The Sack of Lies
an excerpt

Oriel was standing at my shoulder. She smelled faintly of cinnamon, and her face was sheened with damp. Her sweat smells spicy, I thought, and wondered whether frankincense smelled like cinnamon. She was scared. That was not a good sign.
I looked back up the hill. Wendigo, cannibal spirit, runs through the forest with burning feet. Men turned into wendigo, sometimes, or so the stories went, alone in the forest, starving and crazy. The cloud creature looming over the hill was not anything human. The massive, ephemeral legs lifted, stretched out down the hill, casting a bloody light on the road and the traffic, now honking and swerving like panicked geese.
"Is that after us? You? Me? What does it want?"
"I don't know."
"Is that the angry hungry thing you're chasing? Is that what killed my parents?"
Oriel shook her head. "No. The wendigo has always been part of your world, of the cold."
Which didn't explain what it was doing on a warm sunny day in east Van, far from its chilly northern woods. I could think of one reason for it to be so out of place, and that was not a reassuring reason. The wind picked up outside, shaking the feeble little tree in the courtyard. Windows rattled.
"Oriel, is that a magic sack? I mean, does it just hold Bendy, or does it hold whatever you want it to?" Motif D1193, I added to myself.
"It holds what it needs to hold."
Great, gnomic answers in a crisis. Just what I need. "Then kick Bendy out and give the sack to me. I have plans."
"What kind of plans you got?" Bendy clutched the drawstrings around his belly. His belly face arched its eyebrows, straining to see outside. Wind howled, and the building trembled.
"What's your problem? You look like an old maid surprised in the bath, you know." I squatted by the sack and dragged it off him. The belly-face looked pleased. I noted that he did have another face, a rudimentary one on his arse. The eyes were closed. Man, I hope it doesn't drool, I thought. "Okay, tell me right now if my putting something else in this sack will cause problems more serious than our present situation with the wendigo."
Oriel shook her head again.
Bendy shrugged, and stepped out of the sack. "Good cess to you, babe, and better you than me."
"Yeah. Remember that." I cuddled the sack to my front, thought of taking off my own pack. Nope. If I went down, it all went with me.
I looked out the window again. The wendigo was halfway down the hill. The red flickering that might be its eyes was brighter. How do you tell what a fire is looking at? The flaming feet lifted, touched down. The ground smoked where it lifted up. Police sirens competed with the wind for howling, except that the wind lacked the cool doppler effect.
I ran down the stairs, thumped onto the linoleum of the ground floor, and spun. Straight-arming the glass doors, I hit the pavement. The awnings of the shops hid the sky, and I ran under the stripes and scalloped edges to the street.
Most of the traffic had stopped, skewed into curbs or double-parked. Horns blared and squawked. Not so many people on the pavement as I expected. Probably most were afraid to leave their cars, or had taken shelter in the shops.
You have to be crazy, said the part of my brain that didn't have anything useful to do except criticize. What do you know about wendigos?
More than anyone else on this block, I answered it, with reasonable assurance of accuracy. And I have a magic sack.. It could be a sack of lies H1045, a sack of truths H1376.4, a bag of winds C322.1, a bag of sins H606, a bag of tricks J1662, or a sack of bad luck N112.1. Sacks are useful, especially folkloric sacks.
I walked up the hill, pulling the sack's mouth open, my hands fisted tight in the rough canvas to keep the wind from ripping it away. Wind fluttered my sleeves, bellied up under my shirt. My hair blew out from my head, slapped against my neck and forehead, stinging.
Great. I'm going to die looking like a ragdoll.
The wendigo paused in its slow progress. The upper clouds bent, and the fires brightened. It had seen me, or at least noticed that only one frail blob of bones and blood was heading towards it instead of fleeing. Had it killed and eaten anyone yet? If it had, I was buggered, because that would disprove my theory.
Of course, my theory would be disproved if it ate me, too. I held the sack open. The inside looked like canvas only on the edges. a few inches down it looked grey, like fog or a deep pool under an overcast sky. "Wendigo! Wind-walker! If you need a place to hide, here it is!"
The red clouds lowered, sank closer. I swear I felt heat on my face. Smoky wings spread around me, and wind yanked my shirt loose, billowed front and back. Wind, sirens and horns blended into a shriek that battered inside my head as well as out.
"I'll keep you hidden, I promise it." I didn't try to shout above the noise. It wasn't possible. Escape by hiding, motif K515.
The air spun first. From random staggering gusts to a steady spin, shaping the clouds and smoke of the wendigo into a narrow column, then a funnel like a twister. The dancing point of the twister swayed toward me. I remembered the stories about tornadoes driving straws through trees. Was I going to be the straw or the tree? No use running, though.
The funnel tip lifted, floated, dipped into the sackmouth. I held tighter. The funnel corkscrewed itself down, down, down. The sack flapped in the wind, but got no heavier or fuller.
Light grew in the sky as the clouds vanished into the sack. The eye-flames sank past me. I had no way to guess their expression, whether despair or trust. The last grey folds of wings tucked themselves down with a whispery sucking sound, leaving a faint carrion scent on the air.
I set the sack down--it weighed no more than before--and hauled on the drawstrings, tied them into a reef knot.