Wind Dancer (13 page)

The sun was going down. Aquamarine streaked the western sky between swaths of red and orange, a fiery sunset that lit the edges of the hills and the creeping darkness of leafy forest shadows.

Shawnee warriors took hold of Julian, rousing him to consciousness. Wild-eyed with fear, he was dragged toward a spot where wood was being heaped upon a fire. Julian was quickly lashed to a stake and raised up among the rising flames.

Isabelle lifted her rifle, aiming at the chief's back.

She was jerked from her horse by Samuel and held tight to his chest, her gun, now wrested from her, in his hands.

“Let me have it!” she screeched, wildly trying to disengage herself from his hold.

“You'll only assure all our deaths by killing the chief.”

Sunukkuhkau pulled Isabelle from Samuel's arms, and Samuel quickly backed away, the rifle ready in his hands.

Isabelle looked back at him with horror, with hatred, as they laid their hands on her and dragged her toward the scene. Her eyes told him she would never forgive him for this betrayal.

The spark and crackle of the fire brought her head around as she turned toward the scene and gazed, shock and fear, shock and despair, shock and sick dread rising to her throat at the sight. The fire was catching, rising, hungry for food. Julian's eyes were open, searching for her.

She held his gaze as they hauled her to the front of the intent throng, barely aware that ropes were being twined around her wrists, binding her hands behind her back, binding her in a slower death than Julian's.

All she could feel, all she could see, was her brother's terror-filled gaze.

A chant grew among them, their throated grunts rising up and up into the fading light. Isabelle's head fell back, her throat exposed, working in a silent scream. She opened her eyes, her head dropping to one side, her dark, heavy hair swaying and pulling. Screams, her brother's and her own, filled the air. But his eyes stayed wide on hers.

Isabelle would not look away and deprive him her meager comfort. She would look upon his horror, feeling that life had ended, that she had been consigned to a hellish place where people did this to other people.

“Julian,” her voice croaked. “Julian!” A bereft soloist sounding loud against their cheering gong, she wailed, panting, flinging herself away from her captor's grasp and onto her knees as the flames caught his shirt, covering his face in a red, merciless blaze. Wild hate and fear now penetrated her every fiber. She collapsed, her captors on either side of her hauling her up by the elbows like the arms of a cross.

Then a shot rang out, exploding against the noise, its verdict loud and final. Julian now lay limp upon the stake, a trickle of life oozing from the middle of his forehead.

Isabelle's head jerked back, saw Samuel standing a short
distance away with her smoking rifle, saw him throw it to the ground and hang his head.

She fell to the ground.

* * *

THE WOMEN OF the tribe took her then. Their thirst for vengeance unquenched, enraged that Samuel had stolen their victory, they came at her, a mob of hate, women her age and younger and older, their tanned faces totem masks of fury, tearing at her clothes, scratching and hitting and kicking.

She fell to the dusty earth. Felt its grains in her mouth and eyes, felt the blood flow where their aim was true, felt her clothes being torn from her, heard the ripping and knew the exposure, sudden wind against a cold sweat.

Naked, her torso bathed in blood, she lay beneath them as they spent their anger, until finally they drew back, panting from their efforts. But their eyes promised something more to come.

Isabelle pushed herself up with her bound arms to sit among them, her long black hair a dusty curtain around her, a veil against the nakedness. She looked up and saw Sunukkuhkau approach. His eyes took her in, all of her, even those parts covered by her thick hair, showing satisfaction that she sat in the dirt, wearing a film of it, that she cowered before them.

At that, Isabelle, her hands still bound, gracefully rose upon strong muscular legs. She stood tall and proud, her legs braced apart. She shook her hair back, not caring that she relinquished her covering. She stood strong and tall and glared back at him. Only blood would cover her body. Her blood. Their sin on her. Nothing else. She glared in challenge at him.

The warrior broke into a smile, looking her up and down, admiration in his eyes. “You will be mine,” he said with a broad smile.

It was a stupid man's smile.

Isabelle tilted her head, her hair hanging to her hips at one side and narrowed her eyes. “If you think so, then you shall prove yourself a fool.”

