Coyote's Daughter Read online

  He sulked a bit, and acted entirely like he does the first morning of school every year, when I have to explain yet again that dogs didn't have to get on the bus, and he should be thankful. I thought nothing could be worse than having to fight Shriveled Corn Man. I hadn't realized leaving Jack behind would hurt so much.

  Bear Girl came out, and I was glad to have the tension between us broken. "I know I have to leave to go home, but I can walk with you part of the way, right?"

  I shook my head. "I have to go over there." And pointed to the range. "It's the other way entirely, and you should go straight home. I'm sure your parents are worried, no matter what your dad said."

  Her face fell, and the tears I fought spilled over. I'll admit it, we cried on each other for a minute or two. I hadn't had a girlfriend to hang out with for a long time, and I didn't know if I'd ever see her again.

  I stopped myself. That sort of thinking would defeat me before I even found Shriveled Corn Man. This was going to be difficult enough without my own thoughts against me.

  "I promise we'll come and see you and your parents on our way back. Couldn't keep us away from that honey bread."

  "If you come back," she whispered.

  I glanced over at Jack, but he hadn't heard her.

  I turned to Spider Old Woman, "Promise me. Promise me you'll look out for him, no matter what."

  "What sort of person do you think I am?" she snapped.

  I answered her honestly, too worried for politeness. "I don't know, but I'm scared of you, and scared for him."

  She put her arm around Jack, tottering by the door.

  "Don't worry, child. No matter what, I'll care for him. But we still expect you to return."

  I got my pack and walked away from the house without another word. I didn't look back. I couldn't.

  Throughout this whole trip, I'd had someone with me: Jack, Ash, Bear Girl. Now I was utterly alone. And I was worried. Worried I wouldn't be able to save everyone. Worried I'd fail. Why on earth had I been chosen to do this?

  This was it, the final battle. From the movies I'd seen this should have been a glorious moment, with trumpets and armies and singing. But I was alone, and my feet hurt from all the walking, and I wanted to go home. If I didn't win, would there be any way to get home, ever? Would I even be around to know I was stuck?

  Lost in my thoughts, I reached the base of the cliff before I realized it. The sheer rock reached into the sky, the top lost in the clouds above.

  I looked around for any indication of Shriveled Corn Man. Nothing, no marks of man at all, only endless sagebrush and chamisa. A rabbit started out from cover, and I thought I saw a coyote loping in the distance.

  Spider Old Woman said right, so to the right I went. I followed the base of the cliff, and brooded on what I would do, what I would say. There had to be a way to win. I had to believe that, believe Coyote and Spider Old Woman wouldn't send me on this mission if it was utterly hopeless. My heart, my head, my tongue. I glimpsed the coyote again. Clever. I'd have to be clever. It was all I had.

  In the distance I saw a stand of twisted pine trees. Shriveled Corn Man waited for me in their shade.

  I stopped, and let him to come out to me. He delayed, then scowled and came into the full sun. One point to me.

  "Well, girl child. Are you here to play another game?" He snickered, and I felt sick, thinking of Jack, twisted with pain. A point to him.

  I forced myself to go cold. Worry wouldn't help now. I slid my pack to the ground in front of me and held up the clay sculpture.

  "Enough chatter, old man." I waved the figurine. "You want this, don't you?"

  His gaze was sharp and hungry.

  I put the oxuwah back in the bag.

  "You want this, but you can't take it outright, can you?" I took a deep breath, and hoped I'd understood Bear Girl's stories correctly this time. The last time I had tried, it had been a disaster, but I shook the thought of that failure away. The challenge had to be mine, the rules ones I could control. I had to set the game up, and make sure I could win.

  "Fine. Explain to me why you should have it."

  "What do you mean?" His voice was as sharp as his eyes, cutting.

  "I've made it here, haven't I? You've tried to stop me, tried to scare me, and you've failed. You can't hurt me, you can't take this from me against my will. Show me you're worthy, and I'll give it to you."

