Subject: The Talisman 4/7

From: [email-masked] (Monture & Wicks)
Date: 05 Dec 1994 01:30:07 GMT

This is my first posting in this forum ... I hope everyone likes my story.  It
contains shamanism, shape-shifting, pseudo-science, and a lot of speculation.
 I  started writing it after Scully disappeared, and this represents the way
I would have like to  have seen the plot develop, but alas ... and because I
like Mulder, he is the central focus of this story.

Also please note that the Mohawk words used are phonetic representations,
rendered as much as possible in an English format.  I have included a
phonetic key at the end of the story.   There are also aspects of this story
that are not (and I repeat not) in keeping with traditional Native American
practices, so don't for one minute think that it represents any of those
sacred ceremonies and rites.  I have ultimately created my own intepretation
of what may or may not happen, but among my people, there are still those who
practice the craft of the "wadayoneras".  I hope I have treated the idea of
their art with the respect and reverence that it deserves. 

This story is based on the characters and situations created by Chris Carter,
Ten Thirteen Productions and the Fox Broadcasting Company.  No infringement
of copyright is intended.

			The Talisman ... An X-Files Tale (4 of 7 parts)

Chapter 3

	He was nothing and he was everything.  He was sky and rock and wind and
water.  He was flesh and bone and feather and fur.  He was a blade of grass,
a twig, a stone, beetle scuttling over dung.  He was a fleeting name on the
wind, an idea, a curse.  He threw back his head and laughed, and then the
changing came upon him again and he wept with a fear greater than anything he
had ever known, a screaming human baby in the light of the universe.  He felt
a thousand things at once and could not name anything.  He fell headlong into
a gaping abyss at his feet and emerged into the light.  He was whole again.
	He stared down at himself, naked in the blinding universal light.  He
clenched his fists, bent his knees -- everything worked.  He threw up an arm
to shade his eyes, and a brilliant red outline materialized beside him.  He
was enveloped by the light, bathed in it, warmed by it, and he knew the name
of this light.  Her name was Daisy. 
	As he remembered her name, she became a river otter, sleek and brown, her
dark eyes shining with glowing intelligence.  He looked down at himself again
and he had become a fox.  He could feel his four paws on the ground, his
plume-like tail, his pert ears and the whiskers that quivered with his joy at
being alive. 
	"Tasitsho," she smiled.  "You are here, and I have found you."  She swirled
around him, a mass of sleek limbs and smooth fur.  He felt faint with desire,
wishing himself a boy otter, but he stayed a fox.  She laughed at him like
she could read his mind.
	"How can this be?" Mulder asked, afraid of his own voice.  "I am a man!"
	She turned an otter somersault, like she was in the water.  "You are a fox,
Fox," she laughed again.  "I am an otter.  In the spirit world, we take on
the form of the creatures that protect and enfold us."  She twirled again and
he felt an inexplicable urge to run and jump.  "Come, my friend -- we will
dance, and then we have a task to fulfill, a trade to negotiate."
	"Great," he muttered.  "Of all the animals in the world, I have to be a fox.
 How come I can't be a gila monster or something -- why do I have to be a fox
of all things?"
	"You are what you are.  It depends on you."
	"This is not cool," he groaned.  "It's bad enough that it's my name --"  he
stopped as she twirled about him, brushing her tail in his face.  "Stop it! 
I can't see."
	''You see everything now." She drew her tail away from his eyes.
	He looked at her, uncomprehending.  There was a whimpered growl behind him
and a huge tawny cat, its golden eyes locked on his, limped to a short
distance before him and stopped,  its great paw tucked against its body.  The
cat looked strangely familiar, like someone he knew.  There was a cast to its
coat that reminded him of Scully's hair --
	"Scully?" he whispered, scarcely believing it.  Daisy laughed and whirled
like a spinning top.
	"She is here, she is everywhere," she chanted.  "She lives in you, and you
in her.  You are the key, Tasitsho, you are her friend.  You must return this
spirit animal to her before she can be whole again.  And you are charged with
this duty.  Until she is whole, there is no journey for you, no higher
knowledge, no truth.  The spirits have spoken."
	"What am I supposed to do?" he demanded, suddenly angry.  This was getting
way too weird, he thought, it's got to be the drugs.  "This is stupid!" he
growled, wishing his body back.  He shut his eyes, counted to ten and opened
them.  He was still a fox.
	Daisy's laughter was high and with a note of manic glee.  "You are in the
hands of the spirits now, Tasitsho.  Why would you leave?  You can't run from
this.  This is as real as it gets!"  Her whiskers quivered with merriment and
her eyes shone.  He sighed.  She was the most attractive otter he had ever
seen, and then he started to  grin, his mouth stretched weirdly over his foxy
teeth.  Not that he had ever seen an attractive otter before, he thought.
	"I don't -- I don't know what to do," he began and took a tenative step
forward.  It was strange being on four legs.  It didn't feel like crawling at
