River Marked

Mercedes Thompson. Her voice was in my head.

I sat down on the ground with a thump, in the faint hope that it would somehow make it harder for her to get me into the water. Coyote had been too precipitous in declaring me immune to her charms. Perhaps she couldn’t make me drown my own children—and Jesse, thank goodness, was a hundred miles away. But she could call me out to her, and she could speak to me.

I thought as hard as I could,Go die.

Mercedes, she said again, her voice like a cool liquid in my head, giving me the mother of all ice-cream headaches.Are you listening to me? Do you see what I want you to see?

“Do you hear her?” I asked Adam.

He looked out toward the river.

“No.” I tapped him, then tapped my head. “She’s in here.”

His teeth gleamed white in the darkness.

MacKenzie Hepner was eight years old as of four days ago. She was supposed to be in the tent with her little brother, but something had woken her up. She hitched up her nightgown and waded in the cold water. On her arm she could see the mark that that weed had left when she went swimming too far out in the river, and her stepdad had to swim out and rescue her. It made her reconsider how she felt about her stepdad. He hadn’t even yelled at her, just hugged her. It took her a while to figure out he was scared, too …

Do you see what I want you to see, Mercedes?

My breath started coming in panicked gulps. I hadn’t been just dreaming about the ill-fated Janice and her family. The river devil had fed me the details afterward. Maybe that hadn’t been on purpose. Maybe. But they had been real, and this eight-year-old named MacKenzie was real, too.

I hid my forehead against Adam and told him what was happening, giving him the words when she gave words to me, describing the rest. He whined unhappily.

Gesture to me if you see what I want you to see. Did you see her?

Evidently, she couldn’t read my thoughts. Like Bran, she could only shove things at me.

MacKenzie’s feet were numb, and the rocks made the bottoms hurt. She shouldn’t be out here in the river in the dark. She knew it was against the rules—

I waved my hand weakly. I didn’t want to know any more about a child who was going to walk into the river and get eaten.

I will let her live.

“She says she’ll let the child live,” I told Adam.

He got it, I think, before I did, because he lunged up and snarled at her—at me, then bumped me with a hip in a clear order to go back to the trailer.

I felt her laughter. She’d seen Adam’s reaction. She knew I’d heard her.

Bargain. A bargain. A bargain. You for her. You come die tonight, and I will let the little girl and her little brother live.

Adam planted himself between me and the river devil.

“She offers a bargain,” I told him. “Me for the little girl—and apparently her brother. If I die, they won’t.”

Adam looked at me, his heart in his eyes.

“She’s eight,” I told him. “Just. Yesterday her stepfather proved that he might be okay. She’s willing to give him a chance. She has a younger brother that she could go get and bring with her.” I swallowed. “What would you do, Adam? Would you die so that little girl could live?”

I knew the answer—and from his body language, so did he. Then he looked at the monster out in the water and back to me with a flicker of his ears. He couldn’t do it because she didn’t want him. I couldn’t do it, either. No matter how much I wanted to. Without me, Coyote’s plan wouldn’t work.

“Would she lie?” I said, while the river devil chanted her promises in my head. “I’m worth more to her than the child, I think. She knows about Coyote and his interest in me, and it worries her. But after I’m dead? Would she keep her word? Who would know?”

“She would keep her word.” Coyote came up to stand beside Adam. “I can’t let you do it, anyway.”

“I know. Your sisters made it clear that you need me.”

Adam whined again.

“I’ll tell you about them,” I promised. I’d forgotten to let him know what had happened; we’d both been tired.

Choose, Mercedes.

“For an ancient evil, she speaks awfully good English,” I said.

“She’s been eating English-speaking people.” Coyote sat next to me.

“Can you hear her?” I asked.

He shook his head.“No. She can’t mark me.”

“Could you save her?” I asked Coyote. “Could you save that little girl? Didn’t you carve the way for the waters to flow and move mountains? Raven hung the stars.”

“That was a long time ago, under the Great Spirit’s direction,” he said, sounding sad. “I’m on my own here.”

“Why doesn’t the Great Spirit take care of this?”

“Why should He?” Coyote asked. “All that is mortal dies. Death is not such a bad thing. What would be a bad thing would be living without challenges. Without knowing defeat, we ca

“I like my god better than I like yours,” I told him.

“Don’t you know, child? He is one and the same.” Coyote watched the river devil wait for my response. “The Great Spirit has given us our wits and our courage. He sends helpers and counsel. He sent me to you, didn’t he? I talked to my sisters tonight. It was a good thing.”

“Can you save this girl?”

“Do you know where she is?”

“A campground near the river,” I said. But was it a campground? There were a lot of places you could just go camping. “No.”

“Then no.”

“Damn it,” I said.

You or they die. Bargain. You die, they live.

“Is there anyone else who could take my role?” I asked.

“None that I know of. I was surprised that you were not controlled by her mark. You are the only creature who is wholly of this realm that I have seen resist her.”

“If I weren’t here, what would you do?”

He sighed.“One of us would take your place. But there are only seven of us who can or will help. I believe that a time will come when the Great Spirit will send us back out into the world again, entrusted with tasks to accomplish. But many of us were hurt when the Europeans swept through here. Disease tookso many of our children, then the vampires singled out those who managed to survive and brought more death upon them …” He sighed. “We were allowed to retreat and lick our wounds—and for many it will take the Great Spirit to pry them out of their safe dens.” He scuffed his bare foot on the ground, rolling a rock a dozen feet. “I won’t lie. We may not have enough to do what we need, even with you. Without you?” He shook his head.

Mercedes. The demand was angry and impatient.

I picked up a rock and chucked it in the river as my answer.

Coward to save yourself at the expense of a child. You shall see what you have done.

I learned a lot in the next fifteen or twenty minutes. I learned that MacKenzie’s little brother was named Curt, like my stepfather. He was four—and marked as MacKenzie was, so he didn’t fight when his sister carried him on her hip out into the river. As a treat especially for me, I think, the river devil released her hold on their minds before she killed them. But maybe it was because MacKenzie’s screams had her parents tearing out of their tent and into the water after them.

I learned that I could have exchanged my life for four people’s lives. Four.

12

I DIDN’T SLEEP. WHAT WAS THE POINT? I COULD HAVE nightmares while I was awake just as well as when I was asleep.

I had made the right decision, the only decision. But that didn’t make it any easier to live with the deaths of four people I could have saved.

I fed Adam, and when he grunted at me, I fed myself, too. I had to keep my strength up. If four people had died to give me a chance to help kill the river devil, it wouldn’t do to fail because I hadn’t eaten.

About 5:00 A.M., when the first pale hint of dawn touched the sky, Adam and I got in the truck and headed back up to Stonehenge. Without Adam to converse with and nothing much to do, I would drive us both crazy if we stayed at the campsite. Stonehenge needed to be cleaned up. I could do that and save Jim and Calvin some work.