====================== Dreamspun by Kevin Brewster ====================== Copyright (c)2000 Kevin Brewster 2000 Hard Shell Word Factory Hard Shell Word Factory www.hardshell.com Science Fiction --------------------------------- NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Duplication or distribution of this work by email, floppy disk, network, paper print out, or any other method is a violation of international copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines and/or imprisonment. --------------------------------- _To my mother and father, and indigenous people everywhere._ -------- *Chapter 1* A SMALL, humpbacked figure sat on the rocky heights of a ridge, absorbed in something that he held in his hands. From beyond the steady sigh of wind, the thin, high notes of a flute song could be heard. Far off across a field of ancient black lava, a monstrous storm was brewing. A cumulus cloud piled crazily upon itself, driven into the stratosphere by building afternoon heat. The top of the cloud flattened as high altitude winds pulled white veils from it and spread them across a brilliant blue sky. Dark gray and contorted with downward bubbling cold air, the cloud's base spread menacingly. The small one on the ridge was not interested in what the cloud was doing. He was preoccupied with the cedar flute he played, keeping the song going. He always kept it slightly more audible than the growing song of wind as it rushed across the lava into the hungry base of the growing monster. As the storm swept toward the rocky ridge, new domes of unstable air began boiling up and punching through its base, racing each other to towering heights. The flute player knew all of this was happening, there was no need to look up from his work. He played louder and with more conviction, barely staying heard above the mounting wind. As a dark curtain of rain began to descend from the cloud's base, lightning danced between ground and cloud, making the storm seem to stalk spider-like across the lava, suspended on many lightning bolt legs. Wind grew to howling intensity as darkness fell around the flute player and crazy shadows flickered among the high rocks. Time was growing short now, and he knew that he must play his best. His lungs ached from the effort, but the song persisted. The storm overtook the ridge, dwarfing it under a low black ceiling overhung by a gigantic, flashing column of seething gray reaching into the heavens. The flute player suddenly stopped his song and gazed upward. He broke into a broad grin as the feathers of his headdress were torn away by the wind. A bolt sprang from the cloud's base, incinerating the feathers before they had flown the length of a man's arm. The sun came out over an empty ridge. No more flute song could be heard, only the fading echoes of thunder as the storm played itself out against the flanks of the Capitan Mountains. Parched and shrunken cactus would swell with new water tonight, and all creatures would benefit. * * * * LANCE HAYWARD'S head slipped from the numb prop of his hand, bouncing rudely on the hard glass of a car window. He snapped back to consciousness, not sure of where he was. His eyes were instantly filled with a frightening spectacle, sweeping across the windscreen in front of him. The dark sky ahead was split repeatedly with blue-white lattices of lightning. Huge, piled up storm clouds burst briefly into view as hidden lightning bolts lit up their interiors in oranges and pinks. An increasingly stiff wind buffeted his station wagon as it rushed down a deserted New Mexico highway, defying the enormity of the elements that unfolded before it. The woman sitting in the dark next to Lance cursed softly as she fought the crosswinds with tired arms draped over the steering wheel, never quite compensating enough to keep the car from swaying alarmingly from side to side. The two of them had been on the road for sixteen hours, and their weary eyes ached with each blinding flash in the sky. "Well, isn't this just lovely," Kaitlyn commented to her now fully awake husband. They both squinted ahead at the violence in the sky. She put a comforting hand on Lance's thigh. "Great weather to set up camp. Sorry I woke you up. Is your head okay?" "Glad I woke up. Was having a damned weird dream. I think we'll be sleeping in the car tonight," he replied, his voice betraying a trace of relief. After hours on the road and watching the pyrotechnics outside the car, intimacy with Nature had lost its appeal. What they both craved now was a king-size bed in a quiet room. But they had passed the last vacant motel over an hour ago, and were committed to stop somewhere before fatigue became a danger to them. They sped silently on, pushing the car through a stubborn wind. When at last the sign announcing the campground turnoff swam up out of pitch darkness, all that mattered was the need to stop moving, once and for all, to let burning eyes be closed. The lightning was gone and not a drop of rain had fallen, but the wind howled steadily on, shaking the little station wagon and reminding its occupants what a frail bubble of metal and glass it really was. Malpais State Campground sat along a lonely narrow ridge of rock jutting up amidst a vast ancient lava field. While the ridge undoubtedly afforded a spectacular view of the lava field during the day, right now it was about the most hellish place Lance and Kaitlyn could imagine, fully exposed to every cruel impulse of the wind. A few other camp sites were occupied by RVs, but at this hour they were dark and no one stirred. Kaitlyn parked at a site close to the campground's tiny latrine, hoping to reduce their exposure when the dash to relieve themselves came. Peering out of his window, Lance could see the rocky ground plunge out of view a few dozen feet away, and only roaring blackness extending to the horizon. "There's nothing for it, I've gotta go like a racehorse. I'll see you in a couple," he muttered as he dragged on his heavy coat. "This sure has been a helluva vacation so far." "The lava was your idea, idiot," Kaitlyn reminded him, struggling into her own coat. "Let's see what tomorrow's like before we panic, okay?" "But I was _counting_ on camping out tonight," he teased in a voice that mocked hers. "I'm so _tired_ of motel rooms." Kaitlyn grabbed Lance by the hair, pulling him close to her. "I'd trade this car and you both for a motel room right now, especially one with a hot tub. Now get on with it and get back here so I can take my turn," she growled. He pulled up the collar of his coat and opened the door, stepping quickly outside and slamming it behind him. The wind was unbelievably fierce. Walking in a crouch, he faced into the gale and struggled toward the latrine. Fine particles of sand scoured his face and pecked relentlessly at his eyes. If not for the utter lack of rain, he would have feared a tornado was bearing down on him. Groping for the latrine door handle, Lance gave it a mighty tug and stepped inside, blinded by the sudden brightness of the deserted interior. The simple facilities reminded him of what one would encounter in a prison cell. "Christ, there aren't even any seats," he muttered, looking into one of the toilet stalls. As he left, Lance cast another doubtful look around the latrine, now convinced that he was not going enjoy his stay here. Returning to the car, Lance found Kaitlyn already zipped into her sleeping bag, her seat reclined to near horizontal. Only her face was visible. "Boy, you were quick," he commented as he wrestled his own sleeping bag out of the back of the tightly packed wagon. "It was dark enough, I just went around the other side of the car," she said, sleepily. "Hope that old guy in the Winnebago next door can't see too well." "You probably made his day." Lance pulled off his shoes and stripped before quickly starting to zip himself into his bag. Before he completed sealing himself in, Kaitlyn reached over, her hand disappearing into the depths of his sleeping bag. Lance closed his eyes and gave himself up to his exhaustion and the warmth of Kaitlyn's grasp. The moaning wind and rocking car conspired to carry Lance mercifully off into the deepest sleep he'd ever known. Lance became aware of silence. He couldn't open his eyes yet, but something was different; the wind had stopped and the car was still. Rubbing the crustiness from his eyes, he turned his head to gaze out across the lava. The sun was rising behind the car and the lava seemed to absorb nearly all of the light, showing only vague, black roughness. Some ten miles to the west, the land rose into low, smooth hills, which glowed yellow-orange as they caught the first rays of sun. Kaitlyn was still asleep, breathing with the rhythm of a sleeping child. Lance smiled at the sight of her there, and fought off the urge to reach out and rouse her from her blissful rest. He couldn't remember the last time she had looked this peaceful. Maybe the trip had been a good idea after all; he felt more at ease with her there in the car than he had in the last three years. Turning back to his window, Lance noticed that the scene had changed as the sun climbed imperceptibly higher in the sky. Now the distant hills glowed in a lighter shade of gold and the lava had taken on more detailed features. Its black, rippled and fissured surface was not at all desolate, but covered by widely spaced clumps of low growing cactus and yuccas sporting eight foot high flowering stalks. The growing light beckoned Lance to leave the cocoon of his car. He quietly unzipped his sleeping bag, pulled on his clothes and jacket and stepped out, closing the door gently behind him. Kaitlyn didn't stir. Making his way to the latrine, Lance saw the sun break clear of the ridge of the Capitan Mountains, far to the east. Clouds rose off their flanks, enshrouding the forests that grew there. The sun was potent, promising welcome warmth. Lance took off his jacket and began feeling new energy as senses numbed by days of driving were suddenly keen. The bright alien landscape was begging exploration. The latrine wasn't any friendlier a place in daylight than it had been the night before. Lance hurried through his morning rituals, hoping to get out before someone else arrived. Seatless toilets were bad enough, but the idea of sharing such facilities with strangers was more than he could handle this morning. As he made his way back to the car, he met Kaitlyn shuffling sleepily toward the latrine, wrapped in a blanket. Her tousled auburn hair hung in a hastily arranged twist down her back. She opened up the blanket just long enough to let Lance wrap his arms around her still naked body. "What a pleasant surprise," he said, a broad smile spreading over his face. Her body trembled as his hands followed the familiar curves. "Good morning," she said, smiling up at him. "Warm me up some more." Lance obliged her, until his hands came to rest on her most sensitive place, causing Kaitlyn to jump in surprise. She returned the gesture through Lance's jeans and fixed an assertive stare into his eyes. "Let's set up the tent, so we can get horizontal together again, okay?" she asked. "Car seats are too limiting." Lance nodded emphatically. "I don't know, I had a pretty good send off last night." "I keep track. You owe me, and I want horizontal," she replied. A light of mischief sparkled in her green eyes, and Lance instantly wanted her. But Kaitlyn released her grip on him and strolled on to her morning duties. She swung the door open and entered, passing an elderly woman just leaving the building. "Good morning," Kaitlyn offered cheerfully. The old woman turned and looked disapprovingly at the blanket wrapped figure. Slender, bare legs extended below the edge of the blanket, disappearing in unlaced hiking boots. Shaking her head, she scuttled off to the safety of her Winnebago. Ravenously hungry, Lance and Kaitlyn had finished a pancake breakfast with no conversation. Now they sat together on the campsite's picnic table, sipping coffee and gazing across the lava field. The lava was heating up, and the view across it was beginning to shimmer. "Well, do you suppose _this _will count as a vacation; do you think we're finally far enough away from the kids?" Lance asked. Kaitlyn stiffened. He seemed to be mocking her. She decided to ignore what Lance had said, choosing not to fall back into a familiar, confrontational pattern of exchanges with him. They had come here to do things differently, to heal. "We'd better get out there pretty soon, or we're going to fry," she replied. Lance agreed, quickly piling up the camp dishes for later attention and grabbing his backpack full of camera equipment and field guides. They began the climb down to the lava over the rocky flank of the ridge. The slope was thinly forested in seven foot tall cholla cactus that threatened to impale them as they tottered along. They kept a wary eye out for rattlesnakes, which might be out letting the morning sun move their blood after a cold night. When they stepped out onto the lava field, both of them were stunned by the brooding beauty all around them. Frozen into ripples, the charcoal black lava still had the appearance of a hot, viscous liquid. Lance imagined this place, fifteen hundred years ago, when the entire plain was slowly moving south, steaming, bubbling and incinerating everything in its path. Now life was everywhere; the kind of tough, scruffy life that hangs on in hostile places, thriving in spite of nearly everything Nature throws at it. Colorful lizards darted about, in and out of shady crevices, single-mindedly pursuing food, mates and defining tiny territories. Bird songs filled the air. No wonder Native Americans found places like this sacred, Lance thought. Then Lance remembered something and stopped dead in his tracks. An overpowering, eerie feeling swept over him. It made him feel vaguely nauseated. "What's up, what are you stopping here for?" Kaitlyn was standing a few paces ahead of him now, turned facing him with her hands impatiently planted on her hips. The sun was directly behind her, flashing through her blowing hair and transforming her into a silhouette. Lance held his hand up to shade his eyes, moving slightly to see past her. Something behind Kaitlyn made his eerie feeling deepen. "Well?" Kaitlyn demanded. Lance just stood there, looking past her. "Holy shit," he muttered. "What?!" Kaitlyn stomped back to Lance's side. "What are you looking at?" "That ridge up there, the mountains behind it...just like the dream!" Lance half whispered. "What dream?" "In the car last night. I dozed off while you were driving, heading into the storm..." "Yeah, I remember you muttering something about that; guess you really did bump your head pretty hard on the window," Kaitlyn taunted. She smiled briefly, then let it fade as she realized Lance's sudden strange manner wasn't a joke. "Forget it," Lance said, seeming to snap out of it. "Just road fatigue." They continued their hike in silence. -------- *Chapter 2* LANCE SAT up in his sleeping bag. Again, for a moment he didn't remember where he was, or even who he was. The lonely song of a flute still filled his ears as he looked out into the darkness from his tent. He had distinctly heard the music, and it had caused him to dream of it, he was sure. A nearby camper perhaps, he pondered, helping pass a sleepless night. Stepping out into the night, Lance was greeted by a silent, brilliantly starlit sky. He had never seen such stars. The Milky Way was so bright that it seemed almost close enough to touch, a misty band of jewel dust hung just out of his reach. Miles away, a pack of coyotes began an unearthly, yapping chorus. Feeling suddenly cold, Lance began to turn to re-enter the tent and the warmth of Kaitlyn's close presence. At that moment, a meteor streaked down from the zenith of the sky and broke in two, leaving a forked fire trail burned into Lance's retinas. "I guess nothing happens in a subtle way around here," he muttered to himself, crawling back into the tent and zipping the fly closed. The walls of the tent seemed to be a flimsy barrier between him and the shining silence outside. He buried himself as deeply as he could into the sleeping bag he was sharing. Sensing his return, Kaitlyn rolled over, pressing herself against Lance's body. In spite of her welcome, sleep would be long in coming; Lance longed for sunlight and the comfort of the day's heat around him again. Then, he assured himself, he could think more clearly. "So what do you think of that?" Lance asked as he swung his leg over the picnic table and started to devour his breakfast. Another perfect day was underway, and the two of them were planning one last morning walk on the lava before breaking camp. "What, your melodramatic dream?" Kaitlyn responded vacantly, not pulling her eyes from binoculars trained out over the lava. A canyon wren sat singing on a distant yucca flower stalk, and Kaitlyn was entranced by the unassuming bird's performance. "What disturbs me was that I'm not sure whether I was an observer or the dude with the flute, you know?" Lance continued. "Admit it, you're a _wannabe_," she replied. The bird flew off and she put down the binoculars, turning back to face Lance across the table. "Just like most of our well informed, liberal, guilt ridden friends." "If I thought you really meant that, you'd be walking back to work with your self righteous faculty colleagues back in America's Dairyland," Lance replied, polishing off the last of his breakfast. It had to be eaten fast, metal camp plates cooled rapidly in the morning breeze. Kaitlyn frowned at the accumulated dirty dishes on the table. "Damn, it's my turn this morning, isn't it?" she muttered. "Are you still hot to drive up to Frijoles Canyon today?" Lance asked. "Yeah, we've done enough of your lizard chasing here," she said, gathering dishes into a pan for washing. "Now I want to have a real cultural experience. Even _you_ might actually appreciate Indian ruins, especially now that you seem to want to be..." Before she could finish her taunt, Lance quickly stepped behind her, wrapped his arms around her chest and kissed her roughly on the neck. "Enjoy your toils, Wise-ass Woman," he whispered into her ear. "I'm going on a vision quest, up to the top of the rocks for a last look around." "Go on, then get back here and help me finish packing up," she said, grabbing his hands and forcing him to squeeze her harder. "Oh, and watch out for lightning." As he climbed the rise, Lance felt renewed hope for his relationship with Kaitlyn. Their few days here had seen the cautious return of spontaneity and passion between them. Somehow, they had managed to finally shut out the noise of careers and raising a family long enough to open up to each other again. He dreaded the inevitable return to their textbook middle class existence. Even with all of their personal success and two happy children, he feared the prospect of old walls slowly forming between them again. The view from the rocky rise was spectacular, and it had drawn him back several times during the last three days. Looking to the north, the gentle slope of the small caldera that had disgorged the lava flow could be seen on the horizon. As Lance slowly turned, looking east and finally south, he could see how the ridge rose up from the plain. The lava had split and flowed neatly around it, coming back together at its southern end to leave an island of untouched ground. This_ _is_ _a_ _fitting place to have Cecil B. DeMille_ _scale dreams, he thought, snapping a few more pictures of the vista. Turning to head back down to the campsite, he absent-mindedly kicked at some dried cactus skeletons that littered the ground. One caromed off a rock and collided with another stick, which flipped up into view at Lance's feet. It looked like a charred scrap of cedar, probably from an old campfire. Then he noticed regularly spaced holes running along part of its length. Picking it up, he suddenly felt an iciness fill his belly. Though badly burned, the stick was clearly a relic cedar flute, with a line of six carefully spaced tone holes drilled into half of its length. He wondered whether or not to take it back to show Kaitlyn, but quickly decided against it. Perhaps this place had been very important to someone once, and carting off souvenirs was not his right. He carefully laid the relic back down, as near to where it had originally rested as he could remember. Raising his camera, he quickly snapped a picture of it and stumbled back down the rocky slope, his mind again filled with strange new feelings. * * * * FRIJOLES CANYON National Monument was a well known attraction. Hundreds of years ago, the Anasazi Indians came upon this canyon and fertile valley, carved out by millennia of flow from the sparkling Rio Frijoles. The river had worn its way through hundreds of feet of accumulated volcanic ash, exposing sheer canyon walls that were soft and easily shaped by forces of wind and water. Oddly shaped openings formed, seemingly magically, which the Indians soon discovered could also easily modified to create stable, multi-roomed dwellings and shelters for their goods. A cliff side city of caves soon developed, with the nearby river flats used for ceremonial structures and agriculture. They flourished there for centuries until finally overtaxing the fertility of the local ecosystem and moving on. Now, miles of silent cliff side dwellings remained, the nature of their makers mutely stated in rock paintings, primitive tools and pottery shards. The United States Park Service had developed a section of the known cliff ruins for public viewing, even allowing access into some of the caves. Although the Monument was overloaded with tourists most of the time, other sites remained closed and virtually pristine for researchers and students to marvel at. Lance wondered how this tradeoff would sit with the ghosts of the Anasazi, or their gods, whose existence was somehow almost palpable here. Although he was glad to have the chance to experience the ruins, it saddened him to see endless lines of picture taking tourists swarming over the place. The canyon seemed to bear the onslaught with quiet dignity, patiently tolerant of tourists who were often noisy and left behind litter. In spite of this, the full sense of mystery of the place was hard to escape. Generation after generation of people had lived here, long before Europeans began the conquest of North America. Now, the canyon's brooding silence and abandoned structures told a humbling story of human transience and frailty. Halfway through their walk along the canyon, Lance and Kaitlyn stopped in a shady spot and shared a canteen of water. A fierce midday sun was beating down on them. "You know what I'd like to do?" Kaitlyn asked. "I can't imagine," Lance replied as he fed a new role of film into his camera. "Come back here at night when the place is closed and make it with you in one of those caves." Lance squinted up at the cliff face. "I'd like to use that one, up behind the big cholla. Better view of intruders from there. Of course, I don't know if it would work all that well." "Why?" "I don't know if you could be quiet enough," he said. "Oh no, you're missing the whole point. I wouldn't want to be quiet. Imagine the acoustics up there." "You're heavily into tempting fate with the gods, aren't you," Lance countered. "I'd like to think of myself as some kind of sacrifice. I think they'd be tickled with me." Lance grinned. "And I thought that you were here for culture," he said. "I'm really disappointed in you. The idea definitely has merit, though. Definitely. It would have to be tonight, or our travel schedule will really be messed up." "Oh, don't worry," she replied. "I was just having a fantasy. We've had our quota of fun for a while, I guess. Time to get responsible." "Too bad," Lance groaned, closing his eyes against the glare and heat of the canyon. He imagined himself and Kaitlyn, crouching naked and abandoned to profane lovemaking at the mouth of the high cave. It overlooked a moonlit gorge and a sparkling, cottonwood fringed river. He knelt behind her, his arms wrapped around her slender, sweat slicked torso, while she ground her palms and knees into the dirt, pushing mightily backward against him.... Lance opened his eyes back to the glare and long line of tourists filing past. The vivid nature of his daydream left him shaken, feeling as though he had been physically transported into the scene. His groin still ached from his sudden arousal. Then his heightened senses suddenly dimmed, as the prospect of a long drive home and his waiting job flooded back over him. Their vacation was nearly at an end. -------- *Chapter 3* THE OLD men walked solemnly down the forest path, retracing a route they had followed for longer than any of them could recall. In the early days, there was a grand procession of elders and villagers, but now there were only a half dozen very tired, elderly men. Every couple of years, there was one less left to make the Spring and Fall Offerings. No children would follow this generation down the path, for no one taught them to believe any more. Their parents had enough to worry about making sure the children had a chance to get away from the reservation when they were grown. Joseph led the procession. Once physically imposing and dynamic, he had held the position as Chief Elder of the tribe since his thirties. Now in his late seventies and bent with arthritis, he struggled under the burden of a bundle of deer meat pressing down on his shoulders. It was a long walk, even for a young man, and they always spent the night in the forest before returning home. Cool, damp evening air was settling over them when they finally arrived at the place where the Offerings were left. It was deeper into the _Manitou's_ country than any of the men cared to go, but they would not risk rekindling old hostilities by taking the chance that their offerings went unfound. With a great effort, Joseph clambered to the top of a large, flattened boulder that sat in the middle of a small clearing among the columns of huge pine trees. Two other men joined him and helped remove the burden from his back, easing it onto the rock. They were all puffing loudly from their exertion. "I say we leave now and travel in the dark and get back sooner. We shouldn't stay tonight," one of the smaller, frailer looking men said. Joseph glared at the man. "You should know better. How many years have we done this together? It is foolish to travel in the night here. Every time, you complain. There is no danger; look how old we've become! If there were real danger, none of us would have gotten like this," he said, gesturing at his body. "We are too old to be camping in the forest like boys," the frail one replied. "You just cannot stay away from that woman of yours," another old man offered. "Don't worry, with me here tonight, she will have no visitors while you are gone." They all burst into laughter at this comment. Suddenly, Joseph motioned that they should be silent. "I heard something. Let's move away from here to the thicker woods," he whispered. After hastily unwrapping the meat, they scurried down from the large boulder and moved quickly and silently into underbrush a hundred feet from the clearing. From the opposite side of the clearing, sounds of brush snapping and footfalls could now be heard. "This is the soonest the Offerings have ever been taken," Joseph whispered as he strained to see through the brush. "It is good we did not delay coming this year." The footfalls grew closer for an agonizingly long time, then suddenly stopped. A silence followed, during which the old men scarcely dared to breathe. "Maybe we did not bring enough," one of them hissed. "Why hasn't it been taken?" "Silence!" Joseph demanded. The force of his response momentarily broke through his whisper and his voice became more audible. At that moment, the footfalls resumed, but now at a very rapid pace. Seconds later, a great ebony black beast, covered in ivory white horns and spines, burst into the clearing and bounded effortlessly to the top of the boulder. It sniffed the meat momentarily, then swept it up in its jaws as though it weighed nothing. In three graceful bounds, the beast was gone, swallowed up by the forest. "Let us prepare our camp now," Joseph said, rising from his hiding place. "We have nothing to fear here." * * * * THE EARLY April rain was pattering on the office window with increasing determination, rousing Lance from recalling last night's dream, the latest installment in what he was sure was creeping madness. Outside in the parking lot, dirty gray snow banks, stubborn symbols of a hard winter, were rapidly giving way to the persistent rain. Sitting at a cluttered desk inside his small office, Lance watched absent-mindedly as a group of clients, huddled under a single umbrella, dashed across the parking lot and disappeared into the Water Quality Analysis building. Ten years ago he was acting out the same scene, being shown around the sprawling complex at Ames Environmental Associates for the first time. He remembered glancing enviously at the row of brightly lit little offices that made up part of the ground floor of the main building. All of the staff members inside were secure, sure of their futures and meeting expenses, he thought. How long would he last here? _Ten years! How could it have been so long already? _ Lately, Lance's pondering of his station in life had grown to a preoccupation that would give him little peace. Along with his own office and a reserved spot in the parking lot, there had come unexpected, nagging doubts. Like a man cautiously wading into frigid water, he had gradually allowed himself to further question the ramifications of decisions made much earlier in his life. With each passing year, doubt about the wisdom of his career choices grew in his mind. And now, there were the dreams. In the month since he and Kaitlyn had returned from New Mexico, sleep had become a torment of bizarre images and feelings. Usually they were dreams with a Native American theme, some mystical and fantastic, others more mundane, but they always somehow _felt_ Indian. What metaphors were hidden in the imagery of a horned spiny monster carrying away an offering of deer meat, proffered by six old men? This last and most vivid dream disturbed Lance most because of the overwhelming sense of familiarity that pervaded it. He could still see the elder's face, a man whose name he knew, even though he could not remember it being uttered in the dream. He could still hear the muffled, heavy footfalls of a spirit-monster running through the forest. It was not like him to be given to thoughts of the supernatural. Lance was a product of a childhood and education steeped in science and rational thought. There had never been room for spirituality or mysticism in his ordered life. It was an outlook that had kept him out of church since childhood, and allowed him to laugh at horoscopes and crystal worshipers. But his pragmatism wasn't enough to allow him to shrug off the dreams, and they colored every moment of his days. Lost in his preoccupation with them, Lance felt helpless as new tensions built between him and his wife. The two of them spoke a little less each day, and spent the nights with their backs to each other. "You want to go to a powwow with me?" Kaitlyn asked, as she sat across from Lance at the dining room table, watching him read a newspaper. Lance looked up over his newspaper at Kaitlyn. She had fixed a steady gaze on him. She had a determined look, but hurt and worry were not far beneath the surface. It was a Saturday morning and they were alone, the children off at their respective friends' houses for the day. This should have been one of Lance and Kaitlyn's treasured moments, when they could talk without interruption or make love on the living room floor if the urge caught them. But on this Saturday, their privacy was only a source of extra silence in the house. "Are you looking for another fight? I'm tired of it, okay?" Lance snapped, looking back down at his newspaper. "Honey, I'm serious," she said, not taking her gaze off him. She sounded scared; Lance looked back up at her. "What possible good would that do?" "I don't know, maybe nothing. It's a chance to do something different, get our minds off whatever it is that's bothering you..." "I don't think any Indian shrinks necessarily go to pow-wows," Lance interrupted angrily. "What are you talking about? Who said anything about ‘shrinks'? God damn it, I'm trying to help here. I'm worried about you and I'm sick of us not getting along. Do you have a better idea of something to do, or are you just going to sulk for the rest of your miserable life?" she fired back. She was standing now, holding clenched fists at her sides. Lance felt guilty for overreacting. He was tired of conflict, too, and was beginning to wonder why he was hell bent on alienating the best friend he'd ever had. He stood, taking Kaitlyn into his arms. Her body seemed to melt into his, as she let go of her anger and fear. Lance swept her long, straight hair away from her eyes and brushed a tear from her cheek. He cradled her face in his hands, momentarily admiring how her auburn hair framed delicate Celtic facial features, dominated by hypnotic, blue-green eyes. She still looked so beautiful to him; better than he deserved, he was sure. "I'm sorry I've been acting like such an ass," he said. "Maybe you're right. Where and when is the powwow?" "Up at the rez, next weekend. It's in the paper, some kind of competitive event. Indians come from all over the country to compete in dances and costumes. They are trying it this year to see if they can bring in more tourists, I suppose. As if the casino wasn't enough." Lance kissed Kaitlyn and looked into her eyes. "I'll do it for the kids," he said, smirking. "By the way, I've got something to show you." He went into his small study and opened a desk drawer, where he pulled out an envelope. "Have a look at this," he said, handing it to her. Kaitlyn opened the envelope. Inside was a single photograph of a charred cedar flute. "Very impressive. What the hell am I supposed to be looking at?" she asked. "What does this look like to you?" Lance asked, pointing to the tone holes visible in the burned wood. "This is from our trip, from the rocks at the lava flow?" she asked, looking up in astonishment. "And you said you had that dream..." Lance nodded, pointing at his head and making a circular motion with his finger. Kaitlyn looked back at the picture. "Why didn't you show me this before? No wonder you've been acting spooky. Have there been other dreams?" "Almost every night," Lance replied. "I can't even describe what they are like. I really don't know what the hell is going on with my mind these days. Why should I freak out about a burned-up old flute? Coincidences do happen." "Jesus, I wish you would have said something," Kaitlyn said, frowning at Lance. "Maybe we do need to talk to somebody." "You mean a shrink, right?" "Not necessarily," she replied. "Maybe an elder." "I'll try anything," he sighed. * * * * THE SONG leader raised his beater and brought it crashing down onto a four-foot wide drum. He and seven other men seated around the drum began beating a slow, powerful rhythm. Its thunder drowned out and silenced the crowd of spectators gathered in the stands of the reservation school gymnasium. The Na-inga Indian Reservation's first indoor powwow competition was about to get under way. "Stand up, Dad! The Grand Entry is starting!" Lance's ten-year-old son Tommy yelled, yanking on his father's sleeve. Melissa, their seven-year-old daughter, hung onto the belt loop of Kaitlyn's jeans and hid behind her legs, startled by the unexpected overpowering percussion of the drum. As the eight men continued beating the drum mightily in unison, the song leader began a hypnotic intonation of a traditional song. When he had finished the first line of the song, the other drummers picked it up, filling the gymnasium with rising and falling harmonies. A Na-Inga man in full traditional dress, dominated by a huge eagle feather bustle, dance-stepped in restrained jubilance through the gym doorway, carrying an American flag. As he cleared the narrows of the doorway, the bustle spread out behind him like an enormous, wispy butterfly, perched upon his back and pulsing newly grown wings with his every step. Next to him was a much older man, wearing a more reserved buckskin tunic and pants and carrying a staff festooned with the feathers of eagles and other birds. On his belt, a large otter skin bag swung and bounced against his leg as he slowly and deliberately danced. Behind them were assembled a throng of men, women and children, attired in a kinetic rainbow of fancy and traditional ceremonial dress. They slowly filed into the gym, stepping in locked rhythm with the drum. Some of the men gyrated wildly, seeming to re-enact stories of war or great hunts. In odd contrast with the buckskin leggings and rabbit bone chest armor worn by many of the male dancers, the feet of most of the younger men were adorned with trendy athletic shoes. The older women wore traditional buckskin dresses or long dresses covered with dozens of small metal cones, which jingled like bells as they danced. Their sound blended with that of bell covered straps worn on the men's legs, created a pulsing harmonic that seemed to come from all corners of the room. Younger women wore brilliantly decorated shawls and spun and high stepped joyously as they moved around the circle. Children were scattered throughout the group, many of them outfitted in miniature versions of the adornments worn by the adults. The tiny ones shuffled along behind their parents, while older children stomped and twirled with the energy, if not the refinement, of the adult dancers. Each of them wore a numbered competitor's arm band. Soon the dancers, over a hundred strong, had completely encircled the gym as they moved in a great clockwise procession. When they had gone full circle, and the men in the front who bore the staff and flag had reached the point where they had begun, the men let out a yell and the drumming ceased. People that packed the stands responded by applauding and whistling generously. The dancers stood very still, facing the elder who carried the eagle feather staff. He looked oddly familiar to Lance. Another Na-Inga man, attired in street clothes, walked into the center of the gym floor carrying a microphone. "Please remain standing for our opening prayer and honoring of the colors," he said solemnly over the gym's public address speaker. "Our opening prayer, spoken in our native tongue, will be offered by our Chief Elder, Joseph Attacomchat." _Joseph!