Spirited (21 page)

Wusamequin lay with Mahwah in the chamber for what seemed like days. He conjured hot food and drink. He wiped her forehead, chest, and limbs with an unguent he mixed in a stone bowl, which filled the chamber with aromatic steam. It brought her more heat. He rubbed it on her body, then on his own chest and thighs, and enfolded her in his arms.

Mahwah wondered if Odina and Keshkecho had been punished for allowing her to almost drown, but she sincerely doubted that. And Wabun-Anung was no doubt impatient to get her slave back to work. She didn’t ask Wusamequin about these things, and he didn’t tell her.

There were occasions when he would leave her alone, with stern admonitions not to leave the chamber. She obeyed; she had learned her lesson. Afraid-of-Everything stood guard, and the four fairy people, too.

On one occasion when he returned, his face was clouded with worry, and he didn’t smile when he first saw her, as he normally did.

“Aquai,”
she ventured. She picked up a clay bowl of hot tea, which she had learned to brew from a
cache of dried herbs that he had brought into the chamber.
“Menackh.”

“Wneeweh. Wunneet,”
he said, taking a sip. Then he sighed and crossed his ankles, sinking to the ground.

He took her hand in his, and it seemed natural and right. His face was troubled. “Mahwah. War comes, for the People and the Yangees. Big war. Bad war.”

She swallowed. “War? My father? Have you heard anything? The fort? Fort William Henry?”

He turned her hand over and traced the lines in her palm. She watched, wondering if he could read her destiny there.

“The People cannot go back to the village,” he told her. “The corn dies. The squash dies. The People die.”

They were not going to be able to harvest their crops. She wondered if the freakish early snow had already ruined them.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured. Then she peered up at him through her lashes. “But perhaps there is a way to make peace. My people are not warlike. They—”

“Your words are crooked.” His tone was harsh. His eyes flashed. “Your people love war. Your people war on my people.”

“No,” she cut in. “That’s not true. The French are like that. But the English people only wish to share this land with your people. We are only trying to protect ourselves from hostile Indians and the French. We have no wish to war on you.”

He swirled his teacup and gazed into it; then cocked his head and studied her, as if trying to make
a decision. Suddenly she was unaccountably nervous.

“Wusamequin? What hurts your heart?” Her voice was soft and tentative as she touched first her own heart with the flat of her left hand, and then his. “My heart hurts when your heart hurts.”

She expected him to smile at that, but he did not. Instead he turned to the wall and flung his hand toward it. Then he crossed his arms over his chest.

“See,” he announced. “The Yangees and their war.”

When an image formed on the wall, she rose and walked toward it. She was used to the magic now, accustomed to the fact that Wusamequin wielded powerful medicine.

She saw before her the village they had abandoned. It was autumn, as it was now, brilliant carpets of leaves rushing along the ground as a dozen children in warm leather jerkins and leggings capered and laughed. Puppies yipped at their heels, and one little wolf cub. By his markings she realized it was Afraid-of-Everything, and she smiled faintly at his round baby-shape head and gangling paws.

Smoke rose from the wigwams. Passenger pigeons flew overhead. A woman stepped out of a hut, cupping her hands around her mouth. One of the children veered off from the others and raced toward her, dancing like a fawn.

Wusamequin waved his hand again, and the image changed. Now Isabella viewed the inside of a wigwam. A dainty young Indian woman sat by the fire with a baby in her arms. Her dress was brilliantly
decorated with bears similar to the tattoos on Wusamequin’s chest. Her hair hung down in glossy braids, and a braided headband glittered with bear-print designs. Her brown eyes were half-closed and she was smiling dreamily as she took one of her braids and tickled the babe’s face. The baby sneezed, and the woman giggled. She sang in a high, lilting voice with a small but pleasingly full mouth. The baby cooed contentedly in reply.

Then the sound stopped. The image went silent.

Surprised, Mahwah glanced over at Wusamequin, who was staring straight ahead, as if he had forgotten she was there.

“Is this…” Mahwah swallowed hard without taking her gaze off the fetching tableau of mother and child. “Is this your family?”

