the woods as the fd

the woods as the fd

I saw a werewolf drinking a piiia colada at Trader His hair was perfect!

Amy stared in wonder as Claws, happy to be alive, half shouted, half sang as the speeding Excel laid down some miles between them and the fomori: Arooo!

Werewolves of London.

Arooo!

“Arooo! Arooo!” Chottle imitated perfectly.

Sometimes he even hit it right on the beat.

Having shredded his left arm in an effort to more quickly free himelffrom the fdh door, Stinton staggered out onto the road. The moans of the damned rose from the woods as the fd collected themselves behind him.

Black w o r n crawled from his bleeding skin and began stitching the torn muscles.

It would be a simple matter to track them now. With the metis so badly wounded, they’d have to return to the legendary Sept of the Hungry Flower for help-finally exposing the location of that rare cache of power. But even that wouldn’t be nearly as valuable to the Great One as turning young Amy.

He trotted over to his own parked car. But before he could unlock the door, an intentional rustling made him turn. Smelling dog, Stinton grinned broadly.

“Another Garou! The evening is lousy with them!” he said with a beatific smile. Turning to face his new guest, his eyes filled with recognition. Even in the deep shadows it was difficult far the tau figure to hide his perfect, argent coat.

Vic’s *** “We know you. Is there something we cun offer you?

“No thanks,” the Silver Fang said.

Stinton felt a pinch at his neck and found himself sturing at some tenibly familiar shoes. With his foot, Army rokd the disembodied had over and stared down into the dying eyes.

Anything at all?” Stinton asked.

“I already know what I want.”

The cigarette shouId be conceived not as a product but as a package. The product is nicotine. Think of the cigarette pack as a storage container for a day’s supply of nicotine. . . .Think of the cigarette as the dispenser for a dose unit ofnicotine.. . .Smoke is beyond question the most optimized vehick of nicotine and the cigarette the most optimized dispenser of smoke.

-Philip Morris, 1972 Sees the Wind held the vial with Amy’s sample almost up against his right eye, as if the ebon organic orb were a microscope and by so doing he could see every molecule in the liquid.

“Nicotine, sure, and lots of it. Propylene Glyco, corn syrup, a bit of chocolate,” he muttered almost as if speaking to himself.

When Amy furrowed her brow, the elder said, “That’s no surprise. Some tobacco companies use chocolate and sugar to make the taste more appealing to kids.”

“Ah, I know some grownups who like chocolate, too,” Fits the Pieces reminded him, rolling an unlit cigarette back and forth in his mouth.

The Excel’s arrival at the small clearing was met by the same group that had been there the first night.

They were all sitting silently around the bonfire, as if waiting, when the car pulled up. Amy somehow knew they hadn’t simply gathered €or gossip on her first date, and in fact, no one had so much as mentioned Peter’s name.

The old man’s nostrils suddenly recoiled and he waved everyone to silence. “Wait, here it is ...’I he said.

Sees the Wind swirled the small vial and began chanting. After a few moments, the liquid seemed to expand and then separate. A thin layer, mottled olive in color, rose to the surface.

Kathy Bandilack whispered to Claws and Amy: “From what I’ve been able to learn, only a limited run of the cigarettes was being tainted. The mbesmen who made the deal knew nothing about it. They’ll be furious when I tell them tomorrow. Stinton probably planned to have these ‘special packs’ given to various important people. Over time, smoking them would have corrupted most humans from the inside out.”

Hearing that, Fits the Pieces pulled the cigarette from his mouth, tossed it to the ground and crushed it.

Still chanting, faster now, Sees the Wind started to bow and raise his head in a ceremonial gesture.

As he did, in a practiced motion, he reached his free hand into one of the small pouches he wore, withdrew a pinch of powder and sprinkled it in the air around the vial. Though the powder did not enter the vial, the green portion of the liquid frothed, bubbled and rose to the rim. All at once, Sees the Wind fell silent. In response, the liquid dropped, and its entirety became clear, like water. As a final flourish, he knocked it back with a gulp.

“Hm! Managed to save some of the chocolate.

Tasty,” he said, raising his eyebrows and smacking his wrinkled lips in appreciation.

Z P U&M “Do you mock us?” Claws snapped. The weight of strange events, long hot days and near escapes had finally taken their toll on the warrior, and he was ready to rip out some throats.

Sees the Wind’s response was utterly submissive: “NO. I thank your pack for revealing this enemy, and apologize for the deception.”

“Deception?” Amy said.

“Well, for starters, this isn’t the Sept of the Hungry Flower,” Kathy Bandilack said, stepping up.

“Its true location and the cache of powerful fetishes and records it holds has been kept secret from you.

It is not even in Nebraska.”

Amy, her disappointment overshadowed by relief, asked, “Why?”

“Because I knew what the Wyrm would ask of you, but did not know what you would say,” Sees the Wind explained. “When you throw a shadow up in front of yourself, you conceal both the bad and the good. You knew your refusal to tell of the destruction of Greyrock made you seem tainted, guilty. Many Wendigo wished to capture you, force the information from you and then kill you. Only the swift intervention of several Uktena elders delayed your fate at their hands. It was agreed that for a time, you would be left to me.”

“We’ve felt as if we were being watched, from the moment I first did not tell the tale,” Amy said.

“You were. By the Wendigo. By the Uktena. By the Wyrm. The creature you fought in the shape of a bear was a Bane that had followed you for days, having caught a familiar scent of corruption. It was terribly crowded around your pack when I first visited your dreams. Your spirit was complicated, confused, in many places at once, difficult to understand, difficult to help. Then I caught a whiff of my own secret shame upon you. The thing you saw in the cigarette factory, stretching itself to break its bonds, is one I myself trapped thirty years ago, Kwakiuktl.

Among its terrible powers is the ability to shift reality itself.”

“A Nexus Crawler?” Claws whispered.

