Stormfeather Ch. 01

This is set in the New Mexico Territory in the 1870s. I needed the location for some of the story points and a couple of now-extinct animal species. I hope it's as enjoyable to read as it is to write.

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He slowed his pace as he neared the rim of the dale. He'd been on the road for so long that the prospect of an actual arrival now felt strange to him. He stopped and looked over the valley. It didn't look like all that much, he thought. He'd seen many more inviting places. But this one was where he'd felt himself being drawn to for so long.

He'd never been here before, but he knew that this marked the end of his long pilgrimage. This was where it had begun for his kind. This was where the first of them had come from on this side of the world.

He took off his pack and set it down with his bow. His large equine friend sidled up to him to nuzzle his hand. Turning, he smiled and rubbed the great jaw, though inwardly he was a little annoyed with himself. He'd forgotten about the horse. What he'd do about him hadn't come to mind yet, but he hoped that something would soon. There was no reason to hurry now, no matter what faint urging he felt in his heart and he had no desire at this point to sever the only friendly relationship that he'd had with an animal since he'd become what he was.

He sat down by a tree and rested as the large horse began to forage. It didn't matter much whether he arrived today, tomorrow, or ever, really. It was difficult to get a sense, but he was fairly certain that she wouldn't be here. He hadn't heard her call in his heart for such a long while. He pulled out a piece of dried meat and began to chew on it absently as he thought back to the dark agony which had culminated in more of a beginning than the end that it really should have been.

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A great deal of time and so many journeys detached him from where and how he'd begun. The only child of an unwelcome man and a chief's daughter, he'd never been allowed to fit in, as much as he'd tried. With the death of his maternal grandfather, the right of his mother to lead had been usurped by another and they'd been forced out of the band, leaving with not much more than their few things – and the daughter of the new chief who'd torn herself from her own family because of her love of him. If her father could have accepted it – and that plainly could not have happened - they might have made it, he remembered sadly, but that act had likely sealed all of their fates.

Whenever one assumes the mantle of leadership, one of the primary requisites is the ability to care for one's followers and look forward for the common good. It was a quality which the new chief had no cognizance of. While he seethed with ever more hatred toward the outcasts, he failed to recognize the threat to his band from one of their traditional enemies. The band which he led had never been large, and their numbers had not increased enough to replace the losses from the unfortunate conflict with the men who'd come in longships a generation earlier.

While Stormfeather took his mother and bride far from where they'd grown up, their tribe lost two key battles with their enemies and ceased to exist, other than the relative few who were taken as captives.

It was only a matter of time before the outcasts were discovered as well.

While he was off hunting to keep the three of them fed, their tiny camp had been discovered and his mother's identity as the former chief's daughter took little time to ascertain. As traditional enemies, the two women had been tortured before they'd been murdered. It had caused his return the next year to exact the vengeance that his mother's spirit had pleaded for when it had spoken to him on his return from hunting. When she'd shown him that he possessed this ability years earlier, he'd never thought that he'd have used it to learn who had done these unthinkable things, though he wasn't surprised.

With the last of the killers dead, he'd almost crawled back to the ashes of the women. He was torn, badly wounded and wanted only to pass on himself, but it had only marked the turning of another page in his long and strange life.

A traveler had come to him then and cared for him, holding him back from death's door. He awoke in something of a dream state. Nothing seemed solid or real to his fevered brain, nothing but the beautiful woman who was there with him. She told him that she'd known of his struggles over the winter and the spring. She'd watched him as he mounted his campaign of vengeance for those who had been taken from him. Stormfeather thought that she must have been a goddess of some sort, but she smiled and shook her head.

"I am only another traveler," she'd said in her strangely stilted speech that left him calmed but missing at least some of the meaning, as she held his head up to feed him some hot broth. "I believe that you are one who is being sought because of a foretelling. If so, then someone like you has something ahead of them to live for. I can see this in you. But to do this, you must go on. I need to know if you want to."

He shook his head, "What is there to go on to? The only ones who loved me are dead. The ones who I grew up with hated me. There is nothing... no one..." he said as he lost consciousness again.

Awakening the second time, he found that it was night, and he was covered with a fur. He looked around as far as he was able to in his weakness, and peered in the direction of the quiet sounds that told him of the coming of someone. What he saw a few seconds later was more of a two-footed animal than a human. There was some sort of beast who walked upright. When it – she – saw him, she came nearer and knelt on one knee to touch his forehead. Stormfeather wasn't afraid. He didn't care for his survival, but he was taken by the wonder of her and tried to sit up.

"Lie back and rest, warrior," she smiled, "you are still caught in the fever from your wounds."

"You-you are..."

The face smiled, "Your eyes are clearer, though you see through the sickness. How do I look to you?"

He stared in wonder. The braids, the beads, the breechcloth, everything about her told him of a human past, but her features were of something else entirely. "Why do you not wear a woman's clothing?" he asked weakly.

