Fur Magic (7 page)

Cory did not try to struggle now against Yellow Shell for command of the beaver body. He only wished that this too real dream would end and he could wake up once more into the world he had always known.

Upstream or down? The beaver hesitated. It was the otter who waved with his undamaged paw that they should go up, against the current. Yet, would that not be the very way the minks would expect them to go—back towards where they had been captured?

The otter signed again, impatiently. “Upstream—hurry—” He tried to follow his own directions, but swam clumsily,
and an eddy pushed him towards the bank. Yellow Shell easily caught up with him, shouldered him on, across the river, towards the opposite bank. Along that they made a slow and painful way, keeping under water where they could, pausing for rests where roots or brush overhung the water to give them a screening shadow.

For it was day now and a bright one, with sunlight glittering on the surface of the river, insects buzzing above, water life to be seen. Yellow Shell ate willow bark within his reach without leaving the stream. The otter clawed aside water-washed rocks with his good paw, aided by the beaver when he understood what his companion wished, and snapped up the crawfish hiding under such roofing.

He was, the otter signed, named Broken Claw; he looked ruefully at his torn paw as he gestured that. And he was of the Marsh Spring tribe, though this was the season when his people split into family groups and went off for the summer hunting. Since he had no squaw or cubs in his lodge as yet, he had been on a solitary exploring trip when he had been trapped by the minks. And at that, Broken Claw showed shame at his failure to be alert. He had come upon a slide, he told Yellow Shell frankly, and had tried it out. Absorbed in the fun of the swift descent, he had gone up and down more times than he could remember now, the result being that he lost all caution and had at last slid directly into a net trap of the minks.

It was not the minks he feared most, however, but the fact that he must have been spied upon by crows who reported him to the mink raiders.

“The Changer—”

“What does the Changer?” Yellow Shell asked in the beaver language.

“Who knows?” The otter seemed to understand enough of those guttural sounds to sign an answer. Perhaps he understood beaver even if he did not speak it. “But it is bad when the Changer comes. The world may turn over—as it is said that in time it will.”

The world may turn over
—that touched another and frightening, memory for Yellow Shell. There would come a day—all the medicine makers said it, sang it, beat it out on drums when the People came to dance big medicine—that the world
would
turn over, when nothing would be as it now was. And all that was safe and sure would be swept away, and all that was straight would become crooked, all that was light would be dark. And the People would no longer be People, but as slaves.

“As slaves—” Yellow Shell's paws moved in that sign and Broken Claw nodded.

“Already that begins to be. You saw the waterway of the mink village. That was dug by slaves, beavers they took as cubs and made work for them.”

“And what becomes of them?” Yellow Shell's teeth snapped, his strong tail moved through the water, sweeping a stand of reeds into a broken mass. “What happens to them after they so work?”

“They go, none know where,” Broken Claw answered. “But the crows of the Changer carry many messages to that village.”

“If the Changer meddles—” Yellow Shell shivered. Again Broken Claw nodded.

“True.” His good forepaw moved in a gesture of agreement. “It is best that our peoples know of this. Mine are scattered, which is evil. We must gather together again, although this is against our custom in the days that are warm. What of yours, Elder Brother?”

“They move village. I am a scout for them.”

“It would be better for them not to find new water in this land,” replied the otter. “The sooner you say that to your chief, the better it shall be for your people.”

“And you?”

“To the lodge of our chief Long Tooth, who stays in a place appointed where our people may gather in time of danger. He will then send messages, signal fires, to draw our people there.”

“Yet the minks will be behind us now—”

Broken Claw nodded. “The minks, yes. If they listen indeed to the words of the crows and those who fly scout for them in the sky, then we must both travel with the ever-seeing eyes of the war trail. In the water we need not tie fringes to our feet to wipe out the trail we leave, but they are also of the water and they will know.” He looked about where they had eaten, and Yellow Shell saw the foolish way they had behaved in their hunger.

