Title: Kushtaka

Author: Jane Mailander

Edress: j_mailander@idiom.com

Length: 8000 words

Disclaimers: More supernatural mythology stuff (for those who've read "One Hundred Minutes of Solitude").

Summary: Blair really shouldn't go fishing by himself.

Warnings: Angst, and a cold wet Blair.

Author's Note: The words prefacing the segments are Inuit.

*Ikraloktoromanarevov*

(One is hungry for fish)

A blast of cold air and sound wafted from the tent opening.

"Jim, is this how you go fishing?"

Detective Ellison rolled over in the sleeping bag, deliberately presenting his back to the open flap. "No, Sandburg, this is how I sleep in. I'll do some fly-fishing this evening, and tomorrow morning I'll get out in the canoe with you."

It was the first day of their extended weekend and Jim planned to spend the first morning indulging in the luxury shared by soldiers and police alike -- sleeping past the crack of dawn. If Blair still felt a deep- seated urge to beat the sun out of the chute on his first day off that was his problem.

"It's beautiful out!"

"It's *cold* out. You're letting in the entire Olympic Peninsula. Close the damn flap!"

"Okay, man, but don't come crying to me when I bring back a salmon for lunch, and all you get is the head and tail for bouillabase."

"I'll bring the bagels and cream cheese." Jim was already drifting off again. "Join you later, Chief."

"Long after the fish have gone back to bed."

"What's the rule of fishing days, Sandburg?"

With an exasperated sigh, Blair recited the fisherman's credo, his voice muffling as the flap was zipped shut, cutting off the cold air. "A great day of fishing is when you actually catch a fish. Everything else is a good day of fishing."

"Right." Jim huddled back into the sleeping bag.

Dark dank wooded areas gave way to the startling cold of the beach, littered with bleached driftwood and jutting teeth of stone. Drifting patches of gauzy fog moved slowly around the rock spears, clearing before the jutting prow of the canoe that splashed quickly and silently through the stillness of the morning Pacific.

Blair shipped the oar and took up his pole. His Cree fishing spear lay in the bottom of the small craft, even though its main use was in river fishing; he planned to jab it into any fish he did catch, bring it back in triumph and have Jim take back his jibes at Sandburg's outdated angling equipment by making him think he'd used the spear to secure his catch. What would a fishing trip be without a couple of good honest lies between friends?

Blair dropped the baited hook in and sat back with a contented sigh, marred only slightly by a shiver despite the layers of wool, nylon and life-vest. He was back in a canoe, in a rain forest, fishing for his supper; deja vu had never been colder.

The stillness of the morning, broken only by the occasional gull cry, settled into his bones. The fog gauze resettled around the unmoving canoe without obstructing the dark wooded shore or the lightening sky.

The tug of the line made Blair sit up and tighten his grip on the pole, his heart pounding with glee. So soon! Ha, he'd roast this salmon for *breakfast* right in front of old sleepy-drawers --

The line tugged harder, pulled. Blair kept hold even as the canoe jerked forward, cackling as he sculled over the surface after the pulling line. Let Moby tire himself out doing all the work, then Blair would start reeling him in.

The canoe jerked and skipped right around the curve of the rocky shore, the fog parting before it. The fish showed no sign of tiring out or slowing down. "Okay, fish, this isn't funny any more," Blair said out loud, trying to tamp down a thread of fear.

Threads of mist gave way as the canoe approached an aluminum fishing boat that bobbed in the water, empty.

"There are *no* Great White Sharks in the Sound!" Blair shouted over his own quailing stomach. Angry at his irrational terror, he started reeling fiercely, determined to haul up the stupid piscine and introduce it to a poaching pan to pay it back for spooking him.

The line went slack, the rod bounced up, and Blair yelled when it smacked him in the nose. He let go the rod and grabbed his nose with both hands, cursing with pain.

The canoe lurched to the right, shipping water. Blair looked over his cupped hands.

There were two hands on the side of the canoe, hauling down.

Blair screamed at the shock.

In that split-second a man reared out of the water from where the fishline had been, hoisting himself up by his hands. He was round- faced, hairy-faced, too hairy. His arms were short, too short. The wet hairy-faced man grinned at Blair, displaying a split upper lip that reached to the base of his nose.

In the time it took Blair to realize what he faced, one of the man's hands let go of the canoe's side and taloned into the straps of Blair's life vest. The other hand reached up with a gleaming black knife.

No, this was wrong, this wasn't how they worked, they --

The knife hand darted in.

"*Kushtaka*!" Blair screamed as the blade found its mark.

###

*Pirtok tareornartok* (What can be done against the sea? Nothing)

"He was wearing a life vest," Jim said vehemently. "He's a strong swimmer."

The Coast Guard chopper pilot shook his head. "In this water? It's hypothermia that kills, not drowning. We'll keep searching."

"You're damn right you will." *So help me, Chief, if this is some goddamn test of my senses I'll deck you.* But Jim knew this was not a test. Don't zone out, don't zone out.

