Rook & Tooth and Claw (30 page)

Randy said, “Don’t panic, folks. All we have to do is feather the prop, and land on the other engine. You can’t crash one of these babies even if you wanted to.”

Susan said, “I hope that’s not famous last words.”

Jim tried to smile at her but found that he couldn’t. He
could feel his sweaty shirt clinging to his back. He had never liked small airplanes, and he had been clenching his fists and curling his toes ever since they had taken off from Albuquerque. The plane suddenly tilted to port and the starboard engine let out a low-pitched moan of protest.

Sharon moaned, too; and Mark said, “Oh, shit. Oh, shit.”

“Let’s keep our heads here, folks,” said Randy. “We still have plenty of height and we’re only five minutes away from Senator Clark’s Field at Gallup. This may be a little on the rough side, but there’s nothing to get hysterical about.”

The plane plunged again, and then soared upward, leaving Jim’s stomach about a hundred feet below. Mark sat in the co-pilot’s seat grim-faced, with his hands tucked firmly into his armpits. Susan was gripping Jim’s hand so tight that her fingernails were digging into his skin, and Sharon had her hands over her face, although she was peeping out from between her fingers. When he looked at Catherine, however, she was sitting calm and still, her chin slightly raised, and her eyes staring straight ahead.

“Catherine?” Jim asked her. “Catherine, are you okay?”

Catherine didn’t answer, but Jim was sure that he could see that shadow around her, even though the airplane cabin was filled with sunlight. She looked almost as if she were wearing a ghostly funeral veil. She was staring straight ahead, straight at the instrument panel, and her lips were moving, as if she were whispering something.

“
Coyote … Coyote
…
Coyote
…” that was all he could catch, over and over again.

“Catherine?” he repeated.

He reached out to touch her, but as he did so, all the indicator lights on the Golden Eagle’s instrument panel winked out, and all the dial-pointers dropped back to zero. The starboard engine rumbled and shuddered and abruptly
cut out. They were swallowed by an eerie quietness. All they could hear was the whistling and the buffeting of the wind.

Randy jiggled the switch to restart the starboard engine, but nothing happened. “Nothing,” he said. “All the damned electrics are dead. Never known this happen, never.”

“Can you glide in?” Jim asked him.

“I don’t know. The way we’re dropping, we won’t make Senator Clark’s Field.”

Mark said, “Oh, shit! We’re not going to die, are we?”

“Die? Hell, no!” the pilot told him. “We’re going to belly-flop in somebody’s alfalfa, that’s all.” But Jim could tell from the way he spoke that Randy’s mouth was dry, and that he was just as frightened as the rest of them. They had one last ridge to clear, which meant that they would have to maintain enough height to fly over a line of tall, jagged trees. But the Golden Eagle weighed over 3½ tonnes and it felt to Jim as if it were dropping out of the sky as promptly as a grand piano. The trees rose higher and higher in front of them, and soon they were almost brushing the upper branches.

They were never going to make the ridge. They could all see it now. They were already below the level of the taller trees, and there wasn’t even a gap between them which Randy might have tried to fly through.

Susan whispered, “Oh my God, Jim. Oh my God.” Sharon was holding her head in her hands, and her eyes were wide with panic. Jim felt sick with fear and helplessness, and a wrenching grief, too. He had come out here to save himself, and Catherine – but now they were both going to die, and they were going to kill Susan and Mark and Sharon, too.

“You got to brace yourselves,” said Randy. “With any luck, the trees’ll act like a cushion.”

You know they won’t, thought Jim. They’ll smash us to pieces, and there won’t be anything left for the rescue services to pick up but arms and legs.

Jim turned to Sharon and Susan. “Take your shoes off, then heads down, hands over your neck.” The Golden Eagle lurched and dropped as Randy tried one last desperate effort to gain a little more height.

Jim looked at Catherine. She was still sitting up straight, her eyes fixed on the airplane’s instrument panel. The shadow around her was even more distinct now, blurry and patchy, as if he were viewing her through a black-and-white photographic negative. What was more, her eyes were totally black, with no whites showing whatsoever.

“Catherine!” he shouted at her, and gripped her wrist – but then he instantly recoiled. He hadn’t felt the smooth slim wrist that he had expected. He had felt something thick and cold – something that was bristling with coarse, matted hair.