The answer she gave began with a smirk, "This is much better to travel in on the paths where I must walk," she said, "There are many peoples on the land. Not all dress as the women of your band. Where I am from, this is what women wear." He fell silent after this, wondering where she had come from.

"I think you like me," she said with a nod, "no matter how I appear to you. The time has come for you, warrior. You must now decide if you want to go on or if you still wish to die here. I have waited three days and nights for you. Any other man would be long dead from what you bear. I have only tried to make you rest, but you are running out of time. I can save you, or I can let you go. You must tell me what you want for yourself."

"What do you want of me?" Stormfeather asked.

She stood up and placed the things that she'd carried down in several places. He couldn't see what they were. "I am very old," she said, "and I have traveled far, looking for one such as you. When I found you, you had a family in your mother and your woman. I watched for a time, and moved on. When I came back here, I had been following you as you hunted. I have been watching you since then. What I want, warrior, is to be known as the one who found you."

She was out of his field of view for a moment, but when she returned, she wore the same things, but was now a human woman with the same soft voice and warm smile. She sat down next to him and began to eat something. He realized that he was hungry and said so.

She laughed softly as she held out the food to share it, "I think that your body has already decided things for you. Shall I take your body's answer, or am I to listen to your fever as it tells me to let you die?"

"If you can help me, will you stay with me?"

"I can only stay with you for a time," she said, "I must go to my home. But if you live and grow strong again, I think that I will stay long enough to see that day before I leave. When I come to my home, I will call to you. Have no fear, you will hear my call. If you come, and are willing, then we can journey together to a place where there is much magic in the ground. That is where we must go."

She looked at him a little wistfully and said, "I am not the one who must walk beside you when you enter that place. That one does not live yet. The next part of the prophecy - if it comes to pass - will be her birth."

She pulled the fur from him and her face lost its humor, "Decide now, there is not much time for you anymore."

He was never sure why he'd done it, but he told her that he wanted now to go on living. She nodded with a smile and got on with the business of bringing him back to health. She was busy, he could see as he watched. She had small fires where she burned aromatic things which kept the air slightly smoky. To block the wind, she erected walls out of animal skins strung between the trees. With herbs, plants, and her own hypnotic voice she kept him in a trance state as she pulled out the many broken arrows and dug for the ones which had broken off inside of him.

After many hours, she lay down with him and spoke softly to him of her people far to the southwest as she wiped his sweat from his forehead and body. He drifted in and out of consciousness. His world became one of dreams and nightmares. Whenever the nightmares shook him too badly, she came to him there in his dreams as well.

He would awaken now and then to find that she was still with him there in the small space between the trees. There were more and more piles of brush piled up near to the skins to keep the wind out. Several times he awoke somewhat startled to find her above him as she rode him gently. Every time, as soon as she became aware that he was awake, she would smile and speak softly to him about doing this for them both. It forced the heart to work and the blood to move, she said. If he was the one being sought, she said, then she wanted this as a reward to herself for the work of healing him.

He asked her how she had roused him without his knowledge, but she smiled and said that if she had the need, she could raise many things. Those times had been blissful release for him. There was very little lust in the act between them, only enough to drive it and not much more. He was too weak, but she told him that it was more than enough to pleasure her. She said that if she wanted it, a hard ride was an easy thing for her to find on her travels. But to do this with him for hours was what she wanted now.

He woke one night feeling stronger to find her there in the dark flickering light of the fire squinting at his wounds and working the pus out of the ones where she judged the time to be right for it. When she was finished, she sat back on her pretty haunches and said, "If I stop here, you will live to grow as strong again as you once were. There is one last thing to do, and it will cause more pain than anything else that I have done to make you well again. It will make you far stronger still, and much closer to both the spirit world and the animal one. I need to know if you want to go to these places." She stroked the side of his face and then leaned in to kiss him.

"You will have to take this step. We cannot stay together for long if you do not."

He nodded, "I am ready for this, but first you must tell me more about yourself. I have lain here in a world between my dreams and what I see around me. You are always in both of them to keep me safe. But I know nothing about you."

She sat up a little and began to weave long thin braids here and there in his hair as she told him that she had been born a princess in another land. Her tale told of her privileged upbringing and the wealth which surrounded her. The place where she came from was far to the south. She'd learned to hunt for sport rather than food, and she'd learned more than enough to keep herself alive in the absence of that wealth.

There had been several years of drought and famine, and the people clamored for more and better sacrifices to their gods. Finally, the priests had told her father that the gods demanded a sacrifice which affected the royal family itself, since they had thus far not sent any contributions in the way of human sacrifices. Of all of her sisters, she was one chosen.

The trouble for her was that she had long before watched the suffering of her people and knew that there were no gods – not like what the priests taught to keep their soft and privileged way of life. She noted bitterly that none of the priest's daughters had yet had their hearts carved out of their living breasts for the god's pleasure.

