Second Chance Spirit Ch. 4 - Second Sight

The blood pouring from Gray Fox's forehead would have stung his eyes, if he had any left. Flaps of skin hanging over his cheeks quivered, a faint tremble running through his body the only hint that any perception of pain registered beneath that calm exterior.

It was almost too much for Coyote to look at. He shifted his weight from foot to foot, chewed at a nail, and said the first thing that crossed his mind. "Creator's balls, he ripped your face off!"

Gray Fox gave a groan that was, Coyote suspected, unrelated to the pain of the mauling. "I'm sorry," Coyote said, still struggling to regain his composure. "I just… what do I do?"

The level tone of Gray Fox's voice never wavered. "Where is he?" he said, pushing himself to his feet.

Drops of blood painted an uneven path down the hillside. Coyote scanned the trees and undergrowth at the hill's base, but saw no sign of Wendigo. The scent of filth and corruption was already clearing from the air. "Huh," he said, scratching his head. "I guess he ran off. Coward!"

Gray Fox reached for his brother's voice and grasped his arm. "I will destroy him later," he said. "Now, can you get my pack and wrap these wounds?"

Coyote's face fell, and for a perverse instant he was glad Gray Fox could not see him. It was bad enough that his voice chose to betray him. He never wanted to feel so out of control again. "Of course!" he said, taking his time with finding the pack and removing the first aid kit.

There were fluffy rolls of gauze, thick cotton bandages, and some kind of stretchy material that stuck to itself. Coyote didn't know what each type was for, so he wrapped it all around Gray Fox's head until there was nothing visible above his nose but a mess of uneven colors and textures slowly turning red in the centre. He looked like a mad scientist's experimental mummification project. "There you go," Coyote said, patting him on the shoulder. "You look like you're ready to win the Mr. Burn Ward contest!"

Gray Fox’s expression was difficult to read, but there was no mistaking the tiredness in his voice. "Please, if it is within your ability, I would like to make the return trip in silence."

Coyote gave it his best effort. He tried focusing on anything that would keep his mind busy- the pressure of Gray Fox's hand on his arm, finding a path his brother would not stumble on, remembering landmarks that would lead them back to the truck. Long before they reached the abandoned site of the serpent’s first attack he was squirming inwardly and rattling off the next joke or anecdote that came to him. Sharing another's company in silence was simply unnatural, but even worse, no one had ever needed his help in such an intimate way or for such a long time. Every day that restless part of him grew stronger, urging him to leave Gray Fox and forget he was responsible for his pain. He challenged these impulses with the memory of Gray Fox's mutilated face, and pressed on.

Not far from the border of Algonquin Provincial Park Coyote excused himself, telling Gray Fox he needed to scout ahead to find where they had left the truck. It was only a partial lie. Running with a body that had four paws and a wet black nose did help him locate it faster, but there was something to be said for shedding the human form every once and a while and letting simple instincts reign. He changed one of his paws into a hand just long enough to open the front door, curled up on the passenger seat, and took a nap.

Coyote awoke feeling mentally refreshed. He yawned and stretched, snagging a claw on Gray Fox's leather seat and leaving a gash. The sky outside was painted shades of red and orange, though from the sunset of that day or the sunrise of the next he did not know. He took his time returning to Gray Fox.

If Gray Fox resented being left alone, he did not say anything about it. Part of Coyote wished he would confront him, especially when he realized on the drive back that it was indeed the next day. He scowled and told that fragment of his mind to shove it.

Morning traffic in Huntsville flowed at a leisurely pace. For once Coyote did not feel like being the center of attention, and hurried to the hotel as quickly as possible. The lobby was empty save for a sleeping receptionist and an old man with a face full of wrinkles and a white beard trailing down to his chest. The old man, from his seat in a plush chair near the door, swept his eyes over Gray Fox's mess of bandages and raised his eyebrows at Coyote, giving him a stare so intense it sent a chill through him. Coyote flashed him a silent flip of a finger to avoid a scolding from Gray Fox.

He considered pushing Gray Fox down the hallway in the direction of his room and making a run for it, but Red Fox's ears were sharper than he expected, and the door opened just enough for her to peek out. Her dark eyes widened, and before he could offer an excuse she threw the door open and raced into the hallway, screaming with rage and horror. She raised her hand over her head and waved a fat black stick. Coyote was amused to realize it was a remote control, but it didn't seem so funny when she hit him over the head with it hard enough to crack the plastic. He let go of Gray Fox and fled.

Red Fox threw the broken remote after him. Her husband waved his arms until he found her, then wrapped them around her and whispered calming words into her ear. She bit back a sob and hugged Gray Fox against her chest, mindless of the neighbors opening doors along the hallway and peering out at them. Gray Fox stepped forward and let her lead him the rest of the way to their room.

