Trickster Races the Lightning Wolf, Page 2

wolf who has been seen simultaneously in skies over three lands according to ancestral tales!”

  “The same.” The gatekeeper scowled, a most puzzling face for a tortoise to assume.

  “Then…” Trickster sought an answer from the hidden horizon. “This must be the gods’ realm. Yes! This is indeed the sign I sought!”

  “One of my duties is to keep uninvited guests from disturbing him,” the gatekeeper said. “Only my word permits a stranger to enter.”

  Trickster recalled the stories his grandfather had told about gods and their strange powers. One of the first gods, he remembered, had only to slap his female counterpart with a fish to impregnate her. Still pondering, Trickster put his hands under his cloak for warmth. Inside, he felt the cracked pot and the bones inside it.

  “Shall we have a game, gatekeeper?” Trickster said. “It is how we of the Yioka tribe pass our time when the hunt is done.”

  The tortoise’s expression made Trickster think of Prudent Song’s the time he suggested she host women’s gambling in their tent. “You mean when you have sneaked out of doing your share,” the gatekeeper muttered. “Very well. It will be the most interesting thing to happen up here in decades.”

  Trickster grinned and pulled the bones and their pot free. “Of course, it would just be a diversion if there weren’t some stakes.”

  “Stakes?”

  “Incentives to win.” Trickster pretended to have an inspiration. “If I win, you give permission so I can enter Yeves’s realm. If you win, I’ll stay here with you for six months!”

  “Wonderful,” the tortoise rumbled. “We can bore each other.” But Trickster had spent over a decade watching gamblers bluff. He saw at once that the great tortoise welcomed the idea of company, even if only for the duration of a game.

  “Then… Let us play a simple game of odds and evens since you will probably find tossing the bones tedious.”

  The gatekeeper nodded his wrinkled head.

  Trickster rattled the bones in their pot, his expression as serious on the outside as he felt jubilant inside. To have gambled with a creature in the gods’ realm! Even if he were outcast from the Yioka tribe for the rest of his life, what a story it would be! The thud of the pot on the gate’s ramshackle wooden roof brought him back to his gamble. “Which do you choose?” he asked the gatekeeper.

  The tortoise blinked slowly. “How do mortal bones fall?”

  “Oh, this is the stuff of legends!”

  The tortoise’s blink came somewhat faster after Trickster’s outburst.

  Trickster cleared his throat then explained that the bones could fall on odds – one and three – or evens – four and six.

  “Very well,” the gatekeeper said in a voice like ancient stones rubbing together. “I choose odds.”

  “And fates will be decided!”

  “You are entirely too dramatic about this.”

  “What is more exciting than a bet?” Trickster retorted, lifting the can. The bones had fallen on four.

  “Just my luck,” the gatekeeper said, poking his leathery head further out from his shell to inspect the bones. “I lost the last bet I made, too. It is quite a story,” he added. A change had come into his rumbling monotone, almost like hopefulness.

  Trickster blotted out his latest twinge of conscience with an older, more pressing one. “I am also in trouble because of a bet,” Trickster said as he swung down from the gate. “Only a god could possibly make it right.”

  “I’m…” The gatekeeper appeared to think better of what he was about to say. “Sorry to hear that. But Yeves is cruel and proud. There are countless better gods you might seek.”

  “I am Trickster,” was all he could think of to say in reply. “Even if Yeves will not help me willingly, he will help me.”

  “Very well.” The tortoise gave a greater sigh than before. “I must admit the power of your tricks.” Ruefully he gazed at the bones. “You will be wanting these, I assume.”

  “Yes! And thank you, gatekeeper,” he said as the tortoise tossed them down. “Because of you, they have become lucky again.” Trickster waited for the bones for some time, then concluded that the dimness must have prevented him from seeing them. His search of the ground yielded only four roses, bone pale against the ashen earth. Above, the gatekeeper shifted his weight.

  Trickster swallowed. The Yioka gambling tents saw a full range of sore losers, from men who stormed out to those who uttered threats and swore on ancestors and gods. For all his seeming-indifference, the tortoise had been invested in the outcome of the game. This strange magic must be his way of expressing displeasure. What would Knucklebones say?

  “As agreed, I will speak the words of power that will open the gate,” the tortoise said formally.

