In a small "corner" of Nexus, frequently overlooked by all but its native inhabitants, the full silver moon tracks across the depthless sky. The water below catches its light and throws it back, weaving a path that only the fey may travel. The darkness resounds with the chirps, whirrs and creels of a host insects and frogs. Shadowy winged shapes swoop from tall, moss-curtained trees, pouncing midair on unseen prey before returning to their roosts. And beneath the trees amidst the spreading buttress roots, an antlered head looks up to catch starlight in deep round eyes.
"They're restless."
The old stag's ears flick toward the voice a second before his head turns. He nods. A much younger stag picks his way among the roots, stifling a curse at the scraggly brush that reaches up to clutch at the hems of a fluttery gray-dyed garment.
"You shouldn't be out here, Mishanali. What if a Creel scout decided to come by here night-hunting?"
"Then he would be as blind and deaf to me as Washaw," the older stag replies. The once rich golden brown fur that had been his namesake had dulled through the years to a mousy gray, but the fragile looking body still possesses a wiry strength belied by the number of year-knots tied in the cords tangled around his antlers. The task of tying, though, had passed many seasons ago to his shaman-trainee as fine tasks such as knot tying and feather braiding had defeated arthritic hands. A task that will be repeated again at the coming of the Harvest Moon.
"Washaw is a headstrong fool who will lead our people to their end," the same trainee snorts, his ears flattening.
"Washaw is young."
"Washaw is stubborn."
"*You* are young, Manasa."
The younger stag blinks. "At least I listen to my elders."
"You are also stubborn."
Chastened, Manasa is silent. His eyes turn beyond the trees to the diving bats and the moon on the water.
"What do they tell you?" he asks, his voice subdued in the manner of the dutiful student. He watches one bat dive at some small thing lost in the darkness and almost imagines that he sees the insect that was its quarry.
"Hunting is good. Moths are stupid."
"That can't be the only reason you're out here," Manasa frowns at his teacher's lack of seriousness.
"You didn't ask me that. You asked me what they told me. You must learn to be specific in your questions. Do you think Fox will tell you want you want to know, instead of what you ask?"
"No.. " the younger stag admits. "What is it you seek out here tonight, Elder?"
"A sign."
"A sign? Of what is to come?"
Mishanali nods, observing that the moon is nearly at its height. A ruddy tinge stains its earthward edge.
"When?" the younger buck continues. "By whom?"
"You ask too many questions, little one. Have patience and see."
And as the mood rides gradually higher, her face darkens to the color of the red pine. The bats cease their hunting as the shadow stretches across the land, muffling the life in whatever it touches. And the moon's trail across the water becomes a warpath as the waters turn to blood.
And another pair of eyes turns upward as the moonlight darkens. The dismal light makes deeper shadows of fur already darkened with soot, and the light patches that remain turn to copper. It catches on the gilding of antlers bent and twisted back into knotty spirals and flashes against teeth filed to the sharpness of a wolf's.
"See! It is a sign from Luwawe!"
"The moon has been red before, Oshala," an Elder doubts, squinting blindly toward the heavens. "What makes you think this one is any different?"
"Ha! Ah-hah! But always there is death when the moon is red. See how it lingers? There will be death, great death, a hundred days! Our enemies will make war on each other, but the warriors of the Onlawe will fade away as the mist in the morning sun, and they will not find us! One-Tree and I will call the little people of the forest to goad them on, and when the hundred days are past there will be no more Creel or Mishalaw or Kirsiwa. Luwawe demands it! Those who are not her Chosen people must be destroyed!"
"I've seen no such signs," disagrees a tall, ascetic stag draped in the warm tones of his Sun god. "Are you sure you haven't misinterpreted? Luwawe is known for her capriciousness."
"I've done no such thing! She speaks to me truly!" Oshala hisses back. "You have been in the sun too long, Ashina. You're getting as pale and weak-kneed as the Kirsiwa. And you, Montaw! Will your stone-spirits protect you when Luwawe brings her wrath down on the earth? What about your trees, Matera?"
The named cerns' ears flatten in astonishment, and two of the others present make signs against evil at the words coming from their fellow priest's mouth.
