Her uncle nodded. “She was taught that way herself. One teaches everyone one can. When they can be taught. The things that they can learn. Not everyone can learn the same thing at the same time. She knew that. She taught you what you could use and pass on faithfully.

“Quickly, Millie. I know you went on one spirit quest long, long ago. I know you were successful, for you told me so yourself. Did you ever go on another? Have you more than one spirit guide?”

Millie sucked in a breath in surprise, pausing before she answered. She hadn’t even thought of her spirit guides for over a decade, much less contacted them. She knew she could not in the city, for she had tried once many, many years ago and failed. “Uncle, I have not tried in a very long time. I’m not sure they are still mine to call.”

“You must, niece. What were they? Think of them, picture them and call them forth. We will need them shortly because the fourth trickster comes and he brings death with him. He has climbed from his hole in mother earth and seeks the fifth trickster, even now. Hear me call my own guides and brothers!”

Dalton Johnny began to chant again, only this time it was stronger and Millie recognized parts of it. She had seen two of his spirit guides long, long ago and knew their songs of power, by which he called them.

She bent over and placed the tea cup on the small table beside the door and straightened up, to begin her own chant to summon her spirit guides to her.

She had three to call. Millie knew that in her long life, Annie herself had had four and Millie had been proud of the fact that she had managed to find three guides of her own. Her brother had only managed to acquire two before he had died, nearly thirty years ago. Perhaps she had had the gift.

She called raven, for he was smart and canny; he knew hidden things and always gave good advice. He had been her first guide, the one that had consented to guide her on her first quest when she had been fifteen and so alone in the deep, vast forest between the Umpqua and the Coos. Her voice grew stronger as she put her heart and soul and her faith in her great-great-granduncle into her chant, imploring aid for one of the People.

He came. Suddenly, he sat in the lowest branches of the Douglas fir across from the door and Millie felt a warmth suffuse her. His black eyes darted here and there, taking in everything. They strayed back every few seconds to Millie and Dalton Johnny as raven assessed the situation and the need. He cawed twice and then fell silent, his advice plain to Millie even if not spoken. He waited.

Dalton Johnny’s chants had quickly brought two of his spirit guides, fox and bear. It was almost as if they had been waiting for his call, so quickly did they appear under raven in the now very dark shade of the fir. Her uncle nodded a brief greeting and his chant changed to one that reached up and out and cast a web of need across the now dark sky. The clouds seemed quite low and Millie could see them roil and move above them, barely higher than the ridges on either side of the narrow valley.

Millie now called for the second of her guides, the one she loved the best because of the sheer joy the guide knew and shared with all who encountered it: Otter.

The staccato shriek of the fish hunter drifted down to them and Dalton Johnny looked fierce in response as osprey took to the top of the Douglas fir, bright eyes dancing and talons clenching a branch. Within moments, that call was countered by the rasping call the red-tail hawk favored and he fluttered to the ground and calmly regarded the old man he had guided for over a half century.

Millie took a deep breath and began the low chant that she had learned last of all, the one that even now amazed her for her last spirit guide was a rare one, one seldom found this far north and west and then only in the inner coast range where they joined the Siskiyou mountains where there was less rain. She feared he would not come for rattlesnake hated the rain forest and seldom ranged there. Still, when she had been lost and alone in the mountains of the upper Rogue River many years ago, he had come and showed her both his power and his cunning. He had led her to the Illinois Valley and safety before taking his leave.