  Trickster scrambled to gather the roses. Perhaps if he shared some of Yeves’s treasure with the gatekeeper, he would restore the bones’ original shape. He just had to! Deft Hands would laugh if he attempted to gamble with roses.

  “Otilor, mucol, hikehyl!” the tortoise roared with a power Trickster never would have attributed to his ancient, hunched form. Wide-eyed, he waited for something to happen to the bleak landscape. The gate, invisible before its keeper spoke the words, manifested as little more than a ghost of sunlight rippling across murky water, yet it was a flicker of light that went so high Trickster could not determine where it stopped.

  “The way is open, but beware! The realm of Yeves is a fearsome, vile place. Good luck to you.” Following his somber proclamation, the tortoise returned his head to the interior of his shell. Trickster proceeded inside.

  For several miles, the landscape remained unchanged, then gave way to a forest shadowed in black and deepest green. Though Trickster could discern no eyes, they pricked his skin like burs. Where the forest thinned, he saw grey and brown streaks: wolves. It was hardly surprising in the realm of Yeves, the lightning wolf. Nonetheless, his courage shriveled within him.

  That night, Trickster lay in total darkness, fearing to light a fire. When night had completed half of its journey, cold moonlight shone down upon him. In it, Trickster glimpsed the uncanny grins of wolves, which reminded him of his daughters’ toying with their meat while they waited for it to cool, all smiles and anticipation of that first bite.

  The next day, Trickster found a cave. Childhood memories convinced him to investigate; Trickster’s maternal grandfather had always contended with his grandmother that Yeves lived in a cave of stone, rather than a lair of clouds.

  Trickster followed the passages upward until a gleam of light beckoned to his dark-weary eyes. It led him into a cavern surrounded with richly-carved stone pillars. Trickster started at the reflection of himself in the shining floor. Near a heap of treasure that rivaled all catalogs he had heard of Yeves’s riches, lay the sky, boundless and exquisite as a blue opal. Trickster drank in the sight, then turned with a shiver back to the god’s treasure.

  Trickster was pacing around the piles of wealth, finer than anything even Deft Hands possessed or traded, working out the best way to bring as much as possible home, when a thud shook the chamber.

  “Did you think I would not smell you, mortal man? You reek of recent defeat!”

  Claws scraped against stone. Before Trickster could gather his wits, he was choking on the fumes of lightning wolf’s breath. The surprise made Trickster stumble. His bones and their pot tumbled from beneath his cloak. With reckless courage, Trickster found his tongue. “Actually, I just tossed a victory against a terrible gatekeeper!”

  “Terrible? My gatekeeper?” The ground shuddered from a rumble that had its source in the lightning wolf’s chest. Trickster nearly screamed when Yeves’s lips pulled back in a wolf’s laugh. “Why are you here, useless creature?” Somehow Trickster distinguished words in the snarl. “Surely you did not come all this way just to gawp at my hoard!”

  “I am a gambler, though surely one as tremendous and omnis
cient as you knew that already.”

  “I do not concern myself with the doings of mortals,” Yeves answered.

  “I suppose there are mightier matters that require your attention.” A mouse might have overpowered Trickster’s voice. “In that case, I shall tell you what brought me here. I am on a quest to repay my debts. Even a handful of your great horde would save my family. We would remember your benevolence for generations…”

  “You say you are a gambling mortal.” Suddenly the lightning wolf stood nearly nose to nose with Trickster. Any closer, and the god would profane himself by touching mortal flesh. Electrical currents buzzed and hissed in Trickster’s ears, the hum of a distant storm. Every hair on his body rose in obedience to the presence of this mighty one. “Then let us race! If you can beat me, I shall permit you all you can carry.”

  “And if I lose?” Trickster barely heard the answer; as when he betted with mortals, he was swept away with the thrill of what lay beyond chance, a moment that would change all that followed.

  “I will cast you from this realm in pieces!”

  Trickster attempted to smile, though it felt like a ghastly grimace. “Where shall we race?”

  “Behold, beneath your feet,” Yeves declared. “The pictures etched into the floor are a drawing of my domain.”

  Trickster watched, hypnotized with dread as Yeves explained the course. When he finished, the god stalked past him. “Come, let us