He did not reply, but the veins stood out in his forehead and his neck. He was straining against powerful emotions.

Mahwah wasn’t sure she wanted to see more.

Light flared around her, a nimbus of it like the figures painted on the rocks of the chamber. In the next instant, she was standing in the wigwam with the dainty woman, who did not realize she was there. Mahwah understood. It was the same as when they had seen Major Whyte; she was like a ghost.

Suddenly the woman jerked and widened her eyes. She grabbed the baby against her chest and ran to the door of the wigwam. Isabella followed.

A British soldier was chasing the children, and
the little ones were panicking. His tricorne was askew and his face was dirty as he tore after them, laughing hard.

In his right hand, he carried a musket.

The little ones were crying; their mouths gaped open as if they were screaming in terror. The woman gestured toward them, urging them toward the wigwam, but they ran.

Then one little girl fell, and the British soldier behind her stopped, raised his musket, and took aim.

The woman tore out of the wigwam and ran toward the soldier. She bowed her body protectively around her infant, waving her hands and shouting words Mahwah could not hear.

By that time, other women were emerging from their wigwams. Some were racing from the cornfields.

The soldier with the musket shifted it from the little girl to the woman in the bear-print dress. He had an ugly face, pocked and scarred, and it was demonic as he took aim and positioned his finger on the trigger.

Mahwah’s warning scream was soundless.

He fired.

The woman was thrown off her feet.

The baby flew into the air. Mahwah tried to catch it, but she could not; she could only watch helplessly as the baby landed in a pile of leaves.

Blood blossomed on the front of the Indian woman’s leather dress. She reached out a hand toward the baby and began to crawl toward it, her
face twisted with agony. Closer, closer she crawled …

A second soldier charged at her, grabbing her under the arm and dragging her along the ground as she strained toward the baby. Her moccasins kicked up leaves, obscuring Mahwah’s view as she tried to reach the baby. Mahwah batted at the colors, crying and weeping, in the hideous silence.

A third soldier bounded over to the pile of leaves. He hefted the baby under his arm and headed out of the village with the others. Old men and more women were rushing out of the wigwams with tomahawks and knives, chasing after the intruders.

Then Wusamequin flew into Mahwah’s field of vision, wet with sweat and dressed only in a loincloth. His hair was slicked back, and he carried a tomahawk. His face was a rictus of terror. Mahwah had seen such tremendous fear only once before in her life: on the face of her mother, when she had been told they must remain in the Colonies because of the war.

He ran after the men dragging his wife and child out of their village, his tomahawk at the ready. But one of the British soldiers wheeled around and butted Wusamequin hard in the face with the barrel of his musket.

“No!” Mahwah cried, but her voice was silent.

Wusamequin collapsed face first into the leaves as the Englishman turned his musket around. The bayonet had been fixed; he shoved the sharp point under Wusamequin’s skull, then dragged it hard down Wusamequin’s spine. A huge, deep gash erupted,
bleeding profusely

Wusamequin lay unmoving.

More British descended on the village, laughing, discharging their weapons in the air, at the village pets. Mahwah was only slightly aware of them as she knelt beside Wusamequin and reached out her hand to touch his wound.

Her hand went right through his body.

“I can’t bear this. Don’t make me see this!” she pleaded, her words still unheard. Tears slid down her face.

In a trice she was back in the chamber. She was so sickened by what she had seen that she wrapped her arms around herself, rooted to the spot.

She looked down at her fair white skin. In that moment, she wished she could rip it from her arms. She hated that she was English. She hated all English.

Her sobs came hard. She wanted him to comfort her but she couldn’t stand herself, couldn’t stop seeing what she had seen.

He didn’t speak. Didn’t touch her. She keened in her misery, sick to the depths of her soul.

Then she thought of him.

He was the one whose wife and child had been murdered. He was the one who had grieved and mourned their untimely deaths. No matter that she was English. He had opened his heart to her.

She should be the one to offer comfort, not he.

“I … am… sorry,” she managed, her voice raw and hoarse. She looked up at him. “I…”

As she fumbled for speech, a single tear formed at the corner of his eye. It hovered there, and she saw lines of despair and grief in his face; she saw his lips trembling. He was as taut as a bow.

