Where walks the Coyote

Note: This is story/short/semi-short that I ran out of steam on, got into the Canyons and got lost along with the character, part of the problem was that the setting got lost with where I wanted to go with it. I was reading a lot of Tony Hillerman at the time.

Where the Coyote Walks

            Sarah Crow twisted the eagle’s feather in the fingers of her right hand; the brown and white colors sliding between the red of her skin. She looked again down across the rocky expanse of the Deep Water Canyon and considered where the trail would take her next. Her gaze wondered from rock to rock until it returned to the feather in her hand. She stared at it a little surprised to see it still there, a token of the spirit totem, like the one that lay coolly silver between her breasts under her khaki shirt. That eagle hung by a leather thong. Was she waiting for the feather to talk to her or point her way down through this canyon?

            Sarah had been a tracker for the tribal council for the last three years. She had taken the place of her father when he had taken the long walk. She felt that the council would never accept her like they had her father. After all she was a woman and she lacked her father’s bulk, calm steady hands and quiet demeanor that had made him the dependable tracker he had been. She looked downed at her own hands as she remembered her father’s calloused and cracked hands so large around her own as they had watched her brother leave to fight in the white man’s war across the mountains and seas so very far away. Her brother, Littlehorn, has taken the long walk before he could return; vanishing into a jungle and all that remained fit in a small urn that was mailed back the following year.

            Sarah had become her father’s son; she had to become the tracker for the tribe until such time as she could bear a son to replace her. Half her time had been spent out in the canyons with her father learning the wandering ways and singing the hunting songs; the other half spent listening to her mother and sisters at the fire pit. Her mother had fought at first with her father over this crazy notion but he had won her over as he finished each argument by pointing at her two younger sisters. Her mother had relented but only during the day, Sarah had to double time in the evenings learning the maiden way in half the time that her sisters would.

            After she had grown, she had thrown herself into her father’s trade if only to escape the pressure of making the bridal wreath and finding a brave for which to place it at his feet. The first thing was, of course, was that Sarah Crow disliked the braves her age to the point of hate in part due to the ridicule that she had to endure at their hands for taking on the coveted tracker trade of her father. The constant teasing over her childhood had led to bullying and threats from her would be suitors. The end result was that Sarah despised the braves and rejected all that had previously made fun of her.

            Rumors had grown with each rejection as each rejected man added to the growing gossip collecting around the young woman. At first, she was withdrawn and picky, then choosy and the suitor must prove himself worthy. Then it grew ugly as the gossip turned to frigidness and homosexual leanings until even the girls rejected her. This was in part due to the fact that Sarah was taller than most girls and almost the most beautiful maiden in the tribe which explained why all the braves had tried and kept trying to court her. Jealousy and rejection fueled their outrage at her isolation. Sarah found herself isolated from the tribe, although now held in respect as she had taken up the spear while her father began the long walk. At least, her mother would say, your father hadn’t lived to see this disgrace. But Sarah couldn’t care less as it left her more time to track and the situation only presented problem when there was a sing or dance.

            Even her own sisters purported the gossip about her odd situation, making up stories to exacerbate the rumors like Sarah ran with wolves. Or better yet, she went out into the canyons to meet her secret lover, which varied from a witch to a wolf to a Navajo Wolf which was a combination of both to other even more industriously thought out and often spurred ridiculous efforts to top the former rumor. She would come home and listen to her mother fuss and her sisters giggle at the dinner fire. She endured it until one night the story got out that a witch woman had been seen kissing Ms. Crow at Widow’s Rock and Sarah had had it.

            She came home and over her mother’s threats and then pleadings had blocked the Hogan door and captured first one sister and then the next and cut their braids off. The girls to their credit had howled like coyotes and cried bitter tears as the locks fell swearing they would never speak such lies again. Her mother was devastated and made a move to grab the broom saying that her father would have never stood this travesty. Her mother had then brought up her brother until Sarah brandished the sheep shears at her and she had sat down with a thump and a whimper.

            Sarah was not done though; she left her whimpering mother and her sobbing sisters and went to town. She found the braves with the other girls in the town circle. She picked out the biggest hunk of a brave, one named Hawkfall and walked up to him and asked him bold face about the witch woman rumor. Hawkfall laughed in her face which was below his own and flexed his muscles. He said what about it and placed his hand on her right breast- probably by mistake in an effort to push her away out of his space. At twenty years old, Sarah was fit and trim, with the wiry hard muscle of her father hidden under the smooth mud red skin of her mother.

            The shock on his face mirrored the outrage in hers as she had grabbed his thumb and twisting it over and dislocating it as she used her free hand to jab Hawkfall in the face about three times before the large boy hit the ground his noise bloody and his right eye squinting as the bruising started to swell. She stared down at the boy at her feet, kneeling with his arm ajar from his body where she still held his thumb at a sickening angle. She hastily let it go and Hawkfall fell over to cradle his injured hands and whimper. Sarah was shocked at her own violence but the whispering stopped the apology in her throat.

            Without a word she turn to Diana Greenfeather, arguably her biggest rival in the looks department, as she stood behind Tom Longshanks her fiancé. Diana’s eyes grew larger as Sarah strode up to them. Tom looked at her a nervous smile playing on his lips. Sarah put her arms around his neck and kissed the startled brave long and hard as Diana gasped then screamed in horror as Tom did nothing to break Sarah’s embrace. After what seamed a season of sweet warm rain Sarah broke the kiss and stepped back and wiped her mouth. Diana came round Tom in a fit, her black eyes shining with tears and her face scrunched in anger, Sarah considered for a moment kissing the girl as well- but discarded it as too much. Maybe another time, she thought as she turned her back on Diana who had just opened her mouth to speak.

