Fur Magic (10 page)

Perhaps the tower of rock and earth had been born a volcano, and they were now where the inner flames had burned. For this was a basin sloping from ragged stone edging. There was a lake in the centre around an island of stone outcrops. About the outer edge of that body of water were trees and grass, a miniature woodland.

It was the island that Yellow Shell now faced, having been dropped with the otters on a sand bar reaching into the water. And the island was the eagle village, their bushes of nests mounted on blocks, broken pillars, and mounds of stone.

It was a crowded village, and there was much coming and going—mostly of parent birds supplying their screaming young with food. But those eagles who had brought the animals did not stop at the village, rather they spiralled up to the wall of the basin valley where Yellow Shell caught sight of other birds moving in and out of fissures in the rock.

The otters were busied with the pipe bundle, loosing its wrappings, pulling off the fish-skin protective covering. But still the four layers of painted skins were about it as they laid it carefully out on the sand, the bowl end pointing towards them, the stem to the village on the lake.

However it was not from the village that the chief came. He wheeled from the crags, circling down to perch on a big rock by the shore, one worn in hollows where his huge feet rested, as if generations of eagles had sat there before him.

Tufts of weasel fur, for the weasel is a valiant warrior and skilful in evading pursuit, hung from a necklace about his throat, together with the tooth of a cougar, as if he had indeed counted coup on that mightiest of four-footed enemies. He was a proud and fierce chief, more for leadership on the warpath than on the peace trail, Yellow Shell thought, as he looked upon him with awe.

Several lesser eagles settled down on lower rocks. And every one of them wore coup necklaces laced with that which told of their past victories. But the last comer was no eagle.

At first Yellow Shell flinched at the sight of those dead black wings—a crow? Then he saw that this was a raven, larger than the crows he had seen scouting when he fled upriver with Broken Claw.

No coup necklace was about the Raven's throat. But the rattles of a rock rattler were tied to his legs, and he carried on a thong a small drum, hardly larger than Yellow Shell's hind paw. He did not have the painted circles of red or yellow that marked the eagles about their eyes. A dab of white, spirit white, made a vividly plain mark just above the jutting of his beak.

The eagles and the Raven folded their wings as the otters moved with a slow ceremony to unveil the pipe, wrapping by wrapping. They worked in silence, nor was there any sound from the birds who sat in such quiet that they might have been carved of the very stone upon which they now perched. Even the noises from the village lessened and Yellow Shell saw that there were fewer comings and goings from there. Many of the parent birds settled down on the nests, all facing
towards the shore and the meeting between the animals and their chief.

At last the pipe was fully exposed and lay in the sunlight. It seemed to shine, as if the sun put fire to the red of its bowl. For the first time Stone Foot spoke, his voice rising and falling in a chant that the beaver, while he did not understand it, recognized as a medicine song, and not addressed to the eagles but to some protective spirit.

When he had done, Red Head, moving with care, dropped a pinch of tobacco into the bowl and brought out his shell box with its smouldering tinder. But he did not light the pipe as yet. He waited.

Again a long period, or it seemed long to Cory, of just waiting. Then the eagle chief moved from his rock perch to a lower stone set closer to the otters. From that he stretched forth his leg, his claws closing about the pipe stem. Red Head lit the pipe, and the eagle chief raised it to the sky, pointed it to earth, and then to the four corners of the world, even as Long Tooth had done with that other pipe when he welcomed Yellow Shell to the otter village.

The chief smoked, expelling a puff from his bill, passed the pipe to the Raven. And the Raven in turn gave it to Stone Foot, Stone Foot to Yellow Shell, and then to Red Head. Having blown the last ceremonial curl of smoke, the otter tapped the tobacco ashes from the bowl and laid the pipe back on its wrappings, the stem still pointed arrow straight at the chief.

A great clawed foot rose so that the claws could move in signs.

“I am Storm Cloud of the Swift Ones, the Mighty Wings.”

