Tainted Trail (33 page)

“Aiieee,” she said, rearranging her clothing. “Don't you ever tire of that story?”

The boys cried out for the story, and she hushed them all. “The crow people came the summer before Magic Boy was
born. All winter the crows had night roosted in the river bottoms, closer to the village than anyone could remember, so many more than ever before. It was like all the crows had invited their kin to come roost with them. Their
klaahs
drowned out the sound of the river and the wind.

“Always, that spring and summer, when you looked, you would see a crow. They watched us with their all-black eyes. You could not leave out food or string or shells. They would swoop in on black wings and grab it up. But if you picked up a bow to shoot them, before you could nock the arrow, the crow, he would fly away.

“One day, there was the sound of thunder in the clear sky, and it went on and on. Mother called, ‘Look, look,'and I look up and see a thunderbird. It came from the setting sun, and it carried a stolen firebrand in its beak, and the flames danced all around the thunderbird, but did not consume it. Everyone fell to the ground, afraid. The thunderbird swooped down and landed in the mountains. The ground shook, and the firebrand put up a great plume of smoke. All the crows flew up, shouting
klaah klaah,
as if they knew and were happy.

“We gathered around, asking, ‘What does this mean? Why did the thunderbird come without clouds? Why did it steal part of the sun?' And we did not notice until later that the crows had all gone away.

“The next day, the man of the crow people came. He was naked, tall, with spindly legs. His hair was stiff and black as a crow wing. And his eyes were all black, without any white, just like a crow.

“At first we did not fear him. He was only one and we were many. We had our bows and arrows, and he was naked. We met him with friendly words, and offers of gifts. He did not speak, only pointed, and the person at whom he pointed, they would drop dead as stones. He pointed, and my mother dropped. He pointed at my older sister Magpie Song, and she dropped. My brother Willow Branch shot the man with an arrow. The man pointed at Willow Branch and he dropped like a stone. The man pulled the arrow from him and did not even bleed. We saw we could not kill this man of the crow
people, and we ran away, scattering in all directions. I ran down to the river, and hid in the berry bushes.

“I heard a noise, and I think it was the man of the crow people. But it was Coyote. He crouched in the bushes with me, and he said, ‘Little female, take this stone and swallow it. When the man of the crow people points at you, you will not die.'

“So I swallowed the stone, and it sank down to settle like a lump in my stomach. I went then to help my family. The man of the crow people was picking up the dead and putting them in a stone boat that sat on land. He saw me, and he pointed at me, and I started to turn to stone. I fell down and got all stiff, but the stone in my stomach protected me. He put me in the boat with the others, and the boat rose up into the air and flew into the mountains.

“Deep in the ground was the thunderbird. It had dug down into the roots of the mountain to escape the sun, but the sun had killed it anyway. The man of the crow people took us into the body of the thunderbird, where another man of the crow people waited.

“The crow people tied me down so I could not move or see. They poked at the stone in my stomach, and they talked in their harsh crow tongue. A long time passed and suddenly a voice whispered ‘Little female, run! Run now, run away.' I was no longer tied, and there was sunlight seeping in from above. The mountains were shaking and dirt shifts in with the light. I climbed up and up and came out high in the mountains. I saw two boats of the crow people moving away. The crow people were shooting arrows with brilliant, long, red feathering at each other. They went toward the rising sun, so I went the other way hoping to find the village. I traveled for a short time when there was a great noise behind me, and the earth shook, and a fire roared up.

“I ran until I could run no more, and I slept, and ran more. Many days I traveled until I found my way back to the village. Those who were not killed had hunted down the crows and killed all that they could find.

“But I find that Coyote tricked me. The stone in my belly grew and grew, and after nine moons, Magic Boy was born.”

A jump, memories lost.

