After a long while, the fog thinned and he approached what looked like a fully built-out dock, as he might have found in a river back east. Sure that this meant something, that he should stop, he tied the rotting canoe with a painter rope left dangling from the dock. He climbed onto the remarkably decrepit and decaying structure and walked to the shore, where he faced a road, a beaten-dirt track amid verdant forested hills.
Time drifted along, confusing, and he had gone some ways down the road, when he heard a song he remembered from his dreams, that nagging tune he’d first heard as “To Anacreon in Heaven.” He heard masculine voices singing it, far away to his left, but the lyrics were clear, though strange, something about a banner. Meriwether was sure that if he trudged over the rolling lands, he would find Collins, Hall, and Willard, looking just as he had seen them last before that disastrous night of the revenant attack.
He kept to the main road, though, knowing from countless stories that if one diverged from the path in a magical land, it would invite all kinds of disasters. Meriwether kept walking until he heard the sound of hooves, and saw a party of painted native warriors riding swiftly toward him, and their garments identified them as Hidatsa. They bore down on him, carrying spears.
He pumped his air rifle and took a knee, shooting into the massed confusion. A spectral horse screamed and fell, and Meriwether shot again, blasting a man out of his saddle. But he faced too many of them, a good twenty, and Meriwether knew he would be killed or captured.
From his left he heard a slurred, defiant cry, “Hold up, Captain!”
“We’ll get those rascals!”
Out of the blue, a whiskey barrel sailed through the air and crashed into the charging natives, its staves splintering, the iron hoops rolling and ringing loose. Wherever the metal touched one of the party, the warrior or horse fell apart into a pile of bones, and the other horses and warriors tumbled into the debris.
Only three of the attackers remained in their charge, and Meriwether shot one of them through the chest. The other two warriors were dispatched by the three Whiskey Revenants.
“Come on, Captain Lewis,” Hall said, urging him down the road. “No time to lose. They’ll be back on their feet in a trice, and we can’t let them capture you.”
“This way,” Willard called. “Don’t leave the road. This part is dangerous for those still living.”
“You are…” Meriwether stuttered, but couldn’t bring himself to say the word, openly and coldly.
“Dead, too?” Collins asked. He grinned. “Oh, we know that, Captain, but we’re still men of your expedition. We’ll give you every help we can, since we have only been trouble to our party in the living world.”
“And we would love to give a black eye to that dragon sorcerer who did this to us,” Hall said.
“In the other world, the world of the living,” Meriwether said a little sadly, “you are revenants, persistent ones. I’m afraid you’ve stolen a lot of whiskey.”
“Aye,” Willard said. “Do you know why? Because whiskey is the only thing that keeps the evil one from taking control of our bodies and making us his revenants.” He spat on the ground. “He uses empty bodies as his own. It ain’t right. And we found a way to counter him, even though we’re already dead and all.”
The three men helped Meriwether over the pile of bones and gore that had, moments before, been a charging band of native warriors and their horses. When he tried to explain his predicament to them, they waved away his explanation. “We know. Toussaint Charbonneau was pulled here much as we were, and then his body was returned to the expedition as a spy, and to trap his wife.”
“She came by here some days ago,” Willard said, “but we weren’t able to help her. She did not know us.”
They revenants explained that Sacagawea’s spirit form was now being held captive by one of the tribes the dragon sorcerer had killed wholesale and now used as his minions: their bodies in the other world, their souls here.
“Is Charbonneau there, too?” he asked.
Hall nodded. “Yes, and he helped with taking his wife captive. Her husband pleads with her, trying to force her to eat our food, so she will remain here forever.” He shook his head. “I think you need her, Captain. You both need to defeat the enemy and free the land’s magic he seized.”
Collins sniffed. “He knows that and is afraid of you. That’s why he has set about to capture your souls. Be exceedingly careful, sir. Don’t step wrong, or give him a chance to control you. Here, we are given glimpses of many futures. Many presents too. But we can see the futures of your situation. It is important that you return, both of you. Without either of you, the expedition will be destroyed, and then the sorcerer will get hold of Sacagawea’s baby. After which nothing will stand in his way to dominate all of the land. Do you understand?”
Meriwether nodded. His three dead comrades escorted him down the road to where the track diverged, cutting amid other sparsely forested hills. He heard the sound of a swollen creek. Meriwether perked up at this, but Hall clapped his shoulder, “Do not drink water from that stream. You will forget yourself and all that you used to think and be.”
Willard said, “You’ll forget that you even wanted to go back.”
“At the end of this track past those boulders,” Collins said, “you will find the village of the tribe holding Sacagawea’s spirit captive. They are Hidatsa, because the sorcerer knew that would trigger her worst memories and fears. The ghost warriors use her own fears to keep her subdued. You will have to distract them or convince them to let her go.”
“You might even have to fight them to free her. And we’ll help.” Hall sounded altogether too cheerful.
Meriwether felt his heart drop down to his feet. “I shall do it somehow.” Saying his formal goodbye, he shook the hands of Hall, Willard, and Collins. He paused, looked at the three men curiously. “That song you sing, both here and in the world? You use different words than the lyrics with which I am familiar.”
Willard explained, “We are beyond death, and we can see all that could have been in the living world. There is another version of this world, one without the Sundering, where this continent was never cut off from Europe. That land is different, and it has grown into a whole, united land, where all men are considered equal, where every person has the right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
Collins continued, “In that world, they used the tune of ‘To Anacreon in Heaven’ for their anthem. We use those words for strength against the murderous great magic. A world that might have been.”
Willard urged him on. “Now, go and rescue the Bird Woman. It is up to you, sir.”
But Hugh Hall looked sheepish. He cast his eyes down. “I’m sorry we stole that first barrel of whiskey, sir. That was wrong. We let our greed get the best of us, but believe me, we’ve been punished for it enough. Anything we can do to help you and the expedition, we will do.”
“Anything in our power,” Collins added.
As he left them and trudged down the track, he considered the idea the Whiskey Revenants suggested, some strange parallel world that embraced the idea of all men being equal. Such a utopia sounded nonsensical.
He did, however, keep to the road, more determined than he’d been before because he trusted what the three dead men had told him. Once a man needed to trust in whiskey to keep him from being possessed by an evil force, he didn’t have much room to invent lies.
He thought the Hidatsa revenants would have placed sentries on the track to guard against invaders, and he did find them. As he approached a large rock outcropping ahead, beyond which he expected to find the village, a native undead warrior stood in the road, pointing a wicked spear at him. “Turn around, white man, or I’ll be the end of you.” His skin was gray and patchy with rot.