When Blair hadn't returned with the canoe by lunchtime, Jim's annoyance had become unease and then dread. Within the hour a team was combing the site and Jim was in the air, looking. Mid-afternoon was now late afternoon.

Just as the pilot caught a signal from the cutter below, Jim's eyes caught a flash of red, and a speck of orange. The rented canoe, the vest. Reining in his wash of relief, he piggybacked to get information on Sandburg's status, filtering out the heavy thump of the chopper blades and the light glinting off the bobbing waves from the descending sun.

Jim learned the truth before the cutter did. An empty life vest floated and bobbed in the backwash of the Coast Guard rescue ship, one strap caught in an oarlock of the overturned canoe. The straps had been cut.

###

*Aodlarniartoga adlamon* (I am going somewhere else)

"Where are you taking me? Why did you take me? Who are you!" Blair wanted to shout, but his voice was a shaking parody of itself and the questions came out in a wavering thread.

The *kushtaka* paddled the boat and did not answer him; land-otters did not speak any more than sea-otters did. From the back he looked like a fisherman; heavy-set, wearing khaki-green waders and a gray flannel shirt.

Blair sat in the back and shivered violently, sodden and chilled; the otter-man had capsized the canoe while yanking Blair's vest off. By the time he'd gotten some control over his arms and legs again they were far from his boat and the shore and headed farther away. The bitter cold and wind-chill had sapped Blair of energy very quickly; now he shook with cold as the short-armed furry-faced man paddled north.

About four miles north of the beach lay a village, right on the rocky shore of the sound. It resembled a Tlingit village from before the arrival of Europeans; the houses were long cedar structures sound against the onslaught of Pacific winters. Despite his fear Blair leaned forward to stare, fascinated, and his fingers itched for his tape recorder, a pad of paper, *something*. He had a feeling his camcorder would show an empty patch of forest, and was quite sure this village and all its inhabitants would be non-visible to most people's eyes -- even the eagle-eyes of a desperate Sentinel seeking his guide.

A crowd of perhaps thirty or forty people stood at the shore to welcome the fisherman and his catch; people with shining dark eyes and short forearms, with cleft upper lips and hairy faces, people who did not speak at all. They were *kushtaka* people, and this was a *kushtaka* village. The people were mostly men, with some women and perhaps 10 children. Many short forearms reached out to help Blair out of the boat and wade to shore as if he were a friend visiting them.

Despite the traditional look of the village, many of the people wore clothing from various decades of modernity, as did the otter-faced fisherman following Blair up the shore and dragging the boat up onto the sand to join other vessels. The aluminum boat itself was thoroughly modern, as were several other crafts on the shore. One or two of the men were dressed in what looked like traditional Tlingit clothing and their dark eyes burned with age.

"Why have you taken me?" Blair said angrily. The people blinked and stared, saying nothing. "Do you steal everyone who goes out on the water? How many of you were captured the way I was -- by a trick? That's not how *kushtakas* should act!"

There were crucial differences between this village and how a human village would look. There were no totem poles here, and no paintings on the walls of the longhouses. There were no dogs or cats prowling around, and no horses wandering through the village. *Kushtakas* had no family totems and kept no pets; they mimicked human behaviors but did not have human souls.

It was the children that brought Blair up. Children didn't belong in a *kushtaka* village -- the evil spirits specialized in preying on drowning fishermen. They must have changed their m.o. to keep up with the severe crimp the life-vest would have put in their operations. But children?

One child in particular tugged at Sandburg's mind, a small freckled boy in blue swim trunks whose round furry face was as blank of expression as everyone else's. Then, with a jolt of horror, Blair placed the face, once smiling and hairless. It was in a photo in the Cascade Tribune last June, and a story about ten- year-old Randy Hake who'd vanished while swimming at Olympic Peninsula State Park. Randy's body had never been recovered.

Blair hunkered down and faced the solemn-eyed otter-boy. "Randy? Randy, don't you want to go home? Don't you want to see your mom and dad again, your brothers and sisters?"

The *kushtaka* people did not try to hold or stop Blair. But Randy did not respond to Blair besides blinking. Blair rested a hand on the boy's bare neck and shoulder; it was cold under the light dusting of fur, and no pulse met his fingertips. Randy did not react to the touch.

Despairing, Blair looked around at the other children, boys and girls. They all wore bathing suits from various eras, including one boy in a black wool swim costume from the turn of the century. Riptides, undertows, underwater cramps -- decades of camping trips and holiday picnics that became tragedies, funerals with closed empty caskets and distraught mothers, stunned classmates. Tears spilled from Blair's eyes at the monumental human grief these lost children represented. The *kushtaka* children stared back with stony expressions.

The fisherman beckoned to Blair to follow him to one of the houses.

That was how it began -- the offer of fire, food, companionship. Before long...