            Sarah noticed with a widening smile that the other girls were now in front of their chosen braves fearing the same reprisal. She strode swiftly from the town circle as the silence of the braves followed her then Diana’s screech rose as she toke her anger out on poor Tom who stood there in dumbfounded silence wondering why he hadn’t ever tried his luck with Sarah Crow.

            A year had passed since then and the rumors had moved on, mostly because her sisters would not respond to inquiries about Sarah except to look about fearfully when asked and avidly denied ever saying anything about saying or knowing anything at all. Their hair had grown back finally, but Sarah could not touch the shears or even a knife without one or the other or both bolting out of the Hogan door. Even her mother was kinder in the few words she spoke to Sarah; a new respect in her eyes betrayed her feelings of loss and hopelessness where Sarah was concerned. She had given up Sarah ever marrying or bearing children and now focused all her fussing on her other daughters.

            Tom had never been given a chance to even talk to Sarah as Diana or her entourage kept him away from any social interaction. They spread a web of closely whispered lies about Sarah being a witch, in fact the same witch woman seen previously by Hawkfall, who had seen Sarah shed the witch skin and assume her own and this had caused him to make the mistake he had made earlier. These girls would give Sarah long looks but cluster into a pack if Sarah even glanced their way. The singers finally announced that Sarah was not a witch nor would they do any sings on her behalf for the tribe. This proclamation ended all but the wildest speculation by the younger generations, when confronted by any such talk, the older Dene would scoff and say the Singers said otherwise and turn to more interesting talk like the weather.

            Hawkfall recovered his boisterous demeanor but always cringed when Sarah came around him- like a beaten dog tucking its tail between its legs. Tribal life became a needless routine and Sarah spent more and more time away from the towns of the tribe. There turned out to be much work a tracker must undertake for the tribe. The council, of course, knowing of Sarah’s reputation, saw fit to keep her away and busy as much as possible. What was more was the fact that Sarah was the best tracker they had or ever had, even better than her father had been.

            Sarah found herself looking at the feather between thumb and forefinger again, as these thoughts sifted through her mind. She gazed back down the rocky, rubble strewn slope at the path winding its way back in the canyon land. Her quarry was below her, she had tracked it here. The tribal council had been clear, there were to be no mistakes this time. The other tracks had let it get away- though Sarah knew it had evaded them. This was no ordinary quarry, this was the Coyote.

            Not a coyote, but the Coyote. She was sure of it, although the council chose to close its eyes and oppose her opinion. It is a wolf they said- “if not an ordinary wolf, then a Navajo Wolf.” There was no way that the elders would believe that one of the old folk walked amongst them again. But Sarah was sure- as sure as if Eagle had swooped down from the clouds lightning in its beak and sung her into rain. The tribal elders had laughed at her determination, why would a fairy tale come to life after all this time and walk with the Dene? Why would one of the most powerful spirits of the Native American people come back when its people no longer needed him? Where had Coyote been during the genocide or the long walk? Why now?

            Sarah had no answers to their questions and claims, so they had scoffed at her conclusions of the quarry. The other trackers seeing her shame and demotion in the council’s eyes had quickly claimed it must be a wolf- a large smart one that had simply eluded the regular traps at the time. Just luck, they said, all the while laughing at her shame. Besides, the council insisted this quarry was much too big to be a coyote anyway.

            Yes, Sarah had stated that evening two nights passed, the paw tracks were larger then those of the coyote and too far apart as well, but what else would know how to climb over fences and walls? What else would ignore a trap and brave trackers and hunters to slip into the village center Hogan and remove the twelve feather hoop of the Talking God from the central Hogan meant for Sarah’s cousin’s coming of age sing. What kind of animal could be capable of such a feat?

            The tribal council had fallen back on the die hard belief in witchcraft. It must have been a Navajo Wolf; only a witch could have done this. Sarah had foolishly laughed at the old men- why couldn’t she think before responding- and asked what the difference between witchcraft and religion was when it came to the theft. The elders had haughtily informed her that a witch was still a man…for the most part. And a spirit out of legend something else entirely. Then they had sent here out with the other trackers to find this Wolf.

            Sarah had rued her words as the other trackers had laughed at her dishonor and fall from First Tracker. She must now labor among the other trackers. The First Tracker had esteem above other trackers, given the hardest and most difficult tasks to accomplish. First Trackers always were given the high seat at sings and dances. Now because of her quick tongue she had been demoted to labor among the lesser trackers who all openly coveted the First tracker role.

            She had become increasingly moody as she began looking at the tracks and remains left in the wake of the theft. She had to wait in line (at the end) while the six other trackers sifted through the scene so by the time that Sarah got to it there was little left to look at. As she sorted her mood darkened as her conclusions returned again and again to the stories of her father about the Coyote. She took to mumbling and grumbling about it in company until she was shunned by all in general fearing that Sarah Crow would blow up soon and take all around her with it.

            Finally when the other trackers had left following a set of tracks that they believed to be the Wolf’s, Sarah had walked out here to the canyon rim and fumed until she had noticed the eagle feather on the rock at her feet. Now she stood here a day later, calmed by the presence of the feather in her fingers and the certain knowledge that the trail of the thief would take down into the canyons of her people’s past and into her own untold future.

