Rook & Tooth and Claw (40 page)

“So – what do you want?” asked Dog Brother. “Haven’t you caused me enough trouble?”

“I’ve come for Catherine,” said Jim. “If you let Catherine go, then maybe I’ll let you go.”

“I came here to kill you,” said Dog Brother. Droplets of water quivered on his yellow-lensed spectacles. “I came here to destroy everything you touch and everybody you love. Your class of young people are going to die first. Then I’m going to kill anyone who ever meant anything to you,
ever.
Remember your cousin Laura, whom you loved so much? You remember that poem you wrote her,
My Golden Girl,
and she couldn’t even read? You’ll know what’s happened to Laura in the next few days, when your mother’s sister calls you up and tells you that she’s dead.”

“What are you trying to do to me?” Jim yelled at him.

Dog Brother grinned. “Nothing that you white people didn’t do to me. You killed my people, and when you killed my people, you killed me. Well, now it’s
your
turn to find out what it’s like.”

Jim turned to Catherine. Her long hair was dripping in the rain and she looked extremely pale. “Catherine,” he appealed. “Are you just going to stand by and see innocent people killed?”

“And not just any innocent people,” smiled Dog Brother. “Your fellow-students, Catherine. Your precious Special Class II, where you’ve been learning to forget the Navajo way and the Navajo beliefs – where you’ve been learning to forget
me
.”

“If you harm any one of my students—” Jim began, but Dog Brother raised his hand. It was a long, narrow hand – more like a claw than a hand, with a thin, hairy wrist. Dog Brother said, “I’m going to slaughter them all, Mr Rook. David and Sharon and Muffy and Mark. There’s going to be so much blood, you’ll think that you’re drowning in it.”

“Catherine,” said Jim. “Catherine, please. Think what you’re doing. Those are your friends he’s talking about. He wants to murder all of your friends.”

Catherine turned her face away but Jim could have sworn that he saw a flicker of response.

“Catherine,” he repeated. “Listen to me, Catherine.”

“You can’t stop me,” said Dog Brother. “Your spirits are all much weaker than mine.”

Jim took three steps back down the bleachers. Thunder bellowed directly overhead, which made him feel as if the sky were falling in. “
My
spirits may be weaker than yours, Coyote. But
yours
aren’t. I summon you, great spirit, to rise up and see what Coyote has become. And I bid you destroy him – extinguish his breath, tear out his lungs, pull out his heart.”

A father with a gingery moustache turned round to Jim and said, “Excuse me, mister. There are kids here. You two guys want to say things like that, take your argument someplace else.”

“Yes, sorry,” said Jim. But then he flung his arms wide and shouted, “
Great spirit, come and kill Coyote! Great spirit, come and tear out his heart
!”

“Jesus,” said the father with the gingery moustache. “The principal’s going to hear about this.”

But at that moment, a sharp gust of rain snapped across the bleachers, and Jim saw the Rain Spirit climbing up the aisle, its watery face grim with the look of revenge. In one hand it carried a huge and complicated spear, with water continuously pouring from its tip, and raindrops falling from its shaft.

“
Your time has come, Coyote
,” said the Rain Spirit, somewhere inside of Jim’s head. “
And this isn’t a good day to die
.”

“Wait,” said Dog Brother, raising his hand. “Can’t you allow me one last wish before you kill me?” Catherine clung close to his arm, and even though Jim said, “Catherine!
Catherine
!” again and again, she wouldn’t look at him.

The Rain Spirit said, “
Why should I grant you any last wishes, after what you did to my daughter
?”

“I simply want to choose the way I die,” said Dog Brother. He was still grinning. All around them, the few spectators who had braved the rain were cheering West Grove toward another touchdown. “Go West Grove! Go West Grove!”

“
You may die any way you wish
,” said the Rain Spirit. “
Choose, but be quick, My spear is growing impatient for your heart
.”

“You’re the spirit of storms – kill me by lightning! Let me hold up your spear and take the full force of your
anger! I’m half a spirit, but I’m half a man, and that will kill me as quickly as snuffing out a torch.”

The Rain Spirit hesitated for a moment. “Don’t listen to him,” said Jim. “Just stab him, and take out his heart.”