The tear spilled from his eye and ran down his cheek.

“Oh,” she whispered.

She reached up her finger and touched the tear. He grabbed her finger, held it, and for a moment she was afraid that she had done something unforgivable, just as her countrymen had.

Then he placed his left hand over the left bear tattoo on his chest. She heard a distant growl, from somewhere very, very far away; then he brought his hand away from his chest and opened his palm.

Resting in his palm was a shiny black figurine of a bear, which resembled in every way his tattoo. A glance at his chest revealed that the tattoo had disappeared.

He touched her tear-laden finger against the figurine. Then he pressed his fingertip into the streak of tears on her own face, and touched that to the bear as well.

He took her left hand, lacing his fingers between his, and began to chant. The melody thrummed in her soul. From her heart to fingertips, she joined the chant.

The Makiawisug clung to his moccasins, weeping. Titania knelt and laid her head on the colorful quill bear design.

Their hands still laced, he walked her to his side
of the chamber and sat her down on the grass bed. He had to assist her; she was so shaky she couldn’t manage it herself The terrible images she had seen kept replaying in her mind.

Numb, she watched as he moved the grass from the lower portion of the bed and extracted a large woven basket. He opened the lid and pulled out a pair of tiny moccasins. His large hands dwarfed them.

He lowered his head over them and chanted. Then he handed them to her. She cradled them as if they were the most precious and fragile things on the earth. There was only one thing more precious, more fragile:

The father of the child whose moccasins these were.

His voice rose and fell, as he took out a small leather bag threaded through with a leather thong. From the basket he also took dried tobacco, and many, many herbs, and put them into the bag. Next he placed the hoof of a deer, a white eagle’s feather, a yellow feather… and, taking them from her, the tiny moccasins. Lastly, he placed the bear figurine inside the bag and drew the thong, closing the bag.

He moved back on his heels and rose, still chanting. He held the bag out and faced the vine curtain that separated their two halves of the chamber. Then he made a quarter turn, and a third, and a fourth. He raised the bag toward the ceiling, then toward the floor.

A warm glow filled the chamber, swirling in a
golden haze. Mahwah heard a young woman’s sweet voice, and a baby’s shy and happy laughter. The glow faded; then the bag took on the luster of gold, then became a plain leather pouch once more.

Wusamequin held it out to her.

“Isabella,” he said, “keep. Strong medicine.” He cleared his throat and touched his heart. “Wusamequin.” He pointed at the bag. “Wusamequin’s spirit lives there. Keep always. The bag keeps Mahwah safe.”

He reached forward and took the bag from her, tying it by the thong to the belt at her waist. He touched it. “Odina and Keshkecho make war on Isabella. Your heart knows this.”

“I understand. It is for protection,” she said. She lowered her head. “Thank you.” She looked back up at him and added, “I am called in the manner of Mahwah now.” It was the second time she had reminded him.

He said nothing, only looked very sad.

Rapid footfalls sounded outside the chamber. Wusamequin held out a hand to indicate that she should stay where she was. She nodded. He got up and parted the curtain of flowers.

A man’s voice greeted him, speaking in an excited tone. Wusamequin’s voice rose as well. She heard the joy in it and wondered what was going on.

He poked his head through the vines and said, “Mahwah, stay.”

Then he left.

She wondered what was going on, but she knew that this time, she shouldn’t go investigating on her own. She sat touching the pouch. The Makiawisug gathered in her lap, Titania still very low from witnessing what they had seen.

She brewed tea, and drank it, offering some to her little friends. She dozed.

Wusamequin did not return.

“I wish I knew what was happening,” she said aloud.

Instantly, an image gleamed upon the wall.

She gasped.

Major Samuel Whyte lay outside in the snow, bloodied and beaten. Six braves stood heavily armed with tomahawks and scalping knives.

A rope around his neck half-choked him; it was attached to a stake, around which kindling had been arranged. They were going to scalp him and burn him!

Then she saw Wusamequin walking toward Major Whyte with his knife in his hand. Oneko stood to one side with his arms folded, watching with a grim smile.