            The Sun reached its zenith by the time Sarah gathered her gear and began her descent into the shadows of the canyon land. Her gear consisted of an outfitter’s pack complete with bedroll, box of ammo, change of clothes, matches, bundle of kindling, lighter, basic issue rations, compass, medicine pouch, two maps- one AAA and one of the night sky. She also had a small tarp, water bottles and a small tin pot. Strapped to the side of the back pack was a short leather quiver with arrows and a small unstrung handmade recurve bow.

            Slung on one shoulder she had her father’s Winchester rifle that had been handed down with a new telescopic sight attached. Sarah absently wondered if her father would approve- probably not as much as the bone handled knife that rode her hip that was his as well. She wore her loose jeans and hiking boots along with a tank and button up khaki shirt over that. Her moccasins hung loosely under the pack by their strings.

            Sarah carefully picked her way down between the rocks finding the lone trail into the winding mouth of Footfall Canyon. The trial wound down along one wall of the canyon and Sarah was quickly engulfed in its shadow. She saw no sign of tracks but had expected none since the ground was mostly rock anyway. The temperature cooled swiftly to a lukewarm heat as she descended into the darker shadows. She walked in silence without pausing until she reached the canyon floor and began her search for sign along the sandy bottom. There were sparse vegetation scattered in bunches along the walls of the canyon, Sarah started there but found no scent or droppings larger than a kangaroo rats. Carefully she walked the sands but no tracks revealed them selves. She continued to search until the sweat ran down her shoulders soaking her outer shirt.

            Finally she gave it up and found a shadowed cool rock to drop her gear on. She stripped off the outer shirt, pausing to consider loosing the tank too. Too close to the village yet, she decided and sat down to fish out a water bottle from her pack. As she drank she sat back and reexamined her surroundings. All evidence pointed to this being the most likely entrance to the canyons that the thief would have taken. What defied all understanding was why the thief had run for the back country rather than make for the white man’s refuge of the cities in the opposite direction. Any human thief would run in search of motor vehicles and cities to loose the trackers in quickly. Any Native American thief would have sought out another part of the reservation or another tribal land unfamiliar to her people to make good its escape.

            Instead the thief had come into the canyon lands where little to no one lived or went, where there were no towns or dwellings, no roads of any measure and little water to survive on. There were more hospitable less populated places on the reservation to boot.

The thief had come here, Sarah was sure of it. All she had to do now was find some sign or track that she had been right coming here and that the other trackers had been wrong.

            As she sat there pondering this, her eyes fell upon a bit of gray caught in some briars to the left of the rock. Sarah squinted hard at it until her eyes blurred and she was forced to relax and let her vision clear. As it did the fur became sharp in her vision and with it the knowledge she had found sign at last. She scrambled to her feet, gathered up her gear and carefully crossed to where the briars were. Sure enough there were several bits of coyote fur caught in a knot of brambles. She pulled them free and was amazed by the softness of them. Sarah would have thought that the fur would be coarse and gritty, but this fur was soft like baby’s hair and fine like silk thread.

            As she squatted examining the fur, a partial paw print revealed itself right below the bramble. The first thing she noticed was how large the print was. It was as large as a man’s foot- driving home her theory that this was no ordinary thief or coyote. Second, was that the print gave a clear direction that this creature had gone done deep into the darker depths of the canyon lands

            As she stood, her rational mind forced her to reason that the paw print had been made by a man who either was wearing the paws as shoes and had gotten careless near the brambles. Or rather, it was a man who had place the fur and print there intentionally. Why-to scare off pursuers with the idea of a giant coyote or perhaps the Coyote being down amongst the hot rocks along the canyon floor. This reasoning concreted itself in her mind as she crossed the canyon floor and started to make her way deeper into the darkness of the shadows of Footfall Canyon. No man was scaring her off of this track, she would prove that she, Sarah Crowe, daughter of first tracker Jim Crowe, was worthy of his title and what was more the tribes respect.

           

            Her footfalls echoed between the narrow walls of the canyon proving its namesake. Sarah paused at the bottom of the last turn of the canyon before it widened into the hollow basin that joined Footfall to the other parts of the canyon lands. Here was one of the ancestral borders of the Denata- the people- her people.  After she crossed the basin she would entire the lost lands as her father called them.

            The Peublo and Hopi shared domain on part of them and the white man claimed the rest as part of his national parks. The white man did not come there- at least Sarah had never heard of a white man seen in those canyons. The Hopi had hunted there before the long walk but no more as they had tales of the ghost that wondered there. The Pueblo that had lived there before the coming of the white man had long since disappeared from the Cliffside dwellings leaving only fragments of who they had been or where they had gone. The surviving Pueblo would not go there out of some kind of fear and respect for the event that had caused so many of the people to vanish without a trace.

            The Denata occasionally entered the lands tracking or hunting but to Sarah’s knowledge only her father had gone into the desolation much. Now it was her turn. With a deep breath she strode out into the opening a stared out across the basin that was known as the Moon Mother’s Milk Bowl. It got its name from the white sands of its bottom and the white walls that surrounded it. It was as if a thousand years ago a great river had fallen into a grand whirlpool carving out this basin before racing on south into her people’s lands.

