A Plague of Angels

by Sheri S. Tepper

  When all was quiet, he stood up, feeling his head with his hands, assuring himself he was largely undamaged, though emotionally he felt he’d been maimed. His ears seemed intact. He wasn’t bleeding, and he could hear the resumed sound of bird and insect. There was residual pain in his head, but that was left over from the assault by the gangers. Unlike the helpless birds, he’d managed to block the worst of it with his hands.

  Thrashing sounds from the canyon below him drew his eyes in that direction in time to see a large furriness emerging from the brush. It was blackish brown, the size of a half-grown cow, and it pawed at its doglike head as though in pain.

  “Bear,” Abasio’s mind told him wonderingly. Except for the distant forms spotted during his journey south, he had never seen the actual animal. He couldn’t remember reading about bears being dangerous, though the thing below him obviously could be. It weighed as much as two large men, at least, and no doubt there were formidable teeth in that muzzle.

  The wind blew softly past Abasio’s cheek toward the animal. A moment later, the Bear rose on its hind legs and turned in his direction, nose wrinkled, teeth exposed—very long teeth—small eyes peering. It made a muffled noise, of exasperation or curiosity or surprise. Or anger. As though, perhaps, it thought he, Abasio, had been responsible for the painful noise.

  Abasio looked around him for a place to hide, a place to run. Could a bear climb trees? His eyes came back to the animal below him, still standing, still watching. Perhaps if he merely stood very still.

  The Bear dropped to all fours, exposed its teeth in a muffled growl, and started purposefully toward him.

  The sound that had killed the swallows was heard by many in Artemisia, including Arakny and Olly, who were traveling west along a little-traveled canyon road that Arakny said was the straightest route toward the. Place of Power. Big Blue stopped at the sound, four hooves dug into the gravel, head up, ears pricked and swiveling as the noise went past. The women’s heads turned similarly, following the sound, which had a peculiar attribute of motion, as though some shrill machine moved invisibly in the air above them, coming from the north and dwindling away west like a monstrous flying voice calling to another of its kind.

  “What was that?” breathed Arakny.

  “The walkers,” said Olly. She had no doubt that what she said was true. This horrid noise shared certain qualities with the voices that had called to her in the forest above the village. Both sounds had the same insinuating directionality, the same quality of threatening focus.

  “The walker ones who came into Artemisia? The ones who were looking for you?” asked Arakny.

  Olly nodded. She started to speak, stopped, began again. “I think the sound came from where Sonny—Abasio was.” She leaned sidewise across the footboard to blow out the lantern that had dimly lighted their way during the dark hours. “I don’t think the gangers have him anymore. I think he’s either escaped—or he’s dead.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “My pet dog,” said Olly in seeming irrationality, as she climbed down to the road. She was blinking rapidly to keep the tears back, aware it was no time for tears. “I sent my pet dog to look for him, and I think he got there.”

  “You what?”

  “Never mind. Just take my word for it.” Olly rubbed her eyes, unable to decide what to do next, deciding in favor of doing nothing at all. Coyote knew she was headed west. If he was still alive, he would come after her. If he was not alive, likely Abasio was not, either. She refused to consider the implications of that as she stood leaning against the wagon, motionless, too tired to move, too tired even to grieve.

  “You want to stop here?” asked Arakny.

  Olly murmured, “Not want—must. Big Blue is so weary, he’s stumbling. He’s traveled a long way.”

  “You say you sent your pet dog,” remarked Arakny, as she climbed from the wagon seat. “Are you going to tell me about this pet dog? Is it anything like your pet bird?”

  Olly raised her head and stared blindly into the face of her companion. “It’s not a bird. It’s a guardian-angel.”

  “I see. How do you know it’s the walkers that made that noise?”

  Olly sagged wearily. “Because I’ve heard the sounds they make. Not that particular one, but something like.”

  Arakny stared at her. “Are you hungry?”

  “No. Just so tired I can’t think.”

  “Tea, then. Before you sleep.”

  Arakny led Big Blue within reach of some foliage he’d been trying to get at, then took the grill from the wagon and set about making a fire, moving through these chores with practiced efficiency, as though she had done them often before.

