Hidden Moon

by K. R. Thompson

  “I’m sorry,” his voice wasn’t much more than a whisper. It made me wonder if I had imagined it. I ignored him and sat there contemplating the fact that I might be going crazy. After all, normal people don’t hear voices in their heads.

  Ms. Barker came in and started class, and I stayed at my little corner of the desk, as if I had never heard him or anything else that whispered through my mind.

  After class, I felt the desk move as he got up. He hesitated for a second, as if trying to decide whether or not to wait for me. I didn’t say anything, so he left. I followed a few seconds later and found Brian outside the door with a big scowl on his face. It vanished when he saw me and a smile took its place. “Hey, are you ready? They’re loading up the buses for the field trip.”

  We found a seat in the back of the last bus and it ambled down the road. It stopped just shy of turning on to my road and turned instead into the parking lot behind the carved, wooden sign of a howling wolf.

  We had arrived at The Village.

  “Okay, children,” a nasal, high-pitched voice shrilled through the air like a siren the second we got off the bus.” Your attention, please.”

  The clatter and noise subdued. I looked to the front of the group to the thin, bird-like woman with facial features so pinched, it gave her the appearance of one who had eaten sour grapes.

  Hmm, so far Brian has Mrs. Graham pegged, I thought, smiling to myself, maybe there’s a reason they gave her the job as school librarian. I don’t think she’s meant for many speaking roles. Maybe that’s why she takes her role as field trip leader so seriously.

  The librarian’s thin lips compressed into a tight line, and big red blotches popped up like little red apples on her sharp cheekbones. A few students continued to talk, ignoring her.

  “For those of you who do not consider this important, you are welcome to get back on the bus. The driver will take you back to school, where I’m sure Mr. Giles will deal with you.”

  At the mention of the principal, you could hear a pin drop, which was quite impressive as Bland Elementary had parked one of their buses next to ours, and a couple dozen grade-schoolers stood nearby.

  I spotted Emily’s dark, curly head and she sent me a huge grin as she tried not to hop from one foot to the other with excitement. I shook my head slightly, trying to send her a message to be still as I wasn’t sure how far Mrs. Graham’s sharp talons would reach.

  “Now, the Wighcomocos were one of the tribes first encountered by John Smith in the year 1607,” Mrs. Graham chirped in her bird voice. I remembered Brian’s speech. So far he was dead on. A little brown head bobbed closer to us, making me focus on someone other than the birdlike Mrs. Graham. I tried to pay attention as I watched my little sister. The younger kids beside us had shifted over to form their own group, but Emily had stayed apart from them and had seemed to edge closer to us.

  I shook my head harder at her, but she just grinned and hopped, looking back and forth between me and Mrs. Graham. Either she didn’t get the message, or just couldn’t help it, because she started bobbing up and down faster.

  “Be still, Em,” I whispered.

  In that next instant, two things happened. First, Emily realized her group had moved, so she sent me a quick little wave and bounced back in the midst her friends. The second was that I seemed to have attracted way more attention than my energetic little sister.

  Mrs. Graham stomped over in front of me and stood so close I could see the tiny dark hairs sticking out on her upper lip. In that instant, I realized I must be looking into the most drawn, scrunched-up face in the world. Her grey-streaked hair was pulled tight in a tiny bun, behind her head. Sharp, grey eyes seared straight into mine. I stared at her, mouth agape. Even the little crow’s feet wrinkles around her eyes looked pinched.

  “You’re new. What is your name?” She demanded. I felt her hot breath on my face.

  “Nikki Harmon,” I said, not wanting to meet her gaze again, straight on. I settled for staring at the tight fitting collar of her dress, which should have strangled her.

  “Well, Miss Harmon,” she sneered, seeming to bite each syllable of my last name into pieces. “You do speak English, do you not? Or is it only that you want to take me up on my previous offer of the early ride back to school? Because that can be arranged.”