“Catherine, listen to me! It’s Jim Rook! Listen!”

“Tell her to brace herself!” Randy shouted. “For Christ’s sake, we’re going in!”

“Catherine!” Jim yelled. “Catherine! You have to listen to me! Catherine!”

He reached across and tried to turn her face around, but as soon as he touched her cheek he shouted, “
Ah
!” and whipped his hand away. Catherine’s cheek had been rough and whiskery, and he had distinctly felt
teeth.

“Catherine, if you’re in there, Catherine, try to fight it!” Jim screamed at her.

“Jim? What on earth are you doing?” said Susan. “Jim! Get your head down, you’ll break your back!”

Every cockpit window seemed to be filled with nothing
but rising trees. Mark was still gibbering “shit, shit, shit,” under his breath, and Sharon was praying to Allah.

Catherine can’t hear me, thought Jim, desperately. She may be there but she simply can’t hear me. She’s an animal now, not a human being. And how can you make an animal hear you?

He suddenly patted the front of his shirt and felt the whistle that Henry Black Eagle had given him, dangling around his neck. He lifted it up and blew it. He didn’t hear anything at all, and Catherine didn’t respond, so he blew it again, even harder this time.

Catherine’s head turned toward him with a terrifying jerk. Her black eyes glared at him with such ferocity that he flinched away. He could see the shadow around her quite distinctly now, and it was less like a shadow than a mask – a snarling animal mask, with its lips curled back in hatred.

Jim said, “
Catherine
!”

A startling look of recognition crossed her face. She said, “What? What’s happening?” and even as she spoke the blackness in her eyes began to shrink. The shadow faded and suddenly flowed away, like ink washed away down a sink. She looked around her and saw the trees rearing up on every side of them, and Sharon and Susan with their heads down between their knees.

“
What’s happening
?” she shrieked. “
I don’t understand what’s going on
!
What’s happening
?”

“Get your head down!” Randy shouted at her.

But Jim said, “Catherine – you’re Catherine! Catherine White Bird, that’s who you are!”

Catherine stared at him for one long moment, and then she raised both hands and touched her forehead, as if she couldn’t believe that this head, this hair, this face were really hers.

“You’re Catherine White Bird,” said Jim, and even
if they all died now, at least Catherine would die with the full knowledge of who she was, and what had happened to her.

She turned to the instrument panel, and rigidly held out her hand. “
Live
!” she demanded. “
Live
!”

Jim saw the lights snap back on again, and the indicator needles suddenly bob back up into position. But the trees were looming so close that they blocked the sunlight out of the cabin, and the Golden Eagle seemed to be dropping even faster, as if it had given up the effort to stay airborne.

“
Randy
!” Jim yelled at him. “
Randy – try the engines again
!”

Randy flicked the starter switches. Nothing.

“Keep trying, for Christ’s sake!” Jim insisted.

Randy flicked them again, and then again. And then the starboard engine coughed, and the port engine coughed in sympathy, and suddenly they felt the deep, ripsaw vibration of both engines at full throttle. Randy pulled back on the controls so hard that it looked as if he were physically lifting the Golden Eagle back up into the air. Sharon screamed as branches lashed against the wings. Mark let out a long, eerie-sounding moan of sheer terror.

Jim thought, “
Please, God
”, and held Catherine’s hand, and now it was smooth and small, the way it should have been, and she interlaced her fingers with his, and whispered, “Gitehe Manitou, save us.”

The Golden Eagle burst through the top of the treeline, its propellors spraying leaves and branches in all directions. It continued to climb over the lower slopes of the Cibola Forest, higher and higher, rising to such an altitude that they could see the sun shining across twenty miles of forest and desert, with the Zuni Mountains rising behind them now in a faint purplish heat-haze.

“Well, I don’t know what in hell happened back there,” said Randy. “But today I can truly tell you that I believe in God. Or Allah,” he added, turning to Sharon. “Or Gitche Manitou, whatever.”

Mark said, “Whew.”

“Is that all?” Randy ribbed him. “Just ‘whew’?”

“Yeah, ‘whew.’ I thought I’d crapped myself but I haven’t.”

