Running with the Demon (29 page)

Suddenly Two Bears was on his feet and striding forward. He reached the dancers and joined in their dance, his big, powerful body swaying and weaving as smoothly as their own. Nest marveled at the ease with which he moved, smiled at his grace. She felt the heat of his body fill her own, as if his pulse had mingled with hers. She watched in shock, then with a glimmer of terror, as his flesh-and-blood body began to fade into the darkness and turn as ghostly as the spirits of the dead Sinnissippi. There were drums now, their booming rising out of the night—or maybe the sounds were only in her mind, the rhythm of her heartbeat. She watched Two Bears become one with the dead, watched him become as they were, translucent and ephemeral, ghostly and unreal. She stared transfixed as he danced on, the sound of the drums heightening, the movements of the dancers quickening. She felt the summer’s heat flood through her, causing her to blink against sudden flashes of crimson and gold.

Then she was on her feet as well, dancing with Two Bears, moving through the ghosts of the Sinnissippi. She did not feel herself rise or walk to him, did not know how it came to pass, but suddenly she was there among the Indian spirits. She floated as they did, not touching the earth, suspended on the night air, caught between life and death. She heard herself cry out with joy and hope. She danced with wild abandon and frantic need, whirling and twisting, reaching for something beyond what she could see, reaching past memories, past her own life, past all she knew …

Like a fever dream, the vision appears to her then. It comes out of nowhere, filling her mind with bright colors and movement. She is in another part of the park, a part she does not recognize. It is night, black and clouded, empty of moon and stars, a devil’s night filled with pitch. Dark figures run through the trees, hunched over, lithe and supple. Feeders, she sees, dozens of them, their yellow eyes gleaming in the black. She feels her stomach knot with the realization that they are certain to see her. Across the grassy stretches and along the pathways they bound, swift and certain. A woman leads them, young and strong, her shadowed face smiling and wild-eyed, her long, dark hair streaming out behind her. Nest blinks against the sight—a human at play with feeders, running with them, unafraid. The woman spins and wheels, and everywhere she goes, the feeders chase after her. She teases and taunts them, and it is clear that they are infatuated by her. Nest stands spellbound within the darkened park, staring in disbelief as the woman rushes toward her, all wicked smiles and laughter. She looks into the woman’s eyes, and sees there the lines that have been crossed and the taboos that have been broken. She sees the woman’s life laid bare, sees her soul unfettered and her heart unafraid. She will dare anything, this woman, and has. She will not be cowed or chastened; she will not be made ashamed
.

She dashes into Nest’s arms, draws her close, and holds her tight. Nest recoils, then stares in shock. She knows this woman. She recognizes her face. She has seen her face, just
as it is now, in a collection of framed photographs that sits upon the mantel over the fireplace in the living room. It is Caitlin Anne Freemark. It is her mother
.

And yet it isn’t. Not quite. Something is amiss. It is almost her mother, but it is someone else, too. Nest gasps in shock, not quite certain what she is seeing. The woman breaks free, her face suddenly filled with regret and despair. Behind her, barely visible in the darkness, a man appears. He materializes suddenly, and the feeders, who are clustered all about the woman, give way instantly at his approach. Nest tries to see his face, but cannot. The woman sees him and hisses in anger and frustration. Then she flees into the night, racing away shadow-quick with the feeders bounding in pursuit, and is gone
.

Nest blinked anew against the darkness and the sudden bright pain that stabbed her eyes. Images whirled and faded, and her vision cleared. She was sitting once more on the grass, cross-legged in the darkness, her hands clasped before her as if in prayer. Two Bears was seated next to her, his eyes closed, his chiseled body still. In the distance, the burial mounds rose silent and empty of life. No lights moved across the grassy slopes; no warriors danced on the air above. The ghosts of the Sinnissippi had gone.

Two Bears opened his eyes and stared out into the darkness, calm and distanced. Nest seized his arm.

“Did you see her?” she asked, unable to keep the anguish from her voice.