  Olly filled the kettle and brought it from the water barrel, the guardian-angel fluttering to her shoulder as she passed the wagon.

  “We’re low on water,” she said with a shiver. The air had grown cold during the night, and though it was somewhat light, it would be hours before the sun warmed them. The angel’s feathers against her cheek were chill, like ice.

  Arakny gave her a sympathetic glance as she went into the wagon and came back with a blanket.

  “Lie down here, where it’s warm.” She spread the blanket by the fire.

  Olly lay down, pulling one side of the blanket over her and rolling an end beneath her neck as a pillow. The angel cuddled beneath her chin, making broody noises, its slender beak pricking the skin of her shoulder.

  “Tell me about this pet dog,” Arakny demanded.

  Olly sighed. “He’s actually a coyote. And he talks. He came up to us outside your borders, in the desert. He offered to come with us and be our—our sentinel, our guard, if we’d let him enter the city. He’d already saved us from the ogres, so we owed him a favor, and he said he was hungry for conversation.”

  Arakny looked silently into the fire, her face unreadable.

  “It’s true,” claimed Olly, almost angrily.

  “Oh, I’m sure you think it is,” Arakny responded in a kindly voice. “Just as you think all of it is. I can accept parts of it. The walkers. After all, I’ve seen them and heard about them from others. I can accept you were Orphan in an archetypal village. There are such villages here and there.” She thoughtfully stirred the fire once more. “I can accept you were given a prophecy and that you’ve quoted accurately what you were told, though I don’t necessarily believe the prophecy itself. I can even accept that you call your bird a guardian-angel, that it talks, sometimes pertinently, and I can admit it looks like no bird I have ever seen. I accept that your ‘pet dog’ is a coyote. I knew that the first time I saw him. But I cannot accept that he talks, no matter that our ancient legends speak of talking coyotes and bears and even birds and insects. My guess is ventriloquism.”

  “Ventriloquism is a shaman’s trick,” snorted Olly. “I know all about that. Oracle did something of the kind when she used her cavern voice. I assure you—”

  “—Coyote is not a ventriloquist’s dummy,” said a voice from up the hill.

  Arakny jumped to her feet. Branches rustled. Gravel skittered down the bank and sizzled across the road like water on a hot pan. Coyote emerged from the uphill foliage and remarked: “I, too, find myself unbelievable.”

  Arakny sat down abruptly.

  “Did you find Sonny?” cried Olly.

  “I did,” responded Coyote. “Do you have any water left? I’ve had no water for hours.”

  Olly rose, took down the bucket hanging from the rear of the wagon, and half-filled it. “Tell me!”

  Coyote stuck his nose in the bucket and lapped thirstily. Arakny got up from the fire and went up the hill, losing herself in the trees.

  “Where’s she—?” Olly murmured.

  “Let her go,” said Coyote. “She’s hunting for whatever human person or human-directed mechanism is pretending to be my vocal cords. Eventually she’ll realize there isn’t one.”

  “So?”

  “So I sent some of my packmates north, one of them carry
ing the garment you gave me. They moved the horses away from the gangers, quite far away. They dropped your clothing near the horses, where it might be found. I, meantime, went south.”

  “You found the walkers?”

  “I howled to my colleagues, who howled back their location. I went there and called to them from the darkness.” Coyote turned and grinned at her fiercely. “Cleverly, as you suggested. I told them a dark young person had been taken north by gangers. It wasn’t a lie Abasio is young enough and dark enough to fit the description. The walkers went like the wind, too swift for me to follow.”

  Arakny returned in a scatter of gravel, her brows drawn together as she stared at the speaking animal. “He talks.”

  Coyote stared at her, then barked twice, panting and crossing his eyes to make himself look like an imbecile dog.

  “Stop that!” Olly demanded. “Tell me what happened!”

