Revenge of the Manitou (26 page)

Professor
Thoren
looked at Singing Rock carefully. “You’re an Indian,
aren’t you? This is nothing to do with Indian rights, is it?
Nothing
to do with that Wounded Knee business?”

“I was there,
at Wounded Knee, advising and helping,” said Singing Rock. “But this particular
problem has nothing to do with it whatever. This is a problem of Indian magic.”
Professor
Thoren
got up off his campstool and folded
it away. He was a tall, broad-faced man, and he had to stoop inside the confines
of the tunnel. He said, “What makes you think these hieroglyphs are a prophecy?
Do you know anything about them?”

“Nothing at
all,” said Singing Rock. “But they were mentioned in the context of an Indian
legend.”

“Well, you
surprise me,” Professor
Thoren
told him. “I thought I
knew all the Indian legends there are to know. But nobody’s ever mentioned to
me that this could be a prophecy, and I’m only just beginning to come around to
believing it could be some kind of mystical prediction
myself
.
Either you know something I don’t know, or else you’re way ahead of me.”

“Let’s just say
we have inside information,” said Harry uncomfortably. He didn’t like tunnels
much, they gave him claustrophobia, and he was praying that Professor
Thoren
would finish saying what he had to say and let them
get out.

The professor
looked at him quizzically.
“Inside information?
It
sounds as if you heard it from
Gitche
Manitou
himself.”

“Not quite,”
said Harry. “But near enough. You know how these
manitous
gossip.”

Neil said, “Professor
Thoren
, I have an eight-year-old son. He’s in
terrible danger right now, and these men are trying to save his life. If you
could see your way clear to cooperating with them-well, I’d appreciate it.”

Professor
Thoren
looked at their faces in the lamplight. Then he
said, “I suppose I’ve heard of nuttier things. What do you want to know?”

Harry pointed
to the hieroglyphs scratched on the rock-hard surface of the giant redwood. “Do
you know, basically, what all of this means?” he asked the professor.

The professor
ran his fingers over the lines of hieroglyphic script. There were triangles,
curves, figures that looked like birds, circles, and dots. He said, “Basically,
I suppose I do. I’ve translated it into literal English. The hieroglyphs are
remarkably close to the inscriptions found on ancient stones in New England and
middle
America. I don’t know who carved them, or why,
or even how, because this petrified tree is as hard as anything you’ll ever
find. But it must have been an important message, because somebody took a lot
of trouble to make sure it was preserved. It could have been here for two
thousand years, or maybe a hell of a lot longer. It comes right out of the
ancient past, right out of a time when this land was Indian country, all the
way from the east coast to the west.”

He glanced up
at Singing Rock. “I don’t particularly sympathize with Indians who want to
change things back the way they were,” he said. “But I know what you probably
feel about America. If it had once been my country, I’d feel the same way.”

Harry took out
a handkerchief and mopped his face and neck. The tunnel seemed closer and
hotter than ever, and quite apart from that, it was almost six-thirty, and
there wasn’t much time left before the moon rose.

“Professor
Thoren
?” he said.
“The translation?”
“Well, I don’t know how it’s going to help you,” shrugged the professor. “But
here it is. The first hieroglyph here is a kind of opening announcement. You
could almost say it means ‘Now hear this.’ But the rest of it reads: ‘After the
days when the greatest of the chiefs has passed beyond, and after the days when
all the lands and the beasts that run on the land have been lost, then the
magicians outside shall wait for nine hundred ninety-nine moons in darkness,
until the day of the invisible stars, when they shall unite and call down
Pa-la-
kai
and
Nashuna
and
Coyote, the terrible ravager, and also call upon
Ossadagowah
,
son of
Sadogowah
, and those outside who are in no
human shape.’ “

Professor
Thoren
paused, and looked up. “I don’t suppose it makes any
sense to you so far,” he said. “But I can explain it if you want.”

Harry,
pale-faced and sweating, shook his head. “We know what it means, professor.
Just get on with it.”

Professor
Thoren
was about to say something, but then he assumed a
resigned face and turned back to the petrified tree. “Okay. Right here, on the
sixth line, it says: ‘The wonder-workers shall take their due for the stealing
of their lands and the beasts that run thereon, etcetera, and they shall also
raise for this purpose that which sleeps below the surface of the waters and
which has been waiting since elder times.”

He looked up.
“There is no corresponding word in the English language for that which sleeps
below the surface of the waters, although it’s represented here by just one
glyph. It doesn’t mean a fish, or a prehistoric monster, or anything like that.
If you translated every nuance of this character, it actually means ‘the great
and feared god of ancient times who was banished below the waves and has been dreaming
ever since of his return to the shores of earth.’ “

Singing Rock’s
face was strained. He said, “Is there any more?”

Professor
Thoren
frowned. “You really take this seriously, don’t you?
You’re not kidding around.”

“Professor,”
insisted Singing Rock, “can you please tell me if there’s any more?”

“There’s one
more line,” said the professor. “It says something like: ‘That which sleeps
below the surface of the waters shall
rise
on that day
on the bidding of Ossa-
dagowah
, and the massacre of
the thousands shall begin.’ The word they’ve used here for ‘massacre’ could
mean ‘butchery’ or

‘
dismemberment
.’ It’s a very ancient glyph which was often
used to describe sacrificial rituals.”

Singing Rock was
silent for a while. He seemed to be searching deep down inside of himself for
something he had heard years and years before, from the lips of the medicine
men who had taught him when he was young. Professor
Thoren
glanced at Harry inquiringly, but all Harry could do was shrug.

At last,
Singing Rock said, “Professor, I think we have to leave now. I’m very glad we
found you here, and I want to apologize for sounding so abrupt and demanding.
You’ve been most helpful.”

