Edgewise (24 page)

Lily took a cautious step to the left, and then another, and Shooks followed her. She reached the trees and pushed aside a branch with her upraised elbow. The branch snapped sharply, and instantly the brindled wolf trotted forward two or three paces, and all of the other wolves came nearer too.

“Jesus,” said Shooks.

“Let's keep going,” Lily urged him. “It looks like they're curious, more than anything else. I mean, they would have gone for us by now, couldn't they, if they really wanted to kill us?”

“Don't ask me. I'm not a wolf expert. Maybe they're just playing with their food.”

“I'll tell you what,” said Lily, “we won't edge any more; we'll simply start walking, as fast as we can. We don't want to show them we're afraid.”

Shooks looked around them. The wolves were everywhere, their yellow eyes unblinking, long strings of saliva swinging from their jaws. “You're right,” he said. “We might be filling our shorts in sheer terror but we don't want to give them the satisfaction of knowing it, do we?”

“Okay then, let's go.”

Lily took the first step, and then they began to walk away from the clearing, as briskly as the briars would allow. Immediately the wolves began to follow them. On either side Lily could see their long gray shapes flowing between the silver birches. Somehow they didn't seem like real wolves—more like the wolves that you would see in nightmares, weirdly misshapen.

Shooks turned his head. “They're right behind us,” he said, between clenched teeth. “That big black-and-brown bastard—he's almost close enough to take a bite out of my ankle.”

Lily didn't look back. She was trying hard not panic. She knew that fear was infectious, especially among animals. Dogs often attacked people because they could sense they were frightened of them. She had seen horses go berserk, when they smelled human fear, and cattle collide with barbed-wire fences.

“Come on, John,” she urged him.

They started almost power-walking, and then they started jogging. The wolves kept up with them, loping faster and faster. Lily glanced to her left, and she was sure that she glimpsed one of the wolves rise up on to its hind legs and start running like a man. It was then that she lost any sense of control, and started to sprint.

“Lily!” shouted Shooks. “For Christ's sake!”

But now terror had taken over, and adrenaline was surging through her body, and all she wanted to do was get out of there alive. The wolves were chasing close behind her. She could hear their claws clattering over the briars. Shooks was yelling, “Lily!
Lily!
” but she knew what would happen if she stopped and turned back.

She caught her ankle on a root, and fell heavily sideways, jarring her shoulder against a rock. Shooks shouted, “Lily!” again. She looked up and saw the trees spinning. Then a huge furry body jumped on top of her, heavy and rancid and snarling, and she felt claws scrabbling against her right cheek. They tore right into her skin, just beneath her eye, wrenching the flesh away from her cheekbone.

She screamed, but she didn't know if she was screaming out loud. Her right cheek was clawed away from her face, and thrown aside, like a bloody piece of rag. Then a mouthful of crowded, razor-sharp teeth bit into the bridge of her nose, with a crunch that penetrated her whole being. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't even shout out, because it hurt so much. She could hear Shooks still screaming out, “Lily! Lily!” but there was nothing she could do to save him, because the gray wolves were already ripping at her clothes, tearing off her coat and reducing her sweater to multicolored rags.

The gray wolves worried the muscles from her thighbones, tearing them downward with a crackling noise, and she experienced an agony so intense that she prayed that she would die, then and there. Then they clawed their way into her stomach, tearing open the skin and the muscle, and thrusting their snouts into her intestines. She could actually feel them doing it, gnawing at her ribs, and it made her jump, and jump, because her nerves were so sensitive. With horrified disbelief, she saw one of the wolves dragging out her intestines, across the snow. They looked like red-and-yellow hosepipes. She could see blood everywhere, hers and John Shooks's, although Shooks had been silent for a long time now, and she could only suppose that he was already dead.

She let her head drop back on to the snow. The sky above her was still so blue. She realized that she was dead, too, or as close to death as it was possible to be. The wolves had torn her to pieces, pulled her apart, and she was nothing more than the dying remnants of Lily Blake, the last dwindling spark of a woman who had once loved her family, and her husband, and who now lay flat on her back in a forest in Minnesota, breathing her last few bubbling breaths.

