The Guardian

By D. H. Ecke

The Ohlone people walk the trail of sorrows toward oblivion. Their culture and people decimated by Spanish invaders, they no longer have the strength to survive. But in a time before memory, fate planted the seeds of salvation.

When a brave Ohlone warrior embarked on a vision quest that led him to an ancient cave, he emerged transformed into a creature more beast than man. A sentient amber orb embedded beneath his skin, his chest bearing the red slash mark of a spirit's claw. With no memory, no humanity, and no relief through death, the tormented red claw roamed the wilderness.

Hundreds of years later, a babe is born in a Spanish adobe dwelling on New Spain’s California frontier. With miraculous telepathic and healing abilities lying latent within little Domingo, the man-beast is compelled to watch over him from a distance. Red Claw cannot comprehend why this task has been set before him, only that he must keep the boy child safe.

As Domingo grows, so grow his extraordinary abilities. But lacking experience and wisdom, the same powers that heal can also destroy. Domingo now holds the key to the survival of the Ohlone people in his powerful hands, if Red Claw can keep him alive long enough to use it.

Because in order to survive, the weak must become strong – When strength is not enough, Fate chooses a Guardian.

• Language: English
• Publisher: D. H. Ecke
• Release date: Dec 5, 2013
• ISBN: 9781310123580

Book preview

Prologue

The warrior moved ever higher up the winding game trail, finally emerging above the tree line, just below the crest of the ridge. Here, near a high mountain summit of the Pacific coastal range, he could see a vast expanse of timber sloping down and away. The dark forest of pines and enormous redwoods blanketing the steep mountain terrain eventually giving way to deep green valleys and gently rolling hills covered with thick groves of oak, interspersed with fields of multicolored flowers. In the distance, he could see the Great Water lapping the shore and spreading out towards the horizon. He shielded his eyes against the sparkling reflection cast on the water by the shining Sun Spirit, which hovered low in the western sky.

The area that he now surveyed, a three-day journey from the spring camp of his people, was unfamiliar to him. Five nights ago, the Lion Spirit had visited him in a dream and had instructed him to journey here to pray and to search for a talisman of great power. In preparation for his spirit journey, he had fasted and danced the spirit dances; he had cleansed his body and his spirit in the sweat lodge; he had abstained from coupling with his wife and had followed all the spiritual instructions taught him to prepare for such an important journey.

He was the mightiest warrior of the Cougar Clan and in the rare event, that one of The People killed a mountain lion, the remains became the responsibility of his clan. This symbolic action assured that the remains received the highest respect and the most honored use. Because of his stature in the Cougar Clan, he had received many of these sacred remains, and had adorned himself in the most powerful of these possessions. Around his thick neck, he wore the claws and teeth of the mountain lion, drilled, and strung together on a length of sinew to form a necklace. His long black hair, cut short over his eyes, and tied in a topknot with a strip of tanned leather, was covered by a cap fashioned from the sun-bleached skull of a huge lion, which he had once found while hunting. The two large upper canine teeth, still imbedded in the skull, descended over his broad forehead. It was rare to find the remains of a dead predator and he knew that the discovery of the skull had been a strong sign of the Lion Spirit's favor. At his wrists and elbows, he wore armbands made from the skin of a lion, and the breast feathers of the golden eagle. Sewn to the back of his simple fur vest, the long tail of a lion, the bones removed to create a supple decoration, fell just short of the ground. Rounding out the warrior’s intimidating appearance were sharpened adornments of carved cougar bone, pushed through both ear lobes and the septum of his nose.

Since the night of the first dream, he had received several more visits. In each new dream, the Lion Spirit gave him additional instructions and further guidance. Now, after days of travel, he felt sure that he was nearing the spot where he would find what he had come to retrieve.

