Pahnu
Thursday
Note 1
Cletus shivered as he sat on his horse Ruby. She stood quietly on a dark trail that wound its way west of Big Knife Valley, along a deep ravine and up the treacherous face of a dark, silent giant. Its uppermost jagged outline, heavy with snow and ice, stood proudly against the night sky. Known as Biawihi to the natives and as Thompson Peak officially, after the explorer who had discovered it, this peak was the highest elevation in the entire range.
Cletus spat brown juice onto a rock by Ruby's front hoof. He pulled his old brown cowboy hat tighter to his forehead and shivered again. His tattered denim jacket was not heavy enough to keep away the May morning chill. Immediate action had been called for on his part, without benefit of adequate planning. The jacket held a pack of cigarettes in one breast pocket and a pouch of chewing tobacco in the other.
Faint but increasing light appeared in the sky across the valley, behind the eastern range known as Marble, erasing stars as it grew. Marble Mountain's height, being many hundreds of feet lower than that of Biawihi, allowed early light from the not yet risen sun to throw an eerie incandescence on Biawihi's eastern face. No sound--no breeze or bird song--could be heard.
City folks ears are used to the whine of electrical power lines and tires roaring on pavement, horns, sirens and accelerating motors. They can't handle absolute silence like this. It's overwhelming to them. Cletus smirked and grunted, "Huh." But for me . . . He widened his eyes and stared at the ground. Lately, his thoughts had been battling against him. It was as though someone else had slipped in to argue using logic that Cletus himself did not posses. It troubled him greatly and Cletus Jensen wondered if he was losing his mind . . . To my way of thinking. To my way? He questioned himself, jumbled drunken rage--thoughts of revenge . . . what I am doing is horribly wrong. Again, the thought was not his own. He winced and shook it off.
Light flashed suddenly, before full dawn, at Biawihi's peak, quickly moving downward like melting ice washing the eastern face of the mountain clean, as if the mountain was refusing to be accessory to impure deeds performed in the night.
Cletus had waited attentively for this morning miracle. "Alpenglo," he whispered, looking up at the mountain over his left shoulder. The word arranged his face into an expression of assured superiority, as though he had spoken secret code that only the locals would use or understand.
His lack of interest in things academic had stunted his intellectual development. Prideful arrogant ignorance filled the void, causing him to view the world from a position of victim-hood and entitlement. But he prided himself on his appreciation of natural beauty and the occasional descriptive word or phrase, repeated in his presence often enough for him to assume.
Cletus Jensen fancied himself a mountain man, misplaced by time. It was completely lost on him that these cultural icons of yester-century were men of incalculable stamina who, while lonely in spirit, were willing to sacrifice the comforts of polite society for the questionable benefits of freedom, adventure and solitude. Cletus longed for solitude as well, but only, it would seem, when fences needed mending or
cattle feeding on his parent's small ranch in the valley below, two miles north of the Marion town limits.
Although he loathed it, he worked, as a construction laborer for his brother-in-law, Gary Erickson. This was something he needed to do in order to sustain his off-hours activities of drinking and gambling--the very activities his father refused to finance. Cletus hated his father, but found it impossible to sever the strings which allowed him to play out his fantasy of autonomy.
The horse sidestepped. The crisp clap of hooves on loose stone smashed the silence. Ruby quivered a ripple of traveling muscle under the red blanket-wrapped bundle that lay across her saddle horn. "Easy Rube," said Cletus, as he pulled his hunting knife from the sheath attached to his belt. Its razor-sharp edge easily sliced through the orange bailing twine that he had used to secure the body of Frank Hendrickson for the ride up Biawihi. Cletus kneed the bundle and it slid off the horses neck. Ruby sidestepped again and Frank Hendrickson rolled and bounced down the fifty foot drop from the trail to the floor of the ravine.
Loose rocks and a sprig of sage accompanied the body as it slide through the stone and dirt, coming to an abrupt halt against a downed tree trunk. Dust hung in the air. the grinding flow of the rock slide repeated itself in echoes reverberating eerily from farther up the ravine. Cletus heard it as accompaniment to the clicking of a tardy, dollar-sized piece of aggregate bouncing down to meet its companions.
Daylight had increased to a point that would allow Cletus to observe the bundle's descent. He saluted casually with the index and middle fingers of his right hand, his wild eyes staring through the settling dust. The smirk on his face again indicated his satisfaction. Sound waned.
The few broken sage branches bled fragrance into the air, and the disturbed terrain sent up a rush of earthy seasoning, blending with that sage. Cletus sniffed it in, then pulled the right rein and Ruby twisted an about-face on the narrow trail. She took a few steps but he pulled her up to a halt. Furrowing his brow in thought, Cletus twisted in the saddle to look back up the trail. He pulled his horse another one-eighty to the uphill direction once again and they lunged forward with a tap of his boot heels to her flank.
A thousand feet farther up the path; the rider leaned out to survey the ravine floor, this, dotted with boulders and scrub pines. He continued on until he caught sight of a torn gray blanket far below. Cletus nodded approvingly. This package, deposited on an earlier occasion, had been ripped open. Coyotes, he mused. The atmosphere was too cold for flies to swarm, and no unpleasant odor rose to meet Cletus's nostrils.
Five people had gone missing from either Big Knife or Marion within the past year. Two had been found; one on the banks of the Marble River, downstream from the highway bridge. That victim had been shot. Another was discovered dead in a sleeping bag at the campground on North Pass, his head caved in. These were bar folk--night people who had crossed Cletus and had gotten the better of him in some way--in the case of Hendrickson the previous night, poker--angering him to the point of murder.