Not knowing what else to do, Blair stood and followed the spirit into the house and sat at the fire, still shaking with cold in his wet clothes. He could not warm himself; the fire made no sound and gave off no heat. He declined a wordless offer of roasted fish and baked roots by the fisherman; the food looked delicious but had no smell, and for some reason he kept thinking of pomegranate seeds. The fisherman sat opposite the false fire and stared at Blair with his dark otter eyes.

Blair Sandburg was terrified. None of the stories about *kushtakas* were good or optimistic. There was no story about a *kushtaka* abductee escaping, only about him eventually becoming a *kushtaka* himself and preying on the living as he had been preyed upon. Jim would only now start to get curious about his disappearance -- and when he started to look, his first thought was not going to be *Blair's been abducted by evil supernatural land-otters.*

Jim...

Blair muffled a sound of grief against his drawn-up knees and closed his eyes tight.

Kushtaka victims became kushtakas themselves. The next time he saw Jim, Blair might very well be lying in wait to steal his friend's soul --

No! No, he wouldn't!

Because there wouldn't *be* a next time for this village. He was the last victim of their cruelty, he'd make sure of that!

Now Blair gripped his knees and shook with realization. And terror.

He lifted his head and stared into the cold beady eyes of the fisherman-kushtaka, who'd deliberately lured Blair away from safety and peace rather than wait for a drowning victim as he should have done.

"You know," he whispered. "That's why you caught me, isn't it? You know what I am."

The fisherman said nothing. But his eyes blinked faster and his short forearms twitched in their grey flannel, scratching at his belly.

The *kushtaka* legends were bleak and grim. But they also said that only one thing could defeat a *kushtaka*, and then only at the expense of his own life.

A shaman.

###

*Adlaoyunga* (I am another)

Meditation eluded Blair that night, as did sleep. He was still wet and cold, and whatever relaxation exhaustion should have given him vanished around midafternoon when he'd reached up and felt the fur growing on his cheeks and forehead, felt the center of his upper lip drawing up toward the base of his nose. Now he couldn't even reach up and feel them, because his arms were shorter than they had been that morning.

The *kushtaka* fisherman did not speak to him, nor did anyone else in this village. Nor did anyone try to stop or hinder him in any of his perambulations around the village. They knew that the changes kept their captives from leaving them.

Wisely, Blair had stopped shouting and speaking altogether once he'd realized why the fisherman had selected him. His spirit's fire still blazed brightly inside him, and his shamanness held him against the leeching living-death of *kushtaka* existence. But he pretended to match his outward changes with inner ones.

He'd spent the day exploring the undecorated village and the silent inhabitants, visiting their homes one by one as would any invited guest to a Tlingit village. Of the three generic rules for survival in a supernatural setting (be polite to everyone you meet, listen to all advice given, don't eat anything you're offered), only the second did not apply. These land-otters all seemed to be 20th-century drowning victims; drunken boatmen who went out without life-vests and the like. No one stopped him, nor spoke to him; they offered him delicious- looking dried salmon and *kamamuk* which he politely and wordlessly declined, patting his stomach as if full from visiting the last house. He'd smiled at the silent children and tried to play with them, drawing tic-tac-toe grids in the dirt or starting clapping games; they clutched carved-cedar dolls and toy fishing-spears they did not play with and stared at him without responding in any way.

The two men in Tlingit costume lived in a longhouse at the center of the small village. It was clear that they were the seat of power in the village, the oldest made-*kushtaka* if not the very spirits themselves. Blair swallowed his fear and entered their house as boldly as he had all the others, waving aside their silent wives' food offerings as he had in other houses. If the Tlingit *kushtaka* men suspected that Blair was an enemy they did not show it, nor did they challenge him to a fight. Perhaps because Blair was a shaman of a different culture and century to them, and did not display his power the way Tlingit shamans would have, they did not recognize him as had the fisherman who'd taken him captive.

Now Blair sat and tried to find a core of peace inside him, while he battled the twin adversaries of fear and grief.

He would have to challenge the *kushtaka* leaders soon, fast, before he faded into the spirit-shadows. He knew there were prayers that had to be made, gestures, summonses -- he just didn't know which ones to make, the stories hadn't been very specific. What if they didn't work in English? His Tlingit was horrible, even worse than his Inuit; he hadn't studied much about the Northwest Indian cultures, spending more time with the Meso-American ones.

Even if he pulled off everything correctly, the price of this power and effort would be his life. He would die. Every story about shamans and kushtakas was clear on that.

He wanted to live. He wanted to go back to the camp, he wanted to see Jim again, he wanted to go home and keep studying and training Jim and living a long life between the campus and the police station and the loft, watching his Sentinel watch the city. He wanted to grow *old* --

The memory of Randy's solemn furry face shamed Blair out of his self- pity. He'd already lived three times longer than that poor drowned child. Now he might be the force that broke the back of this ancient evil, and would keep any more children -- any more drowning victims -- from falling into a vampirish undeath.

