"I will tell it as it had been told to me. Before Coyote ate the moon before the first crystal had been forged by the ancients, before even the time of Dragons, there was only endless water. A vast ocean. I know you cannot imagine that, the biggest body of water you've seen is the hot spring spa down below but take that water and fill the outside with it. Fill it up until it covers even the mountains. That is the ocean. Humans, the very first people did not live there but in the heavens, among the clouds."
"But that’s-" Sin began only to be hushed by Mei.
Ishe continued, "It was the first village where The All Father and the Sky Woman lived happily for several forevers. Yet the pair grew distant. Sky woman grew with child and the All Father grew dark and jealous. He had a dream that showed him what to do. For in those days dreams were always true. In this first village stood a massive tree, its roots reached deep into their world. When the All Father pulled it from the ground even his eyes could not see the bottom. Into this hole they cast Sky Woman."
"She fell for days but she too had received a dream, she clasp stolen earth in her fist and hid seeds in the seams of her clothing. The darkness of the hole gave way to daylight. Below her stretched an endless ocean. Yet as she fell visitor approached her. First among them was the Death Panther. Dark as the sky is bright, she brought Sky Woman five gifts, a mortar, a pestle, corn seeds, a crystallized flame and finally her wisdom. Sky Woman was honored by the gifts but confused, for the Death Panther had been driven out of heaven long ago. "This world shall be different from that above." The Death Panther told her.
"Yes it shall be." Sky Woman said as she studied the Death Panther's wisdom, that for life to truly flourish there must be Death. She promised that the people she would bare would celebrate both Death and Life as two would walk together in this new land.
The pair parted and Sky Woman would not see the Death Panther again until the day of her death.
The animals of feather and Scale gathered, they knew the weavings of the all much better than Sky woman and worked together to save her. They bid the great turtle to rise from the ocean to catch her. Frog brought mud up from under the ocean and from it they turned the turtle into an island."
Clapping interrupted the story, the repetitive slap of a single palm being beat like a drum.
Ishe blinked, she had been so involved with seeing the story in her head that she had not paid attention to her audience. The two girls at sat down and leaned against each other, eyes closed. Over them stood a man with yellow eyes and painfully slender features. His skin was dark burnished copper, textured rendered leathery by the sun, clad in a blue denim jacket decorated with twin howling coyotes embroidered on either side in light brown thread. Beneath that strangeness a mishmash of tribal influences warred among his clothing, in fact it shifted between the heavily beaded work of the Low Rivers wampum belts to Buffalo wool riding pants as she watched.
There was no mistaking the grin for anyone other than Coyote.
Chapter 14
"Good story." He laughed, his yellow eyes gleamed with mania. "Although if it had more me in it perhaps your audience would have appreciated it more."
Ishe did not remember standing up found herself on her feet, gripping the bars in front of her. Now she tightened her grip in order to hold herself against the fear as Coyote stepped around the sleeping girls. Ishe mined past the fear and found a rich vein of anger. "You!" She growled, "Where have you been?"
He shrugged, "Oh you know, around. That how it works. I'm always around, playing in the shadows at the corner of your eyes, whispering the occasional brilliant idea." His eyebrows danced on his forehead, then stopped, furrowing in concern. He pulled a large book from the inside of his jacket. "White Buffalo Woman always makes this look so easy." He muttered as he flipped through the pages. "Yes," He read out loud. "Direct your followers through subtle means, work minor miracles out of their sight and never ever appear directly to them while they wake. Use dreams instead Coyote."
"I am using dreams!" Coyote snarled at the book and tossed it over his shoulder. It arced through the air and landed with a distance thump. "What's the difference between their dreams and your dreams. As long as somebody's dreaming here." Reaching back into his jacket Coyote withdrew a three legged bar stool, set it on the ground and perched on it. As he did so he became a coyote, clothes fading to dusky fur, yet his posture remained human, canine joints bending in directions that aped a man. Only his blue jacket remains. "But enough bout that. What we do you do with you Little Rhino?"
