III: Masses and Mountains
12th May – 20th January
Chapter Fifty-Seven
CAMPAIGNING as a runaway favourite is wearing, as it mostly consists of massed reporters following you everywhere in the hope you'll fall on your ass. Or, in my case, do some photogenic magic or kill something. I didn't have any more big points to make, but there was plenty of room for details, and we had five weeks before I84 was re-routed, six to the re-emergence of Celilo Falls, so it was time to tour reservations. With more than three hundred nationwide, obliging everyone was out, and some are way small while the Navajo have about sixteen million acres, but I could circle the land. I started with the Yakama, and as everyone decided the election pow-wow marked the real start of the Celilo Falls countdown a fine time was had by all. Amid dancing and gossiping Bear cooked as promised for Jill and me, other avatars were eased into greater publicity, and Jesse's name confirmed as She Steps Sideways Too, to her pleasure and that of the Saskatchewan Sage,while Warren became Long Wolf, which tickled Kyle for reasons no-one asked about. I wasn't sure I wanted to know what had been in the incredibly rich stew Bear served, but if I'd felt calories depart I surely felt them return, and it left me raring to go, once I could move again.
Over a fortnight Skuffles and I traced a long zig-zag down the Rockies to the Navajo, and if there was soft-spoken wariness of anyone wearing Thunderbird's feather, the cloak, Excalibur, and Carnwennan, there was also burgeoning hope. Registration was up everywhere, and Coyote kept the nation amused with posters — we unveiled a new one each day, in the appropriate language plus English and Spanish, and as predicted the press made unveilings a regular national news item. The Yakama got the What she said picture, which caught me swallowing a grin, eyes alight, and I have to say state representatives took it in good part, quite a few taking the chance to endorse me. Tolerance and practicality adding up to hope made an appearance in many languages, as did my being from Planet B, which was fine, but so did one I was far more dubious about, Andrea and Jesse overruling me — Dwayne's shot of me wielding Excalibur under the Arch, cloak flaring with Carnwennan visible, and the legend I'M ALL FOR OPENNESS BUT I DO CLOAK-AND-DAGGER TOO. It pushed zapping Bonarata firmly back in play, not that it had ever left, and though I'd been right it troubled some people, Jesse and Andrea were also right, because the joke weirdly reassured by reminding people I kept necessary secrets just fine, however I'd declassified plenty of others.
Demand for poster and postcard versions developed, which wound up more than paying for them and made my preening Da insufferable for a while with modest observations about the crying need for political advertising Oscars. Then again, he was making pretty good jokes while wrangling First People as only an Elder Spirit can, so I could put up with some strutting. It also provided lighter material for my emails to the registered, disseminating some history about each tribe and reservation, as well as slate updates and details about core policies.
When the tour brought us to New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma, bison territory, I made a point of introducing Manannán's Bane to what small herds there were. Ap Lugh had no objection to my telling everyone its first power had been healthy twin lambs, and the possibility of increasing the percentage of twin bison caught imaginations. History round tables were running to very large audiences on both radio and TV, and when Frank did the real tale of the buffalo slaughter, with context from an older Anglo professor as well as Warren, Jill, and an avatar of Snake's who went by Joey Diamond and admitted to being older than anyone else there except Jill, there was unhappy national shock. It wasn't that most people hadn't known, but being dragged through cold policy and its execution, with photos of corpse-strewn plains and grinning executioners, made the mechanics of attempted genocide horribly apparent.
The idea of multicultural Buffalo Rangers began to become popular, and the Department of the Mississippi Basin was happy about that. If it took advantage of crowds to run an excellent information tent, and make sure First People understood there were real salaries available for real work cleaning up the Basin, that was Feds being efficient — and I returned the favour by setting up meetings with landowners and others to talk migration routes. Many were instinctively conservative, scared of change, and there were questions about fencing, road and river crossings, and wider land management, but Elder Spirits and Ol' Manitou River could ease worries and solve problems. Ranchers knew demand for beef was falling and saw a lifeline, while reforestation of marginal land appealed to outdoorsmen, so there was a sense of progress that fuelled being upbeat. More practically, we added clean-up of local pollution to each stop, wolf strength shifting rusted cars or machinery, or just picking up windblown litter, usually plastic. It involved everyone, making them look around with seeing eyes and active hands, and if it was the barest start, the sheer volume of plastic crap rolling and floating about made its own point. I was pushing local clean-ups in emails, and Jesse on social media, so litter-gathering became a common activity.