At her words there was a scuffle to her right, and she turned toward the sound. It was Samuel, bound now and straining against it. He was pushed toward her, knocking him into her. He sought her gaze. “I am sorry.”

“Wake me up,” she breathed. “I can't wake up.” Tears sprang to her eyes, the blindness a blessing.

Samuel closed his eyes. Then he took a deep breath and leaned close to Isabelle's face as they dragged him away. “Stay alive. Do what you must to stay alive.” He heaved the words through the air between them. “Have faith.”

Isabelle blinked out the blur, her shattered gaze roaming his face and then his bindings, pointing out the obvious without saying it. She turned away and looked down at her trembling thighs.

A sob tore from her throat as she fell forward. Her brother. Her childhood friend. Gone. And for what? Her throat, raw from wailing, worked in silence, the tears dried with the blood on her face, empty of more.

Where is my Savior? Where is my Savior now?

They hauled her up, two women, one stocky and regal, wearing a dark-yellow deerskin dress decorated with turquoise beads, the other tall and slender, wearing a lighter dress of skin, almost white, with a beautiful broad face and straight, white teeth. As they dragged her away, Isabelle craned her neck to catch a last glimpse of Samuel's receding back, thinking this was the end for both of them. She screamed to go to him, her bound arms reaching toward his body, but they hauled her up and toward the river.

They stumbled, the three of them, in their haste through the forest bramble toward the sound of water. It was a sound Isabelle had always cherished, the music to her dance, but she was sure that this time they meant to hold her under that sound until the life was gone from her. So she fought them, they being women and she being unusually strong.

She got away briefly, ran at full strength, though out of balance because of her bound arms. She stumbled, fell. And they were on her, hushing her with words she didn't understand. Guttural sounds, nothing like the flowing French she adored
from her father's lips. Nothing still compared to the clipped English of her mother's tongue.

These sounds came from the throat and sounded much like the strangulation of the water she imagined was her grave. She swatted at them with her shoulders and knees, her strikes as innocent as a fly's she realized, dazed.
Please God, if they would only untie
my hands, I could do so much more!

Arriving at the narrow bank, they shoved her into the cold water. Deeper and deeper the three moved, like a small school of fish connected by unseen forces of moonlight. When her breasts were covered they stopped, taking up a rag and some soap that seemed to come from nowhere. They dunked her, and she shook her head back and forth under the water, feeling clumps of hair floating around her, wondering how long the pressure of their palms would remain on the top of her head. Suddenly she was up again, being soaped from head to toe. They carefully worked the lather through her hair against the last of the sun.

Then her face. The rag was gentle as it washed away the blood from her eyebrows, cheeks and jaw line, her lips, the crevices of her ears and down the long column of her neck. Isabelle just breathed. Like a stallion in the thrall of the corral for the first time, her nostrils flared in rebellion. It was a raspy breath, out of her nose, then her mouth, through her teeth, making a defiant noise that rasped with anger and hate and fear at not knowing what to expect next.

Finished with head and hair, the women pulled her up the bank to wash her body, the soft squishy mud registering for the first time on the outer consciousness of Isabelle's mind. Were there snakes in this water? She had never willingly taken a bath in the river. Hot kettle water and an iron tub was the only bathing she had known, and she hadn't taken them very often, a fact her mother despaired of. But these women seemed determined to scrub her completely clean. What was it they wished to wash away?

She drifted in and out of shock and semiconsciousness.

Without comment they led her, dripping, naked, and clean beyond anything she'd ever known, back to the shore. There they cut her bindings and dried her, clucking now, like mothers, the two of them sharing some precious daughter. They patted her with soft blankets, careful to dry every pore, rubbing every strand of hair till the life was flowing back into it.

Then they held out a beautiful dress, made of deerskin like theirs, but covered with multicolored beads in sparkling, sweeping patterns of delight against a pale blue-dyed background. They slipped it over her head, helping her place her arms through the long, fringed sleeves, then standing back and admiring her, cooing over her dignified beauty. They put moccasins on her feet, matching the dress in color and adornment.

