Coyote Tricks: The Bone Eaters Well

A darkness has gripped the home of Shippo of the Sunset Kitsune Clan since Kit’s encounter with the Bone Eaters Well. Kit is acting strange and nightmares and shadows plague our heroes. What can it mean?
This chapter is rated R for extreme violence and torture scenes.
As always if you haven’t read the disclaimers and warnings in the first chapter please do so before proceeding.

Nightmares and Insanity

That night once again the shadow moved through the house. It fell on Spirit Singer’s sleeping face. The Shaman stirred in his sleep.

Singer was standing on a mesa. The sky overhead was dark and cloudy and rumbled ominously.
“Help me” a woman’s voice said coming seemingly from every direction.
“Who are you?” Singer asked.
“Save me, open the well”
“I have to know more. Who are you? Why are you imprisoned?” Singer said sternly.
“You MUST help me” the voice insisted.
“No” Singer sternly replied.
“If you will not help me” the voice said angrily, “then help someone for whom you care deeply”

-
Kit was running through the rifts and gullies trying to lose his pursuers wishing he had some clothing to protect him from the sharp rocks and cacti. He had been successful in avoiding them so far but his sensitive coyote ears told him they were all around him now. He never saw the rock that struck him knocking him to the ground. They were on him in an instant. Warriors of the People wearing loincloths and painted for battle but he couldn’t recognize the Nation. Too dazed to effectively fight, they quickly subdued him and tied him spread-eagled to an upright wooden frame. Wood was being placed in piles around the frame. A drum beat began and the Warriors danced around him blades drawn.
Kit was familiar enough with the history of some of the Nations to know he was being prepared for a long slow and painful death, probably the worst since this series of nightmares began.
“Brothers” he called out to them. “I am one of you; I am the son of the great Coyote.”
He cried out as one of the warriors swept in and slashed his knife across his chest, the wound deliberately shallow to inflict pain and bleeding while prolonging his life.
The warrior yelled at him “Quiet skin walker!”
More pain came to him, one of the fires behind him had been lit and was burning the fur of his tail. He swung it back and forth trying to keep it out of the flames with little success.
The dancing warriors took up a chant, “Kill the demon! Kill the demon!”
More of them swept in to slash at his unprotected body, blood streaming all over him now from the numerous cuts. As he shook his head in pain, he saw a figure standing atop a nearby mesa. It was Spirit Singer, somehow he knew it was Singer and that Singer was the only one who could lift him from this nightmare.
“Wise Elder, help me!” he cried.

Singer stood looking down on the scene below as the young coyote writhed in agony his body trembling in rage.
“No, this is an illusion, it can’t be real” he called out loud. “Kit is safe, that can’t be….”
Kit called out to him again as the other fires were being lit. “Singer Father, Please!”
Singer seemed to sag. “Kit” he said weakly.
The coyote screamed as the flames licked at his sides.
“KIT! NOOO….”

“…NOOOO!” Spirit Singer jerked up in his bed. That had been no dream! He had felt the mental connection break as his rebellion against the image had awoken him. Someone or something had entered his mind. Then he noticed he wasn’t alone. Kit was sitting at the side of his bed looking disoriented and confused. He remembered the earlier discussion about Kit being possibly possessed. If their mysterious enemy had used Kit as a channel to get past Singer’s mental shields then he might have been freed in the backlash of Singer’s shields snapping back in place!

Singer began humming to summon his powers and quickly raised a spirit barrier around the room.
‘That should keep who ever it is from repossessing him.’ He thought.
He both heard and felt the evidence that his barrier was working as outside Shippo and Toshiro ran into it at full speed and were flung back down the hall. He would have to worry about them later.

He reached out and grabbed Kit by the shoulder.
“Kit? Kit can you hear me?”
“Kit? I’m not Kit. I’m Momoru”
“What?” Singer said confused.
Suddenly Kit’s face cleared and grabbed Singer by the shoulders.
“You must stop her” he said. “The Queen of Shadows must not…”
Singer flinched as something smashed its way through his barrier by sheer brute force. The coyote grabbed his head and rolled off the bed screaming.
“No Mistress, I didn’t mean…”
Then the screaming stopped and when he again stood at the foot of the bed, he was no longer Kit but a dark haired Japanese man, a large dark shadow rose from him to fill the room like some dark hooded figure. The mysterious woman’s voice issued from it echoing the words from the man’s mouth.
“You will help us, the Queen of Shadows will be free or Kit will suffer the consequences” the voices said and then with an echoing laugh, he turned and threw himself through the second story window. By time Singer reached the window all that could be seen below was broken glass.