all, it felt like walking but on more legs than usual. 
	"Why not ask her what she wants you to do?" suggested Daisy, gesturing with
her sleek otter paw at the cougar.   She did another somersault and swirled
her glossy body around him. 
	"Would you stop doing that?" he growled.  Her continual motion was beginning
to irk him.
	She laughed, a strange haunting sound coming out of her otter mouth.  "Don't
be so uptight, fox Fox," she said.  "It feels good to be in an otter body. 
Usually I'm either a hawk or a rabbit.  This is fun.  Let yourself go, enjoy
yourself."
	He ignored her and tried to get close to the cougar, but it growled
ferociously at him, its eyes gleaming savagely.  "Dana?" he asked softly. 
There was no recognition in the creature and it snarled again, its back
arching and baring its considerable fangs at him.  He backed away, his limbs
suddenly not obeying him in the way he was used to.  He could not balance
properly, could not grasp with his fingers, for he had none -- only the swift
clawed digits of what were now paws.
	"This isn't working," he said.  The cougar advanced on him and he reacted
instinctively, bounding away to cower behind Daisy.
	"The cougar does not remember Dana," she told him, swirling her tail behind
her like an exclamation point.  "That is why the two must be reunited, or the
spirit world remains out of balance."  She went to stand before the cougar
and looked up at it, singing in the forest-like, low-pitched language of her
ancestors.  Warily, the cougar stopped snarling and sat down, still nursing
the front right paw.
	"There, you see where she is injured?" Daisy said, pointing at the cougar's
paw.  A strange metal object was embedded deep in the padding of the paw, a
sharp tip protruding out of infected and oozing flesh.  He knew it
immediately -- a kind of implant often taken from the bodies of UFO
abductees.
	"That's impossible," he whispered.  "There was no trace of any of this kind
of device when we scanned Scully, nothing like that--" he stopped, looking
closely at the object.   The cougar was panting harshly, a rasping sound deep
in its throat.  He came as close as he dared and saw that the object pulsed
with an eerie blue glow.   He met the eyes of the cougar and held them, and 
then a thousand other voices were in his head, some cat-like, some human --
and one ... one that didn't sound or feel like anything of his world.   The
noise was deafening  and he tried to cover his sensitive ears with his paws,
but he couldn't quite reach them.
	And then the one voice he thought never to hear again, lucid, sharp, and
full of her intelligence and presence -- Dana's voice.  "You have to be fast,
Mulder," she instructed him.  "You have to pull it out.  I can't be whole
again until this is gone.  It separates who I am from what I am.  The bridge
must be crossed, the door opened.  Mulder, you are the key.  That thing --
that is your talisman."
	"Scully?  What are you doing here?" 
	"Don't be so stupid." She sounded annoyed, and scared, a multitude of
feelings that flowed from her into him.  "Quickly now -- there isn't much
time." 
	Daisy was singing again, a high-pitched keening this time as opposed to the
lower chanting she had done earlier.  He felt a strange wave of vertigo
overcome him, like he was being suspended in a place where direction had no
meaning.   An urgency unlike any he had ever known tugged at him, making him
paranoid and fearful.  He was rooted to the spot, unable to think or know
what to do.
	A ghostly hand seemed to push him then.  "Come on, Mulder -- you're wasting
my time!" Scully's voice was as hysterical as he had ever heard it and it was
this note of near dread that decided him.  Pushing his fear away from him he
approached the cougar and crouched close to its paw, unable to prevent
himself from sniffing the object.  He could smell something almost familiar,
a mechanical note that he couldn't quite grasp, and the smell of infected
flesh.  He tried digging at it with his claws and realized this would be
futile.  Holding his breath, he licked the flesh around the object and began
to tug at it gently with his long fox-teeth.  The cougar began to purr, a
loud rhythmic rasp that filled his ears and made the animal part of him quake
with terror.  He managed to bite on one end of the object and then pulled
free.
	The world shifted again and he felt himself falling down the endless abyss. 
He gasped for breath and the object tumbled out of his mouth.  "Hey!" he
shouted.  "I just --"
	He could feel Daisy tumbling in ecstasy beside him, her spirit form blinding
him as he beheld her presence.  "Don't worry, Tasitsho," she whispered.
	He felt himself become a solid form with a physical jarring that felt like
falling out of bed.  He could feel whiskers and ears, and could only see tiny
pink feet.  "Now what --" he began.
	"Shhh," hissed Daisy, her voice somewhere behind him.  "You're a mouse.  Now
come here -- don't make a sound.  We're in Arrowhead Peak."
	"What?!"
	"You said you wanted to take a look."
	Mulder followed her voice and found himself blinking underneath what
appeared to be a large crate, looking out into a well-lit area.  A large
triangular-shaped object was in the middle of this area, surrounded by banks
upon banks of computers and control panels.  He stared at the thing,
dumbfounded.  It seemed to hover above the floor -- he could see its shadow
beneath -- yet it seemed to absorb all light into its surface, making it a
