Ayanawatta began to roll up his sleeping mat with the habitual neatness and speed of the outdoorsman. "Well, you know we use wampum in these parts, to remind us of our wisdom and our words." He indicated the intricately worked belt which supported his deerskin leggings. "And this stuff is as open to subtle and imaginative interpretation as the Bible, Joyce or the American Constitution. Sometimes our councils are like a gathering of French postmodernists!"
"Can you take me to my husband?" I was beginning to realize that Ayanawatta was one of those men who took pleasure in the abstract and whose monologues could run for hours if not interrupted.
"Is he with the Kakatanawa?" "I believe so."
"Then I can lead you to them." His voice softened. "I have had no dream to the contrary, at least. Possibly your husband could be or will become the friend of my friend Dawandada, who is also called White Crow." He paused with an expression of apology. "I talk too much and speculate too wildly. One gets used to talking to oneself. I have not had a chance for ordinary human conversation with a reasonably well-educated entity for the last four years. And you, well-
you are a blessing. The best dance I ever danced, I must say. I had expected some laconic demigoddess to complete our trio. I wasn't even sure you were going to be human. The dream told me what to do, not what to expect. There is an ill wind rising against us, and I do not know why. I have had confusing dreams."
"Do you always act according to your dreams?" I was intrigued. This was, after all, my own area of expertise.
"Only after due consideration. And if the appropriate dance and song bring the harmony of joined worlds. I was always of a spiritual disposition." He began carefully cleaning one of his beautifully fashioned hardwood paddles, curved in such a way that they were also war-axes. His bow and quiver of arrows were al-
ready secured in the canoe. He paused. "White Buffalo Woman, I am on a long spiritual journey which began many years ago in the forests of my adopted home in what you know as upper New York. I am bound to link my destiny with others to achieve a great deed, and I am bound not to speak of that part of my destiny. Yet when that deed is done I will at last possess the wisdom and the power I need to speak to the councils of the Nations and begin the final part of my destiny."
"What of the Kakatanawa? Do they join your councils?"
"They are not our brothers. They have their own councils." He had the air of a man trying to hide his dismay at extraordinary political naivete.
"Why do you call me White Buffalo Woman? And why would I go with you when I seek my husband?"
"Because of the myth. It has to be enacted. It is still not made reality. I think our two stories are now the same. They must be. Otherwise there would be dissonances. Your name was one of several offered in the prophecy. Would you prefer me to call you something else?"
"If I have a choice, you can call me the Countess of Bek," I said. In the language we were using this name came out longer than the one he had employed.
He smiled, accepting this as irony. "I trust, Countess, you will accompany me, if only because together we are most likely to find your husband. Can you use a canoe? We can be across the Shining Water and at the mouth of the Roaring River in a day." Again, he seemed to speak with a certain sardonic humor.
For the second time in twenty-four hours, I found myself afloat. Ayanawatta's canoe was a superb instrument of movement, with an almost sentient quality to its responses. It sometimes seemed hardly to touch the water. As we paddled I asked him how far it was to the Kakatanawa village.
"I would not call it a village exactly. Their longhouse lies some distance to the north and west."
"Why have they abducted my husband? Is there no police authority in their territory?"
"I know little about the Kakatanawa. Their customs are not our customs."
"Who are this mysterious tribe? Demons? Cannibals?" He laughed with some embarrassment as his paddle rose and fell in the crystal water. It was impossible not to admire his extraordinarily well-modeled body. "I could be maligning them. You know how folktales exaggerate sometimes. They have no reputation for abducting mortals. Their intentions could easily be benign. I do not say that to reassure you, only to let you know that they have no history of meaning us harm."
I thought I might be assuming too much. "We are still in America?"
"I have another name for the continent. But if you lived after Longfellow, then your time is far in my future."
Such shifts of time were not unusual in the dream-worlds. "Then this is roughly 1550 in the Christian calendar."
He shook his head, and the breeze rippled in the eagle feathers. I realized I had never seen such brilliant colors before. Light sparkled and danced in them. Were the feathers themselves invested with magic?
He paused in his paddling. The canoe continued to skim across the bright water. The smell of pines and rich, damp undergrowth drifted from the distant bank. "Actually it's A.D. 1135, by that calendar. The Norman liberation of Britain began sixty-nine years ago. I think the settlers worked it out on the date of an eclipse. Well, they just picked a later eclipse. They were trying to prove we took the idea of a democratic federation from them."
He laughed and shook his head. "And before them was Leif Ericsson. When I was a boy I came across a Norseman whose colony had been established about a hundred years earlier. You could call him the Last of the Vikings. He was a poor, primitive creature, and most of his tribe had been hunted to death by the Algonquin. To be honest I'd mistaken him for some sort of scrawny bear at first.
"They called this place Wineland. He was bitter as his father and grandfather were bitter. The Ericssons had tricked his ancestors with stories of grapes and endless fields of wheat. What they actually got, of course, was foul weather, hard shrift and an angry native population which thoroughly outnumbered them. They called us 'the screamers' or 'skraelings.' I heard a few captive Norse women and children were adopted by some Cayugas who had survived an epidemic. But that was the last of them."
Though he was inclined to ramble on, he was full of interesting tales and explanations, making up for his years of silence. Now that I knew we sought the Kakatanawa, I devoted myself to finding Ulric as soon as possible. There was a remote possibility that we would arrive before he did, such was the nature of time. But somehow Ayanawatta's endless words had comforted me, and I no longer felt Ulric to be in danger of immediate harm; nor was I so convinced that Prince Gaynor was behind the kidnapping. The mystery, of course, remained, but at least I had an ally with some knowledge of this world.
I reflected on my peculiar luck, which again had brought me into another's dream. I had been attacked by that wind, I was certain. An aerial demon. An elemental. Ayanawatta was supremely confident. No doubt, since this was his final spirit journey and he was back in his familiar realm, he had defeated many obstacles. I had some idea of what the man had already endured. Yet he bore the burden of that experience lightly enough.
A current in the lake took our canoe gently towards the farther shore. Resting, Ayanawatta slid a slender bone flute from his pack. To my surprise he played a subtle, sophisticated melody, high and haunting, which was soon echoed by the surrounding hills and mountains until it seemed a whole orchestra took up the tune. Crowds of herons suddenly rose from the reeds as if to perform their aerial ballet in direct response to the music.