Running with the Demon Part 6

He'd moved closer then, and his wizened face had furrowed with delight and his voice had lowered to a conspiratorial whisper. "Feeders, my young friend, devour people!"

Nest's eyes had gone wide, and Pick the sylvan had laughed like a cartoon maniac.

She still remembered him saying it. Feeders devour people. Feeders devour people. There was more to the explanation, of course, for the complexity of feeders could never be defined so simply. There was no mention of the feeders as a force of nature, as sudden, violent, and inexorable as a Midwest twister, or of their strange, symbiotic relationship with the humans they destroyed. Yet it was hard to get much closer to the heart of the matter. Pick's description, provocative and crude, was still the most accurate Nest had ever heard. Even now, six years later, his words resonated with truth. There was more to the explanation, of course, for the complexity of feeders could never be defined so simply. There was no mention of the feeders as a force of nature, as sudden, violent, and inexorable as a Midwest twister, or of their strange, symbiotic relationship with the humans they destroyed. Yet it was hard to get much closer to the heart of the matter. Pick's description, provocative and crude, was still the most accurate Nest had ever heard. Even now, six years later, his words resonated with truth.

The pungent smell of spruce filled her nostrils, borne on a momentary breeze, and the memories faded. She turned and jogged quickly to the end of her yard, slipping smoothly into the gap in the hedgerow. She was almost through when Pick appeared on her shoulder as if by magic, springing out of hiding from the leafy branches. At six inches of height and nine ounces of weight, he was as small and light as a bird. He was a wizened bit of wood with vaguely human features stamped above a mossy beard. Leaves grew out of his head in place of hair. His arms and legs were flexible twigs that narrowed to tiny fingers and stubby toes. He looked like a Disney animation that had been roughed up a bit. His fierce eyes were as hard and flat as ink dots on stone.

He settled himself firmly in place, taking hold of her collar. "What have I told you about provoking the feeders?" he snapped.

"Not to," she answered dutifully, swinging west down the service road toward the park entrance.

"Why don't you listen to me, then?"

"I do. But it makes me angry to see them nosing about when it's still light out." She darted a quick look at the ballplayers to make certain that Danny Abbott wasn't among them. "They didn't used to be like that. They never showed themselves when the sun was shining, not even where the shadows were deepest. Now I see them everywhere."

"Times change." Pick sounded disconsolate. "Something's happening, that much is sure, but I don't know what it is yet. Whatever it is, it's caused the balance of things to tip even further. There's been a lot of bad things happening around here lately. That's not good." He paused. "How's the little Scott girl?"

"Fine. But George Paulsen stole her cat, Spook." Nest slowed to a walk again. "I promised Bennett I'd try to find it. Can you help me?"

Even without being able to see him, she knew he was tugging on his mossy beard and shaking his leafy head. "Sure, sure, what else have I got to do but look for someone's lost cat? Criminy!" He was silent a moment as they pa.s.sed behind the backstop. The spectators grouped at the edge of the ball field were drinking beer and pop and cheering on their favorite players. "Batter, batter, batter-swing!" someone chanted. No one paid any attention to Nest.

"I'll send Daniel out, see if he can find anything," Pick offered grudgingly.

Nest smiled. "Thanks."

"You can thank me by staying away from the feeders!" Pick was not about to be mollified. "You think your magic and that big dog are enough to protect you, but you don't know feeders the way I do. They aren't subject to the same laws as humans. They get to you when you're not expecting it!" She could feel him twisting about angrily on her shoulder. "Creepers! I don't know why I'm telling you this! You already know it, and I shouldn't have to say another word!"

Then please don't, she thought, hiding a grin. Wisely, she swallowed her words without speaking them. "I'll be careful, I promise," she a.s.sured him, turning up the blacktop road toward the cliffs.

"See that you do. Now, cut across the gra.s.s to the burial mounds. There's an Indian sitting up there at one of the picnic tables, and I want to know what he's up to."

She glanced sideways at him. "An Indian?"