“Once he could have been called that, but Kwakiuktl used his power to reshape himself into something even more horrible. Three decades ago, I fought him in Oregon. My own mentor, Stokes the Flame, threw himself at the creature, sacrificing himself just to allow me the twenty seconds to complete the binding. At the very moment I finished the rite, the creature shifted reality-and vanished.

Though I knew he was trapped, I no longer knew where he was. And I was responsible for him. Since that day he has lived in the back of my mind, burdening my spirit with a tale I dare not share. Now he had reappeared, connected, somehow, to you. So I watched and waited. Then word came from the Wendigo pack sent to explore the remains of Greyrock. They’d found signs of a human survivor and tracked him back to Washington. His scent was picked up by our own Uktena scouts, who followed him here, to Nebraska, where, until now, the trail grew cold.”

“And you brought us here, built this fake sept, to draw him out,” Claws said.

“Yes. Only now do I know that the smell of Kwakiuktl did not come from you or from any of your pack, and that my true enemy waits in Dekane,” he explained.

Sees the Wind could not help but smile at the thought. “Trapped beneath a daycare center. No wonder I could not see him. The laughter of the children hid him, but it must also have driven him mad.”

“But what about your nephew? You knowingly put him in danger?” Amy asked.

“Peter? That rapscallion?” Sees the Wind laughed. He called out toward the curtain of broken glass. “Peter! Peter! Come here, will you?”

Sees the Wind hunched slightly and walked in place. His arm lifted as if to draw an invisible curtain.

As he did, the teen emerged.

“Yes, Great Uncle?” he said, but Sees the Wind’s lips moved as well.

Sees the Wind opened a small pouch and pointed to the darkness inside it.

“l’m done with you for now, little shadow. Back inside!”

“Yes, Great Uncle! Don’t hesitate to call if you need me again!” Peter said. With that, he walked over, placed his foot in the tiny pouch, and began forcing himself inside it. Within a minute, he was gone.

“Kwakiuktl is not the only one who can play with reality,” Sees the Wind said with a chuckle. A few of the others laughed as well. Amy shook her head and looked down, but Claws was not so submissive.

“This reeks of Wyrm-taint, old man!” Claws sneered.

Sees the Wind shook his head. “I merely asked a spirit to cast my reflection, Not unlike the mirage of the city you sought.”

“But you used us!” Claws shouted, on the verge of rage. “You put us in the path of death and didn’t even give us the respect to tell us why!”

He rose, shifted to Crinos and began snarling at the old man. Sees the Wind was unimpressed.

“Life is long, Claws with Teeth, and history is written by the winners. Perhaps one day it will be said that you used us. That is why so much depends on the tales that are told. So much depends on who tells the tales, who sings the songs.” He walked over to Amy, put his hand beneath her chin and raised her head so they could see eye to eye.

“We are not so different, you and I. We both carried secrets, we both felt ashamed, we are both Uktena,” he said softly.

“Is Kwakiuktl responsible for my sadness?” Amy asked.

“Attracted to it, more likely. And to the secrets you sought.”

“Then I don’t know why I fight,” Amy whispered sadly.

The old man stood and shook his head. “Yes, you do. Amy, what is your totem?”

She met his ebony eyes with a furrowed brow.

“I don’t know.”

Sees the Wind stretched out his arms with open palms. As he stretched, he shifted to Crinos, but even that form showed his age, fur streaked with broad bands of white and gray, his lupine face deeply wrinkled and tired. His full eight feet swayed, as if the bearer’s soul had but a tenuous grasp on the body it lived in. Like a puppet on a string, he lowered himself onto his knees beside Amy and rubbed her back with his still-strong hand.

It took a while before she realized this grand gesture of supplication was meant for her. In the High Tongue, he whispered, for her ears alone, “I go to face an old foe for what may be the last time. Will you join me, songkeeper?”

Amy glanced at Claws.

“It’s your call. I follow you.”

Her eyes danced briefly from face to face, then “Our efforts are blessed,” Sees the Wind said.

“So all we have to do is head on over and fix those binding runes, right?” Claws said hopefully.

Sees the Wind didn’t answer.

“We will talk on the way. First, Kathy Bandilack will quickly tend your wounds and make you ready for the journey.”

Kathy led the trio off toward a quiet area. As soon as they were out of earshot, Mountainside turned to Sees the Wind and said, “She may have refused the Wynn this time, but remember her wild words the first time she was here. That bone-sphere is like a drug.

She’s still a danger.” Then he added, laughing, “Imagine! Trying to sing the Wyrm to health!”

Sees the Wind cackled in response, “Yes! And you know the redly funny thing?”

The old man turned slowly and somberly toward his packmate, careful to enunciate each word so that his feelings on the subject were plain. she simply nodded.

“She may be right.”

How can the spirit of the earth like the White man?. . .Everywhere the White man has touched it, it is sore.

-Wintu Woman, nineteenth century With time crucial, the party traveled in the Umbra, where Sees the Wind could use his great experience in the Ghost World to cut the travel time to a third. Having in her journeys entered the shadow world often, Amy had seen everything from the spirits of city streets to suburbs and Wilderness areas.

In cities, the souls of old buildings would sometimes warp into earlier versions of themselves, revealing their history. In the wilderness, the souls of the flora and fauna, and the creatures that tended them, abounded. But here, strangely, there was little difference between one world and the other. On the horizon, she spotted a spectral stagecoach rolling along, carrying with it what seemed the ghosts of the Weaver’s Spiders. Half an hour later in a wheat field, she heard the endless stalks of grain sing a single, shrill, monotonous note. But there wasn’t much more.

As usual, Amy took a spot between the recovered Chottle and Claws, but en route, she began to wonder about the rest of Sees the Wind’s packmates. Kathy Bandilack, proud, competent and severe, in particular fascinated her, so she slowed up a bit and began walking next to her.

“Thank you for healing Chottle,” Amy said, smiling.

Bandilack didn’t bother to turn as she answered.

“I did it because it is what Sees the Wind “You don’t like us much,” Amy said.

“The first time you were here, we mocked you.