_ Lance thought. His heart began to pound. The old man began the prayer, so softly that it was barely audible even with the help of the loudspeaker. He spoke the words rapidly in a breathy chant, with his face upraised and his eyes closed. Lance studied his furrowed, dark face. He looked to be in his seventies, and wore his snow white hair pulled back in a single long braid. It could just as well have been a face looking back across a century or more from an archival photograph in a history book, or an unforgettable dream. Lance's mind raced. _How can this be?_ _I'm not losing my mind; he's real, the flute was real!_ Lance couldn't fathom how, but he knew that only this old man held the answers he needed. The competition went on for over an hour, with occasional breaks in the several competitive categories for intertribal dances, where the audience was invited to join in the circle with the competitors. "Let's go, Dad!" Tommy demanded, motioning toward the gym floor as the singers launched into one of the intertribal songs. "I wanna dance like they are." "No, I don't think so," Lance replied. He wanted to, but felt too self-conscious to do it. "Ask your mom to." Kaitlyn leaned over and whispered into Lance's ear. "Chickenshit!" "You want me to look like an idiot, or what?" Lance countered. "Mommy, take me!" Melissa demanded. "Okay," Kaitlyn said, standing. "We'll let the too-cool men sit this one out alone." "Dad!" Tommy yelled, pulling on Lance's arm. "What are you waiting for?" Damn that woman anyway, Lance thought as he watched Kaitlyn and Melissa head out onto the gymnasium floor. They fell into line behind a group of young women who were spinning and high stepping through the steps of what was known as a shawl dance. The dancers were interpreting the joyous movements of a butterfly in the summer sunlight. Kaitlyn picked up the tempo instantly and floated across the floor with nearly as much athletic grace as the young shawl dancers. Melissa hung onto her hand, trying to match her mother's movements. A group of small girls spotted her struggles and swarmed around, showing her the steps as they held her hands. Soon, she was dancing far from her mother, in her own little group of girls. "This isn't any fun at all," Tommy complained. "Let's dance! Melissa got to." Lance knew that he would have to give in. He knew that if he didn't have the nerve to participate in an intertribal dance, he never would make himself talk to the elder. "Okay, tough guy, let's do it," he said, standing up and taking Tommy's hand. "I'm glad you're just as brave as Mom is after all," Tommy said, as they merged into the circle of dancers. It was obvious to Lance that he didn't need to feel self-conscious. There were many people from the audience in the dance now, having slowly made their way down to the floor as they perceived that enough people were dancing to assure relative anonymity. Most just walked around the circle or shuffled in a rough approximation of the toe-heel, toe-heel steps of the traditional powwow dance. Tommy wasted no time joining in the rhythm in his own truculent, high energy version of dancing. Lance halfheartedly attempted the proper steps, finding them pleasing and effortless with the thundering drum driving him along, its energy coming up through the floor and filling his legs with unexpected life. He glanced halfway around the gym, where Kaitlyn and Melissa were dancing in joyous abandon, surrounded by smiling and laughing Indian girls. Kaitlyn had always had a knack for dancing, and if she had been wearing a colorful shawl and not been so fair, might have easily passed for one of the competitors. He found watching her move in this exotic setting deeply arousing, and forgot completely about how he looked out on the floor. As Lance and Tommy neared the end of the gym where the drummers sat, Lance spotted Joseph. He sat in quiet dignity on a folding chair near the circle of drummers, underneath the flag and eagle feather staff. As they passed near him, some of the men that were dancing around Lance raised wooden staffs that they were carrying. They had the taloned feet of large birds of prey attached to their ends, and were decorated in their feathers. Joseph looked briefly at the men, nodding. The men let out a loud whoop and lowered their staffs, looking down at the floor and concentrating anew on their dancing. A moment later, Lance and Joseph's eyes met. Joseph gave another nod, this one directed unquestionably at Lance. Lance felt Joseph's dark eyes burn all the way into his soul, as a flood of new and strange feelings filled his mind. The drumming faded away, and the room seemed empty except for Joseph and himself. The elder was speaking to him, but he couldn't hear what he was saying clearly. It was the same quiet, rapidly delivered speech that he had heard from him during the prayer. Lance wanted to understand so badly, to find the answers he desperately needed to put his mind at ease, but the more he strained to hear, the less he could understand. As Joseph spoke, he grasped the otter skin bag at his side. Tiny white sea shells were pouring from it, disappearing into the floor. Behind Joseph, a horned, polished ebony head suddenly rose. Lance was terrified; he struggled to warn Joseph of what lurked behind him, but the old man continued speaking his inaudible monologue, now gazing through Lance, as though he really were not there at all. The horned beast leapt forward. Lance felt two cool, clammy hands on his shoulders. "You have to keep movin', buddy," said a voice. Lance spun around to stare into the sweating face of one of the male dancers, puffing from his exertions. The drumming was back, throbbing in his ears and pounding his diaphragm. Indian dancers were passing Lance on both sides. "You have to keep movin' around the circle, you never stop, you know?" The dancer grinned at Lance and continued moving on past him. "Dad!" Tommy shouted. He stood thirty feet away, looking back impatiently. "You're embarrassing me. C'mon, what are you standing there for?" Lance's knees felt rubbery, and his heart crashed wildly in his chest. Joseph was still looking at him, but now there was a faint smile on his face. He motioned almost imperceptibly with his left hand. The drummers, intently hunched over the drum and lost in their song, abruptly ceased. The crowd cheered and applauded as the white dancers made there way back to the stands while the Indian women regrouped for the Women's Traditional Class. A long line of thirsty men and boys, in the regalia of their Native ancestors, queued up in front of a soft drink machine outside the gymnasium. -------- *Chapter 4* BEHIND DENSE riverside shrubs, a form of shiny black and ivory white suddenly stopped its prowling. Something had caught its attention. A short distance away, a young Indian girl pulled off her buckskin dress and stood poised to dive off a large rock into the river. The roar of the swollen waters had hidden the sounds of the observer's approach; the girl stood unaware of the monstrous desire that she was fueling a few feet behind her. She leaped gracefully from the rock into a quiet pool that lay next to the torrent of the main channel. Through the crystal clear water her slim body could be seen swimming powerfully, toned muscles working rhythmically under smooth, perfect skin. Her long black hair trailed behind, pulsing with each forward stroke of her arms. Submerged portions of the rocks that lined the pool were covered with algae, and her skin looked radiant against this emerald carpet. Fascinated, the creature could not tear himself away from the spectacle. When she had grown tired of swimming, the girl climbed out of the pool and stood in the hot sun, smoothing her hair back over her shoulders. Water draining from the tangled tresses ran down her slender back and cascaded off her buttocks, splattering onto the rock beneath her feet. Tiptoeing gingerly from rock to rock, she reached a large flat faced boulder that lay inclined toward the rushing water. She climbed onto the rock face and sat, drawing her knees up tightly to her chest. The air seemed cold now, and she felt vaguely vulnerable. She looked around for a moment, making sure that her privacy was not violated, then relaxed to warm herself on the rock. She laid back slowly, stretching her legs out to let the sun dry her. A strange excitement came over her as she felt herself so exposed in the cool breeze and yet warmed by the hardness beneath her. Rivulets of water ran off her body and down the rock face, evaporating before reaching its edge. She closed her eyes, letting the roar of the river fill her head. The creature was totally mesmerized by the wild beauty the young woman radiated. There was something utterly perfect about the whole setting. _This had to be the time. _Desire screamed from the depths of the creature's soul, but he did not dare move from his hiding place. He had not yet finished adjusting himself for her, his form was still incomplete. In the swirling depths of his mind, he begged her not to move, not yet. Just a little longer and he would be ready. Opening her eyes, the girl gazed up in horror. The towering, naked form of a man stood over her. He looked like a polished ebony statue, perfectly smooth and muscled like a forest beast. His nails were white, like ivory, and his eyes burned red as a midsummer sunset. Every instinct she possessed told her to crawl from beneath his looming, insatiable presence, to flee into the woods. But she was paralyzed by his appearance. A scream welled up in her throat, but no sound would come forth. Silently, he lowered himself upon her and a searing wave of pleasure engulfed her, evaporating her fears. Although he looked as though he were made of polished stone, he moved in a supple, catlike way. He was mechanically deliberate, but there was a tenderness, a profound longing in his touch, as if he were a young, inexperienced boy. Reassured, she surrendered to the warmth of him above her. The rock beneath her no longer felt hard and unyielding but instead seemed to move along with their fused bodies. It was as if the only reason for the girl's existence was this single moment; she felt joyously connected with the earth, a living, sensual extension of all creation. Time itself seemed to stop. Then the darkness of his face was gone from over hers, replaced by blinding light. The glare of the sun forced her to close her eyes. She felt suddenly cold as the hot weight of his body, pressing her into the rock, was gone. Sitting up, she found herself alone with the roar of the river. Her whole body ached as though it had been subjected to exhausting physical exercise. Shivering, she crawled to where her buckskin dress lay and quickly pulled it over her head. Glancing up as she finished pulling the dress down over her body, she caught a fleeting glimpse of a black, ivory spiked tail disappearing into the dense shrubs that lined the opposite bank of the river. * * * * LANCE WOKE to find himself locked in a frenzied embrace with Kaitlyn. She lay pinned beneath him, her legs wrapped around the small of his back, groaning and panting loudly with her eyes tight shut. Lance's eyes were wide open; he could still see the river sparkling in the dark of the bedroom. At that moment, he was not sure who he or the woman beneath him was. All he cared about was the sweet fireball of sensation growing in the center of his body. It swelled until it enveloped both of them, growing steadily with the cacophony of tumbling water. Kaitlyn arched her back and bucked against Lance's weight, her cries of ecstasy now lost in the river's roar. They lay next to each other, wide awake, catching their breath. "Whatever dream you just had, you can have again," Kaitlyn said, rolling over on top of Lance and twirling his chest hair in her fingers. "But save it for tomorrow night, okay?" "You're really not gonna believe this one," Lance said. Kaitlyn was too tired to care. They kissed tenderly and drifted off to sleep, wrapped around each other atop a dampened tangle of sheets. * * * * THE FIRST hours of the drive north to Lance's parents' home were monotonous ones. An unerringly straight freeway stretched to the horizon and farm after farm stretched as far as the eye could see. The openness of the country and wide road took away much of the sensation of speed and progress. The day was hot and glaring, and a growing headache added to Lance's low level torment as the drive wore on. The traffic was mercifully moderate. Friday night northward migrations from the large cities would not begin in earnest until the Memorial Day weekend. From then until Labor Day, hordes of suburban vacationers would jam this road, fleeing north. On Sunday afternoon, a hectic weekend of fishing, swimming or sitting out rainy weather completed, they reversed the process. As a child, growing up in the forested north of Wisconsin, Lance had always found the influx irritating. But local economies were dependent on the three month tourist season. The vacationers could turn the area's many lakes into freeways with their huge boats, and prices for goods and services were driven ridiculously high during the summer months. People always grumbled about it, but locals managed to scratch out a living in the feast or famine tourist service economy. As he grew older, Lance began to feel pity for the "summer people," as they were called. He could not imagine having to drive fourteen hours or more every summer weekend, just to spend one and a half days away from the heat and noise of the cities. The really lucky ones got a few weeks. A younger Lance had only to step out of his parents' home to take in the outdoor pleasures of the Northwoods. Playing alone much of the time in the forest and fields of his parents' large tract of land, he developed a deep bond with the natural world. It was out there that everything made sense. Lance always credited this halcyon youth for his fascination and appreciation for living things. It seemed inevitable that he would eventually study ecology and then environmental engineering in college. Now it saddened him to think how his career choices had led him away from a cleaner, quieter and slower moving world, tourists not withstanding. They turned off of the freeway and passed into woodlands, as dusk and a welcome coolness settled over the countryside. With a more interesting landscape passing by, the children settled down, tedious back seat hostilities immediately forgotten. They rolled down their windows and listened intently. Each time they passed a marsh or flooded roadside ditch, the air filled with the ear piercing trill of frogs. Early spring heat had brought them out in uncountable millions, and in a frenzy to attract mates, they called in deafening choruses from every damp place. Tommy and Melissa strained to pick out the staccato trill of one frog species or the high pitched peep of another. Most of the time, all they could discern was an overwhelming, mixed din of millions of tiny frog voices, lost in a frenzy of reproductive urge. The emergence of frogs had become an important rite of spring in their young lives, as it still was for their parents. Only when the frogs came out in force could the promise of spring be taken seriously. Before that, this far north in Wisconsin, early spring warmth could suddenly give way to heartbreaking late season snows that could accumulate a foot deep on ground that was prepared to send up its first green shoots. The road led them out of the woods to old farm fields, whose edges were beginning to be reclaimed by the forest. The land had fallen into disuse two generations ago, as the last struggling farmers in the area gave up or died, testimony to a land cruelly promising fertility but too harsh in soil and climate to reliably provide. As they turned onto the long gravel driveway leading to Lance's parents' farmhouse, they passed familiar piles of rusting farm machinery. The equipment had been left where it was last used, dried remnants of tall weeds now weaving a tangled web around the old iron implements. Lining the driveway were ancient apple trees, with deeply furrowed bark and twisted, still leafless boughs that seemed to silently usher the car to where the old house sat. It was a large, white, two story structure, with thick wooden columns supporting a roof that spanned a wide porch running around three sides of the building. In spite of the rundown state of the farm, the house always looked vibrant and warm. Lance remembered many years of playing or working to exhaustion in summer heat, and later sitting on this same porch to savor lemonade at the end of the day. Though he took it for granted during his youth, now he appreciated the quiet, understated grandeur of the old homestead farm. All aspects of the house were hand crafted, sometimes elegantly, sometimes crudely, and while there was not the consistent precision of line found in modern buildings, there was a sense of spaciousness and generosity in its design. It had been built in a time when cost consciousness and compliance with building codes were not societal obsessions. Lance worried about the fate of this place when his parents were gone. He had no desire to move back here, even if he could carry on his career, but the idea of the place he grew up in being sold, or worse, subdivided, was incomprehensible. It would be an obscene end to a place so rich in memories. As they pulled into the yard, five dogs, all of indistinct breeding, bounded out to greet them, noisily announcing their arrival. The front door of the house opened to reveal a slender, silver-haired woman wearing an apron and holding a dish towel. A broad smile spread across her face as she recognized her son's car. "Those can't be my grandchildren," Hannah Hayward said, rushing up to the car and hugging Lance awkwardly through the open car window. "They've grown too much." "Grandma, of course we're yours!" Tommy and Melissa yelled in unison as they scrambled out of the car. The five dogs mobbed the children, swarming over them in a small sea of wagging tails and affectionate licks. Old playmates were once again reunited. "I hope you're hungry," Lance's mother said. "I did my pasta-for-an-army dinner tonight." "What's Dad going to eat?" Lance asked. "Or have you finally broken him of his hatred for ethnic food in the last six months?" "The old buzzard's so outnumbered tonight, I figured I could make whatever I wanted," she said, her eyes sparkling with mischief. "He'll be back in a half hour. He's over at old Frank's probably harping about the Na-Inga treaty business or something." Lance pulled their suitcases out of the back of the wagon while the women walked toward the house. A disquieting sense of dread crept into his mind. His father was no lover of Native Americans, and recent gains made by local tribes in hunting and fishing rights, based on interpretation of a century old treaty, had made him livid. During visits, conversations would inevitably turn to the treaty rights issue. Lance did not share his father's opinion that the Indians had too many rights already. Now, with him feeling his mind being mightily pulled by something undeniably Native, acrimonious discussion of treaty rights interpretation was not something Lance wanted any part of. As Lance closed up the car and turned toward the house, the five dogs abruptly ceased their roughhousing with the children and dutifully fell into a single file procession behind him. It was supper time for them as well. A large kettle of water was already heating on a massive iron stove in the kitchen. On an adjacent counter, chopped garlic and peppers were filling the air with the seductive aroma of home made Italian cooking. Lance resisted an old urge to forage for a snack in the kitchen, as he had always done as a famished growing boy. He moved on into the dining room, where his mother was setting out teacups on a large, round oak table. Kaitlyn and the children were already seated there, helping themselves to a batch of cookies Hannah had set out. A tall wooden cabinet with glass doors dominated one wall, displaying gleaming silver and crystal. On a facing wall, a nearly identical cabinet housed museum piece shotguns, some with ornate engraving adorning their wide barrels. A tea kettle in the kitchen began shrieking, sending Hannah hurrying off to see to it. "I always like coming here so," Kaitlyn said as she reached up and took Lance's hand. "Do you suppose we'll be this inviting to our kids when it's our turn to be grandparents?" "I'll guarantee one thing," Lance replied. "I won't be a miserable old racist codger." Kaitlyn frowned at Lance. "C'mon, don't start it up again," she said. "He's not even here yet and you're preparing for a fight. Maybe the subject won't even come up, okay? We're all tired of this happening every time." "I suppose you're right, it's benefit-of-the-doubt time, yet again." Lance was tired, and it seemed especially hard for him to hide his bitterness toward his father. Jerome Hayward, like many others of his generation living here, had become increasingly intolerant of a local band of the Na-Inga Nation. Recent legal interpretation of a century-old treaty between the tribes of Wisconsin and United States government had allowed broad entitlement of Indians to wildlife and other natural resources on public lands beyond the reservation boundaries. Lands that were originally theirs had been given up for financial consideration, but the right to gather resources from those lands had been retained. It sounded perfectly fair to the colonizing whites in the 1800s, when most of the state was still wilderness or being exploited for its timber. But now, with the region becoming a booming vacation destination, some white inhabitants were feeling threatened. A widespread sentiment developed; sharing a greater part of the area's fish and wildlife with the local tribes could only result in fewer resources for paying tourists. The tinder box issue was spearfishing, which was legal only for Indians, and meant smaller allowable catches of fish by white anglers. When a Federal judge denied the State's legal challenge to the extension of Na-inga treaty rights, a cry went up: The area's vacationing economy was surely doomed. Racially charged confrontations, some leading to scuffles and rock throwing, began occurring at boat landings when Indians came to spear during early spring fish spawns. Local papers, always struggling to generate headlines more interesting than area gas prices or weather woes, were quick to whip up even more tension with highly speculative and often inaccurate coverage of the issue. "Grampa!" Tommy and Melissa shouted in unison as they leapt up from the table in a sudden explosion of cookie crumbs. They rushed to greet the imposing, white-haired countenance of Lance's father. "Well, what have we here," Jerome teased, "Grandma's been bringing home strays again." The children hugged his stout legs as he covered each of their small backs with his bear paw hands in a gentle embrace. Melissa looked up at him. "You're not going to fight with Dad about Indians again, are you?" she asked. "Melissa!" Kaitlyn exclaimed. "What's the matter Mommie? You were talking about it in the car, remember?" the little girl said, turning to look at her mother with the big hand of her grandfather still holding her close. Jerome bellowed with laughter. "They're getting too clever for you two," he said. "You'd better start using sign language." Lance felt his face growing warm as he flushed with embarrassment. He's right, he thought, we really have to be more careful.... "Don't worry, I won't insult your relatives," Jerome said, giving each of the children a playful swat as they pulled away from him and headed back to the cookie plate. "My relatives?" Lance asked, confused. "Sure, I didn't want to remind you ‘cause I figured you'd be out there spearfishing with the rest of ‘em." "What in Heaven's name are you talking about?" Kaitlyn asked. "I s'pose Lance was too little to remember, but one of the last times my older brother visited, just before he died, he told all of us about your great-grandmother. I don't remember her all that well," Jerome said, taking a seat at the table. "Hannah, got any more of that tea?" "Tea I can do, but you're out of luck as far as the cookies are concerned," Hannah said, casting a glance at Tommy, who was polishing off the last one. "Just as well; I've got my girlish figure to consider." "What about your grandmother?!" Lance asked urgently, trying to get the conversation back on track. "You mean to tell me that you never heard the story about your famous great-grandmother? You must have heard it several times when you were little and forgot," Jerome replied. "Tommy, you're gonna get a bellyache." Hannah brought in some tea for her husband, and he became silent as he sipped from his steaming mug. Lance knew better than to press any further; he had endured this game of teasing and holding back many times with his father, but never on a topic quite like this. After several minutes of silence, Jerome suddenly spoke. "My brother told me she was a full-blooded Ninga." "It's _Na-inga_, Grampa!" Tommy burst out. Lance was beginning to feel like he was having another one of his dreams. "What?" was all he could manage to reply. "You're one eighth Indian, boy," Jerome said, grinning. "So go sharpen up your fishing spear and claim welfare, you got it comin'." "What's welfare, Mommie?" Melissa asked. "Hush, honey, let's let Grampa talk." Lance couldn't believe that his father had waited until now to tell him this. Perhaps he always assumed that Lance knew. Or he was playing games with him again, fishing for an argument. "Why are you telling me this now?" he asked. He was feeling strange numbness inside, a mixture of shock and excitement. "Well, it's a great time to be an Indian, isn't it?" "You mean because of the treaty rights thing," Lance said, carefully. If the conversation degraded into an argument, nothing would be learned and the entire visit would once again be overshadowed by the tensions between them. "Hell, not just that! Look at all of your yuppie friends going out to Arizona and going to powwows. God, you'd think Indians were the best thing that ever happened to this country," he said bitterly. "Indians are cool, so don't argue with my dad!" Tommy blurted out. Kaitlyn took him onto her lap forcefully and held her finger to his lips. "See what I mean?" Jerome continued. "Look how you have these kids brainwashed." Lance was seething inside. He had once again let his father's taunts get to him, and the realization that he had fallen into an old trap made him angrier still. But looking at the enraged old man before him, he also felt pity. It was clear to Lance just how old his father had become. He was no longer the icy cool, totally rational man he remembered, but much more emotional, almost childlike. But at least Lance understood where the rage was coming from now. What would it be like, he wondered, to hate a people so much, and know that you shared their blood? Kaitlyn could sit by quietly no longer. "You mean teaching your children not to hate is brainwashing?" she fired back. "I think it's time to change the subject," Hannah offered. "Kids, I've got something out in the yard to show you. Grampa's finally finished that new swing set." Tommy and Melissa eagerly pursued their grandmother out of the house, leaving a tense silence behind them. Lance stood to leave the table. "So how's work been," Jerome asked, suddenly a different person. Reluctantly, Lance sat back down. They took up a safe, emotionally neutral conversation, as though the tense exchanges of the past few minutes had never happened. -------- *Chapter 5* LANCE ROSE the next morning feeling deeply chilled and nauseated. Unable to face Hannah's customary huge breakfast, he quietly excused himself to the living room. While the rest of the family chatted cheerily in the dining room, he lay alone on the living room sofa, feeling weaker by the minute. Lying half awake, he marveled at how harmoniously the family seemed to get along when he was removed from the scene. The sounds of the family breakfast grew distant as he slipped into semi-consciousness. He turned inward and began wrestling with old questions, ones that he had repeatedly asked himself for most of his life. Questions that he had dismissed as unanswerable years ago returned to torment his pliant, drifting mind. Why was he such a lightning rod for conflict with his father? Why couldn't their visits, as infrequent as they were, be filled with meaningful conversation and honest curiosity about what had gone on in one's life during the past several months? How much longer would his mother and father be around to ask such questions? Lance felt sadness at the realization that precious time was slipping by for all of them, time that shouldn't be wasted in pointless smalltalk or the tense gamesmanship of arguments. The chills that racked his body were slowly replaced by a mounting fever as the morning wore on. His sadness was replaced by another feeling, at once fascinating and frightening. The blood pounding through his veins was hot, and no longer seemed to be only his. It was the blood of countless generations that had gone before him, people that he had long admired, but barely understood. They were now frighteningly close to him, unavoidably and forever changing the way he would look upon himself. * * * * LANCE LOOKED up in resignation at the old couple waving good-bye in his rear view mirror. The rest of their visit had passed uneventfully, with his father offering no further information about his ancestry. The long drive home seemed a welcome prospect now, allowing Lance plenty of time to think. The children, exhausted from a weekend of hard play, lay fast asleep in the back seat, and Kaitlyn was absorbed in thoughts of her own. The fever had left Lance strangely clear-headed and more mentally collected than he had felt in years. Like one of his ancestors, he mused, he had emerged from his illness as a man emerging from a Na-inga sweat lodge ritual, renewed and purified. The next step was clear; the elder Joseph would have the answers he sought. * * * * STANDING BEFORE the elder, Lance told him all that had been burdening his tired mind. He told of his great need to feel that he belonged somewhere, to have a tribe to call his own. He spoke of the burning need to know the truth about his great-grandmother, her tribe, her history, _his_ history. As he spoke, he felt himself going out of control, draining off pent-up emotions, unraveling years of denial of who he really needed to be. The elder said nothing, listening intently until the moment was right, then reached up and gently placed his fingertips on Lance's temples. He began a soft chanting song in his native tongue, casting his eyes skyward and then closing them. Lance realized that he, too, knew the words of this song. He began to sing along with the elder, closing his eyes as well and letting the old song rise sweetly from deep within. It carried away layer after layer of pain and burden. Lance felt as though he could go on forever, as though he were rising like an eagle riding a dome of warm air, exactly where he belonged. When Lance opened his eyes, he found that the elder had changed. The man that stood before him now was Aryan in appearance; closely trimmed blonde hair and a thin, angular face. He wore a military style khaki shirt. His pale face seemed dead and expressionless except for cold blue eyes that sparkled from sunken sockets. They showed great amusement with Lance and his outpouring of feeling, but were also more intent on something else, with the focus of a hungry dog. The last words of the song died in his throat and he stepped