Then they brought out a comb. It must have been a European comb, for it was of finest ivory and had perfectly set teeth. Directing her to sit, they slowly, carefully combed out her dark glory, exclaiming over it, their smiling faces hovering like benevolent gods saying, “It is good.” As it dried, her hair became a silken curtain draping her to the waist in a tumult of dark waves.

Isabelle sat mute under these astonishing ministrations, no longer knowing what to think, what to feel. Her brother was dead, and they, these sudden mothers, were making an Indian maiden out of her. It no longer registered with her that her ropes had been cut, that her hands hung free, that she might fight and run. She could only sit silent as the stone on which they had placed her.

The women led her back to the village, displaying her like a conquering princess, as if they had bathed away the English, the French, the American even. As if she were one of them, their daughter, and a prized one at that.

Isabelle found herself holding her chin high, wondering in some small part of her mind where they had taken Julian's body.

Would there be a grave to visit? Would they allow her the freedom of gathering woodland flowers to adorn his grave? Would she really be alive long enough to do such things?

They gently pushed her into a wigwam filled with women and children, where the smoke tried in vain to escape through the small hole at the pinnacle of the structure. Would that she could become a vapor of smoke and lift up and away into the freedom of the night sky, turning into a wisp … and then nothing at all. She turned her head away, her only rebellion left this day, then collapsed on the appointed pallet. And blessed sleep rushed over her.

* * *

SAMUEL STOOD WATCHING her being led away, seeing the flash of her bare thighs in the pale, lingering light, seeing her hair sway back and forth, black as the panther and as ready to strike. His heart sank.

Never in all his days had such regret filled him. What had he done that they had come to such unimaginable fate? How had he not saved them?

His Isabelle.

Now more than ever, he knew it to be so. She had been taken from him, but she was his. And he would fight, regain her in some way. Whether the next days proved it or not, she belonged to him, no matter the past and his previous commitments.

The warriors led him to a longhouse and gave him food in a wooden bowl which he wolfed down, knowing better than to turn up his nose at it. He was then directed to a pallet. He lay down, turning away from them on a soft fur, looking up through the smoke hole and seeing a single star shining a cold and unreachable light, like himself unable to sleep.

* * *

THE NEXT MORNING Samuel awakened suddenly and rolled, unbound and with a freedom of sorts—an adopted son's freedom—from his sleepless night, and stood straight and tall, braced for whatever was to happen next.

They took him out into the center of the village where he saw Isabelle being similarly led from a different lodge. She was dressed in a long, light-blue dress, the hem mid calf, showing an expanse of skin between the hem and the top of her moccasins, looking like an Indian maiden. He inhaled as their eyes met, willing her strength for what was to come.

They were placed together, sitting side by side, in an ever-growing circle of Indians waiting in silence. Samuel could hear Isabelle's shallow breath, but she would not meet his eyes.

A sudden, loud careening cry split the dawn, as if a bereft spirit had left the owner's throat, fleeing across the distance to the place where they sat.

Isabelle tensed, nearly panting.

Another woman's voice added to it, raising and then dropping in apparent agony. Then there were others, moaning and wailing, falling to their knees, shrill and crying. One old woman dropped directly in front of Samuel and Isabelle, her tanned, wrinkled throat straining to cry out. She moaned, her head thrown back, the thin skin of her arms wrinkled and upraised. She was joined by her sisters, throwing themselves onto the ground beside her, joining her cry, so close Samuel could see the tears track down their cheeks.

“What?” Isabelle gasped to him, looking at him full in the face for the first time. “What are they doing?”

Samuel leaned toward her, his shoulder touching hers. “They are mourning.”

Isabelle's face, that beautiful, fierce face, turned toward him and demanded, “Mourning for what? Not my brother?”

Samuel stared at her, wanting more than anything to pull her into his arms. “No.” He shook his head slowly back and forth, not breaking the contact of their eyes as their captors' cry grew deafening. “They are mourning the loss of a loved one. One of their own.”

“But why? Are we not the ones who should be mourning?” Her eyes were slashes of raw pain. “Should
I
not be the one mourning this day?”