Stone Foot signed in answer. “We are Stone Foot, Red Head, bearers of the pipe. And this is Yellow Shell, who is—”

The Raven hopped down from his stone perch. Among the eagles he had seemed small. Standing thus on the ground to face the beaver, he proved to be almost as large as Yellow Shell. He moved with a lurch and Cory saw that his left foot had lost a claw. But he steadied himself well on it as he signed:

“This is a beaver, yet not a beaver.”

“That is true,” Yellow Shell spoke for himself.

“You bear a pipe?” The Eagle looked at him. “Do you speak for the beavers?”

“For myself only. The medicine otter said that the Raven had great power, that he could aid me in becoming all beaver, all other once more.”

“But this is not a matter of the pipe.” The Eagle's sweep of clawed foot was impatient. “It is the matter of the pipe to which Storm Cloud has been summoned. What speak the otters?”

Stone Foot's paws moved deliberately, giving to his signs the dignity of a ceremonial speech in his own tongue.

“There is much trouble along the river. Those who serve the Changer fly and raid. The minks take prisoners for him, and we know not what becomes of them. Our spirit talker has sung and his dreams have been ill ones. We would know what the Swift Flyers, the Mighty Wings, have seen in the land. For even the edges of the Sky Country are theirs and little can be hidden from their strong eyes.”

There was another pause before the Eagle made answer. “It is true there is a new coming and going. The Changer's
village has moved close to the place of Stone Trees, though the hunting there is poorer. It is as if they must wait there for someone, or something to happen. Spirits walk by night; you may sense their passing. But to know more than that, we must search—and we have left well enough alone.”

The Raven bowed his head in a vigorous up and down. “Yes, yes, it is better not to draw the eye of the Changer, lest he be minded of one. But does your spirit talker fear that the time spoken of is near—that the world is about to be turned over?”

Cory saw all the eagles shift uneasily, their heads turn from the Raven to the otters. He could see that the bold question disturbed them.

“There is always that to be feared,” Stone Foot returned.

“So. Well, the Thunderbird dwells yonder. We shall burn sweet smoke such as he loves to have blown into his wings, and cry aloud to the wind what we fear. But also, tell your chief,” Storm Cloud continued, “that we shall search from the air and learn what we may. None of those who serve the Changer can out-climb or out-fly us, as they shall learn if they match their powers against ours.”

Again there was movement among the eagles as they drew themselves tall on their perch rocks with their pride as strong to see as their war shouts would be heard.

“The Swift Flyers, the Mighty Wings, are great ones, undefeated in any battle,” signed Stone Foot. “If this they will do, then all along the river shall know that we will be prepared for any war, if war is what they should bring upon us.”

Together with Red Head he began to rewrap the medicine
pipe, securing each fastening. But the Raven turned his attention now fully on Yellow Shell.

“You have come to Raven,” he said. “Raven's ears are open to hear what you would ask.”

“It is as I have said—the medicine otter told me that if I would be as I was before the Changer looked upon me, I must come to the Eagle and the Raven.”

But the Raven was shaking his head. “I hold the calling of spirits, yes. They are sky spirits, and wind spirits, and a few earth spirits. But the powers of the Changer they cannot break. They can only tell you where to seek an answer, they cannot give it to you.”

“And will you ask them for me?”

Storm Cloud's beak clicked together in a sharp sound, drawing Yellow Shell's attention. As the beaver looked to him, he signed:

“To do that requires a mighty singing. Such singing is not done for nothing. We have no old peace with your people, nor have we any friendship or brotherhood with you, Beaver-who-is-not-wholly-a-beaver.”

“Friendship is a matter of giving as well as taking.” The Yellow Shell part of him made a bolder answer than Corey might have used. “I ask not to be given where I do not give. What would you want of me as a price for such a singing?”

The Raven did not answer; it was as if he believed this a matter of bargaining between Yellow Shell and the chief. He himself was content upon Storm Cloud's decision.