A new grief touched him. If only Blair could see Jim again, touch him, tell him, explain why this had happened...

He could.

Some stories told of *kushtaka* people coming back to their loved ones, if only briefly; they were warning tales about avoiding the social blunders that led people into the *kushtakas'* hands, but still it was written. And the boats were outside.

Blair walked out to the shipped vessels and took a canoe rather than the aluminum boat; a canoe he knew he could paddle singlehanded. No one stopped him as he slipped out in the darkness of early morning, a pang of grief hitting him again at the memory of doing this exact thing only 24 hours ago.

All the way to the rocky cliff and toward the beach, Blair thought of running, of going home with Jim and never looking behind him, of leaving behind the wretched victims of the wicked land-otters and pretending this had never happened, of going back to the life he knew.

But the proof that he couldn't run away this time came when he paddled by a Coast Guard cutter that did not acknowledge his presence or his shouts, even though he heard them talking about him. Two cutters.

Blair pulled the canoe up on the beach and walked up to the police on the shore drinking coffee. The police didn't react when he shouted, jumped up and down, kicked them or swatted at their coffee mugs. Not even Rafe and Henri, he saw with a pang, talking softly and sitting beside --

Oh Jim.

Jim sat at the fire, his face stone and his eyes glittering in the light. He held a mug between his hands from which he did not drink; he did not speak to his fellow Cascade PD officers nor to the other cops. He looked more like a *kushtaka* than Blair did, despite Blair's fur and short arms.

Blair knelt before Jim and wrapped his otter paws around Jim's hands on the coffee cup, tears forming in his eyes at this proof that there would be no going home for him. "Jim."

The other cops kept drinking and talking. But Jim blinked. Then he jerked his head angrily to one side.

He'd reacted to Blair's voice. His Guide's voice that could lead the poleaxed man out of any zone-out, even this one. Hope surged in the shaman at this thread, and he seized it.

"The site, Jim. Go to the campsite," Blair said, and tugged at Jim's hands. "Go to the campsite." He stood.

There was a spark in Jim's eyes at last. Anger, disgust. Abruptly he dashed the mug's contents into the fire and set it down with a thud on the log. He rose, shedding his companions with a curt shrug, and stalked toward the woods. "Something in the car," he said over his shoulder. "Be back."

Blair followed him, as he'd done so often before.

***

*Ayornaronarevor* (Not much one can do, I guess)

Jim was ice. Everything he felt about Blair was buried under a mile of concrete, a reactor-gone-critical sealed off before meltdown could occur.

It should have been buried. Instead he heard a voice in his head that sounded like Blair's, not plaintive or accusing but in his usual imperious tone when he was talking his way through the walls. The Blair in his head told him to return to the campsite.

Well, why not? He'd done less rational things today, like screaming at the cops who wouldn't believe him when he'd said the life vest was cut with an obsidian knife, or taking a swing at the doctor who'd come at him with a tranquilizer. Or calmly telling Rafe and Brown that it was his fault, that he hadn't gone out with Blair in the canoe because he'd wanted another hour of sleep.

So, return to the site. Jim returned.

Everything had been packed up and put away in the Escort. But he still had the site; he planned to keep it the full long weekend. Some thread of expectation told him to wait, wait until the actual body was found, and only then come back here and take out the gun hidden beneath the driver's seat.

The site was deserted. Of course. That thread inside him felt a pang, that thread that had actually expected Blair to be here waiting for him, explaining his disappearance, saying *Jim, I'm sorry but I can't stay, I have to destroy an evil spirit.*

He shook his head at the idiot phrase that had popped into his head. Madness. Well, why not? It would feel better than sane rational devastation had felt all day. "Evil spirits, huh, Chief?" he said aloud. It felt so sweet to use the name, even this way. "Is that why you're gone? You're not feeding the fish, you're off somewhere fighting evil spirits?"

*Kushtakas. They steal souls. I have to save the village, Jim. I can do that, I'm the shaman.*

Damn, he was a creative madman. This was a hell of a lot better than *Jim, why did you let me die?* had sounded all day in his head. "You're the shaman, Chief."

* I can't stay, Jim, I have to do this. I'm sorry. I love you.*

It sounded so real, so natural. It was what he'd wanted to hear for so long. Too late. Too late. "I love you too, Chief." Too late.

The rest was silence. The voice was gone from his thoughts.

The campsite was deserted again. Again?

Jim headed back to the beach, emptier than when he'd left it. But now, when he tried to think of the gun under the driver's seat, his mind ran into a blank wall.

Rafe handed him another mug, warm and steaming, as he came back to the beach. This one he drank from, and did not shrug off Henri's hand on his shoulder.

Nothing was online except his sight and peripheral hearing. By the time he'd identified the sedative laced through the coffee it was too late.

