Fur Magic (13 page)

So this white down was the sign of the White Eagle and a precious thing of much power. Holding it so, Yellow Shell knew a slight spurt of hope, knew what he could now try. So when he crawled out of the lodge, he took with him that wisp of feather.

Now—to find a high place. He hunched up to look about him. The river had rocks along its banks farther to the east. At the moment those were the highest spots the beaver could sight. There was no hope to return in time to the mountains, or even to the foothills. He had this to encourage him—a rising and a strong wind that now tugged at him.

In his haste to try out his plan for finding where the Changer had gone with the medicine bag, Yellow Shell almost lost his caution. It was only a series of sharp barks from the direction of the prairie that reminded him that he must
still be alert to what lay there, to the hunters who might at any moment return. And it seemed that that was just what was happening now. For at that barking there were more echoes from among the lodges and he saw the squaws and older cubs gathering in excitement, the younger of them heading out, in his direction, as if to meet the returning warriors.

With a burst of speed difficult for his heavy body, Yellow Shell scuttled as fast as he could towards the river, putting such a screen of grass and brush between him and the village as he could find, hoping to reach the river to the east well beyond the village.

He was soon almost winded, for this was rough ground and his fear pushed him to greater and greater efforts. The barking chorus behind him took on the measure of a song and he thought he read triumph in it. The warriors of the camp might be back from a battle or successful raid—anyway, it was plain they had accomplished something of which they were proud.

Yellow Shell did not pause to look back, nor had he any eyes for anything but the ground immediately around him. If he could but reach the water—As it had been yesterday, the need for water was now like a whip laid across his haunches.

Here was a rise of rocks, those he had picked out as a good base for his try at using the eagle down. But he had no thought of that now; even in the night he could be sighted by those hunters from the plains. Instead he plunged into the first opening he saw between those rough stones, scrambling up and down, sometimes slipping painfully on pebbles and gravel caught in the hollows between them, until he came once more to a drop, with the stream lying below.

Taking the precious feather carefully into his mouth, Yellow Shell thankfully dived in, allowed the water to close over him, hardly daring to believe even now that he had managed to leave the village without raising an alarm. Could it be that the power of the spirit dream somehow clung to him, so that just as he had visited the lodge by dream undetected by the coyotes, so he was now also able to go in body?

He swam upstream, ready to duck beneath the surface of any pool if the need arose. The river-bed was narrower here, channelled between steadily rising banks of stones embedded in sun-hardened clay. He put as much distance between him and the camp as he could, alert to any sound from behind that would warn that he was being trailed.

But perhaps whatever success the hunters had had so satisfied the coyotes that they were aware of nothing else. Again he wondered if they had indeed brought down a buffalo, for to those whom the Changer favoured, such a coup might well be possible.

Dawn found him on much higher ground, the stream now running swiftly and with a force he found increasingly difficult to battle against. He pulled out of its grip at last. There were no alders, willows, or edible roots here, and he regretted not having brought supplies with him. But hunger could not turn him back now.

The feather plume, when he took it carefully out of his mouth, was almost as wet as if he had switched it through the river. He held it up with great care to where the breeze blew, trying to dry it. And as he did so, he chanted, though he did not raise his voice above the mutter of the water behind him:

“Eagle, hear me—

Let your power be with me.

White Eagle, hear me.

Speaker, hear me.

Overseer, the seeker, hear me.

White is this,

Of your medicine.

Let the wind that is the beating

Of your wings in the sky

Carry this, which is of your own power,

To join with that which is of its own.

Carry high, and carry far,

To join again that which is its own!”

He pulled from around his neck what was left of his necklaces and looped them with one paw about the haft of his spear, for this was all he had to offer. Then he threw the spear and the dangling ornaments up into the sky with all the force left in his tired foreleg. It rose, swept on and on and was gone beyond the rocky wall. And Yellow Shell was heartened, for it had not tumbled back into the stones where he could see. But as long as he was able to watch, it had gone up and up. Perhaps White Eagle would be pleased to notice his offering, and would listen with an attentive ear to his singing.

