Coyote dreams by C. E. Murphy

Author:C. E. Murphy [C. E. Murphy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SF
Published: 2009-04-23T23:08:33+00:00

They say stars appear to be different colors because of interference in the atmosphere. Maybe it was my nearsightedness, but I’d never thought stars twinkled yellow and blue and the various other colors people assigned to them. I always thought they pretty much looked white, up there in the night sky. I supposed it was a limited existence, but I’d gotten used to it.

So the stars taking a clear bend toward amber struck me as noticeably odd. They left tracks in my vision, streaks of warm gold as I passed through them, and instead of the night getting darker it turned warmer and thicker, until I felt like I was struggling through honey. In time I stopped moving, wings straining to beat against the weight that held them, and the stars began to take shape.

They coalesced into a slow golden form, shining as brightly as Big Coyote’s every hair did, though without the pinprick edge that made him seem more than real. Shoulders, hips, a mane of long hair; they were familiar to me, though I was used to seeing them in Little Coyote’s normal colors, brick-red and black, not starlight and sable. Triumph should have welled in my breast, except my plan in finding Little Coyote had not included getting stuck in amber-laden stars. He was much, much larger than life, as if I was seeing him from a raven’s point of view, and the expression he turned on me was sad and worried. I drew breath to tell him it was all right, when I realized how very all right it wasn’t.

Night’s blackness had butterfly eyes in it. All the hints and shapes of colors I’d seen in my dreams and visions, when I’d tried searching pulling Billy and then Mel out of sleep, when I’d drawn this demon toward Gary, finally resolved into something recognizable. I’d known the form without recognizing it; butterflies weren’t something that I thought of as malicious, and the familiarity of form had simply slipped by me.

Little Coyote’s hair, strung out through the sky like a spiderweb, was caught by indigo and violet spots, watching us. If I took my gaze away from the darkness and concentrated on Coyote, I could see the ripple of life that went through the watching eyes, like endless wings fluttering in a breeze I couldn’t feel. Under different circumstances, the living night might have been overwhelmingly beautiful, traces of green and blue so dark they could hardly be seen washing through the empty spaces of sky. Instead, the feeling of being examined sent a stab of fear directly through the center of my power, beneath my breastbone. It hurt in an almost familiar way, like the cold of a silver blade being slammed through my chest.

For a painful, unfunny moment, laughter bubbled up through that familiarity. Karmically speaking, it was probably less like having a sword shoved through me than a butterfly collector’s pin. I focused hard on Coyote, afraid if I let that idea get too far out of hand I’d see a giant needle piercing me through.

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