Fire Along the Sky
Page 4
The little girl had taken off her moccasins to set them neatly aside; blue-black braids were swinging at her waist as she hopped out of the water and in again in some game of her own design. For a moment the woman believed that it was a trick, that the mountain had conjured her own girl-self up out of stone and soil: a vision to answer the question she had asked herself with every step of this journey. An image to remind her that she was right to come. She belonged on this mountain where she was born, with her own people. With the living.
This thought was still in her mind when a fox stumbled out of the woods and slid down the incline toward the stream. Small and sleek, the red pelt dull with dust, and the worst of it: a grinning mouth that dripped white foam and crimson. It took an unsteady step toward the girl and snapped at the air, once and again, a sound like a dull blade against stone.
The girl stood perfectly still, one foot raised out of the water like a heron. So young for this particular lesson, but it had come to find her nonetheless; her silence was far too fragile to protect her.
Another lurching step and another, and a familiar smell came to the woman on a gust of wind. Madness in the blood.
Her bow came into her hands as if she had called it, the curved wooden shaft cool and smooth and familiar. She notched the arrow and felt the tickle of the hawk feather against her wrist
The boy's quick fingers tying the knot, the tip of his tongue caught between his teeth in concentration
and took aim. In that last moment of its life the fox raised its head to look directly at her. A look she knew very well.
“I bring you the death you seek,” the woman said, and she let the arrow fly.
The little girl was her youngest cousin, born two full summers after the woman left home. She disliked her Mohawk girl-name and asked to be called Annie instead.
“My mother always calls me Kenenstasi,” she added solemnly, watching out of the corner of her eye to see how well this fabled cousin would understand, or if she would have to be reminded of the way the world was divided into red and white.
“I will call you Annie,” the woman promised.
The little girl managed a smile. For the rest of the walk home she was quiet except for a shuddering breath now and then, her mind still filled with the idea of death. Or maybe, the woman reasoned to herself, maybe the girl was quiet because all the questions she would ask had already been answered.
She asked, “Have they had word of me at Lake in the Clouds?”
The little girl let out a sound of surprise, someplace between a croak and a hiccup. She nodded. “A letter came a week ago. We've been waiting for you.”
The walking woman did not ask who wrote the letter; she was only thankful that she would not have to tell her own story. More than anything else she feared having to look her father in the eye and confess her failures.
At the crest of the mountain where the sound of the falls was so loud that she must shout to be heard, Annie turned to the walking woman and cupped her hands around her mouth. Her face was shiny with heat and eagerness to be home.
“The fast trail or the slow?”
“You go ahead,” the woman told her. “Tell them I'm coming.”
She watched until the girl disappeared into the trees and then she sat down abruptly and wrapped her arms around herself to stop the trembling. Overhead an eagle coasted on a hot and rising wind. When it was clear that the eagle had no advice to give her, the walking woman got up and started on the last leg of her journey.
Standing in the forests above the glen tucked into the side of the mountain, she took in the changes all at once. At the far end, just before the cliffs fell away into the valley, where the sun shone hot and long enough for corn and squash and beans, the field lay fallow under a coat of coarse straw that shifted in the wind. That was a surprise in itself, but there was more.
The older cabin, the one built long ago by her grandfather, was as it had always been. The second, newer cabin was gone (a fire, she reminded herself; they wrote to you about the fire). In its place something else had been built, not a cabin in the Indian style or a house such as the whites who lived in villages built, but a combination of both. The walls were made of square-hewn logs, and like the older cabin it was long and el-shaped with chimneys at two ends, but this house had a second story. Shutters bracketed each of the glass windows, and above the front door someone had painted the symbol of the Wolf clan of the Kahnyen'kehàka.
On the porch of this strange cabin-house that she must now call her home, the woman's family was gathered, and they were looking at her, all of them, waiting for some sign that she was real; that she was the daughter they had been waiting for.
Her father stood straight and strong though the hair that fell over his shoulders was mostly gray; beside him was her stepmother, small and rounder with age, pale with worry. Her hair—still dark—curled around her face in the heat. Next to her, the walking woman's aunt Many-Doves stood, the living image of her own mother, long gone to dust. With her stood the walking woman's uncle Runs-from-Bears and a man who must be Blue-Jay, his oldest son. Blue-Jay had been a boy when she went away, but now he stood taller even than his own father, the tallest man in a hundred miles. There was no sign of the other children of Many-Doves and Runs-from-Bears, not even of Kenenstasi-called-Annie, most certainly because she had been sent down to the village to spread the word.
