Monsters of Our Own Making

by L. E. Erickson

  He turned and stalked away. Across the clearing, Ellis and James had broken off their discussion to watch Vincent’s altercation with the Crowmakers.

  Kalvis and Petras bent to help Bosch to his feet. Goodson clapped Jennett on the back, and the two of them walked away, leaving Langston standing alone. To Kellen’s left, Colley and Byrne stood side by side, one with arms crossed and the other with hands on his hips.

  From the corner of her eye, Kellen caught Ger looking at her. His nose was still tilted up, and he looked down it at her.

  “This is how it’s going to be?” His voice was all full of self-righteousness. “You’re back to agreeing with Bradley? Obeying his every whim?”

  Heat rose into Kellen’s face, and tears pricked the backs of her eyes. She wanted to be furious, but suddenly she was mostly just tired. Vincent wanted one thing. Ger wanted another. Neither of them was right, not all the time. What it came down to, really, she realized, was that each one wanted her to pick his side. It didn’t matter in the least to either of them what she really thought. She was a marker, to show which of them was winning.

  To hell with them both.

  Kellen’s mouth twisted into a parody of a smile. She took the bitter taste in her mouth and let it flavor her words. “You gonna ride my ass every time I do or say or think something you don’t agree with?” she said. “How does that make you any different from him?”

  Ger’s frown deepened. “The difference is, I’m trying to look out for you.”

  “I don’t need anyone looking out for me.” She shot the words back at him, faster than a .36 could fire. “I sure don’t need you.”

  Ger’s head dipped forward. His brow furrowed, and a sad-hound expression weighed across his eyes. For a second, his mouth worked. Then he turned around and walked away.

  “So much for acting like peacekeepers.” Byrne clapped a hand on Colley’s shoulder as he also turned away. “Let’s hope we do a fairer job with the Indians.”

  4

  August 1806

  Indiana Territory: Tecumseh’s Town

  Wind Man returned from a hunt to find Laughing Girl outside Tenskwatawa’s lodge. She paced like a tethered wild cat, stalking from one corner pole of the bark-covered house and past the hide-covered door to the next corner before flinging herself around and retracing her steps. Every time she passed the door, her steps slowed and her head turned. To Wind Man it appeared that she tried to peer straight through the hides hanging in the door’s frame and into the closed-off lodge interior beyond.

  Wind Man stood well clear of the path Laughing Girl’s bare feet had trod into the grass, alternately glancing toward the door and then at Laughing Girl’s face. Or at her retreating back, depending upon the direction she was pacing. Her brows drew together and her mouth pursed prettily, although he would not for all the riches of the earth have said so aloud to her at that moment.

  Behind Wind Man, the rest of Tecumseh’s Town had mostly gathered around the cooking fires, from which trickled equal measures of gray smoke and food smells which reminded Wind Man’s stomach that he would like to eat. Twilight dimmed the horizon, and a pleasant coolness settled over what remained of the day’s heat.

  Tecumseh should have arrived at Long Knife Harrison’s by now, Wind Man caught himself thinking. Perhaps they would even meet in the next day or two. Perhaps Tecumseh’s bid to buy time would work.

  At the moment, however, Wind Man wished Tecumseh was here instead of elsewhere, however important the elsewhere was.

  Inside the lodge, Tenskwatawa’s voice rose and fell. In itself, that was not an odd thing. Tenskwatawa often prayed aloud, asking the guidance of the Master of Life and listening for answers only he could hear. To Wind Man’s ear, Tenskwatawa did perhaps sound different than usual. Perhaps. And there was another sound, one that was not quite a full sound, like a whisper inside a whisper, a thing that Wind Man had thought he heard the last time he had been inside Tenskwatawa’s lodge.

  “He sent me away hours ago.”

  Wind Man had been staring at the lodge’s door, trying to decide if he could make out any of the words Tenskwatawa was speaking. At the sound of Laughing Girl’s voice so close, he looked down and found her standing before him. The top of her head came only to his chin, but she tipped back her head and glared up as if he were the cause of her anxiety.

  “He does not usually do so?” Wind Man waded into the question like a weak swimmer into a river.