back from the apparition before him in terror. "I'm so glad you've finally opened up to me," the blonde man said, keeping his cold eyes riveted on Lance. "Now, since you want so badly to be a man of color, you must assume the proper role. I wish to ride you as I would my little coon stable boy." Roaring filled Lance's ears, as he felt himself hurtling toward certain destruction. * * * * THE CAR'S wheels roared as they left the pavement and plowed into soft gravel at the side of the road. Lance woke to find his hands clamped on the steering wheel, fighting to feel the road under the car's wheels again. Kaitlyn sat petrified next to him, hanging onto the dashboard and bracing herself for an impact. Carefully, so very carefully, Lance applied the brakes, fighting for control and slowing the car until the steering again responded in the treacherous gravel. When at last he was able to pull back up onto the pavement, a pale Kaitlyn stared straight ahead, her rigid arms still locked in front of her. "Jesus Christ!" she gasped. Tommy and Melissa sat wide awake and terrified in the back seat. They continued the journey home in stifled silence. -------- *Chapter 6* AS DUSK closed in on a narrow side street, a lone lorry plied its way between dark warehouses and overflowing garbage bins. Its driver was tired and nearing his last stop of the day; he drove faster than he normally would in this part of town, but he knew the place well, and his belly was empty. As he made a turn and headed west, he fumbled to switch on his headlights. The red and gold skyline was still quite bright, and it robbed the driver's eyes of almost all detail in the dark street ahead. As the headlights came up, the driver gasped and swerved to avoid a large object lying directly in front of him in the road. Reacting a split second too late, he cursed aloud as he felt the lorry's front wheels jolt over something. The driver brought the vehicle to a groaning stop and leapt out to see what he had hit. What appeared to be a large bundle of rags lay in the road, now belatedly illuminated by a weak street light. The driver ran back to it, arriving shaking and winded. As he gingerly prodded it with the toe of his boot, the object moved a little and an agonized, bubbling moan issued from it. * * * * ADAM MUNUNGGURR'S condition hadn't shown any sign of improvement for weeks. He lay in Intensive Care, tubes and sensor leads sprouting from his stocky, black body. His wildly curly hair was matted from constant contact with pillows, and his face drooped like a stroke victim's. No one had come to check on his condition since a delivery truck had run over him, asleep and sodden drunk on a Sydney back street. The whole case was looked upon as another tragic example of Society failing its marginalized members. At Lady of Mercy, the veteran staff had seen it all before, and most of them wouldn't lose much sleep thinking about Adam's fate. As long as the government paid the bill on Adam's upkeep, they would keep him alive. The EKG monitor at the head of Adam's bed kept a steady rhythm of reassuring beeps, noting the slow heartbeats of his deeply sleeping body. On another nearby monitor, bright green lines repeatedly traced low levels of brain activity. The lines meant something to the nurses and physicians who routinely looked in on Adam; he was in a coma, barely alive, but not nearly dead either. What neither the machines nor the dispassionate staff that looked down at Adam could know was that far more was going on deep within this middle aged Aborigine's mind than could be measured externally. Very old forces, plainly familiar to those few still fortunate enough to be connected to the Land and the Ancestors, were very slowly moving across Adam's subconscious, retracing primordial paths. There was much to be sorted out in his Dreaming; things had gotten seriously out of kilter. Adam Mununggurr was taking care of himself, in spite of all that modern medicine was doing. Everything had started to go wrong for Adam fifteen years earlier, when he moved away from his clan's village and settled in a rough black section of Sydney. The promise of a steady wage working on the loading dock of a motor freight company was a temptation he could not resist. He had seen the fabric of his people's lives shredded by alcohol, unemployment and loss of identity. Young people, descendants of Aborigines pulled from a culture tens of thousands of years old and forced into missionary schools, no longer cared about tradition. They moved to the cities in droves, hoping to better themselves and enter what they perceived as mainstream society. In spite of all the cautioning from his elders and members of his family, Adam had decided to head for the city. Dead end employment and disillusionment greeted many of the Aborigines who uprooted themselves, followed by alcohol and drug abuse, violence and incarceration. Many died each year in prison, often under poorly explained circumstances. The working class white population looked dimly on black migrants competing with them for low paying jobs. Prejudice ran deep and sympathetic people with any influence were hard to find. Adam would come to know the struggle so many of his brothers and sisters had shared with substance abuse, but his final downfall was the seduction of gambling. If he was lucky, winnings would make up the difference between his meager wages and what he needed to survive in the city. If he wasn't lucky, he ran up debts that often put his life in jeopardy. Usually, he could steal something and clear his accounts, but this last time, he had gone too far, and there was no way out. When the white thugs came to ransack his flat, they were not to be disappointed. Adam had few possessions, but something that he did have would settle his debt quite well. It was an old, sacred object, something the tribal elders had entrusted to Adam's care to remind him of who he was and to comfort him in his isolation. It carried his clan's hope of Adam returning one day to take up his life as it was meant to be. Now this would never be; Adam's prize possession would be sold to a dealer somewhere in uptown Sydney. Most likely it would ultimately grace the mantle of a wealthy tourist on another continent, its meaning forever lost. But it would be safe for Adam to walk the streets again, at least for a while. This reprieve was a hollow one; the last remaining thread of his identity had been cut with the loss of his property. And the message the looters spray painted on his wall made it clear enough what Adam's life had now been reduced to: _Next time, coon, its going to be you...._ He broke into a liquor store and helped himself to two bottles of Russian vodka. A few hours later he lay unconscious in the middle of a dark street, unaware of the wheels of a delivery truck bearing down on him. At first, only fragments of visions and sounds drifted through Adam's mind. None would persist long enough for him to know if they were familiar things, remembered experiences or shreds of the outside world leaking in through the dark walls of his coma. As the weeks passed, the fragments solidified into experiences that he could understand, but were totally foreign. He became an unwilling visitor, an observer who couldn't shut his eyes, in what seemed to be the life of someone he was sure he had never met. Scenes of family life and visits with people who were unknown and yet familiar to him. A job, an office, traveling by car through a strange, green countryside. And there was the torment of all of the talk, conversations that went on and on about unknowable things, back and forth between strange, white faces. Adam did not want to know all of the things these people were talking about in such great, nonsensical detail, but he could not turn away from it. The sights and sounds continued to pour into his mind, eroding his sense of whom he was, or once was. As time wore on, Adam would occasionally see himself in a setting that was mercifully familiar. The content of this dream was even more bizarre than the others, yet it held meaning for him. It was always the same; he was sitting under a _mulga_ tree in pleasant shade, wanting to be at peace there. He remembered such a place from his childhood. But now he was grown up and engaged in conversation with a short, unwelcome guest. "You've been wronged, brother," the _Womabirri_ would say. The _Womabirri_ had come into being in the time of _Tjpurka, _or Dreaming, when all things were delivered onto the face of the land. And as with all things, he existed simultaneously within the moment of his creation and the temporal world, fulfilling his purpose. But unlike more heroic spirit beings, the Womabirri's purpose carried the potential of evil when his role was not clearly defined. His powers and propensity for causing mischief always made dealing with him a mixed bag, a severe test of the character of any mortal who called him. If there were conflicting or ulterior motives clouding a man's mission in life, the Womabirri had a talent for magnifying the negative and confusing one's purpose. He enjoyed conflict too much, it seemed, to be of any real use to anybody. But his power was substantial, and few men who were able to call him could resist the temptation to employ his talents. Adam hadn't chosen to call him, he was just there, demanding and disruptive. Adam only wanted to sit quietly and feel the cool breezes of his childhood. "You've been wronged, brother, you ‘ave the right of revenge. That's why I'm ‘ere," the Womabirri would say. He squatted before Adam, uncomfortably close to his face, grinning and gesturing with his spear. He was an absurdly short creature, the compressed image of a fierce bush hunter and warrior. Adam was sure that his stature was at the heart of his combative nature. "I didn't call you, I don't need you," Adam would protest, weakly. "We can save a lot of time and forget playing games; I know what the _balanda_ bastards did with your clan's belongings. You know you'd get angry enough sooner or later and call me. I just saved you the trouble." "But I don't want to see you," Adam had replied. "This is my problem, not yours. Let me rest ‘ere in peace." Then the Womabirri would stand up and begin pacing quickly around. He was barely a meter tall and physically proportioned so that he suffered from a comical lack of ground clearance. "No, it's my problem now, too. White boys ‘ave gotten themselves in way too far this time. Should ‘ave left me where I was. _Baiami_ don't like ‘aving ‘is children messed with, moved all over the damn place. You've been wronged, I've been wronged." * * * * "THIS OLD bugger could hang on for years like this," the neurologist said, scowling at Adam's vital signs. "Wonder when the bloody government's gonna let us unplug some of these indigents." "Graeme!" an incensed nurse exclaimed, "I didn't hear you talking like that!" "You're right, luv, you didn't. Who's next here; I've got a serious lunch appointment after all this caper's over with." Adam slept on. -------- *Chapter 7* A GREAT PILE of unread mail, memos and faxes sat on Lance's desk. It was nearly a week since he had returned from the eventful visit with his parents, and he found himself unable to get back into the routine of his work. Lance had uneasily gone through the motions of his job, avoiding as many telephone calls and face-to-face meetings as he could. Concerns of work seemed trivial now, as he stared past his neglected desk and out the office window. The terrifying vision in the car could be interpreted countless ways, and the longer he pondered it, the more confused he became. All that was clear was that a warning lay deeply embedded in the vision, but rational problem solving wasn't going to root it out. He needed time away from this place and all of the mental noise it created for him, so that some other part of his consciousness could process what was happening to him. Now, he could only wait for his request for time off to be answered. A furious pounding at Lance's office door jarred him out of his reverie. "Hayward! The Big Guy wants to see you in his office. Boy, you musta really screwed up this time." Lance recognized the voice. "Go to hell, Brian," he answered. The door opened to reveal a young man with long, thinning and disheveled hair. He wore patched blue jeans, a battered tweed sports jacket and glasses with thick lenses. Brian Farris was a relative newcomer to Ames Environmental, yet he was one of the few staff members Lance genuinely liked. His responsibilities as manager of the Lower Vertebrate Bioassay Section of the Water Analysis Division had little to do with Lance's engineering realm. Nonetheless, even with Brian's constant tiring wittiness, Lance found him much easier to take than the rest of his colleagues. His total lack of concern about office politics and protocol in general made it easy to imagine him getting dismissed from his position, walking off to some other occupation, and never missing a stride. His simple, single life didn't seem to encompass more than enjoying his work and occasionally drinking more than his share. "Hey, I'm serious," Brian said as he began leafing through the pile of paperwork on Lance's desk. "You know, I think you've finally gotten the hang of this professional engineer thing; you've got the most disorganized office on the floor. Lance, you've arrived." "What does Big Tom want?" Lance asked, looking out the window again. The sun was beginning to break through the morning's oppressive overcast and drizzle. "He caught me in the hall a while ago, said something about your leave of absence," was the reply. "Pretty classless of him to discuss it with me, don't you think?" Lance felt a little surge of excitement. If his request had been rejected, he would have just gotten an interoffice memo which wouldn't have surfaced on his desk for weeks. "I told you if you brown-nosed long enough you'd get something out of old Thomas when you needed it. Now that you've got some pull with him, just remember to mention me at the next salary negotiations, okay?" Brian shouted after Lance, who had disappeared out the office door. Dorian Thomas, supervisor of the Environmental Engineering Department at Ames, sat like a small mountain behind his desk. The staff had long wondered how much the man weighed, in exact values as engineers are compelled to think; Lance's estimate had always been 300 pounds, plus or minus twenty. His face looked as though it had long since given up its battle with gravity, and seemed to threaten to collapse in a flaccid heap on the desk in front of him at any moment. Lance hated going into Dorian's office for any reason; there was always a choking pall of cigar smoke in the air, and Dorian seldom spoke to anyone unless something had seriously offended him. "Sit down" he grumbled, and then broke into a coughing spasm. "God damn air pollution, it's gonna kill us all," he wheezed between coughs and noisy throat clearings. "I've finished reviewing your proposal for a two week leave of absence. You got it." Lance broke into a grin which he tried furiously to hide, but couldn't. "I'd be happy to except the leave," Lance replied evenly, as he gradually regained his businesslike facade. "Good, we'll get all the water plant details and bullshit routed to one of your young flunky's offices tomorrow. Any preferences?" "Brentwood's up to speed on this one, he'll do." "Fine. Have a good time, son," Dorian replied, vacantly, already turning his attention to other matters on his desk. As Lance left the office, he pondered Dorian's ridiculous callousness. He took the role of a crusty corporate boss too far, smothering whatever morale and enthusiasm the staff might muster for their work. During senior staff meetings, his use of phrases like "client flow" and "the bottom line" bordered_ _on_ _the_ _ridiculous. Lance knew that some day, if he stayed on at Ames long enough and played the game right, he could be doing the same thing. It was a prospect that truly frightened him. After closing his office, Lance ducked out to his car through the building's back entry, seeking to avoid the customary idle chat of his colleagues. The afternoon sun was unexpectedly hot through the breaking clouds, causing mist to rise in curtains off the wet pavement as Lance walked across the parking lot. He opened the car door and dumped his paperwork inside, wincing as a furnace-like blast of dead air greeted him. He swung himself into the car and rummaged through his pockets for the keys, while his mind clouded with doubts. He could only hope that Joseph was willing to council a confused, middle class mixed-blood who looked, no matter what his intentions were, to be a typical, white young urban professional. At best, Lance was guessing at what the correct protocol for calling on a tribal elder might be. Among the Na-inga, as with many Native American tribes, tobacco was a sacred gift to be offered to the many deities, or _manitous_, that made up their spiritual universe. To offer it to a fellow man was considered a profound gesture of support for his spiritual life, and done any time one was in need of the service of another. Would the elder take offense at such an offering from a "white" person? Would trying to follow Native customs and botching it be more of an insult than just walking up and introducing oneself? "So what the hell will you do for two weeks, and does it include your wife or what?" Lance looked up to see Brian stooped over, grinning at him through the car window. "You've been pretty squirrely lately; most everybody thinks you're gettin' it on the side somewhere. Man, I'd kill for a babe like Kaitlyn, personally speaking," Brian said. "Please don't, okay?" Lance deadpanned back at Brian. "So, this is none of my business, but..." "You're right, it's not," Lance finished. "Jeez, what's made you such a tightass all of a sudden?" Brian crossed his arms in exaggerated hostility. "Just tell everybody I'm going on a vision quest," Lance offered, reaching out of the car and patting a puzzled Brian on the cheek, as though he were an unhappy toddler. As Lance drove off, Brian was left standing alone, slowly shaking his head. Lance was on his way to a little shop on the other side of town, one that carried only the finest tobacco. * * * * IN PREDAWN darkness on a Saturday morning, Lance set out for the Na-inga reservation. As he drove, his mind drifted ahead of his car to the reservation, a place Lance had resisted going to for years. The depressed economic lot of the Na-inga people made him feel uncomfortable with his own relative prosperity. He felt added guilt now, because he was going to the reservation only because he needed something there. Given the bigotry of his father, and the disturbing nature of the last dream, Lance was beginning to wonder if he, too, harbored a deep mistrust of the Na-Inga. He had no real idea who they were beyond the myopic focus of history texts and occasionally sensationalized news media coverage of the reservation's social ills. The Na-inga community didn't seem overly concerned with contact with outsiders either. Besides its gaming industry and small tourist oriented shops, little was offered. Until the recent powwow, no authentic cultural events had been open to the non-Indian public. They had learned long ago what bored urban outsiders with money to spend expected Indians to be, and had provided that image to tourists and casino patrons. But, the impassioned dancing and huge turn out at the powwow had shown there was far more pride and spirit alive in the tribe than could usually be observed on the surface. By midmorning, Lance was rounding a bend in a narrow road leading to the reservation, and crossing an invisible line between life he took for granted and harsher realities. A weathered wooden sign, framed by rotting half logs, announced in barely legible letters: _Welcome To The Sacred Lands Of The Na-inga People_. Tacked on to the bottom of the sign, in neon pinks and greens, were newer placards reading: _Welcome Casino Adventurers! Visit Tribal Smoke Shop! Fireworks! All Major Credit Cards Accepted. _A landscape of abandoned, rusting cars and tiny, run down frame houses began to take shape. Overlooking it all, on a freshly cleared hillside, stood a sparkling new casino complex. Just over fifty years ago, the neighborhood had been carved out of a white pine forest, part of a federal housing development program aimed at finally setting things right between the Indians and their conquerors. Federal money provided a few rows of identical houses and a watery version of middle class American living. The tribe's great hope was that its new casino enterprise would do what years of federal programs hadn't; change the face of a community where children and thin dogs still tussled among mud puddles on unpaved side streets. Two generations removed from traditional life ways, these children were embracing "mainstream" culture's styles and consumer gadgets as best as their parents could afford. But most of the real social benefits of being in that "mainstream" remained just out of reach. They lived in an odd limbo, reaping disappointment from a new, adopted value system while rapidly forgetting the values that had sustained their ancestors for centuries. As Lance drove on, past little peeling houses with rusty swing sets and yards sparkling with broken glass, his heart grew heavy. Compared to these people, he felt like the very embodiment of wealth. His car, his clothes, everything visible on the outside seemed now to place miles between him and the impassive Na-inga faces drifting past his car window. Lance pulled up in front of a small gas station and restaurant, hoping to get directions to Joseph's house. He planned to order his lunch there, and attempt to get some feel for the local people. Inside, he found a half dozen men sitting at the counter. In one corner of the room, three young boys were punching selections into a blasting juke box. Lance walked to a small table and sat down. The murmur of conversation stopped abruptly, and the men at the counter turned to glare at Lance. A heavy set, middle-aged woman came to Lance's table, a little tag on her blouse identifying her as "Marge." "You ready to order?" she snapped. "I'll have this roast beef plate and some coffee, please," Lance said, looking at the battered menu. She snatched the menu out of his hand and disappeared into the kitchen. The men at the counter had resumed their murmuring, but they occasionally stole hostile looks at Lance. As Lance waited, he grew more nervous. The juke box was much too loud to let him hear himself think, and it was playing a bizarre, repetitive string of songs, ranging from _Beer Barrel Polka_ to something Lance thought sounded like an old Led Zeppelin song. He began to doubt if anyone here was going to be the least bit cooperative, and fought off the urge to leave and look for Joseph's house on his own. The meal finally arrived, and when he was through, Lance sat back from the table and folded his arms in an exaggerated manner, hoping to attract the waitress's attention. She looked up at him momentarily, then resumed the conversation that she was having with the men at the counter. After several minutes of uneasy waiting, he stood and walked over to the counter, digging out his wallet as he went. "That'll be $5.25 with the tax," Marge said briskly, moving to Lance's end of the counter. Before handing her the money, Lance asked, "Can you tell me how to get to Joseph Attacomchat's?" Marge pulled back the hand that she had extended to take Lance's money. "What do you want to see him for? You another damn social worker or something?" she asked with surprising hostility. Lance bristled at her attitude but held back what he really wanted to say to the woman. Getting off on the wrong foot with these people would accomplish nothing, and word would get around fast if he seemed the least bit combative. "I'm an acquaintance, okay?" he replied in a well-controlled tone. Marge softened her stare a little and Lance handed her the money. "Go up to the end of the street here and take the county road out for about four miles, then hang a right on the first gravel road you come to. His place is at the end of the road. Good luck finding him, he's never home." "Thanks," Lance muttered as he spun around from the counter and headed for the door. He could feel them all watching him leave. -------- *Chapter 8* "I'M AT the airport in L.A.," a familiar voice announced over the phone, barely audible over a cacophony of crowd noise. Kaitlyn pressed the receiver tighter to her ear and plugged her other ear with a fingertip. "Cedric, is that you?" she shouted into the phone. "Too right it's me, Niecy," the voice replied. "What are you doing in the States? Last we heard from you, you were doing something with imports, or something.""It's business, but I thought I'd try to ring you kids up while I was here. Maybe drop in if it's not a bother." "Of course, we'd love to see you. Can you get connections from there okay? When would you be coming?" Kaitlyn asked, her mind racing ahead to short notice preparations for her uncle's visit. "No worries, Niecy, I've got it all sussed already. Just thought I'd call first. Always the considerate bugger, you know. Where's your handsome Lance today?" "He's off on a little exploration of his own at the reservation; don't expect him back until much later. Well, let's hear it then," Kaitlyn said. "When, where and how long?" "I'll be flying into the Twin Cities next Wednesday at six in the P.M. Northwest Airlines 262, gate thirty-two. If you can't make it, I'll be overjoyed to rent a car. Got something unusual for you two lovebirds. Can't stay too long, maybe three days. Business and all that. I'll explain better when I get there." It was growing noisier on Cedric's end of the connection. Kaitlyn shouted into the phone. "We'll look forward to it; we'll pick you up, okay?" "Good on ya, bye-bye luv." The line went dead. Hanging up the phone, Kaitlyn sighed deeply. With Lance's ongoing problems, she hadn't been thinking much about entertaining company the last several months. In spite of the short notice of Cedric's visit, Kaitlyn knew that he would provide a welcome distraction for the whole family. Cedric seemed to live the lives of ten people, all at once. There would be, as always, much to catch up on. She mused over what the "something" Cedric was bringing them might be. "Anything, except another stuffed koala toy, okay Uncle?" she muttered to herself. Over the years, it had proven to be his favorite gift to his "little Niecy" and he always managed to forget from one visit to the next that he had already given many of the stuffed toys to her. Even when Kaitlyn was grown, the occasional sad-eyed koala still appeared in the mail at Christmas time or on visits. She had kept them all, of course, and Melissa was starting her own collection with some of the overflow from Kaitlyn's closet. Kaitlyn remembered Cedric, now in his sixties, as a rugged figure, sporting a snow white beard that contrasted with a brown, leathery face. Over the years, sun and wind had gradually transformed him; now he could be mistaken for one of the Aborigine stock hands he employed on his sprawling sheep station. Except for his crew of station hands, he lived alone, avoiding personal entanglements at all costs. Born and educated in London, he spent most of his adult life drifting from one occupation to the next, growing more and more restless with what seemed to be oppressive English civility. It was a place where, as he often put it, "everybody was too far up their own arse." After bailing out of a brief, miserable and childless marriage, Cedric was ready to get a fresh start elsewhere. The opportunity came unexpectedly with a late night phone call from a roaring drunk old Australian friend. He told Cedric about a sheep ranching operation a few hundred miles northwest of Sydney that had fallen into receivership. If they moved quickly, he claimed, a substantial infusion of Cedric's money was all they needed to get the place for "bloody nothing, or close to it." By late the next morning, Cedric had liberated all of the financial resources he had and secured the property sight unseen with a flurry of phone calls and a meager down payment. The bank involved, desperate to unburden itself of a property with a long history of financial failure, was obliged to accept the offer. Cedric left England quietly, telling no one about what had transpired. One day, the few people who normally received letters from him started noticing that they were postmarked in Sydney. Even then he gave no hint of explanation for what he had done. His new business partnership lasted only a few weeks before his friend fled the sheep station, unnerved by the rough life in the Outback and the ways of the black station hands. Cedric never heard from him again. He carried on alone, much happier with the new control he wielded over the operation of the place. Always restless, Cedric never stopped looking for a "new angle" that would bring him permanent prosperity. Most of Cedric's business schemes carried the risk of running afoul of local laws or accepted social customs in one way or another, but he seldom let such matters influence his decisions. The station hands were accustomed to upheaval, and most loyally stayed on when Cedric repeatedly ran the place into the ground financially to bankroll his business schemes. In return, Cedric never fired anyone, even during the leanest times. Again and again, the station would be reduced to subsistence living conditions for months at a time, but they always managed to sweat or connive their way out of jeopardy. His compassion for his station hands and his reputation for not cooperating with white bureaucrats gradually earned him the respect of local Aboriginal tribes, and was welcomed into their communities whenever he needed their support. In spite of all the rancor, Cedric slowly learned to fit into his harsh adopted landscape, surrounded by a handful of marginalized souls and several hundred sheep. "Who was that Mommie?" Melissa asked as she brushed past her mother, on her way from the front yard to the kitchen, a jump rope dragging behind her. "It was Uncle Cedric, honey." Melissa stopped in her rush to the kitchen cookie jar. "Is he coming? Is he coming?" she asked excitedly. "Looks like it. We're going to have to get this place straightened up in a big way before then. Think you can help?" "Of course, Mommie. Is he going to bring you another bear?" Kaitlyn laughed. "It's quite likely, I think. We'll make the best of it, okay?" "Which one of yours will I get then?" "This time I think I'll just let you take your pick," Kaitlyn replied. Melissa hugged her mother's leg. "Oh, goodie!" she squealed. She helped herself to a cookie and headed straight to her mother's closet, to begin the process of selecting the next koala to adopt. * * * * LANCE SWALLOWED hard and knocked on the door of a tiny frame house. He waited for an agonizing ten seconds and knocked again. Nothing. There was no way of knowing if Joseph was home, since he did not own a car, and Lance couldn't see if any lights were on in the house. "Once more," he said to himself, and knocked. There was a stirring inside this time, faint footsteps could be heard, a door closing, more footsteps that grew slowly louder and then stopped. Silence again. Lance didn't know whether to knock again or not. "Can I help you, son?" came a thin voice. Lance spun around to find Joseph standing a few feet behind him. He had on a tattered pair of coveralls and held a rusty knife in one hand and a bag containing plant roots and bark fragments in the other. His face was as Lance remembered it from the powwow, deeply furrowed with sparkling brown eyes set deep within the dark folds of skin. His mouth was turned downward in slight frown, an expression that struck Lance as one of mild annoyance. "My name is Lance Hayward," Lance began, his voice breaking like a teenager's. "I must speak with you...I hope this is not an inconvenience. I...I _need_ to speak to you." Lance held out a pouch of loose tobacco. Embarrassment swept over him when he saw that his hand was trembling. "Please accept this," he said. The turned-down corners of the old man's mouth seemed to bend upward slightly. "Do you remember me from the powwow?" Lance asked, hopefully. "There were a lot of people at the powwow." "I was dancing, sort of, with my son in an intertribal. Our eyes met at one point and you acted like you..." Joseph suddenly motioned for Lance to move into the house. "I gotta put this stuff down, it's gettin' heavy," he said. As they entered the tiny house through the kitchen area, Lance looked furtively around for the other person he thought he had heard inside. "Do you live alone?" he asked as Joseph shuffled off into another room. "Just me and the Jehovah's Witnesses, ‘bout every month or so. Stubborn, very stubborn. Find a chair, I'll be right back." Sounds of chopping and scraping could be heard, along with running water. Lance wondered if the plant material that he had brought in and was cleaning had some type of medicinal use, but decided not to ask. The tiny living area where Lance settled was spare, furnished only with two small chairs, a tiny coffee table and a battered old sofa. A gas space heater occupied most of one end of the room, apparently the house's sole source of heat. Shelves along one wall were crowded with old pottery, a turtle shell, many kinds of bird feathers, a small mammal skull, a set of deer antlers and variety of glass jars containing dried plants and berries. In one corner, a closet door sat partially open, revealing buckskin leggings and a feather bustle hanging inside, like Lance had seen worn by many of the men at the powwow. A couple of badly faded black and white photos of a traditionally dressed Indian family harvesting rice from a canoe hung on a wall. On the opposite wall hung a brightly colored, vaguely abstract painting of a landscape. Lance marveled at the almost childish idealism the painting radiated. "It's my granddaughter's, she's taking art at the community college," Joseph said, reentering the room. "It's pretty crazy with the colors, but I have to hang it in case she drops in." Lance smiled. "It's nice. Looks good on your wall." "Can I get you a cup of tea, or how about a beer?" Joseph asked. "Oh, don't go to any trouble..." "C'mon, nobody ever wanted to speak freely unless they had some kind of drink in their hand. You want to speak freely to me, don't you, Lance? You brought tobacco; it must be serious," the old man's eyes were sparkling with a touch of mischief. "Okay, I'd love a cup of tea, thanks," he replied. "You want real tea or that dried deer manure they sell in the store?" "Real tea." Joseph grinned, revealing two missing front teeth. "It's already on the stove. It'll be ready in a couple of minutes. Now, what's troubling you?" "You really don't remember me from the powwow?" Lance asked. "Should I?" "Well," Lance said, looking at the floor and frowning, "something strange happened to me there, kind of like a dream, and you seemed to be part of it, or cause it. And months ago, I had another dream, and I swear I saw you in it." Joseph said nothing as