Chapter Ten

1

This “Bigfoot” has often appeared during critical moments in human history, and has often foretold future events.  Democritus, in his Treatise on Future Things, explains that he was given his prophetic knowledge by “a hairy creature, somewhat resembling a large monkey,” and that this creature provided “startling evidence of what would transpire 10, 50, and even 1000 years hence.”

        It should then come as no surprise that Democritus was the first to describe the workings of the automobile and the internal combustion engine, the invention of the Internet, and the exact sentence in which the world would end.  He was certainly shown such things by this “creature,” and one can only wonder what other news of the future he was privileged to hear from the lips of this friendly star traveler.

        A leading sorcerer and alchemist, who fears to give his name, has also testified to the existence of Altantis, “the Yeti,” and our extraterrestrial foes.  His source of information was the demon Yog-Sothoth, whom he first conjured in the basement of his parents’ house on January 14, 1975.  

The demon also related secrets regarding crop circles then appearing in the north of England, and also Stonehenge’s true use as a focus for magical energies in that part of the world.  It is no accident that during the same year, 1975, several Bigfoot sightings were reported in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States, and that the Monster of Loch Ness, also known as “Nessie,” was at this time reawakened from her ancient slumbers.

        It is also no accident that the number 1975 is widely known to possess magical properties.  Within this number – representing a year which is of pivotal importance to the cosmos – there are the numbers 19 and 75, and also the numbers 9 and 5 in alternating order.  Of still greater significance is the fact that the numbers 1, 9, 7, and 5 add up to make 22, which is the number of the house in London where the first of the Atlantean artifacts were discovered.  Even more alarming is the fact that 19 multiplied by 75 gives us 1425, which is the year in which Nazari completed his great treatise on the alchemical art, The Lessons of Trismegistus.

2

“Yes,” I answer.

        “Where are you?” she asks, growing impatient, “I’m on the way over, and after I get there we have to be on our way to meet Tina and Roy for dinner.  Are you dressed yet?  Are you ready?”

        “Yes,” I lie, “I was just looking over something.  I’ll meet you downstairs.”

3

“Go back further,” said The Character From a Science Fiction Novel That Has Yet to Be Written, “I’ve seen this place already.  I want to see something else.”

4

I watched the two of them pass along the road.  A man and a woman with yellow hair.  A fine-looking woman.  

But their wagon was too full, and the horses leading the wagon were tired and thirsty.  There was no water to be found in that place.  It was a very hot day, and their skins were no longer white, but red like mine.  I know they call a man like me a red man, but they were redder still.

        In the time of my father I would have had that woman for my wife, but in my time I could only watch them as they passed, wondering what kind of children that woman might have borne me.  Red children, no doubt, but their hair might have been yellow, like hers.

        I was on my horse, and watching them go.  I do not know how I feel about the white men and their women.  Some of them want to bring us liquor and weapons.  Others want to bring us their God.  Some of them seem to have no purpose, and no place to call home.

My father said that the magic of the white men is a fearful thing, and for this reason their God is stronger than ours.  I do not know.  Even now, I do not know.  Sometimes I think that the white men are not so smart.  They are only clever, in the way that Raven is clever.  Some animals do great harm.

When I think of the future I feel sad.  I think that the white men will erase me from it.  Or they will change me so that I am myself no longer.  This West that they are taking for their own, this whole world that they are taking, they want to fill it up with their own stories.  They want to erase my past from the rocks and the trees.  They want to say that every place was always theirs from the beginning.  They have their own stories, these white men.  They have their own explanations for why things are made, and why other things are unmade.

I think that if I could have taken that white woman for my own, I would have put my mark on their stories.  They are so selfish with their women, but they could not have unmade me so easily.  Because I would have given her red children with yellow hair, and these children would have kept both tribes alive, both tribes living.

And here, now, I am just a red man left alone in this shack, among other red men like me, in a place the white people have chosen not to remember.  They have taken so many of our stories away with their guns and their schooling, but there are some who will remember, there are some - a few, yellow-haired red children - who have escaped this place, and our stories will live on in their blood.

That yellow-haired woman.  I saw her near the mountain that we called the place of the man-stealers.  My father knew all the stories of the man-stealers.  I have forgotten most of them.  But I wished I could have been a woman-stealer that day.  I wished it mighty hard.