  He looked at me with slitted eyes. "You'd give it to me? Just like that?"

  "If."

  "If what?"

  "Prove to me you're worthy of the gift. Despite everything you've done, for everything you're tried, you've failed to take this. You've tried everything you can think of, and never once simply told me why you should have it, why it is your right. Impress me, make me believe your case is just, your cause righteous, to convince me you should have it."

  He started to protest, and I cut him of with a dismissive flick of the hand I'd seen a queen use in a movie. "No, there is no guarantee I will play fair. But you don't play fair anyway. Stop the tricks and threats, and try to convince me of your right, of your power. If you do, you and the oxuwah will be united, as you've wanted."

  I tried to center myself and hoped beyond belief he couldn't see me shaking. "That's my challenge to you. You should start talking now."

  Chapter Twelve

  My heart echoed so loud in my ears Shriveled Corn Man must have been able to hear the beats. I could imagine a fairytale princess saying those words to the evil magician in a story, but not me. But they were good words, and the best bluff I could come up with.

  He changed, straight to the form of a giant bear. When he roared I could feel it in my shoes.

  I made myself stay calm. "You think that's going to impress me? Did you forget? I traveled here with a shape-shifted bear. Talk to me. Your tantrums won't work any more."

  He became human once more, and raised his arms. He called down the lightning. I could feel the hairs on my arms lift. It struck all around me, and I knew if I moved, it would hit me. I grit my teeth, and spoke softly. I bet he couldn't hear me over the crash of lightning, and the blinding flashes tapered off.

  "What did you say, girl child? Ready to give up?"

  "You've wasted time with theatrics, old man. Try talking for a change."

  I sat on the ground and leaned back on my arms, trying desperately to act casual.

  "Why don't you take a breather and try to explain to me what's going on here. I've heard the story from other people, but never your side of it."

  I regretted my words as soon as I said them. I shouldn't give him any advice on how to win this game. Then I took deep breaths and tried to act like Mom, calm and collected, in search of the facts.

  He didn't sit. He paced back and forth before me, his movements harsh and rough, the limp more pronounced than before.

  "They told you, did they? They told you? Did they tell you how they killed my mother with shame and neglect? Her own people, and their actions cut her sharper than any knife."

  "That must have been hard on you, growing up in a village where no one wanted you, just ignored you."

  I thought of my dad, always curious and sympathetic, tried to bring his warmth into my voice. I imagined my parents standing behind me, supporting me, protecting me.

  "Hard? You cannot imagine how hard. The winter chief had wanted her as a bride for his own son, and when she disappeared, when she came back heavy with me, clear that she chose an unknown man over the winter chief's son, the entire village shunned her. Little more than a girl, she had no one to speak for her, to shelter her from their hatred."

  Shriveled Corn Man stood motionless, gazing into the distance, his voice low and even.

  "She never told them the name of my father, not for all the abuse they heaped upon her. She pleaded for them to be fair, but her own family cut her off. I only remember later times, when I grew a little older, but she must have nearly died that first winter. A new mother on her own, no grain stored, no skill to tra
p or hunt, no one to teach her or trade meat with . . . I still do not know how she managed to survive."

  I whispered, wondering, "Do you think she resented you? Resented having a baby to care for, having her life so completely changed?"

  He spun towards me, all softness gone. "No! She sang to me, told me stories of my father's homeland, the brightly colored birds we would see one day when we traveled to be with him." His hand stole up to touch one of the parrot feathers in his hair, now faded and gray. "She loved me, and I loved her, and that encompassed our entire world. My earliest memories are helping her strip the meat off a scrawny rabbit, her sole catch of the day."

  He smiled bitterly. "She never became skilled with the snare, so no scrap of precious meat could be wasted. For years she told me her delicate stomach could not handle meat, that she preferred just the broth. She starved herself for me. She sang beautifully, sweet and quiet, and her eyes lit on something far away. I think after a time she no longer truly saw our house, but lived in her mind in the south with my father."