  Coyote uncrossed his eyes and gave Arakny a wicked glance. “I couldn’t have kept up with them, they went so fast, but I knew where they were going better than they did. At least, my packmates had howled me which way the gangers were headed, and that they were on horseback. The walkers had to cast back and forth, searching, while I could run directly there. By the time the walkers arrived, I had come up to the gangers and had found the tree where your friend was tied. I let them see me to keep them from seeing him, and that worked well enough. They killed the gangers, not meaning to, then decided you might be with the horses, so they went off to find you. If all went as planned, they found your garment and will believe you were there, somewhere far north of here.”

  “What about Sonny?” cried Olly.

  “I chewed him loose and brought him partway. Since we didn’t know exactly where you’d got to in the meantime, it seemed sensible to let him rest while I located you.”

  “He actually talks!” marveled Arakny. “It’s him He’s really doing it. But how can he, with that tongue, that shape of jaw? His mouth isn’t made for speaking!”

  “Nor yours for singing,” snapped Coyote. “Any bird can do it better, but some of you learn to do it nonetheless. So I learned to talk, with difficulty. Have the courtesy not to tell me what I can and cannot do!”

  Arakny subsided, but watchfully, as though she still suspected a trick.

  “You heard the horrible noise?” Olly asked him.

  Coyote snarled. “I did. A cry for reinforcements, perhaps? A notice they had found you, or almost? An attempt to kill or cripple you? That noise would have maimed you if you’d been close enough to it.”

  Coyote stuck his muzzle into the bucket and lapped once again. When he had drunk his fill, he said: “I promised your friend I’d be back to collect him. He’s not far, but have you something I could eat first? If I take time to hunt—”

  “Eggs,” said Olly. “And bread. And the remnants of last night’s stew. No, night before last’s stew. The one I made the night we met.”

  “The stew,” he agreed. “It smelled very tasty when you were cooking it, though I wasn’t hungry at the time.”

  Olly brought the pot out of the wagon and set it on the ground, where Coyote wolfed the contents within moments and then chased the pot about on the gravel as he licked up the last drops.

  When he had finished, he sat down and licked his jaws for some time, getting the last of the flavor. “Stay here,” he directed. “Get some rest. I’ll bring Sonny as soon as possible.”

  He trotted up the bank and was gone amid a shiver of foliage.

  “I don’t believe this,” said Arakny.

  “Believe it or not,” Olly replied. “I’m too tired to care.”

  Shaking her head at her own disbelief, Arakny cleaned up the pan and the cups they had used, then drove the wagon into a screening copse, where she unhitched Big Blue and hobbled him. Full daylight had come by the time she took her place on the wagon seat to stay on watch while Olly and her angel slept and Big Blue chomped his way along the edge of the trail.

  Abasio had managed to get five or six feet up the rock wall before the Bear arrived, knowing all the time it wasn’t high enough to do him any good. When the Bear arrived, that point was made even clearer as the animal reared up to full height and took a good sniff of Abasio’s nearest body parts. Even as scared as he was, Abasio had time to think that everyone and everything in the world seemed interested in his sex life.

  He had no time to think anything else before the Bear sat down and said in a conversational voice, “Not eating you.”

  Abasio was startled into letting go of the rock. The resultant slide dumped him almost at the Bear’s feet.

  “Not,” the Bear repeated. “Did you think?”

  “Yes,” said Abasio, for the moment incapable of duplicity.

  “No,” said the Bear thoughtfully. “Fish, yes. Eggs, yes. Ant eggs too. Not big animals much.” He sighed deeply and drooled a little. “Looking for woman person. Dark hair. You seen her?”

  Abasio’s mouth clamped shut, and he felt sweat start out on his face.

  The Bear sniffed. “You know where,” he accused. “You not telling me.”

  “Two walkers have been looking for a dark-haired woman,” Abasio explained. “I don’t think they intend to do her any good.”

  “Them.” The Bear nodded. “I saw them. They look this place, that place. Whuff, Talk funny. Smell funny.” He pawed at his ears. “Make noise like—don’t know. You hear it?”

  Abasio nodded. “It killed some of the swallows.”

  The Bear got up and nosed among the feathered bodies. “Poor birds,” he said sympathetically. “Go to waste. Not eating them. Feathers prickly. About this girl.…”

  “What do you want her for?” demanded Abasio.