But you did not rage. Now you learn we lied to you because we feared your weakness, and though I can see the hurt in your eyes, still you do not rage. I want to know,. . .” she said, but then her voice trailed off as she clicked her tongue in self-annoyance. ‘What?” Amy asked.

For a moment, Bandilack let the silence hang, and weighed Amy with her eyes.

“Where is your rage?” she finally asked, half in disgust, half in genuine curiosity. “Why didn’t you stand up for yourself in the face of those insults? Why did you stop your warrior from defending his pack?”

“Don’t you think we have better things ahead to fightthan each other?” Amy asked.

“Of course, but I watched you. I smelled you. Your blood didn’t even boil. It’s not even boiling now. The songkeepers I know have a harder time controlling themselves than any other auspice. It’s as if you’re tainted somehow, if not from the Wyrm than certainly from something. Even the mourning Garou, even those who fall to Harano, scream and wail their despair at sister Luna with the full force of their being. But you, it’s as if you’re unclean. How can you s d to be like that?”

Amy was about to give her a long-winded answer about how she had always tried to see the balance in things, how she was proud to be able to curb her tongue, but then her memory flitted back to her First requested,” she answered grimly.

Change, during a rape assault. Even then, rather than attack her assailant, she just stopped, frozen in the alley, listening to her jackhammer heart, watching her strange new form as if she weren’t quite in her body. It was a distance made greater by the death of the Greyrock Wendigo, but a distance that had always been there. Was she tainted somehow, even now working for Weaver or Wyrm? She wanted to defend herself. Bandilack wanted her to defend herself. Instead, grimly, she said bluntly, “I don’t know. I’ve never had any choice.”

Having learned nothing about Sees the Wind’s packmates and too much about herself, she walked back up ahead to keep pace with Claws and Chottle.

“Making friends?” Claws asked.

“No. Apparently my reputation precedes me,”

“They’ll get over it,” he said, trying to cheer her.

“Cada cabelo faz sua sombra na tewa,” Amy muttered in Portuguese. “Every hair casts its own shadow on the ground.”

She was grateful when, nearing the site of the building, Sees the Wind motioned for them to hide behind a small hill. He pointed his lean finger at the area surrounding the cigarette factory’s spirit and spoke in a low voice. “Kwakiuktl and his prison punched a hole in the membrane that separates earth from the Umbra. All manner of Bane has been drawn to it, but none dare pass while Kwakiuktl remains.

Even they fear him,” he said.

“I don’t see anything,” Amy said. “And there was nothing around when I first visited the Umbra here.” she answered.

“They hid from you, hoping you’d release Kwakiuktl for them. Look carefully, among the shapes, behind the webs, between the shades of color.”

At first, she saw nothing, but then she spotted a dark figure crouching just out of sight, its color and texture providing camouflage. Then she noticed two more, then three. With a gasp she realized there must be sixty Scrags of various shapes and sizes and at least five Psychomachiae hiding near the cigarette factory, waiting for the great Nexus Crawler to free itself.

“If it’s plugging up the hole, why not just leave it where it is?” Claws said.

“I cannot. The location is now too tainted to hold my old magics for long.”

Indeed, the entire building was covered with an odd blur, and “breathin$ much in the same way Amy had seen earlier. With every strain, the spirit terrain stretched, cracked and oozed that sickly green. One such vein on the far wall blistered, sending droplets of foul bile cascading into the spirit alley, where they landed with a hiss. ‘We must hurry. Back to the earth. The tear must be sealed there.”

Almost simultaneously, they slipped into what some might call the real world. Once there, Amy felt some peculiar trash at her feet that hadn’t been in the Umbra. Without looking, she kicked it out of the way. Its nature obscured by shadow, it rolled like a lopsided ball. Thinking nothing of it, she made herself a silent promise not to use the sphere in this battle. On the one hand, if it did no more than drug her, it might somehow dull her senses to the fight.

On the other, if it was truly an item of power, she dare not reveal it, lest it fall to Stinton, Kwakiuktl or any other minion of the Wyrm. The promise made, she waited for a command from Sees the Wind.

Instead, Claws tapped her on the shoulder.

“Uh, Amy? Look down, will you?”

Amy gasped and jumped backward, realizing what she had kicked: a human head. Looking closer, she said, with equal surprise, “That’s Stinton!”

Mountainside crouched by the head, poked it with a stick and sniffed. ‘‘Cut with a klaive,” Mountainside said. Turning to Sees the Wind, he added, more than a little impressed, “One stroke. Nice and clean.”

“een.. .een.. .een,. . .” Chottle said.

“We are not alone,” Sees the Wind said, “but our ally does not wish to show himself. I do not have the patience to wonder why.”

He turned back toward the building. The dim green glow previously visible only from the Umbra could now be seen here as well. Sees the Wind hunched his back and stretched his arms as if imitating a bird in flight. He whispered a few words, and a black raven flew down from the sky, landed on the windowsill and peered inside. Eyes closed, Sees the Wind shook his head. “Kwakiuktl is all but free.

I will not be able to bind him again. I must kill him.

It will take several years, but I will do it. Alone.”

As the old man straightened and opened his eyes, the bird flew off. His packmates’ protests folded over one another in exasperated outbursts.

“You cannot!”

“We live and die as one!”

“Are you nuts?“ zM2 U # M Sees the Wind shushed them. “Foolish children!

The battle to seal the rift will probably kill us all!”

He waved everyone close together, grabbed the stick from Mountainside and used it to scratch out a rectangle in the dirt. “This is the building,” he said.

Then he took the disembodied head in both hands and plopped it in the center of the rectangle, saying, “And this is Kwakiuktl, only much prettier.

The moment he sees me, he will grow angry and gain the extra strength he needs to be free. The longer I can conceal my presence from him, the better. So, I will become invisible.”