“Hold up,” said
Professor
Thoren
. “You can’t just waltz in here and
take a whole year’s work and then waltz out again without offering something in
return.” “Oh, I’m sorry,” said Singing Rock, and he reached into his coat
pocket. “Would an ounce of chewing tobacco do?”

“Mister,” said
Professor
Thoren
impatiently, “what I’m talking about
is a little cultural cross-pollination. I know what these hieroglyphs say but I
don’t know what they mean. I’ve never heard of anything like this. You can’t
simply walk out without telling me what you know about it.”

“Professor,”
responded Singing Rock seriously, “the reason you don’t know what they mean is
because, of all Red Indian legends, this is the most feared and the most
secret. It is the legend of the greatest of the elder gods and it has been kept
from the white man for centuries, because of what the white man might
unwittingly raise up if he spoke the sacred spells.”

“You believe
this?” asked Professor
Thoren
. “You actually believe
that if the spells were cast, you’d raise up some kind of ancient god?”

Singing Rock
stared at him defiantly. Then, in a slow voice that was rich with dignity, he
said,

“Yes,
professor, I believe it. I believe in the gods because they have often come to
my aid when I was weak and uncertain. I believe in the gods because they still
live and breathe and speak to me from the lands that once belonged to my
people. I believe in the gods because they will care for my
manitou
when I pass to the great outside.”

“Very well,”
said Professor
Thoren
, a little abashed. “Then what
god is this, the one who sleeps below the waves?”

“There are many
stories about him,” said Singing Rock. “He was said to be cloudy and amorphous,
and sometimes to be of such a size that he would tower over the earth. His face
was a hellish confusion of serpents, and his jaws were like a chasm. So the
stories say, anyway.”

“He sounds
pretty alarming. Who managed to banish him below the waves? It must have been
someone with real magical talent.”

“It was,”
agreed Singing Rock. “But in those days, almost every Indian wonder-worker was
amazingly powerful. It was said that many of them could juggle with miniature
suns, and cross the waters without a canoe. The wonder-worker who banished this
particular god, though, was the greatest of all the wonder-workers.

It was
Misquamacus
, sometimes known as
Quamis
,
or
Quanquus
. The stories say that
Misquamacus
dismissed him below the waters of the earth and placed a spell on the waters so
that the god could never emerge again through the watery portal into the world
of humans. He couldn’t send the god back to the great outside, of course. Gods
of that magnitude will only return of their own free will. But
Misquamacus
protected his people sufficiently well for them
to flourish and grow, without being molested for human sacrifices or massacred
as they slept.”

“But it says
here that the god is going to be raised again,” Professor
Thoren
pointed out. “If he preyed on red men as well as white men, why would the
wonderworkers want to do that?”

“A god who is
released from a spell bears a debt of gratitude to those who let him out,” said
Singing Rock. “That is part of the exact balance of Indian magic.” “Even if
whoever lets him out is the same person who put him under the spell in the
first place?” asked Harry.

“It makes no
difference,” nodded Singing Rock. “You see, the god wouldn’t have been put
under the spell at all if he hadn’t been savaging or frightening the
wonder-worker’s people, and so the balance would be maintained.”

Professor
Thoren
said, “Does this elder god have a name? Something I
might recognize?”

“Most of the
elder gods have hundreds of names,” said Singing Rock. “The Natick Indians of
Boston used to call this god
Paukunnawaw
, the Great
Bear, because he came at night like a bear and left their people hideously
mauled. When Cotton Mather talked to the
Naticks
in
the
seventeeth
century, he asked them what they knew
of the stars, and they pointed up to the sky and said
Paukunnawaw
.
Mather was delighted, because he thought the Indians miraculously knew the
European name for the constellation of the Great Bear. What he didn’t realize
was that they were telling him about the elder god who came from the stars and
devoured them.

“Some Indians
called him a long
unprounounceable
name which means
The-Being-Without-Shape of-the-Estuaries. But I guess the most widespread name
was
Ka
-
tua
-la-
hu
. It’s hard to tell you what it means exactly, just like
those hieroglyphs are hard to translate. The Sioux say it means ‘he who lurks
in the deepest lakes.’ “

Harry said, “I
think I’m going to go for some fresh air. This is like holding a seminar in a
subway train.”

Neil chimed in,
I’ll join you.”

Singing Rock
held out his hand to Professor
Thoren
. “I must leave,
too. We have a crisis on our hands tonight. But please understand how much you
have helped us. When this is finished, we will return, if that is possible, and
I will tell you everything I know of
Ka
-
tua
-la-
hu
. You deserve to know.”

Professor
Thoren
gave a lopsided smile. “From what you say about him,
I don’t know whether I do.”

They shook
hands, and then Singing Rock turned and made his way back along the lighted
tunnel into the darkness of the Petrified Forest.

“Well?” said
Harry, as he emerged.

“It’s much
worse than I thought,” said Singing Rock. “
Ka
-
tua
-la-
hu
was always the most
grotesque and bloodthirsty of the elder gods. He was so feared that his name
outlived the religion itself, and you can still hear some of the coastal
Indians call someone they fear ‘a
ka-tua
.’“

Neil said, “I
don’t really understand. You mean that
Misquamacus
is
going to raise this god?”

Singing Rock
nodded. “That was the second reason he chose this region for the day of the
dark stars, apart from the strength he could draw from the old
Wappo
victory over the white settlers.

Lake
Berryessa
is deep and wide, and an ideal place to call for
a manifestation of
Ka
-
tua
-la-
hu
.

You see, when
Misquamacus
banished him under the waters, he banished him
under all waters, not in any particular spot, so he can raise him from any lake
or reservoir or estuary or whatever he wants. It just has to be a big enough
stretch of water to re-create the greatest and most horrible demon that ever
was.”