Ishe open her mouth to protest but only a strange bellow came out. The world changed as blink, too much of it slammed into her mind, all the bars of the cage showed themselves now. Her hands lost their purchase and slammed into the cage floor with a heavy clang. Something prodded her rear end. A roar of confusion and fear rolled out of her too thick lungs. Instinctively she whipped her now massive head upward and an the shock of a forceful impact jolted through her face. Now what she had hit held her horn fast. Bawling with panic, Ishe stomped her hooves and kicked the bars behind her.
"Hehehehe!" Coyote howled with a laughter and fell backward off his stool.
The cage did not yield to her hooves nor did it release what Ishe's sluggishly realized was her horn. What did you do to me?! She attempted to scream but it came as a deep grunt.
Coyote popped up onto all fours and trotted over with a toothy grin. "Aww did the Little Rhino get herself a little stuck?"
Stop mocking me and help me! Ishe snorted through unfamiliar nostrils.
Coyote squeezed his slender body through the bars, his fur turning an electric blue of plains tribe paints. "What do you take me for? A miracle worker?"
You're my god! Help me! Ishe thought, no, prayed at the Coyote.
"Are you sure?" He asked as he hopped up onto Ishe's back, she could barely feel the weight. "That didn't work out too well for your mother. Are you sure you want me as your god? I don't know if we're a good fit." Ishe felt a small amount of pressure on her head, four points it and saw the underside of his coat above her. She looked forward and focused, finally seeing the edges of her horn wedged between two of the bars. Coyote's long tongue flicked out of his mouth, twisting around one bar then the other until they shined with slickness. He spoke between licks, "After all I'm the amazing Coyote *lick* And you’re a rhinoceros. *Lick* Not even a particularly big one. *Lick* Not that your mother was perfect. *Lick* The Silver Fox? Really now, should have been the Silver Coyote. *Lick* Then she would have been real pretty when I came by." He hopped off. "Pull my daughter."
With a jerk the horn came free and so did Ishe. She landed in the center of the cage on her unarmored, human ass with a loud, "Oof!" Hands flowed over herself. They met the scratchy wool of her black coat. Her nose ached as if someone had closed it in a vice but was once again soft flesh, and not a massive horn. It hurt to touch but she rubbed it anyway, mind still echoing with alien sensations of being the beast of her nick name.
Coyote sat across from her in the cage. Still canine although more man sized, long limbs twisted into a lotus position. Watching her with that amused smirk. He seemed to be in no hurry to leave.
Ishe finally spoke her words surprised her. "Why did you let mother die?"
"Heee! Let her die?" He let out a weedy wheeze of a laugh. "Girl, I told her how to survive." The yellow eyes went hard, "She simply needed to offer you and your sister to this Horned Serpent." The world outside the cage darkened to pitch black and Coyote dissolved back into it, his color fading into a shadow. "But she refused my council," As he spoke great white shapes moved in the dark in a line that encircled the cage. "And died!" the voice boomed from all around her, rattling the metal that encircled her. A giant eye opened above the cage, blazing like a mad sun.
"It changed nothing!" The voice dripped with accusation. "You sit a cage, and you cage your sister with your big dumb life."
Rage gripped Ishe.
Click. Slam. Aim. Fire. A shell of brilliant white arced
out from the barrel of a hand cannon that had not been there a moment ago. The eye of the Moon crusher widened as the shell struck it dead center. It pierced the surface of the pupil as if were a hole, shrinking to a mere speck. It winked out of sight. Then something distant exploded, a ball of blue light expanded with a rush, filling the eye. It strained against the blazing iris for moment. The giant Coyote let out a deep canine Yipe as if the very earth had uttered it before the eye exploded in a fountain of bloody puss. The Moon killer leapt up on legs so massive that Yaz'noth would be dwarfed by his toe nails. Yipe! Yipe! Yipe! He cried as he ran, his mountainous paws kicking up waves of bleached white bones.
Skulls washed up toward her, empty sockets glowing with hate. Their flesh flashed through her mind, a merchant captain she'd hurled over the side with a thunder shell, a soldier she'd gifted with the blade of her hatchet and so many more. Entire crews of ships that had been downed by her cannons. "Murder!" They shouted as the wave of bones grew into a wave that grew into a towering tsunami.
"It can't be that many!" Ishe shouted before the bones crashed down on top of her. They hit the cage, sounding like a hail of dice pounding into a metal cup.