  “No, ma’am.” I dropped my eyes to her sensible-looking black leather shoes. “I mean, I would like to stay. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

  She let out a long, noisy breath through her nose, and stayed silent just long enough that I found enough courage to dare to look back up. The steel grey of her eyes bore into mine, unblinking, as if she were trying to see into my soul. Or maybe she was just trying to see if I was the kind of kid who was going to give her more problems throughout the day. Either way, she had me spooked.

  “See that it doesn’t.” She turned and walked back to her original spot before the group. As if nothing had happened, she started right back up on her speech where she had left off.

  Someone behind me let out their breath in a whoosh, and I turned just enough to see a pair of bright, blue eyes and an amused smile. I jerked my elbow back, catching Brian in the ribs. A slight grunt escaped him. Thankfully, Mrs. Graham hadn’t heard it, as she was thoroughly ensconced in the history of the early Native American tribes.

  After a rather lengthy, although informative, ten minutes of background and birdlike chatter, we started down the dirt path past the small building that looked to be a gift shop. The path wound around the back of the building and into the woods. I was already familiar with part of the Res, as the guys called it, but had never been quite so far into their land.

  At least not physically, anyway. But in my dream I had seen this place.

  The campfire circle sat dead center, the same one I had dreamt of the first night we arrived. But today, there wasn’t a fire and no one was sitting around the circle.

  “C’mon, Nikki, unless you want to unleash her wrath again,” Brian whispered. I must have stopped and had been standing there gaping, because all of a sudden, he grabbed my hand and gave it a quick tug and squeeze at the same time to get me walking again.

  After a reminder to to meet back at the buses in two hours, Mrs. Graham took her leave.

  At a small hut on the right, we began our tour. Sitting cross-legged at the door of the hut was a pretty girl with a buckskin dress. Her hair had been braided in a single plait with pretty blue beads weaved through it. A large, flat stone lay on the ground before her. Sun glinted on her dark hair, casting a blue hue on her bent head. She laid a few kernels of raw corn on the stone, and began grinding them with a smaller stone.

  When she had finished, Penny looked up and smiled. “Anything that we would have eaten years ago, we would have had to make by hand. Something as simple as flour that you can buy in a store, was not so simple to get back then.”

  Hands flew up everywhere, and one-by-one she answered each question, everything from the different kinds of food they ate to how it was stored. The quiet, calm Penny had captivated the entire group and gave them the thirst for more knowledge. After answering each and every possible query, she stood and walked us over to the next hut.

  As beautiful as Penny was, Hannah seemed exotic. Her hair swung wild and loose to her waist except for a single braid on one side. Surrounding her were piles of furs. Some stretched tight on sticks, others hung on poles. She held a large white pelt in her arms.

  “Pelts were one of the main sources of trade,” she stated, as if everyone already knew that particular bit of information.

  “Trade for what?” A boy in the back prompted.

  “Food, blankets, sometimes people,” she smiled devilishly.

  “People?” he gulped.

  What rock did this kid come out from? I thought and snorted a little too loud. She looked over at me and lifted one perfectly arched brow. She shook her hair back over her shoulder and continued,

  “Yes, sometimes a war party would steal w
omen and children from a different tribe. If the hostages were lucky, they would be bought back with furs, beads, blankets, or whatever else their family had of worth. Of course, sometimes there were other instances one tribe would welcome trade from another tribe for their unmarried women if it meant the survival of their people.” At this last statement, she had the whole group in the palm of her hand.

  “So how many furs are you worth?” someone snickered in the back.

  “Trust me, you’ll never have enough,” she retorted, a few of the guys laughed and elbowed each other in the ribs. She stood aloof, as if she dealt with this kind of idiocy on a daily basis. All the while, she stroked the glossy white fur in her hands.

  I had noticed that she hadn’t put it down it the entire time, which I thought was kind of weird. There were plenty of other smaller furs everywhere that would have been easier to handle. Curiosity got the best of me, and hoping I wasn’t about to find out that it had been a personal pet, I lifted my hand.