###

*Taimarnartok* (It is time to have done with it)

It hurt, paddling all the way back to the *kushtaka* village; Blair knew this time that he was on a one-way trip. The pain was eased somewhat by his ability to convey some kind of message to Jim. It wasn't much of a closure, but it was all they would get and a lot more than most people got with loved ones.

The villagers did not react in any way when Blair returned; they all walked around with the same furry-faced stone-eyed expressions. Otter zombies. The two oldest *kushtaka* worked on a canoe down the shore as if this was a daily event.

The fisherman showed no change when Blair let himself into the house and sat at the heatless fire once again; he was once again offered ghost-food that he did not eat.

Blair had not eaten nor slept since his abduction; despite his wraith- like state, his belly hurt with hunger and his body ached for sleep. Danger there, danger of having the last of his soul drained away by the two old ones here if he succumbed to these remnants of physical life.

Blair sat against the wall of the cedar longhouse; he straightened his back and folded his legs into the lotus, closing his eyes. All right, then -- it wasn't hunger and sleeplessness he'd undergone, but fasting and vigilance. He was preparing for his confrontation.

He reviewed shamanistic practices from all the cultures he'd studied, looking at common threads as he'd often done before for research purposes. Now it meant the difference between the horror of *kushtaka* undeath and freedom.

Fear was the first demon to attack. What if he couldn't do it? He didn't know the right procedure for these creatures, not even the right language -- what words should he say, what prayers, what gestures?

Those concerns he shook aside. *Kushtaka* custom had already been violated here. This entire village was out of place here -- *kushtaka* occupied the northern Tlingit lands of Alaska. The two old ones had obviously been able to move their site of operation south, possibly driven out of their old village for abducting drowning women and children as well as fishermen. And if they could move south from Alaska to the Olympic Peninsula...they could move further south, preying on more heavily populated areas like San Francisco Bay or Los Angeles Harbor. The misery they caused would be exponentially increased.

He didn't know the language. Then he would not fight with words.

Despair attacked him next. What good would this do? Who was he, to think he could face down these two ancient evils? They didn't even notice him now, they weren't afraid of him. What if they already knew who he was, and knew he couldn't hurt them? He was a student, a white man playing with another's culture that wasn't even this culture. What if his spiritual power wasn't strong enough to combat these two old ones?

In horror at his approaching fate, Blair's eyes snapped open. They met the glittering-glass eyes of the fisherman who'd abducted him.

Wordless, captive undead, like all of them. Yet he wanted freedom, was desperate for it. They all were, surely. Blair was all they had.

What if the worst happened, if he too became a *kushtaka*? He would lose control over his mind and become like the rest of the villagers, going out in boats and preying upon the drowning --

He'd see himself in Hell first!

Blair's nostrils flared over his otter-split lip. His teeth bared. He drew in a deep, deep breath -- not the peaceful cleansing breath of meditation, but the intake of a warrior raising his weapons.

He was a Sentinel's Guide, a warrior's teacher. He'd spat in the face of evil once before, chained and terrified, before he'd even realized his power. These two old spirits were cowards and bullies, ants to crush beneath his heel. It was time they saw what they were up against.

Blair stood and approached the ghost-fire that flickered soundlessly between him and the fisherman. He pulled off his cold wet clothes and threw them into the blaze; the false fire went out. Naked, he took up a firestick and broke off the charred part into his hands. Without a word, he began to blacken his face with the charcoal, right over the fur.

The fisherman's flat-glass eyes brightened.

Blair did not stop with his face. He drew black stripes down his chest and otter-short arms and legs. His furriness did not stop him -- he'd been a hairy man long before the *kushtaka* had begun their work. At his throat he drew the spread black wings of the Condor, the emblem of the Chopec shaman.

Finally, he held out his hand to the fisherman and looked at his obsidian knife. When the man gave it to him, Blair cut at his right palm until blood welled; he clenched his fist to mark his whole hand with blood, and then seized his own left forearm with the bloody hand, making a handprint where Incacha's bloody hand had touched him at the moment he'd passed on the shaman's way to the terrified student.

Blair handed back the knife and stood straight and tall, breathing hard and clenching his fists. If he was the only champion this village of captured spirits had, he would damn well be the best champion he could be.

*This is a good day to die.*

Blair strode from the longhouse to stand at the center of the village, radiating grim determination. Otter-people stared at him -- actually stared at him, instead of looking with their lifeless glittering eyes.

Blair Sandburg ignored the other otter-people and faced the door of the central longhouse. "Kushtaka! Hey!" he shouted, not in the anger and fear of a captive but in the tone of a challenge.

Out came the two old spirits.

If Blair had had any lingering doubt about their centrality in this village they were vaporized by the two men's horrific appearance. No longer did the two old Tlingit men wear placid otter-faces. Crooked- eyed and snaggle-toothed, they snarled at him, their faces now resembling the twisted cedar masks of the Pacific Northwest. They bore shark-tooth-tipped war clubs and lances. With loud screams they ran toward the weaponless painted man, their clubs raised high to smash in his head.

