WHEN I GOT BACK TO THE HOTEL, EVERETT WAS GONE, AND SADIE WAS SITTING in the main room, the Pretty-shield book's spine cracked in her hands. She'd probably read it fifty times.
"Where have you been?" she asked.
"Getting supplies. Where's Everett?" I asked.
She turned around to face me. "You knew he was here?"
"Oh . . . yeah . . ." I stumbled. "I heard you guys talking on my way out."
"Why didn't you stop in to say hi to him? Or tell me you were going out?"
I kidded to deflect. "The door was closed. What if you were naked?"
She rolled her eyes and turned back to the window. "So what did you procure?"
I laughed. Procure. Sometimes nineteenth century Sadie showed through. "No, no. You first. What the hell is in that book?"
"Oh, you know," she shrugged, "just the run-of-the-mill back story on where Alexander Raven likely came from a few thousand years ago. Did you know that archaeological evidence suggests that people have been in the Flathead Valley region near Bigfork for seven thousand years?"
"Can't say that I did," I said. "That's in there?"
"No, this is Frank Linderman writing down the autobiography of Pretty-shield as she told it to him. She was a medicine woman, a pretty powerful one, who was old enough to remember a time before they went onto reservations, even though Linderman interviewed her and wrote this in the 20s."
"So you're holding the oldest first-hand account of the Crow tribe in existence," I reasoned.
"So it seems."
"What makes you think that Raven was a Crow?" I asked, and as I said it, I heard it. "Ravens . . . Crows . . . interesting. What's the difference between a raven and a crow?"
"I'm glad you asked, because I wondered the same thing. They're both of the Corvus genus, though they are different species. Ravens are much larger than crows, and they make different sounds and such, but they're otherwise very similar. And just for fun, I found this lovely book online called Ravens in Winter that pretty much says it best." She opened her iPad and read from it, ""Given the tendency of corvids to be large, intelligent, adaptable, ground-foraging birds independent of trees, it is probably only a slight exaggeration to say that the raven (Corvus corax) is the ultimate corvid. If so, it is also at the top of the most species-rich and rapidly evolving line of the birds.' Oh and also this fun sentiment: "If you hear something in the forest you cannot identify, it's probably a raven.'"
"Do you think it was a coincidence he named himself that?"
"I doubt it," she said. "As I understand it, Ravens are a prevalent creature in many indigenous creation myths, but not the Crows. That's probably why his being named Raven wasn't on my radar of potential connections to the man himself, but here we are. Do I think it's a coincidence that he named himself the thing closest to a crow but just slightly superior? No, not at all. But it could be. This, however," she said, holding up the book, "has a little more concrete evidence. Do you remember what Abigail said when Alexander pulled her out of the McDonald's?"
"Let's see," I said. ""Sadie, don't let him take you! Look for the arrows. And Red Woman. And the Pretty Girl! He think's I'm her, but I'm not! And tell everyone I'm sorry! Lizzie, especially. Tell her I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do what I did! He tricked me! He tricked me!"
"I thought you couldn't remember things verbatim like I can," she said.
"The siblings can't. I can," I smiled. "So let's break down the ominous message. "Arrows, Red Woman, graveyards, Pretty Girl."
"Two, maybe three of those four, I think I can explain from this," she said. "But the rest? Tell everyone I'm sorry? Tell Lizzie I tricked her? I'm thinking that means she killed Lizzie, which for some for some reason I am unwilling to believe, or she's referring to colonial history, meaning when she said during the witch trials that Lizzie and the others tortured here," she said.
"What does your gut tell you?"
"I don't know, honestly," she said. "I keep thinking of the last conversation I ever had with Lizzie, when she finally started telling me something about Raven. I read it from her that she was friendly with Abigail, that she didn't know why Abigail said they did the things they did. Alexander had told Lizzie that they'd be accused, not that their friends would accuse them of torture."
"So what does Pretty-shield have to say about the rest of Abigail's ominous messages?"
"When she was a kid, she and a friend dug up a human skull that looked human, only bigger and sectioned off differently on top. They brought it back to their father, and he told them he could tell it had strong medicine — for lack of a better term, let's say spiritual power, or magic — and they should put it back where they found it. Pretty-shield believed this was evidence that a people like humans but not quite humans lived there long before her people did."