-

Kit lay curled into a ball in the darkness, occasionally small whimpers would escape from him as he shivered. The shivering stopped as he felt Her return. She comforted him and the hurts eased. He reached for an identity of who She was and could only come up one term close enough.
“Mother?” he said.
There was as a quiet laugh. “Yes, Mother is here.”
He wanted to understand what was happening to him, why did these terrible things keep happening to him, why didn’t Singer help him? He could only come to express it all in one word: “Why?”
“Why?” the comforting voice answered. “Because they are humans and that is what they do. All humans are evil. They are a blight on our world and must be destroyed.”
“But Singer…”
“Is human too. He did not save you did he?”
“But he is my Singer Father” Kit whispered. The thought became a sliver of light in his mind. He grasped onto it and held it tightly lest She see it. It became an anchor that allowed him to orient his thoughts for the first time in what seemed an eternity. Something was wrong, something that She was keeping from him. He held on to the sliver of light, trying to work it out, holding on desperately to his sanity.

--
Toshiro rubbing a bruised nose entered the room with Shippo to find Spirit Singer collapsed in heap under the broken window frame. The strength and dignity the shaman always carried was gone and every second of his 80 years hung heavily on him.
“Master Singer are you all right?” Shippo asked.
“Yes” the elderly shaman answered as they helped him up.
“Where is Kit?” Shippo said looking out the broken window.
“That is a good question” Singer said with a concerned look. “I don’t think the person who was here was Kit but we may have been right about him being possessed.”

Singer got dressed as Toshiro and Shippo conducted a quick search of the area around the house for the missing Kit or the mystery man who pretended to be Kit. Then they all gathered in the living area and Singer described what had happened.
“I’m not sure I understand” Toshiro asked “what makes you think that the Kit in your dream is the real Kit?”

Spirit Singer didn’t answer at first as the memory came unbidden to him. It was many years ago, his hair was still dark without any of the grey that currently composed it. He was sitting in the den of his home watching a coyote-eared child dressed in his Sheriff Woody cowboy suit. The boy was sitting on the carpet before the fireplace using his claws to enthusiastically tear into his present. The wrapping and box inside quickly shredded young Kit held up the prize, a dark metal tube with holes and a wood block set in one end to form a mouthpiece.
“It’s a tin whistle” Spirit Singer said bending down to show Kit how to hold it. “With this you can play with me. Do you like it?”
“I love it” Kit said giving Singer a quick hug. “Thank You Father”
“You’re Welcome” Singer said as Kit sat back down and proceeded to make vaguely musical sounds with his new possession.
“But Kit” Singer continued “I’m not your father; your father is Lord Coyote.”
“Yes, he is my Spirit Father” Kit said matter of factly, looking down the tube of the whistle “and you are my Singer Father”.
A slightly teary eyed look came to Singer’s face. “Alright then, I am Singer Father” he said with a grin.

“As he was being tortured” Singer answered with difficulty “he called out to me. He called me Singer Father. It was his name for me when he was a small child. We haven’t used it in public for many years. No one here would know it.”
“Could this Momoru have read it from your mind?” Toshiro asked.
“No my mental shields are too good for that, I would have been aware if he probed that deeply” Singer answered. “Besides, if he were powerful enough to probe that deeply he could have possessed me too making the whole dream argument unnecessary. No what I think is that when the new portal opened on the well nexus the old one flickered open briefly too. That this ‘Queen of Shadows’ pulled Kit into the well and sent Momoru to take his place.”
“But why?” Shippo asked.
“Obviously, she sensed my first probings of the well’s structure and realized there was a bard involved. The momentary opening must not have been large enough for her to pass so she kidnapped Kit and sent Momoru through to find me. She wants to get me to open the well fully so she can escape.”
“So how do we rescue Kit?” Shippo inquired.
“We will have to go into the Demon Realm and get him” Singer answered.

Kit ran trying to escape them. He could hear them closing the howls of some awful beasts and the sound of a hunting horn like some sort of evil fox hunt. He ran on through the woods so quickly he didn’t see the drop until it was too late. He slid down the rocky face and landed hard at the bottom. He staggered up but his left leg was hurt and he could only limp slowly. He was in a narrow rocky gully, the walls on three sides too steep to climb with his injury. He turned and started limping towards the mouth of the gully but he was too late. The hunting party had found him.
There in the mouth of the gully stood Spirit Singer and a demon lord that look amazingly similar to Sesshomaru. On all fours before them were Shippo and Toshiro. They had collars around their necks attached to leashes being held by the Demon Lord. They snarled and growled and strained against the leashes, wanting to throw themselves on the cornered coyote.
“We have him at last” the Demon Lord said.
“Yes” Spirit Singer said. “Let me finish the beast Lord Inutashio”
Singer stepped forward uncoiling a large bull whip and lashed out at Kit.
Pain lashed through Kit as the whip struck again and again tearing the flesh from his body. He called out as he had done many times in the agonies of his repeated nightmares.
“Singer Father, please!”
His cries were unheeded, just as his cries for Shippo, his Father Coyote and his Mother Spring Rain had gone unheeded. Now for the first time he called out to someone else.
“Shadow Mother, help me!”
The comforting healing darkness descended on him.

--
Author’s Notes: Some of the Native American tribes had methods of torture would make the Spanish Inquisitors green with envy. Some of my research into this is reflected in the nightmare scene.
So who is the mystery She who has Kit captive and what does Sesshomaru’s father have to do with her? Check out the next chapter: The Queen of Shadows.