  “What kind of animal was that?” I asked, pointing.

  “This,” she said, her voice almost reverent, “this is wolf.”

  A split second of silence and the air seemed charged with energy. It was almost as if it would have seemed right to hear a wolf cry in the distance, or appear by her side as if summoned. Not this was wolf, this is wolf.

  As if noticing, she broke the silence and recaptured the audience by pointing out the different species of animal that each pelt belonged, offering to let them touch and feel each. Deer, rabbit, fox, and bear, but never the wolf. It never left her arms.

  After explaining the long, tedious steps of tanning hides, Hannah wrapped up her demonstration and relieved to be free of her duty, pointed us over to wait under the shade of a large tree and disappeared with her wolf pelt into the shadows of the hut.

  “What do you think so far?” Brian asked, leaning against the trunk of the tree.

  “It’s neat. Penny was awesome, don’t get me wrong, Hannah was good, too, but it just seemed like she was worried someone was going to touch that wolf pelt.”

  “Yeah, I don’t know what the deal is with that. It was like that last year, too, only reversed. Hannah was the one grounding corn meal and Penny acted like she was about to jump out of her skin, so I think Hannah does better with it. Come to think of it, that pelt is always there. Somewhere, somehow, it’s always worked into the history of their tribe. Maybe it’s old and they’re afraid they’ll be in trouble if it gets messed up on their watch,” he said, then looked down at his watch. “Adam had better hurry up, or we won’t get to see everything.”

  “What is he…?” I got cut off with a loud whoop, and suddenly we were surrounded.

  Five ferocious warriors, their faces painted black, circled us until we were bunched against the tree like sardines. Then they quit circling and the one who must have been the leader, stepped closer and spoke.

  “A-da-wi u-la-gu. Ni-ga-da da-na-da-s-ka-gi. Tsu-sa-si,” he said in a grave voice.

  Penny appeared behind him, her face solemn. “He says he is U-la-gu. Leader of his people. You have invaded this land. You are not friend, but stranger, and therefore enemy. The blood of his people cries for revenge—so now you must die.”

  The warrior stalked closer to Beth, who was stuck on the edge of the crowd. Bernie was behind her taking pictures, one after the other. He crept closer, tomahawk poised to strike. The flash from Bernie’s camera caught his eyes, and they sparkled amber.

  A quiet oath behind Beth proved that Bernie had dropped his camera, but Beth hadn’t noticed. Now she was backing up, squashing Bernie’s glasses onto his face, in spite of his attempt to save them and his beloved camera.

  Adam grinned, snow white teeth showing in a face black with paint. “Any questions?”

  The four members of his war party burst out laughing and came to stand behind him. Each of them was bare-chested, with only a pair of pants and a loincloth around their waist. They were all armed with a bow and arrows on their backs and a tomahawk and a knife either on their side or in hand.

  Bear grease was on each of them, though in different patterns. Seeing through the paint, I found each familiar face. Adam’s eyes, nose and mouth were covered, while Ed had opted for a sideways smear going across his angular features. Tommy and Michael were very much alike with their entire face blacked, but Erik was the most memorable, as it looked like someone had smacked him with a giant black handprint in the middle of his round face.

  The group around the tree loosened up a bit and spread out, splitting up into smaller groups, as each brave was being asked questions from everything about hunting to scalping.

  I stayed back and listened. And watched Adam.

  I backed up to lean against the trunk of the tree, when I whacked into something I hadn’t expected. A foot dangled at my shoulder.

  “Easy, now,” Brian said, jumping down from his perch up in the tree.

  I bit my lip, embarrassed that I hadn’t missed him.

  “I thought about grabbing you and taking you up with me, since they sometimes like to demonstrate how they would kidnap women and children, but since you’d never seen this before…”

  I laughed, feeling rather relieved that he thought I was only observing a demonstration instead of Adam. For some reason I didn’t want him jealous.

