Chapter Twenty-Eight
Not so surprisingly, social as well as news media had exploded, and the USGS had a very busy time providing talking heads who actually knew something about plate tectonics, but the house stayed calm, for a change. Some of the pack were on wolf patrol, and after talking to Westfield and various PDs Adam let those with families head home, though there was a roster for guard duty and strict rules about their own security and dealing with the media. Sawyer headed back to DC, after telling me the President would still like to speak to me this evening, but had no idea yet what time he might be free. Who knew what the Feebs were up to, but as they were in their MCC and trailer whatever it was was fine by me. I changed back into jeans and a tee, wriggled in relief, laid the feather carefully next to Carnwennan, and did some more baking.
I also got to watch Medicine Wolf, who after giving its statement in Pasco decided to stay visible while walking to Hanford, and attracted serious crowds. It also — occasionally, and on what basis I couldn't work out — stopped to talk to people. Quite a few were children, and it was clearly greeting police hurriedly stationed along the route, but the adults seemed random — all ages and colours, and perhaps that was the point. It made for an interesting show, not least in that while there was awe on most faces, there was a lot less shock than anyone might expect. Jesse, Anna, and Andrea had come to keep me company while scanning media and stealing bits of chocolate, and shared my curiosity.
"Maybe it's zenning them a little."
"Could be, Anna, but I think they've got to 'it may be a fifteen-foot dire wolf but it's our fifteen-foot dire wolf' sooner than I'd have thought possible. And that they're filing under celebrity — it's a TV star, so going to see it in person is what you do."
"All of that, Mercy, but that's a kind of worship, and so is this." Andrea was smiling as she watched. "It's so wonderful why wouldn't everyone want to look for themselves?"
"Huh. You think my attitude's catching on, then?"
"For sure. And your numbers are up, again. Ninety-eight percent and change under forty giving strong personal approval, despite doubts and worries about the river and earthquake plans, and it's rising into the higher seventies for the over-forties. Everything lupine is doing well too — Charles made a big impression, and anything with Path of Assertion, Path of Mercy, Path of the Manitou in its tags is trending way up."
"Four legs good, two legs bad."
Jesse was deadpan and we all laughed.
"Some of that, Jesse." Andrea looked thoughtful. "But it's more the, um, decisiveness Mercy's shown and induced, I think. The thing with Mr Harris has played oddly — a lot of people didn't like what they heard him say, and most seem to think he got exactly what was coming to him. But it's resonating with Medicine Wolf stopping Cantrip yesterday as well as what Mercy said introducing Sawyer, about putting a rush on it, and Sawyer's own speed in saying what he did. He's done himself a lot of good." She was flicking pages, or feeds, and suddenly gave a wide grin. "NBC's nailed it, Mercy — Wolves Rock America."
"Now that's a tee I want." It didn't mention me, for one thing. I slid more baking trays into the oven and straightened, feeling my back tell me I'd done enough. "And thanks for the analysis, Andrea. I hope you're right, on all counts. And for the walking on water idea, which worked a treat. Is that trending too?"
"Ohhh yeah." She put some drawl in it, still grinning. "The religious feeds are getting really confused. Yesterday didn't cut it, despite everything, but the Christian Science Monitor is already asking if today saw a miracle in the Tri-Cities. And the fundamentalist pastors who've been talking up stewardship in the dominion debate are recognising the manitou as what they're calling a corrective Godsend. But most demographics are tipping, Mercy, even ones I didn't expect." She looked up and shrugged. "One day, and it was huh?, two and it's yay! Do you know what happens next?"
I returned the shrug, with interest. "Not a clue, Andrea, beyond what's been said. Except that someone will do something. They always do. And if they don't, my not-exactly father will. He owes Taylor an interview, for all he's been stalling on it."
"Have not." Coyote drifted forward from the doorway, making Jesse and Andrea jump. "I've been busy."
"So I've heard, not-exactly Dad." His eyebrows rose. "What did Gary ever do to you except get conceived?"
"You don't want to know." His hand drifted toward a cooling brownie as he gave me what he obviously thought was a soulful look. "Are you so cross with me you'll deny me your excellent baking?"
"Not if you give Taylor that interview before dusk."
"Done." The brownie disappeared, closely followed by another. "On the other paw, your not-exactly aunts liked what you said to her, and even I think it shows some promise. You know what to do with the spotlight, which Gary doesn't. Did you persuade them to let him go?"
"Yeah. And if you mess with him again, I'll ask Gordon to make you swallow a cell phone and give Margi your number."
He beamed at me. "That's my girl. And I haven't forgotten your very exactly mother, I promise, nor your unpesky sisters and lucky old Curt. They're still feet deep in media, shouting over Bran's splendid security types, but as soon as that ebbs a little I'll drop by."
