Trail of Bones

by Mark London Williams

  “Perhaps someday you could see my home, as well.”

  You mean, journey with you?

  “Yes. You might be able to get a job teaching philosophy.”

  To humans? That might be difficult.

  “To Saurians. You could come to Saurius Prime.”

  Where you fish-people live? But you say I wouldn’t be allowed to hunt.

  I loved talking to Silver Throat. Conversations with her kept me alert and ready for debate class. I enjoyed talking to North Wind Comes, of course, but I didn’t see him as often. His people have placed confidence in him as a healer and now have more need of him.

  And of course, there is Eli. After his gift of the orange, it was my wish to leap straight into the Mandan village to greet him quite loudly with maximum friendship.

  But Silver Throat, and later North Wind, advised me that wouldn’t be safe. Eli is traveling with an exploratory regiment that might wish to harm me out of pure reflexive action. North Wind doesn’t feel his people are ready to have me show up in his village.

  But when I heard Eli had come looking for me and nearly perished, I felt I must make contact with him soon. After all, we have to find the time-vessel and find out what effects mammal-borne disease is having on it. I fear ever greater chaos within the human time stream the longer we are delayed.

  And so I have agreed to come on one of the wolf pack’s winter hunts. To strengthen myself, to catch a glimpse of the village where Eli is, and formulate a gra-baak-proof plan to rendezvous.

  If you join us on the hunt, Silver Throat said to me, you can share the meat.

  If I start actively hunting mammals, I replied, I will be in even greater violation of every Saurian agreement made since the end of the Bloody Tendon Wars. I’ve already been living off the meat you’ve provided. An even more severe appetite for flesh would create enormous social problems on my home world. And furthermore, would be very bad manners here among my hosts.

  I had eaten bird bones when foraging on this planet, but I dared not purse larger game. Especially involving my host phylum.

  There is a stray, solitary ungulate ahead of us — an elk, I believe — separated from its herd. Silver Throat watches while members of her pack surround it. Soon she will join them to take down their prey.

  Thankfully, the limp from the jabberstick keeps me from being a more effective hunter.

  Did you not say that returning to this other home of yours is a matter of both distance… and time?

  I nod.

  But time only moves in a single direction. There’s no going backwards, no matter how much we wish it. That animal’s life will end in a few moments. She nods toward the elk. In its last moments, it will wish to undo its end. But none of us can undo endings. The stream takes us all.

  “That’s why I need to find my ship. The stream may be flooding in all directions, if we’re not careful.”

  A ship like the watercraft that humans use?

  “More like the aircraft that they will come to use in their future.”

  The humans will be able to move around by air? That is very worrisome.

  The hairs on the back of Silver Throat’s neck have raised up, ever so slightly. But it doesn’t seem to be caused by the consideration of airborne humans. Her nose twitches, then she springs to all four feet, growling.

  Birdjumper and some of the others come running in from the outside. They’re wet with snow and ice.

  Birdjumper and her mother exchange yelps and growls. I can make out some of it, but not all. The humans are… moving?

  They’re coming right now. Silver Throat looks at me. On foot and horse. The one you know is coming, too.

  You can see the figures moving toward us.

  The wolves are sounding a retreat. And then I understand why: They aren’t the only ones hunting today.

  The humans are after us.

  Arrak-du…

  This won’t be a friendly encounter. You can feel it.

  And Eli’s with them.

  It’s been so long since I’ve seen him.

  Whose side will he be on?

  Chapter Seventeen

  Thea: Canal Street

  February 1805

  They’ve finally decided I’m well enough to travel. For months, I’ve been “rehabilitated” at Monticello, quarantined on Mulberry Row by Mr. Howard while Jefferson President was away at the capital.

  My “fevers and fugues” were to be “sweated out of me,” until I was “fit to be returned,” in Mr. Howard’s words, “in working condition.”

  So I spent my long days planting and gathering crops, spinning cloth, sewing, mending, washing, watching over the slave children and sometimes, if they were outside, Jefferson’s own grandchildren.