Coyote backed us with a performance on Saturday Night Live so exuberant they just rolled with his informative satire, shapeshifting, and deadpan snark. He got in a bunch of gruesome facts about what plastic pollution did to animals, leavening it with a long shtick on Anglos trying to make snake oil by pressing snakes when everyone knew you had to milk them. That went viral, and so did something he hadn't bothered to warn me about, though my Mom and sisters had — because they and Curt were in the audience, and when he got them to join him on camera there was wild applause. What followed wasn't as excruciating as it might have been, and everyone learned more about Coyote being Joe, but not vice-versa, with Mom having taken my advice to think of the reborn Coyote as her sometime would-have-been father-in-law. My illegitimacy had been raised by scandal sites, with innuendo about why Mom let me be adopted, but she was forthright about the place she'd been, a de facto widowed teenage single mother with a mixed-race daughter who went coyote, and she'd never been out of touch, visiting when she could and the Marrok allowed. She'd been upfront from the getgo with Curt, so I'd known Nan and Ruthie since each had been a few days old, while Coyote charmingly pleaded reincarnation-disorientation and the many difficulties that came with returning from the dead, adding that he had kept an eye on each of us. Then my sisters told stories about their cool coyote big sister, including the lost kitten I'd found by going four-legged and using my nose, bringing it back by the scruff of its neck, scared silly but safe, and fixing Curt's station-wagon for free when the clutch went.
"There's a big reason her name is She Doesn't Only Fix Cars, but she does that too." Coyote grinned. "Come a time when the White House staff can't find her to greet a foreign dignitary or whatever, they should look in the motor pool. She'll want to keep her hand in."
That produced a spate of interview requests from auto magazines, and discovering I really did know a carburettor from a cylinder gasket sharply increased proletarian Anglo support. One thing many First People have is old and usually under-serviced trucks or pickups, so though it bored Skuffles and meant trousers and taking off cloak and Excalibur I added free check-ups to my routine, enjoying the shock and working on elderly vehicles.
Inevitably, someone did try to handle Excalibur while Brent stood over it, sneaking a hand out from behind, and a shriek brought me from under an old Chevy to find the idiot had burned fingers from the hilt while a thorny tendril from the cloak had drawn blood gripping his wrist and Skuffles had bared teeth a few inches from his head. He was white with shock and fright, and I sat up cross-legged on the creeper.
"I've been wondering when someone would be stupid enough to try." I gestured the nearest camera to zoom in. "Please note, everyone, that attempting to steal self-aware fae artefacts is not a good idea."
"I wasn't trying to steal it! I just wanted to see."
"That makes exactly no odds whatever to either Excalibur or my cloak, sir. You have no right to lay hands on either."
"It hurts! Make it let go."
"Not my decision, sir. Under the Medicine Wolf Accords, contact with a fae artefact is equivalent to addressing full-blooded fae, and leaves you liable to Excalibur's and my cloak's judgement. I doubt Excalibur thinks you're worth executing, and burned fingers are sufficient. My cloak, though, shares my outrage. And, unhappily for you, my sense of humour."
There were indrawn breaths as I rolled forward to pick up Excalibur and rest it across my knees, stroking Ceulydd. I was never going to be a real swordswoman but I'd done enough practice that we'd learned one another's ways, a little, while a long conversation with Zee had clarified some things nicely and others not at all. Like me, Excalibur could acquire magics, and beyond the many things Zee had forged into the blade it had over the centuries done a fair amount of what I had to call pilfering. Traces of Merlin were there, harnessed to resisting water, with a swirling luck that had apparently attended King Arthur, and more recently pack keep-away magic had been added, meaning it could hide itself. There was also the power I'd sensed that smelled of my cloak, fused with whatever it got from the duckpond manoeuvre and a gift from Manannán's Bane, to become the ability to transport itself, while from me it had absorbed the spirit magic to cleave braided ghosts. It had also acquired a finely tuned sense of why anyone wanted to wield it. My line about making it an offer it didn't want to refuse had been right, and the Boss had a single out saying so — the pack were annoyingly given to singing the chorus, A sword needs to shine, not to court the idle rust, / So I came gladly to her hand, and the vampire came to dust, when they thought I couldn't hear — but I was also right that on this occasion it had no further interest.
The cloak had acted on reflex, and was puzzled by how to proceed. I offered alternatives, and a second thorny tendril extended upwards, swayed menacingly in front of the idiot's face, and pricked his nose hard enough to make him jump back with a shout as the cloak released his wrist, to leave him sprawling on his back. Skuffles yipped amusement.
"Count yourself very lucky, sir, as far as fae justice is concerned. Then again, tribal law has things to say about attempted theft of sacred artefacts, and you are so busted."
The idiot was arrested while paramedics saw to wrist, fingers, and nose. I did a quick survey before assuring them magic had done nothing to prevent injuries healing, which they could have, wounds that won't heal being a perennial — ask Philoctetes, or Ingrey kin Wolfcliff. The media next day mostly approved, confirming legalities, and commending (in strangled voices) my cloak's restraint. They also began, at last, to wonder what living with self-aware artefacts might mean, and I answered questions about things that had their own ethical parameters and the difference between old, independent artefacts like Manannán's Bane and Excalibur, and the cloak as a personal lifetime gift from Underhill. It had autonomy of means but not intent, while Excalibur was its own though it acknowledged me. And no, curiosity still wasn't a good enough reason to draw it, but practice was, and I eventually allowed Caroline to film a session in vain hope it might deter further requests. I also let a Wazzu archaeologist photograph it and record tech specs which more successfully satisfied the panting historians.