"Creepy and potentially accurate," I said. I came to sit next to her.
"It gets better. She tells a story about a Red Woman. It's one of the tribe's classic legends. Let me read it to you."
I sank back in the chair and let myself just listen.
She opened to a marked page and began to read. ""There were strange things in the Crow country, like that big skull, that told of people who came before us. Once on a trip in the mountains, one of the men, Three-wolves, took the rest of us to a place where he had found a round pile of red-stone arrow-points. I never have seen so many pretty arrow-points as were there. Some were very long and slim, and there were many, many tiny ones, and all of them red. The pile was round, and this tall.' She indicated about fourteen inches, it says. Then Linderman asks her, "Did you take those arrow-points?' and she says, "No, no. We never touch such things. Some Person, that is, sprite, had put them there. It was a medicine-pile.' Then she goes on to say, "I believe the stone arrow-points that are everywhere came from Red-woman, the first woman, who was a very bad person. Her bones were stone. Long, long before the horse came to us, our people caught Red-woman and tried to burn her. But when the fire had burned away her flesh and her stone bones were very hot, a rain came. This rain, falling upon the hot stone bones made chips fly in all directions over the world. These chips are the stone arrow-points that are everywhere,' which I can't say why, but I think that's relevant. She goes on, "Redwoman was a bad person, and yet she was the first woman to live on this world. I do not believe that she ever had a beginning, as we do. I think she was always on the world, and that like the E-sahca-wata' — Old-man-coyote, their creator — "she did much harm and very little good. I believe that she was finally drowned, as you shall see, and that this is the reason why nobody has seen her during my lifetime. I have already told you that once my people caught her and tried to burn her.' And then, "I ought to tell you that there are those among us who believe that Red-woman is yet alive and on this world.' Finally she tells the story of a boy, a widow's son, who, in an early springtime, was following men hunting deer in the mountains. They made him carry a lot of things, and one time when he went to lift the heavy pack, a woman appeared and took it for him, trying to help. She convinced the boy to come after her, deep into a dark forest. Then she said to him, "Let me see your arrows' and counts them. He had four arrows, but when she handed them back to him, one was red, one was blue, one yellow, and one black. She had made them magical in some way, gave them medicine, as they say. Then she said, "Shoot one of your arrows as far as you can in that direction.' He did as she said, she told him to do another, and he did another. But something was happening. The more he shot arrows, the farther away from his people he got. Fog set in, and they're separated by fog, until finally it becomes clear that they've left his people behind. After he shot the fourth arrow, they were standing in front of Red-woman's lodge in a land entirely different than his own.
"So she took him in, gave him his arrows back — because somehow she had them again — and fed him, and kept him in her house. He wanted to go home, but she wouldn't let him. She told him her medicine was too strong, and he cannot get away from her. He ends up hunting for her, and doing her bidding. One day, he was approached by a coyote, who spoke to him. The coyote said, "Say, brother, do you know who you are living with?' The boy of course said no, and the coyote said, "That person is Red-woman. You are in danger. Everybody is afraid of her, everybody but myself; and even I am, too, a little. But I will help you, brother.'
"She turns out to be a psycho, which isn't surprising. This is all very evil stepmother. Coyote came back and told him that the way to freedom was to steal these two feathers that hung in the lodge. If he does this, ties them to a stone, and throws them in the river, it will kill her. He waited until she slept, stole the feathers to throw in the river, and then shot his arrows back toward the way they came, and suddenly, he was in his homeland. Only Red-woman knew this had happened, and she was perturbed. Little boy spotted his mother standing across the river from him, and she screamed to him to cross it, that the Red-woman was just behind him. He drowned the feathers, and though Red-woman followed him into the river, she didn't come out of it. And they believed that was the last of Red-woman."
She closed the book.
"What do you think it means?"
"I think Raven was that kid," she said. "I think Red-woman was either his real mother or was perhaps a mother creature to him in a way. Maybe she's the one who gave him magic, or taught him to use magic he was born with. And I think he hated her. I think that's why he's got issues with mothers. You remember the mother in the house in the Mausoleum Town?"