            When she was seven years old, Sarah’s father had told her a story about the Coyote. According to her father, and Sarah later learned- only according to her father as the others in the tribe did not agree with the story at all; the Coyote still walked among the Denai. He looked at his daughter and gestured her for her to come hold his rifle and sit by him as they looked out across the canyons from her father’s favorite rock.

            “Sarah, my heart, I am going to tell you one of the seven stories that my father told me and his father told and so it has been back to when the Coyote first came among the Denai. You see, Coyote has always been the free spirit of all of the peoples of these lands. Coyote occurs like many of the other spirits as a single harmonious link to our brother and sister tribes that live next to us and far away across the Great Plains and mountains.

            Coyote is often alone in his actions from the other gods and spirits; Coyote does things that only he knows to be true- the Talking God might know it but whether he tells that truth to Coyote or allows Coyote to learn of it is anyone’s guess. Coyote continues to follow his own course regardless of what others believe or say of him. My story, our story is about this course that Coyote walks.

            During the brighter days before the Spaniards came looking for gold or the white man came bearing his empty promises, Coyote walked openly among the Denai. Many of the People saw and often met with Coyote. Our own forefathers learned the tracking way from Coyote. These were good times.

            But they came to a close when the Spaniard came to the canyons looking for golden cities and fountains of youth. Such silliness in men who claimed to be civilized, and such brutality and desperation from these same men who failed to find their hearts desire. These men of metal and strange ways soon began to tempt and sway the weaker Denai with their talk of money and possessions and power. Some of the Denai lost their way and would no longer walk in beauty, they chose instead to walk in darkness with the Spaniards. Coyote began to walk less amongst our people as they forgot the old ways and songs of the Talking God and Listening Woman.

            When the first white men came, it seemed as if they had been sent by the Talking God to remind us of the ways which we were losing. They came with honeyed words and promises of community. Several even desired to become a part of the People, and while most were pure of intention there were those who had come to walk in darkness alongside the other lost Denai.

            Coyote came to our village one night long ago and warned us that death and slaughter would come from these white men and Spaniards but there were many who would not see Coyote and more who would not hear Coyote. Coyote laughed at us and said we would walk away from all we were and had ever been to another world where nothing would make any sense. Those that did hear Coyote denied his words having known nothing but the Canyons and the Mesas of the Land all their lives.

            Coyote said that if our people changed their minds, that Coyote would lead us to a new world one that was safe from the scourge these white spirits and Spaniards could not reach. Coyote said the white man and Spaniard could walk a thousand days and not reach it, could sail a thousand nights and not find it. Coyote said that it was the only way to escape what was coming if only we would walk with him.

            The People laughed, many of them that could still see or hear Coyote. But there were a handful that did not laugh and saw and heard Coyote and their hearts were troubled. These were the lands that Talking God and Listening Woman had provided for us; this was our intended home until the coming of the fourth world. How could the people leave with a spirit that was not even a major part of their religion?

            Those that listened to the Coyote’s words took them deep into their hearts and pondered them long. When the Coyote returned, only a few would walk with him. The others that had heard decided to watch and wait since many of the People would not go. Our Great Grandfather was one of the few who chose to walk with Coyote.

            Coyote came to Great Grandfather and said”

            “Silent Stalker, you must not walk with me, you must wait and watch and remember. I need you to watch over the Denai and mind them of the old ways. There will be others not many will see or hear me but a few will. You and them must keep with the People if the Denata are to survive the coming darkness.

            So Silent Stalker stayed when the six families of the Mud and Slow-Talking clans walked away with Coyote never to be seen or heard from again. Silent Stalker watched the Spaniards driven mad by their greed turn from friend to monster as they picked up every stone in their mad quest for gold. Silent Stalker guided those Denai who would listen around these mad men and kept them safe until the white men drove the Spaniards out of the lands.

            The People said “look the white men are surely better than what Coyote said they would be! Let us embrace them as brothers and we will share with them our abundance.”

But Coyote’s words rang true as the Catholic bells of the softer Spaniards, the white men were as greedy as the Spaniard. Their greed was not for something as obvious as gold but more subtle- first they wanted our lands, then they killed the game and then they wanted everything. Control was their true source of greed. The white man wanted to control us.

They forced the people from their homes and made them walk along with other tribes to distant lands to live far from the customs and songs of the Denai.

            Silent Stalker kept his word guiding and protecting those who would see and hear what he said so that they would continue to walk in beauty forgetting nothing and not leaving the lands of the Denata. Silent Stalker and the singers and (medicine men) kept the ways and songs of the People safe. Others who had heard and seen decided to fight the white man but many lost, and joined the other lost Denai in the Long Walk to the other lands.

            Silent Walker kept his word and passed the Coyote’s command to his son. Then he took his long awaited walk with Coyote to this new world. And so it has been, that each other our father’s since, Sarah, has tracked the canyons and the lands of the People keeping the Tracking Way until it is his turn to walk with the Coyote into the next world.

So too it will be your way since I have no other son to take up my rifle and track the game through the canyons. One day I will walk with Coyote into the canyon lands and to the next world as my father and his father has done before him. I hope Coyote will accept you and your son as suitable replacements for me and my father before me.”

            So, her father had told her the seventh and first story he would tell her as she grew up under his guidance. Each story would be told from that rock where the eagles soared, for that was her father secret name, Eagle Soaring, and this was his secret place where he came to sing.

