kaolin fire presents :: writing :: fiction

"CrowFeather.0"

words

Coyote's bark caught Crow Feather's attention, coming somehow from under the rock he was standing on. He shimmied down off it and noticed a crevice leading deep into the Earth Mother; He heard voices calling, but they were confused--twisted inside out, almost coming from beneath him, still.

His foot slipped against the gritty earth, and he slid a ways deeper; his heart pounded heavily through his flesh. A faint odor of deer wafted down to him, and he sensed movement in the direction he was facing. He crawled towards it against the rock, carefully; there was a slight twinge of pain in his left ankle, so he distributed the weight across his other limbs.

The movement grew into firelight dancing across jagged rock--not sandstone, this. It nearly glowed with spirit. He forced his eyes to better differentiate the darks, and saw the sudden change from one to the other. If he'd crawled forward too much faster, he would have sliced his flesh on amethyst. The beauty of the amethyst pulled him forward, but he paused before it--

A voice came again: thinner, almost whining. The sounds were nearly nonsense, back and forth; was it singing? He'd heard that some of the white devils sang when their scalps were taken, that it was a sort of nonsense. Was he being led down to be fed on by a white devil?

Crow Feather turned himself around, quietly, and tried to see from whence he'd come, but all was dark. He felt a chill pass through the crevice, and with it a distinctive moan of pain. Of course, white devils used pain and mimicry to trap the foolish, but curiosity won out. And the amethyst called him back as well--amethyst would be an honorable present to Snake Charm's father, when he'd made his spirit walk.

He returned to the amethyst, and the voice called out more nonsense in its sing-song way. Crow Feather felt some old spirit almost answering, and he wondered if he could just pry some of the amethyst loose and away with himself.

The voice seemed weak, though, and he was sure he could handle just one white devil. Eagle Cry had boasted five at once, saying they were weak and worthless but for their tricks. Crow Feather would not fall for their tricks. He braced himself very carefully, and maneuvered across the slick-sharp surface of the amethyst, finding himself hanging above a great precipice.

The firelight came from further than he could see, far down in Earth Mother's womb. Crow Feather wondered at Earth Mother's ability to harbor beasts such as the sweltering malignance he could now feel oozing from the deep. Then he caught the white devil's form, rocking against itself as if some creature had already feasted on its spirit.

A dull glow cast itself from its skin, and there was a scrape of metal on rock as it moved. Crow Feather crawled along the crevice until he was equal to the ledge on which the white devil was trapped. Before dropping, he stilled his heart and felt through the earth for breath of others. The white devil glowed with much more life than seemed right for one, but perhaps that was why it had been chosen as the crowning sacrifice. The nearest thing besides the white devil was the unnameable death below.

He crawled down the rock face, thankfully more basalt than gem, and approached the white devil. It did not respond to his presence; its breathing was heavy, ragged and deep. Sweat came off of it, though the cavern was cold--and he saw the glow coming from it was unevenly applied, hand-smeared. The white devil was skinny, just bones, and paler than most devils, even under the white paste that covered it.

Crow Feather examined the metal that held it, and saw that the binding had been melted into Earth Mother's very bones. There was no way to free the white devil without powerful magic, and no powerful magician would come down here for such a purpose. They would say to let the white devil rot--even if he told them of the evil that was being drawn to it. Let the evils have each other, they would say.

The chains had been made for a larger being than what they held; the manacles held, of course, but mostly just for the thumb. He prodded the white devil on the shoulder, and that elicited no response. He took its hand and with a swift motion knocked the delicate thumb out of place. The white devil gave no indication that it felt the pain he caused; encouraged, he slid the hand out and popped the thumb back into place. Quick, then, he did the same for the other hand. The white devil still showed no connection to the pain he knew he caused it.

Crow Feather paused to think. He had a strong suspicion that the thing from below was coming for this white devil, but that suspicion stretched to the thought that perhaps it would not be satisfied with just this one. Coyote would not have sent him here if that was all that was to be done. He could throw the white devil down into the pit, but it was likely that that would just encourage it.

Another breeze came through the cavern, and he tasted carnage on it. That wind came from the pit, he knew. Many had died here, and something made him think just recently. There was a noise, a scrabbling of flesh against rock that seemed somehow in and of itself unnatural. He knew nothing alive could come from the pit, even his fledgling hunter senses could tell that--but there were other forms of animation.

