Part 1 (1/2)

Eye of cat.

Roger Zelazny.

I have learned hate. I have been waiting for the chance to escape, to track you as you once tracked me, to destroy you.

I am sorry for the pain I have caused you. Now that we know what you are, amends can be made.

The sun of my world has since gone nova. The world and all others of my kind are no more.

How can you restore it to me?

I cannot.

Cat slammed against the field and sparks outlined his entire figure. Billy did not move.

After a time, Cat drew back, shaking himself.

He seemed smaller now, and his body coiled around and around upon itself, sinking into the ground.

Finally, I will help you - for a price, Cat said.

And what is that price?

Your life.

PART 1.

At the door to the House of Darkness lies a pair of red coyotes with heads reversed.

Nayenezgani parts them with his dark stag and comes in search of me.

With lightning behind him, with lightning before him, he comes in search of me, with a rock crystal and a talking ketahn.

Beyond, at the corners by the door of the House of Darkness, lie two red btuejays with heads reversed.

With lightning behind him, with lightning before him, he parts them with his dark staff and comes in search of me.

Farther, at the fire-pit of the Dark House, tie two red hoot-owls with heads reversed.

He parts these with his stag and comes in search of me, with rock crystal and talking ketahn.

At the center of the Darkness House where two red screech-owls lie with heads reversed, Nayenezgani casts them aside coming in search of me, lightning behind him, lightning before him.

Bearing a rock crystal and a talking ketahn, he comes for me.

From the center of the earth he comes.

Farther...

Evil-Chasing Prayer

NIGHT, NEAR THE EASTERN.

edge of the walled, sloping grounds of the estate, within these walls, perhaps a quarter-mile from the house itself, at the small stand of trees, under a moonless sky, listening, he stands, absolutely silent.

Beneath his boots, the ground is moist. A cold wind tells him that winter yields but grudgingly to spring in upstate New York. He reaches out and touches the dark line of a slender branch to his right, gently. He feels the buds of the fresh year's green, dreaming of summer beneath his wide, dark hand.

He wears a blue velveteen s.h.i.+rt hanging out over his jeans, a wide concha belt securing it at his waist. A heavy squash blossom necklace - a very old one - hangs down upon his breast. High about his neck is a slender strand of turquoise heiche. He has a silver bracelet on his left wrist, studded with random chunks of turquoise and coral. The b.u.t.tons of his s.h.i.+rt are hammered dimes from the early twentieth century. His long hair is bound with a strip of red cloth.

Tall, out of place, out of time, he listens for that which may or may not become audible: indication of the strange struggle at the dark house. No matter how the encounter goes, he, William Blackhorse Singer, will be the loser. But this is his own thing to bear, from a force he set into motion long ago, a chindi which has dogged his heels across the years.

He hears a brief noise from the direction of the house, followed immediately by a loud cras.h.i.+ng. This does not end it, however. The sounds continue. From somewhere out over the walls, a coyote howls.

He almost laughs. A dog, certainly. Though it sounds more like the other, to which he has again become accus- tomed. None of them around here, of course.

William Blackhorse Singer. He has other names, but the remembering machines know him by this one. It was by this one that they summoned him.

The sounds cease abruptly, and after a short while begin again. He estimates that it must be near midnight in this part of the world. He looks to the skies, but Christ's blood does not stream in the firmament. Only Ini, the bird of thunder among the southwestern stars, ready with his lightning, clouds and rain, extending his headplume to tickle the nose of Sas, the bear, telling him it is time to bring new life to the earth, there by the Milky Way.

Silence. Sudden, and stretching pulsebeat by pulsebeat to fill his world. Is it over? Is it really over?

Again, short barks followed by the howling. Once he had known many things to do, still knew some of them. All are closed to him now, but for the waiting.

No. There is yet a thing with which to fill it.

Softly, but with growing force, he begins the song.

FIRST MAN WAS NOT EXACTLY.

jumping with joy over the dark underworld in which he was created. He shared it with eight other humans, and the ants and the beetles and later the locusts whom they encountered as they explored, and Coyote - the First Angry One, He- who-was-formed-in-the-water, Scrawny Wanderer. Every- one multiplied; and the dragonflies, the wasps and the bat people later joined them; and Spider Man and Spider