            Sarah looked up instinctively to the west towards her father’s rock far off to the right along the rim of the bowl. She smiled at the memories of her father’s stories told as the two of them sat there. Each time she would cradle her father’s rifle as he taught her of the ways and the songs that she would need to know to become first tracker.

            The sun traveled across the sky as she walked across the Bowl following the now easy to spot paw prints into the soft sands and loam in Mother’s Milk. Sarah tracked the progress of her shadow now more than the prints in the sands. The almost blinding ground hid the tracks from her save where her shadow covered them. She felt as if she knew where to walk, as if she was walking her own long walk into the next life.

            Finally, she sensed the mass of rock as much as saw it and she looked up at the weathered stones of the other side of the Bowl towering above her. She glanced down at the ground at her feet and saw the print at her toe then nothing beyond. She grinned at the obvious thought that the Coyote had spoken to her. He might be saying- now the easy part is over, Sarah Crow, now you must show me what you are really made of.

            Sarah sighed feeling the weight of her pack on her sweat soaked shirt and damp jeans. Even her toes felt squishy. First I must find shade and rest and dry out she thought as she climbed over several mid size boulders to a small cleft and sat down.

            Sarah began by stripping off her shirt and bra and spread them out on the rock within easy reach. Then she unlaced her boots and removed her socks wiggling her toes in the fresh airy relief of exposure. She settled her pack and leaned back against it in the shade, wishing she had a towel to wipe herself or plenty of water to pour over her head and chest. The eagle totem was hot in her cleavage; she reached up and removed it from her chest then held it in front of her face pondering its purpose.

            One of the singers had presented it to her at her coming of age Sing. She had said nothing but simply pressed it into her palm before ambling off to rejoin the others in the Hogan. She had stared at it then until her father had come up and closed her fingers around it with a knowing smile.

            “It’s the symbol of your quest, my child.” He had said before walking her over to the dancing ring and the other girls who had come of age as well.

            It was the look in the Singers eyes that had held the wonder of the silver totem all these years. The singer’s eyes had been grey with white flecks and they had looked deep into Sarah’s own as the singer’s hand had found her own. The woman had never looked for her hand; she had simply known where it was. She often found those eyes looking out of other faces since then. Sarah had never gotten the name of that singer or seen her again. Sometimes she wondered if she had made the whole thing up, but then she would remember the coldness of the silver in her hand and those gray eyes looking into her soul.

            After a time had passed, Sarah sat up and pulled on her shirt, stuffing the bra into her pack then slipping her socks and boots back on. Finished dressing she took a ball cap out of her pack, a Atlanta Braves cap, and sat it low on her head tucking most of her hair under it. Like much of what she carried it had been her father’s. The red Indian had faded along with the blue background. She shoulder her back, gathered her tools and walked down the wall of the cliff until she came to the narrow opening that offered exit to the Bowl.

Jessandra

September 24, 1998

            The summer had been long and hot for the hill-town of Ashtonbury. The heat coupled with the fast steaming rains had stripped most of the white paint from the exterior walls of the small town’s hall. The white paint which had been so meticulously applied that spring by Farmes Marsh, the town’s painter. The remaining paint peeling in the heat and flaking off into small snowfalls down into the main street on blowing down into Ben’s Alley that last long week. Ben had grumbled about Farmes Marsh painting the hall’s alley side wall so much last year, that Farmes feared to do it this year seeing that Ben was dead and that the little painter was afraid of ghosts. The town hall stood powerfully on the highest crest of Ashtonburry alongside Gillobren’s church; the two structures strove above the other teaming buildings and houses that cloistered there on the hill. The peeling paint revealed the oaken columns that ringed the hall’s sides and façade, tall and mighty trunks they once were, cut from the forests of Avonlea to the north.

            The hot wind of the receding season slipped through the narrow streets past the jailhouse up to and by the hall, bearing the smells and scents of the day to mix a aroma in the square of the hamlet. Smells of fish from Samisson’s market and fresh baked breads from Baker Dante’s shop from down the street. All this mated in and with the swirling paint chips as they showered down into Ben’s Alley. The alley so named for Benjesserit- a soldier of half a dozen wars, who had lived there since the raiders had burned his farm outside of the town seventeen summers since. Benjesserit or Ben had arrived one day and decided to live there since he could not rebuild or find another place to lodge. But now Ben was dead.

            Ben had passed on in front of the Fountain to Mellina- a local goddess of the past- that sat at the center of the square. The fountain had always been a gathering place for the townsfolk and many of the festivals were held there. Benjesserit died one evening as he recanted his favorite war-story to a small crowd of children and parents. This particular story was about a war with no name; and a man that he had met, fought along side and who had become the best friend that Ben had ever had- a friend who he had lost. It was this man for whom Ben had quit soldiering and come home. A man who fought against war- and so the story would end, except this time old Ben got a far off look in his eye and slumped down against the base of the fountain.

            People of the town had called the alley after Ben, although the alley had been considered as Ben’s for a long time before. But for the townsfolk of Ashtonburry, this was the most appropriate way for them to express grief at Ben’s passing and in turn honor the only hero that Ashtonbury had ever known. Then one day about midsummer as Farmes Marsh fretted over his lost paint job, he saw Ben’s ghost in the alley. Farmes had actually seen a flurry of paint flakes caught in the light and shadows and wind, but nothing would do Farmes but to elaborate and stretch his story until the Townsfolk would not even look down the alley, much less enter it. Most of the townsfolk believed him with one exception, Jessi.

