Witchy Winter

by D. J. Butler

  He entered and found Waabigwan his wife, kneeling within their wiigiwaam beside a sick child. Giimoodaapi. The boy’s breaths were labored and he sweated. He was ill with a fever.

  “Are we too late?” Ma’iingan asked, turning to Nathaniel.

  The Zhaaganaashii healer’s eyes twinkled like stars. “You will be too late, if you don’t become a little faster than that.” Then God-Has-Given stooped, snatched up the boy in his arms, and sprinted out the wiigiwaam door.

  Ma’iingan stared for a moment. He still saw Waabigwan tending their sick child—

  out the wiigiwaam door, he saw Nathaniel running into the forest, holding the child—

  and he knew what to do.

  Hollering, Ma’iingan raced after the healer. The pain of his injuries fell instantly away. He ducked branches, and pans of flour and water—who was throwing those?—and chased Nathaniel three times around the camp, dodging among his own glum-faced people, who didn’t seem to notice him.

  The healer ran up a tree, light as any squirrel. Ma’iingan leaped—

  and found, to his astonishment, that he too could run straight up the tree trunk. And when they had both reached the top of the tree, Ma’iingan chased the healer carrying his child across a river of stars he didn’t know. At the end of the river, they passed through the open mouth of the earth and into broad caverns.

  Here the stars shone, but up through pools of dark water on the floor. Ma’iingan chased Nathaniel among the pools, careful not to step into one, lest he fall into the night sky. Unseen creatures with skin dark as shadow grabbed at Ma’iingan and he squirmed aside.

  Finally drawing close enough, Ma’iingan leaped—

  snatched Giimoodaapi from the healer’s arms and fell to the ground—

  landing on the floor of his own wiigiwaam.

  Nathaniel fell beside him, laughing.

  Carefully, Ma’iingan placed the Giimoodaapi in his arms within the Giimoodaapi held by his wife. The two melted together, and the baby’s breathing suddenly became regular. Waabigwan sighed with relief and clutched the baby to her breast.

  Ma’iingan’s knee and arm ached again. “You’ve done it,” he said to the healer.

  “No.” Nathaniel shook his head. “You have done it. I think the baby will now be able to eat the food of the People. And what will you call the child?”

  “Miigiwewin,” Ma’iingan said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means ‘gift.’” Ma’iingan smiled at his son, sleeping soundly. “He is a gift Gichi-Manidoo has given me. Also, the word sounds a little like midewiwin.”

  “And what does that mean?”

  “The midewiwin are those among the People who bridge heaven and earth. They are the great medicine men and healers.”

  Miigiwewin, Waabigwan murmured.

  Then she looked up, and it seemed to Ma’iingan that she saw him, and she smiled. Ani?

  He smiled back.

  Nathaniel clapped a hand on Ma’iingan’s shoulder. “It’s a good name, Ma’iingan. Now, are you ready to return with me to Johnsland? You have a long journey ahead of you to come back to this place, and the sooner you start, the sooner you will arrive.”

  * * *

  “It’s not a witchy eye, after all,” the Beloved of the goddess said.

  She stood before the Serpent Throne and looked down into it. Someone had removed poor Eërthes’s body—Maltres wondered who had done that, in all the tumult—but his blood remained.

  The three witnesses were alone in the temple with the Beloved. She stood leaning on Maltres for support, while the other two looked up from the nave. They had brought her here in Alzbieta Torias’s palanquin because she had been too weak to stand. The eight bearers—who constituted a second kind of witness, Maltres thought—stood outside the Temple of the Sun. Torias herself had walked the entire way—did she feel released from her sacred prohibitions? Was that because of the presence of the Beloved? Or had she relinquished her priesthood, along with her claim to the Serpent Throne?

  Maltres wasn’t sure what Sarah meant by witchy eye, though she must be referring to her one exotically colored iris, the one that was nearly snow-white. “No?” he asked.

  “It’s the Eye of Eve.”

  Maltres nodded.

  “You’re Sarah Elytharias,” Alzbieta said, as if reciting a poem. “Beloved of the Goddess and bearer of Her Eye.”

