The Verse of Sibilant Shadows: A set of tales from the Irrational Worlds

by JM Guillen

  My enemy, who could Tell entire worlds into being, was asking me to sit and listen to him, to open my secret heart before him. Here. In his lodge.

  He was asking me to sit, powerless.

  “I’m not interested in feeling you shape the world, Coyote.” I gazed into the fire. “But this is your place. I can’t exactly deny you and hold propriety as a guest.” Subtle reminder, that.

  He huffed. “I have made all offers of host, Tommy. I have no interest in sparring with yeh again.” Pause. “Besides. If I wanted yeh dead, yeh would be. I had yeh before.”

  “Easy to have someone you beckon, someone who just awoke.”

  He shrugged. “Nature holds to no rule of honour, Tommy. The prey doesn’t get to cry foul just because it was taken unawares.”

  I simply looked at him. “And yet I trust your honour. I sit in your lodge.”

  For a long moment, we simply sat, looking at one another.

  Coyote sighed. “Time to draw, Tommy Maple. Shall I Tell yeh the story of what I know or would yeh leave?”

  He knew his answer. My nature was as certain as his, and deep in our hearts, we were kin in a way. Glamour, Medicine, it didn’t matter what you called the singing shadows that dwelt within us; it amounted to the same thing. We were both creatures of flickering imagination and woven dreams.

  He knew I couldn’t resist his offering of a story as well as I did.

  “Do what you will, Old Man.” I tried not to glower. “But hear me. If you try to spin your tale so it twists the world, if I feel even the slightest bit threatened…” I let it trail off as I grinned. “I wager I can call the Hunt before you Tell me down. I’ll also wager that the Hunter can come even here, to your place.”

  He didn’t have to know that the Hunt was the last card in my deck.

  He sat, still as stone. “I mean you no harm, Tommy Maple.”

  “Make certain there is none then, meant or not. Our kind has fought till death for lesser things.”

  He leaned back into his chair with a nod, his fingers steepled. Silence pounded in the lodge, like a slow, lumbering heartbeat.

  Worlds gathered between us. Worlds and not-worlds.

  I must admit, I held my breath.

  He somehow crafted silence into form.

  The room felt heavier, the Old Man more solid, more real.

  After a long moment he spoke, carefully and purposefully. “I’ll tell yeh a story about a moonless night, not long ago nor far away. It’s only a piece of the story true, but Tommy, it’s yer piece.” His eyes caught mine, held them. “It’s why I need yeh. It’s why yeh aren’t dead.”

  His voice remained quiet, but it rumbled inside me, like distant thunder. No. I would know if he had cast glamour upon me. Still—

  “Things don’t just all fall apart at once, yeh must know.” The fire danced, orange on gray eyes. “No, the world’s done been unravelin’ for a long time, so long I couldn’t right say when it started. Things weren’t good even before yer kind came here.”

  Fascination crept across my skin like hoarfrost.

  He cast his words forth, peals from a drum. They were spears, tearing at the heart of the world. First, his hands started to move, then he stood, pacing around me. His story began with the barest gossamer of thought, then slowly wefted together with whispers that could never be spoken. Coyote was both an artisan and a man possessed.

  I watched as the fire of his Telling tore through him, gripped him, animated him.

  It was a piece of the sun cascading through his body and whipping forth from his tongue.

  “The people had long been quarrelin’. If only they’d held true, then they might’a stood tall when yer folke came from across the sea.”

  I could see the arguments and betrayals reflected in the fires and hear the echoes in his words of mourning and of loss. I knew that pain well.

  May we meet on far shores…

  He glanced at me with no anger, only deep wracking loss.

  “Since the Oaths between were struck, an’ our people unstrung their bows, I been wanderin’. Only one question gripped my heart, Tommy, but it burned. What was happening to the People? Where was the power their songs once held?”

  I saw him in my mind’s eye as if I were there with him while the wind sang along the lonely mesa, then a secret creek babbled its song.

