No doubt he had his pygmies with him and his ally, the Two Tongues. I warned the others of what I had seen. We agreed it would be wise to mount a guard again when we camped.
We rested Bes regularly. White Crow said normally she would have been put to pasture years before. Then he had talked about this dream, this destined scenario, with her. She had wanted to go, he said. "She believes this journey is good for her and prepares her for the afterlife."
We were lucky. That evening the rain disappeared and left us with a watery sunset brightening a stand of heavy, old oaks. Of the groves we had passed, these were the thickest and most ancient we had seen. The boles and branches were so dense they offered excellent cover. The smell of the ancient glade was intoxicating! "Good," said Ayanawatta, striding around in what was virtually a cave of woven branches into which a single shaft of sunlight fell upon a slender sapling at the center. "This is the place to make our medicine. It is a world within the world, with a roof and four corners and the tree at the center. It will amplify our medicine and make it work as it has to do."
Although he talked more around the subject, he added no further information. We built a small fire in our pot, as you might in someone's home. It felt somehow wrong to disturb the floor of this ancient grove. Many branches were thicker than most trunks. They could be thousands of years old. Perhaps an earlier culture had left a few stands of uncleared woodland? Maybe some natural disaster had destroyed all but a patch or two of these timeless trees?
Ayanawatta burned a little of our food as an offering to the grove for its security. There is a special consciousness which trees have. They respond well to respect. I had the distinct sense that night that I slept in a holy retreat, in a temple.
Strangely for me I dreamed. The tree under which I slept became my multiverse in which I wandered. I dreamed of relatives. I dreamed of the world where my name was Ilian of Garathorm. She was a powerful warrior, an avatar of the Eternal Champion, a soul-cousin to my father. Her world was nothing but ancient trees. To the northwest were the great redwoods, to the northeast the giant oaks and birches. In the south were mangroves and more exotic trees. All were united in one vast world of tangled roots and branches. The entire planet was an organic nest of growing flora, with massive, fleshy blossoms. Magnolias and rhododendrons, vast chrysanthemums and roses bloomed to make a world in which Ilian coexisted with all manner of huge insects and birds. She rode the branches of her world as I strode the moonbeams of mine.
In my dream Ilian was troubled. She saw the end of her world. The death of everything. The withering of her home tree and therefore her own end. She called to her ancestors and the spirits of her world. She summoned them together to aid her in her final fight. She spoke to creatures she knew as silverskins, and as she woke she recalled the story of Piel d'Argent, of Le Courbousier Blanc, the silver man, the Prince of Faery, whom the Kakatanawa called White Crow.
Upon waking, my dream fled away from me. I held what I could of it, for there was now a nagging idea somewhere in the back of my mind, something which linked White Crow to someone or something else, some faint memory, perhaps of childhood. I became increasingly certain that we were related.
I looked at the sleeping face of the albino youth. He was completely at rest, yet I knew he could come alert in seconds. I hardly liked to breathe for fear he would mistake any sound I made for an alarm. What had I been dreaming which concerned him? What were these tiny patches of memory he had left me with? I moved a little closer to the fire. My steaming breath was pale on the air. I drew my buffalo robe closer around me and was soon warm.
At last I slept again. In the morning I saw that it had snowed. The thickness of the oaks had protected us. We now inhabited a many-chambered palace of icy greens and golds. We looked out over a prairie purified by the first snowfall of winter. Sitting near our merry little fire and contemplating that immensity of snow, White Crow pulled rather cheerfully on his pipe and, as soon as he knew we were awake, took up a small drum and began to sing a song.
In a lifetime of moving between the realms I had heard few voices as beautiful as White Crow's. The song wove among the branches and glittering icicles. Its echoes turned into harmonies until the entire grove sang with him. Together they sang of ancient ways, of bitter truths and golden imaginings. They sang an elegy for all that had ever been lost. They sang of the morning and of the hours of the day, of the months and the passing of the seasons. As they sang I could barely stop myself from weeping with the beauty of it. Ayanawatta stood straight, with his arms folded, listening with absolute intensity. He wore only his tattoos, his paint, his jewelry and a breechclout of fine beaded vellum. His copper skin glowed in the wonderful light, his chest swelling, his muscles clenching, as he gave his whole being to the music.
Wearing her hero feathers, Bes, too, stirred to this song as if with a sense of security. Yet as well as comfort, the song had power. It had purpose.
Through the surrounding lens of ice, I saw something moving
on the horizon. Gradually I made out more detail. It trotted quite rapidly towards us and stopped abruptly about ten yards from where Ayanawatta and White Crow still sang.
Again, I was unsure of the scale, but the beast they had summoned seemed huge. Regarding us with solemn, curious eyes as a fresh curtain of snow began to fall stood a massive white bison, a living totem, the manifestation of a Kakatanawa goddess. Her red-rimmed eyes glaring with proud authority, she stared deeply into mine. I recognized a confirmation. She pawed the snow, her breath steaming.
Bes lifted her trunk and uttered a great bellow which shook the forest and set ice cracking and falling. The white buffalo tossed her head as if in alarm, turned and was gone, trotting rapidly into the deep snow.
Ayanawatta was delighted. He, too, had seen the buffalo. He was full of excitement. Everything, he said, was unfolding as it should. Bes had warned the buffalo of our danger, and she had responded. Powerful medicine protected the land of the Kakatanawa, which in turn protected their city, which in turn protected the eternal tree. Once we crossed the mountains, we would enter the great valley of the Kakatanawa. Then we would almost certainly be safe, ready to begin the last crucial stage of our journey.
I had no reason to doubt him. I kept my own counsel, congratulating him on the beauty, rather than the power, of his voice. I knew, of course, that I was in the presence of skilled summoners. My father was one who could call upon bargains his family had made with the Lords of the Higher Worlds, with powerful ele-mentals. He could invoke spirits of air, earth, fire and water as easily as another might plow a furrow. I could not be sure who had summoned the white buffalo, or whether she had heard both men singing and come to inspect us. If she was as strict with us as she was with her own herd, and indeed with herself, she would soon give us an order. I wondered why I should feel such sisterly feelings towards the animal. Was it simply because Ayanawatta had given me the Indian name of White Buffalo Woman?
The drum continued its steady beating. White Crow rose
gracefully to his feet. Swaying from side to side he began to dance. It was only then that I realized what Ayanawatta had meant.
White Crow was opening the gateway for us. We were attempting to pass between the realms. The land of the Kakatanawa lay not in the looming mountains, but in the world beyond them, where this strange tribe guarded their treasures and their secrets in mysterious ways.
As he danced I soon became aware of another presence, something drawn not by his summoning, but by the smell of his magic. And then at last I confirmed the identity of my particular enemy. An elemental but also a powerful Lord of the Higher Worlds, Shoashooan, the Turning Wind, who was native to this realm and therefore more dangerous.