The Key to the Indian (14 page)

O
n the way back, through the entrance to the stockade and into the longhouse, Little Bull told them they were to witness a ceremony, a ceremony of departure, of farewell to their longhouse, of a great journey to come. That, they thought, would be interest, excitement, experience enough.

They couldn’t know the nightmare that lay ahead.

Twin Stars was playing with the baby when they returned to their lodge-room, and looked up expectantly. Little Bull spoke to her. Her face showed surprise, but also a sort of relief, as if what she had been expecting had finally happened. She put Tall Bear aside, jumped up immediately and began
folding the furs, but Little Bull stopped her and made some suggestion. She listened carefully, then nodded and pushed through the curtain.

She had finished the basket she’d been making, and had hung it up on one of the poles with all the things Omri and his father had brought with them, inside it. Now Little Bull put Omri and his father into it too. It was like being in the basket of a hot-air balloon, high above the ground.

“Safe,” Little Bull said tersely, and went out after his wife.

Omri didn’t feel particularly safe.

“What’s going to happen, Dad?”

“What’s going to happen?” repeated his father slowly. “Well. Little Bull will tell his people that they should leave. Then we’ll spend the night, and tomorrow’s the day Patrick’s due to bring us back. End of adventure.” But he didn’t sound as if he regarded it just as an adventure any more.

Omri looked over the edge of the basket at the ground far below. He saw something pushing its way under the corn-husk curtain. It was a dog. Tall Bear gave a gurgle of laughter as it wriggled its way towards him, belly to the ground, backside waggling.

“Why are all the dogs here white?” asked Omri, watching from his safe height as the dog and the baby started to play together.

“It’s a special breed. The pure white ones are bred for sacrificing.”

Omri swung his head round. “
Sacrificing!
You mean, they kill them?”

“Yes.”

“Dad!”

“What?”

“That’s horrible!”

“Don’t be silly, Omri,” said his father shortly. “Think of all the animals we kill to eat. This is to please the Great Spirit, which is just as important to the Indians as food. And I’ll tell you something else. Every dog they sacrifice has to be somebody’s beloved pet, otherwise it doesn’t count as a sacrifice at all.”

Omri didn’t speak for a while. Over the rim of the basket he was watching the little scene below. The dog was rolling on its back, grinning as happy dogs do, its tongue lolling. The baby was pulling its ear rather roughly but it didn’t seem to mind.

Omri thought of the dog who had picked him up. Just a stupid old dog, he’d thought… But some family’s pet. He knew animal sacrifice was part of several religions in his own time. Why should it make a difference that the Mohawk did it with
dogs?
It didn’t. Omri thought it was horrible whoever did it. Killing to eat was one thing. But for a god? How could you worship a god who wanted something so cruel? He was glad his family wasn’t religious! And yet he could see how vitally important it was to the Indians, how much strength it gave them to believe in a creator who cared for them. He felt, not for the first time, that it would be a relief to be able to pray sometimes, especially in moments of danger.

He was suddenly shivering. So he put on his sweater and
climbed into his sleeping bag. All around him was a lovely scent, sweeter than new hay, drowning out even the smoky smell of their clothes. “What’s that smell, Dad?”

“Sweetgrass,” said his father. “These dark bits woven into the basket, see? It goes on smelling sweet for ages.”

Omri breathed in the scent, and dozed. Then he slept. And he, too, had a dream.

He was in a wood, standing on something high, stretched across a dirt road. He was no longer small. Around him were other men (he knew
he
was a man, not a boy) with rifles, in camouflage uniforms, but despite that, he knew they were Indians. He looked to see if he was wearing uniform, but he wasn’t, yet he felt he was one of them, on their side.

Suddenly there were gun shots. He wanted to duck down, behind the barricade, but he couldn’t move. He wanted a gun to defend himself, but when he looked down at his hand, it was empty except for a tiny stick. He was sweating with fear, and then the voice of Little Bull spoke to him quietly. It said, “We are of one mind. Your weapon is in your hand.” Omri looked again, desperately, and saw the twig was a pencil.

He woke up suddenly. The dream was so real to him still that he was clenching his right hand on the pencil, and when he pulled his hand out of the sleeping bag, he was baffled to see that his fist was empty. Then he felt the basket move slightly.

He looked up at the rim. A giant but distinctly female hand was coming in over the fancy edge of the basket. On two of her fingers, like big thimbles, were little caps with
feathers all over them. What tiny feathers they must be to her!

“What are these?” Omri’s father asked.

“
Gustoweh
,” came Twin Stars’ gentle voice from below.

“Ah! For the ceremony. Thanks, Twin Stars, they’re beautiful.”