Evening was approaching and the warrior looked around him for a suitable place to make camp for the night. Huge boulders were scattered about this treeless mountaintop like a giant child's abandoned playthings. Jutting from the earth at the top of the ridge was a large rock outcropping, which reminded him of the exposed bones on a well-rotted corpse. Dark clouds had begun to gather to the south and it smelled as though it might rain during the night, so he approached the outcrop in search of a cave or overhang where he could take shelter.

As the big warrior started towards the rocks, a movement began beneath his callused feet. Tremors often shook the region in which his people lived. He knew that there was little danger from the earth spirits as they trembled and groaned, as long as he was cautious and stayed out from under trees or other objects that could fall and crush a man. In his experience, the shaking of the earth during such a tremor did not last long, so he stopped walking and remained in place to wait out the event. The spirits of the earth must be more restless than usual because this tremor grew stronger and the ground around and beneath him continued to roll and pitch. The trees on the slope below him waved their branches and the tops shook as though a great wind moved through them. As the warrior stood still, fighting for balance, the sound of great stones being ground together came from the exposed outcrop ahead of him. Chunks of rock broke free of the ridge and tumbled down the hill and into the darkening woods below.

Finally, with a loud crack followed by a rumbling echo and a cloud of stone dust from the outcropping, the earth's movement ceased as suddenly as it had begun. His heart beat rapidly, as silence descended on the now frightened warrior. He knew that small movements of the earth often followed large tremors, as the underground giants rolled over to find comfortable positions in which to slumber. Therefore, he remained in place for what seemed a long time before moving. As the warrior began to walk forward once more, he angled off to his right where he could see an opening between two large rounded stones, many times the height of a man. As he approached, he noticed faint markings carved into the stone’s surfaces. Although they were faint and almost wiped away by exposure to wind and weather, he recognized some of the markings. They were similar to designs the women of his village used to decorate their baskets. There were geometric patterns and wavy lines in pairs and in groups. Others were unfamiliar to him and spoke of power and the spirit world. This was a good omen! He must be very close to his spirit quest destination. As he walked between the stones, he stepped out into a large area surrounded on all sides by high rock walls. As he mumbled a low prayer to the spirits of this place, the sound of his voice echoed back to him, as though an invisible speaker mocked his words. Surely, this was the place, which the Lion Spirit had urged him to find. At the far end of the enclosed area, he could see a large fissure in the rough stone, which created a narrow opening into the sheer wall. Stone debris had broken away from the edges of the opening and littered the area in and around the dark aperture. Dust still wafted from the opening, and he realized that this cleft in the rock must be a result of the earth tremor. The sharp, rumbling sound, which had signaled the end of the tremor, had likely been the sound of this great rock splitting wide open. His excitement mounted as he approached the dark opening and recognized the similarity between this cleft and the cleft of a woman - the doorway through which all human life entered into this world. Many taboos of his tribe involved the woman's sexual opening and the warrior was unsure how to interpret this cleft in the body of the stone. Was it an entrance into the land of the spirits, or was it an exit created solely to allow the spirits within to gain entry into this world of the flesh? Doubts clouded his mind and confused him. His resolve began to falter.

As the warrior stood pondering, the Great Sun Spirit dipped lower in the sky and a shaft of light shot between the two marked stones and shone directly onto the crack in the stone before him. The golden light from the setting Sun Spirit illuminated the opening and dispelled the darkness for several paces within, revealing a path wide enough for two men to walk shoulder to shoulder. His doubts immediately disappeared and he realized that this was a clear invitation from the spirits to enter into their sacred place. For him to refuse this obvious invitation would be disrespectful to those very spirits he had journeyed here to appease. With that thought in mind, the mighty warrior of the Cougar Clan entered into the stone and out of the memory of his people forever.