***

"I should cut out his eyes and see how he likes it!"

Red Fox was so furious her hands were dangerously close to shaking at an unfortunate moment.

"Please, do not blame him,” Gray Fox said, as protective as ever of his failure of a brother. “An evil spirit tricked me into trusting it. It was my fault."

Gray Fox folded his hands in his lap and fidgeted on the edge of the bed. Red Fox stopped fastening the edges of lacerated skin together to give her husband an odd look. "What?" she said, tearing off another piece of medical tape. "How could you trust something like that?"

"Perhaps it has been too long," he said, voice tinted with shame. "I suspected it, but… somehow, it seemed friendly enough. It had a human body. I mean, had one, under its control. If I understood sooner this would have never happened."

She spread her fingers and held them before his face, making a slow downward motion over the slashes. "Oh, I see," she said, and shuddered.

With the last of the tape in place she tried to lighten her gloomy mood by ruffling his hair as hard as she could. "It would serve you right if I only replaced one of your eyes," she said, as if scolding a child for climbing a tree it wasn't supposed to and scraping a knee in a fall.

He flashed a sheepish smile.

Red Fox plucked two smooth spheres from her medicine bag. "You need to hold really still for this," she said, crouching in front of him.

He nodded once, and then sat rigid as a statue.

Ordinarily she was not squeamish about healing severe injuries. When they involved Gray Fox, however, a hint of nausea often tagged along with the anger over his insistence on looking for danger. Worse still, over the years they seemed to be getting nastier, as if the manitou protection he enjoyed was waning. This was by far the worst injury he had suffered during a long, dangerous life. She held a sphere against one of the empty sockets, took a deep breath, and tried to wedge it in as gently as possible.

A brief tension passed through Gray Fox's muscles, but he gave no other outward sign of pain.

She placed the other one, checked them again to make sure they fit, and uncapped a sharpie she had borrowed from the lobby. Her heart pounded with the thought that one unsteady movement could leave him looking even more disfigured, but to her relief she applied the two little dots in what appeared to be the right size and location.

Next she measured his face, cut a strip of deer hide, and secured it so that the fur rested against his skin. She closed her eyes and asked the healing manitou that lived in this region to help her patient. A presence entered the room, but it would not speak with either of them. She waited until she felt it leave, and then removed the hide. The slashes had no more use for the tape, though they had healed to leave prominent scars. Gray Fox's eyes were now glossy with life, and to her relief the black circles had not rubbed off. It was always a gamble, asking a manitou to accept something artificial in a healing ritual.

Gray Fox tilted his new eyes down to regard the cuts on the discarded hide. "Beautiful work, as always, my dear," he said with a warm smile.

He stood and made his way to the bathroom, where he stared at the mirror in silence for several minutes.

Despite the return of his vision, Red Fox could not help but feel she had failed him. The stones, chosen for their smoothness and size, were mismatched. The right was a piece of labradorite, a metallic swirl of blue and green laced with a spider web pattern of black. The left was tiger's eye, with alternating streaks of red and orange like a miniature Jupiter. The pupils, though rotating with the movements of the eyes, sat unnatural on their surface.

Her reflection bit its lip in the mirror. "No disrespect to the manitous," she said in quiet voice, "but I really wish I could use more modern materials."

Gray Fox turned around and kissed her on the forehead. "Nonsense, dear," he said. "They are very pretty. I will think of you every time I see them."

***

"Do not worry, I sent her to a movie."

Gray Fox stepped back to let Coyote into the hotel room.

Coyote merely leaned forward and stared at his face. "Cool," he said, though the enthusiasm behind his approval was dampened.

Coyote did not want to be there. If Gray Fox was anyone else, he would be gone already. He did what he came to do, the park was safe (from half of the monsters plaguing it, anyway), and every instinct told him to leave before more responsibility was thrust at him. Even the money he wasted paying for the rent with an ice cream cone was not worth another meeting with Red Fox, or the reminders of a lesson gone wrong. Nonetheless, Gray Fox was his brother, and probably the only being in the universe that had any patience for him. Coyote followed him in.

Gray Fox gestured to a chair and took a seat on the edge of the bed. Those eyes, Coyote realized as he sat, were more than a little eerie. When Gray Fox narrowed them with a hint of disapproval, Coyote could not help but squirm. "Stupid uncomfortable chair," he mumbled under his breath.

"Coyote… I am not in the best of moods today. You did not tell me the truth about Wendigo. I do not appreciate that."

One of Coyote's greatest pet peeves was having to explain a prank or lesson. He shrugged. "I thought you would figure it out,” he said. “I never meant for… that to happen."

