Keepers Of The Gate

by E. Denise Billups

  When he stares in her direction, she turns and limps up the small path the way she came. The quick jolt awakened something in her body. At once, as though muscle memory revived in her feet, they know where to carry her. Her mind, a moment ago blank, recognizes the farmstead wavering through the trees. She follows the smell of chimney smoke toward the small cabin on the hillock. Though familiar, she feels no connection to this place. It can’t be her home, but someone must know who she is.

  32

  Mingin

  Year 1793

  Kanadasga once thrived under the hill where the bluff reaches the lakeshore. A place where the Iroquois’ war-whoop rang through the woods, wolves howled in the distance, canoes knifed the lake, and cornfields and orchards bloomed. Seneca villages pulsated with ceremonial dance and songs and thunder boomed from the lake. Now, a cluster of log cabins, a four-story, bark-roofed hotel housing the Lessee Company and tavern. A local watering hole where traders, speculators and land surveyors congregate to plan their new settlement, the City of Geneva.

  Under the westbound moon, a few yards away, Mingin (Gray Wolf) springs from the crisp, argent waters, and glides toward the lake’s shallow end from a brisk morning swim. A ritual he and his Wolf Clan performed, and now, he continues 14 years later. Moonglow glistens off his skin as he moves on sinewy legs through thigh-high reeds and rushes, swaying on rippling water. Dagger cattails battle steel-hard calves as he trudges over the stony bottom through dense bulrush on to the rocky shore.

  Mingin breathes in the northwest wind, gripping his nostrils with dawn’s sweet sap, sulfur, and must of damp moss. His gaze falls on the village of Geneva in the distance, a cluster of cabins near the lakeshore. His heart sinks with thoughts of settlers’ pollution near the cabins that have grown fetid and flea-infested from village commerce and waste, tainting the pristine lake.

  Disheartened, Mingin glances ahead. His six-foot-three frame moves as his shorter Iroquois brothers had with feline grace and agility across the jagged shoreline toward his waiting steed. He lifts a blanket from the saddle, runs it over his long, drenched locks, and across his body, confident and comfortable in his robust nudity. Dawn awakens over hills, valleys, glens, and sinuous lakes around him. Mingin stands straight, raises his head toward aurora skies, inhales brisk air, and gives thanks to the Great Spirit for another day.

  His steed whines and prances from side to side. Mingin lowers his gaze and stares forward at a large red stag appearing through the trees, its antlers in the murky dawn resembling bony boughs. It halts with a commanding stance, eyes him with a snort, then turns and struts its powerful haunches into the woodlands.

  Mingin gathers his clothes from the craggy ground, dresses in a buckskin top, close-fit skin breeches and deerskin boots. Ahead on the bluff, he stares at the place his home stood before the war ravaged his people and land. A life he grew to love, destroyed by an avenging government against natives who’d sided with rivals.

  With bitterness, he recalls the horrific night a raging fire consumed his village, ruining The People of the Hill, his people. He, Sagoyewatha, and Pilan secured the clan from danger, but amid the smoky chaos, he lost sight of Teka and Pilan. Turning back, he arrived just as a soldier stole their lives. Pilan lay dying as Teka raced to the water, stopped by a resonating bullet, blasting his mind with rage. He spied Sagoyewatha just as he released an arrow at the soldier who fired back. As Sagoyewatha raced toward the sacred springs, the soldier and Mingin tailed after him. Too far away to thwart the soldier, he watched as Sagoyewatha and the soldier fired their weapons at each other. The image of his brother’s fall still fires rage in his soul. He vowed vengeance for his beloved sister and brothers.

  Though British blood flows through his veins, Mingin abandoned white man’s ideas years ago, along with a past that belonged to a boy named Kane Dox. With reverence, he runs his hand across three silver marks on his chest. Scars gained alongside his brothers in battles and on hunts. He hasn’t been a Dox since his capture and his parents’ murder for taking the life of Gray Wolf, the Seneca warrior who encroached on the Dox farmstead. For ever now, he’s Mingin, Gray Wolf, a name given to him by the Wolf Clan, the name of their murdered warrior.

