Fear and the Coyote
They asked me to write more about Coyote.
They
were still laying together in their blankets near a relighted fire
under their lean-to, their clothes pulled between them to warm up
before they dressed. They held each other and felt each other's life
in their bodies, one old and one comparatively young. Then Coyote
sighed, and Wolf Woman frowned and looked him in the eye."You're
different out here, alone. You drop your mask.""I
dropped it? Where?" he yipped as he reached up to his muzzle. She
rolled her eyes."You
know what I mean. There's something about you. You're not... Not
like all the myths.""Howso?
I was the one who did all those things. Can a being change so much?
...Well, s'pose they can. I'm older now. That was all when I was
young. They stopped keeping my story.""Did
you stop doing interesting things?""No.
But I did mature. And so did my children."There
are other gods and other realms, Coyote reminisced as he walked up
the trail with Wolf Woman behind him. They joked and jabbed from
time to time but they were mostly quiet that day.In
his early days Coyote did so many things. He was young and
ambitious. Life hadn't broken him yet. It was true, life could even
break a god. It so often had. Gods weren't always gods, and beings
from their race didn't always become gods. Coyote had even seen
other gods die, or fade away. He'd seen them become weak or grow
strong, he'd seen them slowly lose interest in all things and sleep
and never awaken, no matter how many prayed to them. Those prayers
went unanswered.Gods
dreamed and Coyote dreamed. He'd learned from a spider how to weave
these dreams, and he'd become very skilled. Out of his own mind he
weaved his own dream realm, but it was... Not what it used to be.
Not since his wife had been taken. It'd been a thousand years.
More! Tens of thousands of years, and he still remembered that day
he met death.Coyote's
wife had died. He'd never seen death before and he asked Crow what
it was. Crow said that was when the soul of a person left to the
spirit world. Not just any spirit world, though, it was a place from
where they could not return. Coyote decided to go there, and bring
his wife back.He
sailed and he sailed and his boat sank, and he swam and swam. He
drifted for days on top of the deep sea until he sank. He'd been
looking for the West Hole in the Sky, where he took the sun and told
it to roll under the earth and come up on the other side. But he
couldn't find it. He sank into the West Big Water.When
he woke on the other side he'd washed up on a faraway land. Coyote
wandered for ages, cold and wet and hungry in a gray place, until he
found a village where the dead dwelled. He looked around and asked
for his wife, and eventually found her..."Coyote,"
Wolf Woman asked as they stopped for a rest near a waterfall, "You
seem thoughtful. What are you thinking about?""Mortals
cannae comprehend the thoughts of a god!" he said deeply, before he
broke out into a yipping laughter. She threw a pawful of moss at him
and nailed him right in the muzzle, and he admitted he deserved that
one.The
wind was soft and cool in their fur and the thawing waterfall
trickled and slowly wore away the stalactites that hung over it, a
puddle resting over the thin ice there and sandwiching it between two
layers of water. From their mountainside path they could see the
valley into which they were descending."I've
been enjoying my time with you." she warmly said even though her
breath created a cloud of mist like smoke from a pipe."Most
do, men and women." he slyly said, and she just laughed and turned
her muzzle away. "But... I've been enjoying my time with you,
too. Your kind is so precious, Wolf Woman, your time so short...""Don't
remind me, you big downer. I thought you were supposed to be playful
like a big puppy, and mischievous and tricksie!""I
try my best. A lot has happened since those stories were recorded.""Like
what?"He
sighed softly, looking up at the sky. What could he say? His wife?
His banishment? The four hundred years of war where he was helpless
but to watch his children die? Every corpse of a coyote, or worse,
piles of them, some skinned and some just left to rot?"Everything."Wolf
Woman sat silent for a bit, before sighing. "Do you still manage
to enjoy things?""I
enjoy you. I enjoy life. Even the breath inside my lungs is
heavenly. The beauty, the boldness and the stubbornness of life.
The sacred, scared dark nights and the dreams I weave in them.
There's nothing else like it." He'd hate to see it go."You're
such a softy, Coyote!""I
am. I make sure my fur is the softest and warmest!" He got a
snicker from her for that, and she leaned onto his shoulder and put
her opposite hand on his thigh. "I also do take time to enjoy nice
whiskey and nice food, and good music.""You
didn't strike me as the type!"As
they got further down the slope all snow and ice was gone and the
wind was just a little warmer. Coyote and Wolf Woman enjoyed some
play in the muddy puddles along the old path, and then set up camp
and huddled near the fire together to keep warm. He smoked his old
pipe and she rolled a cigarette and they smoked together by that
fire, the traditional and modern."What
if I be wrong, Lupa? What if I can't? What if... What if I'm
just...""Coyote,"
she cut him off, "You are,
and that is why you will succeed.""I'm
afraid, Lupa. I'm afraid." These were the truths he whispered in
the night to her as they cuddled by a dying fire. A tired,
frightened old god. Frightened of failing himself and his mother,
the Mountain, and his followers."We
all are afraid. Remember
what you told me when I first saw you?""Besides
going on about how beautiful you are?" That managed to get a
chuckle from her. She squeezed the god tighter in her arms and
whispered into his ear softly, her breath teasing the fur inside."You
told me, 'fear is only logical, but isn't it magic, isn't it
wonderful?'"