  I lived in a shed near Isaac’s, with some straw on the floor, a couple of blankets, and two servings of food a day — stews made of greens and the cast-off parts of farm animals, like cows and chickens. Sometimes there is an allotment of a pasty substance called cornmeal. And once in a while, I have received a pudding made of something called a pumpkin.

  But what matter my diet? Eli’s soft helmet was gone, and I had no more visits or visions of the future. I kept looking for chances to escape, to somehow return to my friends.

  There were none.

  In spite of living near Isaac and the horse stables, I had no opportunities to be alone with the horse Soysaa, either.

  But I did see him on the day he was taken away.

  Isaac held him by the reins and brought him down the row.

  “Where is he go?” I asked, in the English I was using more and more.

  “Where troubled horses go, little miss. Now you best move aside. Don’t spook him.”

  Soysaa reared up when Isaac spoke, and it took more slaves to subdue him.

  I don’t know where he was headed.

  But my journey has been less mysterious. After my rehabilitation, and Jefferson President’s return from Washington, I am being returned to my “owner,” a man named Governor Claiborne — Claiborne Governor? — in a city named New Orleans, in a region called Louisiana. During a festival called Mardi Gras.

  The festival has started already, and it is the reason I was given for the repeated explosions of light and large rumbles of thunder in the sky.

  When the light flashes, I remember my journey through the dimensions and my visit to Eli’s time.

  Show…

  There’s been no one I could tell.

  …me.

  I’ve tried to talk to Sally about it but don’t want to get her in trouble. Sometimes I feel like light is exploding inside me, too, looking for a way to come out.

  Another boom fills the air. “That one’s not a firework — that’s from God.” Sally turns to me, her face covered in feathers. “Maybe you attract lightning, too.” She smiles to let me know it’s a small joke, but around Monticello, Mr. Howard let it be known that I was “spooked.” Sally wasn’t allowed to spend much time alone with me, anyway.

  We couldn’t even ride down together in the same carriage. I was not outside, on the top, as I was that time with Sally. Instead, I was kept behind a locked carriage door, on a hard bench across from Mr. Howard, who watched me the whole time.

  Even when we stopped to spend the night at various inns — or rather, when Jefferson did, since the slaves slept in barns — Mr. Howard seemed impervious to sleep. Whenever I’d awaken, he would still be watching me.

  I could scarcely exchange words with Sally. At what point in the journey did she start wearing feathers?

  “Sally…” I have so much I want to tell her, but so little English. Maybe now’s the time to give her some of the lingo-spot.

  Except then, would she wind up like Sooysaa? Like me? With the voices cascading in whether she wanted them to or not?

  Even in the shadowy moonlight, my eyes do the job of my tongue. She sees me looking at her costume.

  “Do you like it? It’s for Mardi Gras.” She turns around to let me see all of her clot
h feathers. Facing me again, she raises the wooden beak off her nose, so I can see her more clearly in the dark. “I’m an American Eagle.” Then she looks at me, trying to see what else can be read in my face.

  “I know why they brought you back, Thea. Aren’t they even going to let you wear a disguise? Just for tonight?”

  I gather that costumes, or disguises, are required for this Mardi Gras — “fat” something, if my sense of the Latin is correct. But I have only the dress I was wearing at Monticello.

  There is laughter as a group of people walk down the street near us. They have noisemakers and horns. One appears to be dressed like an insect; another, like a giant goat; and another, still, appears to be a type of fool or trickster, with a mask of exaggerated facial features and outlandish baggy clothes. The fool laughs. The insect seems to stare at me.

  “They’re headed to the river,” Sally says. “You know, all those articles about you in the Truth, you’ve become famous. They even ran that portrait of you. You don’t need anybody staring at you. Put this on.” She hands me the wooden beak. She wants me to tie it around my face.

  As I do, she explains how it is that I have become famous, perhaps even infamous, in the last few months.