“Yes.” Samuel looked down into his lap, wishing, wanting more than anything, that he could have spared her this. He looked again into those deep blue eyes, the eyes of a stormy day. “Yes.”

Isabelle then rose to her feet, suddenly against them. She stood tall, her chest thrown back, her head falling back, her hands balling into fists at her side. He watched her take a deep breath, knowing what was to come, knowing that she didn't understand that this was their adoption ceremony.

Isabelle's exhale became a cry. Like theirs … but not. Deeper, then rising to a scream. Stronger … more guttural than even these could manage. She stood to her full height, threw back her shoulders, and wailed her anguish, her arms slowly rising until they lifted full toward the morning sky. She inhaled once more. The cry that followed was so great, so piercing, that the authors of her death cry drew back in silent horror, staring in awe at her brilliance.

She reached up and tore at her hair, shaking the waves of blackness around her, a mourning cloak. Her cry grew, loud and then whimpering, full and then still, shrill but softer, shaking her hair about her, eyes and fists tightly clenched, railing toward the sky, toward God.

And then she turned on them.

The Shawnee were a passionate people. They knew the
depths of expressing their grief, but this … this frightened even them. Her eyes opened, and Isabelle leaned at the waist toward them, sweeping from one end of the crowd to the other, impaling them with her gaze and her outstretched arms.

Samuel saw their astonishment of her.

A captive was taking over their ceremony.

She glared her hatred at them. Her arms swooped from one side of the gathered Indians to the other as she spoke in a quiet, harsh voice, looking each of them in the eye as her gazed passed by—the women, the braves, the children, even the chief. She feared nothing and no one.

“You killed my brother.”

She confronted them, first in English, then in French. Then again in English.

Samuel wanted to reach up and grab her, even found himself on his feet beside her. He wanted to tell her that this wasn't the way, that they must play their part for a time, pretending to be a newly adopted son and daughter while plotting their escape. He wanted to tell her to trust him, that he would find a way. That he knew these Indians, knew their customs and their ways, knew how to work them to his advantage. But all he could do was stare and feel her grief, fighting a clog of emotion in his throat. He knew there was nothing he could do. She would have this moment of blame, even if it meant the end of both their lives.

Then he realized, biting back the words to stop her, that he was willing to give whatever price for her. She deserved this moment.

* * *

AS HER WAILING quieted into rapid, short breaths, Isabelle collapsed back to the hard earth, taking fistfuls of dust from
the ground and pouring them over her bent head. The sobbing subsided, and a deep, hate-filled silence enveloped her. When she finally looked back up, she once again glared her hate.

Samuel sat back down beside her. “This is an adoption ceremony. They grieve their lost ones, then adopt us into the families that need replacements.”

She turned toward him, her chiseled, dirt-streaked face so disbelieving that it made him wonder how he'd ever accepted it.

“And whom will I adopt?” she whispered in a hiss. “Who will assuage the loss of
my
brother?”

She turned, half-mad, toward an Indian boy and pointed at him, causing the lad to lean toward his mother. “Him? Will
he
be my Julian?” She pointed at another, older man. “Or him? Will he magically become my best friend?” She threw back her head and laugh-cried, a sound that sent chills down Samuel's spine, then abruptly stopped and stared back at Samuel. “Only a fool would replace a brother with a dog.” Her eyes were slits of scorn. “Only desperate, stupid hearts could so easily replace a loved one.”

“It is their way. Isabelle, we must go along with this, or we will be lost.”

She tilted her head and stared at him, through him, scorn and sadness filling her eyes. “Can you not see? They cannot do anything more to harm me.” She smiled, and it was not lovely. “I am already lost.”

She rose, turning away from him, then walked calmly away from them all, her back strong and straight, toward the charred remains of the fire that had taken her brother.

Samuel and the whole tribe turned and watched her kneel at the site. She reached toward the ashes, like a mother gathering her family to her, and slowly, methodically, rubbed ashes into the deerskin they'd adorned her with, turning the dress from a lovely sky-blue to the gray of her grief.