. . . must be the “white man” that they had been hearing about. The traveling party had a score of men, and a woman that looked like a Shoshone, a baby strapped to her back. By count of limbs, eyes, nose, and mouth, the white man seemed like any other man. He pressed through the crowd of villagers, fingers outstretched, curious to see if the men would “feel” the same as other men, or would they would be totally different, like a frog felt totally different than a fish although both lived in the water. A woman's hand clasped tight on his. Traced through her genes were many that matched his own. “Uncle,” she murmured, “don't draw attention from the strangers. It is said that they go downriver next.” Downriver was where the various neighboring tribes sold slaves. He gave her a disgusted look, partially because he wanted to explore, but mostly he could not imagine anyone wanting a stunted freak like him, the boy that didn't grow up . . .

No record of the woman's name, or her true relationship to Magic Boy remained. Had her father been one of the little boys that wrestled like wolf cubs with him? Or was she more distantly related, a granddaughter, or great-granddaughter of his brothers? There was no time to wonder, for even as one memory snapped off, another blasted full-bloom into his mind.

. . . They lay on the riverbank, dipping fingers into the water, watching the minnows dart away. Far off, a train whistle went unnoticed, yet recorded into his memory. The boy beside him grunted, rolled onto his back, and watched clouds drift overhead. “What do you think of Hannah?”

Magic Boy winced inside—it was the beginning of the end. They always grew up to leave him behind, going on to things he could never hope to have . . .

A jump, memories lost.

For once the memory caught him in a moment of reflection. He sat in high in the mountains, letting the teenager beside him catch his breath.

At least one benefit of living for a long time,
he thought,
is seeing the pattern of life, and taking advantage of it.

He thought then, of his mother's children, grandchildren,
great-grandchildren, great-great-grandchildren, and even her great-great-great-grandchildren. They numbered in the hundreds, being without fail healthy, wise, fertile, and long-lived. A strong law-abiding streak ran through them, and they became stuffy at an early age. Luckily, each generation had its troublemaker, and thinking of each in turn, from his baby brother to the most recent, Jay, he decided that he loved them most of all.

Take this adventure to find gold in the mountain streams. Jay's uncles and cousins would all argue that it wasn't worth the risk; a charge of claim jumping could land them both in jail, if they weren't hung out of hand. Jay only pointed out that Magic Boy could sense gold in the water just by touch, and thus they could find it quickly. Anyone watching would think they were boys on a lark, finding nothing. It was riskier than breeding horses, where a hundred years of experience allowed Magic Boy to coax superior colts out of only ordinary-seeming parents. In one day, though, they could find more gold than several colts would bring the family.

At my age,
Magic Boy thought guiltily,
I shouldn't have allowed my own boredom to let him talk me into this.

By then Jay turned and flashed him a grin that lifted away all sour thoughts. “Do you know, Uncle, I've been thinking.”

Magic Boy laughed, knowing full well how this would end.

“What?” Jay asked, caught by surprise.

“Promise me, Jay, when it is your son that's dragged me off to some misadventure, you will not say ‘Uncle, you're supposed to keep him out of trouble!' Ones like you cannot be kept out of trouble. In fact, I think it might be a mistake even to try. It would be like keeping fish out of water.”

Jay laughed, showing the sound white teeth that marked him as a child of Kicking Deer. “I promise. Now, look over there.” Jay pointed out the depression that later would be known as Big Sink. “Does that not sound like the rocks that your mother talked about when she climbed out of the thunderbird's body, fleeing the crow people? Let's see if we can find the way down to the thunderbird.”

And off Jay went. Magic Boy followed, ambivalent about
the whole adventure. It sounded dangerous. On the other hand, Magic Boy could feel the strangeness in him. He was partly his mother, and in her many children he could find whispers of himself. He could find no match, though, for the other parts of him. Not coyote. Not crow. Not of anything that crawled in the dirt, swam in the water, ran the earth, or flew in the sky.

In the thunderbird's body, deep in the earth, perhaps there would be a clue of what he was.