He bent down, and hoisted the white devil over his shoulder. Its flesh was warm and sticky, and it weighed more than its frail frame belied. His ankle twinged, and he nearly stumbled under the odd bulk of the white devil; yet he caught himself, and walked away from the pit, following the breeze. If the white devils had come in here, he knew, then the way out had to be simple.

He kept an even stride, forcing his foot to heal as he went; form and function, and his foot had not lost form. The platform led through a small tunnel to a larger cave, and he let the air choose for him his turns of travel. Eventually, he broke through to white devil work; trees embedded into the walls, prying open Earth Mother's flesh. He stepped more carefully, here, where the footing lacked a natural pattern.

The walls echoed his passing, and something else, like darkness would sound if given a voice, sliding and scratching along the white devil walls. He tried to hurry his step, but without sight it took too much concentration to guess where his next foot should fall, so he had to let the darkness slowly gain on him.

Crow Feather imagined Earth Mother wailing at the birth of this darkness, and wondered what beast had begat it upon her. No, the wailing was real; the white devil was keening, though for what he couldn't be sure. The pain in her thumbs, or perhaps the horrors in her head--or perhaps that she was being taken from the beast below--was it the monster keening through her mouth?

He knew it was hungry, could feel the whisper-thin tendrils of hunger sliding about his skin, hinting of the substance still to come.

The white devil's keen grew louder, and he wondered at its ability to sound without breath, sound without break. Was it a shaman? A witch of a devil, to have summoned a terror greater than itself? Crow Feather was well aware that white devils were not afraid to deal with powers they could not control. That was how they had become enslaved, of course, though most of them could not see it.

Dozens of voices were screaming from its mouth, twisting in and around each other. The exertion of carrying the too-heavy white devil was beginning to make his head spin, though he could carry a full-grown buck for days. Maybe it was the walls, which seemed to be growing towards him, or the effort in healing his leg; he set the white evil down, then, before he fell carrying her, and braced himself in the tunnel; dagger in hand, he sat between her and the nameless horror, leg splayed out.

He was sweating, himself, now, despite the chill of the air. Noises were coming faster, and the shadows were out of sync, almost as if they were struggling to keep up. Crow Feather could tell he was closer now to the spirit world, but didn't know why. Still, he was thankful, because he could see the tendrils of the beast now instead of just the projections; he could see them even though they were hundreds of paces away, twisted and turned through white devil machinations. And because he could see them, he thought, he could harm them. They seemed to speed up as he thought this.

He brought his blade to bear, and moved to stand--but something was missing, and the ground felt unsteady. His knife was not with him--had he entered the spirit world so fully? But no, skin still girded his waist. He brought himself to fours, crouching and turning around. The white devil had left.

Crow Feather held back a curse only because he did not know which spirits to call as responsible for the white devil's actions. He could sense it, though. And he could see the surface now, as well; feel Sun sending warmth into and through the Earth Mother. The white devil was not heading for the surface, though he could not be sure if that was intentional.

He thought perhaps it was, as the white devil doubled back, bypassing his section of the earth wound and moving to confront the nameless horror. What was it thinking? It was moving slowly, as if in a dream--perhaps the tendril's shadows had reached its mind. Crow Feather pushed himself with a wolf's pacing, all four limbs pushing at the uneven ground--slower than a sprint, but distributing the power more evenly, keeping his foot from slipping out from under him.

He found himself between the two monsters, and wondered. Was the white devil under the sway of the tendrils, or was it calling them? Could he fight the white devil and then turn to fight the spirit of emptiness, or vice versa?

The tendrils wrapped themselves around his legs, and he fell, trying to jump away. He could feel them worming around and through his flesh; the tunnel dropped away, and he was floating, tumbling, wrestling with razored, barbed vines that attacked him with uncanny precision; the wounds grew on his body, but they did not hurt. His blood fell out, a strange filmy substance, coating his skin, binding the wounds. He heard coyote's laugh, and the film turned to fur. Crow Feather's flesh expanded, and he felt another being crying in his skull. He thrashed against the ropey flesh with his new strength; tendrils ripped and cracked, and he burst free and out.

Crow Feather was in the tunnel, between the nameless monster and the white devil. No time, it seemed, had passed, except--the white devil had passed him, was facing him with the power of the horror behind it.

He examined the black miasma in more fullness. It was not so much of the world, not so much physical; it simply had a presence in the world; and it was not just following the white devil, but expanding ever outwards. It was not just in this tunnel, but crawling through every crevasse, even to his tribe above. Crow Feather knew then that it was good he had not simply tossed the white devil to it. He knew then that it was good he had not simply killed the white devil; neither would have ended its hunger.