  I shivered, even in the sun; its warmth seemed drained by the bleakness of his story. "You must have felt you lost the only person who cared about you."

  "Oh, I tried to fit in, to belong, but the children of the village were as cruel as their elders. Worse, in their careless disregard. Too much difference lay between us, and they could not be bothered to make the effort to try to understand, to try to sympathize. We were not—I was not—worth the effort."

  "I know what you mean, it's horrible to want acceptance, to need that acceptance, and knowing in your heart you'll never get it."

  I drew lines in the dirt, marveling that I could still feel the hurt of the day at the skate park. Did Shriveled Corn Man feel the taunts and insults of his youth even now?

  He stared at me. "If you know how it feels, then you should understand, understand it all."

  "Understand what?"

  "Why I started with the children, of course."

  I fought to hold in my shudder. "The children you took—they weren't the same children, were they?"

  He looked blank, uncomprehending.

  I tried again. "The children who tormented you when you were a child would be adults now, like you, right?"

  "No matter, the children are always the worst. They had to be punished for what they did." His voice sounded calm, steady, sane. No telltale glint of madness flashed in his eyes.

  Yet he had started his vengeance on innocent children who hadn't even been born when all of this happened. I swallowed; my mouth too dry to speak at first.

  "Tell me about when you went to find your father. Did you find him waiting for you?"

  He laughed, bent double with the force of it. When he finished laughing, he sat on the ground across from me, like an old friend come over for coffee.

  "So you went to find your father?" I repeated.

  A grunt. No good. I needed to keep him talking, keep him off balance, so no more yes-or-no questions.

  "How did you find him?" I waved at the feathers in his greasy hair. "It must have been pretty far south, for there to have been parrots around."

  He waved his hand at a point in the distance. "I just kept walking. My mind sick with grief; all I could think to do was find my father. South, and further south. I trapped small animals where I stopped for the night and if I found nothing, foraged for roots. Sometimes I found nothing." His mouth twisted in a bitter parody of a smile. "The years of suffering with my mother prepared me well for the journey. And everywhere I met people, I asked."

  "Asked what?"

  "Asked if they knew my father."

  "You knew his name? I thought she wouldn't tell."

  "Of course I knew. My mother never told the fools of the council, they had no need. But she told me of my birthright and sang songs of his beauty, his power, his love for her. Blue Jaguar Man was his name, but for months of traveling, I found none who had heard of him."

  "When you found him, was he happy to see you?"

  "By the time I found him, my path did not lay as clearly before me. Unsure of revealing myself to this strange man, I wanted to learn more about him first, so I gave as my name that of one of my tormenters from the village. Not long after I arrived, Blue Jaguar Man's apprentice died in a hunting accident, and I took his place."

  A chill swept down my back, and I pulled my knees to my chest. "How . . . fortunate for you."

  "Yes," he flashed a smile cold and hungry as a shark, "I found it so."

  "By that time I suspected Blue Jaguar Man to be rather less than my mother had believed. Oh," the old man raised a hand to forestall interruption, "there was no doubt as to his power as a sorcerer. But a vain man, shallow. And . . ."

  Shriveled Corn Man was silent for long minutes, and I was afraid he would stop the story there. At length he spit it out, like a piece of rotted fruit. "I discovered him to be married, with children both older and younger than myself. Clearly, he had not been free to make those promises to my mother, but he did, for his own amusement, for his own pleasure."

  "Are you sure?" I whispered. "Is it possible he fell in love with her, even if he was married? It could have happened that way."

  Shriveled Corn Man's face softened. "It is good of you to try to put his actions in such a light, but no." He shook his head. "I asked him once if he had ever been to the far north on one of his expeditions to collect medicinal plants. He laughed, remembering, and told me he found the plants rare and valuable, the women easy and worthless, and he'd have to make the trip again some day."