Fear is the enemy, fear is the enemy. Stand fast.

Spirits didn't use physical weapons to destroy their enemies. Blair was already lost to the living. You cannot kill the dead with weapons.

The hardwood clubs swung down upon Blair's head.

It was as if the weapons were made of fog. The clubs whistled through Blair's head and body without touching him.

The spirits jumped back from him.

A sigh wafted from the villagers -- the first sound any of them had made, surely, since their possession.

Bold with his first victory over the *kushtakas*, the shaman let loose a war-cry in the faces of the enraged spirits as they charged him again -- a Condor scream.

###

*Augatko talva* (Now there is a shaman!)

Blair was naked and painted like a Chopec, standing in the middle of a Northwest Indian village. Two ugly-faced and armed men faced his friend. People with furry faces and split lips stood and watched the confrontation but did not interfere.

Jim seemed to stand with them, as furry-faced and split-lipped as they; he could not shout to his friend or move forward to help him. He stood and watched the fight.

***

Rafe straightened from covering Jim with the blanket and gratefully accepted a cup from Brown as well. "Finally," he said, looking at the sleeping man.

The partners drank coffee and moodily watched the sky lighten from behind them. The Coast Guard cutters headed out to start the search again.

Henri broke the silence. "They were so close. I've never seen anything like it. This is gonna kill him when..."

"When they find the-- Blair." Rafe nodded.

Brown sagged. "Jesus. I can't believe it. This whole thing's a nightmare. I keep waiting for Hairboy to pop up and say 'Fooled ya.' "

Rafe put a hand on his partner's shoulder. "I know. Me too."

###

He'd fooled them!

Squealing in anger, the two spirits struck at Blair again and again without landing a blow or making the shaman back down. Blair grinned at the *kushtaka* men, his arms at his sides, contemptuously displaying his refusal to strike back at them.

Furious, they flung down their weapons and ripped off their snarling masks to display their otter faces again. Now they stared at him, silent and angry, with their glittering otter eyes.

Blair matched them stare for stare, his gaze dismissive and cold. Cowardly untraditional *kushtakas*, who preyed upon women and children -- what were *they* to a shaman?

*You are going to die.*

Ah. They were trying to throw his doubts and fears back at him. No good. He'd fought those demons already, and won.

He was already dead. What was to fear?

*You have your whole life ahead of you.*

He'd finished living his whole life when he'd been taken by the fisherman.

*You're too young to die, your life's work is left undone.*

Him and Mozart and Dian Fossey and Martin Luther King. He was in good company.

*You will die less than a footnote in anthropology, a failure chasing an old fairy tale, an object of ridicule and scorn.*

Well, at least he'd be remembered. And he knew that he was a man who'd been proven right -- the man who'd saved a gifted policeman from the asylum and turned his haywire senses into a finely-polished tool. How many lives would be saved by Jim, that would have died if Blair hadn't taught Jim?

*You're too young and untaught to battle two demons. Arrogance!*

He was a true shaman, their enemy. Resistance!

*Your life is forfeit for your conceit!*

Wrong. His life was the price willingly paid to save a village of captives. No more captives, no more *kushtaka* ever. Their prisoners would be free to die completely at last, as would he. And their captors would flee as they were ordered, by the one human being strong enough to withstand them. They would never terrorize these waters again. Their day was done.

The Tlingit backed away, squealing in rage. This time Blair cawed at them derisively, spreading his arms like Raven-the-Trickster's wings.

Round two to the shaman. Heya heya hey!

***

"Good, Chief," Jim murmured in his sleep. "Did it."

Both Henri and Rafe looked at the drugged man. Jim stirred and sank back under. Henri blinked back tears.

###

Last round, boys. Take your best shot or get out of Dodge!

Blair grinned at the chittering otter-demons before him. They'd tried to attack him physically and failed. They'd tried to undermine his spirit and failed.

He was terrified still. But his fear made his heart pound faster, stronger, angrier. He wasn't chained to a chair staring at a pointless, useless death by a madman now. He wasn't waiting for anyone to rescue him. No one.

Something twisted his heart.

He glared at his enemies, whose eyes had just brightened. One reached out a stubby otter-paw of a hand and seized Blair's arm, staring into his eyes.

Blair stared back as the blackness of the otter eyes opened wide to envelop him. *From the darkness comes the day, out of death new life is raised, from despair there comes hope--*

Light returned, and Blair stood on the driftwood-strewn beach from where he'd gone fishing so long ago. It was mid-afternoon, as it was here. The cutters were gone, no doubt still out looking for him. Gulls screamed overhead. An ambulance sat on the beach. Loud noises were coming from it. Police were gathered around the back of the ambulance, grim and silent. Rafe and Henri were there too.

This was happening now, right at the moment. Why were they showing him this? Had they found his body? If it was in the ambulance, Jim was --

The screaming.