Once inside, he found himself in a tunnel, which extended deep into the belly of the rock. As he peered into the tunnel, the Sun Spirit slipped lower in the sky and the inviting shaft of light moved away from the opening. He stood in the dimly lit space for a moment, letting his eyes adjust to the gloom. The tunnel ahead curved slightly, blocking his line of sight, so padding cautiously he moved several more steps and rounded the bend. A stone's throw ahead of him he could see a faint glow. With heart racing, he continued towards the mysterious light. As he approached the glow, the tunnel broadened slightly and he saw before him an odd disturbance in the air. The light seemed to come from the agitated air, which reminded him of the wavy, mirage-like effect one often saw rising from a hot surface. At this point, the curtain of glowing air completely blocked the throat of the tunnel and he could see nothing beyond. He prodded the glowing disturbance with the tip of his spear. The sharp chert point passed through and disappeared from his sight! Quickly he drew back the weapon and stared in amazement. The tip was still there! With great caution, he reached out his hand and extended one finger into the shimmering disturbance, where it too disappeared from view. Although he felt nothing, the warrior whipped back his hand as though stung, but after close examination of his finger, he saw no injury. Again, he reached out, this time slowly pushing his hand and part of his forearm through the curtain. As he watched in fear and wonder, his hand and wrist passed through and once again disappeared! He did this several times, and each time that he withdrew his hand, he found that he was unhurt. He realized that to move any further down the tunnel, he would need to step through the curtain to discover what was on the other side. Therefore, with a few words of prayer to the spirits, he slowly moved forward and stepped through. Instantly, a change took place in the warrior’s perceptions. His vision, previously hampered by the dim interior of the outer tunnel, suddenly became very acute. He was able to see his surroundings in detail, as though by the light of a flame, though he saw none burning.

Opening up before him was a cavern large enough to hold ten or maybe twelve of the reed huts that the people of his village lived in. A layer of fine undisturbed white sand covered the floor of the cavern. Painted forms of animals and colorful human handprints adorned the walls and ceiling of the domed and roughly circular place. Many of the animal forms were recognizable. Other images were not familiar at all and did not look like animals drawn from nature, but instead from the mind of the unknown artist. On one wall, he saw the great brown bear standing on its hind legs, its mouth open and its arms spread wide in a posture of attack. He saw a herd of elk moving across the rough stone, their large antlers held high, their strong legs seeming to move as he watched. Behind the elk a small pack of gray wolves followed, their intentions clear to the seasoned hunter. On the ceiling of the cave, soaring above the animals of the land, he could see the eagle and the condor, their wings spread wide to catch the invisible breezes. On the facing wall, he noticed what he took to be a group of lions, though these were different from the lions that he knew. These great cats had several dark, back-facing stripes on their tawny coats and the two upper canine teeth were far too long, extending below the lower jaw lines of their huge heads. Among the odd-looking lions, he could see the image of a very large, hairy creature with a humped back. This unknown animal stood on four tree trunk legs and sported a long snout, and oversized curving tusks, which poked from the corners of its small mouth. The creature's long snout was raised high in the air and the dangerous looking tusks were pointed towards the closest of the approaching lions. There was no such creature as this! He thought.

The warrior was in awe of this place of magic, and it took him several moments to absorb all that he was seeing. As his eyes wandered about the cavern, leaping from one amazing image to the next, he noticed several dark forms outlined against the far wall. There were five in all, and they appeared to be human, though it was difficult to tell from where he stood. Four of the individuals sat in a small circle, their arms extended and their hands clasped. Apart from these four and sitting on a waist high shelf of stone below the painted lions, was a fifth and considerably larger figure.

The warrior spoke to the figures. What place am I in? The unmoving figures returned only silence.

Addressing them again, he called out. Are you spirits or men? Still they did not reply.

He approached closer, walking hesitantly across the smooth sand floor. As he stood only paces from the four closest figures, he could see that they were naked, their long black hair falling over their bowed heads. It was not until he crouched down on his haunches to draw closer to the seated figures that he realized the truth. The four shadowed figures were women and they were all long dead. Their wrinkled skin and deflated breasts were a dark acorn brown color. The flesh covering their faces had shrunken and cracked, exposing the pale, yellowed bone beneath. Their eye sockets were dark and empty. He could see deep incisions cut from the women's crotches to just below their breastbones; their brittle bodies stuffed with stiff, dry grass, filling their hollowed out cavities. The faces of the mummified women gazed down with expressions of horror as though a hideous death had found them and frozen their features in a dying rictus of pain and suffering. Through split lips and broken yellow teeth, they silently wailed. The horrible tableau shocked him. He stumbled backwards tripping over his own feet to fall on his rump on the sandy floor.