"That's what I said, didn't I?"

"A real Indian?"

Pick sighed in exasperation. "If you do like I told you, you can decide for yourself!"

Curious now, wondering if there really was an Indian or if the sylvan was just making it up, she stepped off the roadway into the gra.s.s and began to jog steadily toward the cliffs.

Chapter Eight.

The Indian was sitting at a picnic table on the far side of the playground just across the roadway from the burial mounds. He was all alone, having chosen a spot well back in the tangle of pines and spruce that warded the park's northern boundary against the heavy winter storms that blew down from Canada. He sat with his back to the roadway and the broad expanse of the park, his gaze directed west toward the setting sun. Shadows dappled his still, solitary form, and if she had not known to look for him, Nest might have missed seeing him altogether.

He did not look up as she neared, and she slowed to a walk. His long, raven hair had been woven into a single braid that fell to the middle of his back, and his burnished skin shone with a copper glint where errant streaks of sunlight brushed against it. He was a big man, even hunched down at the table the way he was, and the fingers of his hands, clasped before him in a twisted knot, were gnarled and thick. He wore what appeared to be an army field jacket with the sleeves torn out, pants that were baggy and frayed, boots so scuffed they lacked any semblance of a shine, and a red bandanna tied loosely about his neck.

Somewhere in the distance a child squealed with delight. The Indian did not react.

Nest moved to a picnic table thirty feet away from the Indian and seated herself. She was off to one side, out of his direct line of sight, where she could study him at her leisure. Pick perched on her shoulder, whispering furiously in her ear. When she failed to respond, he began to jump up and down in irritation.

"What's the matter with you?" he hissed. "How can you learn anything from all the way back here? You've got to get closer! Must I tell you how to do everything!"

She reached up, lifted him off her shoulder, and placed him on the table, frowning in reproof. Patience Patience, she mouthed.

In truth, she was trying to make up her mind about the man. He looked like he might be an Indian, but how could she be sure? Most of what she knew about Indians she'd learned from movies and a few reports she'd done in school - not what you'd call a definitive education. She couldn't see his face clearly, and he wasn't wearing anything that looked remotely Indian. No jewelry, no feathers, no buckskins, no buffalo robes. He looked more like a combat veteran. She wondered suddenly if he was homeless. A heavy knapsack and a bedroll were settled on the bench beside him, and he had the look of a man who had been out in the weather a lot.

"Who is he, do you think?" she asked softly, almost to herself. Then she glanced down at Pick. "Have you ever seen him before?"

The sylvan was apoplectic. "No, I haven't seen him before! And I don't have the foggiest notion who he is! What do you think we're doing out here? Haven't you heard anything I've said?"

"Shhhhh," she hushed him gently.

They sat there for a time without speaking (although Pick muttered incessantly) and watched the man. He did not seem aware of them. He did not turn their way. He did not move at all. The sun slipped below the treeline, and the shadows deepened. Nest glanced about guardedly, but she did not see the feeders. Behind her, back toward the center of the park, the baseball games were winding down and the first cars were beginning to pull out from the parking s.p.a.ces behind the backstops and turn toward the highway.

Then suddenly the man rose, picked up his knapsack and bedroll, and came toward Nest. Nest was so surprised she did not even have the presence of mind to think of running away. She sat there, frozen in place as he approached. She could see his face clearly now, his heavy, prominent features - dark brows, flat nose, and wide cheekbones. He moved with the grace and ease of a younger man, but the lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth suggested he was much older.

He sat down across from her without a word, depositing his belongings on the bench beside him. She realized suddenly that Pick had disappeared.

"Why are you looking at me?" he said. She tried to speak, but nothing came out. He didn't sound or look angry, but his face and voice were hard to read. "Cat got your tongue?" he pressed. She cleared her throat and swallowed. "I was wondering if you were an Indian."

He stared at her without expression. "You mean Native American, don't you?"