  The v between Laughing Girl’s brows dropped even deeper. Wind Man blinked and resisted the urge to step away. He reviewed his question, trying to decipher what about it had caused such a reaction.

  “I am invaluable to him. He needs me.” Her words were sharp, but then the furrow in Laughing Girl’s forehead relented and smoothed away. “He has not sent me away for so long at a time, no. At first it was like it always is. I sat here outside with my quillwork, so that I would be close by if he needed me. I could smell incense burning and hear his voice.”

  Laughing Girl hesitated. Her brow furrowed once more, less deeply this time, and Wind Man wondered if there was something she had not said.

  “He was preparing for our nightly gathering. Asking the Master of Life what words he should speak this time.”

  Wind Man considered Laughing Girl’s words. Mere days had passed since Tenskwatawa had summoned fire from the sky. Wind Man resisted the temptation to put his fingers to his breastbone, where his medicine bag had used to hang. Mere days since they had all burned the protection they and their ancestors had believed in since time unending.

  The Master of Life had made them a new promise of protection. Tenskwatawa had heard the promise and relayed it. He returned to meditations and visions daily, now, and relayed new words of hope each evening.

  “If you could hear what I hear, you could not help but believe.”

  Laughing Girl turned her head, suddenly, and peered again toward the hide-covered door. After a moment, Wind Man realized that Tenskwatawa’s voice had fallen silent. A sense of waiting replaced the sound. It reminded Wind Man of a hot, still day, the kind where a storm lurks just beyond the horizon, waiting for the right moment to spring upon the land.

  “He speaks with the voices of all his creation, man and animal, wind and water.”

  “Perhaps now he has finished his preparations.” Wind Man covered Laughing Girl’s bare shoulders with his palms. Her skin was smooth and warm and reminded him of things which might happen later, in the darkness of their dwelling. The sharp, sweet scent of her gathered in his senses. “Come to the fire with me and—”

  Laughing Girl shook her head and stepped away from Wind Man’s touch. He quelled a sigh. Since Wind Man had proven his loyalty to Tenskwatawa by being the first to burn his medicine bag, all had returned to normal between him and Laughing Girl. But obviously their marriage was not the foremost thing on her mind at the moment.

  “It has been this way before.” Laughing Girl crossed her arms and rubbed her hands up and down them. “He falls silent for a time, but then—”

  Tenskwatawa’s voice rose, sudden and sharp, loud enough that individual words picked themselves from the sound. “—are you?”

  Wind Man forgot all thoughts of Laughing Girl’s scent and straightened, looking past her toward the lodge.

  Laughing Girl lowered her hands. She too turned her head toward Tenskwatawa’s lodge. Then she clenched her hands into determined fists at her sides. With firm steps, she crossed the grass.

  And stopped just short of the door, staring as if to open it with her gaze alone.

  Tenskwatawa fell silent once more. Wind Man strode up behind Laughing Girl and joined her in staring at the doorway. The stitched-together hides covering it hung straight up and down, unmoved by the evening’s damp cool.

  More murmuring. Tenskwatawa speaking quietly, Wind Man thought. But there seemed also that watery whispering beneath, as if a brook burbled through the lodge’s interior.

  The voices of all his creation.
>
  “Perhaps we should not—” Wind Man began.

  Laughing Girl stood straighter, and her shoulders tightened. In one swift movement, she thrust forth both hands, shoved the blanket aside, and marched through the door.

  More slowly, and with a great deal less enthusiasm, Wind Man followed her.

  Tenskwatawa’s lodge was much as it had been the day he had summoned Wind Man and asked for his loyalty. Between the poles supporting the framework, raised platforms formed simple benches. A fire pit had been dug at the center but held no fire, not in the heat of summer. Smoke wafted through the room, carrying the sweet scents of cedar and sage from a stone bowl to one side of the fire pit.

  Tenskwatawa knelt beside the bowl, his back to Wind Man and Laughing Girl.

  “No.” Tenskwatawa’s whisper resembled a death rattle.

  Laughing Girl took another step. Wind Man followed her the rest of the way inside, sidestepping so that the hides could again fall into place over the door.

