Meriwether was not so quick to dismiss her worries. “But what if the ice signifies another attack on us? The great magic could be testing its powers.”
“All the more reason to keep moving,” Clark said. “Remember our previous encounters with the dark magic. Only the river and our swift travel allowed us to escape unscathed. If the attack intensifies, what good would it do us to remain here, huddled in camp? Should we all run in different directions along the bank?” Clark surveyed the river’s edge, the rocks, thickets of drift wood, impenetrable underbrush. “I would rather be on the river.”
Meriwether could not disagree with that, and Sacagawea accepted the decision. Nevertheless, he made sure to have his air rifle close, pumped and ready, and insisted that the four men in his pirogue were similarly armed.
Together, the canoes and pirogues set off into the river, using oars for direction, pulling against the surprisingly rapid current. Before long, the river narrowed and they found themselves passing between quite steep banks of golden stone, dotted with scraggly trees that clung to pockets of soil.
Suddenly, the air seemed to dim, as it had at Tavern Rock nearly a year ago. The sounds of the world grew muffled, as if a thin blanket had been draped over them. Noticing the difference, Meriwether grew tense and wary.
A scream came from one of the canoes ahead, the boat carrying Sacagawea. He saw it tilting perilously, and then the water itself lurched up, raising the canoe. It looked like a green rock…and then the rock moved, curled, slithered. They were coils, semitransparent, glistening, wet coils, like the skin of a great monster.
A roar-hiss erupted from the river, drowning out the alarmed shouts. A sinuous body rose from the current, as tall as both canoes end to end. At the end of the snakelike neck, the creature’s head looked part lion, part lizard, with broad golden eyes and glistening fangs. More serpentine coils spread across the river surface, ensnaring every one of their boats, tipping them. In one of the pirogues, the big dog Seaman barked and barked.
As Meriwether’s pirogue tilted wildly beneath him, he grabbed his air rifle and aimed, but his shot went wide of the mark. With a yelp, he found himself plunged into the deep, cold water. Sacagawea was in the water, swimming. Baby Pompy was wailing, his head barely above the water. Crates, papers, and parcels floated everywhere, strewn about from the capsized boats. The men frantically struggled to escape the coils and swim for the high-banked shore, although Pryor and York tried to save some of the supplies. Seaman paddled toward the bank, snapping at a coil that came too close to his muzzle.
Struggling in the water, Sacagawea tried to turn a pirogue right-side up again. Meriwether stroked over to her and helped her. Treading water in the swift current, she started throwing packages into the pirogue, saving their supplies. She shouted to him, “You have to stop it!”
Meriwether didn’t know what she meant. Did she mean he had to become the dragon? How could he do that? He had only dreamed it, and he still only half believed what she had told him. He couldn’t just call on some imaginary inner magic.
The water-serpent’s coils pulled Peter Weiser up out of the water and dangled him before its maw before popping him in, still screaming. The serpent’s tail plunged back into the water, coiled around Meriwether’s legs.
As she clung to the side of the pirogue, Sacagawea lifted her hand, palm open. A bird flew from her hand, a magnificent, powerful eagle that appeared out of nowhere. The raptor swooped in, flying directly into the serpent’s golden eyes, attacking.
Sacagawea’s body grasped the boat, but Meriwether sensed that she was not really there. Her mind and heart were inside that eagle, screaming a challenge at the river monster.
If only he could do the same…
Meriwether used his belt knife to stab at the serpent, but the creature only coiled tighter around him, squeezing, raising him partway out of the water. Sacagawea’s eagle continued to harass its face. The serpent snapped its jaws, nearly catching the eagle’s wing. Two loose feathers drifted away as the bird swooped in the air.
She had said that if the spirit form died, then the person would die.
Meriwether blocked all thoughts of the constricting slimy coils around him, and he willed himself up in the air. He felt something leave him, and suddenly he was the dragon, flying, roaring. He didn’t know if he could breathe fire, like that other attacking dragon in St. Louis. He spread his dream wings in the air and evaded the serpent’s lunge for him. His dragon form flew closer and interposed himself between the monster and Sacagawea’s eagle. Meriwether spread his hooked claws and raked at the eyes of the river serpent. He felt the satisfying snaring of tissue, ripping scales, flesh, and jellied eyes.
The river serpent scream-hissed, and its sinuous glistening neck wavered like a reed in wind, back and forth. Trembling, shuddering…
The monster screamed one more time and then, like the antediluvian lizard, it exploded, tore itself apart, and collapsed inward. One moment the monster thrashed and writhed in its attack, gross and blood-spattered, and then it simply fell apart, spraying in chunks and gobbets.
Meriwether was once again in the cold river water, going down, down, down, into the swift current, striking against submerged rocks, grabbing at fallen, waterlogged trees, rushed along by the current.
Hands grabbed him and pulled him out of the water. He could barely see, but he flailed his arms, trying to help. York dragged him to the shore, while Clark shouted orders to the other terrified men. “The monster is dead! And we’ll all be dead unless we retrieve our boats and supplies. Get in the water and collect what you can!”
A gunshot rang out, and Meriwether blinked, saw Clark raising his rifle to shoot at three…creatures, revenants that moved in a halting and strange way. He shook himself, flung river water out of his eyes, and saw that the three revenants appeared to be the tattered remains of Hall, Collins, and Willard, still lurking along with the expedition. The three dead men seized a barrel of whiskey that had washed up along the bank, and they shambled off with their prize. Clark fired again, but his shot missed.
Meriwether lacked the strength to be interested. Becoming the spirit dragon, fighting the river monster, had drained him, as well as nearly drowning in the rushing river. He collapsed on the narrow bank near the high rock walls, but he struggled to sit up, looking around to find Sacagawea. She was dripping wet, and the baby still wailed on her back, but she was alive and intact.
While the rest of the men scavenged what they could and looked about for any appropriate patch of ground that might serve as a camp, Clark came up to him, sloshing through the shallow water. “I saw the dragon.” His expression was grim and serious. “I believe that you and I need to talk, Lewis.”
Before Meriwether could answer, a cry came from Sacagawea, “Charbonneau!” She scrambled through the shallows, sloshing her way to the rocks and sparse trees toward a rough-looking stranger who sat on a narrow strip of sand, looking dazed. “Charbonneau! Mon ami!”
Secrets and Powers