  “Brassy” sightings continued even after I was at Monticello. These caused Jefferson President a nearly endless string of political trouble, since Brassy was supposed to “belong” to Governor Claiborne and should have been returned right away. As president, Jefferson couldn’t be perceived as taking the side of a slave in a runaway dispute, especially a slave who was, according to the rumors, getting ready to lead a slave revolt.

  The rumors, and Jefferson’s troubles, grew as sightings of “Brassy” were reported in far-flung areas: in Virginia’s own Alexandria; in the capital, Washington; down here in New Orleans. Each sighting of the “ghost slave” was then reported in something called the Weekly Truth.

  “Jefferson hates that paper. Says he’s not sure if Tom Paine is behind it or not, but it’s always stirring up trouble.”

  I wonder if the random appearances of Brassy, or rather me, had to do with my travels through the Fifth Dimension? Could it be, with Eli’s cap on, that I was somehow “split” in two? One self not fully appearing in the world of Eli’s father while another kind of remnant emanation was left behind here?

  Was I at risk of becoming a ghost?

  “In any case, Jefferson’s problems just kept piling up,” Sally says. “He had to agree to come down here and give a speech — which he hates to do. To try and make it up to the governor, since it was his slave he lost. Mr. Howard keeps worrying that the situation isn’t ‘stable enough.’ And you know what? It turns out, for once, that man may be right.”

  Evidently, Brassy had been seen recently in the New Orleans area, calling for a mass slave escape on Mardi Gras night. Carnival time. Or so claimed the Weekly Truth.

  Consequently, there was a bounty hunter in the area, looking for Brassy. He was describing her to locals, saying she was dangerous, saying she might be seen in the company of “a white boy” and, according to the Truth, “other creatures too strange to mention.”

  “They decided to let all the Mardi Gras balls still go on, though,” Sally explains to me, “ to show they aren’t afraid. Since the president had you all along, they want to make a big show of handing you back. Except they did add a curfew, so everyone would have to go home early. Those costumes you saw were headed to one of the parties: American, French, colored. They all celebrate separately. Only the Creoles seem to mix it up a little.”

  “Creoles?”

  “Native Louisiana people. They’re kind of like a big stew of different races already — Spanish, French, sometimes Indian or colored, all in the same blood.”

  “But Sally, it is the same blood. It’s just blood.”

  “I know that. And you know that. But when someone keeps slaves, I guess they have to pretend to not know that.”

  Brassy, or her ghost, evidently had called for using the parades and disguises to transport recently escaped slaves straight out of the city. They could march their way to freedom under cover, I suppose. It was a good idea, except that somehow everybody had heard about it.

  According to the paper.

  That’s why there are armed guardians patrolling the streets.

  That’s why Mr. Howard had me put in leg braces, sitting in the wagon, with strict orders for the guardians around me that I was to stay put until everything was ready for me to be handed over.

  Sally looks around, to make sure no masked insects or armed guardians could hear us. “Since you couldn’t come into Jefferson’s house, you missed a real nervous visit from this governor. He’s all worried ’cause a lot of slaves seem to be up and disappearing outside New Orleans and no one ever sees ’em again, anywhere. And the governor wants to put a stop to it. Jefferson felt forced to go along. ‘Politics,’ he called it. ‘Sally,’ he told me one time, ‘it’s politics that has me thinking the office of president might have already outlived its usefulness.’

  “And then later that same visit, one of the governor’s slaves whispered to me that it was magic helping the escapees. Magic that you could find right here in New Orleans, for a price. Maybe from one of the fortunetellers. I don’t know if I believe it, but I told Jefferson I wanted to investigate this thing from the slave side, in case somethin’ bad was happening to ’em.

  “There were other reasons they couldn’t shut down Mardi Gras. The French refused to be deprived of their celebration, the Americans refused to be shown up by the French, and the Creoles said they were free to do what they pleased. So, because we still have the masked balls and the parties, I have my disguise, and I think we should find out what’s happening.”