  "That's a terrible thing to say!"

  "See!" The old man sprung to his feet, triumph sounding in his voice. "You understand me. You will understand I had no choice."

  For the first time he smiled at me, and I could see no malice in it. Just a lost old man who had a horrible time growing up and needed a friend.

  And yet . . .

  "You had no choice about what?"

  "I had learned all I could from that old fool. He was no longer necessary. Only one thing left for me to do; a lesson for him to learn, however briefly. Nothing more to it than a sleep spell, and then a little more to be done. When the old man, my father," he spit, "woke, bound and gagged, I made sure the first sight his eyes fell upon was the heads of his wife and children, neatly arranged on the floor beside him. I tell you, I had a hard time with that."

  "Anyone would," I sputtered, relieved to find some core of decency left in him. Then he continued.

  "Oldest to youngest, youngest to oldest, wife to one side or in the middle? Thinking back, I cannot remember what I decided at the time."

  Oh. He sounded like my mother fussing over seating arrangements at a dinner party. Oh.

  "I whispered in his ear my true name, my mother's name. I waited for him to look at me, and comprehend he had brought this upon himself. Then I crushed his head with a stone, and left him there."

  My mouth was too dry to speak, but it didn't matter. Caught up in his story, Shriveled Corn Man didn't even see me.

  "And then I journeyed back to my mother's village. The time had long since passed when my new knowledge would do my mother any good. I could no longer tell her he would never come, no need to wait for him; we could leave, be free. Nevertheless, surely I could find something to occupy my time with in the village."

  He faced me. "You must admit, you who have understood so much about me, the brilliance of my strategy. A curse of general malaise, at first only enough to bother the weak, the young, the old. The cornhusk dolls kept anyone from suspecting anything was wrong for a long, long time. The villagers never guessed that, under the guise of treating their sick ones, I had changed each person into a bird, and compelled it to fly far into the mountains, and left the doll to fool their families." He giggled, like a child playing a joke. "A village of birds, and no one suspected until the end."

  My dream of streets filled with birds, from weeks ago. Had Coyote tried to explain this to me, even then?

  I steeled myself. This
would be the endgame. If I made a wrong move now, I would never recover. I made my voice harsh, cold. "So, now you have what, exactly? No one left to claim vengeance upon, because they're all birds? Or did you plan to rule over an empty village, with no one there to see how clever you are?" I shook, but kept going. "Oh, I know. You thought you'd play with your new bird toys, one at a time. Then they'd all be dead and you'll have nothing."

  "You still don't understand!"

  The sun beat on us, and I dug for some water in my pack. I sipped it, waiting for time, forcing myself to relax. "Do you want some?" I held it to him, hoping he would decline.

  He eyed the bottle, then waved it away. "With the oxuwah in my power, I could restore the people to their human shapes, to live their lives in the village, working their own fields." He reached his hands to either side.

  "And you would, what, torment them, play games with their lives forever?"

  "They would have no choice if I held the oxuwah. When I looked for it in the council chambers, it did not rest in its usual place."

  Ash. I smothered a little smile of pride in him.

  "I realized the little fox boy had guessed my designs and hidden the statue from me. By claiming it for himself, I could no longer just take the oxuwah, I had to win it from him." He loomed over me. "He might have held me off at the pit, you know, if you had not interfered."

  The lump of guilt I had carried for days about my misunderstanding of Ash's actions knotted my stomach tighter and I panicked. What was I doing? How on earth did I think I could defeat this sorcerer?

  Out of habit I reached to touch the necklace Ash had given me. The cool, smooth beads reassured me and I ran my fingers over them, calming myself.

  Ash trusted me. What I had done, I did out of concern for him. I carried no guilt for that. Guilt rested entirely on the crazy old man chattering pleasantly of murder, and trying to break my will and self-confidence. And I wouldn't let it work. Not this time.

  A wave of relief washed over me. I could fix this. Time to stop beating myself up and get on with the battle.