving her, what, superstition and legend?

  Maybe.

  “Tell me.” She barely did more than mouth the words. “Please. Everything.”

  “It is not for you to know. You are sano’tts. The enemy.”

  Sano’tts. “If you really believed that, you wouldn’t have brought me up here.”

  He stiffened, started to step away from her, then stopped. Eyes on the horizon, he squared his shoulders and threw back his head as if seeking something in the air, the land, maybe the sky itself. “Without Kumookumts there would be nothing. He was everything.”

  “Was.”

  “He is no more,” Loka said with no touch of sadness in his voice. “He was The Old Man, the father and creator. When he finished here, he became one with the mist.”

  “How did you come to believe this? Your parents—did they tell you?”

  He glanced at her, and in the brief silence she sensed that he was again asking himself whether he should tell her anything. Then, his eyes probing so deep into her that she felt as if her soul itself had been stripped naked, he continued. “The shamen hold all wisdom. They are the keepers of our past, and we believe what they say.”

  He was speaking in the present tense. If only it was in her power to make that time real for him again! “Cho-ocks, the shaman who kept you alive. Was he the only one you had during the war?”

  He nodded, the gesture slow and even and sensual in a way she could barely handle. Maybe if he wasn’t still touching her, she wouldn’t be feeling this way, but she couldn’t tell him to stop.

  “Loka,” she said when she realized he hadn’t spoken, when desire for him threatened to become a flood. “I—I’ve been trying to learn more about the Modocs. I, ah, I’ve read books—every book I could get my hands on—but they contradict one another. I don’t know if there’s truth in any of it. You believed in Cho-ocks’s power? Completely believed in him?”

  “Yes.”

  Yes. “Why?”

  “Cho-ocks told me when to climb Spirit Mountain for my vision quest. I did as he said and Eagle came to me.”

  He made it sound so simple, but maybe it was. From where they stood, she could just make out the thin, dark ribbon that was the two-lane road cutting through the lava beds. Except for that and the diminishing wisp of a jet trail, the small collection of buildings that made up the park headquarters, nothing of the twentieth century existed.

  “When the army came,” he said. “we could no longer reach Spirit Mountain. My chief died without returning here.”

  Her fingers had lost all strength, but his words returned it to her. She grabbed his wrists as he’d done to her earlier and hung on to him as if her presence might be enough to end the pain she knew went along with his simple comment. “I’m sorry.” The wind seemed to grab her words and fling them outward.

  “I am glad that I did not see his end,” Loka said. He wasn’t looking at her. Instead, his gaze seemed welded on Yainax. “When I learned that my people were sent away from here after Keintepoos was hung, I gave thanks to Eagle that I was not there.”

  Maybe, if he had been, he would have been hung alongside Cap—alongside Keintepoos. “I don’t want to talk about that,” she managed. “Not now and maybe never. What was it like before white men came? Please, will you tell me about that?”

  He looked relieved at her question, but maybe she only imagined the expression. “This is important to you?”

  “Yes. Oh, yes.”

  “Why?”

  She couldn’t answer. The need for understanding had become too deep for words. “I don’t know your world, Loka, and I want to.”

  “My world, what was once my world.” His voice had become heavy. All she could do was cling to him and pray he could find his way through regret to where she waited for him. Finally: “Kumookumts provided us with everything we needed. Deer and birds, fish and camas. We had the strength to fight the Klamaths. For a long time they were our only enemies.”

  “Them and sometimes this land.”

  He frowned at that. She explained that there must have been times when the weather had been so severe that they’d been afraid they wouldn’t survive until spring. To her surprise, he shook his head. “If a Maklaks walks the right way, he has nothing to fear.”

  “The right way? But how do you know what that is?”

  “Our spirits, the land and sky, tell us.”

  It seemed as if she’d been holdi
ng on to him forever, feeling the essence of him through the contact. Most of the time it was a battle to concentrate on what he was saying, but his simple statement freed her, at least briefly. “Your eagle spirit?” she asked. “He guides you?”

  He nodded and again she was struck by how sensual he could make the gesture. “He always did, Tory. But this is a new time. I need to learn how to walk in today.”

  Only when pain shot up her arm did she realize she’d been gripping his hands with all her strength. It didn’t matter; nothing did except the beauty, the mystery of what he was saying. “I wish—I want to help.”

  A deep sigh echoed throughout his body. When it was finished, he pulled himself free and stepped over to a low, flat rock. He stood on it, arms outstretched, eyes closed. He began chanting, the sounds hard and discordant and yet hypnotic. She couldn’t take her eyes off him, yet she remained aware of the horizon. The setting sun glinted off his dark chest and all but buried flashes of light in his ebony hair. He didn’t move. If he breathed, she couldn’t tell. He remained silhouetted against the world, a man secure in his belief, at home with an untamed world. If she had a camera—

  No! This moment was for her heart and soul, not something man-made.

  She felt her lips move and realized she was trying to duplicate the words he was saying, but she didn’t know how to make her mouth and tongue work in that way. Because he was staring at Mount Shasta, at Yainax, she did the same.

  Something—there was no doubt—was coming their way. Even before it flew close enough that she could identify it, she had no doubt of the bird’s identity. The setting sun kept her from making out every detail, but her memory supplied the missing pieces. Eagle. Because she’d long been fascinated by birds of prey, she knew that its keen eyesight made hers pathetic by comparison. It had come, she believed, not because it was looking for something to eat, but because Loka had called it to him.

  “What—” she began and then stopped. The eagle was no more than twenty feet above Loka’s head now. Driven by an instinct for self-preservation, she slipped behind some rocks, observing it from that relatively safe vantage point. Its wingspan had to be at least twenty feet, its eyes clear and dark and keen. More than anything else, its talons fascinated her. Instruments of death, they hung at the ready beneath its muscular and yet nearly weightless body. The thought of those weapons digging into Loka’s body forced a cry from her throat, but neither Loka nor the bird seemed to have heard her. They remained focused on each other, an invisible linkage forged. She tried to tell herself that it was impossible. Surely her warrior and this primitive bird couldn’t think as one, but what other explanation was there?