  In the first months of captivity, he swore when he reached manhood, he’d avenge his parents’ death and kill the Seneca people who took their lives. But with time, that anger lessened as he learned his captors’ ways. He embraced their customs and loved them deeper than his biological family. He became one of them.

  The territory where the Seneca tribe once thrived now belongs to a wealthy British land surveyor and employee of the Lessee Company. Often, Mingin acts as a translator between natives and settlers at Lessee, but foremost, he’s a trapper, a role he assumed to buy his people’s land at two dollars per acre. But the property sold long before he amassed the cost of 40 acres.

  Jawanda longed to be near her daughter’s spirit, which she claims still exists where the Seneca Village once flourished. To appease his adoptive mother, Mingin purchased two acres a mile away. With the help of his immediate family, Billy, Jawanda, and Garrentha, they built a small cabin.

  Jawanda often trespasses on the surveyor’s property, sensing her daughter’s presence there. And many times, the frightened owners shooed her away with a threat and a gun aimed in her direction. Wary of the owner, Jawanda stays out of view among the trees, but close enough to be near Teka’s energy. A month later, without notice, and to Mingin’s surprise, the British landowner sold the property to wealthy Virginians. Town gossip reported he feared the land was haunted. When Jawanda heard the news, she’d said, “The land didn’t want them there.”

  He smiles, believing she’s right. How long before the new owners hightail it from town?

  Mingin gazes at the sunrise and unfolding landscape in the distance. Above the hill, a thin wisp coils from the cabin’s chimney. He mounts his horse and advances through the wooded deer path. A trail he could travel blind, tuning his ears to the rustle of bramble and the hills’ changing acclivity, a trek he’d made many times as a boy to the lake’s end.

  Shortening the reins and clicking his tongue, Mingin guides his mount up the dark bluff, through trees behind the farmstead. Smoke from the fresh fire now rises in a steady plume. At the edge of the yard around the cabin, Mingin stops the horse beneath an overhang of trees above soil darkened from bygone native sapping campsites. A sugary scent emanates from the maples, evoking memories of the Wolf Clan’s late-winter journeys to the sugarbush. At 11 years old, Teka taught him how to sap with a stone knife, cutting a slanted gash into the tree and driving a bark chip through the gouge. He beamed when the pure, white sap dripped from the bark into handmade elm baskets. Many times, he’d lain under the spout, mouth opened, tongue extended, and savored the tree’s blood.

  The memory disperses when candlelight flickers through the log cabin’s translucent window, casting a moving shadow. Mingin’s horse whinnies with a stomp side to side and then rears on his hind legs.

  “Whoa, whoa, quiet now,” he whispers with a tug on the reins. “Don’t want ’em firing a gun this way,” he adds, rubbing the horse’s reddish mane. Mingin stares between the trees for a bear, wolf, or wildlife that might have spooked the horse, finding nothing in the dawning woodlands. Before leading the horse on to the trail adjoining the cabin, he notices the new owner’s slipshod work around the farmstead and three Conestoga wagons still filled with supplies. He remembers the caravan passing his cabin, followed by several slaves astride horses. The wagon’s wheels, too wide for the path, rumbled along The Great Central Trail. A warpath, carved ages ago by animal and native feet, now guides settlers through woods to their uncharted lives. Mingin ponders the black men’s fate. Are they free men now that they’ve entered a free state?

  The cabin’s front door opens. The imposing man he’d seen in town exits and glances around the yard. A week ago, he’d overheard his conversation with two men at an adjacent table in the tavern. He spoke of land above the hill
he’d purchased from the prior owner. Mingin damn near fell from the chair when he turned his head, and his long-deceased father peered back. He looked away, eavesdropping on their conversation.

  The man across from him had said, “Aye, William, families have problems cultivating their land. And the lack of supplies and food during harsh winter months left many settlers near starvation.”

  “Serves them right for burning the natives’ homes and crops. Such an abundance of food and a ridiculous waste. Sterling farmers, those natives. We could use their help with this land,” William had replied.

