He pointed down below, where the creek had obviously changed its course and undercut the willow. “See, how the water came and washed everything from under the roots? The willow, I think, ate most of the bones, as Watches-Over-The-Land intended, but the evil one’s spirit-bundle was buried there with him, and it—it is gone. I can feel it.”

David shook his head, but Jennie felt the blood draining out of her face as well.

“These things, these spirit-bundles, can be doorways,” Mooncrow explained for David’s sake. “They can allow things through them. So now the bundle is loose in the world, and so is the spirit of that evil man. He can work through whoever takes up the bundle; and the longer he works through that person, the more likely it is that he will be able to take the place of anyone who touches it. This is something that he was working toward, to be able to live on this earth forever, by sending others through his spirit-door and taking their place.”

David’s forehead wrinkled. “But—I don’t see the point—”

Mooncrow stared down at the water, as if he was demanding that it give up its secret and tell him where the bundle was now. “The point is that this evil one wanted life forever, and power, and he got his power through hate. He will make that hate grow, here and now. He will poison the earth to give him power over it. So wicked was he that he had no spirit-animal; he created his own, neither bird nor insect, neither animal nor serpent. He made it out of all of these things, so that it would serve him rather than guide him. And he made it corrupt, so that it would poison all that it touched. That is what made him so evil. That he would corrupt anything, so long as he had dominion over it.”

David stared at the old man, his own face going pale, and Jennie wondered if he, too, had a dream like hers, of a poisoned earth, and dead eagles lying in the ashes.

“I had a dream, the night of my vision-quest,” he said slowly. “I was in a place like Tulsa, but with absolutely no people, completely virgin wilderness. Everything was great—and then this—this monster came, and it was like you just described, it wasn’t animal or bird, but it had pieces of all kinds of things, only twisted and distorted. Wherever it went, things just died as it passed. I was really afraid, and I hid from it.”