  “Sarah Elytharias Calhoun,” the Beloved said, and then looked very tired. “I mean Penn.”

  “Of course,” Sherem said. “We will file suit to vindicate your claims against Thomas.”

  Sarah laughed, a sound dry as a corn husk. “After all this, a lawsuit feels…mundane. But better a lawsuit than a war, I suppose.”

  “Better a lawsuit than a war,” Maltres agreed. Then he knelt. He smelled Eërthes’s blood, thick in his nostrils as he looked up at the Beloved, the future queen of Cahokia. “Beloved…My Lady…I plead for mercy.”

  Sarah swiveled the Eye of Eve and pinned it on Maltres. “What the…what are you talking about, Korinn?”

  “I imprisoned you. It’s within your power to kill me.” Maltres spread his arms wide to embrace whatever fate she decided for him. “I beg you to show me mercy, take back the Earthshaker’s Rod, and allow me to return home to Na’avu.”

  The Beloved stared at him. “I will not show you the mercy you seek,” she finally said.

  His heart sank, and he nodded. “I understand.”

  “You may not go home to Na’avu,” she continued. “I need you here.”

  His heart fluttered; he wasn’t going to die. “To…witness?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Also, I need someone to run this city, and for that matter the kingdom. ‘Lord Mayor’ doesn’t quite feel right, that smacks of Pennsland or the Covenant Tract to me, but that’s the job that needs doing. Lord Mayor for the whole kingdom.”

  “The Memphites call such a person the vizier, Beloved,” Sherem said.

  “Ah, yes.” Sarah smiled, as if remembering something from years earlier. “That’s right, the vizier. Very well, Maltres Korinn, Duke of Na’avu. I believe you’re still regent-minister, since there is no queen.”

  “But that’s a formality,” Maltres protested.

  “It’s no formality,” Alzbieta said sharply. “Enthronement is a trial, and more than one child of Wisdom has died attempting it.”

  Sarah waved them both to silence. “You’re still regent-minister. Now you’re also vizier. Keep the Earthshaker’s Rod as your staff of office.”

  “That does require formalities,” Korinn pointed out.

  “We’ll get to them later,” Sarah said. “Right now, I need to eat a herd of horses and sleep for about a century.”

  * * *

  “I’ve got no room,” the keelboat man said. “I’m packed stem to stern with refugees, and they’re all paying passengers.”

  “I can’t pay, but I can pole,” Cal shot back. “And iffen you need someone as can stay awake and sing so’s the other boats hear us comin’, I’m your man for that work, too. I got lungs like a blacksmith’s bellows and I can go all night.”

  “You sound like a real hell of a fellow, and I see you’ve been on a keelboat before.” The boatman, a dirty, unshaven man with big arms, one missing ear, and a slouch hat, grinned.

  “I can shoot, hunt, trap, whate’er you need,” Cal insisted. “Jest git me as far as Natchez-on-the-Trace, and I’ll work all the way there.”

  He’d slipped out the gate of Cahokia before the whole wall turned into living trees—that just had to be Sarah’s doing—and hiked south to a village on the river. Now it was mid-morning and he was trying to buy passage south. Only he had no money.

  This was the third keelboat he’d approached; the first two had laughed him away.

  He should have brought cash.

  “I just don’t need it, is all. What I need is a homeless Cahokian or Missourian, with specie in her wallet and a burning need to relocate to New Orle
ans. Better luck next time, friend.”

  Cal sighed. “Thanks, anyway.”

  On impulse, he passed the boatman a Masonic recognition token in the handshake.

  As he then made to pull his hand back, the boatman shifted his own grip, grabbed Calvin’s hand more firmly, and gave him back the same token.

  “You, uh…you said you knew how to pole?” the man asked.

  “I got strong arms,” Cal said. “How hard can it be?”

  “You’ll have to sleep on the roof,” the boatman said. “But I’ve got blankets. And if the Imperial Ohio Company makes trouble, it’s possible we may have to do a little shooting.”

  “Hell.” Cal grinned, relief flooding his chest. “I’m used to that.”

