His hand brushed against something that wasn't rock, and it moved.

Paulie knelt there, hardly daring to breathe. No sound. No alarm. No movement ofany kind. And he could see, just a little bit, just faint dark grays against theblack of the background, and there wasn't any motion, none at all. He reachedout and touched it again, and it moved again, and then tipped over and thuddedsoftly and now when he handled it he realized it was a shoe, or not really ashoe but a moccasin, the leather dry and brittle, so it broke a little under hishand. Something clattered out of the moccasin when he lifted it up and when hecast around to find whatever it was, he realized it was a lot of things, smallhard things, bones from somebody's feet. There was a dead body here. Someone hadcrawled into this cave and died.

And then suddenly in the darkness he could see, only he wasn't seeing anythingthat actually lay there. He was seeing an Indian, a youngish man, broadcheekbones, nearly naked, unarmed, fleeing from men on horseback, men on foot,running up the stream after him, calling and shouting and now and thendischarging a musket. One of the musket balls took him, right in the back, rightinto a lung. Paulie almost felt it, piercing him, throwing him forward. Afterthat he could hardly breathe, his lung was filling up, he was weak, he couldn'trun anymore, but there was the cave here, and the water was low, and he hadstrength enough to climb up under the overhang, taking care not to brush againstit and leave a stain of blood from his back. He would lie here and hide untilthe white men went on and he could come back out and go find Iris father, gofind a medicine man who could do something about the blood in his lungs, onlythe white men didn't go away, they kept searching for him, he could hear themoutside, and then he realized it didn't matter anyway because he was never goingto leave this cave. If he coughed, he'd give himself away and they'd drag himout and torture him and kill him. If he didn't cough, he'd drown. He drowned.

Paulie felt the moment of death, not as pain, but as a flash of light thatentered his body through his fingertips and filled him for a moment. Then itreceded, fled into some dark place inside him and lurked there. A death hiddeninside him, the death of a Cherokee who wasn't going to leave his home, wasn'tgoing to go west to some unknown country just because Andrew Jackson said theyhad to go. He held inside him the death of a proud man who wasn't going to leavehis mountains, ever. A man who had, in a way, won his battle.

He knelt there on all fours, gasping. How could he have seen all this? He haddaydreamed for hours on end, and never had he dreamed of Indians; never had theexperiences seemed so real and powerful. The dead Cherokee's life seemed morevivid, even in the moment of dying, than anything in Paulie's own experience. Hewas overwhelmed by it. The Cherokee owned more of his soul, for this moment,than Paulie did himself. And yet the Cherokee was dead. It wasn't a ghost here,just bones. And it hadn't possessed Paulie -- he was still himself, still thebland nondescript nothing he had always been, except that he remembered dying,remembered drowning on his own blood rather than coughing and letting hisenemies have the satisfaction of finding him. They would always think he gotaway. They would always think they had failed. It was a victory, and that was anunfamiliar taste in Paulie's mouth.

He stretched himself out beside the skeleton of the Indian, not seeing it, butknowing where the bones must be, the long bones of the arms, the ladder of theribs, the vertebrae jumbled in a row, the cartilage that once connected themgone, dissolved and washed out into the stream many years ago.

And as Paulie lay there another image crept into his mind. Another personsplashing through the stream, but it wasn't a sunny day this time, it wasraining, it was bitterly cold. The leaves were off the trees, and behind him hecould hear the baying of hounds. Could they follow his scent in the rain?Through the stream? How could they? Yet they came on, closer and closer, and hecould hear the shouts of the men. "She went this way!"

She. Now Paulie became aware of the shape of the body he wore in this memory. Awoman, young, her body sensitive to the chafing of the cloth across her smallyoung breasts. And now he knew what she was fleeing from. The master wouldn'tleave her alone. He came at her so often it hurt, and the overseer came afterhim as soon as he was gone, until finally she couldn't stand it, she ran away,and when they found her they'd whip her and if she didn't die from the lash thenas soon as she was half-healed they'd come at her again, only this time she'd bekept chained and locked up and she wasn't going back, never, no matter what.

As she ran up the stream she saw the outcropping of rock and happened to stumblejust then and splash on all fours into the icy river and then she looked up andsaw that there was a cave and almost without thinking she climbed up into it andlay there shivering with the bitter cold, hardly daring to move, fearful thatthe chattering of her teeth would give her away. She slid farther up into thecave and then her hand found the half-decomposed leg of someone who had died inthat cave and she shrieked in spite of herself and the men outside heard her butthey didn't know where the shriek came from. They knew she was close but theycouldn't find her and the dogs couldn't catch her scent so she lay there by thecorpse of the dead Indian and shivered and prayed that the spirit of the deadwould leave her alone, she didn't mean to bother him, she'd go away as soon asshe could. In the meantime, she got more and more numb from the cold, anddespite her terror at every shout she heard from the men outside, their voicesgot dimmer and dimmer until all she could hear was the rushing of the water andshe got sleepy and closed her eyes and slept as the stream outside rose up andsealed the entrance of the cave and her breathing drew the last oxygen out ofthe air so that she was dead before the cold could kill her.

As before, the moment of her death came into Paulie's fingers like an infusionof light; as before, the light filled him, then receded to hide within him; asbefore, her last memories were more vivid in his mind than anything he had everexperienced himself.

I should never have drunk the water in this cave, thought Paulie. I've takendeath inside me. It's a magic place, a terrible place, and now I'm filled withdeath. What am I supposed to do with this? How am I supposed to use the things Isaw and felt and heard tonight? There's no lesson in this -- this has nothing todo with my life, nothing to teach me. All that's different is that I know whatit feels like to die. And I know that there are some people whose lives wereworse than mine. Only maybe that's not even true, because at least theyaccomplished something by dying in this cave. They had some kind of smallvictory, and it's damn sure I've never had anything like that in my life. SinceI'm the source of all my own problems, blundering and babbling my way throughthe world, who can I run away from in order to get free? This girl, this man whodied here, they were lucky -- they knew who their enemies were, and even if theydied doing it, at least they got away.

He must have slept, because when he woke he was aware of aches and pains allover his body from lying on stone, from sleeping in the cool damp air of thecave. Fearless now of the dead, he felt around until he had traced theCherokee's whole skeleton, and then, crawled farther in until he found the bonesof the girl, the crumbling fabric of her cotton dress. He took a scrap of thedress with him, and a piece of the brittle leather of the Cherokee's moccasin.He put them in his pocket and crawled back to the entrance of the cave. Then heslid down, soaking his pants and shirt again.