Like most of his tribe, the warrior enjoyed listening to the storytellers as they weaved their tales around the communal campfires at night. Occasionally the storytellers told dark tales of human sacrifice and torturous rites involving captured warriors or even innocent women and children. These tales described rogue shamans who had turned against their people to practice dark magic. Instead of bringing healing and plentiful acorn harvests, their dark rites cursed the land and those who lived upon it. He had thought these stories were told only to frighten children. Never had he expected to see such evil first hand.

The panic that filled his superstitious mind bore down on him. For a moment, he teetered on the verge of turning and running from this cursed place. Was this what his savage spirit guardian had led him here to see? Even in his panicked state he knew that if he left this place now, tail tucked between his legs like a frightened dog, he would never again regain the nerve to enter this chamber of death. Numb with fright, the man looked down at his shaking hands and noticed that the sand beneath him, which should have been disturbed by his clumsy antics, was still smooth and without a mark. Glancing furtively over his shoulder, from the direction he had come, he could see that the floor there was as smooth as still water, showing no impressions where his feet had stepped. Overcome by curiosity, he pushed his finger into the sand between his outstretched legs and drew a line. He watched in fascination as the depression left by his moving finger instantly filled, leaving no sign that the fine grains had ever been disturbed.

Rising quickly from the self-smoothing floor, he drew his bone knife from the sheath at his hip and tentatively approached the last of the five figures seated alone on its table of rock.

The warrior immediately noticed that this figure was quite different from the others. It also looked to be dead, though the body was in a much better state of preservation. The figure looked to be that of a very large, masked man. He was fully dressed in tightly fitting garments made from animal skins with golden fur, striped with slashes of dark. The skillfully made garments completely covered the exposed skin of the seated figure. The legs of the figure were folded underneath it and its back was straight, its posture erect. As he looked closer at the man's face, he involuntarily stepped back in surprise.

Jutting from each corner of the broad, cruel looking mouth were two long ivory colored fangs, which descended down over the lower lip, ending just below the creature's lower jaw. The painted images of the unfamiliar lions with their exaggerated teeth, and striped coats came instantly to mind, the similarity being unmistakable. A short dense layer of fine golden hair formed the creature’s mask, which covered its entire face. Its ears were large and stood out slightly from the sides of its broad head. The same golden fur also covered its ears, each one tipped with a tight brush of long, coarse, black hairs. The frightened man stared in awe as the truth struck him. What he had originally taken to be the figure's garments were not coverings at all, but the actual skin of this creature - and what he had believed to be a mask was the creature's true face!

The huge, cupped, and outstretched hands looked deformed, the fingers wider and stubbier than a normal man's. The same golden fur, which covered the rest of the body, covered the hands as well. The only exceptions were the upward turned palms, which were black and hairless and shaped very much like the pads of a big cat.

