The Native Star (9 page)

“For God’s sake, don’t run,” Stanton shouted. “It’ll chase you!”

“Better than being eaten here!”

Underneath her, Romulus was dancing backward, trying to put as much space as it could between itself and the slavering creature. She developed an instant appreciation for the horse’s good sense and excellent judgment.

Stanton stood up in his stirrups and raised both hands.

“Contra procyon lotor!”
he said, bringing both hands together in a loud thunderclap.

The effect was spectacular. A ball of white magic gathered around Stanton’s clasped hands, and with a cry, he hurled it at the raccoon. But the instant he did, an invisible force grabbed the wrist of Emily’s right hand, forcing it up. The ball of magic swerved like an iron filing toward a powerful magnet. She felt her hand drawn to the magic, pulling her almost off the horse. Luckily, Romulus planted his feet and she was able to brace herself against her old friend, the pommel. The brilliant white flash broke against her palm, jolting her hard, then a pleasant warmth flooded through her.

Stanton glared at her. She glared back.

“Well,
you’re
the one who said not to run!”

The monster made chuckling sounds deep in its throat. It took two steps toward Stanton, lifting its dripping black hand to swat at him. Stanton leaned sideways in his saddle to dodge the blow. Remus had the same idea, except in the opposite direction. Unbalanced, Stanton flailed. The next instant he was on the muddy ground and Remus was bolting off at a flat run. The horse’s movement attracted the Aberrancy, and it followed Remus, fat black tongue slobbering greedily. Panicked, the horse floundered up a steep embankment of salal, reins tangling around a dead tree limb. The horse screamed, throwing its head back and trying to tear itself free, but it was no use; the Aberrancy was closing in.

“Hurry!” Emily gestured to Stanton, reaching down to offer him her hand. But though Stanton leapt to his feet quickly, he didn’t even look in Emily’s direction, much less accept her offer of aid. Instead, he strode toward the monster, throwing his poncho back over his shoulders to free his arms. Reaching inside his coat, he brought out what looked like a cigar case, silver-etched and cylindrical. He held it firmly in one hand, and with a flick of his wrist, unfurled a long slender blade that telescoped out of the silver handle with a hissing
snick-snick-snick
.

Emily fought the urge to put her hands over her eyes.

“Hey! Hey, you raccoon!” Stanton bellowed. The monster pulled back, blinked in Stanton’s direction, and cocked its huge head curiously. Distracted from trying to eat the poor thrashing Remus, it sidled over, sniffing at Stanton. Sharp yellow teeth gleamed as it curled back matted-fur lips. It snapped at Stanton. Stanton jumped back, boot heel sliding in the mud.

Then, with an astonishingly quick movement, Stanton brought the blade up and drove it toward one of the monster’s burning red eyes.

It was an elegant attack. Which made it even more of a shame when the monster swept Stanton aside like a cat playing with a ball of string. Stanton sprawled into a nearby bramble of blackberries. He did not move for an agonizing moment, but then he stirred, pulling himself up onto his hands and knees. The telescoping blade was still in his hands, but the demon raccoon was shambling toward him quickly, making its terrible chuckling noises, sniffing and licking its greasy chops.

Fire surged in Emily’s gut. With a high, full-throated whoop, she slammed her heels into Romulus’ side. The horse surged forward. Screaming at the top of her lungs, waving the hand she wasn’t using to hold onto the pommel, she rode straight at the demon raccoon. Instinctively, the monster lumbered back with a squeal and a hiss.

In the confusion, Emily didn’t see Stanton get up, but a moment later he was by Remus, using his blade to slash the reins free. He swung himself up into the saddle and wheeled his horse alongside Emily’s. His face was pale under the thick globs of mud and dirt, and there were ugly welting scratches across his throat from where the brambles had torn into his flesh.

“I guess you were right about the running,” Stanton breathed, reaching over to give Romulus a smart slap on the haunches. “Romulus, Remus … 
race!”

The horses sprang like bullets from a gun. But Emily could feel the enraged beast behind them, the irregular
thump-thump, thump-thump
of its huge strides, the crashing sound of tearing undergrowth.

“We’ll never make it,” she said under her breath. She glanced to her left, where Stanton rode almost at her side; his hands, desperately clutching the horse’s mane, were white with tension.

And then there was the sound of screaming. Not their own screaming, as Emily had supposed she’d hear next, but echoing whoops and ringing staccato cries.

The sound of dozens of rifle shots rang through the air.

All at once, Emily could feel the monster falling away. There was a grunting roar from the beast, then a series of little chitters, and then silence.

Emily would have been more than happy to keep running without looking back, but Stanton pulled up and vanished from her side. She kept riding for a moment, but Romulus didn’t want to leave Remus behind, so he slowed to a balky trot, tossing his head backward.