  “I telling,” the Bear growled. “You nervous person. Flesh persons nervous. Right?”

  “What do you mean, flesh persons?”

  “Like you. Not like those two. Part flesh, maybe. Not all. Smell funny.”

  “I never thought they were quite human.”

  “Not animal, either. Find girl. I take girl. Where she goes.”

  Abasio laughed. “We’ve already got a coyote who says he wants to serve as our guide.”

  The Bear sat down again. “Can have two?”

  “Where did you intend to guide us to?”

  “Where she goes.”

  “Do you know where the thrones are?”

  The Bear pointed with one large paw. “That way.”

  “That’s probably where she’d like to go. I’m not sure Coyote knows where that is.”

  “Coyote knows.” Bear wrinkled his nose, as in disgust. “Coyote goes around. Coyote says much.” Bear nodded to himself in satisfaction. “Bear goes straight. Bear says little. Bear says true.”

  “Coyote isn’t honest?”

  Bear shrugged. “Sometime. A little.” He used the claws on a front foot to comb the hair at his throat. “He good sneaker. Bear good fighter.” As though to demonstrate this, he reared up to full height, extended both clawed feet and growled hideously.

  Abasio shuddered. After swallowing deeply he managed to say, “So if we want to get there unnoticed, he’d be better at it? But if we had to fight, you would?”

  Bear sat down, making a whuffing noise that Abasio interpreted as agreement, or laughter, or both.

  “How would he feel about your—joining us?”

  The Bear shrugged, a massive heaving of huge shoulders “Coyote! Today, this way. Tomorrow, that way. Who can tell.”

  Abasio slumped. “He said he’d be back to get me.”

  “He will Sometime.”

  Abasio picked up his soggy sock and went to the shallow pool that lay within the cavern’s entrance and overflowed in a trickle that led down a face of stone into the soil, where it disappeared without a trace. He washed the sock in the overflow, well below the level of the pool, wrung it out, and smoothed it on the rock face in the sun to dry.

  “How did you learn to talk?” he asked the Bear, who was licking his feet w
ith great attention to the furry spaces between the toes.

  “Mama talks,” said the Bear. “Many bears do.”

  “Have you any theory as to—to why?”

  “Don’t know. Some cubs talk. Bigger animal, more talk.”

  Abasio thought this over. “You mean, the smaller animals don’t talk?”

  “Rabbits, hardly any. Coyotes, some. Bears, lions, a lot.”

  “Lions?” gasped Abasio.

  “Not many yet. But most talk. Buffalo talk. Eagles talk.”

  Abasio thought this over. “Coyote wanted to go with us just to hear conversation.”

  “Coyotes say that.”

  “You think it a he?”

  The Bear shrugged once more. “Maybe. Maybe helps woman. Bad things everywhere. Woman needs help.”

  “Help getting to the thrones?”

  The Bear shrugged.

  “She’s had this prophecy about the thrones,” said Abasio.

  “What’s prophecy?”

  “A telling about the future. Someone told her she is to find five champions who’ll take her to three towering thrones being gnawed by four something elses. Oh, there’s six set on salvation in there somewhere.”

  “Five what?”

  “Champions People to fight for her.”

  “She got some?”

  “Me,” said Abasio. “Maybe Coyote. Maybe that woman from Artemisia.”

  “Me,” said the Bear, rearing up on his hind legs to rip the bark from a tree in long, tattered shreds. “Need one more. Find one, stop looking.”

  Abasio’s jaw dropped.

  “You think bears not smart,” challenged the Bear. “Can’t count one an’ one an’ one.”

  Abasio nodded, feeling himself flush.

  “Bears smart. Coyotes smart. Other animals smart. We don’t talk, man says not smart.” The Bear made the repeated whuffing noise that Abasio identified as laughter. “You know, we count-smell.”

  “Count-smell?”

  “Smell whole thing. Part gone, smells different Something more. Smells different. Count-smell. Not one, two, three. Is thing, more thing, less thing.”