THE DAYS Henry spent at the gathering were some of the most anxious he’d ever known. Though Talon had apologized for the way he’d presented Henry to the elders and leaders, he hadn’t apologized for the demands he made, and later, when he’d shown Henry to a place he could camp and explained the setup for food, water, and sanitation, he’d made it quite clear he expected Henry to do as asked.
Henry had been honest. “Talon, it took me years to learn to shift the way you saw me do it, and I learned from people who were my same species, my family. They’d learned from their ancestors. I don’t even know if it’s possible for people outside our line. I suspect it might be, but I don’t know how to teach it, and especially in a short time. And… I need to try to get back to where I was before I ended up here. It’s urgent.”
Talon sighed. “I don’t doubt you. I don’t know how I could help you with that last, but if I can, I will—after you help us. I know you think I’m an ass. I agree. Nevertheless. Get some rest and I’ll see you tomorrow morning.” He turned and started to walk away, then turned back. “And, uh, you will be watched, so stick around, right?”
Henry had been “asked” to join another meeting in the morning. After he, at Talon’s prompting, talked briefly about the shamanic way of shifting, the old snowy owl had spoken at length, summarizing what she and a few other elders had gleaned about the situation for shifters around the world, and boiling it down to a final statement. “Something is disturbing the web of all Earth’s life. Many sensitive species are affected, including humans, though they don’t notice it. But it seems we are more affected than others—perhaps because our numbers are small, but more likely because whatever it is in our genetic code that makes us what we are—shifters—is more vulnerable. It seems perhaps you have a way to bypass that by touching the web itself. You must teach us, Mr. George. It’s simply the right thing to do.”
He couldn’t argue with that.
While he still wanted to get back to his obligation to Han and the Sunlands in Ethra, he had no way of doing that. He had—despite being discreetly tailed by some of Talon’s people—investigated every nook and cranny in the immediate area looking for anything that might be a Portal of Naught. He hadn’t found anything, but then, he didn’t really know what to look for. And, although he resented the fact that he’d essentially been kidnapped and coerced into helping the people, the truth was he also wanted to help them.
Every day, reports came in about the families who hadn’t been able to come here to the Sinlahekin. Those who’d been unable to shift into a complete form were dying, and those who were stuck in either complete shape had drifted away to embrace fully what they were stuck being. But a few more people had come to the gathering on Bastien territory each day, and now it seemed the entire viable population of Earth’s shifters had gathered in this one place.
With one notable exception. The White.
After days and then weeks of Henry’s efforts to coach the most promising students—the young, the wise, the agile—failed, the elders began to speak of trying to call The White.
“Can you call White Buffalo?” the snowy owl asked Henry.
“Uh… I could try, but no. I have no knowledge of how to do that. I’ve never even heard that it can be done. White Buffalo Calf Woman appears when she chooses, and she’s both prophet and prophecy, but she’s busy with her human kin.”
The owl turned to a tiger elder from Cambodia. “Can you call the White Elephant?”
“I don’t believe such a thing would work. The White Elephant is a messenger of joy, not a magician.”
She turned then to a pair of Irish wolves. “Can you call the White Stag?”
“I’m thinkin’ it might be done,” the oldest of the two, a warrior woman if ever there was one, said, “if we were goin’ into battle. For this… well, perhaps, but….”
Then a bear from Hungary cleared his throat. He had been teaching at a Canadian college for a quarter century, and he spoke with hardly a trace of his original accent. “I can call the White Stag, the one known in my country. My parents and grandparents passed down the ritual, but keep in mind, none of us have used it for centuries. I’m sure it will work, but if I do perform the ceremony, we’d best be prepared to move to a new land, for that’s what the White Stag is known to do for Magyar, be they bears, humans, or shapechangers. I’m only assuming, of course, that he would lead all of you too, if you were with me.”
To Henry’s great relief, the elders and leaders of the conclave agreed this was their best chance at survival, so he was off the hook. The great Magyar bear, whose name was Artko Mack, arranged his solitary ritual and invited all the people gathered at the Bastien aerie to keep vigil outside the ceremonial circle, adding their voices as appropriate to his petition for the White Stag’s assistance. The ritual was unimpressive to look at. Dancing around a fire, the bear kept his movements small and his voice quiet. His talismans consisted of water, sigils crafted from twigs, and a sheaf of fresh, new-green branches with tender leaves—birch, hazelnut, wild plum, and alder, one variety to please each of the stag’s four stomachs. For two hours spanning the dusk from daylight to night, Artko spoke, sang, and danced his bobbing dance around the fire. Then he sent all the watchers away, saying he would sleep by the fire inside his circle and must be undisturbed.