Making a circle of Xs in the ground, he continued: “You will all surround me as I enter. When we are close enough, I will begin a ritual to call the necessary spirits to heal the rift in the Gauntlet. But to complete it, I must be seen-and he will break free. You must keep him from me until the spell is complete. Once the rift begins to seal, he and I will face each other again. Do not fear for me or try to follow, for at that moment your real battle begins. It will take time for the proper spirits to seal this gash, and in that time all manner of Bane, no longer needing human host, will make its way through to the earth. They must be stopped. And then, whoever survives, if any, must ensure that this place is cleansed.”

When he saw that everyone understood, Sees the Wind pulled some powder from one of his many pouches and began chanting. Under Luna’s glow he was tinged with white and blue, but as he chanted, even these cool colors faded to gray. The texture of his clothing and skin began to smooth until his very shape became more and more abstract. Its nowunfamiliar lines folded into each other until he disappeared completely. A calm, disembodied voice explained that while he was invisible he would have to move slowly to retain the magic. The Garou circled the spot where he last stood. Even Chottle took a place, with some help from Claws.

Amy felt a hand on her shoulder. Sees the Wind leaned forward and whispered in her ear, “Now, songkeeper, you will see with your own eyes how Kwakiuktl writes with the world.”

Slowly, solemnly, as if in ritual procession, the group drew its weapons and made its way through the hole Claws had left with the bulldozer. The fomori Stinton had previously commanded lay about the comers of the room like listless extras from a low-budget zombie film. They shuffled when the Garou entered, but made no move to approach, tom between a desire to do them harm and a greater fear of what was trapped here. The concrete floor had new, spider-web cracks in it, the source of the green glow. Also now visible was a series of sigils carved in the midst of the pattern. But their shape was deteriorating at the edges, their very form giving way.

Satisfied he was close enough, Sees the Wind chanted rhythmically, slowly at first, but then faster and faster. Amy caught a whiff of some odd herbs in the air and realized the shaman had sprinkled them as part of his invocation. For a moment, she felt silly, as if on some Halloween quest, surrounded by children in costume-but the sound of the old man’s voice, even when so soft it was barely audible, carried with it such energy and passion that the solemnity of the moment hit home. It reminded her, however briefly, of the sound her sphere made-rich, enchanting, with edges that seemed to trace the outlines of the world before trailing off into forever.

His droning grew louder, his syllables harsher, percussive, as if the sounds themselves were driving stitches into either edge of the ethereal gap.

Bandilack, Fits the Pieces and Mountainside tensed.

Seeing this, Amy and Claws did likewise. Amy heard the old man inhale sharply, then shout. The exhale that accompanied this strident appeal to Gaia’s ephemeral helpers seemed to suck all the color and shape back into his form. He was visible again, but, eyes closed, hands spread, he was so intent on what he was doing, he didn’t seem to notice. As his hands rushed together and clapped, the floor rattled. Sees the Wind spoke faster and faster, the individual consonants he uttered meshing into a blur. He stamped his feet and flapped his elbows in a hurried dance.

A low droning filled the room. The hair on Amy’s back stood up.

“It’s laughing. It sees the old man,” Bandilack said.

The concrete floor began to breathe, in and out, up and down, as the doors and windows had in the Umbra. The sigils stretched, swelled and began to lose its shape. As both the strange breathiig and Sees the Wind’s dance reached a frenzy, the thirty-year-old writing crumbled to the point where it looked more like an accident of dripping paint than the design of a practiced hand.

Then the floor shattered completely.

A great multisectioned, black-shelled insect, Kwakiuktl threw off the shackles of reality, rose fullbodied from the breach and at once set to work making manifest the tortured dreams of its unknowable mind. Below the sectioned shell, scores of flailing tentacles spread out into the room, a giant, grim, fanged mouth and a single yellow eye at their center.

“Sweet Gaia!” Claws said. “What are we supposed to do against that?”

“Para todo hay remedio si TU) es para la muerte!”

Amy said, then quickly translated for the benefit of her companions: “There’s a cure for everything except death.”

Claws, Bandilack and Mountainside instantly shifted to Crinos and positioned themselves between Kwakiuktl and Sees the Wind. Chottle shuffled along with them. Fits the Pieces waved his hands and clasped them, intertwining his fingers as he prepared to call upon the help of some spirit. It was only as one of her fetish arrows glanced off the thing’s thick armor plate that Amy realized she’d fired it at all.

A flash of green light erupted from the horrid central eye, spreading out in a series of concentric circles. All at once everything seemed blurry and distant. Amy recognized it immediately as a minor distortion, a nuisance at best. With each passing effort, its influence on reality would grow more far reaching.

She let fly a second arrow, this time aimed at the fleshy area near the eye. A satisfied rush washed over her as she saw it penetrate the skin. As the spirit within the arrow spread outward, a growing wound erupted, oozing black liquid. Her excitement was short lived, however, as a series of tentacles careened across the floor toward her. She soon found herself leaping and rolling out of their way, unable to stand let alone get another clear shot. A second wave of energy made things even blurrier.

With the long, black tentacles able to work their way around any obstacle, Claws and Bandilack, having apparently consulted with Mountainside, moved forward. Swinging their blades, they tried to clear a path toward the central body, knocking and slashing the vile arms as they came. Then, all at once, with another blast from the eye, the very concrete beneath them changed to liquid and they began to sink. Before he went under, Claws caught one of the tentacles and pulled himself free. Then he lifted Bandilack. Clinging to the creature’s arms, they continued their attack.

Mountainside, meanwhile, made his way to the top of a pile of crates that had remained solid, if not secure. With a powerful leap, he launched himself toward the eye. As a human, his muscled arms made him look top heavy, almost comical, but in Crinos the same arms seemed impossible for the world. Using their strength, Mountainside grabbed a hold of the thing’s eye and drove his head toward it, mouth open wide. He steeled himself against whatever he would taste, bit down and clamped his mouth shut. With the strength of will and body control taught him by a wolf-spirit, his mouth would not open again until Mountainside desired it, even if he died.

The bite had an immediate effect. Kwakiuktl’s entire body rippled as its hundred tentacles all raced at once toward the source of the pain. His mouth still firmly clamped, Mountainside raised his powerful arms and ripped into the bilious flesh on either side, widening and lengthening the wound his teeth began.