As she waited for the dawn of her last day, she was visited by a traveler much like how she had come to him. Over the course of the night, he taught her that her people were not the center of the world, they were only another people in the same world as everyone else, and that she'd been correct. Whatever god or gods there were, they had no interest in human sacrifice. She gladly accepted his offer and by the dawn, she was somewhere else, and more. She'd become something else as well, and later returned to hunt the priests themselves, carving out hearts as she went through their ranks.

When she asked Stormfeather again, he nodded, and she changed her shape there beside him. "My heart is full of joy for all of us, then," she said as she moved his hair aside and lowered her head to his shoulder. He felt her arms gently pin him to the ground and then he felt the pain of her bite. She moved her head a little to let her teeth sink into his flesh and then he felt her tongue slide over the wound thoroughly. When she sat back on her heels, she wore his blood around her mouth. She wiped it off quickly and caressed his face. She hadn't done anything but bite him to pass her saliva to his blood.

She waited and stayed with him as he progressed through his first change. The pain that he felt as his body changed the first time was beyond excruciating. He felt as though he was being torn apart, and in truth, he was. Muscle groups and tendons managed with only partial success to follow the shifting shapes of his bones. Internal organs were squeezed into different sizes and shapes inside him. But the princess with no name remained with him, holding him and offering her soft encouragement.

The next day, he changed many times, each slightly less traumatic to him than the one before until he could make the changes himself at will. She told him of a very old place where the ancient people who had lived there had left long ago, but where there was magic in abundance. That place, she told him, was where all of their kind must go. It was where the first of their kind's young had to be born if they were to survive naturally in this world, because to walk in that place was to walk in another world of magical power. It was the gateway to their holy land, a portal where they could choose to remain in this world or move on to the next. Humans could be changed and live, but their changeling offspring had to be born in that place or in the holy land beyond.

She stayed with him for the next week to offer him guidance in the paths and ways that he would need to know to survive comfortably. But the one thing that she would not now do was mate with him. That, she said, was for their reunion and then once they had come to the sacred ground, there she would love him as they would both want, if it happened, and if the foretelling had been true, the one who would walk with him would by then be waiting for him and she would take her leave to watch them go on together for the benefit of all.

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Stormfeather came back to himself as he looked out over the valley. He'd never fully understood what she'd said of a prophecy and how it might concern him. He remembered her final words to him the last night. He would lose her in the tracking of her, but he would sense her calling to him one day. It would mean that she had come back to her home. She would begin to call to him from there as she made her own journey to this holy place that he now saw as a lump of rock rising out of the plain in the distance. She said that her call would bring him to her and that they'd meet up somewhere on her way here.

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The next morning, he awoke alone. She'd been right, he thought. He did lose her trail as he searched in vain. It had taken many years, but he did feel her calling him and it drove him toward where he supposed that she was. But then it had stopped one day quite suddenly. He kept on in the same direction. His travels took him down into the United States long before they were even true settlements, barely colonial attempts and certainly not united in any way. He made his way through Mexico and Central America, down into what is now Peru, coming at last to see the final days of the Inca people as they struggled in vain against the Spanish conquistadors. All that he got from that was that it was the place where she'd grown up.

He turned then and went back north, feeling a different, far older call to this place. He'd actually passed it by and gone deep into the American plains for some time, but finally gave in to the gentle call to move on and turned southeast once more.

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Picking up his bow and pack, he whistled for his friend and together they walked down the slope to cross the valley. If this was where he had to go, he thought, well he'd better get on with it. He could feel the magic of the place and it was some comfort to him, but he didn't think that he'd find his princess there.

As he walked up the rise to the old burial grounds of the many other tribes who had lived here over the centuries, he shrugged to himself. This was where she'd said that they all had to go, sooner or later. He thought that he must be on the later side. He'd been trying to find her for over seven centuries. Now that he was coming to the end, he didn't much care if he found her or not.

It wasn't quite true, he admitted. He just didn't know what he'd do if he ever met her again. After all of this time, he felt there was a good chance that he'd seize her and hold her to his chest and never let her go again.

Then again, he might just give in to the other urge that he felt for having searched this long and do his best to tear her to pieces in rage for the long years of solitude.

The horse stopped and neighed to him nervously. He was uneasy in this old place of death. The man smiled and gave him the sign to wait. He shook his head as he walked on. After some of the things that they'd been through together, he was surprised that the horse would be nervous in this place.

Walking among the dead, he followed the traces of mist that he saw curling over the ground to one of the caves. He looked at it for some time, and came to the conclusion that this was where he had to go to continue his journey.

But he didn't go inside.

If this was the next part of his life, he thought that he was in no hurry now. He'd spend some time saying goodbye to this world in case he could never return. He found a vacant cave nearby and decided to make that his home for the next little while. It took a bit of doing, but with his soft words of encouragement – and a few oats – he got his friend into the sheltered place and settled for the night on the lush grass which grew near the grave mounds at the other end.