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The Mannegishi sang to the hill that we stood beside.
It wasn’t a pretty song.
It sounded a lot like their language but only worse. A whole lot worse. It sounded like a murder of angry crows cursing at broken glass in the middle of a cymbal solo on top of the rustiest tin roof in the universe.
Loud, nasty and cracked in two where the pieces ought to fit.
I could see a raven’s head forming in the mountain. I could see the big old black feathered cowl and the big old jowl in the throat and I could see a pair of cold eyes like flat black river stones. At first it looked as if the head was made out of mountain and trees and shadow but then as the Mannegishi continued their long and ugly singing it began to look as if the mountain was made out of raven.
The sunlight streaming down over my shoulder should have felt warm and comforting but I shivered just the same.
The beak of the raven in the mountain opened like a welcoming doorway and I could see a cave hiding inside of the gaping beak.
Several of the Mannegishi escorted Coyote into the cave. Coyote didn’t seem to want to fight them. I guess those raven feathers he was chewing on had somehow taken all of the fight out of him – even after he had his mouth stitched shut with a bone needle.
Another couple of Mannegishi carried Bigfoot’s head into the cave.
Then they came for me.
“Fine,” I said. “Just fine.”
Only it wasn’t fine.
I felt like I was caught in one of those crazy nasty dreams that you sometimes have. You know that kind of dream where you can’t stop yourself from doing something no matter how stupid or bad or dangerous that something really was.
I should have run - but I just walked along, hanging onto one of the Mannegishi’s extended hand like I was three years old and hanging onto my Mom’s hand while she walked me safely across a busy intersection.
I wondered to myself what was going to happen in the cave.
Was the cave going to chew us up and eat us?
I supposed it might have. The cave kind of looked like a big old wide-open mouth, all hungry and ready chew, and after seeing lake dragons and giant islands and a birch tree Spirit Bear I was just about ready to believe that anything was possible.
I walked inside.
I wondered to myself what the Raven really wanted with Warren’s cocoon.
It wasn’t like the Warren cocoon was all that pretty to look at.
I supposed he could have used the Warren cocoon as a throw cushion or maybe to stop up a leak in a plaster wall.
I wondered to myself if Old Shuck had got away from the pursuing Mannegishi hunters.
I hoped that he had.
I wondered all of these things while I walked into the Cave of Tears but mostly I just wondered if I was ever going to walk out of this cave alive again.
And then the Mannegishi sang their ugly song one more time and the cave closed its mouth leaving me and a sewed-up Coyote and Bigfoot’s decapitated head huddled alone together in the darkness of the Cave of Tears.
It wasn’t exactly a comfortable sort of situation.
I would like to tell you that I was brave and courageous about the whole thing - but a fellow’s last words on earth probably ought not to be a lie.