  He didn’t know what he was hunting…

  “Couldn’t say just what I was huntin’.” He stood now, walking over to the fire. He leaned one arm against the mantle. “I only knew that things’re wrong. I felt it.” Yellow light streamed across his face. “Twasn’t just the war, twasn’t just when the White Buffalo left. The Medicine was withering.” His gaze pounded into me, like a bolt from the sky.

  “I wanted to know why.”

  This was so much more than I expected. His words felt fairly mundane, but the pain behind them tore at my heart. I marveled, secretly wondering if I could call the Hunt if he turned that terrible power, that weight, against me.

  He believed that I could, however, and perhaps that was enough. Enough for now.

  I sat, drifting, as Coyote told me of his adventures across Turtle Island. Fascinated, I traveled with him to the sun-soaked cities of Palenque and Tulu’um and sat in counsel with the ghosts there. They honoured him, naming him Coyotl, and told him stories that were once dead.

  In the end, they knew little.

  After, we cast our way north, finding ourselves within the shadow of lost Tenochtitlan. There, we cast bones with the shades of heroes almost forgotten and drank from a bounty of blood that had been sacrificed centuries before. Every drop contained harrowed memories of a people lost.

  I saw their lives swim before me. I watched as they lived, loved, and lost. I heard their tales of a strange darkness growing in the wilds.

  But no. They whispered of the darkness but knew not its source.

  Coyote debated with emaciated priests who bore piercings of jade and fragrant wood. Borne on his Telling, we danced with remnant memories of untouched women who had willingly sacrificed their bodies and lives. We sparred with the jaguar-men and gave ourselves, body and manhood, to the wild Ad’uun, women who spoke the future while in the grasp of pleasure born from passion and blood.

  All knew of the shadows on the horizon, and all lived in fear.

  I saw the entire thing painted inside my mind. I smelled copal resin and tasted plants that gave visions. Through all of it, I began to see a shadow creeping across his tale, the unifying thread that his stories held in common. I grasped for it; however, the Old Man’s words raged. Their river swept me along with no choice other than to be carried forward.

  Soon, he traveled even further north into the empty lands once held by those he knew as the Lost Brothers. Only the invading humans had come to use the word Anasazi, and Coyote skipped the name entirely, even though I could still feel it, floating behind his tale.

  “First place I found somethin’ I could sink my teeth to.” He smiled, lost in the past. “Twas all shadows and whispers till I came here.” He gave me an empty, wandering look. “But here I found the storytellers of old. They had seen world upon world and knew secrets long forgotten.”

  They told of labyrinths of pueblos hidden beneath the sun-lit land. Memories of sun dances, peyote, and distant, lost stars sang through his tale. There had been story keepers, one for each world the people had passed through before coming to this place. Each told Coyote of a portent, a sign that would precede the next world:

  Their four voices blended as one. “We have seen, Sinawava, and we shall show you our visions.”

  The man was ancient, older than days. His voice creaked like an ancient oak. “The next world will come when man harnesses the power of the sun.”

  Then, the boy, young but strangely wise added, “It will come when one voice can cast its way across the earth.”

  The woman stood behind the man with eyes of obsidian and flame. “It will rise like blood on the horizon when man learns to speak
with light.”

  Then, the bird who was also a woman spoke. “The next world comes when he conquers sky and sea.”

  Then, again, they spoke together. “We will stand at the three doors of bone and blood when these things happen. Once we pass through, the Next World will be upon us.”

  He stopped, regarding me a long moment. I didn’t know what he saw, but I saw terror. A long moment passed, thrumming in the air.

  “They told me more than that. They told me that in the north, where the spirits dance in the sky, I would find one of my answers. They told me I would find a blight that walked upon the world.” Coyote turned his shrouded eyes to me. His hand trembled the smallest bit.

  He admitted, “I found more than I wanted, Tommy. That I did.”

  9

  I felt shadows behind Coyote’s story, whispers of things he wasn’t Telling me. That reflected his nature as a shaman however. He wove his Tellings with such power that, once begun, he couldn’t hide the truths that lurked in his tale. Even though he spoke little of the next leg of his journey, I still saw it.