  In front of Tenskwatawa, a nearly-white deerskin had been smoothed flat. At its center lay the simple yet strange gray stone Wind Man had previously glimpsed.

  “Father?”

  At the sound of Laughing Girl’s voice, Tenskwatawa’s head jerked to the left. For a moment, he only looked over his shoulder with his one good eye. Then his spine straightened and his shoulders squared.

  “You have a good reason to interrupt my preparations?” The words spilled forth with all Tenskwatawa’s usual disdainful force.

  But there was something new in that voice, Wind Man thought. A faltering. A hair-thin crack just beneath the surface.

  Incense smoke tickled Wind Man’s throat and burned his eyes. He would have liked to step outside again.

  “It has been a long time.” Laughing Girl’s shoulders lowered. She ducked her head. “I was worried.”

  Tenskwatawa faced forward once more. Slowly, he folded the deerskin around the stone and pulled it toward him.

  Tenskwatawa’s hands shook. An ill feeling grabbed at Wind Man’s stomach.

  Something is not right.

  When Tenskwatawa stood and turned to face them, he looked no different than ever—garish red bandana wrapped low across the empty socket where his right eye had been, beaten bronze ornaments dangling from his ears, richly beaded clothing to hide his squat frame.

  “I am The Open Door. I speak for the Master of Life.” And still, beneath Tenskwatawa’s powerful confidence swam a new and tremulous note, one that crept down Wind Man’s spine.

  Laughing Girl’s head dropped further forward. Resisting a sudden urge to step up beside her and place his hand on her shoulder—because her fury at such a show of disrespect toward her father would be rivaled only by Tenskwatawa’s response to the same—Wind Man also lowered his gaze.

  “Of course, Father.”

  “All will be well.” The near whisper of Tenskwatawa’s words prompted Wind Man to look up from under his lashes. Beneath its thin moustache, Tenskwatawa’s mouth twitched. “All we must do is to continue to do as we are instructed.”

  He speaks to himself as much as to us. It is his own mind he seeks to convince. The insight came in a flash, accompanied by a fresh clutching of Wind Man’s stomach.

  If Tenskwatawa, who had fallen near dead and been granted visions powerful enough to transform a worthless drunkard into a man who summoned the leninpisia, the mighty storm panthers, who bid them to call lightning and rain from the sky—if he now doubted, then what were the rest of them to believe?

  Tenskwatawa held the combined lives of all the Shawnee in his hands. The sheer force of his faith that the Master of Life would give him the power to drive the whites from their lives, that belief was what had brought them courage and strength.

  What were they without that?

  Wind Man was suddenly aware that he had raised his lowered head and faced Tenskwatawa head on. Tenskwatawa looked directly into Wind Man’s eyes.

  Before, Wind Man had imagined he glimpsed the glory of the entire cosmos in the blackness of Tenskwatawa’s sole eye. Now, he saw only the too-wide stare of a frightened man.

  Tenskwatawa jerked his gaze away from Wind Man’s and turned his back, stooping to fuss with the stone bowl of burning incense.

  For the second time in mere minutes, Wind Man wished mightily that Tecumseh had not left his village.

  5

  August 1806

  Indiana Territory: Grouseland

  “I still can’t figure how we got stuck with Robert Langston.” Goodson spoke from outside, as Ger parted his tent door and stepped outside. “But Poanski got sent home.”

  Tomas Poanski. Inevitably, the name and the memories it recalled twanged in Ger’s gut. Not that it was Ger’s fault Vincent Bradley had chosen Poanski to cut loose from the Crowmakers or that Ger had convinced Poanski that suicide was preferable to returning to Philadelphia. But it was Ger’s arrival that had forced Bradley to make the decision that had driven Poanski to his death. Ger rubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands and processed the rest of what Goodson had said.

  The sun was barely up, washing a thin light through the morning’s haze and brushing the mansion’s brick with rosy gold. Accompanied by outbreaks of bird chatter as they too awakened, the Crowmakers’ camp stirred slowly from stillness to motion. From around the mansion’s far side, where the greater multitude of the Army regulars camped, voices rose and fell as they also awakened and set to the day’s work. A glimpse of the path between the mansion’s kitchens and the main house proved that the bustle extended to include Harrison’s servants, silhouettes filing back and forth with armloads of what was, judging by the savory scents filling the air, the beginnings of the mansion’s morning meal.