Ishe threw her arm in front of her eyes and felt bones glance off her arm and chest. She expected to wake up now. Yet when she lowered her arm she found herself in a sea of bones. The cage bobbed up and down as Ishe brushed the feeble grip of a skeletal hand from her body and kicked it back through the bars.
Among the white of the bones, flames began to spark. Each one blossomed into a canine composed of flame. Coyotes, or more drawings of Coyote given life. Some stood on two feet, men with a canine head, others stood on four, their bodies abstract swirls.
One burst into life right near the door of the cage. A blue flame, an old man, long hair cascading out from under the headdress of made from a coyote skin. Both the eyes of the man and the headdress studied her. Stories that Madria would tell Ishe and Yaki in the dark of the captain's cabin whirled up in her mind. It had always been so confusing, sometimes Coyote had great powers, other times he seemed to be nothing more than a man named Coyote.
The Cage swung open. At the old man's beckoning Ishe stepped out of the cage, the bones rattled threateningly beneath her boots but no grasping hands reached for her ankles. As she walked the Coyotes watched her and her mind began to place them to the stories. A coyote archer who had abandoned the wolves to become stars, the coyote in a dress, disguising himself as a woman to seduce a naive maiden and a coyote who's outline shifted as if he were ready to race the very wind were among the multitude. Each story she knew had a different one. The bone sea stilled in her path. The Old man walked beside her, the others flickered into him as passed near them but they were not consumed, rather they all overlapped the other, when Ishe look at him she could clearly see all of them, not blended, merely all sharing the same space.
Ishe walked over a swell of bone that had hardened into a hill and found a depression on the other side, the sea had been broken here, a crater had formed. At its bottom a naked figure frantically grabbed up bones and hurled to the rim where they rejoined the sea. Her entire being was as if the color had stripped away from her. "Mother!" Ishe cried, leaping down into the crater, the bones rebelled chattering and biting at her boots, making each step a strain. "Mother!" Ishe called again.
Madria did gave no sign of hearing her as she pulled a screaming skull from the ground. It twisted and latched on to her wrist as she made to throw it. "Back biting, iron hearted whelp!" Madria cursed, "Let go!" With a wipe of skeletal fingers, the offending jaw snapped away from the skull. It fell to ground and began to roll away. Madria lashed out with arcing kick and punted the over the rim of crater, into the sea.
Hissing in pain, Madria clapped a hand over her wrist where gray ichor flowed and stained the bleach white bone below. Only then did her eyes see Ishe, the only color that Madria possessed were the yellow of her eyes. Yet they were the same eyes Ishe had always known, swift and calculating. Not cruel but not one to blink when she deemed cruelty required. "Help me dig daughter. Four hands are better than two."
Calling the things that extended from Madria's wrists hands was a generous. The skin of her fingers had swollen massively and raw bone protruded from the ruined finger tips.
Instinctively Ishe bent to obey. Her hand closing around the first bone and she felt the tacky stickiness of drying blood squeeze between her fingers. Images played in her mind, a flash of the dusky blue of Valhalla naval uniforms a katana sheering through a skull above surprised eyes. Shock, she turned and look at her mother who smiled with sharp canine teeth. "These are not my bones." Ishe said.
"My pile is your pile Little Rhino, dig, for there is no time for the world to forget them."
Ishe blinked to find Sin looking at her with a confused expression. "Why would a turtle volunteer to be an island?"
Chapter 15
Yaki winced as the water boiled off her hands. The purification ritual didn't hurt but the stinging feeling didn't make it pleasant. One would think that if she was the one that called the kami to bless the water, it wouldn't take offense. She sipped it, drinking from the dipper instead of her and that awful fizzy feeling spread through her chest. Exhaling, a stream of white steam blew from her mouth. A cough drove the remainder from her nose.
Closing her eyes, Yaki waited, listening to the Ka-clink Ka-clink of her heart and happy burble of her stomach which heartily approved of flat bread and plains rider stew.