"Give Mom some warning?" I was deadly serious and he heard me. "You bounce a lot better than she does."
His voice gentled. "I will, Mercy. Joe loved her a lot in the time he had, so I do too for all my much longer time." Enough was enough and we both knew it. "Aren't you going to demand reassurances about the marid?"
"What's the point?" I pointed to a third brownie and made a cut-off sign it didn't survive. "You'll do what you'll do, with or without humourless djinni to help. Just don't do it here when stuff that matters is happening." I considered. "In so far as you were priming Asil to be more forthcoming, my thanks. But leave him be as well, hey? Because I ask you, if for no other reason. At ten and whatever thousand, you've forgotten the pain he's in, manitou glass or no. And wolves are so not your domain."
He was busy looking indignant when, surprising both of us, Jesse slipped off her stool and went to stand in front of him.
"We haven't been introduced, sir, but I'm Jesse Hauptman. And you're Coyote."
"Yes, I am. So?"
"So you're my not-exactly grandfather?"
He quirked an eyebrow. "You could say, not-exactly granddaughter. What of it?"
He got a grin that had more edge than anyone Jesse's age should be able to manage, and I sent up a silent cheer as he blinked.
"It means your sisters are my not-exactly great-aunts, yes?"
"Not-exactly so." He shrugged slightly. "But you could argue it."
"Can I meet them? And may I?"
"Maybe. It's not so easy, not-exactly granddaughter. And your not-exactly mother should find a less clumsy way of putting all this."
Jesse wasn't distracted. "Dad has no siblings, but Mom's sisters are cool, so I like aunts. Great-aunts sound even better."
Coyote sent me a harassed glance, and I folded my arms, leaning back. He stuck out his tongue, and I just smiled. Jesse was a force to reckon with when she wanted to be.
"There are rules, granddaughter."
"And you obey them, Gramps? Mom says otherwise."
"Gramps? Have you no respect?"
"While you do, lots. I'll make you chocolate and brush you anytime. But if you give Mom any headaches, I'll tie a firebrand to your tail in a heartbeat and tell my graunts everything I know about hair dye."
He tried staring her down until a grin spread over his face. "Now that sounds promising, Graught. Step-grand-niece is pushing it, but things do go sideways in our families, and maybe they have with you."
Abruptly he became more serious, and with an easy motion sat cross-legged on a chair, putting his head closer to Jesse's eyeline.
"Yes, I'm a trickster, and irritating my more-exactly-than-she-thinks daughter is in my blood, along with ignoring everybody else's rules. But what she's doing now is very important. I wouldn't be here otherwise and I won't mess with it, just … lighten up the edges a little. Laughter matters too. And meeting my sisters isn't so easy because they don't walk in the world the way I do, but if you come with Mercy to the next big Yakama pow-wow we might be able to find a space you can both be in for a little while. Do I get a pass?"
Jesse gave him one, but he'd also been looking at me.
"You always do. But yeah. I was just pissed about Gary, and the pack wouldn't have been too pleased if he'd wound up back in jail. Especially Honey, and I do not need her upset. Nor does she."
He rolled his eyes at me. "Alright, alright, I'll leave him be. For now. But he's going to have pull his weight a bit more, Mercy. Everyone is."
I couldn't argue with that, and had my own doubts about Gary, so I let it go, and as it was clouding over and the wind had picked up a little, I agreed Coyote could do his interview in the room we'd used last night. Anna went to tell Taylor, while I gave Mom a heads-up, and took the chance to tell her what I could about this morning and assure her I was OK. She wasn't too happy with how much I wasn't saying but knew there were reasons, and was more nervous than she was letting on about Coyote, which led to some babbling about me having looked good on TV. I talked to my sisters too, exchanging reassurances and laughing with Nan about the Time and National Geographic covers, while waiting on the last batch in the oven and wondering how many people would need feeding this evening. Then KEPR's coverage of the manitou ended as it cleared the city limits and sped up, and the Coyote fun began.
After her introduction, Taylor not unreasonably asked him if he really was the Coyote, about whom so many tales were told, and instead of speaking he just went coyote, giving a twirl on the couch and cycling through his animal-headed form before reverting to looking human.
"Yup, Ms Taylor, that's me. Mercy and the other avatars can't do the mixed form or manage clothing when they change, and they have regular-sized animal forms, because they're not Elder Spirits. But I'm the quintessence of coyote, and I've been around a long time — twenty thousand years or so that I remember, and who knows how long before that that I don't? As to stories, the First People usually get them about right in the oral traditions, but in print it all gets muddled up because most of you Anglos can't tell a catamount from a catflap. I can tell you a true one, though, if you'd like."
