The Dark Father fell. Glittering shards of memory followed him into the darkness.
The only light was the fire trailing behind him. The only sound was his screaming rage.
He plummeted through layers of experience, each flavored with the time and place of the generation of the memories — the people of Hollow Hills.
Deeper he fell. Out of the idioms that were the collected lives of the white man. Into the memories of the soil. Into the thoughts of the creator.
Kokumthena.
Grandmother of a people long gone from here.
She created the dirt he felt under his toes. The breeze lifted the smoke of his flames into the sky. The Dark Father stood on ground saturated with the memories of his Shawnee ancestors, and he could feel them crying out to him.
There was no saving them, now. For now was not a when he was interested in. The Dark Father was focused on times yet to be.
He spread his awareness down into the earth. Probed with his mind into the burrows and dens of the noble brothers and sisters that lived beneath. The Groundhog. The Rabbit.
Many more.
Deeper still, then he found the caverns his people had discovered. Mines they had created. Dark hollows in the ground they had worshiped.
He traced his way through the interconnected tunnels until he felt one touched by the hand of the Shadow Man.
This was the point he would attempt his escape. The Shadow Man and his Ghost Brother would take their adopted people through this shaft in Grandmother’s body, dug deep below to expose the riches she had buried there for the discovering.
The Dark Father ignored the voices around him that cried out for vengeance. The ones killed at the hands of the interloper. He drove his fingers into the last shaft to pull him down, and before he submerged himself in the flow of history, he felt the gaze of the Fox upon him. The Trickster.
It followed him down, and when he stood at the bottom of Lady Moon, the sacred well of souls, he couldn’t see the eyes for everything that glittered in the darkness.
Silver and turquoise. Coins from the pockets of those tossed into the dark. Shining buttons. The glint of a gold tooth in the polished skull of another unfortunate.
Many hands above him was the opening in the woods where he had thrown the victims of his wrath to the bottom.
After a speech full of pretension and artifice.
Before he had gained the knowledge and power of an entire people. Filtered through the past of a much more dignified race. HIS race.
The Thunderbirds fought the Great Horned Serpent in these hills. Opened the doorway to heaven itself. But his people didn’t get the chance to ascend, for another usurped their place.
He would call on the spirit of the serpent, slumbering in the lake above the land, in the north where he waited for the final judgment of a people no longer there to give it.
The Dark Father would beseech the serpent to flood the tunnels, and as they filled, he would step through the layers of memory until he was abreast with the Shadow Man. Then he would force the memories to be one.
These people would not escape, for the Dark Father would make sure the door was closed to them.
After he had walked through into the wider world.
He felt the hand of the Supreme Being in the working of his mind.
The blessing of the universe.
He felt the gaze of Trickster Fox, but he ignored it. For what could a fox do to a wolf?
Carter did not feel brave. He felt tired and sad.
Sad Carter heard the sounds of grief above him, louder than the sound of the small Carter in his chest — the little raccoon that danced at a lightning pace on his ribs.
Sad Carter lifted his head, and the women ran to the one whose sound was Bobby.
Sad Carter knew the sounds of their names now. Andrea, Richard’s mate. And Jericka, Bobby’s mate.
Sad Carter flopped onto his side to catch his breath. He had scampered from the hyenas that had filled his home — intruders that came to destroy him and his family.
The warm ice above had been as slick as always, and it had almost cost Sad Carter his sad life.
The hyenas had no trouble on the warm ice. Their claws held more firmly than his. Perhaps it was the fire in their breath. It melted the warm ice until they could get purchase.
Sad Carter smelled Bobby’s blood, a scent that would bring predators. The hyenas would become frenzied, but they were in the Above. Sad Carter was in the Below.
There was no Brave Carter here. He had run from the hyenas the same as Sad Carter. Smart Carter, then?
He did not think so.
He twisted his neck to look up into the dark of the flat hills that rose to the Above. Bobby’s blood dripped into a splatting puddle next to him. The smell burned his eyes.
Sad Carter could not fool himself. It was the tears that burned his eyes. He cried for his friend. For his mate who would have to live without him. For his friends who had fought beside him.
Cried for himself.
His love for these humans had grown like a rare flower in the forest. One that bloomed once in a hundred raccoon lifetimes.
He went to bed as a closed bud on a forgotten bush. The next morning, he was turned to the sun, his petals soaking in the heat.
New and fascinating.
Sad Carter had a deeper understanding of the world around him, for he had more feelings that defined that world.
He was becoming more than he was, but he was afraid he would not have a family to share it with much longer.
Movement flashed at the edge of his vision. Sad Carter thought the hyenas had found their way into the Below.
But it was Jerry. Where before he had no scent, the odor of cooking meat and sulfur now clung to him. Over Jerry’s shoulder, in the haze of distance, was the Dark Father.
The little raccoon in Sad Carter’s chest squealed in terror and doubled his efforts to escape. Sad Carter did not think there was enough air for them both.
Jerry jumped into the Below. His face was wide with fear and panic.
The Dark Father was much closer than he had first appeared.
With Jerry busy overhead, Sad Carter rose to his feet. Kept his nose to the floor. Pulled the cool, moist air into his nose.
Jerry screamed noises of anger. Words beyond Sad Carter’s ability to understand, yet he still knew what he meant.
Jerry charged by with Bobby in his arms. Back into the tunnel of memory, but it was too late. The Dark Father had caught them.
Jerry turned, and Sad Carter thought he looked into his eyes. A pleading message Sad Carter still could not understand.
Jerry jumped, then the tunnel of memory quivered.
Sad Carter realized what Jerry was doing.
And that spurred on Angry Carter. His exhaustion fell away in the fire that consumed the peaceful forest in his mind. His blood flowed hot. His vision narrowed. He wanted to fight.
Angry Carter would not let them get away.
He charged through the feet of the women as they raced toward the tunnel, but they were not as fast as Angry Carter.
He zipped into the corridor of crystal as Jerry’s knees hit the floor, then the memory exploded.
Angry Carter twisted in the air. Swam in water too thin to provide movement. But his destination was easy to see. Even as he tumbled out of Jerry’s mind and into another.
The Dark Father left a burning trail as he fell. Angry Carter directed his thought to it, and he found himself surrounded by stench and heat.
Deeper still they fell. Angry Carter was at the Dark Father’s feet. At the bottom of a well that smelled like the earth of his home.
Clever Carter was pleased with himself, for he had passed through the thoughts of the Dark Father on their way into the memories of the past, and he now knew what to do.
Then Clever Brave Carter crept back into the shadows of Lady Moon and waited for his moment.