Holding the feather still in the drying breeze with one forepaw, Yellow Shell scrambled up and up to follow the general direction of his vanished spear. It was not an easy climb and he was puffing hard through a half-open mouth as he reached the top.

Dawn was grey in the sky, the sun's day paint beginning to show on the eastern sky. The river had made a wide curve and now he could see that its source lay somewhere to the north, not the east, perhaps in the very mountains where Storm Cloud's tribe nested.

Once more the beaver chanted his petition to the White Eagle. And out of the river valley, or so it seemed, curled a breeze that although not forceful enough to be termed a wind, yet blew steadily.

Into this Yellow Shell loosed the feather. It was caught up in the breeze, to be borne southward into the desert waste on this side of the river. And with firm faith that he was indeed following a sure guide, the beaver set out after it.

It was light enough to see the feather clearly, to be able to follow its flight. So small a thing to trust to—For the first time in many hours, Cory thought as himself and not as Yellow Shell. Surely he could not depend upon such a thing as this!

But because the faith of his Yellow Shell self was so strong, Cory did not struggle against it.

To his surprise, it almost seemed that the feather
was
indeed a purposeful guide. Twice, Yellow Shell tired and crouched panting, unable to keep on. Then the feather was caught temporarily, to flutter on the top of some sun-dried, leafless piece of dead growth, only to be torn loose and carried on when the beaver was ready to shuffle ahead. Finally a last gust whirled it up and up into the bright blue of the cloudless sky as the beaver came to the edge of a basin.

This might be twin to that cupped-mountain stronghold of the eagles. But whereas that had been green and held water,
this held sand, with strange, rough columns rising out of it, some of which had been toppled to lie full length.

Set up in the heart of this was a small skin shelter before which crouched an oddly shaped figure. It was busy, its forepaws patting and pulling at a mass of clay on the ground before it. Now and then it sprinkled water from a gourd on to that mass, always returning to its pinching and pulling, kneading and rolling.

The feather was like a snowflake, drifting through a winter day. As the beaver watched, it floated downward once more, heading straight for the worker. And Yellow Shell knew that he had found the Changer, though what he did here, the beaver could not guess.

Carefully he climbed down the basin wall, scurrying as fast as he could into the shadow of the nearest of those pillars, putting it between him and the Changer. As he set a paw on it, he found it was stone, yet once it must have been a tree, for it had the look of bark and wood. And if so, this must have been woodland changed to stone. Another trick of the Changer? If so, for what purpose? How could trees of stone serve anyone—Unless the Changer had been merely using his power for sport and to see what he might accomplish.

Yellow Shell crept on, though under his thick coat of fur he felt cold enough to shiver. The sun might be beating hotly down on his slowly moving body, yet the closer he drew to that absorbed worker, the more he felt a deep chill of fear.

Perhaps the Changer would catch sight of the eagle down, know that it had guided someone to spy on him. And what would be the fate of such a spy? To be changed—perhaps to
such stone as these trees? Go back, said his fear. Yet Yellow Shell shuffled on, from one patch of shadow to the next.

He could hear the faint murmur of song now, and he guessed that the worker strove to sing into his fashioning of the clay some power. Yet it would seem that he was not accomplishing what he wished. For time and time again he would bring the full weight of his forepaws down on the clay, smashing it all flat again, growling over the destruction of his efforts.

Forepaws? Yellow Shell blinked (Cory would have exclaimed aloud had he then his human lips and voice). Those paws had looked like yellow coyote paws from a distance. But now—now they seemed to be human fingers busy once again at pushing, pinching, rolling—

He saw that the squatting figure was neither wholly an animal nor a man, but a strange combination of the two, as if someone had started to make a change from beast to man and the experiment had been only half successful.

