They drifted past a faded mural, cleverly made from tiny chips of glass. It showed a group of the City's long-dead inhabitants bathing in a sunny blue pool. The aliens had long, smooth legs, startlingly human in shape; four stumpy, powerful arms; and a pair of bony crests on their hairless heads. Their skin was a metallic viridian. They showed no recognizable sexual characteristics. They posed carefully, in a composition that spoke to Thinwolf of ease and comfort and contentment.
That night they rested in an inner lagoon of the dead City, moored to an elaborately carved post that angled from the still water. Age had obscured the carving, but to Thinwolf, it looked like a winged fish, rough-scaled, with voluminous trailing fins.
The cold wind shrieked above, tearing through the broken pavilions, but in the lagoon the air rested. The boat lay quietly for the first time in weeks, though the world still swayed and rolled for Thinwolf. His chair meandered from side to side, as he crossed the deck to where the hulk stood, looking off into the dark City.
"Ironhorse," Thinwolf said.
The hulk turned, though Thinwolf's voice was hardly more than a gasp. "John. How are you feeling?"
"Very little worse, actually," Thinwolf said, as though that were a reason to be cheerful. He felt close to death, but his mind seemed clear. "Tell me. What do you ponder, so deeply?"
The hulk smiled, an expression Thinwolf no longer found remarkable. "Nothing too deep, John. But will you tell me something? Those stories you told me, about Coyote — I do not mean the one that happened to you —did you make them up?"
Thinwolf rotated his chair, so that he faced the eroded flying fish. "In a way."
"Yes?"
"Coyote was a mythmaker. I never learned the true stories; not by heart. When I was a historian, I tried never to learn anything I could look up. Why waste memory on trivia? But I knew the sense of them, so I could tell them in my own words. That's how myths are grown."
"I see. Would it be proper, then, for me to tell a story? Since I am a member of your tribe now." The hulk's eyes shone with entreaty.
Thinwolf had believed that his capacity for astonishment had dried up along with his life; it had not. "But you've never heard the true stories."
"Perhaps you have not, either. In any case, I know many stories that seem true to me, and I do have the capacity to dream."
"Truly?"
"If I did not, then you would be unable to dream, after you transfer."
After a time, Thinwolf nodded.
"You are kind," said Ironhorse. "But first we should go below, where you can be more comfortable."
In the salon the hulk touched a hidden switch, and a simulated campfire appeared on the cabin sole, burning with a low glow. Thinwolf could feel the heat through the robes that covered him. "Better," he said. When first the hulk had shown him the fire, he had been amused, but Ironhorse had pointed out that the people of Jaworld had their own pastoral tradition.
The hulk squatted before the fire. It was silent for a long time, as if ordering its thoughts.
Thinwolf lost himself in the fire's red reflections. When finally Ironhorse spoke, Thinwolf jumped, and his heart hesitated for a moment before resuming its slow, tired beat. "This is the story of Coyote and the Chicken House of Death," said Ironhorse.
Long ago, in the Time before Time, Coyote withdrew from the affairs of the People for a time. Coyote did not wish to do this, but his reputation as a meddler and trickster had become so widespread that no one would listen to him anymore, or pay any attention to him. He felt crippled and deserted and less than himself.
Finally, when his hurt became greater than his love for the People, he made a decision. "If the People have decided to forget me, then I will forget them." He bought passage to a faraway system, and began to make a new life for himself.
For all Coyote's flaws, no one could ever accuse him of being weak-willed. When he decided to forget the People, he made a good job of it. He went to mindwash parlors and skullpickers, though these were of limited help, since Coyote did not wish to forget everything. He studied vastly, filling his mind with trivial knowledge, so as to leave less room for his memories of the People. Finally he went out adventuring, for adventurous memories are the strongest of all. He succeeded in purging the People from his mind, eventually. But by then the adventuring had become a habit, and since he could no longer remember why he had begun, he did not know why he should stop.
After many years, Coyote found himself on a new world. It seemed a good world, with a breathable atmosphere and temperate continents, and a well-adapted Terran ecosphere. Great palaces lay scattered over the mountains and forests and fields, but they were all empty and silent and full of bones.
Coyote was puzzled by this mystery. He explored the palaces, and each was more magnificent than the last. Coyote found more treasures than he could ever have carried away. The palaces were of the finest fully automated variety, and they treated him with perfect courtesy, offering him food and wine and soft beds. The only thing they could not do was tell him what had killed their owners.
Coyote has always loved comfort, so he spent a great deal of time in each palace, enjoying the amenities. But each palace was much like the last one, varying only in detail, so that Coyote eventually grew bored. Searching for novelty, he discovered that behind each palace was what appeared to be an empty chicken house. He made his way, through weeds and rusty wire, to one of these and went inside.
It was a magnificent chicken house, built of marble and tile, with gold-plated feed hoppers and silver curlicues supporting the roosts. But there was nothing inside but some broken shells and the smell of death.
The most impressive palace was high on the shoulder of a mighty snowcapped mountain. Coyote visited this palace just before he planned to lift away from the world, saving the best for last.
Though cold winds shouted around the walls and towers and courts, the palace was still warm inside with the presence of its vanished inhabitants, as if they had departed just the hour before Coyote's arrival. A soup still steamed in the palace kitchen, hidden music played in the throne room, mops lay abandoned in the gleaming halls, and when Coyote went into the bedroom of the First Lady of the palace, the bed was still fragrant with the scent of her body.
Unlike all the other palaces, this one contained no bones.
Coyote cursed. "Had I been a little quicker, the mystery would be solved." He never considered that the fate that had overtaken the palace dwellers might have carrried him away; Coyote still believed that he would live forever.
Coyote went out to the chicken house behind this palace, and saw that it was the most beautiful chicken house of all. The feeders were heavy gold, the fixtures platinum, and each roost was set into a niche backed by a large, round stained-glass window. Here also were broken shells, but the smell of death was absent.
Coyote looked at the window behind the first roost. It showed a great bird, high against a black sky that shook with its passage. The bird had a cruel beak and eyes of fire and feathers blue as turquoise. The image touched something in Coyote's damaged memory, and unexpectedly, a name came to him. "Thunderbird," he whispered. Beneath the roost lay a few fragments of shell, thick as pottery, marked with black-on-white patterns.
The next window showed another bird, this with long trailing wings, rising from a pillar of fire. The flame clung to the bird, and it seemed to shriek pain and ecstasy. "Phoenix," Coyote said. Only ashes lay beneath the roost.
The third window showed a mighty feathered serpent, coiled around a mountain that belched purple smoke into a green sky. One of the serpent’s great wings lay across a vast golden trove; the other lay across a river of blood that washed the mountain's foot. "Quetzalcoatl?" The eggshells were gossamer-thin, as if made of the most delicate gold leaf.