He picked the one about the cheating Anglo trader — what the Sioux call was'ichu, or fat stealer — who reckoned he could outsmart and rob any dumb old Indian, and lost his clothes, new hat, gun, and horse to wind up bareass naked in the afternoon sun while Coyote rode off with the lot. And I have to admit he told it really well, with vivid detail and a switching accent that made it clear the was'ichu was an Easterner, as well as a pure relish in the trickery. But he ended on a sober note.
"I pulled that trick often, but it didn't stop the was'ichu in the end. They just kept coming, until there was no more fat to steal and not much lean either. Coyote as I am, I couldn't match the trickery and conniving you Anglos got up to, any more than poor old Bison could stop you slaughtering all his children for the dark pleasure of killing. He's still in a bad way. But now the Great Manitou's back and being Medicine Wolf — isn't it a good name? I don't think I've ever been grateful to the FBI before — we're having another go. And we've been studying up on your tricks for a long while, now, so seeing it make you all jump sideways is … pleasing. Makes for a change."
For a while after that he stayed serious and on message, so far as I understood what it was, while I shifted the last batch of brownies to racks to cool. Humans mostly saw pollution as a nuisance, but for plenty of animals it was a killer — especially chemicals and plastic. The yokes for packs of beverage cans got special stick, as did the microbeads they use in stuff that really doesn't need them, and the habit of saturating cattle with antibiotics. Taylor didn't have a problem with any of that, but she did ask about predation on livestock, and got an eloquent shrug.
"Of course my children eat sheep, and cattle when they can, though bovines are too big mostly. You've filled the plains and everywhere else with them, and reduced the deer and rabbit ranges. Humans feeding my children is not good, because it gives them ideas and confuses them, but if you shared the land better the problem would reduce."
It didn't seem likely, even today, and I'd always been able to see the ranchers' point, even if some ninety thousand coyotes being shot every year was a stat that always made me wince. But all that went out of my head when Taylor got him onto the River Devil. She was cautious, mentioning the sacred silence Charles had explained but wondering if there was anything he could add, and he gave her a grin.
"Of course there is, Ms Taylor. Charles and Mercy were exactly right in what they said, but now we Elder Spirits have come out we can say what we like, however they still shouldn't. So ask away."
She did, and to my surprise and consternation he told it straight, though he did leave out the otterkin. Listening with increasing surprise Taylor went a little pale.
"It ate you?"
"It did."
"All of you?"
"Yeah. Well, all who were there, which was seven of us. Look, Ms Taylor, it was the River Devil — very magical, most of a hundred feet long, with really nasty teeth and way too many tentacles, as even Octopus and Squid agree." I had no idea if he was joking, but the coastal tribes had cephalopod totems. Neither a giant giant squid nor a squid-headed man were comfortable thoughts, at all — ask Johnny Depp — but that might be the point. "In all those monster films humans get the whatever-it-is in the end with some kind of direct violence — blow it up, or crush it, or burn it. But none of that works with the River Devil because it's magic. Bullets bounce right off. So would a missile, if we'd had one and been silly enough to try it. Someone has to cut out its heart using a stone knife, because it's a water spirit and stone resists water. But that means it's got to keep still for long enough to let that happen, and the only way you can do that is to glut it senseless. And it is very hungry, always. But we are the Elder Spirits, and we have a lot of magic, so eating us is like eating a mammoth whole. And with seven mammoths in its belly, all at once, it did go to sleep, so Mercy had the window she needed. Did a good job, too, my not-exactly daughter."
"I don't doubt it, sir. I'm just trying to get my head round the fact that you said you died. You and Thunderbird and the others. You sacrificed yourselves."
"Needs must."
"But you came alive again."
"Yeah. We do that."
"You're heroes."
She sounded quite plaintive.
"Of course we are, Ms Taylor. The tales are always about us." He grinned. "Could I get a Purple Heart, do you think?"
Adam, who had several, had come in and was sitting beside me, eating a brownie he nearly choked on.
"You have to be serving in the military, I believe." Taylor was still shocked. "But I'll agree you ought to get something. So should Ms Hauptman. She really cut out its heart?"
"It's the only way, Ms Taylor. Took a lot of knives, too, and some timely help from Manannán's Bane, as I heard the story. But you'll have to ask her about that, not that she'll tell you — I was dead at the time, remember? Didn't get back until next morning." He grinned. "But the River Devil didn't get back at all, until next time, and that should be a long while. It'll also be a lot easier to find if the dams are gone — having so much deep water for it to hide in didn't help much, this time round. Just be glad we got it, as we are."
"Oh, I am. Is there anything else like that out there?"
"Nope. Only one River Devil." He frowned. "Wendigos aren't much fun, but they're not in the same league by a long way. Enough salt will usually do the trick. And they prefer the ice, silly things, so stay south of it and you'd be very unlucky to bump into one."