"Everything the light touches!" Oshala continues. "Everything in Luwawe's eye shall be cleansed!"
"He's mad!" Montaw whispers to the Elder, who only nods wisely in reply.
"Luwawe's priests are prone to madness, but this..!" Ashina agrees quietly, watching the priest of moon-goddess as carefully as a viper.
"He can't be serious!" Matera concurs. 'This has got to be--"
"Enough," the Elder says, his quiet but firm voice carrying enough authority that even Oshala breaks off his exaltations of his goddess to listen.
"We have heard you, Oshala. You are Luwawe's priest, and the only one who can speak for her, as we speak for our own. Now it is time that we look to them and hear the wisdom that they might grant us. If you are correct, then we must prepare.
"I pray, however, that you are wrong.
"Help me up, Montaw," he concludes. "My old bones long for my bed and light of the sun to warm them in the day. This skulking about at night will be the end of me."
Quietly, the other four cerns withdraw back toward the village, but Oshala remains to bask in the bloody light of the moon.
"They will learn, Luwawe, or they will die like the rest."
A dark, slender shadow detaches itself from the trees and glides like a serpent to entwine itself around his legs and up to his shoulders.
"You did well, my priest," Luwawe purrs.
*****
Karreya woke and yawned. It was twilight, and he was hungry. He stood, and immediately regretted doing so. The den had been warm and snug enough when he had first entered it, but the cool breeze that had been blowing at that time had turned into a biting, beginning-of-autumn wind that blew through the entrance and reached him even underground.
Yaki, his mate, snuffled and mumbled something about fieldmice before she fell back asleep. Karreya trotted up out of the den quietly, so as not to wake her.
The wind outside was colder, but the sensation of chill faded after a while, leaving only an insistent hissing ruffling of his dark red-gold fur.
Here, also, the wind brought more messages, not just those of wet fur and three pups grown and gone that it had stirred up in the depths of the den.
The fieldmice, for instance, were about. He heard them rustling discreetly in the brush, and smelled their fear. But 'many mice make mouthfuls only', as the proverb said, and Karreya was not as adept at hunting the small creatures as his mate. //If Yaki wants to eat them,// he reasoned, //let her hunt them.// Personally, he enjoyed rabbit, and they were nearly as abundant as the fieldmice.
He loped around out of the woodsy brush around the lair and into the open area of grass, marking a few bushes idly as he looked for his prey.
Karreya had seen some smaller rabbits, the year's last litter, out feeding a few days ago. He hoped - and suspected - that they did not yet know the location of all the bolt holes into their warren. The twitch of a long brown ear alerted him. They were feeding in the grass, running and eating. Often one would stand up and look about. One of the smallest was feeding much too far away from the warren, but did not know it.
"Your fur, your feet-quickness, yours add to mine." Karreya whispered the charm as he pounced. The rabbit heard the stamp, but did not bolt nearly quick enough. He ate as the twilight dimmed to darkness, and, feeling generous, killed nearly nine fieldmice on the way back, burying them for Yaki.
"Yaki," he said as he pranced into the den. "I have - " The wind, and nothing else, filled up the inside of the earth-space. He sneezed. For a moment, his sharp white teeth shone in the darkness like deadly stars. //Perhaps she has gone on the hunt herself,// he thought, //out the ridgeway.// He went up that way for a few minutes, the ground rising underneath his feet, until he was at the beginning of the ridgecrest that went on for miles. The wind brought no tinting of the air with her wonderful smell of fresh leaves.
He went back, then, past the den, to the place where the mice were buried. She had left no scentmarks on the bushes or trees, no paw-crushings of grass marked her way across the meadows. Karreya yipped, loudly. For five snowfalls, another's bark had answered him back. Now, there was nothing but the wind, bringing nothing except the half-tone sounds of crickets. He looked up at the sky.
The Rabbit gleamed brightly. The Deer's Head twinkled like fireflies set in the darkness. The Fisher's large eye gleamed. The Three Foxes were crossed by the moon - a large, full moon, reddish-brown as the rabbit's blood.
