he bone again. Always, in these waking dreams, the bone, working its enchantment, weaving its impossible pictures.

She could not afford its visions now. The rutted, flood ravaged track required all her concentration. She slowed the Rover and lifted the hinged passenger's seat next to her. The plywood and aluminum medical equipment case was still secure in its hiding place. And in it, the bone. An accident. She had been digging for a new latrine, not a new history. She was an experienced mission nurse, not an over zealous student digging for a place in the anthropology text books.

This latest manifestation brought a vision of a wasted, plague disfigured corpse cradled on a bed of fresh boughs in a crude dugout canoe. The canoe had been left for the tide. In that distant time this had been a coastal region. The tide would have claimed the dead along with whatever meagre possessions accompanied her in the canoe.

Theirs had been an intricate culture. Not the kind that left a rich material legacy to attract and inspire awe in tourists or archeology students, but a culture of great spiritual and intellectual depth. Their story tellers and dancers were as highly respected as their warriors. She had seen the woman, Cold Hands dance a beautiful tribute to the passing of her mate; a hymn to the return of his knowing to the Tide. It was a dance of great artistic and spiritual intensity. Her hands drew visions from the now hollow shell of his being in the canoe. She painted them across the air. She soared to dive into the surf to swim a hypnotic ballet as the tide ran in to reclaim his knowing, that which had belonged to it all along.

She couldn't say how she could discern all this from a single, simple bone exhumed from a sandy pit near the mission compound. She could point to no hard evidence to convince Charles or anyone else. She simply knew it to be true. This bone that had come to her as if of its own accord, that carried its story across time, etched into its very fibre, was the sole remnant of a masterful enclave that had been swept away prematurely, before it had its chance to make its evolutionary mark.

She braked sharply. Another downed tree barred her way. With a sigh and a mild muttered oath she stepped out into the greasy muck and pulled the light chainsaw from the back of the Rover. Every nerve twitched, recoiling violently as the machine wailed and roared to life. It brutally shattered the gentler rhythms of the forest, sending wildlife screeching and fleeing in all directions.

She too was fleeing, although she wasn't yet sure what or why she fled. The epidemic that defied their mission camp's penicillin made her fearful, especially for the six week old fetus she carried. The thigh bone hidden under the seat beside her had torn a ragged swath from the map of her future. It had shocked her with new revelations about herself, and, especially, about Charles. She feared she would not be able to stay with the man she had worked beside more than two years, the man she had married three brief months ago, the man she was only now really beginning to understand. If she didn't return it would hurt him deeply.

She would feel a terrible guilt about hurting him and about the damage the ensuing scandal was sure to cause the mission.

"Charles, we can't wait for another supply truck. How many of these people will die in the next three weeks?"

"Two days ago you said you thought this thing had run its course. Besides, you have no way of knowing that Cephalexin is going to do any better against it than the penicillin. It's a guess, nothing more. You want me to risk your life on a guess?"

"Even a guess is better than inaction! And it is my life to risk—not that it's really a risk—especially weighed against the more tangible risk to the children in the village. And what about our own baby? No, Charles, there are too many reasons for not waiting."

"Steadfastness in faith is not inaction. You want to go because of that bone. You intend to ship it out to that archeologist from Berkeley in spite of all the reasons I've given you against it."

"I would take it with me, yes, but I wouldn't be going if it weren't for the medication."

"Ellen, you know that I, personally, have no problems about that bone whether it is as old as you think or not; I have no trouble reconciling an evolutionary view of prehistory with my Christianity, but the people that support this mission are very conservative. Besides, dear, we both know that you aren't trained in this sort of thing. It's probably not nearly so old as you think."

"It's old, Charles, and special. It needs to be examined by someone trained in these things."

"And what if it is unusual? Think of what an invasion of scientists and their entourage of students and journalists would do to our mission—to these people —"

"We've been through all this before, Charles —"

"If it really is the medicine, then let me go."

"Don't be ridiculous, Charles. A simple flat tire or the first deadfall and you'd be absolutely helpless out there. What would you do if your van broke down? Roll your wheelchair through this mud all the way out to the highway?"