  Just as Mingin questioned the man’s identity, the tavern owner walked over, addressing his father’s doppelganger as Captain Dox. Without a doubt, Mingin recognized the man a table away, proprietor of his adoptive family’s stolen land, as his long-lost uncle, William Dox.

  Bile rose in Mingin’s throat, knowing his blood took part in destroying the Iroquois and now lived on the land they burned to the ground. He bit his tongue for Jawanda and Billy’s sake, swallowed the cider, and plunked the mug on the table with a loud thump. Seated beside them, he seethed until struck with a sudden epiphany. This twist of fate might well be in his favor. The key to gaining his family’s rightful property sat an arm’s span away.

  “Mercy!”

  The name pulls Mingin from his reverie.

  Captain Dox exits the log cabin and swings a lantern around the dark porch. “Mercy?” He calls, stepping to the edge, pivoting the light around the side of the house. “Mercy, you there?” He shouts louder toward the woodlands. When trees rustle beside the cabin, he steps back. “Is someone there?” He calls out, backs toward the door, and gazes into the dark.

  A deer breaks across the yard.

  Captain Dox steps over the threshold and gazes in the deer’s direction, missing the woman peering from the woods toward the cabin as he closes the door.

  Mingin hardens his gaze on the fleeting sprite’s sliver of white retreating into the timber fortress, swerving through the underbrush, receding farther into the forests. With a click of his tongue, the horse canters onward, approaching a woman, a teenager dressed only in a shift.

  She glances over her shoulder, speeds up, and stumbles over a tree root with a startled shriek and scurried crawl behind a tree.

  “Easy boy. Whoa,” Mingin commands the horse that slows to a high-stepping prance before the tree. “Young miss? I mean no harm.”

  Panting, she catches her breath and yells, “How do I know that?”

  Mingin pauses, noticing a distinct cadence in her voice he’d heard only once. “You don’t. But I warrant I’m far less dangerous than the creatures in these woods.”

  Pain throbs her sole and pinches her wrists from catching the hard fall. She winces with fear pounding her heart and weighs her chances with the forest or this man who might be more dangerous than bears or wolves. But she’s exhausted and won’t make it far on an injured foot. Her odds are better with this stranger.

  She peeks around the wide tree trunk at a striking man astride a horse. The man who could be native American or Caucasian. “Who are you?”

  “I may ask the like. What brought you into the woods at morn?”

  His voice rolls with old-world cadence melded with another accent.

  Mingin dismounts from the horse and walks toward her.

  “Stay back!” She screams, scrambling backward on her hands and heels.

  Something’s spooked the poor miss. He notices the makeshift bandage and scrapes along her exposed feet, surmising she’d been in the woods a while. As he moves closer, her brow clarifies. She’s the woman he’d seen towards the farmstead a few days ago. He approaches with tentative steps and offers his hand. “I won’t hurt you. Just want to help you back to the cabin,” Mingin says, leaning forward.

  “Cabin… over there?” she asks, pointing ahead. “You know me?”

  “Yes,” he confirms, baffled by her response. Mingin recalls Captain Dox mentioning his wife the fateful day in the tavern. “Mercy Dox,” he replies, noting the same addled expression blitzing Jawanda a year ago when afflicted with a peculiar memory loss.

  Mercy Dox. The name strikes her as familiar though strange, resonating as someone else’s identity, roaming her brain, an ineffective whisper waking only wonder, not her memory.

  “Mrs. Dox, you best get out of that damp nightgown before you catch a perpetual wink of chill,” Mingin says, offering his hand.

  Cristal reaches up, and he draws her from the ground to his imposing figure. She recognizes the nude man she’d seen at the lake. His gaze dips to her sheer outfit. She folds her arms around her breast.

  “Please, take this,” he urges, removing his coat, draping it around her shoulders.

  “Thank you,” she whispers, lifting her gaze to his face and familiar eyes, feeling immediate comfort in his presence. She tugs and folds his jacket around her shivering shoulder, dipping her head into the collar. Worn leather and his manly musk tease her senses. She glances up, catching his stare. She must look a pitiful sight barefoot in a scant gown. He must think she’s lost her mind. But she has.