he got to his feet and headed to the kitchen, where the tea kettle was at a full boil. Lance sat uncomfortably silent, wondering where their conversation was headed. Joseph returned shortly with two mugs of oddly aromatic liquid, setting one down on a small table near Lance. "Just gathered this root, it's always better when it's fresh," Joseph commented. Then he sank slowly into the old sofa and stared silently into the steam coming off of his mug for a long, awkward time. Finally, he looked up at Lance. "What were your dreams about?" he asked, in a voice so quiet Lance could barely hear him. "It was wild, bizarre stuff. I don't know what all the imagery was supposed to stand for, but it involved a creature with horns and big teeth. And there was another dream that you weren't in, where it seemed like _I_ was this creature, and I..." "Go on." "Well, I was ...um, having sex, with this Indian girl." Lance looked away from Joseph. "This must sound absolutely crazy to you." "Not if she was pretty." Lance laughed. "Yeah, she sure was that." "Why do you suppose you are having Indian dreams? The creature you describe is our manitou, _Makida-ishina_, an earth spirit. You must wanta be an Indian real bad, ‘cause that one isn't in any of the books about us," he said, seeming to show more interest. Lance looked back, squarely into Joseph's face. "I just found out from my father that my great-grandmother was Na-inga. He'd kept it from me all of these years. But I think I must have already known somehow, because I had been having these dreams for months before I ever found out. And how did I dream about you? I never met you before the powwow." The elder frowned and looked back into his tea mug again. The two sat silently for another long, uncomfortable moment. Then Joseph stood and went to his crowded shelves and retrieved a small bundle of dried, blue-green stems and leaves. He placed it in a small clay bowl and lit one end of the bundle with a match. Pungent smoke filled the air. Lance realized that the elder was burning sage, a purification ritual. "Now only the truth will be spoken between us, okay?" "Of course..." "It is with you, of two nations, that the heaviest burdens often fall, if you choose to be truthful with yourselves," Joseph continued. "You have great courage to face up to who you really are, who you must be." "How could I have seen you in my dreams?" Lance repeated. "I can't answer that, but it's no big deal to one who understands the power of the Dream. Dreams are our most valued guides, if we pay attention to what they have to say." Lance realized that the elder was not going to provide any direct answers to his questions. As with his father, Lance would have to be patient and let the conversation go wherever it was meant to go. "What do the shells mean?" Lance asked, suddenly remembered a detail from his eerie experience at the powwow. A hint of greater interest flickered across Joseph's face. "What kind of shells? What are you talking about, son?" Lance sat up on the edge of his chair, unconsciously wringing his hands, trying to remember all of the now hazy details of his experience. "I saw you in the gym, and then it was like only you and I were there. And you had this bag tied to your belt; I think it was some type of animal skin. There were these little white sea shells pouring out of it." "And then what happened?" "Then the beast appeared behind you...and I woke up, or came out of it. You looked right at me then. I know this happened to me." Joseph rubbed his deeply wrinkled forehead for a moment, then he took a deep breath. "That was my medicine bag. I am the last member of the old Medicine Society. It was a great honor; took years to get fully initiated. The medicine bag was the great symbol of belonging." "What did the bag symbolize, exactly?" Lance asked. "It did more than symbolize, the bag and the shells, they gave us our power!" he exclaimed. "The Medicine Society's job was to make great deeds happen. Things that we saw in Visions, that we knew must be done. We alone could do this!" Joseph was suddenly very agitated. His hands were trembling and his bent shoulders heaved up and down as he breathed more rapidly. "Forgive me if this isn't appropriate," Lance replied, very quietly, "but do you mean magical powers?" "I suppose your people would call it that. I'm sorry, not _all_ of your people. Your great-grandmother may have watched our ceremonies, you know that?" Lance's tea had cooled enough to take a sip. It had an initially overpowering herbal taste, but he quickly grew accustomed to it and took another taste, and another. "In one of my dreams, the first one you appeared in, I saw you leading a procession of old men into the woods. You left an offering of deer meat for the Makita...the creature," he said. Joseph stared at Lance. His mouth dropped open, but no sound came out for a very long time. When he did speak, his voice trembled and seemed hoarse. "You saw this?" he asked in disbelief. "Yes, perhaps I should have mentioned it sooner." The sage smoke in the room was growing heavy, and Lance was starting to feel a strange blend of excitement and dread. Joseph was showing an emotional side that seemed intimidating, despite his age. Forcing himself to remain calm, Lance continued to sip his tea, staring silently into the sage smoke as it curled off the end of the little dried bundle on the table. Joseph was deep in thought, but the silence between them no longer seemed awkward. It was all right to be here, and there was no need to speak just for the sake of conversation. The tea tasted so exquisite, so full. The sage smoke continued its sensuous journey from the glowing end of the bundle into the air, where it briefly inscribed wonderful swirling patterns. Lance felt a heavy warmth come over him; he realized that he could no longer move. It was growing very dark around him now, but he did not care. -------- *Chapter 9* CONSCIOUSNESS crept slowly back. The first noticeable sensation was that of oppressive heat, and a panicky sensation of imminent suffocation. Lance opened his eyes and saw nothing, and for a split second was sure that he was somehow buried alive. Adrenaline raced through his body, yet he could not move. Only after realizing that he was breathing regularly and that there was no shortage of air did he calm down. There was no great weight pressing down on his body, only the sensation of being in a very warm, very small, dark space. He gradually became aware of soft, unrecognizable sounds coming from nearby. It was a melodic, sometimes mournful sort of humming. Once in a while it would sound fleetingly like a familiar human voice. The humming gradually grew louder, and flickering phantoms of softly lit images teased his eyes every few seconds. The sense of mortal danger had left him, but the overpowering heat remained. Lance could feel sweat pouring off his body, running down the sides of his face, off his chest, abdomen and legs. Focusing on the sensation of the running rivulets of sweat, he realized that he was naked. He seemed to be lying on some type of woven rug, with his head propped up on something uncomfortably hard. Trying to move again, Lance found that he now could. Raising an arm over his head, he felt a low, sloping ceiling of wet, heavy canvas, supported by slender wooden poles. He slowly sat up and stared at the flickering image before him, trying to focus on it. The image slowly coalesced into the elder's face, lit from below by a small dancing flame and the glow of red-hot stones. Joseph sat across from Lance, with his head bowed. He was totally engrossed in a breathy, whining chant. The old man, too, was naked. His sunken, sagging chest trembled with the exertions of his song. "Where am I?" Lance weakly asked of Joseph's flickering image. The elder abruptly cut off his chant. He did not move his head, but slowly rolled his eyes upwards, meeting Lance's. "You are safe, my son. Now come, sing with me." "What do you mean? Where have you taken me? What is this all about?" Lance tried to stand up but quickly thought the better of it as the small dark world he occupied spun and tilted wildly. "You've got to give yourself more time, son, you're not used to this yet," Joseph replied. "Please sit still." As Lance anchored himself back in a sitting position, the vertigo mercifully stopped. "What is going on?" "Something's gone terribly wrong, and we must seek a vision here in our _nipi_ ceremony to find a way back. Sing with me now." Joseph took up the chant again, and its sound seemed to fill Lance's head until it felt as though it might burst. He felt his lips beginning to move involuntarily, his vocal cords contracting and his diaphragm pushing. A high, reedy note escaped his lips, in perfect harmony with the elder. Lance had always known this song, and it took more strength than he had not to sing it now. The two men sang on in the dark, their sweat pooling up and soaking the old rugs on which they sat. When the song was done, Lance felt much stronger, much less disoriented. Still, he could not remember how he came to be here, taking part in a sweat lodge ceremony. The whole experience of visiting the elder had a dreamlike quality about it now that made him wonder if it had taken place at all. "What has gone so wrong?" he asked. Joseph poured water from a wooden ladle over the softly glowing stones arranged in a small pit between them. Steam exploded off of them, momentarily hiding Joseph's face from view. It became instantly hotter and muggier in the tiny space. "I was unsure of you at first," Joseph replied, when the steam had cleared away. "These days, so many want to learn our ways, but it's not sincere. But you are different. There is no way you could know about Makida-ishina, the medicine shells or the joining of manitou and human flesh. Or about the Offerings. You have a small amount of Na-inga blood in you, but it calls loudly now." "But, what has gone wrong?" Lance asked again. "I brought you here when I realized you were being truthful with me. God, it's been so long since I've had to do this. I sang and fasted for a long time. Finally the vision came. You slept so long, and I couldn't wake you to tell what I saw." When the elder mentioned fasting, Lance suddenly felt hollow inside; he was starving. "How long have we been here?" he asked. "As long as it took, my son. These things take time." "What did you see then, in your vision?" Joseph stared silently at the glowing rocks for a long moment before speaking. "In the old days, I was caretaker of the needs of Makida-ishina. Now, he has come back to us because he is unhappy. There is a newcomer, not of our world. It belongs to another tribe, another race. This being has come into our presence and challenges our great Manitou. It seeks a place here that rightfully belongs only to Makida-ishina." "What does Makida-ishina do, exactly?" Lance asked. "He is one way the greater powers of Creation can be put in the hands of mortals. To men who have pure hearts, he can guide and assist them in deeds of goodness." "But what about men without pure hearts?" "Makida-ishina does not make the distinction. It is our burden to use his powers wisely. This manitou exists only to render the link between the powers of the manitous and mortal men, as the Creator wished," Joseph explained. "Is that because of the joining of the manitou with a woman, like in my dream?" Lance asked. "Makida-ishina was discontent with his isolation in the Place of the Spirits, so he took on human form once, to know its pleasures. But it corrupted him, and stripped away his judgment of right and wrong. Now, only the heart of the mortal who calls upon him for help decides to what end his powers are used." "Who, or what is this newcomer?" Joseph sighed and cupped his face in his hands. "I am an old man. I can't fast any longer. This is all that I can tell you. Something has come into our presence that has created a terrible imbalance. You must set it right." "Me?!" "Makida-ishina has been talking to you in your dreams for a very long time. He has looked among the Na-inga here and found them to have strayed too far from the old ways to do this task. Your Na-inga blood is thin, but it speaks loudly. He knows this." "How could I possibly...?" "You have already begun the process of learning, Lance. You are awakening to your true heart. Very soon, a fleet-footed messenger will make a great sacrifice for you. Let it happen; it will make your path to understanding your task more direct." Lance wanted to ask more questions, but the drowsiness had returned. The elder's voice grew unintelligible again, as it had during the vision at the powwow. No matter how hard he tried, he could comprehend no more. Joseph's face became a blurred candle flicker. Darkness closed over Lance, and all he knew was the heaviness of the heat and the torrent of sweat rolling off his body. The heat was gone. Lance opened his eyes to a blurry dappled kaleidoscope of green and gold light. Sun filtered through a high leafy canopy and played on the ground around him in elaborate soft-focus shapes as a gentle breeze stirred. He was lying naked on the forest floor, his clothes neatly folded and stacked nearby. Sitting up slowly, he gazed out into the forest until his eyes began to focus. About 50 feet away, he could now just make out the shape of his car, parked at the side of a road. He felt hunger like he had never known before, and a searing thirst. Looking at his wristwatch, his heart skipped several beats. The date told him that he had been gone for three days. Lance weakly pulled on his clothes, which seemed much looser now, and stumbled toward his car. When he reached it, he found it had been parked well off to the side of an unfamiliar road. Out of habit, he reached into his front pants pocket and found the car keys, right where they should have been. Unlocking the car door, Lance swung himself into the vehicle and fell limply into the seat. As he sat slumped over the steering wheel, Lance tried to make sense out of the past few days, how Joseph had managed to move him from place to place while apparently unconscious. But he quickly lost his concern over these matter as the thought of what Kaitlyn and the children must be going through right now crept over him. All that mattered was that he get home fast, and that he wouldn't be pressed too hard for an explanation. Judging from the dense forest that stood on both sides of the narrow road, Lance guessed that he was somewhere deeper in the reservation than he had ever been. He started the car's engine and pulled onto the road, hoping to get his bearings as he drove. As minutes passed and he saw no other vehicles or dwellings, he realized that he must have been taken to the far side of the reservation, where it abutted a national forest. Lance drove on, waiting anxiously for anything to give him a clue as to where he was. Rounding a bend, he noticed a young buck deer standing in the road. It stood its ground as he approached, eyes riveted onto Lance's car, stamping one foot nervously every few seconds. Lance began slowing as he continued to close on the animal; 500...300...100 feet away, and still it did not move. Just as Lance prepared to stop altogether, it raised its white tail high into the air and bounded off the pavement. Passing the spot where the deer had stood, Lance glanced over to see where it had gone. There was no sign of it. He looked back at the road a split second later, to see the deer squarely in his path, only feet away from impact. Lance had already begun accelerating again and now there was no hope of stopping in time. He stood on the brake pedal with all of his might, and the car's tires moaned in protest. The last thing Lance saw of the deer were its eyes, intently fixed through the windshield, seeming to stare right at him. Then came an impact, and a fleeting glimpse of deer legs and hooves flying up past the windshield and over the top of the car. Careening to the side of the road in a spray of gravel, Lance pounded on the dashboard of the car. "Shit!" he yelled in sorrowful rage. In all of his years of driving, he had never before hit a deer. He threw the car door open and jumped out. A couple of hundred feet back, the buck lay in a crumpled heap on the road, the pavement beneath it beginning to redden. Grabbing a tire iron from the rear of the car, he walked dizzily back to where the deer lay, ready to bring a merciful final blow to the animal. Reaching it, he saw to his relief that the deer's neck was neatly broken, and it was completely still. Lance bent down and touched the furry softness of the deer's head. It was a yearling buck, with a pair of spike antlers still in their velvety covering. "Poor bastard, you'll never get to use those antlers now," Lance said. He knelt by the ruined body and wept. The sound of an approaching vehicle made Lance look up. A battered old pickup truck rounded the bend in the road. It slowed and pulled off the road just before reaching Lance. A husky Na-inga man in blue jeans and a ripped tee shirt jumped out. "Had a little mishap here, eh?" he called out, as if Lance were hard of hearing. Lance stood up. "I just couldn't seem to miss him," Lance offered, shaking his head. "Hey, it's no big deal," the man said. "Sometimes these damn deer act as if they wanna die." The man's remark rang more truthful than he would ever know. The "fleet footed messenger" had made a very large sacrifice indeed. "I'll make you a deal," Lance said. "You can have this deer, if you give me the hide." The man laughed. "Hell, I was gettin' a little hungry for venison anyhow. You want the hide, it's yours. Help me clean out this bastard right now and I can send you down the road with the hide inside half an hour." Lance smiled. "Let's get to work then." -------- *Chapter 10* KAITLYN DROPPED her gardening trowel as she stood up from her work in a front lawn flower bed. "God, you look terrible! What happened to you?" she exclaimed as Lance stepped out of the car. "What happened to the front of the car?" "Hit a deer," Lance replied evenly. Kaitlyn rushed to her husband and hugged him. "Are you all right?" "Better off than the deer. I'm going to try and explain where I have been the last several days; I know that you won't believe this..." Kaitlyn stepped back and looked at him in disbelief. "What are you talking about? The last couple of days? You left for the rez early this morning! You're kidding, right?" Lance looked down at his watch. The date again showed as Saturday. "Forget it," he said. "I've got a big job to do, and very little time. I'm going to need you to accept some pretty strange ideas, I'm afraid," he said, as Kaitlyn inspected the damaged front of the car. "What kind of job...Lance, what on earth do you have in the back here?" she asked. "Some kind of hide?" She walked quickly back to him and took him by the hands, locking her wide, frightened eyes onto his. "What the hell happened over there? Did you ever see Joseph?" Lance led Kaitlyn to the front steps of the house and sat down. He kept hold of her hands and turned to her. "Yes, I met him, and he made a lot of things very clear to me. Honey, there's a job I have to do for him...for me, too, and it may all sound pretty weird." "Are you in some kind of danger? How did you end up looking like you just escaped from a concentration camp?""Listen, I'm okay. Let's not get into all of this until the kids are asleep tonight, then I'll tell you all I know, if you really want to get involved." "How the hell could I not get involved, you idiot! I'm scared to death by what's happening to you. Now Uncle Cedric is coming...just how am I supposed to act like everything is normal? Got any ideas?" "Cedric?" "He called this morning. He's in L.A. on business and wants to fly over next week for a visit," she said. "You told him to come?" Lance replied in disbelief. Life seemed complicated enough. Kaitlyn became more agitated. "I thought it might help get things back to normal! I thought we all could use a break from all of this!" Lance tried to take her into his arms, but she pulled away, stood up and started backing away from him while slowly shaking her head. He held up his hands in resignation. "Okay, okay. We'll deal with it. Maybe I'll have a better idea what this is all about by the time Ced gets here." "And what about the kids?" Kaitlyn countered. "How can this go on any longer without really screwing them up? They are having trouble explaining things to their friends now. What about your goddamned job?" "There may come a point that I'll have to be by myself for a while," Lance replied vacantly, recalling again the elder's face as it seemed to change shape in the flickering light of the sweat lodge fire. "It will be safer..." "Oh, just great!" she shouted. "They need their dad back, and your answer is to go off on some adventure and leave us guessing even more?" Lance snapped back to the present. "Damn it, I'll try to explain better when we've got time to really talk. I just don't want the kids involved..." "Bloody marvelous! "More strange little head games to keep us strung along." "No! Can't you just let me..." Lance looked up to see Kaitlyn striding angrily away and vanishing into the house behind a slamming door. He sat alone on the steps for a long time, pondering the events of the past days, or day, depending upon which evidence he chose to believe. It saddened him that Kaitlyn was taking the latest turn of events so badly, but other people's feelings, even his own family's, were a distant concern compared to the enormity of the task facing him now. There was much to learn, and little time. What the deer had begun for him, he must now finish. * * * * THE HIDE had soaked for several days in an alkaline solution made of water and wood ash. A long search of the forest had finally yielded a log of the right size, one that natural forces had already begun hollowing. To ready it for the skin, it was painstakingly trimmed to the proper shape with an ax. Scraped clean of its fur, the skin was cut into two wide, round sheets, making the top and bottom heads of a drum. Narrow strips were cut from the rest of it, to provide lashings to hold the skins to the hollow log frame. Time was of the essence, as all sacred drums had to be completed in one day, after tobacco had been properly offered. After a few days, the skin would dry and shrink, tightening the heads and lashings. When struck with a padded deer hide beater, this assemblage of the animal and plant worlds would vibrate with a voice of its own. Subtle tonalities and hypnotic rhythms could open a man's mind to the promise and potential of a world too many men had now turned their backs on. With the drum, a man could talk to the spirits, and hear himself. * * * * KAITLYN ROLLED over in bed and stroked Lance's face. "You're just having a dream. Shhh," she whispered in his ear. Lance opened his eyes. Kaitlyn was looking down compassionately at him, her long hair spilling off her shoulders and down the shimmering front of a satin teddy. Lance had never seen her in it before. "Tomorrow, I've got to go back to the rez and look for something, before I forget how to..." he muttered. "Is this new?" "Yeah, lonely girls buy impulsively. Need company?" "Tomorrow or right now?" "Both." "I'd like that," he said. He slid his hands under the thin straps of Kaitlyn's teddy and slid it down to her waist. She obligingly arched her hips off the bed, allowing the garment to be glided further, until it lay in a glossy pile at her feet. She kicked it away and crawled on top of Lance. "Promise me you'll really be here this time, when we are making love, okay?" she whispered, running the tip of her tongue around the perimeter of Lance's ear. "If I'm not here, I promise you'll be wherever I am," he replied, his heart beginning to race. They sank into a long-denied kiss as their entwined bodies seemed to meld them into a single, glowing being. -------- *Chapter 11* THE TOWERING hardwoods created a sense of being in a cathedral lit in soft greens. Lance and Kaitlyn walked slowly through the reservation forest, searching the ground for candidate logs for the frame of a drum. "Where do we look for something like this?" Kaitlyn asked. "I'll know the right log when we find it," Lance replied. "That's pretty fuzzy logic coming from a design engineer," Kaitlyn commented, brushing flies out of her hair. "If it wasn't so damned buggy, I'd love to pull you down in the bushes right now." "C'mon, we're on the rez...show a little respect." Kaitlyn laughed. "This coming from the guy who wanted to make love in a cave at a National Monument!" "I seem to recall you suggesting that one, too," Lance said. "Okay, I'm preoccupied with doing it where I shouldn't. Seems to me that was one of my better selling points when we started going out..." "Shh," Lance interrupted. "I think I see somebody in that clearing over there!" He pointed ahead to where sunlight flooded a small open meadow. Someone was kneeling there, toiling with something unseen. As they came to the edge of the clearing, Lance took a deep breath. "This is really cool!" he whispered. "It's a cemetery!" Kaitlyn whispered back, hoarsely. "Just look at all of the ghost houses!" The clearing was perhaps half an acre in size and crowded with small frame structures, roughly the size of dog houses. Most were very old and weathered, some in the last stages of disintegration. A Na-inga girl in her early twenties was intently arranging a bundle of flowers and small figurines at the "door" of one of the better maintained structures. She looked a little out of place here, clad in tight blue jeans and a revealing stretch top. She wore pink athletic shoes, and a silver chain encircled one of her ankles. But her perfect, dark skin and jet black hair clearly showed her to be from this place. She was tending to a timeless task, the upkeep of the small shelter that symbolically housed her ancestor's spirit. "How can I introduce myself without scaring the hell out of her?" Lance whispered. "Let me go first, then she won't think you're some kind of pervert loose in the woods," Kaitlyn suggested. "Okay, but be courteous..." "Don't be an idiot, Lance," Kaitlyn hissed, slowly stepping out into the clearing. "Hello," she called softly. The girl looked up suddenly from her work, her long black hair swinging wildly to catch up as she turned her head toward Kaitlyn. "Hi," she answered, shyly. Lance started into the clearing, assured that he would no longer startle the girl. "I hope we're not intruding here," Kaitlyn continued. "We were kind of wandering around..." "Oh, it's okay. Not too many people come here anymore, so it's good to see folks, even if you're not...I mean, you don't have to be Indian anymore. It's good somebody cares." Her response struck Lance as sounding a little odd, but he decided to change the subject. "Do you have relatives here?" he asked. "Oh, yes, of course. I was just tending my grandfather's house here. He's only been with the spirits a couple of years," she said. "Are you looking for something?" "Well, yeah, actually we were looking for a large piece of wood, to use as a drum frame. Seen any around here?" The girl looked at the ground for a moment and slowly nodded her head. "I see," she began. "I was thinking maybe you were looking for some old relatives or something." "Believe it or not, I've got an ancestor who was a Na-inga woman," Lance blurted out. He immediately felt embarrassed by his overly enthusiastic response to the girl's words. "Oh really?" A faint smile flitted across her face, but she continued to keep her gaze averted. "What was her name?" "I don't know. She was my great-grandmother. "And what was her husband's name?" "Hayward," Kaitlyn offered. Now a look of wonder filled the girl's face and she looked up, smiling more broadly. "There's a Hayward buried here," she said. Lance's jaw fell open. "You don't suppose...no, my great-grandfather was white! At least I think..." "He was a famous man, this Hayward. He asked to be buried with his wife, when the fever claimed her. It was the only time a white man ever came to rest with the Na-inga. He must have really loved her," the girl said. "Where...?" was all Lance could manage to say, feeling his whole body begin to tremble. He felt a lump growing in his throat. The girl motioned for them to follow her, and she set off for a distant corner of the cemetery, where many of the oldest ghost houses stood. Some were completely covered in lichens and mosses, and barely discernible from the ground on which they stood. Finally, she stopped and stood next to one of the old structures, which was adorned with bone-white bracket fungus and a kaleidoscope of mosses and lichens. Next to it, a weathered hardwood cross stood. Lance knelt in front of it and, with a trembling finger, traced the faint letters that had been burned into it nearly a century earlier. _J. Hayward_. Some dates were faintly visible as well, but were unreadable. "My God," Kaitlyn said, quietly. "They're both here!" Lance exclaimed, turning to the girl. "You seem to know about them. What can you tell me?" "Jeremiah Hayward was hired by our people to oversee logging on the reservation. He understood trees, when to harvest them, when to leave them be. Jeremiah convinced the elders to be careful, not to sell off the timber to outsiders for pennies. He encouraged them to build furniture and sell it for more money; it helped our people get on their feet during a time when there was literally starvation here. Nobody else cared. Not many white people are remembered like he is." "And his wife?" "She was the daughter of one of our Medicine Society shamans. He had great stature among our people, and he gave her willingly to your great-grandfather. Her name was Raven Feather." "Do you know how they died?" Kaitlyn asked. "Early in this century, before the town was built or anything, there was an epidemic here. Nobody would say what it was, but our medicine wasn't strong enough. Many died, mostly children. Raven Feather died soon after giving birth to her only son." "My grandfather..." Lance mused. "How is it that you know so much about all of this?" She shook her head and stared at the ground again. "Somebody has to, or it'll all be gone," she said, very softly. "The elder who told me was my grandfather back there. There have been no men in the family line since him. It's got to be my job." "Do you know Joseph Attacomchat?" Lance asked. "Yes, I know him. He has such a great burden now. He's the last one, the last elder from the Medicine Society times. I wish I could do more; all I can do is listen and remember the stories, try to keep the facts straight. When he's gone, that's it." Lance sensed that the girl was anxious to return to her duties at her grandfather's grave, and that she might appreciate some privacy. "You've been such a wonderful help to me," he said. "I can't begin to thank you for showing us all of this. I've been trying to figure all of this out for so long." She smiled sweetly. "You are always welcome here," she said. "Good luck hunting for your drum log." Lance and Kaitlyn turned and headed back into the forest. Daylight was beginning to fade from the woods and they knew they would have to hurry or go home empty-handed. Flushed with a sense of pride and contentment, Lance turned to get one last glimpse of the clearing and the girl. Mist was beginning to rise from the tall grass that surrounded the ghost houses, ushering in another night of peaceful rest to all who resided there. Where the young girl had been standing, Lance now saw a very old Indian woman, dressed in buckskin, her silver hair pulled back into a long braid. She looked at him for a moment and then smiled a toothless smile. The mist rose further and she was gone. "C'mon, Lance, it's getting dark fast. Let's get back to the car while we can still see," Kaitlyn demanded, tugging on his hand. "What are you staring at?" "Nothing." He turned and followed his wife. They had taken too long at the cemetery and it seemed that their search would have to wait. As they crossed the last few paces of thick forest between them and the car, Kaitlyn tripped over something in the faint light and tumbled to the ground. "Oh, damn it!" she groaned, grasping her ankle. Lance scrambled over to her. "Are you all right?" "Yeah, just scraped my ankle a good one. I'm such a klutz. What in God's name did I trip over, anyway?" Lance searched the ground momentarily. Then he stood up grinning. "The perfect log," he said. -------- *Chapter 12* TOMMY jumped up from his seat in the airline gate waiting area and dashed over to where passengers were filing off of a newly arrived plane. "What did you bring us this time, Uncle Cedric?" he shouted. "Tommy!" Kaitlyn called after him. Cedric had just emerged from the jetway with a large bundle wrapped in brown paper slung over his shoulder. Tommy collided with him in a high speed hug. Melissa, now only a few paces behind, arrived adding her impact. "Cool shirt, Uncle Cedric!" Tommy exclaimed, looking up at Cedric as the children tried to hurry him along by pulling at his belt loops. Emblazoned with colorful concentric circles composed of myriad ocher, yellow, white and black dots, Cedric's snug-fitting tee shirt exposed gnarled, muscular arms. Stout cotton field pants and battered boots completed an image that seemed out of place in a large metropolitan airport. His furrowed tan face, fringed in a snow white beard, erupted into a huge smile. "Well, if it isn't me old mates! Strike me pink, kids, you've grown a bloody foot!" he exclaimed, trying to keep up with the children's insistent pulling. "Kids! Let Uncle Cedric walk!" Lance yelled, hurrying to aid him with his burden. "Good to see you again, Ced." "Always good to see you kids. Niecy, you're beautiful as ever," he said, embracing Kaitlyn. "That line never fails," she replied, hugging him back with all her might. It was how she always had hugged him, having grown up thinking that someone as tough as he was might otherwise not notice. "What's in the bundle, Uncle Cedric?" Tommy asked, pulling at Cedric's burdened arm as they strolled together to the baggage retrieval area. "Well," Cedric began, "it's sort of a sample of something I'm doing as a side business right now. Which is the other reason I'm in the States. Of course, that's a bloody lie, it's why I'm here at all." "But what _is_ it?" Tommy insisted. "Surprise." As they waited for Cedric's bags to make their journey around a baggage carrousel in the crowded terminal, Lance and Kaitlyn stifled their overpowering urge to question Cedric about his "business,". "Well, whatever it is you're up to, it's great to have you here," Lance offered, hoping to prime Cedric for an explanation. Cedric slapped Lance roughly on the back and laughed. "No worries, Lance. I'll tell it all to you lot soon enough. Was just hoping to get a bit o' the old lubrication flowing first, if you catch my drift." "Does Uncle Cedric want to get drunk, Mommie?" Melissa asked. "Melissa! No, not exactly..." Kaitlyn stammered. "Will he wait ‘til we get home?" Cedric doubled up with laughter, his mysterious bundle swinging off his shoulder and hitting the floor with a hollow, ringing _clunk_. The sound echoed through the cavernous terminal