"Not the kind of thing you forget," I said. "All this doesn't feel like a leap to you?"
"No," she said, and she was confident.
I thought about challenging her, but it all fit into what Abigail said.
Sadie sighed and put her head in hands. "Do you want to know what I really think?" she said. I raised my eyebrows to her and nodded. "I think the place Red-woman took him to was a place inside her mind. I think she was the real Point of Origin, not him. I think she was more powerful than he was, and he's hated her for it, forever. I think he killed her and took her power, or he tried to kill her and failed, and they got the story wrong. But I bet it's the first. I bet he thinks he can win humans over because he knows how much stronger he is than they are. I think he got power from Red-woman in the first place. I think he learned to acquire power because he killed her, and then he got her power. I think that's where he figured out that everything magical has a weakness, whether it's a weakness from a power that lies inside of a person like with the Achilles' heels we've been searching for, or a weakness stored in a thing outside their bodies like Red-woman's feathers. Her power was in her feathers, and destroying them killed her. This matters somehow. And I think," she said carefully, "that because this is where Raven came from, and this is where the magic started, that this is the Survivors' creation story. My creation story."
It was a lot to swallow. But she was sure.
"Then I think it too," I said. "It might be hard to convince Kutoyis he's really part Crow though," I laughed.
A faint smile broke across her face.
"There's more," she said.
"Isn't there always?" I smiled.
"This is not the first time I've read about skulls or bones of any kind being really old and bigger than normal," she said. "It took me a little while to place it, but I remembered sitting in the Nashville airport once when a CNN story was playing on the TV while I was waiting at my gate. They were talking about an archaeological discovery that had just been made of a gladiator graveyard. In England. In . . . York."
I sat up straighter now. "That can't be a coincidence."
"Agreed. They deem it a gladiator graveyard because the skeletons are usually larger than normal, and they've suffered a number of blows that should have been fatal and appear not to have been. Essentially, their skeletons suggest they were super humans."
I closed my eyes, understanding. "Or Survivors."
"Exactly. And do you want to know where the most recent discovery of a mass grave of gladiators was before York? Ephesus in Turkey."
I was silent.
"It's happening, Mark. The pieces of this puzzle are elaborate and misshapen and fucked up, but they're fitting together. We will get our answers, and we will beat him, I'm sure of it. Surer now than I ever have been."
"We just have to find him," I said.
She laughed sadly. "There's only that."
"Well, it's a good thing that's what you need, champ, because I have a plan for how to make that happen."
"I'm all ears," she said, getting to her feet.
"You were right when you said we had to find her by human methods. If I can just get in front of her, then I can make it so I can find her wherever she goes, in whatever form she goes in."
"Go on," she said.
I laid out all my new toys on the table. "If I can lure her out, I want to do it alone. But I want you to hear what she says and tell me if there's something I should ask her. I got these," I said, showing her the ear-pieces, "for that. You can hear everything she and I are saying, and I can hear your instructions on what to say back."
"Then what?"
I produced the GPS box. "Then this," I said, and I explained my plan to track her via GPS.
"I see why the GPS is useful, but how are we going to get her to carry it?"
"I don't want her to carry it. I want to put it in her," I said.
"Inside her body? Mark, this isn't made for implanting in a human," she said.
"Good thing Sam isn't human," I said. "Look, I don't know exactly how yet. But if we get me in front of her, then I'll . . . charm her. Or freeze time, or something. And I find a way to get this into her and heal her before she knows what's happened. And if it stays on, survives her shift, and . . ."
"That's a lot of "if'," she said.
"It is," I agreed. "But if it works, then we can follow her straight to Raven. They won't think of this. It's too human. It might work."
"It might work," she repeated. "I hate to point out the obvious flaw, but isn't this plan contingent on our ability to lure her out, as you say? Do you have a plan for that?" she asked.
"I hope I do," I said, and I slid my phone of the pocket. I pulled up the number Ginny had traced, and I dialed.
Sadie's eyes widened. "You can't be serious?"
Someone answered. "I'm not in the business of answering numbers I don't know, so talk quick," the voice said. It was her.
"Sam?" I asked. "It's Mark Winter. Don't hang up."