Тим Пауэрс - Free Stories 2018

He walked the rugged wilderness in buckskin pants and tunic, his wild waist-long black hair, increasingly streaked with white, blowing in the wind, his beard long and only intermittently trimmed by his own knife. He kept his tattered cassock with all his other possessions on his back, bringing it out only when he had to perform Catholic rites for those who requested them, a few Natives, but mostly mixed-breed men like himself, the product of Native and European.

As a priest of the mother church, Father Avenir knew he looked odd, and he also knew that he was inadequate to his task. But everyone was inadequate in these wild times, and many other priests had lost their way, turned their backs on the Church and embraced some other sect of Christianity, or worse, degenerated into idolatry and sorcery now that magic had returned.

Father Avenir could have retreated into the chaos of power and desire to control the future, or he could have joined the more powerful Protestant sects from the North. But it was not in him. Tatanka stood firm, steady, facing down threats with lowered head, ready to charge.

He ranged all over the unexplored arcane territories populated by scattered Native tribes, all of whom needed to hear the word of God. Now, more than ever, they must hear that in the world of spirits and supernatural creatures, there was a rock to cling to. For God so loved the world He sent it His only son.

Fifty years after the Sundering, when Mr. Halley’s comet had exploded over the Earth and forever separated America from the old world, Father Avenir’s beliefs had become even more potent and necessary. But all the unleashed magic had also made manifest the powerful Native gods as well.

He should have been preaching to scattered tribes, sitting around their campfires and sharing food with them, but now those encounters had become more than telling them of his faith, of the man who was God and who required nothing more than their belief in Him. Now his work had become fighting demons and visions, sometimes literally.

Father Avenir had wandered for the past fifteen years, embarking from St. Louis as a missionary, up the Missouri River, heading across the Great Plains, and up into the mountains. He trended ever northward where his father had once hunted, where his mother had carried him on her back. The landscape had been frightening twenty years after the Sundering, and it was terrifying now.

The younger generation of shamans didn’t rely only on the legends of their forefathers, but they had also personally visited the spirit worlds. They had spoken directly with Coyote and flown with Raven. They had seen river serpents and been attacked by Canotti with their magic arrows. He had heard of the land of the dead where the tribes believed their spirits went, but what place did he have there, halfbreed that he was? Father Avenir had to go to the God that claimed all peoples, or nowhere.

He spoke English, French, and a half-dozen or so Native tongues, and often the words got mixed up in his mind because he spent so much time wandering alone and talking to himself. Avenir believed that one needed miracles to convince people who were beguiled by shamans, but he refused to perform sorcery. He would not risk his connection to Him Who’d Redeemed the World, not even to achieve his holy purpose.

And now at last, he knew what that purpose was. He had heard stories from the tribes about a powerful wizard, an evil force that drained energy from the land, destroyed numerous tribes, brought back the dead, summoned monsters—all to strengthen the wild arcane territories and fight against the white men in the East. Father Avenir felt that he had at last come to his most important battle.

He trudged along on foot, crossing a ridge and working his way through sparse pine trees and larches, until he looked down at the wide and smoking valley below, where heat shimmered, where steam and spray wafted into the air, bringing with it a sulfurous taint. He could hear the hiss and grumble in the forest silence.

The Shoshone people had told him of this place and sent him here, a land where the rivers ran hot and cold within feet of where the stone was yellow, or mud bubbled up from the ground and geysers roared with hot steam like a dragon’s breath.

Father Avenir fumbled with his buckskin jacket and touched the hand-carved wooden cross that hung on a leather thong around his neck. It gave him strength and he would need it to face the demons ahead. Avenir had once intended to purge the demons from the land, to show the power of God and convince the tribes of the power of Jesus. Now, he just hoped he would survive this ordeal. He reached for the rosary strapped to his belt so he could count the beads as he walked.

Hora mortis nostrae, Father Avenir muttered to himself, and sighed. He hoped indeed that Mary and the Angels would be there to receive him at the hour of his death, but sometimes he worried. Maybe the things he’d done—small acts from his small magic to avert death or to convince a tottering believer, had damned him already. Or maybe Heaven itself had changed with the Sundering.

He could do nothing but continue. H e’d been told the Mother of God was Grátia pléna , and he would have to trust in her Grace to intercede with her Son on his behalf.

He found his own trail toward the cursed valley, his feet carrying him along before he could let any doubts assail him. All his life Avenir had conquered his questions and survived persecution. From the Natives who considered him a stranger, from the whites who considered him a Native, from the pagans who considered him mad, from the Protestants who considered him evil. He remained strong, though.

Just because America had been severed from the rest of the world did not mean he was in any way cut off from Jesus, Mother Mary, or the Holy Spirit. Surely God was stronger than any magic he could imagine.

The air was chilly, the sky gray with clouds. The tall, feathery larches swayed back and forth whispering in a sound that was not a threat, but like a frightened child whispering a prayer.

Far ahead on the other side of the valley, a geyser gushed with a loud hiss, shooting a plume of steam and boiling water high into the air. The sound shattered the silence, and Avenir flinched, but he forced himself to continue, to face his test. He heard other gasping fumaroles, exhalations of poisonous gas belching from the ground. A slurry of mud and ash bubbled up like some witch’s cauldron.

He closed his eyes prayed more loudly and kept walking.

He had known of the valley of yellow stones, or at least his mother had told him of it. The ominous place had existed since before the Sundering, with its thermal turmoil and its natural wonders, but after the return of magic, it had become something else.

Near the edge of the valley, he paused to make his preparations. A shallow, half-hearted stream trickled down the hillside. He knelt on the soft bank, where a thin scum of chemical residue had collected. The wildlife in the forest around him had fallen into a hush.

Father Avenir removed his pack and opened it, withdrawing his empty bowl used for cooking and also for washing himself, even shaving when he felt so inclined. For now, it would serve as a basin to hold the water. He dipped the bowl in the stream and went through the motions of blessing it.

For a battle such as this against arcane demons and the minions of Satan himself, it would have been far better to use holy water blessed by the Pope himself, but no drop of that precious fluid remained any longer in all of the Americas. But every priest, who had been ordained by another priest in a line stretching back to the apostles, had been given the power to cast out demons.