Chapter 18b: This Night Is Magic (continued)

...the star clouds of Scorpius, marking the southernmost end of the great Rift of the Milky Way; ahead, the false dawn of the City, repelling her even as it draws her toward and then beyond it.

As the Falling Leaf Moon touches the land behind her she cries out, calling one last time to her home.

For days she flies, following a river of black far below her. This river has a significance, the details of which have no importance to her; only the truth that its spirit is merged with her own inner form, and that spirit leads away from her remains, her hogan, and the Four Mountains themselves.

There is no Navajo word for 'relocation.' To move away is to disappear.

Though the Way is alone, the Journey has travelers, and over the Plains she is joined by the spirits of the Assiniboine and the Cree, of the Sioux and the Nez Perce, of the Piegan and the Cheyenne. Within four days she is in a flock of a thousand, pushing eastward by moonlight and resting, circling in the thermals above the great cumulus clouds, by day.

By the time of the full moon the flock senses the water of the inland seas. It has become again her time to take her position at the head of the 'V', and she leads them down, over the wasted landscape towards the ice mountain that stands at the shore of the great Lake.

How long he had been out, it was impossible for Eric to say. He tried to piece together the chain of events backwards, starting from the only fact he had, that he was lying in crushed basalt and sandstone with his legs and one arm broken.

Therefore, he must have fallen.

From... up there, somewhere, in the dark.

He tried to twist his head around to look up at the barbican silhouetted against the stars, but a blinding pain shot from his clavicle and his head dropped, face first, back into the sand.

Shiprock. Rock Monster Eagle. It was all so long ago. He had dived at the creature, but missed somehow. He was flamed, and he fell...

But he was still alive?

"If you call this living," his inner voice said.

His thoughts traveled back to all the bad movies he'd ever seen, and realized that his sudden, unexpected reappearance in this story could only mean that he was an important character, that a crucial plot twist was dependent on him. But it's been so long, he thought; he could barely remember the plot, let alone what his role in it had been.

He hoped his faded copy of the story was still rolled up in his back pocket, although he couldn't feel it. He couldn't feel anything; Eric's shattered legs, laying at an odd angle, were numb. He could see a torn page of the palimpsest lying on the ground, out of reach; he struggled to push himself up on his one good arm, but hadn't counted on the broken ribs that had caved in the left side of his body. With the searing pain black dots appeared in his field of vision; as they began to coalesce, he slowly lowered himself back down onto his side.

It was then that Eric knew that he would survive this. His thoughts, his situation, were being spelled out too clearly; he well knew the conventions of storytelling.

This realization buoyed his spirits immensely. As he tried to piece together a plan of action, there was a sudden WHOOMP in the direction of his feet; without moving his head this time, he looked down to see the bodies of a white and a black wolf. Evidently they had plummeted off the same cliff as he.

An image of the Road Runner's Coyote flashed in Eric's head, and he laughed out loud. "Missed me, missed me, neener, neener, neener. You taking flying lessons from that guy on Elephant Parts? 'Flap your arms, I said!' Hey, got a riddle for you: what's black and white and red all ov---"

Mercifully, he was interrupted by the force of several hundred more falling wolves landing on top of him.