  No rest for anybody today. Not with the appointed time for the Shawnee war chief’s arrival creeping ever closer.

  Out of habit, Ger started to scan the camp to see where Kellen was. Then he realized what he was doing and made himself stop.

  She doesn’t want you doing that. Keep your head on straight. Give her time to sort it out. Easy enough to say, and the right thing to do. But part of him, an ember in his gut, wanted to shout more stupidly jealous words at her. As if he hadn’t done enough damage already.

  To Ger’s left, Goodson stood outside his tent, rumple-headed and blinking. Beyond him, Petras glanced toward Goodson. To Ger’s right, Kalvis and Ackermann, each outside his own tent, exchanged a look.

  All of their shirts hung out, un-tucked and uncovered by their uniform jackets, which remained on the line where they’d been hung to dry the day before. Not that anything really dried in the territory’s dense humidity, but at least it hadn’t rained the previous night. At least maybe they could hope for fewer wrinkles than usual when they presented themselves to Harrison later that morning.

  On the far side of the camp, over towards the glow of the cook fires, Rawle and Langston stood side by side, Rawle’s mousy hair hanging into his round face as he lowered his head to hear whatever Langston was saying. The too-familiar smart-ass smirk on Langston’s face tweaked Ger with a touch of apprehension.

  Surely even Langston would refrain from any stupid stunts today. But Ger guessed there wasn’t much any of them could do but follow orders and hope Langston would do the same.

  Ger turned around, flipped open his tent’s door flaps, and ducked down to peer inside. The back wall had been pegged out to create an extra triangle of space at the back. From that spot, silvery eyes glowed in the shadows. Out of instinct, Ger prodded at the back of his mind for the link between himself and his Crow.

  It was there, of course, quiet like the surface of a deep pool, just waiting for Ger to break the surface and reach in.

  Behind Ger, Kalvis grunted. The way he did it, though, Ger imagined he heard an entire sermon in the single sound, with Langston in the starring role. Smiling faintly to himself and hunching over to keep his head from rubbing on the sloping sides, Ger stepped the rest of the way into his tent. There wasn’t much
room for more than sleeping.

  And keeping the Crows dry. As always, Ger braced himself before stretching out his hands to pick up the metal bird. Crazy, maybe, how he could have his mind linked to the thing, but touching its tenebrium-cased physical form caused his skin to crawl.

  No other way to get it out of the tent, though—not enough room for flying—so Ger gathered the Crow into his arms and tried to ignore its cold touch as he stepped back and deposited the Crow onto the ground outside his tent.

  “He is a challenging one.” Ackermann’s gaze remained fixed on his own Crow as he carried it from his tent and also set it on the ground. Ger assumed Langston was still the topic of conversation.

  “Nothing but trouble.” Petras stood beside his Crow, arms crossed and square jaw set. He frowned toward Langston and Rawle, who still had their heads together.

  “You think there’s any hope at all for him?” Goodson settled his Crow in front of his tent.

  “The Lord God offers the chance of redemption to all men.” Kalvis straightened from his Crow, planted a hand in the small of his back, and stretched.

  Goodson eyed Kalvis sidewise “You don’t sound much convinced that he’ll take that chance.”

  “If I were his father, I’d turn him over my knee.” Kalvis finished his stretch and fixed his gaze again on Langston. “As it is, we can only hope, I suppose.”

  6

  The sun finished rising, turning the mansion’s painted steps a blinding white against its red brick walls. Servants and a handful of blue-coated soldiers moved in ant-like columns, hauling chairs and benches from the mansion to the clearing Harrison had designated as the meeting location.

  On the mansion’s wide porch, Harrison’s “important” visitors gathered. Ger recognized none of the three men, but judging by their expensive-looking waistcoats and silver hair, he assumed they were elder statesmen with some tie to the Indiana Territory. They stood in a loose three-pointed huddle, pinching snuff and gazing down the wide drive that led from the Vincennes road to Grouseland.