She bit her lower lip and blushed. "Sorry. Native American." He smiled, a tight, thin compression of his lips. "I suppose it doesn't matter what you call me. Native American. Indian. Redskin. The words of themselves do not define me. No more so than your histories do my people." The dark eyes squinted at her. "Who are you?"

"Nest Freemark," she told him.

"Huh, little bird's Nest, crafted of twigs and bits of string. Do you live nearby?"

She nodded, then glanced over her shoulder. "At the edge of the park. Why did you call me 'bird's Nest' like that?"

The dark eyes bore into her. "Isn't that what you were called when you were little?"

"By my grandmother, a long time ago. Then by some of the kids in school, when they wanted to tease me." She held his gaze. "How did you know?"

"I do magic," he told her in a whisper. "Don't you?" She stared at him, not knowing what to say. "Sometimes." He nodded. "A girl named Nest is bound to be called 'bird's Nest' by someone. Doesn't take much to figure that out. But 'Nest' - that is a name that has power. It has a history in the world, a presence."

Nest nodded. "It is Welsh. The woman who bore it first was the wife and mother of Welsh and English kings." She was surprised at how freely she was talking with the man, almost as if she knew him already.

"You have a good name, Nest. My name is Two Bears. I was given my name by my father, who on seeing me, newly born and quite large, declared, 'He is as big as two bears!' So I was called afterward, although that is not my Indian name. In the language of my people, my name is O'olish Amaneh."

"O'olish Amaneh," Nest repeated carefully. "Where do you come from, Two Bears?"

"First we must shake hands to mark the beginning of our friendship, little bird's Nest," he declared. "Then we can speak freely."

He motioned for Nest to extend her hand, and then he clasped it firmly in his own. His hand was as hard and coa.r.s.e as rusted iron.

"Good. Because of your age, we will skip the part that involves smoking a peace pipe." He did not smile or change expression. "You ask me where I come from. I come from everywhere. I have lived a lot of places. But this" - he gestured about him - "is my real home."

"You're from Hopewell?" Nest said dubiously.

"No. But my people are of this land, of the Rock River Valley, from before Hopewell. They have all been dead a long time, my people, but sometimes I come back to visit them. They are buried just over there." He pointed toward the Indian mounds. "I was born in Springfield. That was a long time ago, too. How old do you think I am?"

He waited, but she could only shake her head. "I don't know."

"Fifty-two," he said softly. "My life slips rapidly away. I fought in Vietnam. I walked and slept with death; I knew her as I would a lover. I was young before, but afterward I was very old. I died in the Nam so many times, I lost count. But I killed a lot of men, too. I was a LURP. Do you know what that means?"

Nest shook her head once more.

"It doesn't matter," he said, brushing at the air with his big hand. "I was there for six years, and when it was over, I was no longer young. I came home, and I no longer knew myself or my people or my country. I was an Indian, a Native American, and a Redskin all rolled into one, and I was none of these. I was dead, but I was still walking around."

He looked at her without speaking for a moment, his eyes impenetrable. "On the other hand, maybe it was all a dream." His flat features shifted in the failing light, almost as if they were changing shape. "The trouble with dreams is that sometimes they are as real as life, and you cannot tell the two apart. Do you have dreams, little bird's Nest?"

"Sometimes," she replied, fascinated by the way his voice rose and fell as he talked, rough and silky, soft and bold. "Are you really an Indian, Two Bears?"

He glanced down then for a moment, shifting his hard gaze away from her, placing the palms of his big hands flat against the top of the picnic table. "Why should I tell you?"

He kept his eyes lowered, not looking at her. Nest did not know what to say.

"I will tell you because we are friends," he offered. "And because there is no reason not to tell you." His eyes lifted again to find hers. "I am an Indian, little bird's Nest, but I am something more as well. I am something no one should ever be. I am the last of my kind."

He brought the index finger of his right hand to his nose. "I am Sinnissippi, the only one left, the only one in all the world. My grandparents died before I went to Nam. My father died of drink. My mother died of grief. My brother died of a fall from the steel towers he helped to build in New York City. My sister died of drugs and alcohol on the streets in Chicago. We were all that remained, and now there is only me. Of all those who were once Sinnissippi, who filled this valley for miles in all directions, who went out into the world to found other tribes, there is only me. Can you imagine what that is like?" Nest shook her head, transfixed.