"Don't get patronizing, Ellen—I'll take Mario."

"We need Mario here."

"We need you here too—more than either Mario or me. Ellen, you're being unreasonable. You're using my handicap for an excuse. Besides, this has nothing to do with the medicine and you know it."

"I don't care what you say, Charles. I have to go, and that's all there is to it. The Rover can handle this muck a whole lot better than your van. I should be back in two or three days."

He didn't respond.

"Good-bye, Charles."

Would she really be back? Suddenly she was very confused. She climbed into the Rover. He turned his chair and wheeled back across the deck into their house cum clinic cum chapel. He didn't look back. That was it. No hug, no kiss, not so much as a "Please be careful."

It was not a good way to leave, but she knew she had to make the trip herself. She also knew that the bone was old—older than the European presence in Central America. She knew that the woman from whom the bone had come was not a member of a previously studied culture, not an ordinary ancestor of the local Indians. Of course Charles was right too. She wouldn't have gone just for the medicine. But she couldn't tell him about the bone—not everything. Not the visions.

The sickness frightened her. So many had died. So many were dying. She kept to the trees to avoid the River people. They had too much hatred for her kind. Too much fear. She could never go to them. As long as she could stay awake she would know of them before they could see or hear or even smell her. They had none of the knowing—only her own people could know another creature's fear, stealth, lust, joy. It was a gift. A gift which the River people regarded as a sign that her people were possessed by evil gods.

She would find the cliffs the elders had described. The people there would take her in. There, overlooking a different sea, she would be safe. She would be safe from the sickness. Safe from the axes and spears of the River people. She knew they would attack. Sooner or later they would take advantage of the sickness and try to sweep away all traces of the knowing with the blood of her people. What would stop them when the sickness clouded the knowing and turned even the strongest muscles to limp, aching vines dangling loosely at the sides of every long-man and every womb-man of her village?

She ran now, away from her people's sea, away from the Tide that made her. She ran to preserve the knowing. Deep Breath, her mate, had counseled against it, saying that the knowing was in and of their Tide, that it would not be

passed on to sons and daughters away from their Tide. But the sickness had taken Deep Breath, and without him, she had little reason to stay. Without him there was no voice to speak against her going. That morning, around the village spring, the others had agreed.

The stabbing belly lust of a jaguar jarred her back to the forest. It was close. Its legs coiled, flexed, tightened. Its craving closed upon her.

She threw it fear. It tensed, but did not withdraw.

She sent it pain, gouging her thigh with her own nails. Its gaze did not waver. Its craving was overpowering. It found her eyes.

The bone was not marked by the cat attack. The jaguar had not been able to stand the pain. It had been forced to withdraw with the first sweep of its claws. It never tasted her blood. Confused, it retreated to lick its own thigh. It batted at its own head.

She was tired and weak. She just sat there, letting her head fall back, flopping over the back of the seat. The sickness. The bone. It rested in her lap. She probably shouldn't be touching it with her bare hands. The expert from Berkeley would tell her she shouldn't have touched it, but the visions seemed clearer, stronger with actual physical contact. Would she tell the experts about the visions?

Once again she wrapped it with great care. She closed it back in the case and stowed it under the seat. She started the Rover.

They discovered her as they returned triumphantly from the hunt. They took her. She was too weak to know, too weak to resist. The heaviness was upon her like a hungry undertow stalking along the shore. They didn't kill her right away. Their long-men, engorged with boasting and male-heat from the hunt, passed her about, tearing at her insides with their clumsiness and greed until she bled from her groin. Until she was beyond all knowing. In the end, they left her like an empty shell at the edge of their village for the dogs to finish.

The moon passed over her three times before she was capable of even the slightest movement, but still the dogs would not touch her.

When she finally did move, it was only with the greatest effort. It was only to scare back death for a bit longer. But death never scares easily, nor for long. The furrows gouged in her thigh by the cat were festered and hot. The sickness surged inside her head like the River currents pushing against the Tide. She waited for their long-men to return to her to do what the dogs would not.