  I changed the subject. “You should have pulled me up, although I faired better than Bernie did. Well, his camera, anyway.”

  Beth was still shooting questions at Ed, who had taken on an aura of patience worthy of the Pope himself. The star journalist of the school paper, however, was oblivious that her sole photographer was mourning the loss of his camera as he wiped his running nose, and picked up yet another piece up off the ground. As if he had reached his wit’s end, Bernie dashed off toward the restroom, and disappeared.

  “Poor ol’ Bern, he never can seem to get a break,” Brian shook his head, and his dark hair fell toward his eyes. “Listen, I’m going to go check on him. If they get finished up before I get back, I’ll meet you at the bus, okay?”

  “Yeah, sure,” I nodded.

  Our group started to disperse and wander back toward the gift shop and the buses. I was still at the back of the crowd when someone fell into step with me, and I turned, expecting to see Brian with Bernie in tow.

  “What do you think?” Adam asked, his eyes flashing warm amber behind the black paint.

  I think wow, I thought, staring at him. From a few feet away, he looked great, but as he stood right beside me, my brain had decided to go into overdrive and was trying to soak up every inch of him that my eyes could see.

  “You didn’t like it?”

  I love it, my brain screamed as I kept staring and walking at the same time.

  “Y-yes,” I stammered a split second before I tripped over my own feet and somehow slammed sideways into him.

  His arms came out and steadied me again as they had before and everything sizzled and popped around us again. Where his fingers touched my arms it felt as if tiny electric currents zinged between us, like a constant current of static electricity. Curious if there were actual sparks popping between us, I looked down at the exact second he turned loose.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, very politely. I felt my cheeks flush red. Maybe he was still angry from earlier that day.

  “Yes, thank you.” I got the nerve to look up at him.

  His eyes were locked on something or someone behind me, near the hut at the end of the row. I turned. Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw something. Just a quick flash of white skin, as translucent as an opal and a sheen of cool blue. It felt as if the very atmosphere had shifted.

  “Who was it?” I asked, looking around. I was certain someone had been there.

  “No one’s there,” Adam whispered, then took my arm to get me walking again and steer me toward the buses.

  “No, you saw something, too,” I argued, feeling a stir of anger since I knew that I was being lied to.

  “Is
there a problem here?” a familiar voice demanded on the other side of me.

  “No, ma’am, not at all,” Adam said, giving a warm smile to an irate-looking Mrs. Graham.

  It was as if Adam’s smile was the sun, and Mrs. Graham was an iceberg. She melted. She gave him a rather beaky, bristly-looking smile back and then turned to me and barked, “On the bus, girl.”

  Best not make her mad, she’s not someone you want to mess with, a voice cautioned.

  “Making enemies again, are we?” Brian hissed into my ear, while grabbing my arm, and jerking me on the bus. “Nikki, you don’t want to screw around with that lady, she’s not your typical quiet librarian type.”

  He herded me to the very back of the bus and into a corner and then sat down beside me, darting a quick look back out the window to make sure no attack was going to come our way. He let out a whoosh of breath that he must have been holding, and flopped against the back of the seat.

  I dared to take a quick glance out the window, and saw Adam standing, hands clasped behind his back while he talked with Mrs. Graham, who seemed quite at ease. Students filed past and the buses filled. After a few more moments, she boarded the bus. After a quick head count, the bus driver started the engine.

  I looked over once more to see Adam staring at me. His eyes locked with mine and he gave me a nod. Somehow feeling that he was trying to say goodbye, I pressed my hand to the glass. He stood in the same place and watched us until we were out of sight.

  SEVEN

  ADAM DIDN’T MAKE it to school at all the following week. Another hiker was missing, Erik informed me, as he dropped off the title to the Jeep one evening after school. They were helping search for her and he didn’t know when they would be back.

  Each day crawled by slower than the one before. Then Saturday came.