            Jessi or rather Jessandra Lathandres found in Ben’s Alley a rare kind of sanctuary. Her father had decided, for reasons that were not made known to her, to send her to Queen Margaret’s school for Ladies in Ashtonbury. Jessi knew that part of the reason had to be her mother. Her mother had been the center of her father’s life and hers as well. She had been a handsome and proper lady who on occasion who show that she had deep emotions and a sense of long forgotten freedom. It had been that freedom that she had seen flashes into her mother’s eyes on rare occasions that (and Jessi believed this to be true in spite of everything her father and the doctors said) had killed her mother. The first time that Jessi had suspected her mother’s true nature had been when she turned seven and her mother had freed a caged canary of purest gold from its prison and bid it fly away. The bird had died because it could not decide where to go and a household cat had eaten it. This act upset her father extremely, as it had been his favorite songbird. He and her mother had exchanged curt words over it and then that blaze had come into her mother’s eyes and she knew. Her father had taken a lot of time grieving for the caged bird.

            The last time Jessi had seen that blazing look in her mother’s eyes was when she lay in bed with the cold sickness and Jessi was thirteen. Her mother had spoken long with her father before he had come silently from her room. He walked over to Jessi, telling her that her mother wanted to speak to her and then he almost ran from the room. Jessi had thought that a tear had broken through his polite exterior. Jessi had gone into the room to find her mother lay up in the giant bed that had been her grandmother’s. Her mother waved her over and then dismissed the huddling doctors and nursemaids from the room. Jessi had come over to the bedside and look into her mother’s eyes and seen them blazing as her mother had stroked her hair. Her mother had wept while talking about going on a long journey and that Jessi must watch for the raven- a sign of her destiny. Then her mother sent her from the room and gone into a deep sleep. The next day, Jessi’s father told her that her mother had died and that it was time for Jessi to began to be a lady of the court. With as many words and a short dry kiss, he sent her off to the finishing school in Ashtonbury. So Jessi had come to believe that her father did not want her to be around him because she reminded him of her mother.

            “Queen Mag’s School” as it was called in Ashtonbury was a dreadful place for the thirteen-year-old girl from Avonlea. Jessi had trouble fitting in with the older girls since she was too young to be giggling about boys and strutting around trying to be as shapely as the fifteen and sixteen year old girls- of which there were six. The leader of that pack had tried to get Jessi to act ladylike but Jessi had not hit puberty yet and it would not be noticed for awhile so the older girls left her alone. The younger girls were nine to eleven and ran as a pack of well-behaved sheepdogs. Seeking to please the austere grandeur of the queen of the school, Margaret or “Queen Mag.” Queen Mag had run the school for many years with an iron hand, a gentle touch and a deep sense of honor and duty. It was said that she had once been the high queen of Avonlea and when the high king had died, that Queen Mag had left the high country for Ashtonbury. Queen Mag had chosen exile over any other options. When money and hospitality had run short, she had opened the school as a means of support and survival in “the wasteland of rudeness” as she would put it.

Jessi had found Queen Mag to be a kind but aloof mistress who drilled her pupils on the matters of etiquette and skills that all ladies should have- especially queens. A detail that the next high queen was secretly one of the girls at the school. This kept the gossip mill turning and town talking about it with every new recruit that Queen Mag added to the enrollment. There had been a small stir when she had arrived, but the townsfolk had instantly dismissed the idea when the saw how “common” that Jessi was. Jessi’s “commoness was to be found in the way she dressed and her hair. Jessi, at thirteen, stood at nine spans, and wore plain smocks of woven cotton with faded dyes. Her favorite one was a blue one that was so faded that it could pass as white except that the smocks never stayed clean enough. Her hair was straight and hung from her head down onto her shoulders in piles of tangled knots- which Queen Mag or Mansa (Mag’s maidservant) would dutifully come out when they could catch her and keep her still. Jessi had deep gray eyes, which the locals were inclined to stay that was the sign of low breeding rather than that of royalty. Jessi had grown up enough to have a presence but had not developed any hips or buttocks that she was supposed to sway as to denote her sex. Rather she walked and ran like a boy.

            In the early days of her exile and isolation at the school, Jessi had discovered a hidden door in the back storeroom of the grand manor that the school was housed in. The door opened into a narrow passage that in turn ended in a wall. The wall could swing open at slightest pressure on the inside revealing the alley behind the manor. The downside to this secret door was that Jessi had found no way to open the door from the alley side. Jessi decided that if she left a piece of ribbon with a knot on the end of it on the inside with the tongue of the ribbon sticking out in the alley, she would be able to opened the door by pulling on the door. The ploy and worked but had to be performed very carefully. So Jessi had found an escape from her imprisonment and would do so as often as possible. These escapes led to her exploring the town and would have gone on except that most of her sojourns had ended up with her being recognized by one of the townsfolk and turned into Queen Mag for punishment. So after having to scrub the floors for the eighth time, Jessi decided that Ashtonbury was a Tatarus for little girls although the other girls did not seem to mind the confinement. On her ninth trip out that summer she had discovered Ben’s Alley and the subsequent stories about it.

            

Impression (written in 1994 in England)

She slept as the darkened hills slipped by the windows into a blur. Silent breaths pumped out to fog the glass under her pillowed head. I watched her silently as my busy hands sketched her image into the paper.

