Terry Brooks - Running With The Demon

"I sound the way I always do!"

"Well, you always sound angry. Tonight, especially." She felt him squirming on her shoulder, leaves and twigs rustling, settling into place. "Tell me something about my father."

He spit like a cat. "Your father? What are you talking about?"

"I want to know something about my father."

"Well, I don't know anything about your father! I've told you that! Go ask your grandmother!"

She glanced down at him, riding her shoulder in sullen defiance. "Why is it that no one ever wants to talk about my father?

Why is it that no one ever wants to tell me anything about him?"

Pick kicked at her shoulder, exasperated. "It's rather hard to talk about someone you don't know, so that might explain my problem with talking to you about your father! Are you having a problem with your hearing, too?"

She didn't answer. Instead, she broke into a fast trot, jogging swiftly down the service road and past the nearest backstop, then cutting across the ball diamond toward the cliffs and the river. The humid night air whipped past her face as her feet flew across the newly mowed grass. She ran as if she were being chased, arms and legs churning, chest expanding and contracting with deep, regular breaths, blood racing through her in a hot pulse. Pick gave a surprised gasp and hung on to her T-shirt to keep from falling off. Nest could hear him muttering as she ran, his voice swept away by the rush of the air whipping past her ears. She disappeared into herself, into the motion of her arms and legs, into the pounding of her heart. She covered the open ground of the ball fields and the playgrounds, crossed the main roadway, hurdled the chain dividers, and darted into the trees that fronted the burial mounds. She ran with fury and discontent, thinking suddenly that she might not stop, that she might just keep on going, running through the park and beyond, running until there was nowhere left to go.

But she didn't. She reached the picnic benches across the road from the burial mounds and slowed, winded and shot through with the heat of her exertion, but calm again as well, distanced momentarily from her frustration and doubt. Pick was yapping at her like a small, angry dog, but she ignored him, looking about for Two Bears and the spirits of the dead Sinnissippi. She glanced down at her wristwatch. It was almost midnight, and he was nowhere in sight. The burial mounds were dark and silent against the starry backdrop of the southern horizon where moonlight spilled from the heavens. The park was empty–feeling and still. Nothing moved or showed itself. Even the feeders were nowhere to be seen.

A trace of wood smoke wafted on the still air, pungent and invisible.

"Where is he?" she asked softly, turning slowly in the, humid dark, eyes flicking left and right, heart pounding. "Here, little bird's Nest," his familiar voice answered, and she jumped at the sound of it. He was standing right in front of her, so close she might j have reached out to touch him if she had wished to do so. He had materialized out of nowhere, out of the heat and the night, i out of the ether. He was stripped to the waist, to his baggy pants and worn army boots, and he had painted his face, arms, and chest in a series of intricate black stripes. His long hair was still braided, but now a series of feathers hung from it. If he had seemed big to her before, he looked huge now, the coppery skin of his massive chest and arms gleaming behind the bars of paint, his blunt features chiseled by shadows and light.

"So you've come," he said softly, looking down at her with curious eyes. "And you've brought your shy little friend."

"This is Pick." She introduced the sylvan, who was sitting up straight on her shoulder, eyeing the big man.

"Charmed," Pick snapped, sounding anything but. "How come you can see me when no one else can?"

The smile flashed briefly on Two Bears' face. "Indian magic." He looked at Nest. "Are you ready?"

She took a deep breath. "I don't know. What's going to happen?"

"What I have told you will happen. I will summon the spirits of the Sinnissippi and they will appear. Maybe they will speak with us. Maybe not."

She nodded. "Is that why you're dressed like that?" He looked down at himself. "Like this? Oh, I see. You're afraid I might be wearing war paint, that I might be preparing to ride out into the night and collect a few paleface scalps." She gave him a reproving frown. "I was just asking." "I dress like this because I will dance with the spirits if they let me. I will become for a few brief moments one with them." He paused. "Would you like to join me?"

She considered the possibility of dancing with the dead Sinnissippi. "I don't know. Can I ask you something, O'olish Amaneh?"

He smiled anew on hearing his Indian name. "You can ask me anything."

"Do you think the spirits would tell me who my father is if I asked them? Do you think they would tell me something like that?"

He shook his head. "You cannot ask them anything. They do not respond to questions or even to voices. They respond to what is in your heart. They might tell you of your father, but it would have to be their choice. Do you understand?"

She nodded, suddenly nervous at the prospect of discovering the answer to this dark secret. "Do I have to do anything?"

He shook his head once more. "Nothing. Just come with me."

They crossed to a small iron hibachi that sat next to a picnic table. A gathering of embers, the source of the wood smoke, glowed red within. Two Bears removed a long, intricately carved pipe from the top of the picnic table, checked to see that the contents within its charred bowl were tightly packed, then dipped the bowl to the embers, put the other end of the pipe in his mouth, and puffed slowly to light it. The contents of the bowl ignited and gleamed, and smoke curled into the air.

"Peace pipe," he declared, removing it from his lips and winking at her. He puffed on it some more, drawing the smoke deep into his lungs. Then he passed the pipe to her. "Now you. Just a few puffs."

She took the pipe reluctantly. "What's in it?" she asked.

"Herbs and grasses. They won't harm you. Smoking the pipe is ritual, nothing more. It eases the passage of the spirits from their resting place into our world. It makes us more accessible."

She sniffed at the contents of the bowl and grimaced. The night around her was deep and still, and it felt as if she were all alone in it with the Indian. "I don't know."

"Just take a few puffs. You don't have to draw it into your lungs." He paused. "Don't be frightened. You have Mr. Pick to watch over you."

She considered the pipe a moment longer, then put it to her lips and drew in the smoke. She took several quick puffs, wrinkled her nose, and passed the pipe back to Two Bears. "Yuck."

Two Bears nodded. "It's an acquired taste." He inhaled the pungent smoke, then carefully placed the pipe across the rim of the hibachi. "There."

Then he moved out onto the open grass and seated himself cross–legged facing the burial mounds. Nest joined him, sitting cross–legged as well, positioning herself next to him in the dark. Pick still rode her shoulder, but he had gone strangely silent. She glanced down at him, but he was staring out into the night, oblivious of her. She let him be. Overhead, the sky was crosshatched by the limbs of the trees, their dappled shadows cast earthward in a tangled net by the bright moonlight. Nest waited patiently, saying nothing, losing herself in the silence. Two Bears began to chant, the words coming in a soft, steady cadence. The words were foreign to Nest, and she thought they must be Indian, probably Sinnissippi. She did not look at Two Bears, but looked instead where he looked, out over the roadway to the burial mounds, out into the night. Pick sat frozen on her shoulder, become momentarily a part of her, as quiet as she had ever seen him. She felt a twinge of fear, wondering suddenly if what she was doing was somehow more than she believed, if it would lead to a darker result than she anticipated.