  Mingin’s brows furrow, sensing her disorientation. “We’ve ne’r met. I’m your neighbor, just across the way in the cabin by the stream,” he explains with a disarming grin. “My name’s Mingin. Please, allow me to take you back to the cabin. Your husband’s bound to bid a search party if you don’t return anon.”

  “Husband?” she asks. A name and face escape her memory.

  “Yes, Captain Dox. He’s worried in your absence.”

  The mention of Captain Dox nettles her consciousness. She parts her lips to seek his first name, then hesitates. The sight of this man, her husband, may rouse her memory. If they share the same bed, how and why did she slip from the cabin without notice at night into dangerous woods? Barefoot, wearing only a nightdress, logic suggests she was fleeing something or someone.

  “Please,” Mingin offers, perceiving her lost demeanor with a warm smile, trying not to appear too aggressive. “Please, allow me to help,” he says, pointing at the horse.

  She stares at the handsome steed, rubs its neck, wondering if she’d ever ridden a horse. Placing her foot in the stirrup, Mingin clutches her hips with a gentle hoist on to the saddle and stares at her foot. He peels the bloodied lace and frond stuck to the swelled wound. “That’s a deep gash and needs tending and a better bandage. Doc Brogan isn’t far in town. He’ll mend it well,” he says, placing his foot in the stirrup and mounting the horse behind her.

  Doc. Doctor. Doctor. Doctor. Repeats an unbroken litany.

  A fleeting name struggles to pierce her consciousness, yet it evades her mind as fast as it appeared. Her heart escalates when the horse veers and trots toward her ambiguous life. Strangely, she’s comforted in Mingin’s presence, yet alarmed with the mention of her husband’s name, Dox. Her instinct warns something’s awry. She was fleeing elsewhere before she woke without a memory.

  Mingin turns the horse around in the direction she’d fled, jostling the reins at her stiff sides.

  They ride in silence as the horse canters toward the farmstead and her worried husband inside the remote cabin. Her breath and pulse escalate. And as if sensing her distress, Mingin’s arms tighten around her shoulder. She closes her eyes, releases a silent breath through her lips, comforted in his familiar yet strange embrace, and hard chest against her back. Her eyes stay closed until the horse exits the dim forest into the soft glow of dawn, and Mingin’s guttural, “Whoa,” vibrates against her spine.

  Ahead, the cabin’s front door springs open with a loud bang against the wall. A burly, night shirted man with a rifle and lantern steps on to the porch.

  “Mercy, where in God’s name? You had me worried a wild animal carried you off,” he says with a menacing glare at Mingin. He lowers the rifle and rushes toward the horse.

  A cat curls its head around the doorframe, meows, and saunters on to the porch. A fleeting name breaks free from Cristal’s memory. />
  Mystik!

  As Captain Dox approaches, another name strikes her mind as though a phantom wail.

  Dante!

  He’s my husband, not Captain Dox.

  33

  Wolf Clan Longhouse

  August 1779

  Twyla springs upright with a loud gasp in the dark, clutching her chest for air. Frightened, she jerks her head around, eyes flitting across the unfamiliar place and up at objects hanging above from scaffolds and pillars. Something soft brushes her hair. She wrenches her head sideways, colliding with feathers on the bed pole.

  Where am I? Am I still dreaming?

  The instant she touches the dreamcatcher, a voice from a faraway place, trying to take physical form, whispers in her mind. “The web entraps nightmares and banishes demons at sun’s first light. Feathers keep only pleasant dreams so you can dream them again.”

  Someone snores and bumps her arm. Twyla jumps, falls off the bunk, dragging the fur to the hard clay floor with her legs. Panic spikes into an urge to flee. In a frenzy, she peers at the figure in the bed, up at the dome-shaped ceiling, side to side at two doors open wide to dusk on opposite ends of the long hallway. Her hazy vision widens on many slumbering bodies. Their breaths and wheezes wind her ears with fright.

  “It’s not real!” she murmurs, shaking her head. She thumps the dirt floor beneath her rear, strokes the pelt, and swallows a sharp gasp roaring around her wild heart. Reaching toward the pallet, she taps then grasps the timber frame, the cornhusk mats, hoping they will vanish with her touch.