Another one of the heads swiveled and belched fire up toward his spirit dragon, while the other heads laughed.
Three of the reptilian heads thrashed and wove in the air, also adding streams of fire. Even if he swooped and dodged like a frantic canary, he could not avoid the trio of jets. Rather, he let himself plunge straight down, his wings and tail scraping painfully on the rock of the cavern. The tangled evil dragon let out sibilant, echoed laughter and lunged out at his falling body with clawed paws. “You will make a tasty snack, to give me strength to court my queen.”
As he fought to keep himself free, Meriwether snapped at a paw with his own strong jaws, then clawed at yet another.
“Stop!” a voice boomed, and Meriwether spun in the air.
On the floor of the cavern stood Coyote, accompanied by two dazed-looking people, as if they were sleepwalking. One was a man of rough appearance and mixed race, clad in the buffalo-hide clothes common to trappers. His eyes were wide and vacant.
On the other side of the trickster stood the beautiful native woman that Meriwether had seen preserved in the waterfall, back at Coyote’s home.
With a lilt in his voice, Coyote said, “If you breathe fire at me, old friend, you will kill one of them.”
Meriwether’s spirit dragon broke free and scuttled along the floor, to loom over the dazed male figure, presumably the trapper Raven’s mad spirit had possessed.
The seven-headed dragon roared and dropped Sacagawea, no longer interested in her. Gouts of fire burned the ceiling of the cavern, but none threatened the hostages.
Sacagawea started crawling, all dogged determination, towards the nearest head of the dragon, still clutching her long hair. She clearly intended to scale the heads one by one and somehow tie a hair around each of the necks. But that was impossible.
Meriwether knew his spirit dragon could do better with the speed of his wings. With his large scaled form, he reached out and pulled Sacagawea back to the place of safety. As she protested, he used his claw, as delicately as he could, to pull loose a handful of her hair. She cried out as they came loose, but now he had the magical weapon he needed.
Before Raven’s dragon thing could tear his attention from Coyote’s hostages and ultimatum, Meriwether flew out. Swooping close, he snagged the long, thin hairs around two of the necks, before the horror’s other heads swung toward him. He darted away, like a startled canary, back to where Coyote kept his hostages safe. The seven-headed dragon howled in frustration, two of his heads bowed, unmoving.
Fire scorched Meriwether’s right wing and his tail, but he forced the pain away, flapping hard again as he flew back for a second attack. He fluttered swiftly past another writhing neck, draped a strand of Sacagawea’s hair in place and immobilized it. Then another. Then another.
Now, the distorted monster had only two of its seven heads left to fight, while the others had been rendered immobile, unconscious. He focused on the remaining two heads, darting back and forth, drawing their fire, eluding most of the pain, but he could not get close enough to tie another strand of hair.
Suddenly, one of the two heads drooped, also rendered unconscious. While Coyote laughed on the floor of the cavern, Sacagawea had sprinted up the monster’s twined body and plucked another hair from her head, binding the reptilian neck.
The dragon sorcerer roared, swung its only remaining head toward Sacagawea to roast her alive.
Meriwether moved. While the last head was turned away, he slipped a final strand of hair around its neck. And the twined river serpents, the horrific manifestation of an insane Raven and the anger brooding in the restless arcane territories, collapsed, defeated and unconscious.
Meriwether collapsed as well, letting his spirit dragon slide down the cavern wall and slump into a heap, breathing with great difficulty. His skin and scales burned, his broad armored chest hurt.
Coyote let out peals of laughter. “Marvelous! A game and a battle at once! It is just what my friend Raven deserved.” Then he turned his distorted, canine face toward Meriwether’s spirit form. “Very well done, little dragon.”
Meriwether was too sore and exhausted to move. His eyes burned, and through the pain he watched Coyote draw forth a very large blade. He handed it to Sacagawea, while he drew a dagger for himself. “Go on, Bird Woman. Behead the rascal. Seven times the trouble, but worth it.”
Sacagawea glanced at his wounded spirit-dragon form, as if considering how she might aid him, and instead took the long blade from Coyote and strode forward.
He couldn’t imagine that she had ever used a blade so large or so sharp, but she wielded it with a will, raising it over her head. With a single stroke, she chopped down and severed the neck of the first head. Without waiting for it to roll aside, while dark blood gushed out of the stump, she swung again and chopped off the next head, and the third. She let out a yell, a wild release, and with a great blow she sliced off two heads at once, then stood panting. With dark blood spattered on her skin, face, and hair, she moved forward more methodically and chopped off the rest of the seven heads.
Finally, she stood, shaking with exhaustion and relief. She clutched the bloodied blade in both hands, and stared at Coyote with an odd, shining expression in her eyes, as if she considered swinging the blade at the other trickster as well.
In the transformed shaman’s body, Coyote looked unconcerned. He clicked his unnaturally long teeth together. “We should make a clean sweep of it. And I must do the part I promised.” Without malice, barely paying attention, he drew his own dagger across the throat of the defenseless man to his right, the hapless, maddened trapper who had been possessed by Raven. He collapsed to the floor of the cavern, bleeding, without even reaching up to touch the gash in his throat.
As soon as the human avatar died, a sound like an implosion erupted behind Sacagawea. The dead, tangled mass of twined river serpents whipped and unwound, then blasted apart. Pieces of putrid reptilian flesh blasted in all directions. She hunched over to protect herself from the barrage.
To Meriwether’s unbelieving eyes, still in his spirit dragon form, the whole mass seemed to explode and implode all at once, filling the chamber with a bloody haze. Light glowed all around, and he breathed the distinct smell of rivers and fish and willow trees.
In the place where the seven-headed creature had been stood another figure entirely.
He was a young and muscular native, wearing buffalo-hide breeches. His hair was long, sleek, black as a raven’s wing. His eyes were intent, and power rolled off him as he looked at Coyote. “Brother, what are you doing here?”
“I came to save you.” Coyote nudged the bloody corpse of the trapper with his foot.
Just as Meriwether thought they had been betrayed, that Coyote would join with Raven to attack them all, Sacagawea turned and bowed respectfully to the youth, bending nearly to the floor. He gave her an amused took, as if such abasement was his due, and turned back to Coyote. “Save me from what?” He craned his neck and peered around the cavern in peevish annoyance, as though he noticed something just slightly out of place.
“From yourself, Brother,” Coyote said, then placed his hand on the back of the beautiful woman from the waterfall. He nudged her forward, and she moved listlessly, still sleepwalking. “And I brought your wife with me.”
Raven’s brow furrowed as he looked at the woman, puzzled, as if he were trying to remember something. The woman drew a quick breath, and her eyes brightened, her expression animated as if she had come fully awake for the first time in a thousand years. Her eyes went very wide. “My husband?”
Even knowing the story, as related by Coyote, Meriwether couldn’t fully understand what was going on. He watched as the woman and Raven stared at each other, their eyes meeting and widening. Was that what falling in love looked like?