“You are of those who master water,” the Eagle said after a long moment's pause. He might have been trying to determine
some manner of payment of benefit to his tribe, thought Corey. “This, our lake, is sometimes too full. Rocks tumble from the cliffs and close the stream that empties it, and then there is much hard labour to clear them free. Twice have storms so filled it that lower nests have been washed away. Dig you a way for water to run, one that we may use at such times, and this singing shall be yours.”

“I am but one beaver,” Yellow Shell countered. “This may be such a task as would need a whole clan to do.”

Storm Cloud's bill clicked again, impatiently. “A whole clan does not ask for spirit singing, but you do. Therefore it is your task. And perhaps only you can find a way to use the stream that is, clear it more easily of rocks.”

“What I can do, I shall,” Yellow Shell promised.

The otters had the pipe recovered, were ready to be gone, and Storm Cloud had already assigned two of his warriors to fly them down the mountain. But Yellow Shell had a few moments to talk with them. He signed a wish that they might find his own people and warn them against marching south into these river lands where trouble was gathering. And this, Red Head agreed, they would do, sending their best scout north. Then the otters were snatched up by the eagles, who seemed to want to rid themselves of their guests as soon as possible, and Yellow Shell was left behind.

Storm Cloud, too, was a-wing, heading back to the crags, and only a young eagle swooped about the beaver. Even as Raven signed, “Split Bill will show you the waterway,” the eagle's clutch was hard upon him, and he, too, was borne skyward in a fearsome soaring.

Y
ellow shell looked over the terrain when the eagle warrior dropped him at the outlet of the lake. There was a stream that fed through a narrow gap and the beaver could see how a fall of rocks from above would dam it. But this was not a trouble his people had had to face before, for their task was usually the making, not the clearing, of dams.

He swam along the river outlet, nosing at both banks, trying to find some way to deepen the flow of water. But he could not see any method of tunnelling through the stone of the cliffs.

Since the present outlet was so banked with rock, he returned to the lake and began to explore its banks at this end. The eagle who had brought him grew bored and flew away, and Yellow Shell was left alone to face what seemed a hopeless task. But the beaver stubbornly refused to admit defeat.

In the end his forelegs and head suddenly broke through a screen of brush into a hole in the mountain cup. If all the basin had been formed by a volcano in action, then this
crack had come at that time, with a later spread of molten rock to roof above it. When Yellow Shell padded into it, he found not the crevice he had first expected but a channel, which brought him, by a very dark way, out on the open mountain side on the other side of the basin wall.

He went back to the valley of the lake and squatted down at the edge of the water, eating a hearty meal of freshly stripped bark while he studied the bank by that fissure. It was a big job for one beaver working alone, but he could see no other possible way to provide the eagles' lake with an emergency overflow exit. By mid-afternoon he was at work.

The bank of the lake must be undermined, cut through so that there was an open spillway into that crack. He dug with his forepaws until they were as sore as they had been from travel over stone. Rocks had to be loosened and pushed from side to side, then firmly embedded again to make a kind of funnel into the spillway.

He worked through the last of the daylight, keeping on into the night, stopping only now and then for a much needed rest or to eat again from the food about him. Now he had a raw gash in the earth, partly walled in with stones and such pieces of hard saplings as he could pound and wedge in for security. Mud mixed with broken brush was then plastered over that foundation, all to form a channel. The whole thing was the height of his body above the present level of the lake, and at that end he built another wall of small stones, to be easily shifted by the strong claws of the eagles when the need arose.

He was lying with his sore feet in the lapping waters of the lake at the next sunrise, so tired he thought that he could not
easily move again. But to the best of his beaver skill he had provided the eagles with the safety they needed. Let the river leading from the lake again be sealed by falling stones and they need only pull out the thin dam corking this outlet, and the flood would pour through the new channel. Of course there was no way of testing it until such a calamity occurred, and Yellow Shell wondered dully if they would demand such proof before they fulfilled their part of the bargain.

There was the whir of wings in the air above him and the eagle who had brought him there, or one enough like him to be his twin, landed on the edge of the restraining dam Yellow Shell had built. He teetered there as he looked down into the channel the beaver had cut and walled.