building, causing people to turn and stare. "If she's not the very mischief you were!" he crowed. They dragged Cedric's staggeringly heavy baggage through the airport parking lot to their car, which seemed to have moved itself farther from the building. "Boy, L.A.'s a bleedin' armpit compared to your lovely Twin Cities, here," Cedric commented. "Air's a little easier to breathe, eh?" Lance offered."Oh, it's rather a bit more than the air; some right wankers back there in L.A. Can't do business with ‘em. Real pushy kind of attitude." "In trouble already?" Kaitlyn teased. Cedric shook his head. "Ha! The stupid buggers didn't know what they were passing up. Too bloody worried about makin' the last damned cent off of a deal. Greedy bastards." "What deal?" Tommy asked. "Okay, let's get this monstrous burden into your wagon's boot and I'll entertain all your questions on the way back to your house." "Without lubrication?" Melissa asked. "I'm a patient man," he said. The sun became an enormous red ball, loitering low on the horizon when the last sprawl of Minneapolis dropped behind them and the freeway narrowed to four lanes. The evening promised to be a warm and intensely humid one; the air seemed charged with excitement. Lance and Kaitlyn loved summer nights like this. These were nights when they would stay outdoors late, unwilling to retreat inside until clouds of biting insects forced them in. To have Cedric here as well, with his exotic stories and outrageous manner, allowed them to forget other, more urgent things. "You getting hungry, Ced?" Lance asked as the drive wore on. "Contemplating a bit of a pit stop are we?" Cedric replied. "Well, I just know how travel can mess up your body's schedule. Besides, I'm dying here." "It's the only way to get him to stop once he's on the Interstate," Kaitlyn commented. "Yeah, he waits until I almost pee in my pants before looking for waysides," Melissa added. Cedric turned toward the children. "Well, I wager a bit of the old road tucker would make a right welcome change from kangaroo meat. Whatda you think?" "_Eeewww_!" Tommy and Melissa exclaimed in unison. Lance pulled off of the highway at the next small town which offered the usual array of fast food establishments. As they walked into a busy restaurant, Cedric stepped in front of all of them as they approached the service counter. "Let me take care of this mob," he said to Lance, who was preparing to make an order. A blonde, teenage girl came to the counter. "Can I help you," she monotoned through gum-chewing jaws. "Yeah, I was wondering if you good people might have any wombat back there in your cooler," Cedric replied, with a dead serious look on his face. Lance turned away from the girl, unable to control his laughter. "_Excuse_ me," she said, chewing more rapidly. "I said, do you have any wombat?" Her face started to redden. "Like, I don't know what you're _talking_ about, sir!" she said. "Oh all right, no worries then. How about some Aussie beef? Or is it all Texas?" he continued, unrelenting. "Cedric..." Kaitlyn interjected, jabbing him in the ribs. "Sir, would you like to look at the menu some more and let these other people behind you order?" she asked, tersely. She had stopped chewing her gum and held it clenched in her teeth. "Oh, fine, sorry to be a bother. America is such a strange country," Cedric offered apologetically as he stepped back from the counter. Lance stepped forward. "Can I help _you_ sir?" the girl asked, still red in the face. "I'd like a McRoo sandwich," he said in a bad Australian accent. His face contorted into an idiotic smirk. Cedric burst out in high-pitched, cackling laughter. Kaitlyn elbowed Lance aside. "I think I'd better take over here," she said, now thoroughly embarrassed. It was clear Cedric was in top form for this visit. After their meal, they drove on into gathering darkness. Cedric turned to look at Kaitlyn and the children, snuggled together in the back seat and sound asleep. "You have any idea how lucky you are, mate?" he asked, quietly. "How do you mean?" "Good God man, just look at your family here. I'll probably never know a feeling like this," he said, motioning toward the scene in the back seat. "Sounds like you've got quite a family of Aborigines to keep track of, on the sheep station, though." "Oh, yeah, they're a fine bunch all right, generally. The odd one gets all pissed up on occasion and can be virtually useless, but on the balance, they're good lads," Cedric reflected. "Never any kids or women on the station, then?" "Not in a bloody long time. One of the Abos had his little girl living with him there for a while, but some bastard social worker came ‘n got her one day. Living with her shrew of a mum in Sydney somewhere now. Poor bugger hasn't seen his own daughter now for three years." "That really sucks," Lance commented. "I'd lose my goddamn mind if that ever happened to me." "If I know my niece, that'll be right unlikely, Lance." "There's never been a woman, then, even among the tribal people you've been around so much?" "Oh, yeah, there's been a couple. But you really gotta watch your step with those boys. You go lettin' your old goanna run loose in the chicken yard and you're likely to end up with a bloody spear through it. They got their taboos, all right, and you never forget that. They still do the odd revenge killing. Their women can be a real sore point," Cedric explained. "I mean to marry!" "Oh sheeit! No, I've done that bloody dance already, but if I ever did marry a woman, she'd be an Abo for sure. No games, no bullshit. Krikey, I hope the kids are asleep, this is getting awfully mature up here." "So tell me about your business ventures," Lance said. "Nothing too spectacular, really," Cedric replied, "Just some imports some of my mates got together that I'm brokering over here." "Imports?" "Yeah. Cultural crafts, that sort of caper. Lot of you Yanks like to put stuff like that over your mantle pieces and tell lies about where you've been in the world." "You mean Aboriginal crafts? Do you have people making crafts for you to sell?" "Not exactly." "I don't understand," Lance persisted. "More like antiquities, actually," he replied. "But how do you deal with Aboriginal religious and cultural sovereignty? Don't they mind this?" "Well, mate," Cedric began after a lengthy pause, "I don't deal with criminals, if that's what you mean. My associates look for opportunities, they maintain contacts here and there, and I line up the buyers, relying heavily on my charm and instincts." "So you don't exactly know where your ‘merchandise' comes from," Lance offered. "I don't exactly ask." "What sort of antiquities do you deal in, then?" Lance was growing a little alarmed at the path the discussion was taking. "Bloody Yanks love the old dot paintings, spears, musical instruments..." "Musical instruments? Like what?" Cedric slapped Lance on the shoulder, causing him to swerve a little on the road. "That's all I'll tell you for now, you cagey old bugger!" Cedric laughed. "Take me to your lovely house and I'll show you what I mean." They pulled into their driveway at eleven o'clock, groggy from the long drive. Lance helped unload Cedric's luggage while Kaitlyn ushered the sleepy, bitterly complaining children off to their beds. Cedric piled his bags and the mysterious wrapped parcel into a corner of the living room, next to a newly built Na-inga style drum. "Smashing drum, Lance, who'd you get it off of?" Cedric asked. "Nobody. Kaitlyn and I built it." "You're kidding! Bloody good job; it looks like it was stolen out of a museum or something. Good on ya." "Not something you'd ever consider..." Lance said, grinning. "Never mate. Gonna put the billy on. Who wants tea?" he asked as he headed for the kitchen. "Count me in," Kaitlyn shouted from upstairs, as she as finished tucking Melissa in for the night. "I'll pass," Lance said, eyeing the long package leaning up against a wall. "Don't want to have to step over all your luggage to get to the bathroom several times tonight." When the tea was drunk and the customary catching up on family and relatives complete, Cedric sat up in his chair, looking at his watch. "Bloody hell, it's half-past one. Well, kids, you lot too tired for your little surprise? I sure feel like something you'd find in between a wallaby's toes after this bloody long day. How's tomorrow sound?" "Not on your life," said Kaitlyn. "How about you, Lance? Too tired for goodies?" "Not on your bloody life either," Lance replied, rubbing his eyes and stretching. Cedric stood and walked over to the long package. "Enough tawdry theatrics, then," he said. "I'll show you lot a little sample of what I'm on about these days." He took the four-foot long package and laid it down on the living room floor. "Well, one of you come on and open it then," he said, grinning broadly and motioning with his hand. "Oh, I _suppose_," Lance said as he leapt up like a child heading for the Christmas tree. "What, Cedric, no card?" he joked as he began tearing open the wrapping. "Don't push your luck, mate," Cedric replied. "It ain't bloody Christmas and there's no stuffed damned koala in there. It's better than that." The paper came away to reveal a stout, tapered wooden tube. Lance instantly recognized it as an ancient Aboriginal wind instrument known as a _yidaki_, or, in colonial European parlance, _didgeridoo_. He remembered seeing fuzzy old black and white photographs of Australian Aboriginal ceremonies in anthropological texts, showing men sitting cross-legged in the dirt, playing instruments like this. It was actually a massive tree branch that had been slowly hollowed out by termites. One end was just wide enough for the player to fit his lips into, while the other was several times wider, allowing for amplification of sounds. For over forty thousand years, Aborigines had been crafting musical instruments out of these found objects. They would first cut them to a desired length for a particular tonal quality and then often elaborately decorate them for ceremonial use. This one was exceptionally beautiful. The hard, dense wood was an odd salmon color. Wide bands of ocher dots encircled the instrument at both of its ends. Between these, numerous animal and human figures were painted, all in the characteristic simple, slightly geometric style of Aboriginal art. "It's solid bloodwood, the best you can get," Cedric commented, proudly. Lance picked the yidaki up, slowly rolling it over to look at the decorations along its length. There were depictions of human figures, lizards, kangaroos, various birds, insects and other beings. "These are tribal totems of some type?" he asked. "Yeah," Cedric replied. "Something to do with the shapeshifting creature they call _Womabirri_. It's an awful lot of complication, how those chaps keep all of the old stories straight, what without much written history or the like." "Shapeshifting?" Kaitlyn asked. "Right. I don't pretend to know much about it, but some of the lads at the station would talk about stuff like this from time to time. This character was particularly nasty." "Why?" Lance asked, still cradling the wooden tube in his hands, fascinated by its mass and intricate decorations. "The story goes that he causes a lot of mischief for people. He starts out helping them, but they always lose track of right and wrong when they get a sampling of his powers. He can turn into anything: goanna, ‘roo, fly, even a bloody koala if he takes a mind to it." "Is that why you didn't bother bringing me one this time?" Kaitlyn asked, grinning. "Krikey, Niecy, have I gotten so predictable?" "We like to refer to it as ‘consistent'." Lance lifted the yidaki so that its mouthpiece end was close to his face. He peered down the rough bore of the wooden tube. "I can't believe the sounds they get out of these things. There's nothing in here!" "Abos start when they're wee kids, get bloody proficient by the time they are initiated as teenagers," Cedric said. "Couple of the blokes on the station can play up a real storm. Even imitate every imaginable critter of the bush to boot." Lance offered the instrument to Cedric. "Well?" he said, hopefully. "Ohh, bloody hell, no! I'm too old and have too many bad habits for that kind of lung power! You lot are gonna have to learn the ropes on your own," Cedric exclaimed. "But I haven't the foggiest..." Lance replied, looking back down the bore of the yidaki. "Listen mate, just try it, okay? Put the bloody thing up to your mouth and see what happens." Lance obeyed, and then raised his eyes up to Cedric in a questioning way, shrugging his shoulders. "Now blow through your lips, first gently and then slowly increase the pressure until something happens," Cedric directed. Lance took a deep breath and pushed it out through his lips. No sound issued from the end of the tube except for a hollow sound of exhalation. "No good," he said, taking the yidaki away from his mouth. "Oh, come on, don't be a sissy now, Lance," Cedric taunted. "Take a deeper breath and try again." This time Lance held on to his air longer, and began to feel a point during his exhalation when his lips began to vibrate on their own. He pushed a little harder and a sudden, sonorous drone filled the room. He had heard that sound before. It had been featured in numerous public television documentary programs about Australia. He had also heard it over the opening credits of _Crocodile Dundee_, recently rented from a local video store. They had gotten to missing Cedric, and couldn't think of anything else to do about it. "Good on ya, Lance!" Cedric howled. "You're a bloody natural! Keep on with it." Lance drew another deep breath, feeling slightly light-headed from his first efforts. "I'm going to regret this," he muttered. This time, he sustained a prolonged, buzzing howl from the instrument. He could feel how the tiniest changes in his lip and tongue positions could cause dramatic and eerie changes in the sound. It excited him in a deep, indescribable way. "I could get used to this," he said, taking the yidaki away from his mouth to admire its decorations again. The inside of the tube had become moist from his breath, and the wood gave off an intriguing tart, smoky smell. He offered it to Kaitlyn. "Let's see what you can do." She took it out of Lance's hands. "Jeez, this thing is really heavy," she commented. Holding it to her mouth, she drew a mighty breath and blew. A tortured squeak emerged from the other end of the instrument, bringing gales of laughter from the men. "A little practice, then, Niecy?" Cedric chuckled."At least I can get _something_ out of it," she fired back at Cedric, slapping him on the shoulder. "So tell us how you got this," she said. Cedric leaned back into the sofa and let loose a great yawn. "I'm about done in," he said, rubbing his eyes. "You lot can continue interrogating me in the morning." Kaitlyn stood up. "Well, come on and let me show you where your towels and stuff are," she said, ushering him out of the living room. "Are you sure you still want to sleep on Lance's study floor?" "No worries, Niecy, it's what I'm used to here. Go getting posh on me and I'll be seriously disoriented. Good night, Lance." Lance was still admiring the yidaki. He noticed a small human looking figure within the parade of bizarre figures adorning the instrument. It was a squat individual, somewhat overzealously portrayed as a male, that held a spear in a threatening manner. Not a character to bring to proper social gatherings, Lance mused. "Goodnight, Ced," he muttered, not looking up. After seeing to Cedric, Kaitlyn returned to Lance, who hadn't moved. "It'll be here tomorrow," she said, taking Lance's hand and putting it on the inside of her thigh. "Come to bed." "Go do all your usual stuff and I'll be in shortly," Lance promised. Kaitlyn slid his hand further up her thigh until it could go no further, smiled at him and headed for bed. Lance waited until she had left the room and brought the instrument to his mouth again. The pungent, almost intoxicating smell was still there; the smell he could imagine as coming straight from the wild heart of Australia. Taking a deep breath, he blew down the yidaki, and the sound came easier than before. Lance found that he could make the instrument boom like a distant thunderstorm, buzz like cicadas, and carry the melody of wind through high rocky places, seemingly all at once. It wasn't music he was playing, it was more like the visceral sounds of the earth itself. Warmed with satisfaction from his seemingly instant rapport with the instrument, he gave in to the fatigue hours of driving and visiting had brought. Kaitlyn would be waiting for him, perhaps no longer awake, but always welcoming. Since his adventure on the reservation and the shared experience of building the drum, the tension between them had seemed to melt away, and they seemed to be in rhythm again. More and more Lance thought of her like the girl he had fallen for so long ago, before careers and other people's needs had dulled their lives. For the moment, at least, little seemed wrong in his life. Gently, Lance laid the yidaki across the head of his new drum and stepped back to admire the two ancient-looking instruments. "Practically an entire band right there," he said to himself. Then he stumbled off to bed. A jarring crash brought Lance to a sitting position in bed, his heart pounding. The glowing red display on his alarm clock showed two fifty-seven A.M. Kaitlyn was sound asleep. Sliding out of bed, Lance crept out to the living room, where he thought the crash had originated, fearing Cedric had blundered about and hurt himself in the dark. Flipping on the lights, he found himself alone in the room. Determined snoring from his study assured him that Cedric had not been up. Looking around the room, Lance noticed that the drum's appearance had changed. The yidaki was no longer lying across its top, and the skin was sagging, as though it had been tremendously stretched. He walked slowly around the room and suddenly stopped, staring in amazement. On the opposite side of the room from the drum, the yidaki lay on the floor amid a pile of thick glass fragments...all that remained of Kaitlyn's favorite table lamp. -------- *Chapter 13* THE NATURE of Adam Mununggurr's dreaming had changed, though it was not evident to the specialists and nurses that hovered over him. To them, his electronic signature of gently undulating neon green lines crossing the monitor screen near his bed showed unchanged, near death levels of brain activity. Inside his subconscious, however, it was different from before. The Womabirri had stopped tormenting him, leaving him alone in his dreaming reverie under the mulga tree. But Adam's other dreams had become more disturbing, more displaced in their feeling. He was witness to much travel and, of late, a strange household and family. He looked on it through the eyes of an uninvited guest, one who seemed bent on precipitating conflict. There had been an uncomfortable feeling of drawing too close to someone that had no desire for him to be there. Then there was a sudden spasm of rejection, a feeling of being violently cast away by someone furiously intolerant of his presence. He didn't want it to happen again, but he knew that he was being drawn into deeper involvement with this same being, deliberately provoking more conflict, insatiably curious about the limits of the other's powers and tolerance. All that Adam could do was to try to hang onto his sanity and continue to watch the story evolve, experiencing all of it, but unable to manipulate any of it. * * * * "WE'VE MANAGED to locate some friends of his, based on the documents found on his person at the time of the accident," commented the taciturn head nurse to a group of social workers and a police investigator who were making the rounds with her. There were always a few patients on the ward who presented a challenge when it came to locating friends or next of kin. Quite often, they were unemployed or homeless Aborigines stumbled onto by passers by on back streets. In Adam's case, they were lucky in having been able to trace him back to his employer from a check stub found in his otherwise empty wallet. "He was a loading dock flunky," she concluded. "Someone may come in at some point to further identify him. We still don't have anyone who will claim the remains if there is any change for the worse. I need you people to help me on this one." An obese, sweating police lieutenant laughed. "Too right, luv. Wouldn't be the first coon to go out the back door for a no frills send off, now would it?" The head nurse turned to face the man, who seemed to shrink back from her. "Just give me some kind of effort, if you're capable," she replied icily. * * * * THE YIDAKI still lay on the living room floor, undisturbed. Darkness enveloped the room except for pale moonlight streaming through a window, partially illuminated the scene. Near the mouthpiece end of the yidaki, a moth now perched. It was strangely marked, obvious even in the pallid moonlight. Its wing patterns were like none other, oddly geometric and consisting of many small dots. It pumped its wings rhythmically, pushing blood into their farthest extremities, eager to undertake flight. Its antennae trembled as they nervously scanned the air for a particular scent. There were tantalizing traces of it all over the room, but he had to find where it was most concentrated. It was here he must fly, to find its source or die in the attempt. After several minutes of pumping up its wings, the moth lifted away from the moonlit bloodwood shaft on which he had come into being and plunged into the thick darkness of the room. He circled randomly at first, still not able to distinguish any increase in the intoxicating scent. Then, little by little, perhaps molecule by molecule, the scent began to concentrate and guide him in a gradually less meandering path. Suddenly, he came up against a wall and fluttered frantically, driven by an ever strengthening scent but frustrated by a solid barrier. As he struggled along in the dark, he worked himself nearly to exhaustion, unable to move forward but slowly moving sideways, toward an invisible open doorway where the scent was stronger yet. Then he was flying free again, sailing through the dark opening, unerringly straight to the source. The moth circled above a bed where a man and woman lay. It was an uncommonly sultry night, and she lay naked on top of the sheets, tiny beads of sweat beginning to sparkle like dew on her skin. A man lay close by her, but not in contact with her. He faced away from the woman and appeared to be in a very deep sleep; the perfect moment had come. The moth circled a few more times, searching for any sign of movement, but the only things in the room that moved were sheer curtains, swaying gently across an open window, little more than moonlight itself brushing past them. He settled near the foot of the bed, close to the woman. Her body, which appeared a pale silver in the waning moonlight, loomed like a beckoning landscape, waiting to be explored. Though the moth feared being close to so large a creature, the scent was in full control of him. He had no choice but to begin a long walk over the surface of her, to learn all that he could about her. Hauling himself up onto the top of her foot, he gingerly scuttled across her ankle and began a carefully balanced walk up her slender shin. The smooth skin beneath his tiny, hooked feet was warm, pulsing with life. It seemed to tremble as he advanced further up her leg, occasionally twitching, as if in response to a tickling irritation. He knew that he must proceed slowly, or his presence would be disastrously betrayed. Above her knee, the walking became much easier, the pathway wider and the skin even smoother. The moth felt a new sense of urgency; the woman was becoming aware of him, moving lightly, and sometimes making soft, sighing sounds. He continued his journey, encouraged by her response to his explorations. As her movements increased, he was forced to flutter his wings to maintain his balance. When he did this, she would react even more, forcing him to beat his wings still harder to remain on her body. The farther he traveled, the greater was the danger, for her movements became increasingly strident with every inch he advanced. Finally it became nearly impossible to remain in place, as her breathing came more and more rapidly and she moaned loudly in her tormented sleep. His frantic flutterings began to leave a fine yellow powder of wing dust on her thighs, as the tiny wing tips caressed her skin in a blur of motion. Then the moth ceased his wanderings, in a place that she approved of most. * * * * IN LANCE'S fitful sleep, he began to see Kaitlyn, lying on their bed, deeply engaged with something that she held close to her body. It was a long, slender object she pressed tightly against her chest and abdomen, enveloping the end of it between her thighs. The object was the yidaki, but it was also _Lance's_ slender, intricately decorated hollow body that she writhed against in a hungry embrace. And as she continued to toil against his unyielding wooden body, gleaming silver moths clamored out of the upper end of the yidaki and marched in a fluttering procession down its length, disappearing between Kaitlyn's legs. Lance savored the long dream, content to watch himself being the embodiment of her wildest pleasure. -------- *Chapter 14* LANCE AND Kaitlyn woke to find themselves a tangled mass of arms and legs, facing opposite directions on the bed. Kaitlyn's hair was in wild, sweaty disarray. The sheets lay strewn about the floor in a knotted mass. Exhausted and shaking, they sat up on opposite sides of the bed, staring into the middle distance. "What the hell happened last night?" Lance finally managed to mutter. "I guess you must've had your way with me again, but I can't for the life of me actually remember it," Kaitlyn replied, rubbing her face in her hands. "Now that's a good one for the old ego." Kaitlyn flipped her hair back, out of her eyes. "No, I mean I certainly remember how it _felt_, but all I recall are some pretty strange dreams. It must be catching." "Mine weren't exactly normal, even for me." "Tell me yours first," she said, turning to face Lance. Lance stared at Kaitlyn' body for a moment. Her naked form and disheveled hair made him hunger for her, in spite of his weakened state. "All I can say is that I dreamed I was something of an ‘implement' in what was obviously going on in your dream. Maybe we never really laid a hand on each other." "In that case, you'd better never lay a hand on me again," she said, smiling weakly and rolling over onto her belly to search for her clothes on the floor. "God, I hope we didn't keep Cedric up." Lance suddenly remembered the unexplained carnage in the living room. "I'm going to the john; I'll check on the old boy," he said, hastily pulling on his pants. "Don't you want to hear about my dream?" "Wait ‘til we have some time to reenact the whole thing, detail by detail," he replied, in a lecherous tone. Peering around the hallway corner into the living room, Lance stared in slack-jawed disbelief. The lamp was intact, standing where it always had on an end table near the sofa. The yidaki stood up against the wall near the drum, but not touching it. Lance walked over to where he remembered the broken glass to be and found a clean floor, and no hint of disturbance. _I know I didn't dream this one_, he thought. "Fan-bloody-tastic morning, isn't it, Lance?" Lance looked up to see Cedric, dressed and ready to take on the day. "You and the Niecy up to a bit of Aussie style tea this morning? I've got the billy on already." "Oh...sure, yeah. Cedric, did you sleep okay?" Lance asked, still eyeing the yidaki leaning against the wall. "Marvelously. How about you lot? You look a tad hung over; you didn't get into the booze after I went to bed, did you? Shame on you kids." "No, we...it must have just been too hot or something. Damned steamy one last night." Kaitlyn appeared wearing a robe. "Good morning, Cedric. I think I'm going to jump into the shower before breakfast," she announced. "Good morning, Niecy, I'll have a good strong cup waiting for you when you're dried off." Kaitlyn squeezed Cedric's hand and smiled. "We could stand to have you around more," she said, then turned and headed for the bathroom. After starting the water running in the shower, Kaitlyn pulled off her robe and hung it on a hook beside a full-length mirror fastened to the back of the bathroom door. As she stepped back from the door, she caught a glimpse of herself. Though fog from the shower slowly encroached on the edges of the mirror, she could plainly see a film of yellow dust covering her, reaching from her upper thighs to her lower abdomen. She ran a finger over the inside of one of her thighs, clearing a path in the fine dust. Examining her fingertip, she saw the powder change to a bluish color and then vanish. Suddenly, she could recall her dream in perfect detail, and, in spite of the building heat in the bathroom, felt iciness running down her back. She quickly stepped under the shower and furiously scrubbed away the yellow powder. "So where _did_ that yidaki come from, Ced?" Lance asked casually as he slowly stirred his cup of coffee. "You shoulda had my tea, Lance, you don't know what you're missing," Cedric replied nonchalantly. "I don't trust other people's tea anymore. So where do you think the instrument originated?" Cedric finished fixing his cup of tea, which had more the consistency and color of coffee, shuffled over to the kitchen table and sat down across from Lance. "Okay, mate, here's what I know about the particular didgeridaki in question," he began. "Came by it a few months back when one of my ‘associates' in Sydney got an old debt paid off. He didn't tell me who he got it off of, but he did say it was a blackfella. Even I could tell this was no piece of tourist crap here, so I pressed him about the circumstances. He assured me it was a fair compensation, that it was all the bloke had for tender, so he acquired it off him. Christ, Lance, if I got the history of every piece that I handle, I'd be a bloody museum curator, not a businessman." Lance frowned into his coffee. "But, what if this was some really sacred object, maybe hundreds, thousands of years old. It really looks old to me." "Too right it's old, probably worth a few bucks. I didn't mean to cause you such distress, mate. Would you lot be happier if I take it back with me?" Cedric replied, trying to look hurt. Lance smiled. "Truth be known, Ced, I'm pretty attached to the damn thing already. I just didn't want to be party to the loss of some important Aboriginal clan heirloom or something." Kaitlyn slipped into the room, still in her robe. She had a look of concern on her face. "What's up, honey?" Lance asked, looking up at her. "Oh, I guess I'm a little under the weather for some reason, must have been that road food last night. Didn't sleep too well," she said, avoiding Cedric's eyes, but trying to get Lance's attention. Lance and Cedric continued their chatter, until finally Kaitlyn could stand waiting no longer. "Lance, can you come check something with the bathroom plumbing?" she asked, trying to hold back the fear in her voice. "Something plugged?" he asked, looking up again."Yeah, sort of...here, come on, I'll show you." Cedric laughed. "You Yanks and your fancy fixtures," he said. Kaitlyn took Lance by the hand as soon as they were out of Cedric's view and towed him quickly into the bathroom. "What's going on?" Lance asked, suddenly aware of the concern etched in Kaitlyn's face. "Something's going on. Something really weird happened to me last night," she whispered. "What do you mean?" Kaitlyn opened her robe and passed her hand over her abdomen and thighs. Her skin was still pink from her scrubbing. "I was covered all over here with something this morning. I just washed it off in the shower. It's like something...was crawling all over me last night, and it left this...powder." "You mean some kind of insect or what?" "I'm not sure," she replied tremulously. "I had this dream about a moth or something like that; it left some kind of dust on me. What the hell is going on?" Lance looked incredulous. "What exactly was a moth doing on your body, anyway?" "It's pretty hard to explain in literal terms. It was some kind of symbolic sexual thing, I don't know. Right now I feel like I've been _used_ somehow. I think you can figure it out," she said, her tone turning suddenly bitter. "You know how we both felt and looked when we woke up. This has to have something to do with all of this business you're involved with. Now it's in _my_ head too!" Lance frowned and rubbed his forehead for a moment. "Why are _you_ involved now?" he mused, more to himself than to his wife. He didn't even want to broach the subject of the mysteriously broken, and now unbroken, lamp. "Suppose it's got something to do with Cedric's visit?" Kaitlyn asked, with more dread creeping into her voice. "Oh, I don't know why that would..." Lance suddenly remembered something. He sat down on the edge of the bathtub to gather his thoughts, and then looked up at Kaitlyn. "You know, my dreams were all to do with that damned yidaki he brought. There were moths in my dream, too, like the one painted in the design. It was a very erotic..." "Daddy, are you still in the bathroom? I've really gotta pee." Melissa's urgent voice cut through the tension in the small room. "Be out in a minute, honey," Lance yelled through the door. He looked back at Kaitlyn. "Let's try to act normal, okay? We'll figure this out later, I hope. We've got kids, two birthday parties and Cedric to deal with for now." Kaitlyn nodded in agreement, but her face was clouded with doubt. "Are we gonna be late for Bobby's birthday party, Dad?" Tommy asked as Lance and Kaitlyn came back into the dining room. He was sitting in front of a large mixing bowl full of cereal that Cedric had prepared for him. "Relax, Tommy," Lance replied. "We've got plenty of time before we drop off your sister and head over there. Now see if you can actually eat all of that cereal before it dissolves. Jeez, Ced, you think you gave him enough?" "No worries, mate," Tommy replied before Cedric could say anything, sounding almost Australian. "Bobby wants Cedric to come. He's never seen a real Aussie before." "Neither have my friends!" Melissa shouted from the bathroom. "I'm death to parties," Cedric assured him, not relishing the idea of being the centerpiece curiosity for a gathering of ten year old boys. "Oh, _please_, Uncle Cedric?" Tommy whined. "Just a quick ‘hello', then, nothing else," he said. "No bush stories or the like, okay?" "You're the best!" Tommy exclaimed, turning back to the soggy mass in his mixing bowl. * * * * TO A SMALL tick crawling around the floor under the dining table, all of the human conversation seemed like the muffled rumblings and howls of gigantic beasts. It felt sounds much more than heard them, and had little reason to be concerned with them. What mattered far more was the smell and feel of warm-blooded creatures, easily located using its array of chemical receptors and keen sense of temperature. With these senses, it barely needed to see or hear. The blood that it craved could always be found where the scent and heat were right. As it crawled busily about the slippery floor, it came upon a monolith of white canvas and rubber. It scaled the wall of the monolith, homing in a strong scent of animal flesh. As it climbed, it reached a place where the canvas stopped, and a thick web of cotton took its place. Here the heat was greater and the scent stronger. Still higher it climbed, until the cotton web at last ceased, and only bare human skin remained. _This_ was the place. The tick scuttled onto the vertical plane of tender skin and reversed its direction, pushing itself under the thick cotton web. As it crawled downward, the annoying light of the room softened and faded. It was even warmer here, and it had found a spot where the blood coursing under the skin was particularly close to the surface. Here the tick paused, and began the slow process of making an incision with its tiny mouthparts. Its anticoagulant saliva began to flow. * * * * TOMMY scratched absent-mindedly at his ankle as he finished his orange juice. Then he bounded upstairs to his room to find his baseball mitt. Lance stood at the front door, waiting for his son. "Let's go, Tommy, you don't want to be late!" he shouted. Tommy scurried downstairs and pushed past his father into the yard, climbing into the waiting car with the rest of the family. As Lance reached back into the room to close the front door, he felt an icy chill fill his stomach. Kaitlyn's lamp was gone again. -------- *Chapter 15* LANCE DROVE through the quiet suburban neighborhood to Tommy's friend's house with his heart in his mouth. 