Cletus dug a finger into his lower lip and cleared the saliva-soaked tobacco gob from his mouth, flinging it to the weeds by the path. A pint bottle of whiskey was drawn from a small, weathered, leather saddlebag and its cap unscrewed. He rested back in the saddle and drank. The whiskey filled him with a sensation of warmth and his cheeks crimsoned. Light and color were rapidly shifting in the sky, yet the sun still hid behind Marble Mountain across the valley. It was growing clearer and colder. Odd, thought Cletus, it's always coldest at daybreak. It was time to get on down and catch a couple hours' sleep before driving into Big Knife for work. He again reversed Ruby's direction and lowered the reins, giving the horse her head. She knew the way.
Cletus drew more golden liquid from his bottle, swallowed, spun the cap tight and slipped it back into the saddlebag. He pulled his collar up and shrank into his shirt like a retiring turtle. Hugging his arms around himself, he leaned slightly forward and dozed. Ruby plodded down the trail. An explosion sounded from across the flat land, near the base of the eastern range. Ruby twitched at the sound but continued on her way. Cletus looked up sleepily, but then allowed his chin to again drop to his chest as he drifted into sleep.
Unseen entities of another realm, Muha and Pahnu, struggled with each other while clinging to the atmosphere surrounding the quiescent murderer. White-hot sunlight pierced the top of Marble Mountain to the east just then; the instant sunrise causing its tip to temporarily disappear with the flash. The struggling intelligences parted as Pahnu withdrew, offering no more resistance to the sinister presence accompanying the slayer.
Cletus began to snore as heat from the sun touched his left cheek.
Across the valley, nearly three quarters of the way up Marble Mountain, on a rock outcropping, jutting free of the snow field that ringed the southern boarder of Marble Glacier, the air glowed. Dim at first but growing brighter, the light took the shape of a sitting man with long, wavy white hair. He faced west, sitting at the end of a winding trail that led up from Marble Lake on the eastern side of the mountain.
This trail was a natural animal path that gave anyone, who wished to exert themselves, access to an ancient native burial site along the way. This was reached from a much narrower offshoot path, which dropped from the main trail, leading the hiker down onto individually forested shelves. Smooth basalt walls enclosed these steps on two sides, bearing white markings--ancient graffiti. No one in recent time had been able to decipher these symbols, and no one knew of any records which preserved their meaning.
A faint breeze ruffled waves through the white, tightly-woven garment that the man wore as he remained perfectly still on the rock, his attention focused on the tiny dot that was Cletus and Ruby moving down the winding trail, across the valley on the face of Biawihi.
"Extelned," the man whispered, frowning. His eyes rose as he watched a streak of lightning shoot up and away from the horse and its rider. "Pahnu has relented. I could have helped."
The valley below was awakening. Smoke rose from a few chimneys in both of the small communities that occupied opposite ends of the basin. Marion, the smaller town in the north of the valley, was a thousand feet higher in elevation than the county seat, the southern town of Big Knife. A two lane highway climbed the grade between the two towns and was only half visible from the man's vantage point on Marble Mountain before disappearing in the trees as it wound its way north, up a cleft in the rim known as North Pass.
"No Osiahapahnu, you could not have helped. That one has made his decision, as have so many others. I tried to reason with him but he pushed me away. The Model is wearing out. Its population is as great today as all previous generations combined. Ripe fullness will be reached. Their number will reach seven billion soon." The ice wall behind Osiahapahnu gave resonance to the voice of Tap Neh Apahnu. Osiahapahnu, in physical form, heard the voice, but when whispered as an inner influence, the words of Tap Neh Apahnu were irresistibly peaceful, sparking strong desire in the Pahnu and those of the Model who had chosen to hear.
"I can see that clearly, Tap Neh Apahnu. The Muha are strengthening." Osiahapahnu gestured across the valley with his outstretched hand. "That is the Muha of Extelned."
Tap Neh Apahnu spoke of a different subject. "Your charge feels her weakness. This brings you nearer to receiving the strength that she will call for. Hold on, Osiahapahnu, you will not be defeated. The champion of the Muha refused to relent in the last Circle of Discussion, even though it is clear that he will not prevail, his growing strength being a delusion. But we knew that was coming, didn't we? He still mistakenly believes that greater numbers translates to victory."
Osiahapahnu lowered his hand and nodded his head. Another explosion popped from below his position on the mountain. It echoed against Biawihi and rang down the valley.
"We must go through with everything to the end. It must be made clear that he was given every opportunity. As for you, Osiahapahnu, the Muha number six against you now. Extelned will appear stronger than ever. His champion is well aware of you."
Startled, Osiahapahnu jerked his head, as if he had heard someone call to him. He scanned Big Knife, then above and beyond, to the south. Something--someone--called him from a much greater distance.
"Go."
"But Tap Neh Apahnu, I do not understand. I have aided Altapahnu and have watched over her at her mother's request, but this one isn't truly mine. I belong to her mother.
"She is now. It will be the daughter, not the mother."
"But Altapahnu . . ."
" . . . is grateful for your help, but she is now yours." Tap Neh Apahnu began speaking as the inner voice and Osiahapahnu smiled. It was determined in the Circle of Discussion, much to the champion's discomfort, that Pahnu would now be allowed to speak personally with those of the Model. Full explanation is now allowed to be spoken directly through dreams and visions. While the champion objected strongly, we reminded him that Pahnu has often communicated with individuals who had placed themselves in a position to hear. We will now be just as direct but with more people than we have communicated with up to now. We also assured the Muha that no one would ever be forced to receive what we offer.
The champion became silent as we pointed out that Muha has been communicating directly with those of the Model for the entire time that the experiment has been in effact.
Lifting his face to the sky, Osiahapahnu closed his eyes and vanished into a streak of vertical lightning, shooting straight up into the sky. A few seconds later he was nearly eight hundred miles from Big Knife Valley.