Hands were at the end of furred forelegs, and the head was domed, as a human skull, though large ears pricked on either side. It was as if a man wore a beast's mask over his whole head. The hind legs were still pawed, but the shoulders under the yellow-brown hide were those of a man.

To Cory-Yellow Shell the combination was worse than if one wholly coyote or wholly human had been squatting there. To Cory the beast-human was all wrong and to be feared, while his Yellow Shell self found the human-beast unnatural and frightening. Yet the beaver could no longer retreat; he was held where he was as if bound to the column
behind which he hid. And that realization came with such a shock that he whimpered aloud.

The singer's head lifted, green beast's eyes looked straight at the stone tree behind which Yellow Shell crouched. The Changer made a swift gesture, a beckoning. Against his will the beaver's body obeyed that summons, creeping out into the sun, treading straight to where the Changer worked in clay, with no hope of escaping that powerful pull.

About the Changer was a wide patch of dug-up earth, pocked with holes out of which he must have scraped his clay. A big mass of it was directly before him, having no form at all now, for he had just once more pounded what he shaped into nothingness. He sat, his man's hands resting upon its surface, watching the beaver. And he no longer sang, but rather he studied, as if he saw a use in Yellow Shell, as if some missing part to what he would shape had come to him.

Seeing that look, the beaver's terror grew, and with it an inner stir in his human self also. Cory must now break through this nightmare, awake into the real world before something worse happened. He could not guess what that something was, but the beaver's fear was a warning and he knew it too—as great as the terror that had touched him when he had watched the buffalo and the dancer.

“W
hat have we here?” The Changer spoke, and it seemed to Yellow Shell that his words were beaver, but to Cory's ears they were human. “You have come here to take the wood-which-is-stone for the making of spear points?” He nodded to one of the fallen pillars where its side had been chipped and broken, shattered lumps lying in the sand. “But, no, I think you have come for another reason, and it is one that can well serve my purpose. Now sit you and watch!”

And with those words he seemed to root Yellow Shell to the ground, for the beaver could not move, nor was he able to turn his eyes from the Changer's hands.

Once more the Changer mixed a little water from the gourd into the pile of moist clay, and his fingers pushed and pulled at the stuff. What arose from the muddy mixture under his coaxing was a small figure that very roughly resembled a man. There were two legs, two arms, a squat body, and a round blob ball for a head. But it was very crude, and plainly its maker was dissatisfied, for with his fist he impatiently smashed it back into the clay once more.

Cory came fully to life in the beaver body, aroused to take control at the sight of the manikin that had so disappointed its maker. And he spoke, though the sounds he made were a beaver's gutturals.

“You are making a man!”

The Changer stopped kneading the clay, his head swung up so those green eyes stared at Cory, or the beaver Cory now was. Very cold, very frightening were those eyes. Yellow Shell, the beaver, might not have been able to meet that stare for long, but Cory, the boy, somehow found courage and held steady. Slowly that gaze changed from cruel menace to surprise, and then speculation.

“So—you are that one,” the Changer said.

What he meant by that, Cory did not know. But he continued to face the half man, half coyote with all the will he could summon to his aid. And now he had an idea. He did not know how such a thought had come, but he grasped it with a new boldness, as if to beaver stubbornness he added what only a human could know. He did not reply to the Changer's half question, but he said:

“You are trying to make a man.”

Once more those green eyes were chill with anger—Cory did not know whether it was his guess or the Changer's own failure. A mud-spattered hand half rose as if to aim a blow at the beaver. Then it fell back on the clay, which he began to pinch and twist again in moist chunks, though now his attention was more on Cory than on what he was trying to do.

“You would bargain—with
me?”
There was a challenge in that demand.

“I offer you a model,” Cory returned and waited in suspense,
but with some hope. Would the Changer accept, turn him back to his human self for the sake of a model to copy for his manikin?