'He could only guess how much danger they might all be in at this very moment. He knew he must focus on keeping Cedric, who would not be leaving for another day, from picking up on Lance and Kaitlyn's tension. In the back of the car, Cedric was being kept busy entertaining the children. "And now the ol' black possum is going to tickle his next victim," he announced, quickly thrusting his hand under Melissa's chin. The little girl collapsed with laughter, while Tommy pounded merrily on Cedric's back. "It's the Dingo Spirit, come to eat the possum!" he yelled. "Krikey, I'll be glad to drop you rowdy lot off," Cedric said, trying to duck Tommy's playful flailing. Before leaving Tommy at his friend's house, Lance and Kaitlyn chatted briefly with Bobby's parents. Cedric put in a hasty performance for a half dozen boys with his standard boat-eating crocodile story. They had become wide-eyed with admiration, and as he left, turned to shower their remaining adulation on Tommy. Then Melissa was delivered to her friend's house, with more parental small talk and a repeat performance by Cedric, this time for a group of little girls. "Pretty good, Ced," Lance commented as they pulled out of the yard to finally return home. "You really ought to give parenting a try some day." "Gotta bloody settle down and mature a bit yet first," he replied, grinning through his snow-white beard. "Now, what's eating you kids?" "What do you mean?" Lance asked innocently, but he knew it wouldn't wash with Cedric. "You lot have been on edge since you got up. Anything I can help with?" Cedric replied. Lance knew there was little point trying to hide anything else from him. "Ever give much consideration to supernatural matters?" he asked, looking up at Cedric in the rear-view mirror. "You mean like ghosts and _Willi-willis_ and the like?" he asked, chuckling a little. "Yeah, spirits, mythical characters, that sort of thing." Cedric shook his head. "My bloody life's odd enough on its own. I don't require spooks to further muddy my collective waters. Some of the blackfellas back at the station believe in that stuff, though. That's the only reason I have much of a grasp on any of that kind of caper. You lot worshipping crystals or something?" Lance laughed. "No, I...both of us, have had some pretty strange experiences lately, mostly associated with dreams. It seems to have something to do with the fact that I found out recently that I am part Na-inga Indian," he said. "Nooo sheeit!" Cedric exclaimed. "How did you manage that?" "Let's just say that my dear father likes to wait patiently for the right dramatic moment to share old family secrets," Lance replied, bitterly. Cedric sat forward on the edge of the back seat, leaning close between Lance and Kaitlyn. "Tell me more," he said, eagerly. By the time they arrived back at the house, Cedric had been given a greatly simplified synopsis of the past few months' upheavals. But Lance and Kaitlyn didn't share their growing suspicion that Cedric had somehow played an unwitting part in all of the strangeness. "And I thought _I_ was supposed to be the only colorful one here," Cedric remarked, as they walked through the front door of the house. As Lance passed the place where the lamp used to sit in the living room, he eyed the area uneasily. "I wouldn't mind going back to that arrangement," he muttered. * * * * THE TICK HAD grown sated with its blood meal; its body had become grotesquely swollen, now several times its original size. Releasing its grip on the site it had nursed blood from for the last several hours, it struggled upwards and out from under cover into hot sunlight. Movement was difficult; it had grown so bloated that its tiny legs were barely long enough to drag its body forward. The host was walking in a grassy area, and the tick instinctively knew that a place to shelter and recover from its gorging must be nearby. It waited for the right moment, then released its feeble grip and tumbled into the grass. It dragged its impossibly stretched, grape-sized body toward the welcoming shade of some shrubbery. * * * * THE BOYS had just finished picking sides for a backyard baseball game. Tommy and two of his friends would be first at bat, while the birthday boy, Bobby, and the rest of them would be playing defense. After several minutes of arguments about who would pitch, Bobby settled matters by announcing that he owned the softball they were using, as well as the bat, so he was going to pitch. Then all that remained was for the two other boys, Eric and Josh, to settle on which base they were going to play. Since they would be a man short, third base would go unguarded. As Tommy stepped up to bat first, he acknowledged a barrage of insults from his friends and then confidently motioned the trajectory of his upcoming home run. As the first pitch flew past, he swung, cleanly missing the ball. "Where's the next one goin', Babe?" the boy taunted. The second pitch was met soundly with Tommy's bat and the ball soared away toward a neighbor's yard. Eric took off in hot pursuit of the ball as the rest of the boys screamed at him to hurry. The ball dropped and rolled up against a picket fence that delineated the suburban yard. When Eric arrived, panting from his run, he stopped dead in his tracks a few feet from the fence. Standing just the other side of the low fence, partly obscured by shrubbery, was a tiny man, no more than three feet tall. He had wild, curly black hair and dark, shiny skin. He wore an animal skin loincloth and held a tiny spear in one hand. The boy shrunk back from him as he flashed a toothy grin and hissed: "Need somebody to play third, little _balanda_?" The boy scooped up the ball and ran pell-mell back to where the others were waiting. "Isn't lettin' ‘em have a home run bad enough?" Bobby scolded. "Do you have to make everybody wait forever besides?" Eric was white-faced. "There...there's a...a midget with a spear!" he gasped, now seriously out of breath. "What?!" the boys replied in unison. "Back by the fence...a black midget, honest!" "Sure, and I bet he was riding a little black camel," Bobby added. Eric felt a little braver now. "C'mon, and I'll show you!" he yelled as he turned and headed back toward the fence. He stopped when he realized that no one was following him. "What's the problem, you wimps?" he yelled. Tommy ran up to Eric. "Okay, show me," he challenged. With two boys going, the rest knew they must go as well, so all of them stalked their way back to the edge of the yard. As they crept up to the place, nothing could be seen but the shrubs of an adjacent yard. A peculiar tangy, smoky smell hung in the air. "Real funny, butthead," Bobby remarked. "Now, can we play some more ball, or what?" Fierce, high-pitched barking broke out from the yard on the other side of the fence. As the boys watched, the neighbor's toy poodle, carefully appointed with ribbons in its fur and pink toenail polish, scampered out of the shrubbery, hot on the scent of something. It zeroed in on one shrub in particular and began carrying on in an hysterical, strangled parody of a bark. The shrub moved slightly, causing the dog to lunge into the foliage, growling as best it could. To the boys, it made an odd and comical sight; a tiny white ball of predatory fury, not at all behaving like an animal forced to wear nail polish would be expected to. "I can see where you could mistake that for a black midget with a spear," Bobby sneered. At that moment, the little man sprang from the bush that the poodle was attacking. He circled quickly to the side of the animal and loosed his spear before the poodle could react. The poodle collapsed into a trembling mass at the foot of the shrub. The little figure trotted over to the carcass and withdrew the spear, smearing its bloody tip against his cheek. "Could do with a bit of bush tucker. There's plenty ‘ere; care to share?" he said in a raspy little voice, looking up at the astonished boys. "It's no bother, really," he added, grinning again The boys let out a collective scream and fled for the house, nearly climbing over each other in the process. * * * * "LANCE, WHAT happened to the table lamp?" Kaitlyn asked in dismay as she stood in the back doorway, arms tightly folded in front of her. Lance was returning from proudly showing off his garage workshop, where he had recently made some new additions to his woodworking tool collection. "Oh, I was meaning to tell you...I blundered into it last night, when I got up to check on a noise. Really stupid of me," Lance replied, hoping his lie would satisfy Kaitlyn until later. "What happened to the pieces?" "They're all packed away in the garbage already; didn't want the kids getting cut." She rolled her eyes in disgust. "All the tacky furniture we own and you have to wipe out that classic piece," she said in a low voice. She shook her head, spun on her heel and left the doorway. "You're in deep shit, mate," Cedric offered. Lance shrugged. "Moments like this are why we carry credit cards, I guess." Cedric put his hand on Lance's shoulder. "No worries. When the Niecy and I go shopping before we pick up the kids, I'll do a little looking around. Then I'll report back at a discreet moment if I locate a worthy peace offering to save your sorry arse. I'll even chip in on it." "Oh, you really don't have to do that; she'll get over it, in a few months." "I rest my case, mate." Lance felt relieved when Kaityln and Cedric drove off for town a few hours later. She had barely spoken to him since he had fabricated the explanation about the lamp, and he could sense Cedric's embarrassment over the matter. He sat down next to the drum, which had gone unplayed since it had been finished, and began to attempt sorting out the accumulating mysteries in his life. Joseph had said that the drum would help answer Lance's questions; at the time Lance had heard this, he simply accepted it as truth. But now, staring at the silent drum, he couldn't imagine how this inanimate object could be of any use at all. Time crept by in the silent house. Lost in thought, Lance absent-mindedly picked up the beater that lay nearby and softly struck the drum skin. It responded with a deep, diaphragm shaking boom. Lance suddenly realized that the skin was no longer distended, as it had been early that morning. The top of the drum was now so exquisitely tight that the beater, when dropped from a slight height, would walk across the skin, bouncing and vibrating until all of the energy of motion was exhausted. The sound was pleasing and somehow calming to Lance. He began softly beating the drum in random rhythms, then settled on one that matched his own heartbeat. A very old, familiar song came to his lips, and he freely sang the chant that he had shared with Joseph in the steaming womb of the sweat lodge. Lance still didn't understand what the words meant, but he felt a growing sense of peace and belonging. It washed away the disturbing, displaced feelings that had hung over him since the events of the past night. The drum was smaller and lacked the floor shaking power of the one he'd heard at the powwow, but only one drummer was playing it, not eight. Lance imagined his own drum being the respected object at the center of the drumming circle, and its voice barking and rumbling around the walls of the Na-inga school gym, or outside at a _real_ tribal ceremony, with his people's feet touching Mother Earth.... As he played the drum and continued to sing the chant, his mind began to drift. The yidaki seemed to be beckoning, as it leaned against the nearby wall. With his eyes, Lance followed the strange procession of creatures painted on its side, marching in a lazy spiral from one end of the instrument to the other. The figures suddenly made more sense to Lance as he noticed the sequence of them along the spiral. The first figure was the Womabirri with his spear, then came a butterfly-like creature, a beetle-like creature, then the Womabirri again, brandishing his weapon as if poised to make a kill on a bush hunt. The last two figures that were visible before the spiral disappeared around the side of the yidaki were of a large-billed bird and then a lizard, protruding a long, forked tongue. Lance's song faltered as he began having trouble recalling the words of the chant. His drumming rhythm became uneven and he felt himself becoming bored with the drum. The yidaki was much more interesting and beautiful; he wondered why he had been wasting his time alone pounding mindlessly on such an unattractive instrument. Scrambling to his feet, Lance tossed the drum beater aside and picked up the yidaki. He admired it for a moment and then went outside to sit on the back steps to play it in the afternoon sun. Putting it to his lips, he found it easier than ever to play, and subtly different; the curious smell that had so captivated him before was gone. But its sounds were more exciting to him than before, and the more he played and experimented, the more prolonged and haunting were the results. To his delight, he found that he was able to produce a continuous sound, uninterrupted by breathing intervals. By conserving air in his mouth and squeezing it out with his cheeks like a bellows, he could keep the instrument pressurized while he quickly drew in a new breath through his nose, as truly proficient wind instrument players did. Now the yidaki sounded like the best Aboriginal playing he had ever heard, and it was _his_ playing. An hour passed, with Lance playing with greater and greater fervor. He began to feel as though the yidaki were actually playing _him_. Sweat began to stain his clothes as the rapid breathing and exertion kept him in a state just short of blacking out. He found it to be a pleasant intoxication, playing this ancient hollow branch. It was tuned to him, responding to his rapidly shifting emotional tones better than any lover he had known. As he continued his frenzied playing, he noticed a persistent buzzing around his ears that was not coming from the instrument. Stopping his playing for a moment, Lance noticed several hornets flying uncomfortably close to him, circling erratically and darting close to his face. He moved a few feet away and resumed playing. The hornets returned, this time centering their attention on the wide end of Lance's yidaki. At first they circled close, then began landing on the outside of the instrument. Lance found their antics amusing and decided to continue playing, in spite of the hornets' nearness. One by one, the hornets became more secure on the surface of the yidaki and worked their way to its edge and into the open end of the instrument. Lance played on, astonished that they could withstand the steady barrage of sound, vibration and hot breath coming down the tube at them. Then he heard louder buzzing and noticed a tickling sensation on his lips. He pulled the yidaki away from his mouth to find the hornets perching just inside the mouthpiece, their antennae waving furiously. Lance instinctively swung the instrument away from his face, hoping to dislodge the insects. As the yidaki swung out in a wide arc, the hornets took flight and vanished. "Bastards," he muttered and resumed playing his plaintive song. The hornets soon gathered again at the base of the instrument, and climbed its length, only to be angrily ejected by the player. But when Lance resumed his playing, he felt a searing needle plunge into his lips. One hornet had managed to hang on. He hurled the yidaki away and charged, cursing, into the kitchen. Frantically, he pawed through the freezer to gather enough ice to put on his already swelling, misshapen mouth. Lance returned to the yard half an hour later, still holding a towel packed with ice cubes over his throbbing lips. The yidaki was lying near the edge of the driveway, where it had landed after cartwheeling across the lawn. As he leaned over to pick it up, he stopped short. The inside of the instrument was alive with hornets. Some took flight and hurtled at his face as he sprang away from the now buzzing, seething mass. To Lance, the message was clear enough: "Stay away." -------- *Chapter 16* LANCE WAS beginning to feel better by the time Kaitlyn and Cedric returned with the children. His lips were still somewhat discolored, but the swelling was going down and he could stand to form words again. The children spilled noisily out of the car, Tommy being especially excited about something. "Krikey, Lance! Were you in another bar fight while we were out?" Cedric exclaimed. He tottered in the doorway as Tommy burst into the house around his legs. "Dad, there was this black midget with a spear at Bobby's house! He talked just like Uncle Cedric!" the boy blurted out, before Lance could make his reluctant mouth form a reply to Cedric. "What on earth are you talking about, Tommy?" Lance asked slowly. "A little black midget! He speared the Thompsons' rotten little poodle!" "He's been like this ever since we picked him up," Cedric commented, gazing down at Tommy with a puzzled look. "Imagine anything as improbable as a poodle-killing black midget with a spear that sounds anything like _me_. What in creation did you do to your mouth?" "Hornets." Kaitlyn entered the house, looking stressed. "What happened to you?" she asked, stopping abruptly to look at Lance. "Hornets," Lance repeated. "Christ, first Tommy starts ranting about dog-killing midgets at Bobby's party, then I come home to a husband who's been attacked by hornets. Great neighborhood we have here," Kaitlyn proclaimed. "At least Cedric and Melissa behaved themselves, I think." "He was like the man on the yidaki, with the big balls!" Tommy continued, for the benefit of anybody who would listen. "Tommy!" Kaitlyn barked. "Not a bad role model, eh Lance?" Cedric added, barely able to hold back his laughter. Melissa appeared in the doorway holding the yidaki. "Dad, what were you doing with this out on the lawn?" she demanded. Lance leapt up. "Melissa, don't..." he shouted as he bolted toward the little girl and snatched the instrument out of her hands. The smoky smell had returned to it. "You could've been stung," he said. Glancing quickly down its bore, Lance saw no sign of life. He carried the yidaki to the other side of the room and set it down in a corner. "_What_ are you talking about, Dad?" Melissa demanded, now looking amazed as she noticed her father's swollen, purple lips. "Mom, how come Tommy's friends had a midget at their party and we didn't have one at ours?" "Doesn't anybody believe me?!" Tommy yelled. "Bobby's parents let those kids watch the worst stuff from the video store you can imagine," Kaitlyn complained. "They really must have gone overboard this time. I tell you, Lance, this is the last time..." "_Mom_, it was _real_!" Tommy was nearly in tears. Lance took his son into his study and closed the door. "Okay, tell me exactly what happened," he said carefully, enduring every word he had to force through his throbbing mouth. "I hit a home run back to the fence by the Thompson's yard, and Eric ran back to get it and saw the midget. Then he came and got us and we all saw him! The Thompson's poodle chased him out of a bush and the midget speared him! The midget asked us if we wanted to help him eat little Eunice!" "You said this midget looked like the figure on the yidaki and sounded like Cedric?" "Yeah, Dad, he had on this little animal skin over his, you know, equipment, but you could just tell it was _huge_." "Did he look kind of like an Aborigine?" "Yeah, but nastier." Once again, Lance felt an iciness fill his stomach. He understood everything now, and fear for his family flooded over him. "I believe you saw something, all right," he said, reassuringly. "Now, let's not talk about this any more until Uncle Cedric goes home, okay?" "Why, Dad?" "I think Uncle Cedric accidentally brought someone here from Australia with him, and it will hurt his feelings if he knows he did this, because it may cause some problems. We'll take care of the problem on our own, and let Uncle Cedric have a nice vacation here, okay?" Tommy looked like an eager soldier who had just been assigned a secret mission. "Okay, Dad," he said curtly, giving his father a high-five and marching out of the study. No wonder Makida-ishina had sent the hornets to drive Lance away from the yidaki. Cedric's "contacts" had stumbled upon an object more sacred and powerful than they could have ever imagined. The spirit it sheltered was running amok in a place it was never intended to be. Then an even more chilling thought settled over Lance as he pondered where the Womabirri was right now, and what form it may have taken. Lance quietly stepped out of the study and moved the yidaki back out into the yard. The pungent smell of it taunted him to put it to his lips once again, but the pain was still there, and he knew better. -------- *Chapter 17* KAITLYN GAVE her uncle one last tearful hug. "I wish you could have stayed longer," she said. Cedric returned the embrace, then hoisted the strap of his carry-on bag over his shoulder. "Oh, no worries, Niecy, I'll be by again. I just hope you lot sort out all of this business that's such a complication for you. And I sincerely hope that I haven't made things worse." Kaitlyn squeezed Cedric's hand very hard. "No, don't let it bother you; it's our problem, even if I don't fully know what's going on yet. But I think it's going to come to a head pretty soon. Neither one of us wants you dragged into it." "I'm going to worry nonetheless. I'll call as soon as I get back to the station, right?" Cedric's voice had a tremor in it; for an instant, he had let his guard down. Tears started filling Kaitlyn's eyes. "We'll look forward to it," she choked. She wanted Cedric to get on the plane now, before she fell apart completely. He bent down and kissed her, his unruly white beard momentarily engulfing her delicate face. She could feel Cedric's years of hardship, the wearing of harsh elements, in the brief contact of his skin on hers. Only at that moment did Kaitlyn fully understand the emptiness behind all of Cedric's wit and bravado. Perhaps he envied _them _in his moments of self-doubt. The final boarding call for Cedric's flight came over the public address system. "Promise to tell the kids I'll be thinking about them all. Lance too. I wish they could have come to see me off," he said quietly, now visibly choking up. He took a deep, noisy breath through his nose and regained his old facade. "Well, on with it then," he said in his usual enthusiastic tone. "Back to L.A. for a little more wheeling and dealing and then over the big water. Sure hope the lads haven't run the station into the bloody ground while I've been off." Putting his hand on Kaitlyn's shoulder for a moment, he smiled warmly at her and then quickly turned away. He disappeared down a long jetway corridor, the last passenger to board before the plane was slowly backed away from the terminal. * * * * JOSEPH'S LITTLE house looked vacant as Lance pulled up in front of it. His heart sank; there might be very little time left. The drum sat next to him on the front seat, and the yidaki, wrapped in protective plastic, was strapped onto the roof of the car. He felt as though he were transporting a bomb of some sort, and any distance he could keep between himself and it, even if it would make no real contribution to his safety, provided a modicum of comfort. As he climbed out of the car, Lance suspiciously eyed the bundle lashed to the roof. He marveled at how an innocently-given gift could have triggered such a complex and dangerous upset in the ancient order of things. It had braided together the lives of Lance, his family, Cedric, Joseph, and who else, that Lance wasn't even aware of? Even his smallest actions now seemed brimming over with potential implications for the future. Whether it was smoothing back his hair at a particular moment or setting foot next to a particular pebble on the ground, what new chain of events might be set off? "It's good to see you again son." A startled Lance turned to find Joseph standing nearby. "I know what is going on with the manitou...what has caused the imbalance," Lance said, his voice edged with fear. "I see you built a drum. You did build it didn't you? It's not one of those tourist drums, is it?" "No...no it's mine. Clobbered a deer up here on the rez on my way home from the last time I visited. That's his hide and the log came from here too." "As it should be." The old man walked over to the passenger side window of the car and admired the drum. A faint smile crossed his face. "Come in and explain what you have learned. Bring the drum with you." "I have something else; it's very important that we look at it," Lance added, starting to unlash the yidaki from the roof of the car. "This thing is the key to all of this." "I see," Joseph replied, stroking his chin and nodding slowly. "So you understand now?" Lance uneasily tucked the long bundle under his arm. "Let's say I have a strong hunch. But there are a hell of a lot of loose ends yet...I'm counting on you to help me now, to figure this out," he replied. Lance set the drum in the middle of the tiny living room, then carefully began unwrapping the yidaki. As he picked it up and rolled it over in his hands, he noticed that its curious smell was absent again. "Do you know what this is?" he asked the elder. Joseph took the yidaki into his hands and sat on the couch, his brow more furrowed than usual with concentration. For a long time he said nothing, following the decorative figures up and down its length. Finally, he looked up at Lance. "This is very old," he said. "Do you know anything else about it?" "I know it once belonged to the ancient people of Australia, the oldest of the black tribes. It does not belong in our hands, it does not belong here at all. Where did you get this?" "It was a gift from a friend, but I think he was unaware of its real purpose. I suspect it was stolen at some point," Lance explained. "I think this has something to do with our ‘intruder.' Now what do we do?" "This musical instrument is as sacred to its rightful owners as the drum is to our people," Joseph began. Lance felt a sudden surge of pride, because he knew that Joseph was referring to his _and_ Lance's ancestors with that statement. "This malevolent spirit that has traveled here, until it is sent back, there will be no peace or balance in our spirits' world, or theirs," he said, motioning towards the yidaki. "Send the yidaki back?" Lance asked in disbelief. It sounded far too simple. "Send the malevolent one back." "How?" Joseph examined the yidaki again, rolling it over and over in his hands. "I haven't done this for so long, I can barely remember. My father was skilled in the Calling, and in time I learned after my initiation into the Medicine Lodge. But that was so very long ago," he said, more to himself than to Lance. "The ‘Calling'?" "The old ones could do it so easily. They called the spirits of the dead, or the many manitous like Makida-ishina. They called distant friends, in villages hundreds of miles away. Everyone believed then, and it was possible," Joseph replied. "But how would you know _who_ to ‘call'?" "There is much to be learned from this object you brought. I can feel so much from it, rising off it like mist above the water, early in the morning. Whoever owned it held it very near to his heart. His spirit has left its tracks on its surface. The drawings say much of the spirit that dwelled within, as well," he said in a half whisper. "And then what, after you contact this person?" "He is a very spiritual person; he had this thing because he was somehow special. He would know how to call _his_ manitou back to where it belongs. He must be made aware, before this rogue spirit does great harm." "There have been a few incidents already," Lance commented, dryly. "Then there is little time to be wasted. We have much to prepare." From somewhere outside the cabin a strange, demented, laughing bird call suddenly split the air. The two men stopped dead in their conversation to listen for it to repeat. When it came, Joseph saw the color drain from Lance's face. "What was it, my son?" he asked. Lance picked up the yidaki and pointed to the figure of the large-billed bird. "Kukaburra," he whispered. -------- *Chapter 18* ADAM Mununggurr stirred in his deep sleep. Dreams that had been filled with distant observation of strange events seemed to be drawing closer to him. The dreams became more vivid, and he began to more clearly understand what was being said by the shadowy figures that populated the dreams. He found himself looking into a small, dark room where two men sat, one much older than the other. They were both very anxious; there was an overpowering sense of urgency in this room. The younger man, naked to the waist, sat pounding an insistent rhythm on a log drum. The older one, holding an animal skin bag high over his head, began a nimble dance around the small room, in perfect step to the impassioned drumming. Circling the room again and again, the old man began to chant furiously, screaming out unknowable words, over and over again. The younger man, who looked strangely familiar, never looked up from his drum as sweat poured off his brow. Each time the older one circled the room, he passed near where Adam now felt himself standing, engulfed in the spectacle. At times it even seemed as though Adam could feel him brush past. As he continued to circle the room, the dancer reached over his head and loosened a cord that held the end of the animal skin bag closed. He did not interrupt his dance, but melded all of the movements he made into a fluid extension of the dance. The bag slowly opened, and as he whirled, tiny white sea shells poured out and filled the air. Instead of settling to the floor, they hung and swirled in the thick air, floating and forming spiral patterns along the eddies left in the dancer's wake. As he approached where Adam stood, the cloud of shells fell out of their complex vortices and descended upon him, surrounding him in a cloud of unbearable, pearly light. Adam felt crushing fear. The old man had stopped dancing and now stood in front of him, looking directly at him and speaking. But the drumming completely filled Adam's ears; the old man's lips seemed to be moving in silence. Then he raised up his arms again, this time holding a very familiar object. Adam's most treasured possession, his one link to his people and his dignity, lay cradled in the upraised hands of this dark red-skinned, white-haired dancer. It had been so long since he had felt the smoothness and mass of the yidaki in his own hands; he yearned to lean forward, further into the dream, to snatch it away. The dancer was clearly trying to convey a message to Adam, something to do with the stolen yidaki. As he continued to mouth unknowable words, he lowered the yidaki to the level of his chest and pointed to a specific figure drawn on its side. He was pointing at the caricature of the Womabirri. Then the pearly light began to fade, the drummer ceased his drumming and slumped forward over his instrument in exhaustion. The old man went to the drummer's side, and the scene in the room grew distant and indistinct. It was replaced by an unpleasant glare and harsh sounds: the glare of florescent lighting in a white room, and the beeping of a life support monitor. As the nurse turned away from Adam's side, his stout fingers began to twitch and tap on the stark white sheet of his bed. His drooping eyelids began to flutter, battling the overpowering glare that filled the room. Adam wanted to return to the room with the two men, to learn more about them, or return to his spot under the mulga tree. But the dream had left him with the sense of an urgent task to be done, if only he could figure out what it was. Reluctantly, Adam woke up. * * * * LANCE AND Joseph sat silently for a long time, too exhausted to raise their heads. Lance's hands trembled from his prolonged impassioned drumming and his head and back ached from crouching over the drum. It was a great effort for him even to turn his head slightly to look at Joseph. The elder sat with his head resting on arms folded atop his knees. His breathing came slowly, and his whole body trembled like Lance's hands. Finally, Lance grew concerned enough about him to break the silence. "Joseph, are you all right?" he whispered. Slowly, the elder raised his head and looked around the room. Night had fallen outside, and the air in the room was heavy with the smell of sage smoke and sweat. "I had a dream," he said, softly, staring at a particular spot in the room. "He was a black man, and seriously injured." "Who was, who was seriously injured?" "He has had such hardship. He never would have wished problems onto anyone. Now he sits alone in a hospital, helpless. "Then you succeeded in calling the owner of the yidaki?" Lance asked, hopefully. "It's all so very confusing to him. Whatever can he do about all of this?" Joseph's voice trailed off, and he sat trembling in silence. Lance dragged himself up from where he sat and slowly walked out to the tiny kitchen. He filled an old, fire-blackened enameled steel mug with water from the sink and returned, offering it to Joseph. He took it and drank deeply through trembling lips. Lance sat down next to the elder again. "Now what?" he asked. "We wait." Lance became angry. "Wait?! Wait for what, for this monster to come out of nowhere somewhere else, or the manitou to play more games with my already depleted sanity?!" Joseph quietly continued. "Just leave this yidaki here with me. Perhaps I will learn more from it. What dwelled within it is probably far from here by now. There is no reason for us to lose heart. I believe I made contact with someone, the right one. I felt his amazement at what he saw. This will cause him to think, and he may find the wisdom to do what he must." "So I leave here and pretend things are normal now?" Lance asked, incredulous at Joseph's apparent calmness. Joseph took Lance's hand. "Have faith in your manitou's power, my son. He has demonstrated his power and protected you through the visions he has sent and by outright deeds. He is as strong as your and my belief in him. When he knows fully the extent of your belief, he will easily rid us of this intruder. Go home to your family now, and carry with you your strength. Carry your pride in who you really are, who your people really are. You showed it tonight in your drumming; stop all of this white man's doubting, it's not needed." As Lance stood to leave, he noticed Joseph scribbling something on a piece of paper: _sydney mercy lady???