            The train coasted out of the lights of  small towns into the golden hues of sunset. It was there into my silence, came a murmur. From her lips murmured the name of someone lost in pronunciation in the clickity clack of the rails. She trembled and clutched at the short rough blanket that had mostly fallen from her body.

            She woke suddenly gasping, then fell quickly silent and flushed as she saw I was staring. The blood rose to my face as I  guiltily looked away out of my own window.

In the reflection, I could see her now staring into nothing over quivering lips hugging her pillow like a small child. The moon rose and shed waning light off its crescent as the mist wisps turning white swinging wide of the rush of our train.

            A murmur of misery brought me back to her reflection as she bit her lip hard in order to hold back the pain. Her shifting eyes betrayed her letting loose in rivulets of tears on her cheeks. I found myself walking across the swaying car to sit down by her now

hunched body. She had hidden her face behind her hands muffling her sobs. She jerked and shivered as I put my coat around her and held her to me. She looked at me in apology and said "I miss.." but couldn't finish, I said "I know."

            We sat there for an eternity saying nothing, looking somewhere else. She suddenly cuddled against me and drifted off to sleep, serenity slowly returning to her face. I smiled and held her closer and looked out into the night knowing that neither of us were alone or strangers.

            I awoke in the warming sunlightstill holding the coat. She was gone and so was my sketchbook, but there was a rose-crushed in its place and a note...

            She wrote, "I don't even know your name and there is no way I can repay your kindness and love. I hope I can find the strength in your pictures, please take the rose as a trade. Thank you, Vanessa."

            It was at that moment I felt on my cheek a faint impression of a kiss.

years ago I wrote a Star Wars Fanfilm

Then I tried unsuccessfully to create it as a work of fiction outside the Star Wars Universe. What follows is the beginning of a Character study on a former Jedi:

Sozan V’Dora

            One of 4 children of Shadan and Corska V’Dora; born on Allashar in the inner sphere of the Praetorian Empire. Sozan grew up believing that her origins are no different than that of her older siblings. However, her origins are far from normal for she is a clone spawn of the Bladeborn. She has no genetic father; half of her matrix is pulled from the remains of the legendary Bladeborn, a warrior race a millennium past. Lord Kravyn impregnated her mother's fetus through invasive conception and Corska gave birth to Sozan a term later.

           

            Sozan is named for Shadan’s mother. He believes her to be his own genetic daughter. Corska is one of Kravyn’s sleeper agents, so is also unaware of the manipulation. Sozan grew up with a yearning for combat that she could not fully express; it led her into the resistance against the Empire along with her father and two brothers, Soran and Damacrees. Her sister, Seriza married into the Mercantilium and lives with her husband’s family on Ciryx.

Shadan was killed in the Celeron Massacre two terms later, on the Goodship Phalanx. Following his death, Corska moved to Ciryx to live with her daughter, Seriza. Soran died fighting the Praetorian Galatica on the ice fields of Thoth Anon. Damacrees survived the war, making general by the final battle and commanded the Goodship Spear of Fire in the last conflict. Now he commands the Flagship of the Inner Fleet, Vanguard.

Sozan trained and became a pilot flying with the Screaming Eagaran Squadron where she met Del Comyn. He became the squadron leader of the SE and remained so until the end of the Resistance War. Sozan took over as leader when Del Comyn left to enter the Psaber Knights. When he returned he took her on as his Scion Learner and she left flying behind for the Knighthood.

Sozan soon gained the level of Psaber Knight to stand as a partner to Comyn. Their relationship is on the level of compatriot, respect and love, though neither of them admits the attraction for the fear of breaking their fellowship.

Sozan carries the gifts of the Bladeborn, the mastery of edged weapons, Psabers and melee fighting. She is unaware of her heritage to this day.

The Arthurian Fiction Continues

The Black Knight

            The last time I saw the Black Knight was among the shadowy standing stones of old Dover on the rocky cliffs along the coastline. The rain and mist rolled of the mountains and slid down the pocked rocks of the stones. He stood in his tunic a chain black as night and waved as I looked on from my cart. At his side, Valda sat her horse garbed in chain like the knight though hers were of lighter colors. Her travel hood was up and her face mostly hidden. She absently pulled her grey cloak around her to shield herself and her horse from the misting rain. She was a silent as the stones that surrounded her.

            So much had passed by then; so much had passed between them. Sometimes I wondered how the two had met in the first place. They were alike in their austerity and both had somehow disappeared into the personas they had been set to play. Fate had been kind and unkind to each of them. Since those days, especially when I sit on the front stoop of the small house that occupies this neck of Avalon, I think back to that day as the mists rolled off the Channel and goodbye seems to long and wrong a thing to say to the only two people in the world who were left who knew who you were and why you could no longer be what you once were.

            Now I know that I speak in riddles, but I do because of a lifetime of doing so- well one of you, my dear boy, lifetimes anyway. In plain speak; sometimes goodbye just does not cover the emotions that you feel after going through everything the three of us went through. Sometimes there is not a word to describe the way you feel about someone or something. That is how I feel about the enigmatic man and his companion and the lost age of Camelot.

            They are memory now, but then so am I, although Viviane reminds me that I am supposedly locked away in a crystal cave or one of the Standing Stones of Stonehenge or the Worldtree Yggdrasil or under Camelot herself or some such nonsense. Also, if one were to believe such things, then one would have to also believe that Viv’ was responsible for putting me there. Personally, I like the idea of the one woman who I have ever loved locking me away in a stone or tree better than her threatening me with another haircut!