Karreya stood for a moment, staring at the sky. The large red moon was reflected in his eyes. The image almost obscured the black pupil in the center and gave the appearance of some strange internal eclipse. He remembered.
--
They were all sitting in a circle around the elder, in the early morning.
The elder-tree's branches creaked overhead.
The elder-wise's voice creaked like the branches.
"Ayarp?"
The small brownish fox turned back. "Yes, elder-wise Rak?"
The cataracts on elder-wise Rak's eyes made his expression all the more unreadable when he replied, "Thank you for the Bounty of your hunt, Ayarp, but I do not think I will be needing this." He nudged the mouse away with a grey-furred foot, and lay his head down on the ground.
The entire skulk had known it was coming - the Watch had been called together long ago - but it was still a shock.
Ayarp, unable to deal with the ritual response required, looked desperately around the circle of watching faces, ran between two others, and disappeared into the woods.
Elder-wise Rak chuckled. It sounded like lightning splintering trees. "It seems that I did not reach the Lessons on composure with young Ayarp." Nervous glances flitted around the circle like butterflies. Teeth clicked as some smiled, but no one could quite bring themselves to laugh.
"Come," the elder-wise said, and everyone started. Rak sounded, for that moment, as if they were back at Lessons, and he back at his Teaching. "Will no one take the mouse?"
Karreya stood, and walked forward.
"Ah," elder-wise Rak said, and sniffed. "Karreya, is it?"
"Yes," he said quickly. He immediately took the tiny mouse in his jaws, tossed it up in the air, snapped it in half on the way down. The two pieces fell to the ground separately, thudding like a heartbeat. "As the mouse dies, so dies all. So dies Elder-wise Rak, and so dies Karreya after. So dies the mouse."
Elder-wise Rak smiled. "Thank you, Karreya," he said warmly, and sighed. Karreya went back to his place among the Watchers and sat down, cold and shaking.
Rak tilted his head, and sniffed around the circle. "Well," he finally said, "This is the time you have all been waiting for, Watcher-students. Your last Lessons. Individually given. As always, only upon request."
One at a time, the Watchers came up and sat with Rak. Sometimes they would talk together, in low tones. Sometimes, they would sit in silence. Then, they would leave. They would not look back, but Rak's nearly sightless gaze often followed them until fur and scent was lost in the green leaves.
Ayarp came back in the latest afternoon, and slunk into the remains of the Watcher's circle. "Rak," he yelped once, and was silent, not knowing what else to say.
The elder-wise smiled. "Ayarp," he said, so that it carried to the entire circle, "come here. I believe it is time that you Learned composure." This time, the entire circle laughed, in high-pitched barks that echoed like afternoon shadows.
Karreya was not laughing when he went up for his Lesson.
"Karreya," Rak said, then suddenly looked confused, and distant.
Karreya was scared, but did not even think about slinking away. Instead, he crept closer to the old elder-wise, and lay down beside him. He made a comforting noise, somewhere between a whimper and a hum. The elder-wise Rak - as well as various other elder-wise - sometimes got like this. Or so he had been told. But he had never before seen it himself, and so was glad when Rak shook himself and began to speak.
"Hm. That has not happened often to me in these past few days, Karreya." The elder-wise spoke as softly as the wind stirring the grass. "I only hope it never happens to you."
"Me?" Karreya was taken aback. "I hope so as well," he said with utter sincerity.
Rak laughed, but it turned into a cough. "It begins as detailed memory," he explained, "There are smells. Sights. Sounds."
"Yes," Karreya said slowly. "I have memories such as those."
"But these - these gradually become more *real*. Finally, feeling and thought will come. You will know, Karreya. And I am sorry you will. For, sometimes, they will be memories not of the past, but of the future."
Karreya shivered. "Why?"
The elder-wise shrugged as best he could, and shook his head.
"I only know this," he said. "If you are ever in a place where the red moon crosses the Three Foxes..." his voice faded out.
Karreya twitched his ear to hear more clearly, and jumped when Rak whispered loudly and urgently, "To the South. Do not stop. RUN!"
--
And Karreya looked up once more at the starry sky, and ran.