Omri sat up, and his father said, “Take off your sweater.” He did, and his dad fitted the cap on his head. Then he put on his own. Omri stared at him. Soft curving feathers sprouted from the top of the cap and fell around his father’s forehead, neck and ears, like Not-o-way in the painting. From the crown, three tall straight feathers stuck up. It should have looked funny, but it didn’t. His dad didn’t look like an Indian, but he didn’t look like an actor any more, either. He looked very solemn. Almost reverent.

“The
gustoweh
are their headdresses. Look. She’s even given us three white standing-up feathers. That’s because we’re Mohawks. The other Iroquois tribes don’t have three, because the Mohawks are the elder brothers.”

“What do you mean, Dad, we’re Mohawks?”

His father frowned. “Did I say—? Sorry, that was ridiculous. I meant—” But he didn’t go on.

For the first time, Omri thought it would be a good thing if Patrick didn’t wait the two days they’d arranged, but brought them back sooner. He’d heard the expression
going native
, and he thought his dad might be doing it.

When it was dark and the only light came from the fires, they sensed a lot of movement. All around them was the rustling
of corn-husk curtains and the murmur of voices, the soft shuffling of moccasins on earth, and the crackling of the fires. They waited. Before long, they felt their basket being lifted off the pole and lowered. Little Bull carried it, and them, out into the main aisle of the longhouse and walked slowly and solemnly into the centre where the main fire had been built up. He wore a cloak of hides that shielded the basket from view, but they could peep out and see what was going on as it was carried along.

A large gathering, perhaps forty people including a lot of children, were seating themselves on blankets on the ground, the women on one side of the fire, the men, some wearing
gustoweh
, on the other. Some of the men carried small drums, and rattles. The women wore their best dresses, decorated with beadwork and quillwork, and a lot of shiny silver ornaments.

When everyone was sitting, Little Bull stood up in the centre. He closed his cloak around the basket, so that Omri and his father were in smoky-smelling darkness, and began to speak. He spoke for a long time. What he said sounded like poetry, or a prayer, and after a while Omri noticed that every verse, or paragraph, ended with the same words. Perhaps it was like ‘amen’, because the people joined in.

When he had finished, he sat down, and parted his cloak a little so that they could see what was happening. Across the fire, a figure rose up and began to speak. Omri saw who it was – the clan mother.

He had thought her a crazy old woman. But she didn’t
seem crazy now. She talked like someone who is used to making speeches, and to having them listened to with complete attention. Her voice droned on and on, not hesitating, not stumbling. Every eye was fixed on her. Even the youngest children were still and silent, with the firelight gleaming in their wide-open eyes. After she’d finished, she looked round at them all. Her sunken, inflamed eyes were glistening. Was she crying? Her face showed not a trace of emotion. She gave one nod, and sat down again, with some help from the women on either side of her.

Several other women and some men then spoke. Omri noticed now how few young men there were – there were some teenage boys, but all those who spoke were middle-aged or old. Little Bull spoke in between. Without raising his voice or sounding as if he were arguing, he seemed to be answering them, telling them what had to be done.

At the end of the talking, there was a long silence. Omri thought:
They’ve accepted it
. Then an old man with snow-white hair stood up, clapped his hands, and raised them. He said a few words. That seemed to bring the talking part of the gathering to a close.

People began to murmur excitedly among themselves while some of the men and boys arranged themselves in two lines, facing each other across the fire. They took their drums on to their laps and began to beat them with short sticks. The small drums had a strange, plangent note, as if they had water in them. Other men shook their rattles rhythmically. They began to chant.

Most of the others stood up and began to dance in a circle around the fire. Omri had seen Little Bull dance, when they’d been together in Omri’s time. But this was different. The sounds of the chanting and drumming, the stamp and shuffle of feet, the flicker of the firelight on their expressionless, resigned faces, was the saddest thing Omri had ever known.

Of course they were used to moving around, they had several dwelling-places, he knew that. But it’s one thing to move when you want to. Another to be driven away, far away – not knowing where you’ll end up or what will happen to you on the journey; to leave a house you’ve built with your own hands, which is home and place of worship and meeting-house and ancestral command, all in one – and not know if you’ll ever build another.

Perhaps they would never dance like this again, never sound their drums, never chant these sacred songs. Settlers would come and build their homes on this land and grow different crops on these fields – not the Three Sisters; corn, beans and squashes – and cut down the bright-leaved trees and the straight, strong pines, and take the Indians’ places, and never think about them except to curse them and be glad they’d gone.

Omri put his face down on the rim of the basket. He didn’t want to watch the dancing any more. It seemed Little Bull felt the same, because Omri felt the basket turn a hundred and eighty degrees away from the fire. He raised his head and glanced sideways at his father. He had tears on his cheeks. They caught the firelight like the children’s eyes.

And suddenly Omri realised something. Little Bull had turned away from the fire.
And still firelight caught Omri’s father’s tears
.

In that split second, everything changed.