Grudgingly, Emily let the horse turn.

The monster lay on its back, dead, black claws curled against its chest. There were Indians all around, some in fringed buckskin trousers, some in flannels and denim. All held rifles. And Stanton was trotting toward them, one hand raised.

Out of the frying pan, into the fire!
Emily thought furiously.
Avoid getting eaten just to get yourself scalped?

But the Indians were utterly nonplussed by Stanton’s arrival. Stanton rode into their midst and slid down from the saddle, laying a hand on his horse’s lathered neck. He stood with the men, exchanging a few words, looking over the enormous dead raccoon.

She rode forward slowly until she was in earshot of Stanton.

“You know these … men?” she called from a safe distance.

Stanton looked up at her, as placidly as if he and the Indians were just looking over a curiously formed tree root.

“They were just trying to understand why, while I was trying to save one horse, you were doing your best to kill the other.”

“I was trying to keep the beast from sinking its huge teeth into your pompous backside!” Emily snapped. “It works with bears. Usually.”

“An Aberrancy is not a bear,” Stanton said. “But, shrill and foolhardy as it was, you certainly did provide a distraction. Thank you.”

“That’s the first time you’ve ever thanked me for anything,” Emily said. Her heart was still pounding, and it made her feel awfully cross. “And if you only thank me when I save your life, I guess it’ll be the last.”

“These men are of the Miwok tribe,” Stanton said, ignoring the barb and gesturing to the umber-hued men who gaped at her, open mouthed.

“What are they staring at?” Emily growled, gathering her buffalo coat around herself tightly. “I’m sure they’ve seen a white woman before.”

“Not with black eyeballs, they haven’t,” Stanton said.

“My eyes?”

“I’m beginning to think that the color shift must be the result of an altered energy state within the stone, or perhaps an alteration of the stone’s interaction with your physical person—”

“Spare me,” Emily hissed. Her pique amused the Indian men vastly. One of them clapped Stanton on the shoulder and said something Emily doubted was entirely polite.

“So they’re friendly, at least?”

“If they weren’t, we’d be in the belly of that ugly beast right now,” Stanton said. “I’ve had dealings with this tribe before. Native magics are an expanding field of inquiry in my profession. I was a guest of their
Maien
—their Holy Woman—last spring, before my arrival in Lost Pine.”

“They let you
study
them?”

“It’s a simple matter of professional courtesy.”

“Professional courtesy?” Emily lowered her voice to a whisper.
“They’re savages!”

“Savages who just saved your life, and who have invited us back to their camp for rest and food.” Stanton frowned at her. “But if you’d rather sleep on the ground and hope that there aren’t other Aberrancies roaming the area …”

“No, no.” Emily stared at the massive corpse of the demon raccoon around which the Indians were circling, long knives drawn. “That’s quite all right.”

CHAPTER SIX

Lawa

Most of the Indians remained behind to skin the massive raccoon, but one—a man with a licorice-colored braid that snaked from under a black felt hat—took them back to the Miwok camp. He and Stanton chatted as they walked ahead together along the overgrown path; Emily hung well back, brushing dripping foliage away from her face.

She followed them to a wide clearing on the shores of the slow Sacramento River. It was ringed with oaks and shaggy cottonwoods, and within it stood several round dugouts, domed with willow and tree bark. Campfire smoke drifted against the gray afternoon sky. Children chased one another, making high hooting sounds; dogs nipped at their heels. Women chatted over stone mortars, clay pipes clamped between black-stained teeth.

When they stopped, Emily slid down from her saddle. The man in the black felt hat took both horses’ reins; without a word, he led the animals away.

“Hope you see your horses again,” Emily muttered, watching as a group of young boys clustered around the animals, laying light brown hands on their warm glossy sides.

“Spoken with all the broad-mindedness and generosity of spirit I’ve come to expect from you, Miss Edwards,” Stanton said. “He’s taking them to food and water. Come along … Komé will be waiting.”

“Komé?”

“Komé is the tribe’s Maien, of whom I spoke earlier. She’s a very powerful practitioner. I want to get her opinion on the stone in your hand.”

“So you meant to ride down here all the time?” Emily said. “You could have told me.”

“And listen to you complain about it all the way from Dutch Flat?” Stanton looked at her sidelong.

They stopped before a long low house, much larger than the other dugouts. They stood outside and waited for what seemed quite a long time. Long enough for the rain to pick up again. Emily pulled her hat down and peered at Stanton from under the brim.

“Well? Shouldn’t you knock or something?”

“She knows we’re here,” Stanton said.