As he stared at the creature, he wondered how long it had sat here like this. His simple understanding of the passage of time could not have allowed him to comprehend the span of centuries, which the figure before him had been waiting in this silent, tomblike cavern. He could not know that this creature had once been a powerful human shaman in an age long past - a shaman, who coveted the deadly ferocity of the most feared predator of his time, to use against his enemies. The shaman had possessed dark knowledge whispered to him by the spirits of dream. In one such dream, the spirits had revealed a sacrificial spell which they promised would grant the shaman unlimited power to overcome his enemies. When used, the spell had opened a door between two worlds existing side by side, yet impossibly far apart. Reaching through this open door, the shaman had plucked out an object, which was alien to man's plane of existence. What the conjurer could not have anticipated was the immense power or the dark design of this otherworldly object. A parasite, impartial to man’s motivations and lacking any human concepts of good or evil, the object reacted aggressively. Once in the shaman's hands, the object’s trapped sentience entered the man and sought control over his mind and body. Using its power to focus the primitive animistic beliefs of its bearer, the sentience did not fulfill the shaman’s twisted desires of godhood, but instead, transformed the man into a suitable host to insure its own survival. When the shaman realized the trick played on him by the spirits, he struggled to reject the object's power. He strove to cast out the presence now possessing him, but it was too late; his humanity was lost. He had become one with the sentience, which he now struggled to expel. The shaman was strong, but he realized that he had lost the battle. With a final, crushing effort of will, he chose oblivion. The life force within the man winked out like a guttering flame, leaving the empty husk of a creature to bear witness to man's foolishness. The sentience, unable to remain in control, withdrew to its shell to call out and await another.

The sentient object, an amber crystal as round as an oyster's pearl though much larger, now lay revealed in the creature's open hands. To the warrior, the crystal appeared smooth, as though highly polished, reminding him of an unblinking eye. As he gazed raptly at the amber orb, he began to see movement within its murky depths. Smoke seemed to coil and eddy within, as though it were alive! The crystal rested in the creature's outstretched hands, offered as though intended as a gift. Cursed and waiting patiently through the millennia for another to claim it.

The object seemed to call to him like an old friend. Familiar voices and pleasant sensations whirled across his senses as he watched the movement within the orb. The huge seated creature extended its arm in welcome as well as offering. This, he thought, must be the Lion God himself, his spirit guardian in physical form! This must be the very god who had summoned him to this sacred place between the spirit world and the world in which man lived, to give him this rare gift.

Taking care not to touch the lion creature's hand, he reached out and gently lifted the amber orb from its resting place. As his trembling fingers closed around the mysterious object, a powerful burst of energy exploded in his hand, knocking him sprawling to the floor. The crystal, which felt like ice in his numbed hand, hissed like an angry snake, but the warrior was unable to drop the cursed object. The palm of his hand where the crystal adhered began to turn an angry red, and a deep crease began to form beneath the object. Then as he stared, nearly insane with terror, the crease in his hand split open and the hissing crystal sank into the newly created socket until it lay, almost entirely imbedded in the flesh.

The orb glared malevolently back at the warrior for several moments before the flesh surrounding it puckered up and closed like a hooded eye lid, hiding the crystal from his view. As the orb entered his flesh, so the object’s sentience rushed into the man and began its battle for control over his mind and body.

The warrior glanced up, stunned, to see the figure of the lion god begin to tremble and shake. To his horror, the seated form, having passed on its eldritch gift, began to disintegrate. First, the hands, which had held the crystal, began to dissolve. The golden skin sloughed off, and the briefly revealed bones beneath quickly followed in a shower of powdery white dust. The disintegration process traveled rapidly up the creature's arms and spread through the entire body of the seated form. In the time it took for his furiously pumping heart to beat twenty times, the entire corpse was reduced to a pile of fine dust, which glowed like the embers of a burned out fire. As the terrified warrior watched, the dust began to move in a circular pattern, as though caught in an unseen whirlwind. The dust devil spun faster and faster, growing in size until it encompassed him in a blinding cloud. He tried to breath, but the burning particles of god filled his mouth and nostrils with an acrid taste and choked off his air. He could feel the particles covering his body, searing his skin and burning their way into his flesh to invade the bones and organs beneath. The pain was excruciating, far beyond anything he had experienced before.

Then rapidly, the body of the warrior began to change. With a popping grinding sound, the cougar-skull cap, which he had felt so fortunate to find, began to meld with the top of his head. The animal skull and human dome beneath it grew filaments of living tissue, and forced these intertwining tendrils into the other’s bone matrix. Human and animal bone merged to become pliant dough, which then reformed and became rigid. The result was a modified skull - broader, thicker and flatter on top. As the skull changed, the brain encased within changed as well. Its delicate folds unfurled to fill the enlarged cavity; the primitive, instinctual portion of the organ swelling to many times its previous size.