It would be a very stupid mink who would not see the stripped willow, the overturned rocks, and not know that a beaver and an otter had halted here to rest and eat.

The otter signed. “Yes, we have been as cubs untaught, my Brother. Let us hope that this does not lead to evil for us.”

At first Yellow Shell thought that some of the traces could be hidden. A moment's study told him that was impossible.
All they could do now was to put as much space between them and this breakage as they could.

But while his powerful beaver body had almost recovered from the rough handling given him by the minks, though his head still ached and his exploring paw touched a tender swelling on his skull where the war club had fallen, the otter was less able. And though Broken Claw tried valiantly to swim forward on his own, at last he fell behind. When Yellow Shell realized that and turned back, he found the otter drifting with the current, almost torn away from a feeble claw hold on a river rock.

“Hold this.” Yellow Shell took the other's good paw and worked it into a loop of necklace about his own shoulders. The otter seemed almost unconscious again. He watched what the beaver did, but did not say anything as the other made preparations to tow him.

Putting out a forepaw to hold the otter's head so they could look at each other, Yellow Shell signed slowly.

“Where—is—your—chief's lodge?”

The otter blinked. Then his injured paw moved in a short answer.

“Stream—into—river—big stone—painted rock—follow stream.”

“How far?” Yellow Shell next asked.

But Broken Claw's eyes were closed, his head lay limply back against the paw that the beaver used to brace it higher.

So, with the weight of the otter now dragging against him, Yellow Shell paddled along the bank, still keeping to the protection he could find there against sighting from the sky. He found that swimming with Broken Claw as a helpless
burden tired him quickly, and he had to rest more and more often, pulling the otter out of the stream under some overhang so he could breathe. Twice he cowered in such a hiding place as the shadow of wings fell on the water. Once he could not be sure whether that was a crow or some hunting hawk. But the second time he caught sight of black feathers and was sure.

For a long time after that the beaver crouched over the otter in a cup beneath the overhang of bank, not sure as to what to do. If they had been seen by that dark flyer, then the minks would speedily know where they were. But if they had not, and took to the water now, then the crow might be perched in some tree, watching for them to do just that.

But the minks did not arrive and he guessed he was only wasting precious time in hiding. Yellow Shell ventured out again, still towing Broken Claw. At their next rest, however, the otter roused and seemed better able to understand what they were doing. He agreed that he was weak enough to need Yellow Shell's support. But he urged that the beaver help him now up on to the bank between two rocks.

From that point he made a long and searching study of the river. Yellow Shell did the same, but could see nothing except insects, birds—including two of the long-legged stalkers of fish and frogs. And no black-winged ones. Then below them, a little ahead, the grass parted and a deer trotted out to dip muzzle and drink.

Broken Claw crowded against him, using contact of shoulder against shoulder to catch Yellow Shell's full attention. With his good forepaw the otter pointed upstream and to the opposite bank.

The beaver recognized what must be the landmark Broken Claw had told him about. But to reach it they must cross the open river, in full sight of the sky. And on the other side he could sight no bushes or overhang of bank to cover them.

A cawing flattened both animals between the rocks where they sheltered. Crows—two of them—wheeled above the river. One of the long-legged waders called in return, challengingly, in warning against such an invasion of his territory. Of him the crows seemed to take little heed.

Then the wader took to the air and Yellow Shell did not mistake the purpose with which the larger bird set out to clear away the black-feathered invaders. They fled south, the wader winging after them. But in the time when they had been above the river, had they sighted the two among the rocks? There was no answer to that, no answer but again to make such speed as they could, to get away from that point before the crows could report them, or manage to elude the wader and return.

T
aking advantage of the retreat of the crows, they crossed the river at once and rounded the base of rock that divided the other stream. Yellow Shell halted in surprise as he glanced up at that pillar of stone. For set as a deep hollow in it, well above the level he could reach, even standing as erect as he could, was the mark of a paw. It was not, he saw upon closer inspection, the track of a beaver, or of an otter, or a mink. Yet it was clearly an animal sign, left imprinted in the rock as if that had been soft mud.