  * * *

  It was Christmas day, and Chigozie was determined to celebrate. There was food—turnips, potatoes, and one pumpkin, all found in an intact root cellar behind a devastated farm and roasted together over the fire. And there would be music.

  Ferpa had a reasonably melodious voice. Chigozie knew, because in prayer she became animated and loud, and although she had a tendency to break into something that sounded suspiciously like a moo in her most enthused moments, her words generally rolled forth in a rhythmic cadence that rang back from the snow-laden trees surrounding the farmstead in which they took shelter like a symphony.

  She couldn’t read, and after a few attempts, refused to try. So Chigozie had taught her words by repetition, and now they sang together.

  Joy to the world! the Lady’s come!

  Let earth receive her Queen

  Let every heart prepare Her room

  And heav’n and nature sing

  Something about the words as they came out didn’t sound quite right. Still, he was thrilled to see Ferpa roll back and forth transported, and clap a hand over the cross burned into her breast. Heav’n and nature, indeed! Wasn’t that the nature of the beastkind, heaven and nature mixed together? Wasn’t that the nature of all mankind?

  Joy to the earth! the Lady reigns!

  Let men their songs employ

  While fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains

  Repeat the sounding joy

  There were no floods in sight, and Chigozie doubted their strains would reach all the way down to the Mississippi. But the rocks and hills sang back with sounding joy, and Chigozie fancied he heard beasts in the trees, rustling in a harmonious Christmas dance.

  No more let sins and sorrows grow

  Nor thorns infest the ground

  She comes to make Her blessings flow

  Far as the curse is found

  “I have come.”

  Chigozie knew the guttural, rasping voice, and it stopped his song immediately. He opened his eyes, and after one more booming line, Ferpa also fell silent.

  Kort, the bison-headed beastman, stood at the edge of the trees. His shaggy head was bowed, and he dragged his knotted club in the snow. Wounds now several days old pocked his body, and in his eyes, Chigozie saw something he hadn’t seen before.

  “You were right,” Kort said. “I’m ready to ask for mercy.”

  Chigozie’s heart beast faster, and he thought he heard the sky itself sing back to him the final verse of Watts’s great hymn:

  She rules the world with truth and grace

  And makes the nations prove

  The glories of Her righteousness

  And wonders of her love

  “Blessed are the merciful,” were the only words he found to say.

  Kort nodded heavily. The beastman knelt in snow and began to dig. He scratched at the hard soil with the butt of his club, and when he’d reached warmer earth beneath the frost, he used his hands. He dug for ten minutes with Chigozie and Ferpa watching, until blood ran from the torn nails of his hands. Finally, he’d made a pit large enough to bury a small man, and he tossed his weapon in, pushing snow and earth back over the top.

  When he had finished, the beastman knelt over his buried club and pressed his bison’s forehead into the snow.

  “Yes,” Chigozie said. “I think you are ready. I think we are both ready.”

  * * *

  “That one,” Sir William said. “With the lizard’s tail and the bear’s head.”

  Sarah looked down from where she stood on the Treewall at the beastman the Cavalier had indicated. “He rages like the others. He is seized by a fury.” She shivered slightly at the memory of a horse of such creatures, within her city’s walls.

  By her own choice, she had replaced her Appalachee clothing and the blue Imperial coat with a gray tunic, trousers, and cloak. When her hair had grown long enough, she intended to wear it bound behind her head, Cahokian-style.

  “Yes, ma’am.” Sir William rested all his weight on two crutches. Sarah and Cathy had done their best with his again-injured leg, but he couldn’t stand unaided without pain, and maybe never would. “Only when he was within the Treewall, he was so calm I’d have called him civilized. Leaving the city has rendered him again feral.”

  “And our warriors?” Sarah asked.

  “A few dead,” Bill acknowledged. “A greater number injured. We will bury them as heroes.”

  “With Uris,” Sarah said.

  “Colonel Uris.” Sir William straightened his back and stared into the distance. “We shall devise appropriate military honors for the man, with some combination of firearm salutes and unison roaring.”