The walking woman's own brothers and sister stood at the bottom of the steps. The twins, still children when she went away, were now eighteen years old, old enough to be gone, raising families of their own. Lily was small of stature but with a fierce and burning energy about her, at odds with her watchfulness. Daniel was so much like the grandfather they all had in common that the walking woman believed at first that time had taken to spinning backward.
This thought was still in her mind when a fox stumbled out of the woods and slid down the incline toward the stream. Small and sleek, the red pelt dull with dust, and the worst of it: a grinning mouth that dripped white foam and crimson. It took an unsteady step toward the girl and snapped at the air, once and again, a sound like a dull blade against stone.
The girl stood perfectly still, one foot raised out of the water like a heron. So young for this particular lesson, but it had come to find her nonetheless; her silence was far too fragile to protect her.
Another lurching step and another, and a familiar smell came to the woman on a gust of wind. Madness in the blood.
Her bow came into her hands as if she had called it, the curved wooden shaft cool and smooth and familiar. She notched the arrow and felt the tickle of the hawk feather against her wrist
The boy's quick fingers tying the knot, the tip of his tongue caught between his teeth in concentration
and took aim. In that last moment of its life the fox raised its head to look directly at her. A look she knew very well.
“I bring you the death you seek,” the woman said, and she let the arrow fly.
The little girl was her youngest cousin, born two full summers after the woman left home. She disliked her Mohawk girl-name and asked to be called Annie instead.
“My mother always calls me Kenenstasi,” she added solemnly, watching out of the corner of her eye to see how well this fabled cousin would understand, or if she would have to be reminded of the way the world was divided into red and white.
“I will call you Annie,” the woman promised.
The little girl managed a smile. For the rest of the walk home she was quiet except for a shuddering breath now and then, her mind still filled with the idea of death. Or maybe, the woman reasoned to herself, maybe the girl was quiet because all the questions she would ask had already been answered.
She asked, “Have they had word of me at Lake in the Clouds?”
The little girl let out a sound of surprise, someplace between a croak and a hiccup. She nodded. “A letter came a week ago. We've been waiting for you.”
The walking woman did not ask who wrote the letter; she was only thankful that she would not have to tell her own story. More than anything else she feared having to look her father in the eye and confess her failures.
At the crest of the mountain where the sound of the falls was so loud that she must shout to be heard, Annie turned to the walking woman and cupped her hands around her mouth. Her face was shiny with heat and eagerness to be home.
“The fast trail or the slow?”
“You go ahead,” the woman told her. “Tell them I'm coming.”
She watched until the girl disappeared into the trees and then she sat down abruptly and wrapped her arms around herself to stop the trembling. Overhead an eagle coasted on a hot and rising wind. When it was clear that the eagle had no advice to give her, the walking woman got up and started on the last leg of her journey.
Standing in the forests above the glen tucked into the side of the mountain, she took in the changes all at once. At the far end, just before the cliffs fell away into the valley, where the sun shone hot and long enough for corn and squash and beans, the field lay fallow under a coat of coarse straw that shifted in the wind. That was a surprise in itself, but there was more.
The older cabin, the one built long ago by her grandfather, was as it had always been. The second, newer cabin was gone (a fire, she reminded herself; they wrote to you about the fire). In its place something else had been built, not a cabin in the Indian style or a house such as the whites who lived in villages built, but a combination of both. The walls were made of square-hewn logs, and like the older cabin it was long and el-shaped with chimneys at two ends, but this house had a second story. Shutters bracketed each of the glass windows, and above the front door someone had painted the symbol of the Wolf clan of the Kahnyen'kehàka.
On the porch of this strange cabin-house that she must now call her home, the woman's family was gathered, and they were looking at her, all of them, waiting for some sign that she was real; that she was the daughter they had been waiting for.
Her father stood straight and strong though the hair that fell over his shoulders was mostly gray; beside him was her stepmother, small and rounder with age, pale with worry. Her hair—still dark—curled around her face in the heat. Next to her, the walking woman's aunt Many-Doves stood, the living image of her own mother, long gone to dust. With her stood the walking woman's uncle Runs-from-Bears and a man who must be Blue-Jay, his oldest son. Blue-Jay had been a boy when she went away, but now he stood taller even than his own father, the tallest man in a hundred miles. There was no sign of the other children of Many-Doves and Runs-from-Bears, not even of Kenenstasi-called-Annie, most certainly because she had been sent down to the village to spread the word.
The walking woman's own brothers and sister stood at the bottom of the steps. The twins, still children when she went away, were now eighteen years old, old enough to be gone, raising families of their own. Lily was small of stature but with a fierce and burning energy about her, at odds with her watchfulness. Daniel was so much like the grandfather they all had in common that the walking woman believed at first that time had taken to spinning backward.