            No men must have their legends and retell them until the original meaning is lost along with what really happened in the mists of time or as Viv’ says the “Mists of Avalon.” Viviane is my wife in as much as the Christians would allow me the consideration. Not being allowed to be anything but the spawn of a demon or incubus did not grant me much in the Court but had they known the truth, it would probably been far worse. Better to be confined to a story or a stone then to lose what I know of myself and about myself!

            Viviane tells me that with as much confusion about happened all those years ago that it’s a wonder that anyone knows anything about what happened. I write this script in hopes that someone will take note that San Michele Du Draconis and his story will not be lost completely.  I only wish now I had asked the Black Knight to tell it his way instead of having to tell it in my own fashion. I am sure I can hear him laughing at me out from the years that have long since been gone by. I can hear him telling me-

            “You are teller of truths and speaker of lies; I am the doer of deeds and the rider of steeds. You tell my story Caerfyrddin, you will tell it well enough to make it worth telling, my old friend.”

How should one tell the story of the original Black Knight? There have been many of the enigmatic men who have worn the armor and title, but this one was the first of them- the one who started it all- well the tradition anyhow. But I digress, where should one start with this tale; start at the beginning or the end or just dive into the middle of it and hope that you figure it out? No I won’t do it- I won’t have it that way.

Archimedes III, my fine feathered compatriot insists that I should write this one in three parts- as his role was crucial to that of the High King and yes even that of the queen too. He informs me that most people should like to start at the beginning but I am concerned with the affect of my own since of hindsight and benefit of wisdom. But the old bird has a point so I will endeavor to start at his beginning- since mine is a whole different story.

So this begins my story of San Michele Du Draconis, possibly the greatest of the knights to sit at the table. Not great as in deeds of renown or in the ranks of tilting and melee. No rather his deeds were known in his loyalty and camaraderie with those of us he served and protected. He redeemed both her and in the end myself from certain doom. His friendship and loyalty went far beyond the requirements of legend. In the end, he was my knight more than any other could claim and what’s more he was my friend.

            Now as to whom I am, if you have not figured that out by now then perhaps you should find some lighter reading like Mallory’s Morte du Arthur or Da Vinci’s Discourses on Tanks. Many have called me a wide variety of names and titles but I have only ever claimed one, King-maker. Of course, when I got started I had no idea what that meant or how one would go about doing it. Now there are some who would dispute this title but even with what has been told of me, I can claim three kings that anyone knows of. I choose only to claim the one who is central to all these stories.

           

            Whence I came and where I am bound is my own affair, but let me say this my mother was a good woman who had the misfortune to fall in love with the unattainable and pursue it until I was born from her purpose and ultimately her demise. The legends have her name as Aldan or more recently Hunith, but the truth of the matter is that I barely knew her. I was taken from her as a suckling babe and given to another whom I grew to call mother instead. She was a Welsh princess which is to say she was an unwanted daughter of my grandfather who was a minor king in old Wales. Let me just point out there were so many kings in Wales that it hardly meant more than Baron or Duke when it came to the point. Hence the need for a High King but that is another matter entirely.

            I digress, by the time I was of age to learn of my parents, my mother had committed herself to the Christians and their new religion, in part to escape the rumors and in part to escape her father’s house and the scorn of her married sisters. In short, she married this new church becoming one of the holy wives of this Christ. I somehow doubt, this Christ would have been impressed by this decision made by the unmarriable women of my lands. Her name as it turned out was Ninane which is to say not all that remarkable since in my lifetime there were many other women to carry that name. She had been named for one of our Faerie ffolk and perhaps that would explain my “father’s” interest in her.  So, I only met with my mother a few times and she remained a stranger to me.

            My father on the other hand is even more enigmatic than the Black Knight. No one not even the Faerie ffolk  can tell me who he was. He could have been their king (if they had kings) or a peasant (if they had peasants), all that is known is that he was one of the ffolk and I am his son. Since people are prone to believe anything, my mother’s religion convinced everyone I was the spawn of this Christian Demon, the Satan. My grandfather practically leaped at the opportunity to disown me and deny me any birthrights that I might have been entitled to. I would like to point out, my mother was the eighth girl in the family line and like the fourteenth child with at least seven sons before her in line for the throne- a big chair in my grandfather’s house. Frankly, I was not impressed then and am still not all that impressed now. To my grandfather, it was very important however.

            My non-birth mother was the village wise woman (whom the Christians later would try to burn for witchcraft- as if they would know anything about magic in the first place).  If she had a name then she kept it to herself. She tolerated me calling her mother or rather Fam as the Welsh were prone to do anyway. She was good to me as far as keeping me fed and healthy. She showed me the nature of things in her world, one that was being driven away by the new religions and strife that filled our lands as these petty kings fought with one another.

            As I mentioned earlier,  there were still ffolk in the land in those days, I would daresay a few remain even to this day, perhaps for all time. It was to these ffolk I was given upon reaching age seven. For me, this is where my life really began, so before you decide who or what I am or was supposed to be remember this. I am of your world and of others. I am all that I was labeled as, rumored to be and more than anyone could even dream possible. I was also smart enough to allow the people to give me other names and thus confuse me with other figures that came before me. In the end, everyone thought they knew me but only a few bothered to find me out. The man who became the Black Knight was the first to find me out and it made all the difference for the both of us and this story.