River Marked (Mercy Thompson #6)(34)
Author: Patricia Briggs

"I’ll be darned," I said. "That’s why he sent us to look at the baskets."

The men looked at me.

"Well, maybe not," I conceded, thinking of the woman who’d stared at us in the museum, then followed us to the pictograms. "But those animals look like the ones woven on the baskets. If the only art you ever saw was on baskets and woven blankets, when you decided to carve something, you’d make it look like the baskets."

"When we’re through here, you can write to the anthropological journals and tell them your theories," said Adam.

I narrowed my eyes at him. "Stuff that. I’ll write a doctoral thesis. Then I can go do what most of the other people with doctoral degrees in anthropology do."

"What’s that?" asked Calvin.

"You don’t need to encourage her," said Adam seriously, but his eyes laughed at me.

"The same thing that people with degrees in history do," I said. "Fix cars or serve french fries and bad hamburgers."

"This one is the one my uncle told me to point out to you," Calvin said.

The rock had been broken, but the two pieces had been fit together carefully. The creature’s face looked a little like a fox–a mutant fox with very big teeth and tentacles. Its body was snakelike. It was like a cross between a Chinese dragon and a fox with the teeth of a wolf eel.

"We don’t know as much about these as we do the pictographs," Calvin said. "They could have been carved ten thousand years ago by the first people, or a hundred years ago. We don’t know what this one was meant to represent, but we have a name for it. We call it the river devil."

Its eyes were eager, intelligent, and hungry.

I’d seen them before. Bright green eyes in the water that I’d seen in my dream. I blinked, and the eyes were just eyes. No matter how avid they appeared, they were just carved in the stone. But I knew what I had seen.

"Now," Calvin said cheerfully, while Adam watched me out of feral eyes, "there’s a Coyote story about a monster who lived in the Columbia in the time of the first people, before we humans were here."

I tried a reassuring smile at Adam, who must have sensed my sudden recognition of the monster on the rock. I mouthed, "Later." He nodded.

It had been a dream, I reminded myself fiercely. Just a dream.

Calvin missed all the byplay, which was fine. "This monster," he said, "ate all of the first people who lived in the river. It ate up all the first people who fished in the river. Eventually, no one was willing to go near the river at all, so they asked the Great Spirit for help. He sent Coyote to see what was to be done.

"Coyote went down to the river and saw that nothing lived near the river. While he was watching, he saw a great monster lift out of the water. `Ah,’ it cried, `I am so hungry. Why don’t you come down so I can eat you.’

"That did not sound like a good idea to Coyote. So he went up into the hills where he could think. `Hee, hee,’ said his sisters, who were berries in his stomach."

"They were what?" I asked, surprised out of my panic over a pair of hungry green eyes in a stupid dream.

"This is the polite version," Calvin told me. "You can ask around if you want to find out the rude version. It is also rude to interrupt the storyteller."

"Sorry." I tried to figure out how berries who were sisters in Coyote’s stomach could have a rude version.

"`Why are you laughing?’ asked Coyote.

"`We know what you should do,’ his sisters said. `But we won’t tell you because you’ll just take all the credit like you always do.’

"But they were his sisters, and Coyote was very persuasive. He promised that this time he would tell everyone who was responsible for such a clever plan. At last they told him what to do. Following their advice, he took nine flint knives, a pouch of jerky, a rock, a torch, and some sagebrush and walked down to the river.

"`Come eat me,’ he told the monster.

"And it did. As soon as it had swallowed him, he used the flint and stone to light his torch. Inside the monster were all of the first people it had eaten. They were very hungry, having not had food since they had been eaten by the monster. They were also cold because the monster was as chill inside as the river was outside.

"Coyote lit the sagebrush and shared out his jerky among them. He told the first people that he was going to kill the monster. Then, he told them, they would have to find their way out as best they could.

"So he took his first flint knife and started carving his way through to the monster’s heart. He hadn’t worked very long on the tough flesh before his first knife broke, and he had to bring out his second. The second knife broke, the third, and the fourth. Until at last he was down to his very last knife. But that one cut into the heart of the monster.

" `Run!’ he told the trapped people. `Get out.’ And they did, escaping the dying monster any way they could. Out its mouth, out its gills, and out its bottom."

"I thought this wasn’t the rude version," I said.

Calvin grinned but kept going. "Beaver was the last to leave. He just barely escaped out the beast’s sphincter–and that is why the beaver’s tail is flat and has no hair."

I groaned.

"At last it was only Coyote and the monster in the river, and Coyote had the upper hand.

"`I will let you live,’ said Coyote, `only if you promise never to eat anyone ever again.’ The monster promised, and Coyote let it live. The beaten river monster sank to the bottom of the Columbia and never was heard from again. The grateful people threw a feast for Coyote, and he ate twice as much as anyone else.

"` Tell us,’ the people said. `How did you come up with such a clever plan?’

"And Coyote forgot the promises he made because he is vain and forgetful. He claimed all the credit for rescuing the people."

Finished with his story, Calvin turned to look at the river devil hovering on the rock. "There’s no saying that the river devil and the monster in the Coyote story are the same beast, but I was told to tell you the story after you saw the rock."

"And about Benny," Adam reminded him.

"He’s going to be okay," Calvin said. "Physically. The police are giving him a little bit of a bad time because he told them he doesn’t remember what happened or where his sister is, and the doctors are having trouble with figuring out what happened to his foot. But Benny’s not talking to them because it is none of their business, and they wouldn’t understand anyway."

Calvin leaned against the fence that protected the petroglyphs. He looked at us. "I don’t see what this has to do with you. Why my uncle and my grandfather think it has anything to do with you. I mean, I understand why he thinks you won’t run away from the crazies when we start talking river monsters that eat people. But why is it your business?"