A violent twitch in her chest pitched her forward, slamming her hands onto the dirt. A retching seized and something clenched inside her, not her stomach, a squeezing sensation next to her heart. Yaki spat out yet another chunk of blackened meat. A fresh wave of searing followed, like she poked an open wound. She beat her fist against her thigh as the wave crested and then slowly subsided back down to warm ache in her chest.
Finding another medical crystal would make everything easier. She reflected that without the pain she probably wouldn't have snapped into a teary mess earlier. And I still haven't fixed my makeup. Nor stabbed Guro. Yaki laid out the bundle of iron wood gardening tools, she had purchased. Picked up the small rake and tried to push that nearly worshipful look the Guro had given her out of her mental space. Whatever it was, whatever Yaz'Noth had put in her, she couldn't change it now. It didn't matter. Ishe mattered. A quiet laugh escaped her as she stood. How things change. She reflected, gazing at Grandmother Willow. The sun flirted with the tops of the mountains and cast shadows into the garden. Whatever vitality she managed to gather had fled and drooped like an elderly woman who had not managed to get out of bed. Black fungus dotted her leaves like liver spots and choking vines strangled her branches.
"Are you making yourself look extra pathetic so to make me feel guilty for leaving?" Yaki chided the tree. She discarded the rake for a set of shears, iron wood with steel inlayed blades, not the most expensive pair but they'd do the job for an afternoon. She knelt and examined the base of the tree where the suffocating vines erupted from the ground. Frowning, she clipped each vine at its base and then one by one peeled each one away. Chattering as she went along "I shouldn't be doing this. I clean you up and it will be like a beacon to anyone who bothers to peek in here." The vines came slowly, reluctantly. "However, by the look of it no one's actually been here since I left." One vine erupted in sharp thorns as she reached for it, another wrapped around her arm like a disturbed python. Yaki did not yield to either tactic so the rest simply clung stubbornly to the Willow forcing Yaki to use her entire body weight to snap their little digging tendrils. "That the answer isn't it?" Yaki asked after a long period of saying little but grunts of effort. "I have to contact people I know."
The branches shivered in agreement.
"If I do that, the Steward is going to know I'm here and then I'll spend however long it takes to convince him that mothers dead in the hospitality of the palace." Yaki jerked hard on a vine and it snapped in twain. The entire tree rocked back as the trunk
had been hit by a sledgehammer. "Yes dead. As in incinerated." The entire story flowed out of her like a bad bottle of wine. The Dragon, her metal heart, the mission to return the quicksilver in exchange for Ishe's life, her desperate throwing herself at a guard.
Grandmother Willow listened with the same stillness she always had when Yaki had told the ancient tree her secrets as a child. Usually silly, petty things. How she had gotten Ishe in trouble with mother, which boys she liked and the vicious rumors she had started at about her rivals. Once she finished, a heaviness left her. To speak the truth always felt unburdening. The Web of lies she lived in always felt compressive.
She finished as she pruned the last of the deceased branches away. "Now I'm unsure what to do." The sun had gone from flirting to embracing the mountain tops.
Closing her eyes, she listened for grandmother's voice among the wind. She breathed in and out. Yet no voice came to her. Yaki sighed, opened her eyes and picked up her trimmers. "Fine, don't talk to me. I understand. Ishe comes first for me and the city for you." Yaki began to stow her tools.
Then she caught movement beyond the limbs of the tree. There on the other side of the path a weasel stood, nose in the air. Its fur the pure white but red markings on its face around its eyes and nose clued that the creature was kin to the Tanooki. A seeker, a favor pet of House Shibata, known not for their ability to scent but track wayward Kami.
Yaki reached for her sword, slowly pointing the scabbard toward the animal. The world darkened as something snapped in the branches. The seeker's body tensed and then darted off back towards the entrance of the Grove. "A tithe of Iron." Yaki pushed to her feet and gave chase, drawing her sword and pointing it toward the fuzzy white noodle. The purple crystal flared and the blade shot out. With a squeak the little weasel flung itself out of the way at the last moment. It began to zig zag furiously, like a little white lightning bolt. Skirts hiked up in one hand Yaki ran after it, crashing through the same tree limbs she had so carefully stepped around on her way in. The branches artfully snagging on her hair and dress as the squirrels in the trees chittered in laughter.
Dragon's Cage Page 7
