River Marked (Mercy Thompson #6)(31)
Author: Patricia Briggs

He looked out across the river as if for inspiration, and when he spoke again, his voice was low. "My uncle Jim is a medicine man. It runs in the family, usually in sibling lines. None of his kids have the ability to become what he is, and neither did his father. But his uncle did. It runs like that."

"Is Gordon a medicine man?" I asked, trying to work out the lineage. The answer should be no, if Gordon was his grandfather and shared his last name–unless Jim was Calvin’s uncle on his mother’s side. Which, I suddenly thought, was probable since they didn’t share last names.

"Is the night dark?" Calvin grinned, which robbed his face of its sulky cast and made him look likeable. "Maybe. Maybe not. Depends on what you mean and in whose eyes. He is something, that’s for sure. Anyway, I’m Uncle Jim’s apprentice. I’m going to start this tour just like I would if you were a pair of tourists, but if I’m doing it right, some things might change along the way." He cleared his throat, looked a little embarrassed, and said, "As inspiration strikes me. Or not.

"So." He took a deep breath. "Welcome to this sacred ground. Speak softly and show respect while you are here, please. Twenty years ago, we fenced it and closed it to strangers because of vandalism. But that made no one happy because these were left behind to share the stories of those who have gone before with those who are now. So the decision was made to make it accessible, but under specific circumstances. If you were to come on your own . . ." He paused and looked at me, and when he continued, he’d lost the practiced flow of his voice. "You’d probably be okay. You look Indian. But people here without permission get jail sentences; we are serious about keeping this place safe."

He turned and started walking on a trail, and we followed him through the gate. It was almost like being in a maze except the hedges were walls of lava and huge rocks.

"This is the Temani Pesh-wa trail," Calvin said, leading the way, though there was really no need for a guide because the path was obvious. "Which means `written on rock.’ The pictograms here were probably painted between five hundred and a thousand years ago."

He took us up a fairly brisk climb, speaking as we walked. "In earlier times, there were a lot of Indians in this area. Lewis and Clark mention stopping very near here, and from their journals, people estimate that there were nearly ten thousand Indians in the vicinity. We do know that one of the many villages was over there."

He pointed back the way we’d come, where, in the distance, a rounded section of land jutted out into the river. From its edges, basalt cliffs dropped several hundred feet to the water below. I couldn’t tell from where we were whether there was a body of water between us and the land he’d pointed to. The landmass looked like nothing so much as a wedding cake, complete with a second, much smaller layer in the center.

Just as I was turning to look back at Calvin, I noticed that we weren’t the only ones on the trail. The Native American woman who had been in the museum was taking a fork in the trail that we had not. Even as I watched, she crossed behind a big bunch of rock and disappeared into the landscape.

"Twice a year they’d hold a potlatch," Calvin was saying, "a party, to which they invited people from near and far. As part of the potlatch, young men and women of twelve or thirteen would hold their vision quests. Afterward, they would come here and record a reminder of their vision quests upon the rock."

He took us up to a basalt wall of cliffs–a baby cliff compared to the one he’d just pointed out. He stopped but didn’t say anything, so I looked up. It took a moment to understand what I was seeing, even though I’d been looking for them. The old paint blended into the rocky cliff as if it belonged there, and I was the outsider. As soon as I saw one, I saw that they were everywhere.

There were dozens, parts of dozens at least. Some of them were clearly identifiable as human or various other animals. Others were impossible to decipher, either because some of the paint had grown too faint or because whatever symbolism they’d used was too alien for me to understand. There were some symbols that were obvious– like flowing water was a series of parallel squiggly lines. Some were less obvious: a red and white target, long wavy lines, circles.

I stepped close, my hands behind my back like a child told not to touch. Hundreds of years ago someone had stood where I was and touched their fingers to the rock. Five hundred years ago. A thousand years ago.

I had the odd thought that Bran the Marrock had been alive when these were painted. Five hundred years I was certain he was. I was almost sure of a thousand.

Still. I wondered if the long-ago girl or boy who had drawn the bold red and white target had known how long their artwork would remain, the last testament that they had once walked the earth.

Beside me, Adam stiffened and took a deep breath. He turned slowly until he looked down where we’d been standing a few minutes ago. I followed his gaze until I saw it, too.

Crouched on a rocky promontory that overhung the lower part of the trail, a red-tailed hawk stared at us. Like the pictograms, it belonged there. But there was something odd about its interest in us. It reminded me a little too closely of the woman in the museum. The bird took flight and passed right over our heads before veering off over the river, then out of sight.

As it flew, I realized that the unease I felt reminded me of my vision quest and the animals who had hunted me, making me unwelcome, until I’d come upon Coyote. A vision quest like those of all the long-ago artists. Maybe, I thought in sudden whimsy, I should draw a La-Z-Boy on one of the rocks. Somehow, I was pretty sure no one would understand that I wasn’t vandalizing–just continuing tradition.

If Calvin hadn’t been there, I’d have told Adam. I looked over at him and found him watching Calvin with gold eyes that danced with temper.

I put my hand on his arm. Gold eyes weren’t a good thing when we were among friends.

Adam put his hand over mine and took a step so he was between me and Calvin. "In your ongoing education as a medicine man, have you ever heard of people who can change into animals, Calvin?" he asked in a surprisingly civil voice.

I frowned at Adam and gave his arm an invisible squeeze. I didn’t know Calvin; there was no reason to make him question what I was. Something had happened that I’d missed while my eyes had been on the hawk, and I wasn’t sure what it was.

Whatever it was, Adam was pretty mad at Calvin. I wondered if he pulled me behind him to protect me–or to keep me from protecting Calvin.

"No," said Calvin–which was a mistake. He should have learned how to not-lie from his grandfather. Besides, I knew enough Native American legends to know that there were lots of stories about people who turned to animals–and animals into people, for that matter. And he knew about Adam, who was certainly a person who changed into an animal.