Another ripple of energy flashed from the heart of the beast, hitting Mountainside directly, filling him with green light before cascading across the room. At first there seemed to be no effect.

Mountainside raised both hands to strike again, his thick arms poised like trees. Then, all at once, a wave from the creature hit him and his form shifted shape and substance. His thick fur seared into nothing in a line across his body as the wave passed. Then his flesh began to boil and melt away. But still the thick cartilage in his Crinos jaws kept his teeth clamped.

Then his bones began to vanish, each folding in on itself with sickening pops and cracks. Finally, for a moment, all that was left was his jaw until even it, clenched tight in the final moments of its existence, vanished.

Bandilack howled. A deep shiver went through the others. Eyes rolling into the back of her head, without even making an effort to contain herself, Bandilack abandoned herself to rage. Berserk, she tore at whatever was near, accidentally knocking Claws back in the process. Another burst from Kwakiuktl, and not only did the monster’s wounds heal and lost arms regenerate, there were now four times as many tentacles.

Fits the Pieces, hands still clasped, about to finish his spirit call, didn’t notice the change in Kwakiuktl until it was too late. Before he could move, tentacles had wrapped themselves tightly about all his limbs.

As Fits the Pieces rose into the air, Claws rolled onto his feet, raced over and started slashing away at the base of the tentacles that gripped his fellow Garou.

He quickly hacked through two, but that was not enough. In one swift contraction of the alien exoskeleton, Fits the Pieces was sundered into six different sections, his last howl cut off as his vocal chords separated from his lungs.

Amy realized she’d lost track of Chottle.

Scanning the room, she spotted him nearly pressed against the wall, wrapping himself around one of the tentacles. Before she could determine who was winning, she spotted another tentacle rising up behind an unaware Bandilack. Amy notched an arrow and hit it dead on, sneering a bit as it shriveled in a pulpy husk. Though Amy knew it unlikely, given her berserk rage, she thought the powerful woman gave her an approving nod before going back to slashing at everything that moved. Claws, meanwhile, was taking a different approach, grabbing and holding onto as many of the swirling arms as he could-hoping to sever them off a batch at a time.

Just when it seemed impossible to speak or dance any faster, Sees the Wind did. Individual sounds and single moves in the dance were no longer discemable.

A few more seconds was all he would need, just as it had been thirty years ago, with a different pack and a different spell. Sees the Wind’s lips formed to utter the last syllable of the healing invocation that would seal the bleeding wound between worlds. He would have to say it four times, then he was done.

“Ah‘n!” he shouted.

But then one of Kwakiuktl’s tentacles broke free from Claws’ grasp and dove straight into the old man’s open mouth, cutting off the final sounds. Sees the Wind’s eyes opened wide as he tried to breathe.

In an instant, he was lifted by his mouth into the air, where he dangled helplessly. The old man shifted to Crinos and with one swipe of his claws slashed through the tentacle in his mouth.

He fell to the floor in a cloud of dust, pulling pieces of the severed tentacle from his mouth. With growing anger, he threw the pulpy chunks back at the beast, but one was firmly lodged deep in his throat and would not move. The old man coughed and choked, desperately trying to clear his windpipe and complete the spell. As he twisted and tried to force his fingers farther down his own throat, in spite of his years of experience, his frustration grew into anger, and an exploding rage overtook the elder. A mad beast, no longer able to speak at all, he ran, rolled, leapt and dived onto what must have been the thing’s back, then drove both his claws through its armor, up to the palms of each hand, into the thick flesh.

Though the creature had no visible mouth, the building shook from an unearthly din. Kwakiuktl reared, rushing high into the tin roof, as if it were some strange whale that swam in earth rather than sea. Sees the Wind held on tight, digging his hands deeper into the corrupt flesh. With another howl, the creature dove back down into the breach, into the Umbra, carrying Sees the Wind with him.

The building rattled and sighed-r was it the earth?-and there before the onlookers was a gaping hole in reality. Peering through, Amy could see the two old foes. Johnny Sees the Wind looked like a cowboy riding a bucking bronco that was half mountain, half octopus. The duo vanished into the distance of the Umbra.

Amy, Claws and Bandilack looked at each other, panting. Chottle, pressed almost flat against the far wall, had been muttering something softly to himself, over and over, but Amy couldn’t make out what it was. Amy was about to speak, but the tiny slice of silence was shattered by a rush of Banes as they raced for the gaping hole. With no spell to heal the breach, if they could quickly secure both sides, the Wyrmcreatures knew they would have a beachhead with which to begin Armageddon. Scrags began to flood the building. The fomori rose to help their spiritual cousins.

Seeing the mass of creatures emerge from the pit, a stiI1-muttering Chottle rolled in an effort to make it to the exit. Though Amy was disappointed that he did not fight, she hoped he had at least a chance for survival.

Claws, meanwhile, entertained no such illusions.

Spreading his legs akimbo for better balance, he waited for the rush to reach him. He kicked one and slashed at another. Amy shifted to Crinos, snapped the neck of the closest Scrag, then hurled it at two others. Three more came at her, another six at Claws.

She swung at two, but the third pinned her arms.

Unable to move, Amy glanced over at Bandilack, who’d been nearest the hole. Scrags swarmed over her like insects until there was little of the Garou left visible. Amy saw a flash of steel, a rising claw. A few pieces of Scrag flew into the air, but then there was nothing more to be seen. There was a shape beneath the pile of Scrags that bore a slight resemblance to Bandilack, but it shifted, withered and after a few seconds was gone.

Chottle was almost to the exit when the Scrags fell upon him as well and began to tear at his already shapeless flesh. Feeling himself dying, unable to fight back, not knowing what else to do, his muttering rose in volume until it was a scream. He’d been instinctively repeating the last sound he’d heard, the final syllable uttered by Johnny Sees the Wind: “an. . .an. . .an. . . ”

The voice of the metis, a perfect imitation of Sees the Wind’s, now loud and clear, completed the Shaman’s spell.