Around it were traces of old paint, and some of that rubbed into the hollow of the track itself, indicating that it was indeed mighty medicine and such a mark as would be a boundary to a territory.

“The paw—” He swam on to catch up with Broken Claw, who was heartened to the point of travelling by himself again.

“Mark of a Great One, a River Spirit,” Broken Claw answered. “It is big medicine. If it were otter, or beaver, then
the mink could not pass it. But it is for all water dwellers and so cannot aid us now.”

The stream, once they were beyond where it split about the pillar to enter the river, was what Yellow Shell would have selected himself if he could have picked their means of escaping observation.

For it was a narrow slit, much overgrown with bank-rooted bushes and willows. Also it was plain that this was otter country. They passed otter marks on other stones, not pressed into rock, of course, as the river spirit had set its print, but left in pictures of coloured clay above the high-water mark. These were not of his tribe and Yellow Shell could not read them. But twice Broken Claw paused by some that looked fresher than the rest and at the second such he signed:

“Many return to the tribe. There is danger—already they may know that.”

Again his spirit was more willing than his body. And, although he had seemed strong enough to enter the stream on his own and swim therein for some distance unaided, he began to slip back, and finally clung to a water-logged tree root until Yellow Shell once more lent his strength to the smaller animal.

The stream entered a marsh where there were tall reeds and a series of pools. Some farther off were scum-rimmed and evil-smelling. But along the brook the water was clear and Yellow Shell felt safer than he had since his capture by the mink war party. Then the otter pulled against him and the beaver came to a halt where the stream widened to a pool, a
pool half-dammed by a fallen tree and some drift caught against that.

At the otter's gesture, Yellow Shell aided Broken Claw to the top of the tree log. Pressing his wounded paw tightly against him, he used the other to beat upon a stub of branch still protruding from the log. It gave off a sound that carried out over the marsh. And then Broken Claw paused, for from far in the water-soaked land before them came a pound-pound of answer.

“They know we come,” he signed, slipping from the tree to the water. And Yellow Shell saw marks on the log that said that this signal must have been so given many times before.

So they continued, and the beaver was not surprised when an otter suddenly arrived out of a reed bed, to look at them and then be gone again, giving Yellow Shell only a swift glimpse of a painted muzzle, a headdress of feathers and reed beads. But there had been a spear in the otter's paw and he had carried it as one well used to that weapon.

At last they came out into what must have been the centre of the swamplands, a core of dry land rising as a mounded island, well protected from discovery by the watery world around it. Earth, which was mostly clay in which were many stones, had been heaped and plastered together, perhaps on a foundation of rocks. On this were the lodges of brush, also plastered with mud that had hardened in the sun. The lodges were smooth-walled and wholly above water, but with something of the same look as beaver lodges—as if they might have been copied from the larger homes of Yellow Shell's people.

There were otters awaiting their coming, the warriors in front, squaws and cubs behind, but only a handful compared
to the number of lodges. If, as Broken Claw had believed, the tribe was assembling again, not all had yet reached this swamp stronghold.

Coup poles stood in front of about five of the lodges, their battle honours dangling—not strings of teeth as in the mink village, but here bunches of feathers or coloured reed chains. The waiting warriors made way for Yellow Shell to climb up on the island. For these last few feet Broken Claw shook free of his aid and walked alone. Two of the foremost of those who waited hurried to his side, giving him support and leading the way through the almost deserted village to a middle lodge that was larger than all the rest, its clayed sides covered with pictures, and coloured marks drawn in the soft substance and then filled in with black or red paint. As on the rocks some of the marks were weathered, but others stood out brightly as if only recently done. And Yellow Shell knew these for tribe and clan records, so this must be the lodge of not only a tribal chief but one who also held the rank of medicine singer.