Little Bull stiffened. Omri felt the jerk as his stomach muscles tightened against the back of the basket. Then he let out a great cry that pierced through the drumming and made it, and every other sound, stop. Then they could hear it. A roaring and crackling – and through the open door at the far end of the longhouse, they saw that smoke was
coming in
, and that beyond, the darkness was no longer dark.

“The stockade’s on fire!” Omri’s father shouted. “It’s the settlers! They’re attacking the longhouse!”

L
ittle Bull dropped the basket.

Till now he’d been holding it cupped before him in his two hands, but now he let it go. It fell out of his hands as it fell out of his mind – Omri realised it later. At the time, there was only the horrible feeling of being in a lift whose cable suddenly snaps, that hurtles sickeningly towards the ground – no time to think, only time to feel terror.

But before the basket reached the ground, it was struck – kicked – sent flying again by running feet. Omri’s father was pinning Omri to the side of the basket with an arm on either side – he was clutching the thick strands of plaited sweetgrass,
grimly holding on. The sturdy, springy weave of the basket cushioned some of the foot-blows that landed against it, which perhaps also broke their fall. At one point they were rolling along the floor, flopping, lifting, dropping. Omri didn’t notice when his
gustoweh
fell off. His gasps and cries went unheard in the melée going on above and all around them as the Indians, emitting yelps and shouts, rushed pell-mell towards the smoke-filled open doorway.

Omri lay on the earth floor with the breath knocked out of him. His father was half on top of him. The basket lay over them, a dark dome letting through little chinks and flashes of firelight.

“Are you okay?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can you move everything?”

Omri tried. His arms and legs worked, but his neck and shoulder hurt badly. “I think I’ve wrenched my neck.”

His father stood up. One leg nearly gave way under him, but he managed to heave the basket up and away. They were still in the longhouse, but much farther from the fire. The running feet must have kicked them halfway to the doorway.

They stared. Through the doorway they could see the tall, abutting posts of the palisade blazing. They could see the silhouettes of Indians, women as well as men, running, leaping – right
through
the flames! They saw raised tomahawks and heard their war-cries. Dogs barked. Then there were shots. And all the time the sinister crackle and roar of the fire.

“What can we do? How can we help?” Omri suddenly shouted.

“We can’t. We can’t do a single damn thing,” said his father between his teeth.

They heard sounds behind them, and turned. They saw that not everyone in the group around the fire had run outside. Many of the women had remained behind. With frantic, fearful haste they were gathering up the younger children.

“They shouldn’t stay here. They have to get out,” said Omri’s father. “They must—”

A tremendous crash behind them made them turn again. A section of the burning stockade had fallen inward, towards the longhouse, on to its roof. A mass of burning poles fell through the doorway and crashed to the ground in a wild uprush of sparks. A monstrous tidal wave of smoke five times their height rolled towards them and engulfed them, forcing them to turn and run the other way, back toward the central fire, coughing and choking, their arms over their eyes.

Suddenly Omri felt his father grab him.

“Wait!” he coughed. “Where’s Tall Bear?”

“They left him – asleep – in the room…”

“We must get him!”

Had his father forgotten they were small? But they ran, as hard as they could with their bruises and strained muscles. Omri knew which was Little Bull’s compartment by now, it was the one with the short logs of elm wood and sweet-smelling pile of grass near it, Twin Stars’ basket-makings. To
them it seemed about a hundred metres away. Eventually, they reached it, and dived under the corn-husk curtain.

The room was relatively smoke-free so far. They could see Tall Bear amid the hides. He’d woken up and was sitting looking about him, a bewildered giant’s child with black hair on end. When he saw them, his face broke into a smile. He went on to all fours and began to crawl eagerly towards them.

“Come on, Om – run – draw him after us!”

They dived back under the curtain and burrowed under the sweetgrass. Tall Bear crawled after them, sticking his head out from under the curtain and looking around in the fire-lit darkness. Then he got a lungful of smoke, and did exactly what Omri’s dad had been hoping. He let out a howl that turned into a noisy burst of coughing.

Beside the fire, a woman’s attention was caught. She saw the baby and ran towards him, scooping him up in her arms and carrying him away. The last they saw of him, he was hanging over her shoulder, reaching out his chubby hands towards them, yelling blue murder.

The wave of smoke had cleared a little, and wasn’t so thick down near the ground, where they were. Omri could look around him. “Where’s Clan Mother?” he asked suddenly.

“There she is. She’s still by the fire. They must have forgotten her.”

“We must do the dream!”

“What?”

But Omri couldn’t wait to explain. He was running. His shoulder and neck hurt fearfully but it was as if the pain were
somewhere else. It didn’t stop him. He ran as hard as he could, and his father came limping behind him with one stiff knee, gasping “What? What are you doing?” Omri ran on ahead, trusting his dad to follow as best he could.