A hot, dry wind, its source roughly where the elder had stood, blew toward the rift. The great weeping sore in Gaia rolled, sighed and began to fade.

Seeing their prize vanishing, the Banes pressed forward even faster, forcing themselves into the world as quickly as they could. As the rift all but completely sealed, a final unlucky Scrag found itself caught between worlds, pinned at the waist. It tried to pull itself into the earth but could not, and its exoskeleton proved no match for the returning Gauntlet. Its legs severed with a little pop, the half-thing pulled itself about briefly with its hands, like a novelty windup spider, until finally the loss of the black ichor that dribbled from its open waist became too great, and it collapsed.

Though pleased the rift had been sealed and Chottle had proven a hero, Amy felt a great sadness that no one would hear the story, no matter how badly told. Unable to free herself from the Scrags that held her, unable to reach a weapon or the sphere, there was little she could do. At least a hundred Scrags crowded into the cigarette factory, and some, though wanting their fair share of Garou flesh and blood, spilled out into the night for lack of room.

Just as she was about to vanish into the blackness of her own Harano, Amy felt a sudden easing of pressure at her shoulders. At first she thought her arms had both been broken. But no, she realized as she pulled her hands in front of her that she was free! Claws, still swinging, had used his blade to kill the two Scrags holding her. The time he spent freeing his packmate had cost him, though, and now he was being attacked en masse from the rear. In a howl of pain he went down, not unlike Bandilack. Unwilling to see that scene play out again, and knowing there was only one thing she could do, before she could recall her promise to herself, Amy had the sphere in her hands and was rapidly flicking the bones. moon tiiin toooong The sounds pulsed through the room, this time rising rather than fading, until the collected tones became a thunderous, consuming symphony. The sounds crashed from the sphere, heedless of any air, flesh, bone or concrete they met along their way, as though their journey would not end until they cried out and were heard by the very heart of creation.

This time, however, Amy was not the only one affected. In a great circle, at which the sphere was the center, the closest Banes and fomori grabbed their heads and shook. As the sounds emanated outward, so did the effect. By the time the creatures that had been pressed against the walls first heard the notes, those closest to the sphere were no more. The monsters did not die, they simply melted into air, as if the chord had met with whatever manix gave them shape and being and somehow rendered it irrelevant.

As the sounds pulsed farther into the world, a mile away, a man decided not to spend his last twenty dollars on liquor and instead purchased some food for his family. In a small apartment five miles distant, a young couple fell in love.

Amy, as the sounds washed her soul from top to bottom, desperately hoped it was all real.

Whoever saw such drunkards?

Barrels broken open, the ground and stawy ceilings soaked. And bok, this full glass in my hand.

-Jalalu’ddin Rummi, Unseen Rain And what happened then? Well, with the earth-hole healed and Amy’s mind still reeling from the tones of the sphere, the secret helper decided the time was petfect to make himself known. A full nine and a half feet tall, his fur the cotor of moonlight, Arkady stepped in through the breach in the buck wall and bowed.

“Amy Hundred-Voices, I am Lord Arkady,” he said with some difficulty.

If there were any question before, now she knew she was dreaming. She’d heard of the fallen Russianborn Silver Fang and the purity of his breeding, but this magnificent creature was too beautiful to behold.

The perfect werewolf. If there were a Garou fashion magazine, Amy thought, half-delirious, Arkady would grace the cover. Even his scars were gorgeous.

His wounded hand only added to the impression of great natural gifts honed by experience and strong character. Then again, the whole building seemed unusually lovely as well. In fact, Amy had never seen a building looking quite this good.

Ignoring the fact that she did not respond, he stepped closer and shifted to Homid to make the conversation easier.

“I am sorry I killed the fomor in your stead.

Accept his head as a gift for the great service you’ve done us all. If you do nothing else, if by some tragic accident you die tonight, I promise you will always be remembered for finding the bone-sphere.”

Amy shifted to Homid and returned the bow.

“Ne stoit blagalarnost,” she answered formally in the Russian preferred by House Crescent Moon.

Despite, or perhaps because of, her own disorientation, she noticed that his form wavered, just a bit. There was a dull, unfocused look to his eyes, as if he were drunk, or stoned, or.. .

“Are you here?” she asked with a giggle.

“Yes. But not only here. Alongside the cursed Black Spiral that leads to Malfeas, the heart of the Wyrm, there is another path, a Silver Spiral. I walk it now, to bring our war back to the heart of the creature that began it.”

“You’re going to battle the Wyrm in Malfeas?

And they think I’m crazy,” Amy said with a dreamy chuckle.

“Don’t mock me!” Arkady growled, making Amy take a step back. “While your soul still resonates with the music of the bone-sphere, our eyes ate the same.

Amy Hundred-Voices, listen to me. I am of House Crescent Moon. My appearance tells you how pure bred I am. One such as I appears once every twenty generations. There will not be another. Not before the end.”

Amy blinked and furrowed her brow. “But what about after the end? I mean, suppose we lose. Suppose all the Garou and even Gaia die. Suppose Wynn and Weaver no longer have Wyld with which to make themselves real, and there’s absolutely nothing left.

Don’t you think that maybe, after a billion, scillion years of this dreaded absolute nothing, somehow, magically, mystically, some spark will rise again and eventually bring with it all this.. .this nonsense?

Might there not be another of you then? In fact, I find it hard to believe that any world would be long without one such as you, AI-ki.”

Arkady was genuinely taken aback. “I have not yet given up on this world, Uktena. Does the sphere make you speak this way? Has your battle with that Nexus Crawler left you mad?”

“No. Just annoyed. You want my sphere, but you hide your lust behind pretty words and desperate quests.”

“My quest is desperate. As for my lusts, I didn’t even know of your sphere until I heard it sing. Its tones resonate with the path I walk. They resonate with Malfeas, with the Wyrrn.”

