Finally, something clicked, and she saw it, or rather, save the medicine-self that was the echo of its physical self.
It was a single artifact, a small one. A medicine-pouch hardly bigger than the palm of her hand. She had missed seeing exactly what it was the first time because she had beer 'looking' for a mass of relics, not a single piece.
A real, physical light flashed on, startlingly bright in all the darkness. The other person had a penlight and was shining it on the object, and she cursed him mentally for a fool, showing any kind of light out here at night! Anybody driving by would see it; anybody keeping watch for saboteurs or troublemakers would see it! How could he be so stupid?
That's the same kind of dumb trick David would pull- Whoever the idiot was, he didn't act as if he'd expected to find the pouch there, and she wondered how he had spotted it in the first place. Maybe he was marginally sensitive-
Maybe pigs sing arias. He probably saw something reflective.
He was studying it, carefully. Although it was too much to hope for that he'd leave it there. . . .
Dammit. That alone would have told me if it was from one of the looted graves. But I won't know that unless I can get my hands on it, and get the 'feel' of it, to see if it matches the 'feel' of any of the gravesites.
The stag feinted toward the right again, and this time movement there, movement in the spirit world, made her focus her attention in that direction. Oh hell. Oh no-
Little People. Lots of them. In human form, in the dress of her people from the time of the first French traders, but with faces too wild and too hungry to ever pass for human. Waiting and watching, avidly, their eyes glowing with a feral, anticipatory light that made her shiver. They crouched in a group, making her think of a waiting pack of coyotes, or a mob of crows. Waiting for dinner to kill itself. Watching some supremely stupid young creature, who was just a heartbeat away from doing something fatal.
Fatal?
She turned her newly sharpened spirit-sight back toward the medicine-pouch, following the gaze of the Little People. Yes, that was what they were watching; it looked as if they had been waiting for this man to find it-
Fatal? She strained her abilities to the limit, and prayed a little for good measure-and knew, suddenly and completely, what it was that was 'fatal' about the pouch.
It was the bait to a very mundane trap-it was wired to a bomb!
She didn't stop to think; she just acted. She flung herself across the intervening space, hurled herself at him, tackled him and rolled him sideways, just as he started to reach out to pick it up.
Together they rolled right into the crowd of Little People, who flowed about them in confused eddies, momentarily deflected from their purpose.
She felt their anger, hot on her skin; their rage, at being cheated of their rightful victim. And she looked up to see them surrounding both her and the stranger.
David had intended to head straight for the portable office on the site, but something made him take a little detour instead. A feeling that there was something out in the 'forbidden' area that he really should know about.
He hadn't been certain about the hunch, but it was too strong to be denied. But he'd stopped, right by a pile of dirt, feeling a little stupid at following a 'hunch,' and played his penlight over the area-
A flash of pale blue caught the light, and he aimed the circle of illumination there, expecting to see nothing more than half an old plastic cup.
Instead, the light shone on the deep reds and blues of really old beadwork, surrounded by the remains of quill work, all set into what had to be a truly ancient medicine pouch.
He stared at it, transfixed, unable to look away. He forgot what he had come for in the first place. After a few moments, the fascination turned to something else.
Desire. He had to have this thing. It was meant for him It had called him to take it, called to him out of the dark-ness. He must take it-
He reached out for it, slowly, with his free hand-
And something hit him from the side, knocking all the breath right out of him, sending him sprawling.
He had not been ready; he had not even been close to ready. He hit his head on the hard ground as he toppled over, and that partially stunned him. On top of that, his attacker had knocked the breath out of his lungs with the blow, something that hadn't happened since the last time he'd been 'sucker-punched' in grade school. He and his assailant rolled over and over in the dirt, finally coming to a halt a few feet away from where he'd been hiding.
He tried to suck in air, flailing around for balance, or to put up a pretense of defense. All he could manage was a vague idea that his attacker must have been one of Calligan's hired stooges, a rent-a-cop or something. But he was too busy trying to force a breath into his lungs, which burned with pain, and felt as if they'd collapsed. His attacker ignored him, and scrambled to his feet.
Finally, after a terrible muscle spasm, his chest unclenched, and he sucked in a long and painful breath in something close to a sob; a breath that hurt so much that his eyes watered. He looked up, through tearing eyes, to see who had hit him-
Jennie? What the hell?
She stood over him, her face set in a tight, fierce mask, a she-wolf defending her cub. That was when he looked at what she was looking at.
And nearly stopped breathing all over again.
His mind babbled that he wasn't seeing this-he couldn't be seeing this-that it was all a hallucination.
No. Oh no-I'm going crazy. I'm seeing delusions. I'm still knocked out-
But shaking his head didn't make them go away. And despite all his rational thinking, college learning, and disbelief, they were still there.
The Osage Little People.
He knew what they were; old man Talldeer had spun a tale or two for him and the rest of the neighborhood kids, back when he and Jennie were both in grade school. And any Indian kid in Claremore knew about Claremore Mound, the Little People there, the things that would happen to males who were stupid enough to climb it; boys used to dare each other to go up on it, and none of them ever would.
Yeah, he knew what the Little People were supposed to look like. And they had to be spirits; for one thing, they were transparent, and for another, no Osage had dressed the way they were dressed for the last hundred years or so. Wearing only gypsum-rubbed deerskin leggings, with roaches of deer-tail hair and turkey-gobbler beard attached to the long roaches of their own hair, which had been shaved in the style that the whites called a 'mohawk,' they surrounded him and Jennie, their eyes gleaming with mingled rage and hunger.
Their eyes glowed.
And one other thing told him that they were Little People, and not ordinary spirits.
No feathers. No face paint. Each of them should have been wearing an eagle feather in his roach; either a soft, under-tail covert if he was of the Tzi-sho or a full tail-feather if he was Hunkah. The Little People wore neither, nor were they painted. If they had once been human, they had died in such a way that they had no honor, and must go through a strange afterlife stuck here on earth and not in the Summer Country, existing without paint or eagle feathers. . . .
Just as old man Talldeer had whispered to them, on those long-ago October nights.
'They are hungry for blood. They search for prey-'
If they had once been human, they could have been killed by his people, in the raids that left no one in an entire village-every man dead, every woman and child made a slave. To die a slave-to die in a sneak attack and rot where you fell, without paint or ceremony-that would leave your spirit wandering.
At any other time than the night of the dark of the moon, you might be able to talk them into sparing you. They might even content themselves with simply pulling a trick on you. ' But during the dark of the moon, they became pretty single-minded killing machines.
David did not need to scan the sky; he knew it was the dark of the moon. He'd planned on that, when he'd decided to make his little raid tonight.
The Little People were ignoring Jennie for the most part, staring avidly down at him. Whatever was going on, she seemed to have some kind of protection from them. He didn't.