Maybe it was the fever, but suddenly there were so many things she did not understand. What could have killed them off so suddenly so completely, but allowed a single perfect bone to survive untouched? How were the visions carried by the bone? What was she to do with it all—the bone—the knowledge—the knowing?

The canoe awaited the tide. She knew she was ill. The disease, whatever it was, had her. She knew she had to turn back. She knew the bone she carried was all that remained of an enclave that might have reshaped history had it only been given the chance. She knew she had to turn back.

She would not be allowed to return her knowing to the sea. The hatred of the River people grew like a fire against her, like a fever. Their abuse of her had brought the sickness down upon them. First their long-men began to fall, and then their womb-men. The few of their number still untouched by the sickness dragged her to the village pool. They gave her as an offering to the killing fish.

The new chief of the River people raked the bones from the pond and chose a thigh bone as her war club. The chief brandished the club above her head and gathered her people about her, shrilling out her war cry. She roused the killing lust in them to lead them against the people of the Tide. The evil ones had sent their witch against her people to poison them with the wasting sickness. Only the blood of the Tide people would wash away the sickness.

Through the forest, they sought out the big cats and drove them towards village of the Tide-men. Even the witching of their evil enemies was not as strong as the cats' fear of fire.

The rain came again. Darkness. The headlights couldn't find the track. She would have to stop. She should put the bone away, back in the case, safe. But there was the fire. The fury of the beasts pressed against her back. She drove on. Reeling. Faint. Lost.

The anger. The bone sweeping an arc through the air outlined against the headlights—the firelight. She brakes hard. Swerves. Skids through mud and brush.

Sideways. Backwards. Sliding. Crashing. Splashing.

Darkness.

The forest bursts open. The walls of the earth fall away. The lights of the night sky to crash to the ground—hurtling the magical beasts from the night sky, with all their fury, against the People of the Tide. The village was engulfed in flame and violence. Enraged, slashing beasts painted the sands red with blood. Panic, fear, pain and despair flew like sparks from one mind to the next. The war shrieks, the elation, the battle lust of the River-men were heard, were known only as an after shock.

But already it was too late. There was no one left to warn—no one left to flee. There was no one left to plot retaliation.

It had started with the sickness. The River-men finished it. They washed the people of the Tide and their knowing from the land—swept away in blood, fire, fear, and hate.

The sun explored her pain. She had lost a lot of blood. There was a gash along her left thigh where a limb had caught her as she was hurled from the Rover. Her head resounded with the pain of a concussion or worse. But it was the throbbing in her belly that filled her with a brittle, silent scream. She lay in shallow water. Dying. Sun. She realized that she hadn't felt the sun's rays on her skin for days. The sun. She had one thing left.

One thing more to do.

When the sun returned they moved in for a closer look at what the cats had done for them. They had closed in a semi-circle around the village against the escape of cats or Tide-men or fire, but none had broken through. When the sun came they moved in to complete the purging of the land.

They brought clubs and fire to finish off the homes, the weapons, anything that might have been touched by the witching of the Tide-men. Nothing was allowed to survive. Anything which refused to burn was smashed. The coals were raked into the sand. The sun came and went three times before the chief of the River-men was satisfied with the cleansing. Each night they withdrew to the forest to sleep, but on the last night, convinced that the evil was finally and thoroughly eradicated, they rolled defiantly in the ashes. Following the example of their new chief, they slept in the ashes.

The heat of the midday sun burns the mist from her vision. A few meters away, just beyond the water, she sees the bone. Her gaze, beginning to waver again, traces its way a few meters more along the water's edge to the canoe.

She begins to seek out each pain, moving them, one by one to a place behind the certainty of what she knows she must do.

They rubbed themselves all over with the ashes. They ran and sang and danced a celebration to be remembered for three generations. The brave chief of the River people held the witch bone high over her head. She hurled it end over end, spiraling out into the sea.

Even though she feels the warmth of day, there is only darkness around her. She knows the rains are returning by the warm drops on her cheeks, the backs of her hands, her torn thigh.

The canoe begins to rock gently, to slide, easing slowly down into the river to seek out the tide. She will carry the knowing back to the sea.

© Gary Eikenberry