It was a long way to the fire, and to the old woman. By the time he got there, Omri was practically exhausted, and his lungs and eyes were protesting bitterly against the smoke. He thought frantically, “Her eyes! She looks half-blind! She probably won’t even see us through all this!”

But when he came up to her and tugged the skirt near her folded knee, and shouted, and waved his arms, she looked down slowly, as if she had been in a trance, and then sharply bent closer. She saw him! She reached out her hand to catch hold of him. But this wasn’t what he wanted.

He dodged and ran a little distance away. He turned. Her eyes had followed him. He was on the far side of her now. He remembered how Little Bull had said the little man in the dream behaved. He stood still, out of her reach, and pointed toward the far doorway, the one without the fire, and beckoned strongly with his other arm.

He heard her give a gasp. And then at once, she started to lever herself to her feet.

A passing woman noticed her struggles to get up and helped to lift her. Clan Mother clutched her with both hands, shouting at her, pointing to the nearest doorway, through which could be seen nothing but darkness – the stockade fire had not yet crept right round to the other side. The woman nodded and ran off.

“She’s gone to call the others!” Omri said to his father, who had just stumbled up to him. “They’ll take their kids and go out through the far door!”

“But how will they get through the stockade? The only gap is at the other end!”

Omri stood stock still. He hadn’t thought of that. Surely the raiders wouldn’t have wanted the women and children to be trapped in the burning longhouse? That would be too wicked.

Women were now mustering, keeping their children close. They seemed well-organised; there was no panic. The smoke from the burning at the far end was thickening, and many of the children were coughing, though not many were crying – Omri remembered reading that Indian children were taught not to cry. He looked back. The flaming poles that had fallen had set fire to the dry bark of the end wall. That end of the longhouse was already well alight.

Suddenly he felt the skin on the right side of his face begin to prickle and quiver. It was remembering, the way parts of the body can, the injury it had got, the last time he’d gone back in time. His face was afraid – afraid of being burnt again. This fear communicated itself to the rest of him and he felt suddenly weak and helpless. Abruptly, he was so overtaken with fear he could hardly speak.

“Dad! Let’s get out of here – please!”

“Get to the side of the aisle, or we’ll be kicked again.”

They ran to the side, stood against an upright pole, and then turned. The small crowd of women and children were
starting to move swiftly towards the empty black-dark doorway at the end, away from the blaze.

But suddenly it wasn’t empty any more.

Two men – not Indians – appeared in it. One held a flaming torch in one hand and a flintlock pistol in the other. The other cradled a musket.

The women stopped dead.

There was a long, horrible moment when nobody moved. There must have been sounds coming from the other end of the longhouse, but it was as if Omri’s ears went dead. The moment caught and held and was full of utterly silent menace. He had time to notice that the men were smiling – grinning at the crowd of women, as if getting ready to greet them.

Then there
was
panic. The women, many still clutching children in their arms or dragging them by the hand, turned and fled down the aisle. The central fire partly blocked their escape route, and one woman, running blindly, tripped and fell into the glowing embers. She screamed. Her little boy screamed too, and pulled her by the arm as she struggled to roll clear of the smouldering logs. Then there was a bang that nearly stopped Omri’s heart.

The woman seemed to lift off the ground, and then fell back, motionless, her head in the embers. Her hair began to burn but she didn’t move. Her little son stood there, frozen, gaping. The whole thing took about a second. Then another shot rang out, a deeper, roaring sound and, after a brief pause for reloading, the flintlock fired again, through the smoke toward the fleeing backs.

Omri couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He just stood there watching, stunned with horror. He had forgotten his father, Little Bull, Clan Mother. All he could think of was Twin Stars. Was she among the fleeing women? Was she the one he saw leaving the ground as a musket-ball hit her, and then dropping?

Then he realised something else. At the far end, they couldn’t get out. They were trapped by the blaze. The settlers could just come around the central fire towards them and pick them off, one by one, at their leisure.

The only thing that was delaying this was the smoke.

The women, brought up short by the blaze, were doubling back, ducking into the compartments, hiding behind the corn-husk curtains. Omri saw one dodging into Little Bull’s room. Was it Twin Stars? Where was she? Where was Tall Bear? He couldn’t see! He couldn’t see!

The men had lost sight of their targets. But they knew they had them, that there was no escape. They moved down the aisle quite calmly. The one with the torch touched it to the bottoms of the corn-husks which caught like the dry leaves they were, and the fire streamed up them. Soon the whole building would be ablaze and the women sheltering in those compartments would be…

A strong, hard hand closed around Omri and lifted him.

He gasped and struggled but it was useless. He’d had both of the men in his sight – it wasn’t them! Who had picked him up?

He twisted his head in breathless fear. It was Old Clan
Mother! Why hadn’t she run away with the other women? And he saw his father in her other hand. She was walking with them. Walking, not running. Not away from the men, but towards them.