It took all of Magic Boy's abilities to locate the narrow, chimneylike cave. Leaning down in, he found ancient traces of his mother's passage . . .

The memory ended. Only from what Jared told him did he have any hint that he and Jay actually ventured down the hole. Other memories were unfolding, competing for attention. Ukiah tried to hold onto the memory a little longer, treasuring the affection he felt for Jay.

Jared was Jay's great-grandson, he realized with dismay. Tiny flickers of memory gave him Jared's bloodline of Jay, Jesse, and then Jared's father, Jacob.

Then the next memory shared avalanched into his mind. This one thankfully degraded from the razor-sharp details of his normal memory—for Ukiah could only watch in dismay as Magic Boy pursued the lone Ontongard through the streets of Pendleton. His earlier version thought only of finally finding someone that felt just like himself, and forgot all the dangers of his conception. Lost was that moment when the Ontongard turned to attack, or how they ended up in the underground passages of Pendleton. The memories stuttered like a badly edited horror film as Magic Boy fled through the endless, twisting dark in an attempt to escape. The creature that only looked human chased him. Cornered him in the butcher shop. Reared over him. Ax. Ax. Ax. Ax . . .

Ukiah jerked away in horror from the memory and fell into another, saner one.

. . . he was stuck on the blasted doorstep again. The wood was deeply scored from the countless times he been there before, unable to climb up the height of his shell without repeated attempts. He felt vibrations of someone coming. He
blinked nearsightedly behind him, sniffing. Jared. He waited patiently, and sure enough a hand slipped under his shell and lifted him up to sit him on the kitchen floor.

“There you go, slowpoke,” Jared rumbled far overhead, and then leaned down to tap gently on his nose . . .

Ukiah blinked at the memory.

Jared! And there—from the rhythmic creaking of bedsprings, to the break of Claire's water, to an infant's cry, to a toddler's curious fingers, to a boy's confidences, to a man's protective stance—unfolded Jared's life. This was a Jared he had only seen glimpses of, a man physically strong yet gentle, determined to do what was right and good, with a capacity to love deep and strong.

Oh, God, Jared!
Ukiah threw his head back and howled the sudden and complete knowing of the nephew he had betrayed and lost.

 

Ukiah heard Max's hurried footsteps approaching, but couldn't take his hands from his eyes. His tears felt like fire burning under his eyelids.

Max touched him lightly on the shoulder. “You okay?”

Ukiah nodded.

“You know,” Max said softly, “if the machine works on Ontongard, it will work on Pack too.”

Ukiah looked up at Max, blinking, through the shimmering pain of unspent tears. “You mean change Jared back?”

“Yes.” Max glanced about. “So it worked? You took in the turtle?”

Ukiah stood up, scrubbing at his eyes. “Yeah. I remember where the ship is.”

Big Sink, Blue Mountains, Eastern Oregon
Saturday, September 4, 2004

Magic Boy and Jay must have moved rocks to block the hole, afterward, because a stack of stones blocked the entrance. Max, Sam, and Ukiah shifted the stack aside to reveal the opening.

Max measured the gas content of the fissure.

“You always bring all this to find lost hikers?” Sam asked, eyeing duffel bags of equipment.

“Hikers stick their noses into some of the most unlikely holes.” Max clicked the detector to the natural-gas setting. “The dangerous thing about holes in the ground is that there's no good reason for oxygen to be present if another, heavier, gas has filled the hole up.”

“And even the kid can't survive without oxygen?” Sam asked.

“I'd rather not test that theory.” Max folded away the gauge. He took out his lighter, snapped it on and held it in the sheltered opening of the fissure. The flame flickered and danced. “The air is good down as far as I can drop the probe. There seems to be a strong updraft, so there must be another opening and this one is acting like a chimney.”

“Great!” Ukiah cinched tight his climbing harness. “It's a going to be a tight enough fit without oxygen tanks—which we don't have.”