In the morning some of Talon’s eagle clan found Artko’s lifeless body next to still-warm embers. The news spread through the gathering like wildfire, and all the people mourned both the bear and their chances at survival, because they thought his death meant all hope was gone. They cremated Artko, heaping on him as much honor as they could manage in their forlorn state.
“What do we do now?” became the question of the day, and nobody had answers. Many of those who were able to travel decided to make their way back to their homes, thinking a cure was as likely to come there as anywhere, and if it didn’t come at least it would be better to die where they and their ancestors had lived.
But Henry had an uneasy feeling that something about Artko’s ritual remained unfinished—or more accurately, something more needed to be done. Could they expect a supernatural being to just show up in their midst?
That isn’t how it usually happens. Revelations always seem to require some wandering in the wilderness.
Though the others seemed content to bide their time, Henry couldn’t shake the idea that someone had to go looking if they expected to meet up with The White. Early on the morning of the fourth day after Artko’s death, he talked himself into chancing a shift to condor shape, and just hoped he wouldn’t be permanently stuck in bird form, or worse, halfway. He had to work at it, but he made the change, and set out to tour the area and see what he could see.
Some eagles followed him, but he knew it was unlikely they’d attempt to stop him. He was bigger than they were, he could fly faster, and his claws were every bit as dangerous as their talons if it came to a fight in the air.
He circled the hidden valley wider and wider, stopped now and then to rest, and some hours later ducked out of sight when he spotted people pointing at him from a parking lot near at the Sinlahekin reserve office. Condors didn’t generally show up this far north, and he didn’t want to bring undue attention that might lead people to the Bastien Clan aerie and the gathering at the hidden plateau. When he emerged from his temporary hiding place, the eagles tailing him had gone.
He flew generally eastward, doing his best to ignore a mounting hunger, until he saw The White.
A huge animal for a stag, he browsed in a stand of alder saplings, his coat dazzling in the morning sun. As Henry circled high overhead, a group of feral dogs approached, growling and baring teeth. The White merely shook his head to show them the enormous arrangement of antlers on his head, and they cowered and then scampered away. Henry flew down to perch on the short snag remains of a lightning-struck fir, and the White Stag turned toward him.
In a single moment, an old man with a white beard and an old style of clothing—leather pants and a shirt brightly embroidered with floral designs—took the stag’s place. Henry knew that both stag and man were illusions that The White used to reveal his presence, and neither was his true form.
The man held his arm out, and Henry flew down to perch on it. The White had no trouble bearing his weight, and no fear of his beak. He touched his forehead to Henry’s, and then set him on the ground. As soon as his feet touched, Henry found himself standing upright in human form.
Except voiceless, like a condor.
“Don’t worry,” The White said. “Your voice is gone only because I do not want you to waste time on needless fumbling thanks and pleas. As you know, I’ve come to help. Gather the people and tell them to meet me where you grew up, at the eastern end of Black Creek Ravine, the place where the battle was fought with the witch of ice.”
Henry opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. He rolled his eyes.
The White laughed, then nodded his head toward Henry. “You may speak,” he said.
Henry cleared his throat as a sort of test, and said, “Thank you. I meant to ask, are you planning to lead the people through that Portal, then? And do you think it will take us to Ethra?”
“If by ‘that Portal’ you mean the road your young friend opened, then no. Not exactly. That way is marred, and I would not chance it. But that is a place where the barriers between planes can be shattered, and I will make another opening—a back door if you will. As for going to Ethra, I do not know the worlds outside this one—my home. But I suppose your destination will be clear when you get to it.”
Henry didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t just what The White said, it was the mischievous grin on his face.
“But,” The White said, “I was once told by a very old man, a wizard by profession, that in order to get where you want to go when you travel the ways between worlds, you must know absolutely where you want to go.” At this he laughed uproariously, and as he did, he began to fade out of his human shape. For a time he seemed an amorphous white image of nothing in particular, and then he began to melt into the shape of the Stag. That creature’s mouth moved as he spoke his final words to Henry. “I’ll wait a week, no more. Bring all who will come, but don’t delay for those who will not, or even those who cannot. My friend, the one you called Artko the Magyar bear, used up the last of his strength to call me. Don’t let that gift be wasted.”