"Do you know anything of the Sinnissippi?" he asked her. "Do you study them in school? Do your parents speak of them? The answer is no, isn't it? Did you even know that we existed?"

"No," she said softly.

His smile was flat and tight. "Think on this a moment, little bird's Nest. We were a people, like you. We had traditions and a culture. We were hunters and fishermen for the most part, but some among us were farmers as well. We had homes; we were the keepers of this park and all the land that surrounds it. All of that is gone, and no record of us remains. Even our burial mounds are believed to belong to another tribe. It is as if we never were. We are a rumor. We are a myth. How is that possible? Nothing remains of us but a name. Sinnissippi. We are a park, a street, an apartment building. Our name is there, preserved after we are gone, and yet our name means nothing, says nothing, tells nothing of us. Even the historians do not know what our name means. I have studied on this, long ago. Some think the name is Sauk, and that it refers to the land. Some think the name is Fox, and that it refers to the river that runs through the land. But no one thinks it is the name of our people. No one believes that."

"Have you ever tried to tell them?" Nest asked when he fell silent.

He shook his head. "Why should I? Maybe they are right. Maybe we didn't exist. Maybe there were no Sinnissippi, and I am a crazy man. What difference does it make? The Sinnissippi, if they ever were, are gone now. There is only me, and I am fading, too."

His words trailed away in the growing silence of the park. The light was almost gone, the sun settled below the horizon so that its brilliant orange glare was only a faint smudge against the darkening skyline west. The buzzing of the locusts had begun, rising and falling in rough cadence to the distant sounds of cars and voices as the last of the ballplayers and spectators emptied out of the park.

"What happened to your people?" Nest asked finally. "Why don't we know anything about them?"

Two Bears' coppery face shifted away again. "They were an old people, and they have been gone a long time. The Sauk and the Fox came after them. Then white Europeans who became the new Americans. The Sinnissippi were swallowed up in time's pa.s.sage, and no one who lived in my lifetime could tell me why. What they had been told by their ancestors was vague. The Sinnissippi did not adapt. They did not change when change was necessary. It is a familiar story. It is what happens to so many nations. Perhaps the Sinnissippi were particularly ill suited to make the change that was necessary to ensure their survival. Perhaps they were foolish or blind or inflexible or simply unprepared. I have never known." He paused. "But I have come back to find out."

His big hands clasped before his rugged face. "I was a long time deciding that I would do this. It seemed better to me in some ways not to know. But the question haunts me, so I am here. Tomorrow night, I will summon the spirits of the dead from where they lie within the earth. I have shaman powers, little bird's Nest, revealed to me in the madness of the war in Nam. I will use those powers to summon the spirits of the Sinnissippi to dance for me, and in their dance they will reveal the answers to my questions. I am the last of them, so they must speak to me."

Nest tried to picture it. The spirits of the Sinnissippi dancing at night in the park - in the same park where the feeders prowled, unfettered.

"Would you like to watch?" Two Bears asked quietly.

"Me?" She breathed the word as she would a prayer.

"Tomorrow, at midnight. Are you afraid?"

She was, but she refused to admit it.

"I am a stranger, a big man, a combat veteran who speaks of terrifying things. You should be afraid. But we are friends, Nest. Our friendship was sealed with our handshake. I will not hurt you."

The dark eyes reflected pinp.r.i.c.ks of light from the rising moon. Darkness cloaked the park, the twilight almost gone. Nest remembered the promise she had made to her grandfather. She had to leave soon.

"If you come," said the big man softly, "you may learn something of your own people's fate. The spirits will speak of more than the Sinnissippi. The dance will reveal things that you should know."

Nest blinked. "What things?"

He shook his head slowly. "What happened to my people can happen to yours as well." He paused. "What if I were to tell you that it is happening now?"