And indeed, a few moments later, an old woman came out of the long house, ducking underneath the low door. She leaned heavily on a feather-tipped staff. She was followed by a large dog, wrapped in a brightly colored blanket … but no, Emily thought, it was not a dog. It was a girl who couldn’t be more than fourteen, whose back was bent so drastically that she could not stand, only creep along in a painful shuffle. She kept her balance with one hand on the ground, her long black braids dragging in the dirt as she hitched herself along. When she looked up at Stanton and Emily, her eyes narrowed suspiciously. Emily knew it was rude to stare, but she could not take her eyes off the girl, who came to rest by the old woman’s feet.

“Hiti weychin, Komé,”
Stanton said, raising a hand.

The Holy Woman was cheerful and chubby, with bright white teeth. Her skin was a rich russet, and black tattoos ran from the bottom of her lower lip over her chin and down her throat, disappearing into the collar of her soft doeskin tunic. Her ears were pierced with thick cylinders of blackened, polished bone, and beads glittered from where they had been woven into her salt-and-pepper hair. Even the cut-glass beads, however, could not match the sparkle of her eyes as she looked at Stanton and Emily. She smiled broadly, as if they’d both done something vastly amusing.

“Komé, Miss Emily Edwards. Miss Edwards, Komé.” The introduction was spoken so formally, Emily wasn’t sure whether to curtsy or bow or shake hands, so she did a bit of each and ended up looking silly. Stanton began speaking haltingly in Miwok. It was clear he was no expert in the language, but the woman bobbed her head indulgently, as if listening to a favorite grandchild.

“Show her your hand,” Stanton said.

Emily pulled off her glove. Then she stretched her arm to extend her hand, not wanting to step any closer to the girl at Komé’s feet, having gotten the distinct feeling that she might get bitten. The stone winked dully in the heavy gray light of late afternoon. The old woman glanced at it, but it didn’t appear to interest her. Emily’s face, on the other hand, she seemed to find fascinating. She searched it, muttering as she pinched Emily’s cheek. She then held Emily at arm’s length and looked her up and down, appraisingly. She squinted at Emily’s ankles, her waist, her hair. All the while, she talked under her breath in a creaking monotone.

“Sizing me up for the cook pot, no doubt,” Emily muttered.

Indeed, even Stanton seemed frustrated with Komé’s unwillingness to get to the point. He shook his head and said something that cut her mutterings short. The Maien looked at him, shocked, then gave a big boisterous laugh. She hit Stanton fondly, punching him in the arm with her little gnarled fist.

“What is she saying?” Emily whispered furiously. Stanton paid no attention to her, but rubbed his arm as he spoke to the old woman again, separating each word carefully. With a smile, the woman took Emily’s hand again and looked at the stone more carefully. The twisted girl shuffled closer, too, reaching up to put both her hands on Emily’s arm. Her eyes were turbulent pools. There was a question in those eyes, a question that Emily wished she knew how to answer. A question she wished she understood.

The strange moment was broken when the Maien threw up her hands and waved Emily and Stanton away, peppering them with a rapid verbal staccato. She turned back toward her longhouse, and the girl shuffled after her without a backward glance.

“She’s got no more time for us tonight,” he said to Emily, taking her elbow. “She and Lawa have to get ready.”

“Lawa? That bent girl?”

“Her daughter,” Stanton said.

“She gave me the shivers.” Emily looked up at Stanton. “So what was all that about? She went on and on.”

“When speaking to Komé, threshing the grain from the chaff can be a taxing pursuit.”

“What did she say?”

“She congratulated me,” Stanton said. Emily knit her brow at him.

“Congratulated you? For what? You haven’t done anything.”

“The congratulations were part of the chaff,” he said. “The grain, on the other hand, was her insistence that the stone is watching us.”

“Watching us?”

“Watching over us. Protecting us.”

“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” Emily snorted. “If the stone was watching over us, it certainly wouldn’t have sucked up all that magic you tried to throw at the raccoon. Indeed, given the evidence, it seems more likely that the stone would like nothing better than to see us in our graves.”

“She said that the stone was trying desperately to speak to us.
But it cannot
, she said,
for it does not have the tongue to speak and you do not have the ears to hear.”

Emily looked at him.

“It’s a mineral, Mr. Stanton.”

“As I said, she can be somewhat abstract in her expression. The point is that she speaks of the stone as if it were … alive.”

“Min-er-al.” Emily emphasized each syllable.

“A few magical theorists have pursued the question of whether the Mantic Anastomosis possesses a kind of nonhuman consciousness.” Stanton rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “They’ve all been dismissed as crackpots. But that’s understandable, because to believe that it does implies that we might have some sort of responsibility to it. And no one likes responsibility.”

“Leaving magical theory aside …” Emily stroked the stone with her thumb. “What if it does have some kind of consciousness? What would that mean to us?”