The big man shook his head. His painted copper face was bathed in sweat, and his brow was furrowed. “I did not share your vision, little bird’s Nest. Can you tell me of it?”

She tried to speak, to say the words, and found she could not. She shook her head slowly, feeling paralyzed, her skin hot and prickly, her face flushed with shame and confusion.

He nodded. “Sometimes it is better not to speak of what we see in our dreams.” He took her hand in his own and held it. “Sometimes our dreams belong only to us.”

“Did it really happen?” she asked softly. “Did the Sinnissippi come? Did we dance with them?”

He smiled faintly. “Ask your little friend when you find him again.”

Pick. Nest had forgotten him. She glanced down at her shoulder, but the sylvan was gone.

“I learned many things tonight, little bird’s Nest,” Two Bears told her quietly, regaining her attention. “I was told of the fate of the Sinnissippi, my people. I was shown their story.” He shook his head. “But it is much more complicated than I thought, and I cannot yet find the words to explain it, even to myself. I have the images safely stored”—he touched his forehead—“but they are jumbled and vague, and they need time to reveal themselves.” His brow furrowed. “This much I know. The destruction of a people does not come easily or directly, but from a complex scheme of events and circumstances, and that, in part, is why it can happen. Because we lack the foresight to prevent it. Because we do not guard sufficiently against it. Because we do not truly understand it. Because we are, in some part, at least, the enemy we fear.”

She squeezed his hand. “I don’t think I learned anything. Nothing of what might destroy us. Nothing of what threatens. Nothing of Hopewell or anywhere else. Just …” She shook her head.

Two Bears rose, pulling her up with him, lifting her from the ground as if she were as light as a feather. The black paint gleamed on his face. “Maybe you were shown more than you realize. Maybe you need to give it more time, like me.”

She nodded. “Maybe.”

They stood facing each other in awkward silence, contemplating what they knew and what they didn’t. Finally, Nest said, “Will you come back tomorrow night and summon the spirits of the Sinnissippi again?”

Two Bears shook his head. “No. I am leaving now.”

“But maybe the spirits …”

“The spirits appeared, and I danced with them. They told me what they wished. There is nothing more for me to do.”

Nest took a deep breath. She wanted him to stay for her. She found comfort in his presence, in his voice, in the strength of
his convictions. “Maybe you could stay until after the Fourth. Just another few days.”

He shook his head. “There is no reason. This is not my home, and I do not belong here.”

He walked to the hibachi and retrieved his pipe. He knocked the contents of the bowl into the hibachi, then stuck the pipe in his belt. He took a cloth and carefully wiped the black paint from his face and arms and chest, then slipped into his torn army field jacket. He retrieved his backpack and bedroll from the darkness and strapped them on. Nest stood watching, unable to think of anything to say, watching as he transformed back into the man he had been when she had first encountered him, ragged and worn and shabby, another nomad come off the nation’s highways.

“This could be your home,” she said finally, her voice taking on an urgency she could not conceal.

He walked over to her and stared into her eyes. “Speak my name,” he commanded softly.

“O’olish Amaneh.”

“And your own.”

“Nest Freemark.”

He nodded. “Names of power. But yours is the stronger, little bird’s Nest. Yours is the one with true magic. There is nothing more that I can do for you. What remains to be done, you must do for yourself. I came to speak with the dead of my people, and I have done so. I saw that it would help you to be there with me, and so I asked you to attend. What there was that I could offer, I have given. Now you must take what you have gained and put it to good use. You do not need me for that.”

She stood staring at him in the humid dark, at his strong, blunt features, at the implacable certainty mirrored in his eyes. “I’m afraid,” she said.

“Yes,” he agreed. “But fear is a fire to temper courage and resolve. Use it so. Speak my name once more.”

She swallowed. “O’olish Amaneh.”

“Yes. Say it often when I am gone, so that I will not be forgotten.”

She nodded.

“Good-bye, little bird’s Nest,” he whispered.

Then he turned and walked away.