He turned and ran, with his tail streaming behind him and the half-remembered, half-*real*, but fully desperate voice of Rak ringing in his ears. //Now,// he thought, //I am beginning to see why the elder-wise said he was sorry.//
--
He ran, and when he could not run, he walked. He trotted. He even limped.
He ran for months - or at least he thought it was months - hardly stopping to eat. He ran at night, and in day. He ran through forest, and swamp. Once, when he chanced upon a tiny skulk, he ran with them, and they followed. But that was before he ran through long golden hot stretches of sand.
Sometimes, he crossed vast distances in what he was *sure* was only his mind - but when he awoke, a new kind of ground would be under his feet.
And when he could not run any longer, either to the North or South, the East or West, he stopped. He stood for a moment, looking at the green that smelled so differently from the green where he had been born. The birds called to each other, but they were not birds whose names he knew. A furry creature peered out from behind a tree festooned with some kind of large gray moss. A large bug alighted on his ear, and the act of flicking it off took the last of his strength. He slumped to the ground and rested. In his dreams, he was running.
--
Karreya awoke. For once his dreams had not carried him with them.
He stood up and sniffed. He felt sore, and stiff.
He yapped, just for the satisfaction of hearing his own voice. "I am Fox. I am Karreya. I am not running any more."
The words echoed through the trees and scared the birds.
There was water, he smelled, close by and to the West.
He turned westward, and was grateful that he finally could.
*****
When the moon had faded back to her more familiar dull silver and life returned from under that baleful shadow, most forgot about the spectacle that had turned that night to one of malevolent prophecies. In the Mishalaw community, life went on. The women and children went about the harvesting of their crops against the oncoming winter; the men hunted, fished and preserved their bounties; the Council Elders bickered over the meaning of the latest incursions of Creel and Onlawe and the capricious demands of Kirsiwa sun-priests.
Only the two shaman, the elder Mishanali and his apprentice Manasa, remained subdued. They spent long hours out of sight and ken of the rest of the village. Intrepid children in from their field duties tried to peek in and see what kept the two so bound -- Manasa seemed to have forgotten about their stories in the past days, and it was hardly like him to miss his time with the littlest Mishalaw -- but no sooner would the spy close in than something else would suddenly seem much more interesting.
On the third day after the night of the blood moon, Manasa left the village in the darkest hours before dawn, the faint, wispy imaginings of a spirit-fox darting from shadow to shadow on his heels. Mishanali watched from the door of their shared grass house, its thatch grey with age and shimmering with a coat of dew where the flickering light of dying embers touched it, anchored and solid in the world of flesh and earth. Manasa did not look back.
*****
The young stag grimaces at the bite of the yaupon tea but dutifully chokes it down. One last check of the alignment of stones and scribed lines in the cleared earth below the Temple Mound can still find nothing awry: red and yellow ochre swirl in fluid lines, unbroken except for the passage to the South. The points of grey rocks mark and honour the positions of the other Winds and their attendant spirits, and offerings appropriate to each in its season had already been burned and the ashes sprinkled in fine lines within the larger design.
Despite the fact that he has done this before, the young shaman-trainee suppresses a surge of fear and doubt. This is the first time he has done it alone, and the once-familiar lines and words and formulas seem to flutter further and further out of reach.
It was the third day Karreya had been in the strange lands.
There had been plentiful food - strange furry chattering creatures that were a bit too curious about him to run fast enough, birds more plumage than meat - but, though he felt no urge to run, neither did the fox feel any urge to stay.
//There is still something more,// he thinks. //Something...//
He lay down under a broad-leafed tree as the midday rain began. The growth was so thick, the trees were nearly a wall at his back.
"Young one, you can hardly expect to draw the spirits you seek if you tremble like a leaf in a gale," says an unexpected voice.
"I seek no - " Karreya begins, then stops and blinks. //There have been none of my kind since the desert-edge. What is another doing here? Especially one sounding like an elder-wise?//
The stag jumps, the fragile peace he had centered shattering and twisting away. The laughing misty eyes of the fox spirit meet his. It folds its foggy tail around itself and sits in the middle of the Southern passage. It grins at him.