_ "What's that all about?" he asked. "I'm not sure yet. Go home to your family now," Joseph replied. They need you near them." "I'll talk to you again, soon," Lance promised as he turned to leave. Opening the door of his car, Lance felt an unseasonable chill in the air. He paused momentarily to listen to the dark stillness that embraced Joseph's tiny cabin. No eerie, unfamiliar bird calls were to be heard, nothing at all. * * * * AS THE CAR pulled away, the kukaburra roused itself from its nap in the fork of a tall white pine that stood over the cabin. It cocked its head for a moment, wondering whether to fly down to the warmth of the dwelling below or follow the car. After another moment's hesitation, it leapt into the darkness and flew like a feathered dart in pursuit of the car's rapidly receding lights. -------- *Chapter 19* ADAM'S WHOLE body ached. He could recall little of the events that landed him in the hospital, other than that he had gotten very drunk on the last night he could remember. Now that he was awake, the old pain of his loss crept back to join his overall physical discomfort. He managed to glimpse, through tentative opening of his light-shocked eyes, that both of his legs were bound in casts and slung up in sinister looking traction devices. He judged from the unyielding feel in his back that he had sustained injury there as well. Hours seemed to pass before Adam even dared move his arms or fully open his eyes. The nurses and specialists were preoccupied elsewhere, and he wondered how long it would be before someone noticed the change in him. His last dream troubled him. It was so vivid, and so frustrating; being teased by the spectacle of his stolen heritage, nearly within reach, but in the hands of a stranger. He would have preferred the earlier persistent badgering of the Womabirri as less cruel. And where had the Womabirri gone? The clan elders had told Adam the yidaki was special, that it had served as the resting place for much old magic, or _djang_. One day, they promised, he would be clever enough to use it, making his new life in the hostile white ruled world a little easier. Maybe it would even bring him back to his clan one day, the only place he truly belonged. As a young man, Adam shrugged off their words as outdated superstition. But once he had tasted the bitter reality of racism and poverty in the slums of Sydney, the yidaki became a more potent symbol, a thin lifeline back to where dignity and a sense of belonging were still his. Now, lying in his hospital bed, Adam was beginning to believe the elders were right; the yidaki _had_ carried power that, until it was stolen, had kept him from an even grimmer fate. The image of the old man in his dream, a member of one of the red tribes, holding his yidaki, wouldn't leave him. He had been trying to draw Adam's attention to something. Adam concentrated with all the energy his mind held, trying to clear away the mist of the vision, to see what the old man was pointing to in such anguish. When the mist did clear, Adam felt fearful at what he saw: _The Womabirri!_ Now he realized what a great task had fallen upon him, but knew that he was in no position to attempt it alone. Not only was he physically unable, he lacked the knowledge and skills, as well. He had to summon some old friends more familiar with the ways of The Singing. "Bed six is awake!" a nurse announced in a shrill voice. "Get Graeme in here!" another nurse shouted. A small swarm of people were suddenly peering down at Adam, checking readouts on equipment and shining lights into his eyes. "_Can...you...hear...me?" _a neurologist yelled down at Adam in an absurdly dramatic voice. "I'm not bloody deaf," Adam croaked. "Well, Mr. Mununggurr, you're a rather lucky bloke, I'd say," the neurologist said more calmly. "You've been in a coma for nearly six weeks." "I gotta see me mates," Adam replied weakly. "Real urgent." The head ward nurse stepped over to Adam's bed. "Oh, you see, Mr. Mununggurr, we've had a devil of a time locating any of your, ah, friends. One fellow dropped by from your job, said he'd look in on you again. A Mr. Watson, I believe," she said, officiously. "Yeah, ‘e'll do." "Very well, we'll see to it. Now, we need to have a better look at you..." "Krikey, Miss, I've been lie-ing ‘ere for six weeks and you need a better look? What's left to see?" Adam woke the next morning feeling much stronger. He still could barely move his lower body because of all of the traction equipment attached to his legs, but he could move his arms and hands about. His eyes had acclimated to light again, allowing him to entertain himself watching the activities in the hallway outside his room. His appetite was stirring, but the doctors told him that it would be a few days yet before he would be allowed to try solid food. The main problem Adam had to contend with for the time being was his boredom, and to rehearse in his mind what he was about to ask of his friends when they visited him. The first half of the day dragged past with no visitors, and Adam grew frustrated. He was bored, hungry, and felt strength and energy returning to his body, but had no choice but remain immobile. Shortly after noon, a nurse appeared in his doorway. "You have a visitor, Mr. Mununggurr." A tall, thin, half-blood Aborigine stepped into the room. "Bloody good to see you awake, brother," Charlie Watson muttered. "The mob down at the dock wants your sorry arse back to work." "Too right, I'm ready anytime," Adam replied, gesturing at the traction system that held his plaster encased legs. "Thank you for showing ‘im in, Miss. Can we beg a moment of privacy?" "You have fifteen minutes, then it's time for a sponge bath," the nurse replied. "Oh krikey," Adam groaned. The nurse looked sternly at Adam, like an angry grandmother might glare at a mischievous child. "Look here, Mr. Mununggurr, we'll not have any more of your arguing with the staff..." "No worries Miss, I'll stand in for me best mate ‘ere," Charlie said, grinning. "Are all the sheilas on this floor as pretty as you?" The nurse spun around and left the room. "Fifteen minutes," she repeated tersely as the door swung shut behind her. Adam grinned. "Famously good job repelling her, brother. Years of practice pay off now, don't they?" Charlie dragged a chair up to Adam's bedside. "Well, mate, what's to be done with you?" he asked. "Charlie, I have a very big favor to ask of you. I need you to go up to Pinturr country and bring the Clever Man back here." "Krikey, Adam, I don't even know if ‘e's still alive." "No worries, ‘e's alive. I'd know if ‘e wasn't. I need ‘im and someone from the Clan Council mob; I need you to persuade them to come down ‘ere." Charlie stood up and began pacing around Adam's bed. "How the bloody ‘ell am I going to do that? I don't even ‘ave a set of wheels I can count on right now!" "Get one of your mates from the dock to ‘capture' a vehicle; they do it all the time anyway," Adam replied. "Charlie, I don't ‘ave much time." "This for an ‘Ealing? You on your way out, going to your Dreaming? What do I tell ‘im?" "A Singing." Charlie sat down again, looking confused. "A bloody Singing? Who does that sort of old wank anymore?" "The Clever Man. He'll probably take considerable pride in being asked to do it." "Why should he believe me in the first place? I'm only a ‘alf cast blackfella. And you, you walked out on the clan fifteen effing years ago. Why should ‘e want to do anything for either of us?" "Just tell ‘im we got to call the Womabirri," Adam replied in a near whisper. "And that's gonna mean something to the old bugger?" "I'll bloody guarantee it." Charlie stood to leave. "Only ‘cause you pulled me arse outta that alley last year, when the _balanda_s with the knives were about ready to cut me budoo off..." he said, shaking a finger at Adam. "'Ow much time I got?" "Almost none, mate," Adam replied. Charlie slapped one of Adam's casts, causing the whole assemblage of traction cables to sway and creak. "Tomorrow, brother" he said, and sauntered out. -------- *Chapter 20* ALTHOUGH Lance dreaded going back to his office and facing the small mountain of old memos, faxes and correspondence, it felt good to do something "normal." Joseph's words had left in him a small shred of confidence that his situation was on its way to being cleared up. He could go through the motions of his old life, at least for a while. Lance missed Cedric, and felt cheated for not being allowed the relaxed, fun interludes he had grown accustomed to during his visits. He knew Cedric would be returning home wondering about the two of them, and worrying. Someday, Lance promised himself, he would tell Cedric everything; finally being able to top the usual fare dished up in Cedric's stories. As he turned into the uninviting parking lot at Ames Environmental Associates, Lance reluctantly resigned himself to the responsibilities awaiting inside his office. Making his way down a narrow corridor, Lance passed Brian Farris's office. "Well, guess what everybody, Thunderheart is back!" Brian called out. A few heads popped out of other offices up and down the hall. Lance nodded and smiled weakly as they showered him with insults and double entendres. He was quite accustomed to the ritual, part of a strange camaraderie he maintained with his colleagues. "So did you commune with the Spirit?" Brian asked, dragging Lance into his office. "I've had a pretty wild time," Lance replied, intending to leave Brian hanging on that statement. "Good, ‘cause I think the shit's gonna hit the fan when you talk to the guys about your project. They're a little behind schedule." "Why?" "Dorian moved Andrews and Wilson out of your group for the new water system rehab coming up in Warrens Heights. Clients asked for them, Dorian provided." Lance sat on the corner of Brian's desk, numbed with disbelief. "How the hell are we supposed to get this thing off the ground if the two guys besides me that know anything about it are stuck on another damn project?" Brain shrugged. "You'd better take that one up with Dorian," he said. "Feel like you're back home again?" Lance stood and headed for the door. "Unbelievable, god-damned unbelievable," he muttered. He wanted to be a hundred miles from this place. "Mr. Thomas will be out of the office all week to attend the trade convention in Chicago," Dorian's secretary said in a matter-of-fact tone. Lance was seething with anger. "Did he leave any instructions for our design team, now that he's pulled two of my key players?" he fired back. "None that I'm aware of." "So I'm supposed to rally the troops I have left and make the plan submittal deadline, simple as that?" The secretary was growing uncomfortable. "Mr. Hayward, I'm not the one who made these decisions..." "I can't believe he pulled this on me," Lance growled. "Waits until I take a once-in-a-blue-moon leave and pulls this." He stormed out of the office and stalked the corridors, looking for the two remaining colleagues assigned to his design team. Lance found Brentwood and Collins having a coffee break in the employee lounge. "Hayward, you don't look happy," Brentwood commented as Lance entered the room. "You look like you need a vacation." "Both of you had better sit down," Lance replied. "You're going to wish you were on one when you hear this." "You mean about the project; no problem, we're a little ahead of schedule, by my estimation," Brentwood replied. "We can live without the two whiz boys for a few extra days." "There are no extra days, Dorian's kept the submittal deadline as-is. I'm staying late to get as much done as I can; it'll be on the network when you finish your donuts tomorrow. Get comfortable at your workstations, you may not be seeing your families for a while." "Oh," was all Collins could manage to say, looking at the floor. "Brian always said you were a great one for boosting group morale," Brentwood muttered as he crushed his foam coffee cup and angrily pitched it into the trash. He stomped off down the corridor. "Poor devil was figuring on a fishing trip in a couple of days. Are we going to be able to actually pull this off, Lance?" Collins asked, looking worried. "This is kinda ridiculous." "No worries, mate," Lance replied, grinning bitterly. When Lance called Kaitlyn to tell her that he had to work late, she took it stoically, but Lance could hear edginess in her voice. He knew that his assurances that everything would be all right rang hollow for her. She needed him close to her and the children, tonight. Quitting time came and passed, and the offices and corridors of Ames Environmental gradually grew quiet. In a single office, a light burned brightly, while the rest of the building's interior was bathed in the subdued artificial moonlight of security lighting. Lance leaned over his desk, a cup of coffee nearby, poring over piles of documents in ring binders, occasionally swiveling his office chair to punch figures into a computer. He had to come up with design specifications for half a dozen water treatment process structures before morning, when the rest of his team would take over. Their task would be locating suppliers and getting prices and delivery dates for each process's integral components. All of this had to be done before any design prints or other documents crucial to the project could even be started. If the design team failed to meet their deadline, the blame would fall squarely on Lance, and it would cost Ames big money. The evening wore on, and Lance's desk became less and less visible under a growing pile of specification sheets, design tables, old correspondence and preliminary draft design prints. He began making mistakes, and the floor around his desk became littered with balls of discarded paper. The computer monitor screen flickered in Lance's eyes, making him drowsy. Several times he found himself dozing, leaning on an elbow by the keyboard. He had neglected to get himself any supper, and had drunk all of the stale office coffee his empty stomach could stand. Exhaustion was overtaking him, and he was nowhere near being done for the night. The flickering of his monitor screen seemed to worsen the longer he worked. Finally he could stand it no longer and turned away, to focus his attention on written material for a while, hoping to give his eyes a rest. As he paged through a thick reference manual, feeling removed from himself by exhaustion, he heard a familiar sound, coming at an odd time: the quiet chattering of his computer's hard drive. Lance turned back to the computer, dully wondering why his machine was searching for files when he hadn't entered any commands for the last several minutes. The small red light on the machine that indicated hard drive activity flashed steadily, and the monitor screen began to change. What had been a field of numbers and calculations dissolved into a swirling storm of points of light. It reminded Lance of the more imaginative screen saver programs he had seen running on some of the office machines, displaying kaleidoscopic graphics while the machines were not in use. But Lance's machine wasn't equipped with such a program, and none he had ever seen did what he was seeing now. On the monitor, the points of light gradually coalesced into the shape of the beast that had haunted Lance's dreams. As he watched dumfounded, the image of Makida-ishina began to move, at first in a jerky, mechanical gait and then gradually into more fluid, realistic movement. As the movement improved, so did the detail of the image. Soon the image showed in a clarity far beyond anything his or any other computer was capable of, better even than reality itself. Lance sat entranced as a story began to unfold on the screen. Wherever the story went, whatever its outcome, Lance would be going along. His last chance at free choice in the matter had passed many minutes ago, when he had first noticed the flickering on the monitor. Now he stared unblinking, unable to move. * * * * LANCE FOUND himself standing alone, wearing only a breechcloth, with an otter skin bag hanging from a deer hide belt. He was on a vast, almost featureless red plain. A strange sky stretched over him, one of blue-black like early night, punctuated by brilliant white spires of clouds that rose from flattened bases. No sun shone on this landscape, and Lance cast no shadow. To his right, barely visible on the horizon, was the familiar shore of Lake Superior, nurturer of his ancestors for over a thousand years. On the horizon to his left loomed Uluru, the great red rock that stood at the geological and spiritual center of Australia. A great beast advanced from each of these distant places, slowly closing on where Lance stood. They were too distant to see clearly yet, but Lance knew the beast approaching from the shore to be Makida-ishina, coming to do battle with a hated and feared intruder. The beasts continued their march toward each other and Lance. He could make out the murderous looking horns on the manitou's head, long tusks jutting down from its mouth, and a row of tall spikes running the length of its back and tail. All of its armament shone like ivory against a smooth, ebony hide. As Lance turned his head to the left, he gasped at what he saw. The creature that had been sung into being in the heart of Uluru uncountable thousands of years ago had taken his most lethal form. He had become the Goanna-King, _Perenti_. It was a gigantic lizard with a slender body and long, whip-like tail. Its body was the color of desert sand, broken with large oblong blotches of reddish orange. The lizard walked high and stiff-legged, undulating its body in a very snakelike way. The massive head swung back and forth as it approached, while a long, bluish forked tongue periodically extended from its mouth. As it single-mindedly approached, the creature's movements seemed almost mechanical. The tongue protrusions came in a regular rhythm, twice during each swing of the scaly, armored head. The two beasts stopped a dozen paces apart to assess each other. The Perenti opened its mouth slightly, and began drawing in great quantities of air. Sound of the air rushing into its body built from an angry hiss to a deafening roar. It seemed to grow taller through its body, and its throat swelled and bulged downward as the monster continued inflating itself. Turning to present its side to the manitou, the Perenti writhed its long tail in a continuous serpentine motion, as if preparing to lash out a huge whip. The manitou responded to the threat by lowering its armored head. The spines on its back rose to a vertical position and a deep growl clawed its way up from the creature's depths, building in intensity until it reverberated far across the red plain. Its mouth dropped open. There was an explosion of motion. Lance caught a glimpse of the Perenti sweeping its tail outward and under the legs of the manitou, toppling it onto its side. The lizard flung itself upon the manitou, fastening its mouth on the back of its neck. The target was carefully chosen, between the manitou's deadly horns and the spines of its back. Lance fled as a cloud of red dust rose, obscuring the scene. * * * * THE KUKABURRA fluttered into the open office window and strutted nervously back and forth on the window sill. The man inside the office was watching something intently, and hadn't moved for a long time. He was clearly unaware of the kukaburra's arrival. The bird gingerly stepped into the office and waited for a reaction, poised to flee the way it had come in. Still the man did not move. Emboldened by this, the bird hopped into the air and settled on the back of the man's chair, tipping its head from side to side to study the patterns of light and movement on the computer monitor. The longer the kukaburra watched, the more angry he became. There was a great threat in the stream of images that his rival was funneling through the crude story-machine. All of his efforts were about to be undone, the fragile mortal's alliance with the manitou was growing. The Womabirri would have none of it. * * * * AS THE PITCHED battle between the two monsters continued, it became deadlocked. Lance had drawn back to a safer distance and watched intently, catching glimpses of the struggle through the red dust cloud. For every terrible tail blow or crushing jaw grip the Perenti inflicted, Makida-ishina seemed just able to counter with some bewildering defensive strategy. He would trick the Perenti into rushing at the manitou's vulnerable belly, only to offer his fierce, goring horns at the last second, ripping into the Perenti's flesh and savagely twisting his head. The great lizard would gasp and stagger backward as its blood and patches of its hide flew off across the red plain. Lance looked down at the otter skin bag at his side. He remembered how the elder had let loose the shells within, and how they focused great power into a single place. They could magnify the will of the one who possessed them a thousand fold. Lance knew he could do it, too. It was his heritage, his right. The senseless struggle had gone on long enough, balance must be restored. He reached for the bag. * * * * LANCE AWOKE in a darkened room. The hard, hay covered floor and the familiar smell of leather riding tack and horses told him where he was in an instant. He must have fallen asleep during his afternoon chores, and now night had fallen. Carter would be furious with him. He had worked here all of his young life, since his parents had been killed. Although he was virtually a slave, required to do anything asked of him and dependent on the landowner for his very existence, he knew little of better things. He had been terrorized and beaten into submission long ago, and had learned not to question his lot in life. Besides, it was common knowledge that orphaned black children wouldn't last long on their own in this part of Australia. Whatever law existed was handed down by the most influential white landowner in the area, and no one particularly cared what happened behind the gates of huge sheep stations. _You're black, nobody knows or cares that you exist, and you're damn lucky to have a meal put in front of you every day. _Those words played over and over again in Lance's head, one of the unseen scars that accompanied more visible ones left from his twelve years under the care of Harrison Carter and his hired hands. Lance stood and brushed the hay and stable dust off his ragged trousers. He stretched and began walking stiffly through the stable, softly singing an old _Yolngu_ song, one that his mother had sung to quiet him as a small child. Now he sang it to quiet his charges as they muttered and shuffled restlessly in their stalls. When he reached the door, he knew that he was in serious trouble. It was completely dark outside, and the dining room lights had already been extinguished. Supper was over with, and Carter would be looking for him. He tiptoed across the yard to the house, taking care not to waken the heeler curled up asleep on the porch. The hands were all off drinking and playing cards in their quarters. Lance could see Carter sitting by himself in a cloud of cigar smoke in the house's cavernous living room. A half empty bottle of whiskey sat on a small table next to him. With a little luck, he could make it to the back door of the hands' bunkhouse and slip into his tiny room undetected. Perhaps Carter would be too hung over in the morning to remember that Lance had been gone. The door to Lance's room swung open with a noisy, dry squeal. He could hear the men in the room down the filthy hall, swearing and belching as they gambled and drank the night away. Although he was desperately hungry, he quietly closed himself into his pitch-dark room, hoping to quiet his stomach in the morning. He curled up on his floor mat and dragged a moth-eaten blanket up around his shoulders, feeling the cold of the night creeping in through the large gap at the bottom of his door. It grew steadily colder, and it was hard for Lance to get to sleep. He rolled and tossed fitfully, half awake and almost delirious from hunger. Sometime after midnight, after the hands had finally staggered off to their bunks, he rolled over and opened his eyes, noticing a pale light coming under his door. Outside, footsteps and the squeak of floorboards could be heard. He held his breath and waited, as the footsteps came haltingly up the hallway, pausing briefly at each door of the bunkhouse. Finally, they paused at his own, and Carter's python skin boots could be clearly seen in the gap under the door. A stench of cigar smoke and whiskey wafted through. "Open this door, you little black bastard," he slurred. Lance lay frozen in terror, not wanting to let him know that he was awake, not wanting to risk his anger by ignoring him. "I said, open this goddamned door, you worthless, sneaky little coon!" Carter bawled, growing enraged with the silence on the other side of the door. Muffled laughter floated across the hall from one of the other bunks. Before Lance could decide what to do, the door exploded inward, ahead of the sharp-toed boot on Carter's foot. He stood as a terrifying silhouette, backlit by a single lantern hanging in the hallway. Lance began trembling uncontrollably, making little whimpering sounds as the cold and fear convulsed him. "You got some new chores to learn," Carter growled, leaning against the door frame. "Get up." As Lance scrambled to his feet, he felt the vice-like grip of Carter's hand on the back of his neck. He dragged Lance, stumbling and tripping, out of the building and shoved him onto the dusty ground. "Get over to the stables and wait for me," he ordered in a low voice. "If you're not there when I get there, you won't live to see the sun rise." Lance half crawled, half ran across the yard in terror. As he stopped inside the stables, he turned to see Carter staggering over to the large gum tree that stood in the otherwise barren space between the station's buildings. There he stood for a long time, urinating on the broad, scarred trunk of the tree. When he was finished, he left his pants undone and made his way to the stables. "Get over by the feed bags," he ordered. Lance backed away, his eyes fixed on Carter like a wary animal. He retreated as Carter advanced, until he tripped and fell backwards onto several bags of grain that lay on the floor. Carter grabbed him by the wrists, rolling him onto his stomach and pressing him into the hard grain sacks with his knee. Lance fought off the urge to kick out at his assailant, before it was too late. He knew that if he resisted at all, he would be beaten senseless. As Carter leaned over Lance, the stench of his breath and sweat seemed to rob all oxygen from the air. After tying Lance's wrists together with a piece of twine, he stood. Lance sobbed as he trembled in terror, not knowing what awaited him. "Shut up," Carter muttered, kicking at the boy's legs. "Now we lose these bloody rags of yours." Carter grabbed the waist line of Lance's tattered pants and tore them away. "Time you took over your effing old lady's job," he grunted. "I wager you're plenty old enough." Carter began pulling down his own pants. Lance stared straight ahead, feeling a strange numbness descend over himself. He felt far away from the nightmare about to take place. Standing before him now was the Womabirri, and behind him, a fierce battle was raging between two monstrous beasts. Red dust filled the air. "Now you can really feel what it's like to be a _Yolngu_, eh _Balanda_?" the creature chuckled. "It's not so bloody glamorous, now is it?" Lance suddenly realized again who he was: not a helpless young Aboriginal boy, but a man, whose proud Native heart was filling with a crazy rage. The disgrace being perpetrated upon him dragged up all of the hatred he had ever known for men like Carter, for whole nations of men like him and what they had done to native peoples for millennia. But he was securely tied, and could only scream his rage. "Shut up," Carter repeated as he lowered himself onto Lance's back. "You can stop this," the Womabirri was saying. "Take my spear and stop this, if you have the courage." He thrust his spear in Lance's face, a hopeful look on his tiny, dark face. "Go ahead." Lance felt Carter's flesh against his own. He stretched out his hand, suddenly free of its bonds, and the Womabirri smiled. He teased Lance briefly, then laid the shaft of the spear onto the palm of Lance's trembling hand. * * * * LANCE NOW stood before the fighting monsters with the otter skin bag in his right hand and an Aboriginal spear in his left. He was no longer sure what he was supposed to do, but the spear felt good in his hand, like it belonged there. He let the otter skin bag drop to the red ground, as Makida-ishina and the Perenti continued their thunderous battle. * * * * LANCE ROLLED out from under Carter, clutching the spear. He jumped to his feet, and raised the spear to his shoulder. "Why you bloody little black bastard..." Carter sputtered. "For all the conquered ones!" Lance screamed, and hurled the spear with all his might. It struck Carter in the middle, its momentum driving him backward, slamming him hard against a wall. Staring down in dismay, he clutched the spear and stumbled backward, crashing repeatedly into stall doors as he struggled towards the far end of the barn. Terrified horses squealed and pawed at their stalls, adding to the deafening crescendo of Carter's struggles. When he reached the end wall, he stopped and slowly slid to the floor. The barn was silent but for the puffing of settling horses and the thunderous beat of Lance's heart in his ears. Trembling with the release of his rage, and filling with a warrior's pride, Lance cautiously approached the still form on the barn floor. He lay face-down in the shadows, and seemed suddenly much smaller and frail looking. Gingerly, Lance rolled the body over with his foot. What he saw drained the fierce pride from his soul. The man he had slain was no longer the slobbering racist monster who had held him down on the grain sacks. The crumpled figure of Joseph now lay on the floor, dead hands still clutching the shaft of the spear. * * * * LANCE STOOD over the slain manitou, his spear jutting up from the side of its thick neck. The Perenti circled the carcass warily, growing bolder as it became satisfied that no life remained in its adversary. Ignoring Lance, it flicked its long tongue over the spiked surface of Makida-ishina, anticipating the gorging that it was about to undertake. * * * * THE COMPUTER monitor screen was dark. Lance sat bolt upright in terror, realizing the gravity of choice he had just made. The Womabirri had been incredibly clever; blinded by his deepest hatred, Lance had made a choice he would forever regret. In rejecting his alliance with an ancestral spirit, he had surely sealed the manitou's fate. He didn't know how he would live with the consequences, or if he even deserved to. Lance leaned back in his chair, emotionally drained and physically exhausted. He closed his eyes for a few minutes, letting his guilt and grief sweep over him. There would no longer be any reason for him to feel proud of his Native blood. He was the faceless descendant of colonizing European stock, and he had just delivered the final blow in a process of cultural annihilation begun three hundred years earlier. Lance's reverie was shattered by the crash of broken glass and the feeling of an impact. He opened his eyes to find the shaft of the Womabirri's spear extending out of what had been his computer monitor screen and passing through the back of his office chair, inches away from his throat. He leapt aside just as the Womabirri took form on top of the desk. "You did well, _balanda_," the creature said. Lance stared in disbelief at the apparition before him. He was exactly as Tommy had described him; Lance suddenly grasped how much danger his family had been in during past few days. "Why are you doing this?" he asked weakly, growing light-headed from successive waves of adrenaline and endless, deep fatigue. The Womabirri hopped down from the desk and struggled to extract his spear from the back of the office chair. "I needed you, mate," he replied as the shaft finally slid out of the upholstery. "Your old bugger spirit used big theatrics to ‘elp you make up your silly little mind... well, I think I upstaged ‘im, don't you?" The Womabirri started sidling toward Lance. His absurd shortness somehow enhanced his already sinister appearance, as he moved purposefully across the room. Lance found himself instinctively backing slowly away. "It was only a dream, what's really changed?" Lance demanded, trying to stall for time to think. "You failed ‘is test, mate. ‘e's got nothing left. No believers, no power. I should be quite comfortable ‘ere now." "You _know_ you don't belong here," Lance countered. The Womabirri smiled as he continued his advance. He started raising the spear. "Oh, no worries. I do now. You saw to that. Don't think me bloody ungrateful, but now you'll ‘ave to excuse my insistence that you go to join your old spirit in the underworld." Lance dropped to the floor as the spear whistled past where his throat had been only a fraction of a second earlier. He leapt over the desk and sprinted through the office door, not daring to look back toward the office. But even if he had, the Womabirri was no longer there; a twelve-foot long lizard, its sandpaper leather skin crazily blotched in oranges and sand tones, had taken his place. It slowly squeezed through the office doorway and stalked down the dimly lit corridor, walking very upright on wide-splayed feet and powerful claws. The sound of its walking was like that of an enormous cat crossing a carpet, as long nails briefly caught on the close pile of the hallway carpeting. Its long, blue, forked tongue worked in and out while the massive head swung mechanically from side to side, calmly seeking a scent gradient that would lead it, in total darkness if necessary, to its trembling, two-legged prey. -------- *Chapter 21* CHARLIE WATSON led a rag-tag procession of three Aborigines quickly down the stark white corridors of Lady of Mercy Hospital. The seventy-year-old Clever Man had come, dressed in an old army-style jacket and pants. Makuma, a Pinturr clan Council Elder and nearly as old as the Clever Man, was similarly dressed. The third, a much younger