“I can’t answer that,” Stanton said. “But it would be interesting to know what it was trying to tell us, wouldn’t it?” Then, sniffing the air, on which a succulent and meaty odor wafted delicately, his eyes closed with pleasant anticipation.

“Finally,” he said. “Dinner is served.”

Faced with the dinner offered by the Indians, Emily would much rather have eaten soggy bread and cheese from the horses’ saddlebags. But, for the sake of politeness, Stanton insisted that she at least sample the Indians’ feast.

“What’s this?” she asked, pointing to a pile of mush that had been presented to her on a broad, flat oak leaf.

“Maskala
. Acorn bread.” Stanton was shoveling his down like a sailor who hadn’t seen port in a week. “Acorns are a staple of their diet.”

Emily tasted it gingerly; it was bland and slightly bitter, like cornmeal soaked in water and seasoned with black tea. Emily forced down a couple of bites and deemed politeness more than served. Stanton, however, helped himself to seconds. The Indians seemed to find feeding him a challenging entertainment. The women brought dish after dish and he worked valiantly to keep up the pace. Finally, they brought a great wooden platter of steaming meat. Emily took a whiff, recognizing it immediately.

“Raccoon!” She looked at Stanton suspiciously. “Don’t tell me—”

“Waste not, want not,” Stanton said taking a piece of meat with his fingers.

“Is it safe to eat?”

Stanton took a big bite.

“The Indians have been feasting on Aberrancies for years,” he said, licking a thumb. “They call them ‘tragic gifts of the earth.’”

Emily took a piece of tragic gift meat and tasted it. It was aggressively gamey—a flavor that reminded her unpleasantly of the hard winter just passed. She wondered what Pap was doing. What was he eating?
Was
he eating? Mrs. Lyman would see to it that he got his meals, wouldn’t she? The old busybody wouldn’t abandon Pap just because everyone in town thought that his foster daughter had run off with a traveling Warlock … would she?

Emily’s worried thoughts were interrupted by a general mumbling from the people around them. Komé came into the middle of the circle. She was followed by Lawa—limping, shuffling, and bent. In her hands, the girl clutched her mother’s staff.

Komé was magnificently arrayed in a skirt of iridescent magpie feathers and a hat of flicker plumes. She wore a tunic and leggings of white deerskin, fringed and beaded. Taking the staff from the bent girl, Komé began to chant, a sibilant song that resonated with gravity and meaning. All around her, the feasters stilled in respectful silence.

Stanton used a handkerchief to wipe his hands, then leaned close to murmur in Emily’s ear:

“You might find this interesting. Komé will lead a spirit dance to night to pray for the soul of the dead raccoon. It’s a fascinating magical ceremony, with roots in the most ancient traditions on the North American continent.”

“Then I’d better get as far away from it as possible.” Emily thought of how Stanton’s magic had been sucked into the rock in her hand. She certainly didn’t want to do anything that would interfere with the satisfactory disposition of the spirit of the evil raccoon. Besides that, thinking of Pap had left her feeling somewhat low-spirited and weary. “I think I’ll just go to sleep.”

One of the women showed Emily to a hut that was used for storing food. It was dry and tidy, full of finely woven baskets brimming with acorns and dried meats. Herbs hung from the ceiling, and Emily looked them over with a professional eye. Balsam and purple milkweed, black nightshade and mountain misery, rattlesnake weed and monkey-root—even desert lavender. She crumbled some in her hand, sprinkled it all around herself, wishing she could empower it with a rhyme of general protection. But since she couldn’t, she satisfied herself with the relaxing odor.

On the floor had been laid a massive pelt, large as the fancy carpet in Mrs. Bargett’s reception parlor. Emily felt the fur between her fingers. Beaver, the largest beaver one could imagine. Another “tragic gift,” no doubt. She wondered how one went about cleaning black slime off a pelt that size.

Wearily, Emily curled up under her soggy buffalo coat, the smell of which did battle with the lavender and won handily. She did not sleep. The Maien’s slow rhythmic chanting made the darkness vibrate. It made Emily’s nerves jangle and her muscles tense, and even when it started to rain again, the soft pitter-pats on the leaves overhead did nothing to soothe her. After what seemed an eternity of frozen wakefulness, there was a noise at the door. She felt for the heavy rock she’d hidden beside her. She lifted it, ready to brain any redskin who came looking for trouble, but it was just Stanton. He came in, shaking water off his coat.

“I’m sorry, Miss Edwards, but we’ll have to share. It’s a foul night, and I have no intention of sleeping outside after the day I’ve had.”

“Suit yourself.” Emily made her voice diffident, certainly not wanting to reveal her relief that Stanton would be nearby. “I can’t sleep anyway.”

“Then you won’t mind a little light?” Stanton took a small spirit lantern from his saddlebag. She heard him snap his fingers and mutter,
“Flamma.”