The cleverly wrought necklace of lion claws and teeth disappeared into his neck and heaving chest, like hot stones on a lump of fat. Similarly, the bone adornments in his nose and ears were absorbed into his malleable face. The pieces separated and migrated beneath the skin to reappear once again in their correct anatomical positions. The long claws emerged at the tips of his already deformed fingers and the obsidian sharp teeth filled his broadening mouth and thickening jaws. The circlets of cougar skin at his wrists and elbows fused with his tortured flesh, spreading golden fur up his arms like a wildfire. The tattoos, which the man had worn with such pride, sprouted dark hair. On the warrior’s chest, four long marks in the shape of the downward slash of a huge lion’s claw sprouted deep crimson hair to stand out in stark relief against a background of tawny gold. With crackling, snapping sounds the bones of his arms and legs thickened and grew longer, and his already impressive chest expanded to almost twice its previous size, allowing the organs within to enlarge and the cage of ribs surrounding them to become thicker and more massive. The tightly stretched muscles and tendons of his transforming frame writhed like serpents beneath the rippling skin, as their length and girth increased to accommodate this new creature who had been, only moments ago, a man.

Suddenly, the pain seemed to focus, rushing from all the tortured parts of his enormous frame to gather in his deformed head. A blinding pressure threatened to eject the huge split-pupil yellow eyes from his throbbing, heavily boned face. The shock of so much agony overwhelmed him and he cried out in anguish. Then, as if it had been a bad dream, the pain subsided. He floated in a dark unconscious realm, knowing nothing yet opened to eons of untapped knowledge. In this state, his new mind was flooded with the accumulated experience of tens of thousands of years. Knowledge gathered by the ancestors who had lived and died before him. Suddenly he became aware of the incredible passage of time. His people had no inkling of such a span of years, but now he perceived time as a continuous line stretching off endlessly in both directions from the now.

Focusing on a point in this unbroken line of time, he saw in his mind's eye a great vista of frozen land as far as the eye could see. The sky was a dark, cloud-filled blanket that hid the face of the Sun Spirit from view. He observed this frozen landscape as if from above, and from his vantage point he could see a large group of heavily clad people trudging laboriously through the thick layer of snow covering the ground. The solidly built people resembled the members of his own tribe. In that instant, he knew that these people were the ancestors of his own tribe. He realized that the teachings, which said that his people had always been here, were not true. These ancestors had migrated over many thousands of years covering great distances in search of a warmer climate. The ice sheets that covered the land pushed them to the south and east, their steady movements spreading them, and others like them, over vast areas of uninhabited land. The game was plentiful, with seemingly endless herds of hoofed animals covering the land. He saw the great mammoths, which he now recognized from the paintings on the cave walls, their huge bodies covered with long coarse hair to ward off the bitter glacial cold. Predators in this time were big and numerous, having adapted to kill and feed on the large plant eaters that roamed this harsh, cold land. Giant, swift-running bears, saber-toothed cats and large powerful wolves among others. He also saw horses, camels and giant bison, beavers the size of small bears, and all manner of other creatures, which were gone in his own time.

Moving his focus farther down the stream of time, he saw people more like himself, living in small groups in a lush landscape, their needs fulfilled by a simple life of hunting and gathering. The heavy ice sheets had receded leaving a warm climate and a green and fertile land dotted everywhere with lakes and streams. Great forests blanketed the hills and lapped against the Great Water. Many of the larger animals had disappeared now leaving room for the beasts of field and forest that he knew. He recognized this as his own time.

As his mind roamed along the time line, he went beyond the now and began to see more alarming changes. These changes signaled a decrease in the animal populations and a dramatic increase in the numbers of humans. He witnessed the coming of pale-skinned men in enormous floating huts. At first, there were only a few of these men and they rarely stayed long or ventured very far inland. Just a trickle at first