"I am not saying you did. I am saying you lied to me about being friends with an evil spirit."

Coyote allowed his pride to creep back into place, if only to distract him from the unfamiliar sensation of guilt. "Ah!" he grinned and wagged a finger. "You are halfway there. It is true that we are not friends. As for the rest of it, you have yet to understand. Tell me, what did you feel when you touched him?"

The unpleasant look on Gray Fox's face softened into one of contemplation. "He felt…" he said slowly, furrowing his brow, "ancient? There was Medicine there, much more than any monster ought to have. What could it mean?"

Coyote felt like slapping him. "Think!” he said. “Was there anything familiar about it? Focus less on 'evil' and more on 'spirit.'"

Gray Fox's eyes widened and his face paled. "A manitou?" he said.

"Bingo!"

Gray Fox slumped forward and buried his face in his hands. "Oh dear," he said, suddenly sounding very tired. "You mean I need to kill a manitou? Father will be so upset!"

Coyote suppressed a sigh. If the animal spirits were the Creative Spirit's children, the manitous were more like his pets, or maybe even slaves. They probably didn't even rank above humans in his mind since, despite being mortals, he had set the humans apart by making them in the image of his corporal form. Coyote felt no love for his father, so he could not sympathize with the reverence the others felt for manitous.

"More than once," Coyote said, rubbing it in. "Wendigo is in a human because of a curse. Some stupid contract he made with a medicine man ages ago. You know how it is. 'I don't like that you ate somebody because that was a more logical choice than death by starvation, so I'm going to use my super awesome power over the spirits to curse you to do that same thing every day until you die!' Humans can be such retards. Anyway, as soon as you kill that one it just frees him up to possess the next one. I will have you know I did try to do something about it the first time by killing the human, and look how well that stuck. You'll just have to get used to adding 'manitou killer' to your monster slaying resume."

"Those poor humans!" Gray Fox said, lifting his head to give Coyote a forlorn look. "Do you suppose, if I killed this last one, they would stop falling under the curse? Times have changed, after all."

"Who is to say?" Coyote said with a shrug. "After all, he took Mr. White Guy. May not happen often, but I bet you'll keep running into him. I mean, it's not like you could ask him to stop!"

Coyote allowed himself a good laugh.

"I suppose you are right," Gray Fox said with an exaggerated sigh. "Truly, preventing this manitou from harming humans is a task no one is clever enough to accomplish."

Silence settled over the room. Coyote raised an eyebrow. "Was that a challenge?" he said.

"Of course not," Gray Fox said, voice now returning to its more casual tone. "It is a pity I cannot ask Father's permission first, but I will kill the manitou to protect the humans. As much as I disapprove of what you did, I thank you for bringing it to my attention. You can do nothing more to help. I will take care of the rest."

It was a poor attempt at acting, but Coyote did not care. The selfish part of him jumped at the chance to prove he was better at solving a problem. The other, more confused part looked at the scars running down his brother's face and thought, "I have to make it up to him." He had never felt the two parts agree more strongly. It gave him the creeps, as if he were a puppet being strung along by two puppet masters.

He made a big show of thinking it over. "Name your terms," he finally said. "You want me to convince the stupid manitou to become a vegetarian? Done!"

A satisfied grin crossed Gray Fox's face.

Coyote had never seen him wear such a look, and he did not like it one bit.  

"First I want you to see if you can lift the curse,” Gray Fox said. “If that does not work, I want you to make Wendigo understand that hurting humans is not OK. If I find he has killed so much as one more human, we assume that my plan is the best, and I will kill him."

Coyote banished his doubts with a smile of his own. It was, he acknowledged, one of the most difficult tasks he had ever been asked to do. If he succeeded he could make Gray Fox eat his words and force the manitou itself to apologize for injuring him. Surely that was the cure for the unwelcome guilt. "You got it!” he said. “It'll be easy, just like training a dog. A big stupid maneating talking dog. I'll leash train him and house break him for you free of charge."

"Please," Gray Fox sighed, "remember to be respectful. He may have become a monster, but he is still a manitou. Even if he must be killed, he deserves your respect."

Coyote rolled his eyes. Could Gray Fox possibly be talking about the same vacant-eyed, slobbering, shirt-eating, idiotic creature he was thinking of? Dignity would not touch Wendigo with a ten foot pole. "Just you watch," he said. "I'll do things my way, and it'll work, because it'll be the right way! I'm not scared of that stupid thing, and I'm not scared of letting it know how stupid I know it is."

He crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair, shooting a smug grin at Gray Fox. The door opened and he leapt up with a yelp, running to lock himself in the bathroom before Red Fox could get a hold of him.