Taylor swallowed. "Salt for wendigos. Right. Sasquatch?"
Coyote laughed. "Nah, though leaving extra big footprints is always a good trick. Apes didn't make it to North America until the First People came along. I don't know about yetis, though — never been to Asia, but they do have monkeys, so maybe. Wouldn't it be fun if there were?"
"Fun?"
"You bet. Playmates are always good. And we're all hoping some more manitous might wake up. There's certainly Great Manitous of the Mississippi and Colorado Basins, and there used to be a baby one of the Great Lakes, though I haven't seen it in a long time."
That brought things back to Medicine Wolf and what it wanted, seguing into stories about life in the Pleistocene and what the great floods from Glacial Lake Missoula had been like. Coyote had a low opinion of smilodons, which he said had had no sense of humour at all, but he regretted the stag moose — "Very good eating, when I could get it" — and sabre-toothed salmon, both of which had Jesse and Andrea consulting Wikipedia and raising eyebrows. Who knows how long it might have gone on, but Taylor reluctantly curtailed it to say Medicine Wolf had reached Hanford, and was preparing to open a shaft, so coverage would switch. After offering thanks Coyote acknowledged with a modest look that made me grin, she signed off, and after a while he brought her, with Dilman and Hersch, through to the kitchen.
Coyote was mostly after more brownies, and the others were willing enough to take some when I offered, but more awkward with me than they'd become by the end of yesterday. KEPR's coverage of Hanford was keeping everyone a little quiet, though, because while Medicine Wolf wasn't obviously doing anything except glowing a little, which looked very pretty as the sky darkened, its magic was hard at work. A shaft had already opened and was steadily deepening, and a drone camera was providing a bird's-eye view. Zee had been in the shot once or twice, hanging a geiger counter on a metal arm over the opening with a mike next to it, and when the clicking began rapidly to increase in volume and frequency, rattling up to a steady buzz, he and Tad lugged over some big coils of plastic piping, dropped them in, and started the pumps. There were other geiger counters by the filters, and when they started buzzing too I felt a grin start, that others shared.
On one hand it was pretty boring — just a filtration system doing its job with a soundtrack that could have been as annoying as flies in summer. The net result was a dull gray, nasty-looking sludge that Zee showed the drone when after twenty minutes or so he paused the pump to switch out the box where it was accumulating for an empty one, before carefully tipping sludge into one of the waiting containers. But it felt wonderful, because the crap was coming out of the groundwater, and the voiceover let us know only minutes later that contamination levels detected in Hanford Reach and the Yakima River had already begun to fall — only a very little, as yet, but moving in the right direction. Adam broke out some beers, telling me ruefully that we needed to restock, and I caught Coyote as he sauntered out back to drink his.
"Any particular reason you put the technicolour version of the River Devil business out there?"
He gave me an unreadable look. "Finding fame a bother? Don't. You're using it well. And you heard Ms Taylor — she thinks you should get a medal."
"You can be the hero, and welcome."
"Spot's already taken this time, and you're it. With Medicine Wolf. And of course I had a reason — several of them. You danced round it very prettily last night, but you're far too modest, and given what the maggot-brained MacLandis had put out there already it's better to have it all straight. Saving the otterkin, of course, and they're all dead, so who cares about them? The others agreed. And it's not as if we're going to need that plan again anytime soon."
He finished his bottle in a long chug, and handed me the empty.
"Good beer. Besides, oh not-exactly daughter, you're going to need all the juice you can get to keep pushing things. You can't tell the humans you killed all those vamps, or that Gray Lord this morning, and you didn't kill Guayota though you made a pretty good mess of his avatar, but the River Devil was your kill. Well, with that nice walking stick. I bet it's not cross with me. And now you don't have to pussyfoot round it any more."
"I'm not cross, I don't think. I was just surprised. Your version of Gordon's feather, then?"
He laughed. "If you like, though I was only following your example and putting truth out there. We Elder Spirits being so brave and big-hearted we deserve Purple Hearts doesn't hurt either, of course, but once I'd told Ms Taylor we all died in the doing, who else but you could have done the actual killing?" He gave me a sly smile. "You could say death throes again, next time someone asks. It sounded pretty good to me. But after all that sitting and talking I need a run, somewhere there aren't so many wolves. I'll spread the word about searching some more, too, and I'll be back tomorrow or the day after, I expect. Sooner if I'm needed."
I remembered something, and held up a hand. "It's not urgent, but Charles wants me to ask you about scent, and whether mine gets any magical boost. Talk to him when you can?"
"If he wants, but Bear's better at that than anyone else."
He changed and trotted off, tail swishing slightly, and I went back in, thinking with some regret that a second beer should probably wait until after the President called. And a third.