dark, lethal looking weapon.  A technician ambled out and passed underneath
it, seemingly unconcerned by the massive thing above him.
	Beside him, Daisy let out a low whistle.  He glanced at her and saw her eyes
shining brightly in a tiny mouse face.  She made her whiskers quiver
speculatively.  "That's definitely a non-reflective polycarbon surface," she
said.  "Beautiful design -- I wonder if that's one of those so-called
hypersonic planes.  It looks about fifty years ahead of what we were
tinkering with for the Stealth bomber." 
	He didn't answer, suddenly awash in a wave of memory that nearly caused him
to pass out.  He shook all over, his mouse body shuddering.  He was standing
on the runway at Ellens AFB, the black ship hovering noiselessly above his
head.  And then the lights, the jeeps coming after him.  He hyperventilated
as he remembered the desperate dash for freedom, and then the unkind hands
that took him, the injection that caused nothing but blackness in its wake
...
	He swayed and crouched down, whimpering under the remembered pain.  Daisy
nosed him roughly with her snout.  "Quiet!" she ordered.  "Someone's --"
	There were footsteps suddenly booming all around them.  Daisy nosed him into
the farthest recesses of the crates' underside, but the comforting darkness
was lifted away.  "Shit," came a surprised and disgusted voice.  "Hey
Wilkins, there's mice under this goddamned box!  You better get traps set out
before Sarge sees 'em."
	Daisy fled and Mulder forced himself to follow her, squeezing in with her
behind a tangle of cables.  "We really are mice," he managed.
	"No kidding," she replied.  She sniffed around and then turned back to him. 
"We'll have to chance a transformation -- it's the only way out."
	He groaned.  "Now what are we gonna turn into?  Bats?  No, wait -- why not
cockroaches?  Then we can scuttle away underneath all this cable."
	She glared at him as she started to chant again.  This time the
transformation was nearly instantaneous, without the same disorientation and
out-of-body strangeness.  He felt his body become a tightly muscled thing of
feather and bone, his arms stretching into wings, his mouth curved into a
sharp cutting beak.
	Daisy was peeking out behind the cable, now a beautiful red-tailed hawk, her
breast a brilliant white.  Her gaze was brilliant and far-seeing, and she
swept a wing towards the far end of the room. 
	"I think they're about to open the door," she hissed, her voice strangely
modulated beneath the beak.  "As soon as they do, make a run -- I mean, fly
as fast you can towards it!"
	There was a loud grating sound and a door at end of the hanger bay began to
open.  Mulder was torn between wanting to inspect the strange object further
and flying away as fast he could, the animal instinct to flee nearly stronger
than his human curiousity.  A low rumble spread throughout the hanger, but it
was a weirdly low vibration, at the subsonic level that he felt deep in his
bones.  
	Daisy was poised to fly away, he could see it in the tension of her wings. 
"Wait," he called to her, his voice as alien as hers had been.  "I want to
look at it more --"
	"Not like that," she screeched at him.  "Besides, there isn't any time."
	"What do you mean?"
	"We've only a short time in the spirit world," she explained.  "We're nearly
at the limit for this journey.  Come, we must leave now!"  Without waiting
for his response, she spread her wings and was a marvel of speed and beauty
as she flew out of the hanger and into the dark night beyond.
	Mulder cast one more longing look at the ship.  He took an instinctive leap
forward and was stunned when he realized he was really flying, doing
something  in his own body that people had only dreamed of.   It was
exhilarating, an experience he wanted to savour, to remember it fully.   The
scenery blurred beneath him, the stunned faces of the technicians receding
behind.   He forgot even his disappointment at not being able to examine the
ship more closely and gave himself over to the joy of his wings propelling
him through the autumnal air.
	And then he was running, four paws on the ground, the smells in his nostrils
a textbook map of the forest floor.  He saw Daisy ahead of him, turned now
into a bright-haired vixen, her tail a plume in the dim night.  He could
smell her, musky and enticing, and the innate animal pursued her,  trying to
catch her and take her in the night, but she eluded him, her laughter coming
back at him on the wind.   He took a running leap and tackled her, sprawling
headlong into the forest floor, and she was laughing as she wrestled with
him, turning and dancing away from him, then coming close to lick at his
face, his whiskers.  He was beside himself with desire.  Each time he came
closer, she would scamper away, only to brush up against him with her lithe,
furry body.
	He felt the strange vertigo again and with an almost physical jolt found
himself sprawled on the floor of the sweatlodge, the steam rising around him,
his body slick with sweat.  Daisy laughed again and was suddenly straddled
atop him, pressing her hot body against him.  He reached up with one arm and
brought her mouth down on his, and heard a distant rumble of thunder,
something that sounded like the old mountains laughing at him.   He wondered
briefly at this sound, but the feel of Daisy moving against him drove all
coherent thought from his mind as his body took over and he was lost in her.