Edward Bryant: Dealer's Choice

September 21, 1990

Frontier Airlines flight 8, Los Angeles to Newark, raced to beat the morning, to meet the sun. It would lose, but only slightly. At 39,000 feet, the sky was spangled with other suns. They twinkled significantly less than they would if seen from the ground.

The man in 14A pressed his broad forehead against the cold window. He could pick out no familiar constellation. He hadn’t expected to. Still, he missed the southern cross, as the Europeans called it. To him it was the great mirragen, the hunting cat with claws spread, leaping upon its prey.

Hunting… He wondered if his weapons were still intact in his checked bag, deep in the belly of the 747. It wasn’t as though he were smuggling a MAC-10 or an Ingram. If there were any questions, it would be easy to declare his weapons as art. He smiled. If a hollow-point slug split your heart or a nulla nulla smashed your skull, you were just as dead. Art could be fatal.

He smiled grimly, fingering the rough-cut opal that hung from the leather thong circling his neck.

A patch of lights far below slowly moved past the craft and disappeared behind. The man wondered which city that had been. This was such a vast land, but then he was accustomed to vast lands. Still, two continents and a major sea in two days were a bit too much travel to absorb easily. He knew he would be joyous in the extreme when he was back on solid earth, land that didn’t vibrate to the marrow of his bones with the buzz of jet engines.

While the occasional distant lights beneath him clearly moved, relatively speaking, the stars above remained constant. He was glad for that.

Then the voice told him to sleep. He didn’t wish to, but the seductive whisper curled through the avenues of his skull and wrapped his brain in soothing warmth. He fought it. But he drifted, the voice gently reproaching him and reminding him of who he was… “You who returns to the stars, you are summoned.”

And Wyungare slept.

He descended toward the lower world, the place where he would meet and speak with the warreen, his animal guide. This time, he clambered along rocky ledges before finding the broken places where he could use handholds to lower himself to another tier of stone. This painful process went on for a long time, though the angle of sun to his right did not seem to change.

Finally he was among trees and the slope was gentler. The grass beneath his feet soothed his skin and began to heal the ragged places where the rough stone had abraded his soles. He heard a cry from overhead. Looking up, he saw the graceful ga-ra-gah. The blue crane rode the wind with indifferent ease.

“Welcome, Wyungare.”

The man looked down and saw the warreen. The lower half of the creature’s bulky body was wet with mud. It seemed recently to have visited the edge of a water hole or river.

“Hello, cousin,” said Wyungare. “I hope you are well.”

“As well as can be expected, all these evil things of late considered. Thank you for visiting.”

“There is little to do on the airplane. This is no sacrifice at all.”

“Hmph,” said the warreen. “You wouldn’t catch me up in a thing like that. Those wings are so little blessed with grace, it would appear to fly with no more ease than cousin dinewan.”

“Consider that a 747 is constructed to fly, and that cousin dinewan chose to fly no more.”

“So?” The warreen snorted. “Our cousin could soar again if he so wished.”

“Not for a long, long time. I fear his physical form has evolved to reflect his long-ago choice.”

The warreen shook himself. Drying mud flew. “I still say he could change his mind, emu or no.”

The two of them walked farther into Googoorewon, the place of trees. The sunlight was hot, and the dappled shadows cooling Wyungare’s skin felt good.

“The times are no better outside the dreamtime?”

Wyungare shook his head. “They are not.”

“Nor are they within the dreamtime,” said the warreen. “That maira, that paddy-melon of a fat boy, his vision keeps floating before me.”

“And that’s who I seek. If I find him in the land of Tya-America, I will speak with him.”

“And if that does nothing?” The warreen’s tone was edged. “You must kill him.”

“I would prefer not to.”

“I am aware of that desire,” said the warreen. “You are a healer, but a warrior too. If it demands a warrior’s task, then you must perform it.”

Wyungare nodded. “If it is necessary, then I shall. But if I can, I will make sure the task will not be necessary.”

“Good fortune.” the warreen said politely. Then he tipped his head back, muzzle indicating the sky. “I fear we are about to receive an object lesson in thinking to heal demons.”

The shadows gathered together on Wyungare’s skin. Clouds roiled, jostling for position, and masked the sun. A cold wind began to bend the trees.

The blue crane still soared far above. Her cry echoed across the Googoorewon.

The sky convulsed and lightning speared valleyward. A mallee exploded into a fountain of crackling sparks. Wyungare took a step backward. The burning scrub eucalyptus was only a score of paces distant. The wind curled and whipped dark smoke into his face and eyes.

More lightning pierced the earth. More trees became torches. The acrid scent filled Wyungare’s nostrils.

One bolt never reached the ground. Cousin ga-ra-rah shimmered with a nimbus of vibrating light. Then she exploded. Feathers of blue crane drifted down around Wyungare and the warreen like leaves before the winter season.

“And what will happen to her children?” the warreen asked somberly. “In Tya-America, where you go to visit, who will guard such as the millin-nulu-nubba?”

“They are called passenger pigeons,” said Wyungare. “I fear it is already too late in the waking world for them. I had no idea that this was the cause of the loss of their patron and guide.” He shrugged. “The evil can, of course, travel through waking time.”

A final feather landed desultorily at his feet. Both Wyungare and the warreen cried for their cousin. When they had grieved, the sky was bright again with sun.

“I’m going to go back up,” said the man. “I do not know when I’ll be back.”

“Sooner than you now suspect,” said the warreen. “The fat boy will make sure of that.”

“You make a prophecy?”

“No,” said the warreen sourly. “I need only look about me.”

Wyungare saw the flickering overlay on the Googoorewon: an island lapped with waves, a walled castle like the ones he’d seen in European movies, monsters.

“All right.” Wyungare shrugged. “I’ll be back.” The man lifted his palm in farewell and started up the mountainside.

“I think this will be difficult,” called the warreen after him. “All your cousins will be concerned. I will do what I can.”

“I know,” said Warreen, raising his voice to cover the widening distance. “I will show my appreciation when I can.”

“Just stop the depletion of the dreamtime,” said the warreen, voice fading out.

Just like the ozone layer, Wyungare said silently. Not humorous. Accurate. Damn the fat boy! Europeans seemed never to have the slightest cognizance of what they truly did to the world. Everything was now. Everything was me.

As he climbed higher on the rocky mountainside, ever closer to the newly mottled sky, Wyungare thought: Whether it comes from the muzzle of a gun or at the tip of a pointed bone, change will come. This is the single irrevocable law.

Billy Ray stood alone in the prow of the Coast Guard cutter, his face turned into the biting wind. He blinked involuntary tears from his eyes as the cutter sliced through the choppy waters of the Narrows, just south of New York Bay. The predawn wind was cold, but it felt good upon his face. It felt damn good to feel anything.