My tour moved into New England, with a charged reception from the Olde Towne Pack. Boston was very conscious it had taken hits from the Heuter verdict and MacLandis, but defensive of clannish Catholicism and ethnicities — taking another hit as the Vatican continued silent despite evidence Bonarata's influence had been considerable. His primary purpose had been control of the Church's power to brush briskly under carpets, but latterly he'd had fingers in murky financial dealings, including money-laundering, and some Italian seethes were in places that, on paper, the Church owned. I was dreading speaking at Fenway Park, but an enormous audience listened carefully as I tackled it head-on. The Heuter verdict and MacLandis were inexcusable, but the point of remembering shame was to know what had to change, where not to go, how not to think, and nothing was stopping Boston doing that. Harvard and MIT could help examine the Bonarata Papers, speeding publication, and Irish-American and Italian-American communities could reach out to one another in a common predicament. Meantime, the Olde Towne Pack under Isaac Owens would be launching the Magical Entente next week, with Frank making a major speech, and the local seethe fully involved, so the city had a chance to make a fresh start. It was tricky, and the bigwigs were not remotely at ease with me, but knew political opportunity when handed one, and the sorts of things I'd suggested did began to happen, bringing positive energy, and my local poll numbers, lower than most places, climbed sharply.
Then I headed to the Upper Mid-West, meaning more bison, and in Wyoming the Freed and I enjoyed a riotous reception from excitable Shoshone and Arapaho, with a heavy turnout of lawmakers. Many state flags with its bison silhouette were flying, Wyoming was there, and after we'd inspected a herd let me know how much he appreciated my suggestion about chairing the inter-basin committee, the 'watershed state' being a promising new nickname. I couldn't avoid a conversation about Heuter and those sentenced with him, whose appeals had in Wyoming's way gone straight to their supreme court, failed, and were waiting on a reluctant SCOTUS. There had been procedural irregularities, with preternatural witnesses and my brief to look after fae, but the Medicine Wolf Accords had been in force, evidence of mass rape-torture-murder was overwhelming, and quashing convictions on a technicality would be politically fraught. The justices were wary after the resignation of two associates who'd lied about belonging to the JLS, and the Man's nomination of ethnic moderates to replace them, but would soon have to say if they would hear the appeal — which would kick everything past November or give Wyoming a problem I wasn't touching with a stick.
"Not my business, sir, unless you want confirmation that should it ever be my decision he'll get no reprieve from me."
"If it is during your campaign, though …"
"Then it's during my campaign. Law shouldn't run on the electoral cycle."
"Of course not. Frankly, Ms Hauptman, I wondered if you'd rather he saw you win. Call it a parting gift from Wyoming."
"That would be Wyoming's privilege, sir. Can't say I don't admire your sense of revenge, but it's your business."
"Right. If and when, will you attend? Or Ms Velasquez?"
"I won't, and I doubt Ramona will, though I'll ask. Knowing is enough."
It was a strange business, and Ramona declined at once, saying no Freed had any interest in watching executions, even that one, so I set about ignoring it again. Coyote helped by staging his long-awaited National Geographic special on Pleistocene megafauna. He roped in his peers and included Medicine Wolf and Ol' Manitou River by camera and phone, with enough palaeobiologists and -botanists in the audience to constitute a conference — and if they had the same problem as everyone hearing eyewitness statements about events more than ten thousand years ago, papers are still coming out on everything from smilodons to short-faced bears. Elder Spirits had been less confined than they'd latterly chosen to be, ranging along the ice-front as it retreated, so there were maps of glacial lakes Missoula and Agassiz and their drainage events. The unbelievable power of the Missoula floods was memorably described, but the big surprise was manitou perspectives on having hundreds of cubic miles of water abruptly added to one's system. Catastrophic events could not usually be avoided, and however they had disliked ice ages there had been nothing they could do, but mass losses of flora and fauna during the ice's retreat were unwelcome, and ameliorating current threats with human and preternatural co-operation a bonus all round, hence willing co-operation about the Cascadia 'quake and Yellowstone.
National Geographic issued a lavishly illustrated Elder Spirits' and Great Manitous' Guide to the North American Late Pleistocene as an Others 101 textbook, fuelling a Pleistocene-over-dinosaurs craze and in the longer term providing contributors with considerable income. It affected the way preternatural ages were thought about, establishing a perspective in which bicentenarian wolves were the least of it and manitous as emergent magical properties came well before the interaction of First People with totemic animals gave rise to Elder Spirits, and in a related fashion the Fae. Wolves came later, out of the same matrices of human–animal interaction, and vampires couldn't be much older than Baba Yaga's known encounter in about 2000 BCE. The collective data really did get it into human heads that very few preternaturals achieved longevity, and the wannabes problem was way smaller than feared.
It made Bran happy. I was amused that while ap Lugh had taken him to see the Untenanted Duckpond fae were heeding my wish about telling humans — or a Gray Lord's orders, but for once it came to the same thing. Bran had mixed feelings about the triad, not much caring for the mix of absurdity and irony with real power, but greatly approved of Excalibur having a proper resting-place that wasn't his study. And he was still blessing me for Lenka, so that was alright.