  Painted in brilliance across my mind, I watched as he traveled to the coast and walked beneath trees so vast that the sky rested atop their boughs. He passed beneath slumbering titans, mountains whose fury would cause them to rain down with fire and brimstone, destroying all who came close.

  He spoke with forgotten tribes of the sea, nameless peoples who could read the future from wind and waves. An old woman, Sedna, lived among them. She bid him wander further north until the cold sliced like steel.

  Finally, in the distant north, where the ice never recedes, I saw him seeking the spirits in the sky.

  They were wondrous to behold.

  They burned like cold fire in the sky with greens, violets, and deep blues that rippled and cascaded above the mountains. Coyote sought them, but he could never approach them. Like a rainbow, they remained ever out of his reach. He wandered for meandering days with no rest and no food, having only the fire he had stolen from the sun to warm him.

  “I didn’ quite understand what a puzzle it would be to catch them.” He grinned at me. “I was the Old Man, after all! I could talk the moon into bed if I wished.” He winked. “Surely, I would be able to catch them while they danced in the sky!”

  But it was not as simple as that. For three days and three nights, he wandered in the most distant, cold wastes and never reached them. I felt the cold wind slowly eating the flesh from my bones. In this land of cold and ever-darkness, hope grew distant.

  “Finally, upon the third night, I seen an old, abandoned lodge hidden against the mountain. I was so cold that my fur had frozen, so cold that I couldn’t speak without my words becoming ice.”

  I trembled from the cold. Each breath brought the torment of ice burning my lungs. When I reached for the door of the old lodge, I feared my hand would freeze to the handle.

  Inside, I found glorious firelight and brilliance.

  I fell, the heat washing over me in waves of soothing welcome. I felt hands pull me to my feet, and the door was shut behind me.

  Who was here? The lodge had seemed abandoned!

  I had no time to get the answer to my question. The—

  “The people helpin’ me weren’t quite people at all, but I didn’ know that, not then.” He grinned ruefully. “Didn’ matter who they were, all that mattered was warmth. I didn’ right ken how close I came to freezin’ to death, but they took me. Fed me. Made me warm.”

  Not at first, however. No. I slipped into sleep, the first true sleep I’d had for eternal days. It was a deep sleep, a dreamless sleep of warmth and darkness. I know they woke me, know they gave me food, but I don’t remember it. My mind had slipped close to the gates of death, and I still wasn’t quite right.

  I lost a few days—

  “I don’ know how many days I lay in their lodge, not-dreamin’, sunk into sleep. I only know that when I finally woke, a woman sat with me.” He grinned. “Most beautiful woman I done seen, boy. I know yeh fair folke prize beauty, but I ain’t ever seen a woman like this one.”

  She was fair and more than fair. Her skin held the rippling blue and green of the fire in the sky, and her eyes beckoned, large and deep.

  “You return to us.” She wiped my brow. “We worried for you, Illarri. We thought you might pass beyond.”

  “I did the only thing a man should do when he’s back from the dead and next to a pretty girl.”

  Her lips felt cool, not cold. She trembled against me, but while I was daring, I did not push or force. Then, her arms wrapped around me. She pushed herself against me, nubile, her skin flushed. She—

  “Let’s leave off that bit, O Herald.” His grin turned mocking. “I wager yeh understand jes’ fine.”

  The dancing folke had watched as Coyote-Illari had sought them, casting prayers into the sky and beseeching them to share their wisdom with him. Yet they could not.

  “We are the spirits of the last world, Illari. Our place is not upon your soil. We could not have come to you, no matter how we wished it. This is why we brought you to us.”

  “Their lodge wasn’t exactly like any other place yeh’d seen, Tommy. It’s not quite in the world.” He smirked. “But, as yeh can see, it doesn’t lack for comfort.”

  My eyes grew wide. “This? This is the lodge of the dancing folke?”