He ran to look inside the ambulance, pushing aside stunned, incredulous policemen and Coast Guards.

His corpse wasn't there. But Jim was. He was strapped to a stretcher, convulsing and howling as two paramedics tried to hold him down. A zone-out, a big one.

*Jim!*

They wouldn't know how to take care of Jim, wouldn't have a clue about his hypersenses. Rafe and Henri didn't know a thing about it. The men in the ambulance would haul Jim away -- they'd dope him on tranquilizers, lock him in a rubber room, strap him into a straightjacket when he started howling about smells and sounds.

Oh God if he died Jim would--

Back, he had to go back, *now!* One more chance, just a moment, just a moment to save Jim!

He jumped into the ambulance and reached out to unstrap Jim from the stretcher.

***

Blair reached into the open mouth of the otter demon, mesmerized by the black eyes locked with his own.

Jim opened his mouth and no words came out. Blair was going to be devoured and he couldn't speak to warn him, as mute as the other otter- creatures. They'd mesmerized Blair somehow, planted images in his mind perhaps --

Images in his mind. The golden fire people. Radar, echo-location --

Jim clapped his hands sharply, two, three times.

***

Henri jumped and spilled coffee into the sand. Rafe only just caught his own mug. They stared down at the sleeping Jim in disbelief as the man's hands sank back down on the blanket.

***

The sharp sound of clapping hands jolted Blair just before he touched the strapped Jim. He blinked and shook his head, and he faced the two Tlingit instead of his friend. The image of Jim in the ambulance was gone. It had been a mirage.

He knew it had been Jim he'd heard, clapping his hands the way he'd clapped them in the police garage to lure Blair away from the horrors in his mind. The difference between that clapping and the carefully- portrayed images of the *kushtaka* had alerted Blair.

Jim had just saved him from the *kushtaka*, even as Blair fought to save the villagers from those same creatures. It was how they'd always been. The Sentinel guarded the city and the Guide guarded the Sentinel; the Shaman battled the forces of evil, and his Blessed Protector watched his back.

Pride and love captured Blair's heart and made it beat like a war-drum. Even now, even here -- Jim was all right, he would *be* all right. Even without him, Jim would be safe.

Let those bastards haul Jim away! Simon knew about Jim's senses, and he'd come and save Jim if anything happened. And Jim would be all right. Simon could look out for him.

That was it, he'd won. He'd won! They couldn't cow his body or break his spirit or turn his heart. He'd won, and they knew it!

The *kushtaka* men squealed in fear. Blair filled his lungs and screamed like an eagle, beating his chest with both open palms in triumph.

The villagers jumped and blinked at the sound. They raised their arms -- their long, human arms -- to feel their hairless faces, their smooth upper lips. Broken cries tumbled from their mouths.

*All you zombies, show your faces! All you people in the street!*

The *kushtaka* wailed.

"Jerks!" Randy Hake shouted at the demons, and began to cry. Others cried out, and kept shouting, rage and joy and terror at last freed in them after months or centuries of captivity.

The demons howled at losing their captives and flung themselves at Blair in a panic. Again their weapons whizzed harmlessly through him.

*"Clap your hands, Blair. You can save the world here... You did it. You did it! You did it!"*

Blair spread his hands wide, and brought them together.

The sound of thunder struck the *kushtakas* and bowled them over, shrieking.

"Go!" Blair roared, lunging at the *kushtaka.* "Gaah! GAAH-GAAH- GAAH!!" Again the voice of Raven-Who-Sets-Things-Right cawed from him.

The *kushtaka* ran from him.

Every villager cheered. The boy in the Victorian bathing suit picked up a chunk of driftwood and flung it at the *kushtaka*. Other kids followed his lead, snatching up stones and trash, and then the other villagers followed suit. Shouting in rage, they chased their captors, who yelled in pain at the assault and fled to the beach. Hemmed in from all sides, the two old *kushtakas* turned to the water, preparing to dive in.

An immense black shape dove upon the shrieking demons, its giant beak open. The beak clashed shut on the two wraiths with a thunderclap in the cloudless sky, and then the Thunderbird was gone. So were the *kushtakas.*

The freed villagers cried and shouted and prayed and cheered and danced and ran. Blair sank to his knees and laid his head on the sand.

I did it, Jim. I did it. I did it. I did it.

He heard and felt the villagers disappearing around him one by one, their bodies flying into the ocean to finally finish the job of dying. Soon it would be his turn.

But when nothing happened, he raised his head. He was on a rocky spit of land hemmed in with trees. The village was gone, the longhouses vanished. The boats were gone. Oddly enough, his wet tumbled clothes were all there in a pile, in the place where the longhouse fire must have been.

Only one villager was left behind; it was the fisherman who'd captured Blair. "That was a good thing you did, grandson," he said, reaching a hand to help Blair up. "The *kushtaka* are all gone now."

Blair stood, calm and unembarrassed despite his nudity. He noted the natural length of his arms once again, the missing fur, his lips back to normal. "Those two were the last ones?"