“I guess that’s one small mercy,” said Randy, and tilted the Golden Eagle toward Gallup.

John Three Names was waiting for them on the hot, sun-glaring airfield. He was a small, dapper Navajo in a brown coat, beige slacks, and a brown wide-brimmed hat with feathers in it. He had one of those crinkled, soft-skinned Native American faces that always reminded Jim of a parcel wrapped in secondhand brown paper. But his eyes were bright and hard, and he spoke in quick, clipped sentences, and there was nothing soft or secondhand about his ideas.

“Hi, I’m John Three Names,” he said, grasping Jim’s hand. “I gather you had some trouble getting here. They had two firetrucks and an ambulance standing by.”

“Well, let’s say we’ve had something of a scare,” Jim told him. He turned around and looked at Catherine, who was helping Sharon with her bags. “I’d like to think that it’s over, but somehow I don’t think that it is.”

“I have a car outside,” said John Three Names. “Or maybe you’d like to rest up here for a while.”

“I think we can go on,” said Jim. “How’s everybody feeling?”

“Let’s go on,” said Catherine. “The sooner we get there, the better.”

Jim said, “You’re sure?” but she reached out and touched his hand, very lightly, and he knew that she
wanted nothing more than to get this journey over with. She hadn’t thanked him for what he had done in the airplane, but then she didn’t need to. Only she and Jim had shared that moment when she had realised who she really was, and that shared understanding was better than thanks. Jim felt very close to her, just then, and as she followed John Three Names, with her long hair shining in the afternoon sun, he could almost have loved her.

“Don’t let Dr Ehrlichman see you looking at your students like that,” said Susan.

“Like what? I’ve been worried about her, that’s all.”

“As you said yourself, she doesn’t look like the back of a totem-pole.”

“Susan—”

She linked arms with him. “We’re alive, that’s all that matters. I really thought that we were going to die back there. I suddenly realised how unprepared I was.”

She stopped, and lifted her head, and kissed him. Mark and Sharon were walking close behind them and Mark wolf-whistled.

Jim said, “Do you mind? Even faculty members are allowed to make discreet demonstrations of mutual affection.”

John Three Names had a blue Ford Galaxy parked outside the airfield, with seats enough for all of them. “I borrowed this from the Navajo Community College. You must drop in and see it, Mr Rook. I think you’ll be impressed.”

“How come they call you John Three Names?” asked Mark, as they drove away.

“Because I have three names, of course.”

“Really? What are they?”

“‘John’, ‘Three’ and ‘Names.’”

Mark frowned at him for a long time. “You’re putting me on, aren’t you?”

John Three Names looked at him and laughed. He said, “Nobody laughs louder than a Navajo, when he’s tricked a white man.” Jim smiled and sat back and tried to enjoy the drive to Window Rock. Once or twice he took out the whistle that Henry Black Eagle had given him and turned it around in his fingers. It had saved him, he understood that. It had saved all six of them. But he still didn’t really know why, or how. Catherine didn’t seem to have the shadow around her any more, but what were the chances that it might come back? And what might it try to do to them next time? He lifted the whistle to his lips and he was about to blow it when he saw Catherine looking at him with her fingertip raised to her lips.

He said, “What?”

“Better not to disturb him again,” she warned.

“Him? Who’s him?”

Catherine lifted her hands so that they were covering her face, but opened her fingers so that her eyes could look out. Jim couldn’t understand what she meant, but it had a very sinister effect, like a mask, or somebody who was spying on the world from somewhere else.

He lowered the whistle and dropped it back into his shirt. Obviously there were times when it was going to help them, and other times when it was going to bring them trouble.

Susan reached across and held Jim’s hand. It could have been a gesture of revived affection, or it simply could have been a way of confirming that they were all still alive. There was one thing that Jim knew for sure – he wasn’t going to
fly
back to Albuquerque, not with Catherine, anyway.

John Three Names said, “Any of you ever visited the Navajo Nation before? I think you’re going to find it quite an eye-opener. I’ve lived here for the past twenty-five years and I’ve seen some changes here, I can tell you.
We still have far too many people on welfare, but we’ve kept up to date with the modern world in most ways. To me, the most important thing is that we’ve kept our native language and our national identity. It’s just a pity that so much magic has gone out of the land.”