“They resonate with all things, Lord Arkady.” ‘Then it is exactly what I need to succeed! Give it to me! It will give me the strength I need to crush the Wyrm in his lair!”

Amy shook her head.

“The trick is knowing what to play. You see, the Wyrrn wants it, too, as badly as you. And if you fail, he’ll use it to play his own twisted refrains, and then they will ring throughout the Tellurian. In a heartbeat, the war will be over. The Great Mother will perish and nothing remaining will remember her name. Until, of course, things start again.”

“I’ll take that chance!”

“You must not!”

Arkady whirled away and clamped his teeth, finding it increasingly difficult to conceal his anger.

“And what will you do with it? Bury it where none may ever find it? Or better yet, use it to play the melancholy whining of your own Harano?”

“Don’t try to tell me Silver Fangs are immune to the sadness that stalks us all, Arkady. One of your own ruling families, the Winter Snow, all fell to Harano.”

“I will not fall. I will not fail. Give it to me.”

“No. It’s mine,” Amy said.

“You refuse me?”

“Last I checked, that’s what ‘no’ means. Or would you like to hear it in all hundred voices?” ‘Very well. I am deeply disappointed.”

Arkady’s blade sailed through the air and lodged in her shoulder. The bone-sphere went flying. Before she hit the floor, the artifact was in Arkady’s good hand. She gasped. Without close proximity, the effect of its song was wearing off sooner. Her bravado was fading, taking with it her conviction. Shame and dread, for her more natural feelings, rose in her chest.

Where was her rage?

Wo. You can’t,’’ she half-mumbled.

Arkady sneered. He cupped the magnificent prize in his hand and tilted it this way and that, admiring the delicate craftsmanship he’d previously only imagined. Then he stepped close enough to Amy to retrieve his weapon, sheathed it, then twisted his head to listen for what only he could hear-the next step on the Spiral. Something distant, something silver, caught his attention. He smiled, shifted to Crinos and prepared to head for it.

Just as he was about to exit, a figure, previously obscured by the cigarette-making machines, lurched up to his feet with a groan and a sigh. Claws, blade drawn, hand shaking, myriad patches of wet redness on his fur, staggered toward Arkady.

“You heard what she said, Silver Fang,” Claws said. “I believe the word was ‘no.”’ Not waiting for a clever retort, Claws shifted to Crinos and swung the sharp end of his klaive toward Arkady’s head. Even if the warrior hadn’t been wounded, there would have been no contest. As it was, the only question was how merciful Arkady was willing to be. The answer to that was not at all.

The scion of House Crescent Moon ducked easily, spun and drove his healthy claws so deeply into Claws’ gut, it would have been a simple matter for him to pull out the Uktena’s liver. Claws’ eyes rolled up into his head. He made a shrill whining like a wounded puppy. As Arkady withdrew his hand and Claws slumped to the floor, something inside Amy shattered. ‘(Is there no end to the fools that crawl upon this barren land?” Arkady thought. He shook his hand twice to clean it of the larger chunks of gore.

A deep, low, vibrant sound from the floor, not unlike the heavy grating of concrete scraping against concrete, made him look toward Amy.

Arkady paused and forced a few English words through his thick vocal chords: “Growling now? Too late for that. Go study. Let the real werewolves fight the wars.”

But the sound only grew louder. Once in his homeland, near the banks of the river Ttsza, before it had been poisoned, Arkady saw a brown bear watch helplessly as one of its cubs was pinned and killed by a falling rock, The mother made a sound similar to the one he now heard rushing from Amy’s open mouth, but not nearly as loud. He looked at her, puzzled. ‘‘Give me the sphere!” Amy screamed, shifting to Crinos in midsentence.

A short, dismissive blast of air flew from Arkady’s nose, a sign of the deepest disgust. Not bothering to answer, he turned his back and headed for the outdoors.

But then something on the floor snagged his foot.

Arkady stumbled backward, briefly taken unawares.

A hideous pile of fur and flesh on the floor, which Arkady had raken for a mangled corpse, was alive and daring to grab his foot!

“Chottle,” Amy grinned in her growing, guttural rage, “you are a trickster.” Claws fully extended, teeth bared, Amy gave herself more fully to the inferno that consumed her heart than she ever had to any lover, or even to the sphere. Her legs kicked at the floor to send her flying. She kicked again in midair, as if that would speed her more. In a flash, she propelled herself into Arkady’s exposed side, a blade of grass driven into an oak by a sudden hurricane.

The great Silver Fang lord, already teetering from Chottle’s attack, tumbled to the concrete. Amy slashed, ripped, tore and pulled at anything that remotely resembled her foe. The sphere rolled into a sidewall, making a sick sound like the thud of a damaged piano. Blood dripping from a wound in his side, Arkady turned and looked at Amy as though delighted to be surprised.

“Welcome to the Garou, pup,” he snarled in the High Tongue. “What a shame your stay among us will be so short.”

While Arkady spoke, Amy continued moving.

She dove for the sphere as if into water. Her chest hit the ground hard. A rib broke from the impact, but now her fingers were laced around the most precious thing. She was pulling it toward her when she felt her ankles clench together in the grip of Arkady’s hands. The Silver Fang, still on the floor, had stretched forward and grabbed both her feet.

Now he was pulling her, and the sphere, toward him, embedding his claws in her calves, leaving long open welts in her skin.

With a second to decide, Amy flicked all the bones at once. doon diiin jennn kaaa loo00 miiiiii tauaa The sounds dovetailed one another, rising above and burrowing below the range of Garou hearing.

The resplendent chord rode her rage, then spread and enhanced it. Amy felt herself split in two, like the world itself, and felt a sudden kinship and pity for the beings that lived all their lives this way. She was half in the Umbra, standing before the spirit of the bone-sphere, half in the physical world, being pulled irrevocably toward Arkady.

In the Umbra, the spirit of the sphere, now a snake, now a frog, now a multiheaded mountain lion, warped in shapeshifting abandon, waiting for what she would do. Falling to her knees, she begged, no, prayed, to the creature.