The bush-screen behind Karreya rattles. The leaves shiver at the stag's leap. He catches an unknown scent, rather like deer, but darker, richer - and overlaid with the sharp tinge of fear. Karreya realizes that the other fox - if fox it *truly* was - had not been speaking to him.
Either the Fox in question is ignorant of or ignoring the interloper at the bounds of the young stag's Temple Mound clearing. It watches the shaman-trainee with patient mirth, unperterbed by the light rain that begins to fall and darken the ochre lines swirled on the barren earth.
"I.. I.." Manasa stammers, ears flattened under his antlers. "I beg pardon, Fox. I .. was not expecting you."
"Of course not! That's half the fun!" the spirit winks, clearly enjoying the young cern's predicament.
It is pouring rain, but Karreya does not care. He dashes out of the leaf cover, ducking low, swerving to avoid branches, pushing leaves the size of his head out of the way. A flock of blue and gold macaws, startled by his passage, rise and take wing, shouting unintelligible warnings to each other. The brush wall is wide, but Karreya, in his near-desperation, takes only a few moments to pass through. He tumbles out of the greenery and stops dead as he sees the creatures there. The deer-thing - the one smelling of fear - he ignores.
The young shaman, meanwhile, has managed to scrape back together the shreds of his dignity and solemnity, and he dips his head graciously to the spirit perched laughing before him -- thus missing the stranger who dares invade the clearing.
"Now. You sought someone who would guide you to answers," Fox continues, rising and pacing around the cern within the bounds of the red-and-yellow lines. The spirit stops at the Eastern point, cocks its head and perks its ears and again smiles at the stag. "But you are afraid."
Karreya says nothing, and trembles. He can well understand the fear the deer-thing knows, for he feels it himself.
The cern nods. Fox scuffs a muddied red line with one foggy paw, and water pools in the slight depression, made dark from the ochre like drying blood. Seeming satisfied with this, Fox paces the quarter and pauses again in the North.
"Do you know why?" it asks.
"I am young," Manasa answers honestly. "I am afraid I won't get it right, and that I will bring the wrong answer back to my people."
Fox blinks and yawns, scuffing another line. A gust of wind slants the rain for an instant. The spirit trots to the West.
"What will you do about it?"
The stag frowns and doesn't answer for a moment. "Trust in the guidance of the spirits..?"
Karreya nearly laughs at this...but checks himself at the last moment. //It may not be wise to laugh at jokes made by Sister Fox.//
Fox sneezes.
"I don't know."
Fox sneezes again. The lines remain intact as it returns to its original position in the South and sits once more, tail curling neatly around its paws.
"There is a price for every answer, young shaman. Every action has its cost. Nothing comes for free. Remember that."
The cern nods his head, failure already written in the lines of his shoulders and back. Fox blinks, unconcerned.
As he looks at the fox, sitting with tail wrapped around, Karreya is reminded of Rarr, the white-furred and red-eyed fox he had met two summers ago. This fox's eyes, however, are dark mercury and are the only truly real thing in the whole face, for Her white fur is semi-transparent and shimmers as she moves.
//No,// Karreya thinks, //not like Rarr at all.// Karreya began to understand why his elder-wise had offered apologies. He whimpers and crouches on the ground. "Sister Fox?" he whispers, not truly knowing if he wants Her to hear him or not.
"The fire begins and ends in embers," Fox says, its eyes on the cern but one ear twisted back toward Karreya. Then it hops to its feet, takes off as if in hot pursuit of a rabbit, and disappears from sight.
"Wait!" Karreya calls out desperately, but is not in time.
A crow caws in disapproval somewhere on the other side of the Temple Mound, but the shaman just remains sitting inside his fading scrawl of ochre lines, getting more and more drenched by the rain and not seeming at all to care.
The fox, disappointed but relieved, turns and really notices the deer-thing for the first time. He sits down and stares at it for a long time before finally speaking.
"Sister Fox is rarely seen by any, even those of her own kind, though they may be great. You must be very proud. Does the power run this deep in all your people...?"
He searches for a name.
//After calling of Sister Fox, I can not just call him deer-thing...//
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