She reached across with her left hand, and she could feel her exposed rib cage, and her lungs, slippery and bloody, but still inflating.

“I should pray,” she whispered.

“
Why?
” said a man's voice.

“I'm dying. I should say the Lord's Prayer, at least.”

“You're not dying.”

Lily opened her eyes. The sun was still shining between the trees. The birds were still twittering, and somebody was making a staccato tapping noise that sounded like a coded message.

George Iron Walker was kneeling beside her, in his black leather coat. He wore a single silver earring that flashed in the sunlight.

“You're not dying,” he repeated.

Lily lifted her head and looked down at her body. Her fur coat was still intact. She felt her face. Her face was still intact, too.

“What happened?”

George Iron Walker held out his hand. “Let me help you up.”

“I can get up myself, thank you. What the hell happened? Where are the wolves?”

“Wolves?”

She stood up, though she tilted sideways and nearly lost her balance. She felt bruised and winded, as if she had been jostled and trampled by a panicking crowd. About thirty feet away, John Shooks was kneeling upright in the snow, angrily brushing his sleeves.

“John!”
called Lily. “Are you okay?”

Shooks staggered to his feet, and then took two hops toward her. “Me? I'm fucking terrific. I have a ton of snow all down the back of my neck, and I've twisted my goddamned ankle. You can't see my Ray-Bans anywhere, can you? Lost my fucking Ray-Bans.”

Lily looked around. It was only then that she saw Hazawin, half-camouflaged by patches of shadow and sunlight. She was standing between the silver birches, holding a collection of birch twigs in one hand, and two human thighbones in the other, decorated with feathers and beads.

“You saw wolves?” said George.

Lily turned to him. He was standing uncomfortably close. “I'm not sure
what
I saw. I thought . . .”

George gave her a strangely humorless smile. “The forests are full of dreams, Lily, but you know what dreams are like. Some of them come true, but most of them don't.”

“This wasn't any dream, George. This was a nightmare.” She looked around again, and then she said, “I heard a young child crying. I thought it might be my nephew William.”

“We need to talk,” said George. “That was why you came here, wasn't it?” He held her with a steady gaze, as if he were daring her to look away. It had only been a few days since she had seen him last, but she had forgotten how handsome he was. It was almost impossible to believe that a man so good-looking could be so ruthless.

“You're telling me that
was
William?”

“Yes, Lily, it almost certainly was.”

“Is he all right? Tell me! He's not hurt, is he?”

“For the time being, he's fine.”

“What do you mean ‘for the time being?' Where is he? You can't keep him! That's kidnapping!”

“You can call it whatever you like. Personally, I call it insurance. We made a bargain, you and I, and I need to know that you're going to keep your side of it.”

“You killed my sister! You killed my brother-in-law! You killed my ex-husband! You killed them! You had them torn to pieces, you bastard! You're nothing but a
savage
!”

John Shooks had been hopping toward them, but when he heard Lily say that, he stopped, and held back, with a wary expression on his face.

But George kept up that humorless smile. “I don't mind if you call me a savage, Lily. Savage means fierce and it also means untamed—and that, to a Sioux, is a high compliment. Not only that, ‘savage' comes from the Latin word
silva
—‘of the woods.' And right here—in the woods—this is where my heart is, and my spirit. So—yes—you're right. I
am
a savage.”

“Where is he?” said Lily. “Where's little William? You haven't left him out here on his own?”

“Oh, he's safe enough. But you could search through the forest for months and you'd never find him.”

Shooks said, “The Wendigo has him, doesn't he?”

George didn't answer, but Lily demanded, “Is that true?”

“You've seen the Wendigo,” Shooks told her, “partly here, partly someplace else. If you ask me, that's where it's taken your nephew, and that's why you'll never be able to find him.”