“
If an enemy asks to die in a particular way, then it is shameful not to grant him his wish
.”

“You’re going to give him your spear? That’s good thinking!”

“
I am water, my friend. I am nothing but rain. My own spear cannot harm me
.”

“Well go on, then. Do it. But do it now. And you – Dog Brother – you make sure that Catherine stands well away from you.”

“Do you think I would harm the most beautiful girl I have ever known?”

“Just make sure she stays clear, you got it?”

The Rain Spirit tossed his spear to Dog Brother. Nobody but Jim could see any of these things. They couldn’t see the Rain Spirit, in his tumbling cloak of clouds. They couldn’t see why Dog Brother suddenly lifted his hand as if he were catching something. But Jim could see him standing on the top row of the bleachers with the Rain Spirit’s spear held high in his right hand, pointing up at the hurrying black clouds.

“I’m ready,” said Dog Brother. He took off his yellow spectacles and revealed eyes that were yellow, too.

The Rain Spirit lifted one finger to the skies. There was a moment’s pause, while the rain continued to lash down all around them. Then a leader-stroke of lightning came forking out of the clouds, heading right down toward them. Jim stepped back, and pushed back the father with the gingery moustache.

“Who are you shoving, buddy?” the father demanded, just as the blinding bolt of lightning hit the tip of the Rain Spirit’s spear. How Dog Brother had the split-second
timing to do it, Jim would never know. But he threw the spear back at the Rain Spirit, and the Rain Spirit instinctively caught it – right at the instant when the lightning’s return stroke hit it, with more than a quarter of a million volts.

Jim saw the Rain Spirit’s expression for only a fraction of a second – an agonized mask. Then it exploded into steam, like the ear-splitting blast from a locomotive. Scores of people turned around to see what had happened, but all they saw was the last stray fragments of steam drifting away.

It kept on raining, however, as if the skies were in mourning for the loss of their spirit, the one who had guided them for century after century, even when the white men came.

Dog Brother replaced his spectacles and said to Jim, “No spirit can touch me. No man can kill me. Now I’m going to show you what Coyote can do to you, if you make him angry.”

He turned to Catherine and laid a hand on her shoulder. “
No
,” said Henry Black Eagle. “Leave her alone.”

“She isn’t yours any longer, old man,” said Dog Brother. “She’s mine, and she’s going to stay mine. Catherine, let’s see what pain you can inflict on Mr Rook’s team here. You told me they’ve never won a game. Well, let’s see how badly they can lose this one.”

“
Catherine, no
!” Jim shouted at her. But already he could see the shadows forming around her head, her shoulders hunching, her eyes beginning to shrink and smoulder scarlet.

“
No
!” he said, and tried to grab hold of her arms, but they were already thick and hairy and she pushed him aside.

Henry Black Eagle couldn’t see Catherine’s transformation, but he knew what was happening to her. He
climbed up the bleachers to Dog Brother and tried to seize hold of his coat. “You can’t do this! She’s a child! She can’t change when people are watching her! Leave her alone!”

“When I’m here, she can change whenever I want her to. And I want her to.” With that, Dog Brother grasped hold of Henry Black Eagle’s lapels, and head-butted him, so that he fell backward and tumbled halfway down the aisle. There were screams and shouts and George Babouris called up to Jim, “What the hell’s going on, Jim? What’s happening?”

“Call an ambulance! Call the cops!” Jim told him. “Stop the game! Get everybody out of here!”

“I just want to know what’s happening!”

“Do it, George, that’s all I ask! Just do it!”

Dog Brother came down the bleachers, took hold of Jim’s shoulder, and slapped him across the face. Jim tried to punch him back, but Dog Brother slapped him again.

Behind him, Catherine had grown taller and darker and now she was
bristling,
just the way that Jim’s grandfather had predicted. Her claws were like black crescent moons, and she had rows and rows of hideously hooked teeth.

Dog Brother said, “This is my revenge, white man. This is what happens to people who try to cross me. Catherine White Bird is mine. She was always mine, and she always will be, even when she has given me the child I need, and she becomes nothing more than a beast.”

George had gone down to the field waving his arms to stop the game. Ben Hunkus was shouting at him and so was the Azusa coach. The players were standing around in muddy bewilderment. The crowd had shrunk away from Dog Brother and Jim, but they would have shrunk away even further if they could have seen the beast that Catherine was gradually becoming.