Nest felt a tightening in her throat. She brushed at her short, curly hair with her hand. She could feel the sweat bead on her forehead. "What do you mean?"

Two Bears leaned back, and his face disappeared momentarily into shadow. "All peoples think they are forever," he growled softly. "They do not believe they will ever not be. The Sinnissippi were that way. They did not think they would be eradicated. But that is what happened. Your people, Nest, believe this of themselves. They will survive forever, they think. Nothing can destroy them, can wipe them so completely from the earth and from history that all that will remain is their name and not even that will be known with certainty. They have such faith in their invulnerability.

"Yet already their destruction begins. It comes upon them gradually, in little ways. Bit by bit their belief hi themselves erodes. A growing cynicism pervades their lives. Small acts of kindness and charity are abandoned as pointless and somehow indicative of weakness. Little failures of behavior lead to bigger ones. It is not enough to ignore the discourtesies of others; discourtesies must be repaid in kind. Men are intolerant and judgmental. They are without grace. If one man proclaims that G.o.d has spoken to him, another quickly proclaims that his G.o.d is false. If the homeless cannot find shelter, then surely they are to blame for their condition. If the poor do not have jobs, then surely it is because they will not work. If sickness strikes down those whose lifestyle differs from our own, then surely they have brought it on themselves.

"Look at your people, Nest Freemark. They abandon their old. They shun their sick. They cast off their children. They decry any who are different. They commit acts of unfaithfulness, betrayal, and depravity every day. They foster lies that undermine beliefs. Each small darkness breeds another. Each small incident of anger, bitterness, pettiness, and greed breeds others. A sense of futility consumes them. They feel helpless to effect even the smallest change. Their madness is of their own making, and yet they are powerless against it because they refuse to acknowledge its source. They are at war with themselves, but they do not begin to understand the nature of the battle being fought."

He took a long, slow breath and released it. "Do even a handful among your people believe that life in this country is better now than it was twenty years ago? Do they believe that the dark things that inhabit it are less threatening? Do they feel safer in their homes and cities? Do they find honor and trust and compa.s.sion outweigh greed and deceit and disdain? Can you tell me that you do not fear for them?"

There was bleak appraisal in his dark eyes. "We do not always recognize the thing that comes to destroy us. That is the lesson of the Sinnissippi. It can appear in many different forms. Perhaps my people were destroyed by a world which demanded changes they could not make." He shook his head slowly, as if trying to see beyond his words. "But there is reason to think' that your people destroy themselves."

He went silent then, staring at the girl, his eyes distant, his look impenetrable. Nest took a deep breath. "It is not that bad," she said, trying to keep the doubt from her voice.

Two Bears smiled. "It is worse. You know that it is. You can see it everywhere, even in this park." He glanced around, as if to find some evidence of it close at hand. Feeders were visible at the edges of the deeper shadows, but the Indian seemed oblivious of them. He looked back at Nest. "Your people risk the fate of the Sinnissippi. Come to the summoning tomorrow at midnight and judge for yourself. Perhaps the spirits of the dead will speak of it. If they do not, then perhaps I am just another Indian with too much firewater in his body."

"You're not that," Nest said quickly, not certain at the same time just exactly what he was.

"Will you come?" he pressed.

She nodded. "Okay."

Two Bears rose, a hulking figure amid the shadows. "The Fourth of July approaches," he said softly. "Independence Day. The birth of your nation, of the United States of America." He nodded. "My nation, too, though I am Sinnissippi. I was born to her. My dreams were nurtured by her. I fought for her in Vietnam. My people are buried in her soil. She is my home, whatever name she bears. So I suppose that I am right to be interested in her fate."

He picked up his knapsack and his bedroll and slung them over his shoulder. "Tomorrow night, little bird's Nest," he repeated.

She nodded in response. "At midnight, O'olish Amaneh."

He gave her a brief, tight-lipped smile. "Tell your little friend he can come out from under the picnic table now."

Then he turned into the darkness and strode silently away.