  “Are you running away, too, Sally?”

  “I’m too famous to run away, missy. I’m President Jefferson’s favorite slave.” She isn’t saying it like she means it as an honor. “But I have to find out about this…”

  Boom.

  Show me.

  There’s more thunder, and another crack of light pierces the night, the way the light from Pharos used to with its great beam. Then I notice light from someplace else: under Sally’s clothes, her costume, from her feathers. She takes out a small glass vial with a shifting, glowing mass contained inside.

  I recognize the material. It’s plasmechanical.

  It’s from K’lion’s ship.

  “The governor’s slave, her name was Tomasina, gave this to me at Monticello, when nobody was looking.”

  Clop clop clop.

  “These get passed on to the people fixin’ to run away to freedom. Helps ’em find the trail, or something. Like a pathway, or one of those new railroad lines.” She looks over her shoulders. “I got somethin’ else, too, for when nobody is lookin’”

  Revelers — I see the insect and the goat running in the opposite direction from which they came — are now fleeing up the street. Ahead is another small squad of guardians, armed with long weapons and dressed in their triangle-shaped hats.

  The people in costume run ahead of the soldiers — clop clop — who stay in formation and move like a dreadnought, splitting the seas.

  Sally is counting. “Three…two…one…”

  And just as the guardians clop by, with people fleeing ahead of them, the men who watch me begin to fall out of formation to see what’s happening. There is another roar of thunder—Sally keeps counting —and then another blaze of lightning, during which she moves her pretend feathers to cover up her own swift motion.

  “Come on, child.”

  She unlocks the leg irons with a key that suddenly appears in her hand. The braces fall away and drop to the pavement. Then she grabs me and starts running.

  “How did you—?”

  “Slaves gotta keep their eyes open for each other, child.”

  “You, there! Halt!”

  Two of the soldiers who had momentarily ventured into the boulevard now turn and come after us.

 
“Stop, I say!”

  We’re running the direction the revelers came from. Ahead of us, I can see the canal — or I can at least smell and hear the water.

  “Sally! You can’t! You’ll get in trouble!”

  Tied up to one of the moorings near the water is a small boat. A man stands in it, nervously puffing a small clay pipe that produces smoke like a steady fire. Sally holds out the small vial to him. He nods quickly.

  “Banglees?” Sally pants.

  “C’est moi,” the man agrees. “But I don’ know if I want the trouble.” He points toward the rushing soldiers and hurriedly unties the boat. “I may jus’ celebrate this Mardi Gras by myself!”

  “Wait!” I yell.

  “Pardonnez-moi, but I cannot stay!”

  “We need to know about this!” I hold up the plasmechanical orb in Sally’s hand.

  “I think after tonight, zat doorway ees going to be closed.”

  “What? What doorway?” I shout.

  He has the last of the rope uncoiled from the post.

  “Stay there and do not move under the severest penalty of martial law!” the closest soldier yells.

  “I told Jefferson I would do this on my own. Letting you go was my idea,” Sally whispers. “I thought we could make it.”

  Boom!

  Another firework.

  Boom!

  More thunder. But none of it distracts the soldiers this time.

  Wait.

  I might just be wrong about that.

  That’s not lightning. Or fireworks.

  Zut alors!

  The boatman has passed out. The soldiers have stopped clopping and are pointing their guns. Because those last two “booms” didn’t just make noise and light.

  They produced a boy…

  …and a lizard man.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Eli: Departure

  February 1805

  Clyne’s locked up in a cage, and I’m celebrating in the Mandan village. Men dance around searing hot fires, wearing shaggy buffalo skins or hollowed out buffalo heads that cover their faces like big trick-or-treat masks.

  But they’re not dancing outside on a freezing cold night because they caught my friend. The dance is a buffalo-calling ritual, to tell the herds that it’s time to start appearing again. I guess the winter meat supply is running low for the Indians. I know it’s running low in the fort.