  He shrugged, the image of nonchalance. “Not exactly. The river doesn’t belong to a man, but he may understand how it is used. This place, that place, they are the same, in a way. The dancing folk have endless numbers of doors, and once I understood the knack of it, I did as well.”

  I thought about the way he had opened the door into his lodge, how the door itself turned somehow sideways to the world.

  Coyote truly was a man of secrets.

  “They feasted me for three days and three nights. We drank a musty beer-brew that was fermented berries and reindeer piss. It was awful.”

  I knew he wasn’t lying. Siberian shamans drank urine from reindeer as well. The animals ate plants, which gave visions, and passed the gift to the wonderworkers who were bold enough to taste it.

  On the third night, after I had spoken with remnants of the world before, the youngest of the dancing folke came to me. She was as beautiful as any of them, and naked as night, but she wasn’t here for play.

  “Illari.” I could see the wonder in her, the innocence. “Would you have me show you what you are seeking?”

  I didn’t exactly feel ready. I was full-stomached and half drunk on berries and reindeer water. But there was no denying what I was there to do. Every crossroads on my journey had pointed me this way.

  “I am.” I looked her in the eye—

  “I looked her square in the face, Tommy.” Coyote visibly paled, just a touch, as if the mere memory were haunting. “I told I her was as ready as I would ever be.”

  “But what do you say?” I could feel terror capering at the edge of her and knew the answer before she spoke. It was the first time I ever saw fear in any of the dancing folke.

  “No, Illari. No one is ready for what comes.”

  10

  “Now, like I said, their lodge—”

  Their lodge was doors within doors within doors. The dancing woman— Ses’kia— led me through many of them, opening into times and places of wondrous mysteries. I do not have words for all the strange things I saw. The final door led out of a small building, in the middle of a tiny town, lost in the vast cold nowhere.

  “Quiet.” She held me hand, pulling me forward.

  “What are we looking for?” I was still a touch drunk, befuddled and confused from the journey.

  “Nothing.” Her eyes grew sad. “We are looking for blighted nothingness, darkness that walks.”

  At her words, I couldn’t help but think of the not-fetch. In the middle of Coyote’s Telling, my thought added to it, swirling the not-fetch into his tale, for the briefest of moments.

  …broken, hollow, and mad.

 
It screamed. The sound was rage and fire and rusted blood. Its fingers ended in talons from another age. Its arms, slender gangles, each had two elbows.

  Its empty eyes wept blood and bile.

  “Yes.” His ancient, wise eyes locked onto mine. “You ken it now. You see where it all goes.”

  “There are more of them?” Then, immediately after, “What are they?”

  He held up a single finger. “You will know all that I know, Tommy. Sit on yer dinner and listen.”

  We wound our way through the shadows of the small town, avoiding being seen. I could feel the wrongness, taste it on the wind. The people wandering about didn’t seem to realize they were dying. The blight had sunken deep inside them with strong roots, slowly driving them mad.

  “What’s wrong with them?” I should have whispered but did not. “Can’t they feel? Don’t they know?”

  “The blight takes root behind the poetry in their hearts.” Her voice despaired. “The very part of them that could find the wrongness of it all is silenced first. From there, they rot from within.”

  The darkness tainted most of the townspeople. It manifested in a thousand tiny cruelties. Discomforts flared into anger, and love gave way to selfishness.

  The darkness fed upon their glamour.

  “As yeh must know, these creatures feed upon a person’s Medicine. Everywhere I looked, I saw the people slowly dyin’. We walked among the town until all were abed, until the town was empty.” He gave me a dark look. “That’s when we saw it. Saw her.”

  Rail thin, she looked like nothing but skin stretched over dry bones. Her hair was withered, falling out in clumps. Her arms reached for me, awkward and spindly, and her eyes bled madness and despair.

  I feared as she roared at me. It was exactly as it had been at Jillian’s tree. She sensed me, somehow. She hungered for my Medicine. She felt me, even as the dancer-woman and I watched from hiding.