man known only as Grubber, sported designer athletic clothing, including a tee shirt emblazoned with a neon-colored surfer and the legend, _Surf or Die_. He trailed behind the rest of them, carrying a large burden wrapped in old blankets. Grubber looked nervously over his shoulder. "White nurses gonna throw our arses outa ‘ere for bloody sure," he muttered. Charlie turned, walking backwards and not missing a step, to address the doubtful one. "Relax, brother, we're damned near there. Nobody's twigged to us yet. Maybe Baiami is with us, okay?" Charlie glanced at the Clever Man for some sign of agreement, but he offered none. "I still don't like one bloody bit of this caper," Grubber complained, struggling to keep up with the older men.They came to a corner and glanced furtively around it, down to the far end of the corridor, where the gleaming floor led up to the doors of an elevator. "We gotta get up to Adam on that," Charlie whispered. "Trouble is, there's the effing nurse's station before we get there. Old battle axe might not approve of our cargo ‘ere going into the room." The Clever Man looked at Charlie. "Flowers," he said. "Too right!" Charlie exclaimed. "C'mon, mate, we got some work to do back down the corridor," he said to Grubber. "What the bloody ‘ell?! We just got through there without being spotted, now you want to go back?" Charlie grabbed him by his long, curly locks. "Listen, brother, we need to secure a bit of camouflage for the goods, so get your sorry arse moving, okay?" The young man set down his burden, shrugged and set off down the hall behind Charlie. The two older men slowly sank to sitting positions on the floor, to await Charlie's return. As Charlie and Grubber passed rooms, they quickly decided whether they were occupied or if the occupants were awake. Each vacant room, or one that contained a sleeping patient, was quickly pilfered of any floral arrangements left by well-wishers. By the time they had reached the end of the corridor, Grubber was having trouble seeing past his armload of flowers. "I wager this should be about enough, Boss," he commented hopefully. "Probably right," Charlie replied, looking nervously out of the doorway of the last room they had pilfered. An old man snored raucously in his bed, forcing Charlie to strain to hear a group of doctors carrying on a discussion somewhere down the corridor. As he craned his neck to see further, Charlie saw five men in white coats, leaning against a wall and loudly berating each other's golf scores. They blocked the way back to where the old men waited, and showed no sign of leaving. "What's wrong?" Grubber whispered, a look of panic crawling across his face. "Bloody doctors! Why the effing ‘ell are there so bloody many doctors ‘anging around anyway!" Charlie sputtered. "'Cause it's an ‘ospital?" Grubber offered. Charlie swung an open hand at Grubber, pushing through the greenery in front of his face and stuffing an enormous carnation blossom into his mouth. "Idiot!" he snapped. "What are we gonna do, Boss?" Grubber wailed, spitting out petals. "We're gonna bloody keep our voices down and think! If you can't do both, just try the keeping the voices down part, okay mate?" After what seemed like an eternity, the group of doctors broke up with a final round of loud laughter and back slapping. One of them headed up the corridor in Charlie and Grubber's direction. "Oh, effing ‘ell, the bastard's coming this way!" Charlie exclaimed. "Into the closet with you! I'll duck into the loo." "But Boss..." Grubber protested. Charlie grabbed him by the hair again and thrust him into a narrow closet opposite the bed where the old man lay. As Charlie slammed the door in Grubber's face, some of the foliage he was holding was caught protruding outside of the door. "Bloody ‘ell!" Charlie exclaimed under his breath, pulling the errant stems out of the gap around the door. He tossed them onto the sleeping man's bed and dove into the bathroom seconds before the doctor entered the room. The doctor checked the old man's blood pressure, scribbled a few notes on a clipboard, and turned to leave. Then he paused as he took greater notice of the flowers strewn over the bed. A single red rose perched perfectly on the old man's forehead. "Some bloody cult nutbag, no doubt," he muttered, and left the room. The snoring continued. Charlie burst out of the bathroom. "Well, c'mon then, you!" he called to Grubber. The closet door opened slowly, and a great bush of flowers emerged, followed by the wide-eyed Grubber. "We safe Boss?" he asked. "For the bloody moment. Now let's just walk up this corridor like we belong ‘ere, all right? We got no more time to be tied up with all this sneaky wank," Charlie replied. He took a deep breath and walked out into the corridor, with Grubber close behind him. "And give me some of those effing flowers, okay?" he snapped, grabbing a handful to carry. The Clever Man and Makuma sat expressionless and silent. During their wait they had attracted curious looks and a few inquiries as to what they were doing there, to which the Clever Man had replied, sparely: "It's spiritual matters." It seemed to work, as no hospital security personnel ever appeared to escort them out of the building. Charlie and Grubber arrived back where the old men waited, Grubber having walked backwards most of the way, watching for suspicious onlookers. Charlie unbundled the ceremonial instruments and began pushing the stems of flowers into the wide end of one of them. Grubber and Makuma did the same, as the Clever Man looked on impassively. Within minutes, they had three large, strange looking bouquets stuffed under their arms. They quickly composed themselves, then nonchalantly approached the nurse's station. "'Ere to see our mate Adam Mununggurr," Charlie announced to the duty nurse behind the desk. The nurse looked up in alarm. She said nothing for a long time, looking them over. She clearly did not approve of their appearance. "He can't see more than two of you at a time," she finally said, tersely. "Oh, right, Miss, I know about the rule and...well, we thought being that these two fine elderly gentlemen ‘ave to leave country late tonight, you might see it fit to let us all in for a brief visit. Adam is _so_ looking forward to seeing these ‘ere gentlemen. You see, they're, ah, spiritually important to poor old Adam. We figured ‘e needed some serious spiritual ‘elp, what with ‘is back ‘urt so bloody awful and..." The nurse waved her hands over her head. "All right, all right. But all of you must leave after fifteen minutes, do you understand?" Charlie grinned broadly. "Too right, Miss, and we do thank you. The four of them moved past the nurse's station quickly, and Charlie punched the elevator call button. The car was slow to arrive, and several nurses walked past while they waited, looking curiously at the ‘gifts' the men had brought. When at last the elevator doors slid open, the duty nurse rose from behind the desk, her eyes fixed on the flower-stuffed yidakis. "I've never seen floral arrangements quite like that before, sir," she said. She was slowly reaching for a telephone. "Oh, bloody ‘ell, it doesn't surprise me, Miss. You see they're a sacred tribal ‘ealing ritual thing. No white folks ‘ave ever been allowed to see ‘em ‘til now. You're the first, really. Please be respectful, won't you?" Charlie replied, with a touch of pleading in his voice. "Yes...I suppose so," she said softly, slowly sitting back down and drawing her hand back from the telephone. The four men shuffled into the elevator and smiled at the nurse until the doors slid shut. Grubber let out a great exhalation. "Effing Jesus Christ!" he exclaimed. "I've bloody ‘ad enough of this caper." "No worries," Charlie replied. "Now the real work starts." The Clever Man nodded. They found Adam awake, watching television. He looked up in relieved amazement at his visitors. "I stand honored before you," he blurted out, in a formal tone. "The ‘ell you are, mate, you're flat on your bloody back," the Clever Man replied, a grin spreading over his craggy face. Then he broke into a wheezy laugh. "Charlie, you're bloody marvelous. ‘Ow'd you get them ‘ere so fast?" Adam asked, beaming. "Old Grubber ‘ere purloined a right swift set of wheels this time. Bloody Porsche," Charlie replied, slapping Grubber hard on the back, causing him to stagger forward. "We ‘ad a right difficult time getting the gear ‘ere into the boot, though." Adam laughed to himself as he instantly visualized the four of them, roaring down some dusty Outback road in a borrowed rich man's toy. The two old men would have sat stone-faced in the back, while Grubber drove hell-for-leather and Charlie yelled at him for whatever reason. The whole scene was charged with irony and a touch of poetic justice. "Let's get to work, then," Makuma said in a grim tone. "It'll be a bloody miracle if we can do this without somebody walking in on us." Charlie started dragging furniture toward the door. "We'll make it bloody difficult, Boss," he said. Grubber realized what Charlie was doing and, fully caught up in the spirit of the moment, gleefully pitched in building a barricade across the door. "They'll ‘ave to send in the effing U.S. Marines to get in ‘ere," Grubber bragged as he tested the door against the barricade. -------- *Chapter 22* THE PERENTI was content to stalk the many hallways of Ames Environmental methodically, one by one. Although human scent was everywhere, the scent of the one it sought was easy to distinguish from the others; it was fresher, and full of the familiar fear-smell of all hunted animals. It had a lot of time, and knew that its tried and true, patient search would bear fruit in due course. Its heavy feet continued padding down the hallways in an uninterrupted rhythm, carrying it on in its single-minded mission. Swinging its head and looking; long, forked tongue testing the air with each deliberate step. As he hid in a janitor's closet, Lance could remember only one other time in his life when he was as terrified as he was now. It was when he was seven, and he was playing on a high pile of hay bales in his grandfather's barn. He climbed to the very top of the pile, some twenty feet above the floor, against the stern warnings of his parents and grandparents. The pile was very unstable at the top, and it collapsed without warning, pinning Lance under several layers of bales. He could scarcely breathe under their weight, and had to scream for help for half an hour before he was discovered. Now he was in a situation where there would be no one to come to his aid; Kaitlyn knew where he was, but she was prepared to have Lance gone most of the night. Lance knew his only hope was to get out of the building undetected. He had no idea what form the Womabirri might next take, or what extraordinary senses it might posses, rendering Lance easily detectable no matter how stealthy he was. Daring to open the closet door a crack, he peered into the eerie half-light of the hallway. The hall he had fled down from his office joined the one he now occupied at a right angle some fifty feet from the closet. Anything that would be pursuing him, that was large enough to be seen anyway, would have to make itself visible as it rounded the corner and followed the hallway in either direction. Then something occurred to Lance. His mind flashed back to the sequence of caricatures drawn on the side of the yidaki. He strained to remember what the next likeness in the series was after the Kukaburra. His spirits sank as he suddenly recalled the likeness of the lizard painted on the bloodwood. Cold writhed up Lance's spine as he recalled the Perenti's calculated, vicious attacks on the manitou. With its great size, speed and persistence, Lance stood little chance. Hiding would not help Lance for long, against a creature whose sense of smell was so acute that it didn't even need to see to find its prey. Groping around the closet for anything that might serve as a weapon, all Lance was able to find was a mop and bucket. Turning back to the door and looking down the hallway again, he became aware of a quiet padding sound accompanied by a soft _rip, rip, rip,_ like claws momentarily catching in the hallway carpeting. Then the sound stopped. From the point where an adjoining hall met the corridor, a long, sleek armor-plated snout slowly advanced into view. Then a nostril, from which soft hissing breaths could be heard, and, finally, an eye. It shifted about in its socket, seeking something. It was completely devoid of emotion; more like a camera lens, keenly focused to detect any hint of motion. A long tongue flicked out, gathering scent. When enough of the monster had advanced into the hallway, it slowly turned its head in Lance's direction. The tongue flicks quickened in intensity. It paused for a long time, as if trying to make a decision, then turned its head in the opposite direction for a moment. Again, more tongue flicks. Then it swung its head rapidly back in Lance's direction, this time with the tongue flicking very rapidly. It began to advance down the hallway toward the small closet, the tempo of its steps increasing. Within a few seconds, it was moving along in an eager reptilian trot. Lance reached back into the closet, his hand closing around the metal handle of the mop bucket. In one motion, he swung the closet door open and hurled the bucket with all his might. It hit the lizard squarely on the snout, causing the beast to gape its mouth wide open and rise on its massive hind legs. Its head brushed the ceiling tiles of the hallway momentarily, then the Perenti settled quickly back onto all fours, resuming the trotting advance. * * * * THE CLEVER Man, Makuma and Grubber sat in a semicircle on the floor near Adam's bed, playing their yidakis in pulsating, mesmerizing harmony. Beads of sweat were popping out on their foreheads and the muscles of their necks stood out as they played with a fierce, primal energy. In spite of Grubber's streetwise nature, he had great skill in playing the yidaki, a remnant of a more traditional childhood. In front of them sat a bark bowl containing a small patch of kangaroo hide, a goanna skin, dried roots, leaves and berries. Charlie stood watch, moving nervously between door and window. After several minutes of playing, the Clever Man put down his instrument. He pulled a pair of _bilma_ sticks from the back pocket of his pants and began cracking them together in a rapid, complex rhythm. Tipping his head back, he closed his eyes and began reciting an old Pinturr song, recounting the story of the creation of the Womabirri. The song was charged with emotion, its tonality rising and falling from frantic to ecstatic to mournful. "We sing ‘im back, mate; no worries," Charlie reassured Adam, who lay in frustration, relegated to the role of spectator in the ritual. The song reached a point where the yidaki players trailed off, leaving the Clever Man to sing on alone, accompanied only by the sound of his sticks. He continued to grow more passionate in the delivery of the story, and seemed no longer aware of where he was. Grubber stood up and tip-toed over to Charlie. "I don't want no part in no spookyshit, Boss," he whispered. "What the bloody ‘ell did you think we were gathering down ‘ere for, then?" Charlie demanded. "Krikey, what's s'posed to ‘appen then?" Grubber asked urgently, "We gonna get possessed or something?" "Look, brother, just sit back down, and blow stick when you're bloody asked to. Remember, blackfellas do extra long time for car theft down ‘ere, so don't piss me off," Charlie said, glaring at the young man. Grubber shook his head and returned to his place, casting a fearful look at the Clever Man as he continued wailing, laughing and scolding his way through the elaborate story. At another key moment in the song, Makuma jumped to his feet and ran to Adam's side. He drew out a frighteningly large skinning knife, grasped a lock of Adam's hair and cut it away. After muttering a few Pinturr words under his breath, he stooped and laid the lock of hair in the bark bowl with the other items. Fumbling through his pockets, he produced a book of matches and struck one alight. Gingerly, he set fire to mixture of human and animal hair, goanna skin and the dried plant material. The bark bowl began giving off a thick, pungent white smoke. "'Ow long?" Adam asked. "Not sure," Makuma replied. "Nobody ever called Womabirri from so far. Maybe ‘e not wanta come back." * * * * LANCE RAN like he had never run before. The Perenti was less than twenty feet behind him, and too close to allow Lance a chance to change direction or dive out a side exit. It ran with furious abandon, its undulating tail slapping the walls on alternating sides of the hallway. The muffled sound of galloping footfalls drew ever closer behind Lance. Ahead lay his last chance; a stairway leading to the building's basement exited the hallway on Lance's left. As he ran, now nearly exhausted, he quickly planned his move. As the stairway flashed past Lance's left eye, he reached out and felt the steel of a handrail in his hand. He closed his hand hard and sprung into the air, catapulting himself over the railing as the Perenti sailed past him, mouth wide open. For what seemed like a long moment, Lance was falling in total darkness. Then he saw nothing but purple spots before his eyes as he felt himself slam into the lower flight of the stairs. He tumbled head-over-heels for another long instant, than came to rest, sprawled on the cold concrete of the basement floor. His whole body ached, and the purple lights swarmed before his eyes. As he tried to stand in the darkness, the world seemed to turn on its side, and he felt the hard impact of the floor once again. Strange calmness overtook him as he lay there, barely conscious. He reasoned that he had eluded the Perenti, or he would be dead by now. Lance also knew that he was not going to be standing up soon, and would have to crawl in the darkness, to a large furnace room at the opposite end of the basement. There he might be safe, because it could only be entered through massive steel fire doors, which locked securely from the inside. He managed to raise himself onto his hands and knees, and began a methodical traverse of the long basement, visualizing in his clouded mind where he was by the amount of time he spent moving. During his slow crawl there were maddening instances when he came to an abrupt stop, his head crashing into file cabinets or other unseen obstacles. He would reorient himself and pray he hadn't been betrayed by the noise of his blundering. Minutes dragged past, and no sounds other than his own labored breathing and crashing heartbeat came to his ears. When the steel of the fire doors met his fingers, he gathered himself for another attempt at standing. Reaching over his head, he found the door handles. With all of his strength, he pulled himself to a weak-kneed standing position. Although the sudden change of body position made the pain in his head nauseating in intensity, he had regained his equilibrium and was able to remain standing while fumbling with the handles. The latches released with a loud snap that echoed across the cavernous basement. Lance froze, waiting for new sounds, but stillness prevailed. Pushing the doors open, he half fell, half stepped inside. He let the weight of his body pull the doors closed behind him, and then leaned back against them to rest and think. He had bought himself a little more time, but, guided by scent alone, he knew that the monster would eventually close the distance between them. * * * * JOSEPH HAD been fasting and chanting for nearly two days, and still few answers had come to him. The strain of remaining in his sweat lodge for so long was starting to tell on him, and despair was beginning to fill his heart. And now he had felt the staggering blow Makida-ishina had sustained through Lance's rejection. Joseph had hoped Lance was a man of greater principles; he could not understand how Lance could have been seduced into making the choice he had. Now the manitou's presence was very weak on the earth, and Joseph's best efforts had failed to bring a fresh vision of him. But the elder knew the gravity of the situation rapidly unfolding now, and he would continue his fast and tireless singing until he felt _something_ happen. If necessary, he would gladly die trying. As the last custodian of the Old Ways, his final service to all the manitous and mortal ancestors might be only symbolic, but it would allow him go to his rest knowing that he had tried. * * * * A SECURITY man pounded at the door of Adam's room. "Open this bloody door, you lot of indigents!" he shouted. Inside the room, white smoke hung so thickly it seemed to lower the ceiling several feet. The bark bowl now contained only gray ashes, and the Clever Man was on his feet, dancing to the rhythm of the cracking bilmas. Makuma and Grubber's yidakis droned, buzzed and roared background sounds of an ancient song-story, imitating the calls of bush animal totems and the sounds of thunder, waves and wind. The Clever Man's dance was a pantomime of this great story, one of countless epics the old Pinturr man knew, recalling the great creation events of the Dreaming. "You lot open up in thirty seconds or we force the door, you understand?" demanded the voice from outside. "Are you burning something in there?" Adam looked worried. "'Ow much effing longer, Charlie?" he asked his friend, who stood at the bedside, cracking his own pair of _bilma_s together. "I think ‘e's near the end of the song cycle. Bloody good thing; the door's not goin' to ‘old too long once they get serious, I wager." * * * * THE PERENTI repeatedly dragged its long claws down the surface of the steel doors, creating an amplified screech like human fingernails dragging across a chalkboard. It could smell the prey inside the room, but was frustrated by the unyielding doors. As it waited for some new motivation, it remained stationed at the door, mechanically scraping its nails over the metal, right foot then left, again and again. Inside the black furnace room, Lance cowered in a corner opposite the doors, covering his ears against the endless shrieking of dagger-sharp toenails sliding over steel. Fatigue was winning its battle with adrenaline, and Lance was beginning to think only of sleep. He was in such pain that consciousness and rational thought came only in sporadic, ragged scraps. Lance was not aware that he had left a generous blood trail for his adversary to follow, and that blood loss was continuing to take its toll as he sat there. Then the shrieking stopped, snapping Lance back to a more lucid state. He clamored to his feet and slowly approached the door. Placing his ear against it, he waited. Silence hung heavily on the other side. The Perenti was gone. On the floor now rested a six-inch long centipede. It was more accustomed to the dark than the Perenti, and had great skill at navigating vertical faces and tight passageways. After getting its bearings for a moment, it scuttled to the basement wall and began the long climb up to where ventilation system ducting hung. * * * * JOSEPH WAS no longer able to remain in a sitting position. The stones in the sweat lodge were growing cool, and he no longer had the will to bring new ones in. The fire in his empty belly was overwhelming, forcing him to lie doubled-up his side. As he feebly continued his barely audible singing, a strange landscape began to take shape before his eyes in the darkness. It was the top of a great escarpment, a very flat place, with a red sandy surface, overarched by a canopy of surreal blue-black. White clouds, shaped like none he had ever seen, hung like creamy, spired kingdoms in a sky with no sun. At the edge of this escarpment, a cliff plunged into a dark, tumbling and foaming sea. Near this edge struggled two great beasts. One he recognized as the fearful yet beloved visage of Makida-ishina. The other was foreign to him; a huge brute of a lizard, blotched in the earth tones of the burning desert. It hissed and lunged at the manitou, alternating with sweeping vicious tail blows to the manitou's legs. The manitou kept leaping aside, and drove its ivory horns home into the lizard's flanks whenever an opening came. Joseph put forth all his will, all his remaining strength, to enter his vision further. * * * * THE CENTIPEDE made short work of the tortuous passageway leading into the furnace room. It arrived inside the main air distribution center for the building, a large sheet metal box into which all of the building's ducting joined. For a moment, it became stuck as it struggled through the bars of a small grille covering a register in the ducting that opened into the furnace room. It writhed and twitched spasmodically for a long time, nearly exhausting itself. Then, with a final twisting effort, it slipped free and landed silently on the floor below. "You gave me a good chase, _balanda_," the Womabirri called out in the darkness. "You can rest now, you can rest." The raspy little voice sent surges of new fear-energy through Lance. He grasped the fire door handle and yanked downward. It didn't move. "Brother Perenti made a right mess of your door, you must forgive ‘im for ‘is clumsiness," the Womabirri called out. Lance began moving silently away from the door, to a corner of the room where he thought he remembered a light switch was located. "Where do white men go if they got no Dreaming?" the Womabirri continued. The voice was moving now. "Is it a lonely place you go, or does it all just end ‘ere?" Lance's extended hand crawled along the wall ahead of him, tracing an electrical conduit. After several long seconds he felt the conduit terminate in a metal box. On the face of the box he felt the tab of a light switch. He flicked it on and dropped to the floor. In the sudden glare of lights, Lance found his face inches away from the demented, grinning face of the Womabirri. He lurched backwards in terror, only to slam the back of his head against the wall. The Womabirri pressed the tip of his spear against Lance's throat. "A bloody good hunt, _balanda_," he said, and prepared to drive the spear home. * * * * NEW STRENGTH trickled into Joseph. The vision of the great battle had completely enveloped him, and the excitement of the struggle brought back an old warrior's spirit in him that had been dormant for many, many years. He felt ashamed at how far he had drifted from the spiritual connections that had been his birthright. Of course the bond was still there! It was as it had to be; man and manitou had always been connected; how could he have forgotten? _Nothing but gathering roots and saying prayers at gatherings...there used to be so much more! _ _This will change; a_ _new Caretaker must be trained when this is over; I have grown too tired and lazy_. Once again, Joseph could see through Makida-ishina's eyes; the shared vision became one. _Of course, it was so obvious! _Joseph could see so clearly now; in the struggle there were fleeting moments when the Perenti would become vulnerable. After it lashed out with its long tail, its flank would be exposed momentarily, and the beast's great jaws would be facing in the wrong direction to deliver a defensive bite. When the lizard next presented its side to the manitou, and began the undulating tail movements that always preceded a strike, the old man reached as far into the vision as his exhausted mind would allow; engaging the last and greatest battle he would ever fight. Joseph chose to lower his head and charge, ignoring the oncoming sweeping tail. Makida-ishina plowed into the monster's side and kept surging forward, pushing the invader back with all his remaining strength. The lizard thrashed and struggled, but could never fully regain its balance. Its tail lashed out again and again, shredding the manitou's ebony flanks, but Makida-ishina was too focused on his task to care. Behind the two struggling monsters, the precipitous drop of the escarpment cliff inched nearer. The lizard clawed furiously at the red earth, trying again and again to turn its head and secure one last crushing bite onto the neck of Makida-ishina, but the relentless forward push of the manitou prevented it. Then the Perenti had only a few feet of ground left behind it. In a last bid for life, it leapt into the air and sunk its claws into the wide shoulders of the manitou, clinging in a desperate, deadly embrace. The ground beneath the combatants began to crumble under their combined weight, and great red chunks of earth fell silently to the sea below, long seconds elapsing before they crashed into foaming black bedlam. Then the drone of yidakis filled the air, and the impassioned voice of a Pinturr story singer drifted across the wind. The lizard was caught by surprise by the familiar sound of the old song, and relaxed its grip ever so slightly. Makita-ishina felt the release, and shook its head mightily from side to side. The lizard slipped free and fell out into space, writhing in a frantic corkscrew motion as it descended. Makida-ishina backed carefully away from the cliff edge as fissures formed around and behind him. As he clambered backwards, at last on firm ground, a large section of the edge of the escarpment crumbled and slid into the sea below, following the Perenti to disappear into the churning waves. * * * * A STRANGE blend of songs filled the air of the furnace room. It was as if two recordings, one of a Na-inga chant and one of a Pinturr song-story, were being played simultaneously. The Womabirri dropped his spear and staggered backward, clutching the sides of his head. His eyes rolled upward in their sockets, and he fell to the floor, thrashing convulsively. His appearance began to change, his form blurring into a nondescript, swirling mass. The small shape grew more and more indistinct, like the surface detail of an ever-faster spinning top. Then, with a blinding flash of light, and the blur vanished. Lance stood in amazement for a moment, then cautiously walked over to where the Womabirri had disappeared. Only fine yellow dust remained, and a quickly fading familiar tangy, smoky smell. * * * * JOSEPH THREW back the deer hide door panel of his sweat lodge and greeted the rising sun. A proud smile filled the old warrior's face. It was time for some breakfast. * * * * THE EXHAUSTED men ceased their playing just as the hospital room door burst open. Six armed men in blue uniforms stormed in. They kicked the yidakis out of the hands of Makuma and Grubber as if they were weapons, sending them bouncing and rolling across the room. They leveled their drawn pistols on Charlie. "No worries, sirs," Charlie offered. All four of them were dragged over to a wall of the room and told to stand with their hands in the air. "Now what the bloody hell is going on in here?" one of the policeman screamed at Charlie. "Religious service, sir," he replied evenly. "Well you'll be getting your bloody coon arses out of here now," the policeman bellowed. "This establishment's got rules, and I don't bloody care if you gotta do your walkabouts in the middle of the effing street. You'll not be arseing around like this in this hospital. Now pick up your clutter here and get out." As Adam's friends were roughly escorted out of the room, Charlie turned and cast a hopeful look at Adam. "Maybe we sing ‘im back okay, brother. Wait an' see," he said. * * * * EVENING CAME, replacing the excitement of the afternoon with a depressing, quiet sameness. Adam pondered whether he and his friends had acted in time, or if sleep tonight would bring new torments. A quiet knocking was heard at his door. He had just been examined by hospital staff a half hour earlier, and wasn't expecting any attention for the remainder of the night. "Who's there?" he called out. "Nurse," came a half whispered response. "What d'ya need of me now?" The door swung slowly open to reveal a short figure in a nurse's uniform. Backlit by the corridor lighting, the visitor appeared as an odd silhouette. "I'm ‘ere to give you your massage," the nurse said, still very quietly. "What effing massage? Nobody's done that for me before," Adam protested as he watched the nurse move across the room. "Now, tell me what ‘urts and we'll give it a fix." The white nurse's hat came off, and unruly black hair tumbled down around a grinning dark face. The Womabirri dragged a chair up to the bedside, scrambled up onto it and leaned close to Adam's face, which was frozen in a mixed expression of shock and relief. "Well, it looks like you won't be going anyplace for a while, brother," the creature continued. "Got a lot of conversation to catch up on with you." -------- *Chapter 23* A SHAFT OF sunlight came through the office window, waking Lance from cramped, restless sleep in his chair. The computer on the desk was still quietly whirring away, the same spreadsheet appearing on its monitor that Lance had been working on when sleep had finally overtaken him. A message blinked at the bottom of the screen indicating e-mail was waiting for him. Lance fumbled through the layers of paper clutter on the desk until he found the computer's mouse and clicked it to bring up the message. _Got the package. Sorry you lot can't use the didgeridoo. How did you get it here so fast? Ran it back up to Pinturr country like you asked...honest. You two are such do-gooders. Love to Niecy and the kids. Cedric._ Lance sat back in his chair, at last truly at peace; now, finally, his dreams would be his own. Feeling a strange sensation around his neck, Lance reached up to find a thin strip of deer hide fastened there, with a small pouch attached to it. Pulling it over his head, he carefully pulled the pouch open. Inside he found a single white seashell nestled in a bed of tobacco. He looked out his window at the blood-red and orange morning sky. "Your welcome," he said quietly. After making a half-hearted attempt at organizing his desk, he stood, stretched and walked stiffly out of the office. As he turned to lock the door behind him, he noticed his office chair. There was a gaping hole through the back of it. "Maybe I can swap it with Brian's. He'll never notice," he muttered, and pulled the door shut. -------- *Epilogue* AN OLD MAN with dark red skin led a younger, lighter-skinned man and a young boy on a walk deep into the forest. It was a strange forest, where leaves seemed to burn with the color of a sunset, then let go of their trees to dance on an unruly wind. Each person carried a bundle of meat on his back, and they talked excitedly as they hiked along, the old one often gesticulating with his hands. His pace was almost too vigorous for the younger man, and the boy trailed well behind, wide-eyed in anticipation of what he was about to take part in. From a deep thicket, an ebony dark form watched approvingly. * * * * LI QUAN SAT up on his sleeping mat. It was still dark outside. The vision of his strange, vivid dream hung just beyond his eyes, almost still visible as he looked into the impenetrable darkness of the mountain forest outside his hut. When the sun was high, he thought, he would go to see the elders. Perhaps they would know what his dreams meant. *The End* ----------------------- Visit www.hardshell.com for information on additional titles by this and other authors.