“What do 1 do? Can you help me kill him?”

The great being simply shook its head.

Back in the physical building, Amy kicked herself free of Arkady's embrace and let loose a massive flurry of jabs, swipes and slashes. Arkady, rising to his feet under the barrage, was still amused, until a sharp sting and the feel of something wet and warm on his cheek made him realize the danger was real. Bracing himself to begin a full attack, his spirits soared-iythis is what the bone-sphere does for this whelp, imagine what it will do for me!

In the Umbra, Amy searched the wise, warm eyes of the shifting being before her. Now a glowing bird of flame, it bared its chest to her rage and lowered its great head, once, twice, then three times. Though to some the meaning of the gesture may have been lost, to Amy it was plain. At first she was too terrified to admit the meaning to herself, then she realized it was the only way. Though now she decided, at last, that the sphere and all it showed her was real, even in her heightened state she was no match for Arkady.

And even he, with the sphere, was no match for Malfeas.

In the Uml;ra, she plunged her claws into the fire bird's heart.

In the physical world, she plucked the final note of a long lost chord. doooon looonn wuun The bird of fire looked at her, pleased she was SO quickly able to find its heart. It screamed in exquisite agony-then, in both worlds, in all worlds, the sphere exploded, hurling Amy and Arkady off their feet and into the opposite wall.

Amy, desperately sad and tired, tumbled into someplace else ... , . .that might just as well be called a dream. She and Chottle walked along a quiet beach that came right up against a lush, primal forest. Miles away, on the small strip of sand, she saw what looked like a horse and rider. As the image grew closer, she could see that it was Sees the Wind riding the back of the great Nexus Crawler, holding back its corruption with silver reins. He came to a halt before her and laughed.

“Kwakiuktl matches my eyes, don’t you think?” the old one said, patting the creature’s side. You know, I suppose I should mourn my packmates, but I’ve seen them in their mother’s arms and know the use to which she will put them. Do not seek to know so much, little one, that you can no longer cry.”

“We’re alone now, no one to hear but you and I.. .” Amy began.

“And Chottle,” the old man winked.

Amy smiled. “And Chottle. Tell me, what did you mean when you said I built the bone-sphere?”

With the unmarked, pointed stick he carried, bleached white from the sun, he made a little circle in the sand and poked a hole in its center. The spirit of the sand twinkled visibly in the air as he wrote.

“You said yourself that throughout the Tellurian things become real through song. You sang in your heart for a way for each of your voices to be part of a whole, yet still sing with its own true nature. Does that not describe your sphere? All your rage, all your being had been going into its creation for years, until finally you found it, and yourself. Do you understand?”

Amy nodded.

“Now tell me-what is your totem?” he asked.

Without hesitating, Amy answered, ‘ChimeraSees the Wind nodded.

“When the time comes, perhaps you’ll build another bone-sphere, or something even more wonderful,” he said. “And use it to trick the Wyrm into singing your song.” Then he added in a hushed whisper, “Though on that day, I think it just as likely we’ll all sit in a Grand Moot with the One Who Dreamed Us All.”

Without another word, he bared his claws and drove them deep into the back of the Wyrm-thing.

Johnny Sees the Wind cackled as it screamed, writhed and carried him off in the direction of the old man’s choosing.

And in that moment, Amy realized that perhaps the pains and frustrations she’d been experiencing, the terrific gap between the daily internal battle she fought and the ones she felt she should be fighting was not some unique neurotic aspect of her psyche but, in fact, part and parcel of her spirit-the struggle she longed to be in was the one she’d taken part in all along. She just couldn’t see it. And she knew that millions of others couldn’t either.

Her heart cleared and a voice came to her, the one she so often wept for, the one that maybe came from deep within her or maybe came from somewhere beyond the ages, or both, the one she heard too seldom, the one that flowed quick, clean and certain, and it said: the many that is one.”

Yes, that is the sadness of the world.

Though she could feel the realness of the forms around her, and the air against her skin, for the longest time, there wasn’t any sound at all. Even the cicadas were still. Eventually, Arkady rose to his feet.

Still dizzy, he walked over to Amy’s prone form and hovered there. It was over. Everything was over. He could no longer feel the signs. He was no longer on the Silver Spiral and feared he had been knocked onto the Black.

He lowered his head close to hers and watched as her eyelids fluttered open. A few bits of saliva dripped from the tips of his incisors to her face as he spoke, the wetness bringing her more fully to consciousness.

“Tell me quickly why I shouldn’t kill you.”

She met his gaze unwavering.

“Because I’m the only one who carries an understanding of the sphere. You know in the end it may save us all-and you are no fool, Lord Arkady.”

He huffed and he puffed. Bits of whitish mucus flared in the circles of his nostrils. Amy felt the power of his lineage in his hot, blasting breath. Almost like the spirit of the sphere itself, Lord Arkady was a naked godhead. As he moved his head closer, so close it threatened to touch, she feared his very being might dissipate the paltry illusion of her life.

Then he sneered and walked away.

An hour later, as dawn threatened once more to turn truth into dream, Amy could still hear his distant, pained howl, carried to her by winds so deep, dry and harsh, they, at least, must have been sympathetic to him. *** “Hmmm. I liked that one,” Claws said, nodding.

“Has heft.”

Though the stomach wound was slow to heal, it hadn’t interfered much with his appetite.

Nevertheless, he’d stopped gnawing on the bone to listen more carefully. He hadn’t even noticed he was no longer chewing. But Amy did. In fact, everyone at the newly reformed Greyrock Sept had listened with rapt attention to the story of their birth and now rolled the details over quietly in their mind, except for Chottle, who was nearby in the snow, practicing his new camouflage abilities on an uncooperative arctic rabbit.

Claws watched with a smile as Amy stood proudly, wrapped her recently finished Kente cloth around her shoulders and exited the circle, humming to herself. The tune sounded familiar, and it was terribly catchy, but it took Claws several minutes before he realized she was making it up as she went along.