Nest stood watching after him until he was out of sight. She could see him until he reached the edge of the park, and then he seemed to fade into the darkness. She thought more than once to call him back or to run after him, but she knew he would not want that. She felt drained and worn, emptied of emotion and strength alike, and she found herself wondering if she would ever see Two Bears again.

“O’olish Amaneh,” she whispered.

She started back across the park, wondering anew what had become of Pick. One moment he had been sitting on her shoulder, all quiet and absorbed in the spirit dance, and the next he had been gone. What had happened? She trudged through the dark, moving toward home and bed, starting to be sleepy now in spite of all that had happened. She tried to make sense of the vision she had seen of the young woman and the feeders and the shadowy figure who accompanied them, but failed. She tried to draw something useful from what Two Bears had told her and failed there, as well. Everything seemed to confuse her, one question leading to another, none of them leading to the answers she sought.

In the shadows about her, a handful of feeders kept pace, as if predators waiting for their prey to falter. They watched her with their steady, implacable gaze, and she could feel the weight of their hunger. They did not stalk her, she knew; they simply watched. Usually, their presence didn’t bother her. Tonight she felt unnerved.

She was out of the park and walking through her backyard toward the house when she realized suddenly what was amiss about the young woman in her vision. She stopped where she was and stared wide-eyed into the darkness, feeling the crawl of her skin turn to dryness in her throat. She knew the woman, of course. She had been right about that. And she had seen the woman’s photograph on the fireplace
mantel, too. But the photograph wasn’t of her mother. It was of another woman, one who had been young a long time ago, before Nest or her mother were even born.

The photograph was of Gran.

I
t was approaching seven when Nest awoke the following morning, and the sun had already been up for an hour and a half. She had slept poorly for most of the night, haunted by the vision of Gran, plagued by questions and suspicions and doubts, and she did not sleep soundly until almost sunrise. Bright sunlight and birdsong woke her, and she could tell at once that it was going to be another hot, steamy July day. The air from the fan was warm and stale, and through her open window she could see the leaves of the big oaks hanging limp and unmoving. She lay motionless beneath the sheet for a time, staring up at the ceiling, trying to pretend that last night hadn’t happened. She had been so eager to watch the dance of the spirits of the Sinnissippi, so anxious to learn what the spirits would tell her of the future. But she had been shown nothing of the future. Instead, she had been given a strange, almost frightening glimpse of the past. She felt cheated and angry. She felt betrayed. She told herself she would have been better off if she had never met Two Bears.

O’olish Amaneh.

But after a while her anger cooled, and she began to consider the possibility that what she had been shown was more important than she realized. Two Bears had hinted that she would need time to understand the vision, to come to grips with what it meant in her own life. She stared at the ceiling some more, trying to make sense of the shadows cast there by the sun, superimposing her own images, willing them to come to life so that they might speak to her.

Finally she rose and went into the bathroom, stopping at the
mirror to look at herself, to see if she had changed in some way. But she saw only the face she always saw when she looked at herself, and nothing of secrets revealed. She sighed disconsolately, stripped off her sleep shirt, and stepped into the shower. She let cold water wash over her hot skin, let it cool her until she was chilled, then stepped out and dried. She dressed for church, knowing her grandfather would be expecting her to go, slipping into a simple print dress and her favorite low heels, and went down to breakfast. She passed through the living room long enough to check the pictures on the mantel. Sure enough, there was Gran, looking just as she had in the vision last night, her face young, her eyes reckless and challenging as they peered out from the scrolled iron frame.

She ate her breakfast without saying much, feeling awkward and uncomfortable in her grandmother’s presence. She should speak to Gran of the vision, but she didn’t know how. What could she say? Should she tell Gran what the vision had revealed or take a more circumspect approach and ask about her youth, about whether she had ever run with the feeders? And what did that mean, anyway? What did it mean when you ran with the feeders as Gran had done in the vision? Feeders were to be avoided; that was what Nest had been taught from the time she was little. Pick had warned her. Gran had warned her. So what did it mean that she was forbidden from doing something Gran had done?

And what, she wondered suddenly, had her mother done when she was a child? What did any of this have to do with her?