She called for him, pleaded for his presence with all of the skill she could recall for many minutes and was about to give up when raven voiced a deep caw of welcome and he appeared, coiled mutely and dourly under thick sword ferns, protected from the mist that still came down. His tongue licked out and his black eyes found her and she felt the calm, unhurried and somber sigh in her mind that told her he was still willing to guide and protect her, if he could.

Millie’s resolve steadied and she turned followed Dalton Johnny, who now stood in the small clearing in front of the cabin. She glanced around and stiffened when she realized that another of her uncle’s spirit guides had appeared, elk. Millie quickly counted and frowned. Counting her own as well, there were eight spirits who had consented to come.

Dalton Johnny had more than eight of his own; Millie was certain of that. She recalled the ones she had either seen before or had heard of in her uncle’s tales and counted again. She was certain that he had at least ten guides, possibly as many as fifteen if the stories of her cousins and Annie were true.

At least five were missing and she doubted that any of his guides would ever refuse to come. Raven glared at her almost in admonishment and Millie realized that whatever was coming, it was deadly beyond belief.

In a small voice, made small only by the seriousness of her tone, she asked, “Uncle, what do you wish us to do?” Her own spirits looked to Dalton Johnny and he sighed, almost in relief.

“We must meet the trickster further up the canyon, beyond the lightning stone. He seeks his son for the final time and the fifth trickster is not yet here to deny him.”

“What will happen if he breaks free before his son can come?” Millie asked. She followed her uncle around the back of the cabin and along the narrow trail that ran through the huckleberries and ferns. It twisted this way and that and was difficult to see in the best of times.

Millie suddenly realized why that was so. The trail had always been there as far as she knew, since the first time she had come with Annie to visit Dalton Johnny. But it was a trail in two places, two worlds combined and her uncle now followed it in the second world, the one that the eye cannot see unless the heart is both strong and wishes to see for itself, without the aid of eye. They entered a darker world, a place of things hidden and spirit-haunted.

For all his age, Dalton Johnny moved swiftly now, his feet finding sure footing even where none should be found. He spoke quietly now, his voice only slightly more than a whisper. “It is not yet time, but that matters little to the fourth coyote. He doesn’t care. He hates the march of time because he cannot quell it, cannot smooth it and cannot even understand it. It baffles him. It denies him. So he hates it.

“It has always been so. He has no patience and that is why he feared Tsagaglalla of the Wishram and envied her. She was a great chief and protected her people well. She Who Watches was even too much for coyote and he turned her into stone in shame.”

Dalton Johnny stopped at a juncture in the trail, before a large, mottled granite boulder that stood between two paths. The upper half of the boulder was blackened and no trace of moss or lichen remained. Millie remembered that Annie had talked of the lightning stone, the rock that called lightning from the sky and preserved the forest by doing so. No lightning could resist its call and no tree was tall enough, for miles around, to beckon the lightning and thus die.

Dalton Johnny panted softly for several moments and then looked at her. “The fourth trickster must not get beyond this spot, or all will be lost. We must prevent him from gaining his freedom here, or the People will die, along with all of the whites, the Moving People.”

Millie nodded once and looked around, hoping not to see anything but all too aware that she might. Her eye caught a flit of movement far up the hill, barely visible on the rocky slope where no tree had yet been able to climb and hold. She heard raven caw twice as he took wing again and darted forward to investigate. She saw through his eyes and what she saw puzzled her. It was if she saw both large and small at the same time, her attention and focus split by some trick of the light in this spirit world. Raven guided her eye and mind and her faced paled as she understood, completely.