nothing about those who were beside them. These could not be said to be standing, because they seemed still to be forming, as if out of mist. They had a human form, but it did not hold steady. There was an ungodly transparency to them… and a profound blackness, too, like empty portions of the night sky called coal sacks. While he could make out individual outlines, these seemed to oscillate and blend, so that there was a forbidding aura of compositeness about them-like a crowd made of fog and glass that became something else. Something whole.
What stood grouped beyond them-this was more than his mind could take. They were not human and never would be or had been human. Some he might have said were creatures from the past-beasts that he at least could imagine having roamed the land long ago. Others he could only think were creatures from a dream. Or a nightmare.
The one fragment of Army-trained thinking that remained was the slack-jawed, goggle-eyed question “What kind of troops could march against
He felt his being sag with the energy drain of it, and when he was able to blink again and hold his trembling head up, the forces across the water had receded and he was once more faced with the man from out of time, or mind, whoever or whatever he was, and his more familiar and comprehensible menagerie.
This sparked a sudden renewal of will and boldness in young Todd. Perhaps what he had seen come forth had been mere illusion. “Buck up,” he said to himself-or tried to say. Yet what he heard in his mind but not in his own usual inner voice were the words
The man on the donkey then produced what looked like an Indian blanket, white with a zigzag lightning pattern. This he tossed into the air, but it did not fall back to the ground. It rose and seemed to dissipate, becoming larger but diffuse. Seeing it against the sky made Todd aware again of how blue the sky was. Not a cloud on the horizon.
Now there was a cloud, for that is what appeared-and appeared to drift toward him. The blanket that had seemed to vaporize had re-formed thick and puffy, like those first little cumulus masses that are the harbingers of big thunderstorms. This sculpted single white cloud wafted over the creek until it was overhead. Over his head. Then, like a door opening, it let out a river of its own. Drenching, sopping, unstopping rain.
Todd, in spite of himself, tried to step away. He tried to run away. He did not mean to run, it just happened. He soon realized that he was weaving and darting like an idiot-trying to escape the damn targeted rain! It was appalling and reminded him of trying to avoid the missiles of rotten apples that a bully back in Turnip had smacked him with. He had not thought of that incident in years.
This was humiliation of another magnitude altogether. No matter where and how he dodged, the cloud remained immediately overhead, the pillar of single-minded precipitation sluicing down. Against all his ambitions as a soldier and his deepest aspirations as a man, at last a cloud of another kind burst inside him and he began to cry, tears streaming down the length of his face, mingling with the raindrops. He finally stopped stone still and let the crying possess him. There was nothing else to do. He realized that he had surrendered.
This had a calming effect. A translucent ribbon of prismatic light formed before his eyes, and he pondered whether or not he had pissed his pants. The pressure of the rain seemed to soften in response. The downfall became gentler and gentler.
He stared out through the glistening webs of slowing water into the rainbow obscurity before him, his heart thudding and his throat squeezed shut, wishing fervently that he had taken his father’s advice and stayed behind the plow in Turnip, and not ventured forth into the wild Indian lands of the frontier-and definitely not into the more terrifying wilderness of this other frontier that he had stumbled upon, which before his dead-sober eyes shimmered with a dreadful surmise that he knew he would never forget for as long as he was allowed to live.
He glanced up and saw the cloud explode like a smoke ring.
The man-the Master-gave a nod and once more sounded the spiral horn. The bison that had been on Todd’s side of the creek, that had charged off in the direction of Scoresby’s approaching column, had all melted away. Todd realized that he had not given them or Scoresby and company any more thought for what seemed a very long time. But all those bulky grazers still in view now rose with a communal murmur and approached the creek-and then entered the water in ponderous, measured, military order.
In one enormous, sploshing, swaying, horn-to-tail double row of meat and hide, the lines of bison heaved into the current and formed a bridge-a bridge composed of living wildness. A bridge of composed wildness. A bridge he knew that he was meant to cross.
And yet he could not bring himself to move. He could not. He would not.
Noting this hesitation, the young master of the realm released the falcon once more. Todd watched it gracefully bank and swerve toward him. He planted his face in resignation and his feet in hope-that it would plunge at him at full speed and end this insane ordeal. But it stalled, with perfect coordination, just above his head, like a visual echo of the tormenting rain cloud, and then came to rest upon his shoulder.
Then he saw-he fathomed-to his deepest mortification and yet inestimable delight that the bird of prey was not a bird at all. It was a device. A piece of ingeniously integrated machinery more beautiful than anything he had ever seen. Yet it seemed so very, very real. So alive.
Was it an unthinkably clever but tragic copy, or was it something else? He could not say. It was no clockwork gewgaw, however well made. He had no category handy-no technology of mind to call upon. And the more he examined it, the greater his discombobulation, adoration, and anxiety grew.
He grasped that the Master was somehow able to control the device-flying it like a kite without a string. But it did not behave like any kind of kite. It
It was an expression of the mind of the man on the other side of the creek. A direct expression that intermingled with his own. The cavalryman recognized that how he thought about the falcon changed the falcon. He could make it seem more mechanical-a trick of some arcane industry. He could also appreciate its wild, living aspect. It changed as he thought about it. It was both more a compelling creature and more a sophisticated machine than he had at first conceived-than he could conceive. Thick walls between categories and distinctions began to dissolve. And he heard a voice, very distinct but unthreatening in the air around him:
He let out a jet of wet flatulence in his long johns, which seemed so hot and itchy now that he could barely stand them. Then he stepped forward. By the time he had hoisted himself and begun to crawl across the tail- whisking, flyblown bridge, which snorted and shifted beneath him but still held firm and steady, any thought of Scoresby and company, or the Army that he represented and which was in theory bound to support him, was as far away as his horse. He did not want to look in the direction of the man awaiting him in the stretch of raw meadow beyond. His focus was to hold his sphincter clapped shut and to hope the falcon claws that remained fixed to his shoulder did not strengthen their grip.
Then, in midstream, he had what he felt was the strangest series of imaginings yet. If he had seen phantoms and phantasms before, and been confused by their palpability, he now had an idea that the beasts beneath him were not there at all. They were not simply bigger and more numerous variations on the falcon; they were something else. He was wiggling on his hands and knees across thinner air than he could breathe.
The resistance of the beasts’ backs altered as this idea formed. He felt himself squishing and sliding. He had to keep going.
At the slightest hint of doubt, the bridge of skins began to fade beneath him and he felt as if he were falling at first-and then rising-for instead of a bridge of bison across the creek he saw blood-damp acres of their rotting carcasses. Miles of buzzard-picked skeletons. Miles and piles. And, between the heaps of maggot-writhing tissue and sun-brittle bones, white people in alien costumes wandering oblivious, as if in a ritual. As if in a trance. Some ate food that looked like toys. Some talked to themselves or to little boxes. There were people in the little boxes, and the remnants of bison black with flies. Mounds of skulls. Crows and bones and tribes of souls-white people in bright colors and all the ground around black with dried blood. There were endless little pictures for sale, like pieces of a puzzle that no one knew how to put together. So many little pictures and little voices and little faces and little boxes filled with a noise like that of black flies. Wheels turning-wheels upon wheels driven by a hum, like the furious buzz of black flies in a box.
He had to keep going. He knew that if he did not keep his head he would fall either into the creek or into some