“This is madness,” said Lily. “What are you talking about, ‘someplace else?' ”

“You believe in God, don't you?” asked George. “You believe in heaven?”

“I don't think so. Not any more.”

“Well, let's just say that there are places that exist, but which can't be seen. Your William is in a place like that.”

“Then I want him back, and I want him back
now
.”

“You can have him back, Lily, I promise you. Give me the title to the land at Mystery Lake, and I will lift him into your arms myself. But let me warn you—I can't wait too much longer. I have to have that title by sundown, day after tomorrow.”

“And what if I can't get it for you?”

“Then the Wendigo will live up to its name.”

“You're crazy!” Lily screamed at him. “You're crazy and you're totally sick! If you so much as touch one hair on that little boy's head, I'll kill you myself!”

George raised his hand. “Yelling at me won't change anything.
You
set all of this in motion, not me. You were the one who wanted her children back. You were the one who promised to give me the land.”

“Well, I can't,” said Lily. She was so furious that her eyes were filled with tears. “That's why I came here today. I can't get the title. I thought I could, but I can't.”

She took off her glove and wiped her eyes with her fingers. “I came to ask you if you could accept someplace else instead. Someplace just as sacred, or meaningful, if you know of one. But just not
that
particular place.”

Hazawin approached them, and she looked almost as if she were gliding across the snow. Shooks hobbled two or three steps away from her.

“I'm sorry, Lily, it has to be Mystery Lake. Nowhere else will do. It was there that Haokah appeared to Little Crow, and there was a reason for that.”

“Aren't you
listening
?” Lily retorted. “Philip Kraussman simply won't give it to me. He won't even consider
selling
it. He says the people who are going to buy properties there—they won't want a constant reminder that Mystery Lake was stolen from the Sioux.”

“Of course they won't,” said George. “Imagine how
uncomfortable
they would feel, sipping their margaritas in their backyards, knowing that the soil beneath their sundecks was still soaked with the blood of hundreds of Native Americans—men, women and little children.”

“Are you looking for some kind of
revenge
?” Lily challenged him. “Is that why you're insisting on this particular piece of land?”

“Revenge? You really underestimate me, don't you, Lily? There is no act of revenge you can possibly think of that could compensate for what the white man did to the Mdewakanton. I want this particular piece of land because it's
unique.
There is no other location in the whole of Minnesota which has the same mystical and geographical qualities.”

“So I can't change your mind?”

“No.”

“What if I call in the FBI, and have you arrested for kidnapping, and for tearing people apart, and extortion, and fraud, and deception?”

“But you won't. You will bring me the title to Mystery Lake, before sundown the day after tomorrow. And then we'll be quits.”

Lily didn't know what more to say. John Shooks limped up to her and took hold of her hand, and said, “Come on, Lily. We can find a way.”

Lily hesitated for a moment, and then she said, “Okay.”

Without saying another word to George Iron Walker or Hazawin, she turned and made her way back down the slope, with Shooks following close behind her. The sun was burning the tops of the fir trees now, and it was beginning to grow darker, and chillier. Lily looked back just once, and saw George and Hazawin still standing by the tree line, watching them. Shooks opened the creaky passenger door of his Buick for her, and she climbed in, but almost immediately she tried to get out again.

“Try to keep it together,” Shooks urged her. “We'll get this sorted, one way or another.”

“But how can I just drive off and leave little William in the hands of people like that? He must be terrified! And this ‘someplace else'—this ‘other existence'—I don't understand that at all. Where actually
is
he?”

Shooks started the engine. “The Sioux believe that everything that you see in the real world is reflected in the spirit world, like a mirror. Underneath the soles of our feet, there's a whole other Minnesota, upside down, except that this Minnesota is the way that it used to be, before the white devils came. And there's a sideways world, too, right next to us—kind of like
Alice Through the Looking Glass
. There's another Lily, sitting right next to you, and another me. That's the world that the Wendigo lives in—well,
half
lives in. And that's where your nephew will be right now.”