"*Kushtaka* scattered when the People did, up north. They vanished, one by one. But these two thought they'd prey on the whites that drowned." The fisherman shrugged. "They thought they were safe. Whites didn't have shamans to battle them. That's what they thought."

Blair laughed grimly. "They thought wrong."

The fisherman touched the Condor at Blair's throat. "My cousin in Peru. The shaman's friend."

Cousin... The fisherman's use of "grandson" also rang a bell with Blair. It was how the gods referred to human beings here. "Who are you?"

"Oh, I screw up, mostly. But now and then I set things right." The fisherman smiled. His face wasn't round and furry any more. It was black and feathery, and black twinkling eyes danced with ancient merriment. Then it was a human's face again, with black dancing eyes.

Blair blinked, amazed. "That's why you captured me. You couldn't save these people, but I could." But now a pang went through him. The great pain was now to come.

"Yes, I was so well disguised as a *kushtaka* I forgot who I was," said Raven. "But I remembered enough to catch a white with the shaman gift.

"Why do you look so worried, grandson?" the trickster added. "You saved forty-eight people from the *kushtaka*, and stopped their evil ways. That's a brave thing to do, even for a warrior."

Blair nodded. "But I know that to fight a *kushtaka* is death for a shaman. Now I have to die and leave my friend alone." Now the grief rose up, heavy and painful. He wanted his life back, he resented the loss of everything he'd looked forward to...and yet there was a pride in knowing he'd saved forty-eight people's souls, drafted though he was into helping them.

"Oh, that, well you didn't die," Raven said carelessly. "You didn't spend all your power and spirit fighting those two turds -- that's what kills the shaman, you know, it's not like a bargain or something. You spent most of it, almost all of it. But then that other one clapped his hands."

"Jim," Blair said. He felt a little numb. "He really did help me. He saved me."

"Yes, that's it, the one who clapped and stopped you from walking down that stinkbug's throat. Because he helped, you didn't spend all your strength. There's enough left for you to keep your body breathing."

The only thing that filled Blair's mind and heart was the *kushtaka* stare of Jim, waiting for a Coast Guard cutter to bring back his bloated corpse to identify. "I have one more spirit to awaken."

Raven laughed. "Yes, living is good. Go get your clothes on, grandson, and then get on my back."

Blair washed off the charcoal and blood. Exhaustion struck him like a two-by-four when he finished putting on his wretched wet garments again; his limbs were like lead. He managed to cling to the broad black-feathered back and lock his arms. He closed his eyes, and missed the thrill of the flight back to the rocky cliff where his adventure had begun. "Let go, grandson," was the last thing he heard.

###

*Ayuitok una* (That is the clever one, he won)

The sound reached through his drugged mind, past the black wet blanket of sleep. The sound that was as impossible as the dream-image of Blair facing down otter-faced demons. A steady, rhythmic sound that rested on his nerves like a cool compress on a burn.

Lub dub. Lub dub. Lub dub, lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub...

Jim dragged himself through the thick heavy folds of sleep to emerge, sitting up and blinking like an owl at the darkening sky. He was awake. The time for wishful dreams and fantasies was over.

The sound continued.

Henri was bending over him saying something, his face compassionate. Jim paid it no mind. Without a second's hesitation he flew outward, piggybacking everything. Out across the water of the bay, onto the shore of the cliff to the north. Around the cliff.

There. Breathing, heart beating, limp and sodden and exhausted among the rocks, wedged into an overhang that would have kept Blair from being seen by sea or air. But not by his Sentinel.

His fight was over. He'd won.

He stood, shedding his blanket and the hands of his concerned friends.

It took a long time to make them understand what he wanted, and he had to power down to do it. Rafe remembered something of Jim's "hunches" and solemnly requested one more pass by the cutter, near the shore.

An hour later, Jim was among the group of men lifting Sandburg from the rocks and onto a backboard. His hands had already told him what the medical instruments would prove: no water in the lungs, no broken bones, not so much as a concussion. Exhaustion only, and sodden to the bone. Not dead; only damp.

Blair's eyes opened. He smiled, basking in the radiance of Jim's grin, the warmth of the hands on his face and forearms. Now, finally, he was warm. "Did it," he whispered. "We did it."

"Kushtakas?" Jim said.

Blair closed his eyes in affirmation. "Thanks. Helped."

"What are Blessed Protectors for?" Jim said lightly, one hand smoothing back each wet strand of hair. "It's your turn to sleep in now, Chief."

Blair didn't hear that part.

###

*Kowiasolose* (Sleep in peace)

Three days after the Cascadians' return home from their fishing trip, the body of Randy Hake was retrieved by the Olympic Peninsula Coast Guard. Other human remains began to surface and be identified. The bizarre phenomenon was put down to a freak cold undertow that had kept the bodies remarkably well-preserved.

The fishermen knew better.

-- the end --