  “It’s the blessing of Peter Plowshare,” Sherem said. The Polite did not raise his eyes as he spoke, had scarcely raised his eyes at all since witnessing the events on the Sunrise Mound. “This calming of the beastkind, it comes from him.”

  “No,” Alzbieta Torias contradicted him. “It is the wedding gift of Peter Plowshare.”

  Sarah sighed. “Here we go again.”

  She missed Calvin. She had found him with her Eye of Eve, sailing downriver on a keelboat, but she hadn’t tried to send for him. She understood his decision.

  “If you would know the secrets of the Serpent Throne,” Alzbieta said softly, “you can’t flinch away when they don’t please you. The goddess has chosen you.”

  All three of Sarah’s witnesses nodded, as did Yedera. The oathbound Podebradan had said little since Cal’s departure.

  “It could have been someone else.” Sarah wasn’t sure that was true, but she wanted it say it out loud to test the idea. “She could have chosen you. I merely stood in the right place, at the right time, with the right tools.”

  “You are the daughter of the king, Your Majesty,” Bill said.

  “Is that what did it?” Sarah pushed back. “Or was it the fact that I happened to have the Heronplow? Or was it the spells my dying father cast and the magical gifts he gave his children?”

  The priestess snorted her disagreement, but bowed her head.

  “When the poets write of this day,” Sir William assured Sarah, “they will say that you were chosen, and the child of prophecy.”

  “You can only promise that if you write the poetry yourself, Sir William.” Cathy Filmer kept Bill between herself and Alzbieta Torias; the events of the solstice seemed to have aggravated her distrust of the priestess. “This is a side of you with which I am unfamiliar.”

  “No, my lady,” Sir William said, “there is another way. I intend to twist the poets’ arms.”

  Cahokia was surrounded. Beastkind raged on the west, between the city and the river. North, south, and east, Imperial troops were camped, and their numbers grew daily. At night, creatures that had once been men shuffled in slow circuit around Cahokia, moaning without words and clawing at the Treewall.

  At Sarah’s orders, the gates had been shut, but she had distressingly few troops on the walls. The Imperial artillerists had defected to Cahokia, but otherwise Cahokia was defended by its wardens and by the private troops of a handful of its wealthier citizens.

  Also, Cahokia had very little in the way of stores.

  “Your Majesty,” Cathy Filmer said, “have you considered that you m
ight turn the plow to encircling the entire kingdom? Gift of Peter Plowshare or not, it would greatly relieve our current straits if every beastman on this side of the Mississippi were to calm down.”

  As if in answer, Sarah was taken by a coughing fit. It was short and furious, and she held herself up by leaning on the Elector’s horse-headed staff. Finally, she gagged up a thin stream of thickened black blood.

  Cathy didn’t press her suggestion.

  “I need to go back,” Sarah said.

  “To Nashville?” Sir William asked.

  “To my father.” She looked south. “I think he has things yet to tell me. But before that, I need to get a message to my brother.”

  “You’ve found him?” Cathy asked.

  Sarah nodded. “I’ve found both of them.”

  * * *

  La Verge Caníbal sailed into a fierce north wind that brought down with it a horde of refugees. They were no longer just Missouri farmers; Montse, clinging to the ropes or looking through a brass telescope from her tiny quarterdeck, saw Ohio Germans, Firstborn, and even a Memphite barge or two.

  Something was breaking at the center of the continent.

  Something was breaking inside Montse, too. Drawing back in her telescope, she leaned forward to cough and spit blood over the rail.

  “I should make some crack about your sexual wiles,” Josep said. He stood near her and also watched upriver. “Only I find I haven’t the heart.”

  “It comes out the other end, too,” Montse said. “You see, you may inherit La Verge Caníbal after all.”

  “You passed the coins?” Josep asked.

  Montse nodded. “But I still hurt inside.”

  “We’ll find a witch in Shreveport,” Josep suggested. “Someone who can heal this wound.”

  Montse returned the telescope to her eye. “No, Josep, we won’t stop to look for a witch. We’ll go to Cahokia as fast as we can, and do everything we can to rescue Margarida. If I die, I die. But it turns out that the wound in my belly is nothing compared to the wound in my heart.”