“I’m going to murder your children now,” said Dog
Brother. “I’m going to murder your children just as the white men murdered our children.”

He waved his hand, and the Changing Bear Maiden began to descend the steps. All that anybody else could see was Catherine – walking stiffly perhaps, with her shoulders hunched. But Jim could see a huge black shadow-creature with claws and teeth – a creature that could slaughter every young man on the football field and tear their bodies into shreds.

“
Catherine
!” he roared. “
Catherine, listen to me
!”

Dog Brother kept hold of him, but grinned at him even wider. “It’s no use, Mr Rook. It’s time for the bloodshed.”

“Catherine,” Jim repeated. “Catherine, this creature isn’t you. It’s only an illusion. Magic, trickery, that’s all it is. You’re still inside there, Catherine, someplace. Catherine White Bird, who’s free. Catherine White Bird, who wants a life of her own.”

“You can’t stop her, Mr Rook,” smiled Dog Brother. “Why don’t you sit down and enjoy the spectacle, mmh? It’s going to be better than the Roman games.”

“Catherine,” Jim pleaded. “You never wanted to go back to the reservations, did you? You never wanted to be Dog Brother’s bride? Come on, Catherine, listen to me. You have to break free. You have to be
you
!

He paused for breath, and then he recited,

The shadowy spirit-beast hesitated. It turned its head toward Jim and there was a look of hurt in its eyes, a look of deepest hurt.

“Go!” Dog Brother commanded it. “Go and rip their
lungs out! Go bite off their heads! Come on, heads! I want to see some heads!”

But the Changing Bear Maiden stayed where she was; and then she turned, and came back toward Dog Brother and towered over him, her fur streaked with rain.

“Kill,” said Dog Brother, unconvincingly. But the Changing Bear Maiden loomed over him and wouldn’t move.

“
Kill
!” Dog Brother screamed at her. “
Kill the bastards before I kill you
!”

Without warning, the Changing Bear Maiden slammed her claws into Dog Brother’s shoulder. He let out a high-pitched shriek and tried to wrestle himself away. But the Changing Bear Maiden lifted him completely off the bleachers until his feet were kicking in the air like a hanged man.

“
Let me go
!” he shouted. “
Let me go
!”

But he was half a man, as well as half a spirit, and he didn’t have the strength to tear himself free. And even though it needed one of his own kind to kill him, she was the same – half-beast, half-spirit – and that was what he had forgotten.

She let out a roar that made Jim’s skin prickle all the way down his back. Then she ripped open his chest with a single catastrophic blow, tearing through skin and muscle and ribs, and she dragged out his living heart. She held it up in one bloodstained claw, and roared again.

Jim heard more screams all around him. To the horrified crowd, it must have looked as if Catherine had pulled out Dog Brother’s heart. There was blood spraying everywhere, and Dog Brother staggered and slipped and fell on the bleachers, clutching his chest, coughing and gasping.

He held up his hand toward the Changing Bear Maiden, to give him back his heart, but she took one step backward
and downward, and then another, and with every step the shadows around her the bristles began to fade, and the shadows melted more. The claws shrank and the eyes stopped glowing. By the seventh step, she was Catherine again, her face white with shock, still holding Dog Brother’s heart, but Catherine again.

Dog Brother heaved himself up and grasped hold of the metal handrail. “Catherine,” he said, “give me back my heart.”

Catherine stood with his heart held up in the air. Blood and rain were running down her sleeve. She turned to Jim and looked at him in desperation.

“I love you, Catherine,” said Dog Brother. “Please, give me back my heart.”

Jim mouthed one word. “
Don’t
.”

Dog Brother came down the steps, one by one. His bloody hands slid down the handrail, inch by inch. “Please, Catherine, I’m begging you.”

Catherine took another step back and Dog Brother lunged at her, but he lost his footing and tumbled at her feet. He lay sprawled across the bleachers, one foot shuddering. Then he lay still. Blood ran down the steps onto the grass below. Henry Black Eagle went across and put his arm around Catherine’s shoulders and held her tight. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You don’t know how sorry I am.”