He also understood that it was not a new birth from the Earth Mother that the white devil had created; it was something older, elder, other. Crow Feather thanked Coyote for putting these thoughts in his head, and wondered what the trickster planned with him.

Crow Feather realized a subtlety in the scent of the white devil's musk; beyond the fear, and pain, exhiliration; beyond the death of a dozen other white devils; the stink of herb that had clouded its mind and his as well, that had begun to open him to the spirit world.

That herb was not white devil magic, but the People's. White devils stole much from the People, but the People's magic was very rarely something the white devils acknowledged. Still, if this was the People's magic, perhaps he could do something with it, to it; especially with Coyote's body lent to him. Crow Feather charged forwards at the white devil, through the thick miasma, chanting every litany he knew, and a few that seemed to come from somewhere else.

When he reached the comingling of the white devil and the ethereal darkness, he saw the darkness solidifying against the glowing of the white devil's skin. He lashed his claws against the white devil, but the solidity of the darkness around it acted as armor. The white devil turned and lashed back with the force of a dozen souls; Crow Feather felt his jaw crumple, his flesh sear. He felt his form twisting inside out; laughter echoed. He was dead. That form was dead.

The white devil walked past him, then, taking the front of the nameless horror with it. The wounds of his flesh from the first tangle with the nameless horror were sharp and loud; the numbing of transformation had passed, and he was newly amazed at the magic Coyote had blessed him with--even as he suppressed with every drop of will he had the writhing agony racing over his skin. He could not let them know that he was alive.

Crow Feather marveled that he was still alive, and wondered how many more times he could die. Lying still, a small voice in his head suggested that he crawl back to the source of the evil.

His flesh changed again, this time to a small cub of a coyote, and he understood that this was his final form. In this manner, though, he was uninjured, and he galloped instead of crawled, racing to the source of the evil that had been unleashed, hoping an answer would come to him by the time he arrived.

Crow Feather found his own hunger growing as he approached the large cavern, and he wondered how much time had passed hidden from the sky. He swore it could not have been much, but his stomach seemed to be growing larger than his body. Healing did take a conversion of life, and he had been through much. Perhaps Coyote's gift still cost him for its working, he mused. But there would be nothing in this cavern for him to eat, just the spirit darkness that was thicker here than elsewhere.

Thinking of the darkness made him hungrier than ever. He crept cautiously to the edge of the birthing pit, but saw nothing but darkness. It seemed almost solid enough to step on, so he tested it with a paw. Sure enough, the paw stayed where he had placed it. Curiously, he strode forward into or onto the nameless horror; touching it in such an intentful manner, he sensed a darker glimmering, a pulsation of something blacker than the black that was just absence of light. And somehow, that felt like food.

He raced into the murk of unbeing, then, sniffing for veinlike emanations of the darker darkness. He couldn't tell if he was swimming or flying, but he knew the creature's heart was growing close. Suddenly, its thick, seedlike shell stopped his motion. He rasped his claws against it, and bit with all the might of a young coyote's jaw.

The wall of the seed gave, and he leapt into the core of the beast, its unlife twitching and pulsing against him; any bigger form and he would have been crushed by its heaving. Inside, he thrashed and tore with all his might, and his claws left a glow that ate away at the darkness in its turn. He ate the darkness, then; ripped it, swallowed it--and the more he ate the more the hunger burned within him.

He found himself growing with the hunger, shifting from cub to man to the bipedal dire form he had briefly known. Still he ate, and his very growth burst the heartseed and shredded the surrounding darkness. Light crept in, then, though he couldn't say from where--the darkness broke in streaks of shadow. He scaled down the wall of the pit after the retreating darkness. Eventually he reached the bottom, a point where untold corpses had been exploded from untold height.

They were screaming--no, the white devil was screaming--they were screaming through the white devil, and the screams were growing nearer. Whisper-thin tendrils of darkness were pulling the white devil in; it thrashed and cursed and screamed but seemed powerless against the creature it had summoned.

Crow Feather attacked the darkness, but the horror was too insubstantial. So he attacked the white devil as it was brought near; spirits escaped from its wounds, flying for their bodies. Tendrils fought to catch them, and some were caught and brought to the maw between this world and the horror's; but many found their homes, faded and escaped into proper death.

The maw faded even as he stood on it, and the screams were gone. The white devil lay broken beside him, not very different from the other discarded bodies. He lay there, for a time, and cried from relief and exhaustion, and he slept a while, and then, renewed, giving blessing to Coyote, he began the climb back home.