Next scenario: The park had devised a new, unadvertised adventure for the tourists, something like virtual reality but on a grander scale, and Silver Thorn and the Galloways were simply actors playing their parts, with Nikki as the unsuspecting guinea pig. However, if that were the case, a lot of money had been spent recreating this frontier illusion, complete with props and stunts, and the creator of this elaborate hoax deserved to be shot. Better yet, he should be made to endure his own set of calamities. Let him get abducted, lost in a dark cave, made to believe he was losing his mind, and see how he liked it.
But, wait. There was a big snag in the fabric of this concept. In this day and age, what actor would risk life and limb by making love to a strange woman? And what tourist, upon discovering the ruse, would hesitate to initiate the biggest lawsuit on record? The charges would be innumerable. Kidnapping. False representation. Endangerment. Mental cruelty. Rape. Rape? Well, maybe involuntary seduction, if there was such a thing. Certainly, they should be cited for scaring a person witless!
Conjecture number three. Either she or Silver Thorn was crazy. Possibly both of them were. If not, they were sure headed on the right track.
Last, but not least, and perhaps the most conceivable at this point—Silver Thorn really had sucked her back into a prior era. For two days, Nikki hadn’t seen a speck of evidence to refute his claim. On the contrary, everything seemed to support it.
In the past thirty-six hours and approximately forty miles of actual travel, she had yet to see one utility pole or wire, one bridge, one road, or car or store. What she had seen was unblemished nature, a forest that seemed to stretch forever—and a house, as well as its goods and inhabitants, that might well hail from a previous century. Upon further reflection, Nikki realized that—though she had failed to recognize it earlier—the river, the air, the whole environment seemed cleaner, unpolluted. In fact, she could not recall having spotted a single piece of litter anywhere or one solitary jet trail marring the sky. She’d heard no planes, trains, or mechanical noises—only the sounds of nature.
Then, there was Silver Thorn himself. The man was definitely not your average blue-or-white-collar yuppie. His manner of speech, his dress, the way he moved, his entire demeanor was decidedly out of the norm. As were those inexplicable stunts he’d pulled—inciting that tremor, and later removing those huge rocks, as if by magic! And that trick of the blue imprint on her belly, which no amount of scrubbing had removed, and his prediction that she was pregnant with their son. Talk about eerie!
Could it be that all this was real? That Silver Thorn actually was a Shawnee shaman and Tecumseh’s brother? That he wasn’t a lunatic and she wasn’t losing her mind?
That she was sitting in 1813 in the home of the historically documented Galloways?
And if it were true, what about her own life back in 1996? Had she disappeared from there or was she somehow living a dual existence, with one foot in the past and one foot in the future? If she had vanished from her own time, body and all, had she been missed yet? Were her parents and brothers worried sick about her? Searching in vain?
Would she ever get back? Was there a way for Silver Thorn to return her to her own time? In the meanwhile, who would keep her bills paid up? Would her friend Sheree continue to feed Her Nibs and water Nikki’s plants and collect her mail? How long would the school board wait before hiring someone else to teach her class in the fall? What would happen to her house? Her car? Her cat? Her . . . life? What if she were stuck here forever?
Chapter Eight
“Did the willow bark tea not ease the ache in your head, Neeake?” Lying close beside her, Silver Thorn addressed her in the darkened bedroom. She’d suspected he, too, was still awake.
“I took two aspirin, and my head is fine; it’s my brain that needs repair,” she replied.
“Why can you not sleep?” he asked. “I know that you are weary.”
“For one thing I miss my queen-size bed. For another, I always thought a feather bed would be like sleeping on a big, fluffy cloud. I never figured it might be the size of a miniature marshmallow and much too soft for comfort.”
“I, too, am accustomed to sleeping on a harder surface,” he agreed. “Now, tell me the real cause of your restlessness.”
She rolled over to face him though he was little more than a warm shadow in the dark. For several seconds she was silent. Then, in a small voice, she said, “Is it possible to send me back to my own time, Silver Thorn?”
“Ah, so you acknowledge at last that all I have told you is true?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” She sighed. “I suppose so.”
“And will you now cease calling me crazy?”
“I’ll consider it, if you answer my question.”
“I do not know if it is possible for you to return, Neeake. Until you appeared, I was not certain I could successfully summon a messenger from the future. Therefore, it was not important to know if the deed could be reversed. It could take much time to discover the proper means to transport you back again.”
“How long, approximately?” she pressed.
“This I cannot answer. I first called upon the Spirits for guidance in this matter three winters past; and though I persisted, my efforts did not produce results until wo lah ko, yesterday, when you finally appeared.”
“Three winters?” she shrilled. “As in three years?”
His fingers rose to her lips. “Hush, wife. You do not want to awaken the Galloways, and the walls inside this house are as thin as parchment.”
“Silver Thorn!” she whispered anxiously. “I can’t be gone from my life, my world, for three years! For that matter, three weeks would be far too long. I have family and friends who will be frantic not knowing where I’ve disappeared to. I have bills to pay, a house, a mortgage, a job. My library card and my driver’s license are due to expire soon!” she added nonsensically.
“You also have a husband here,” he reminded her, not unkindly. “And in the spring, you will have a son. The Spirits have willed it so, or it would not be. Should you not consider these things when you speak of leaving? You belong to me now, and I to you, and the child to both of us. Would you leave me and your baby behind? Or take my son far from my reach? If it were possible, do you imagine that I would allow this?”
Again Nikki was struck dumb. “I . . . I guess I’m having a little trouble digesting everything at once. What’s real, what isn’t. The notion of being pregnant is new to me. Amid all the other considerations and confusion, it momentarily slipped my mind. Not that I wouldn’t love to have a child. It’s been a dream of mine for several years. It’s just that here, now, it just all seems so unbelievable . . . so incredible.”
“It will not seem so when your belly is as big as a pumpkin and our son is thumping on your ribs like a big-footed rabbit,” he predicted with droll satisfaction. “Then you will have no doubt that you are soon to be a mother.”
“I can only imagine what that must feel like,” she murmured. “As for the rest of this fantastic phenomenon, it literally scares the hell out of me. I feel as if I’m up to my neck in quicksand.”
“As you said, this I can only imagine. But you need not be frightened, Neeake. Until I cease to draw breath, I will care for you and protect you from harm.”
She was still for so long that he wondered if she’d fallen asleep at last. Then she spoke in a weepy whisper. “Silver Thorn, will you hold me, please? Just hold me? I feel so . . . lost!”
He gathered her tenderly into his arms, cradling her head on his broad chest. Her hot tears scalded his skin as she wept silently. His fingers stroked her hair soothingly. “You are not lost, my little bird,” he promised. “I have found you.”
The next morning, James Galloway offered them a ride in his wagon as far as Dayton. “We can haul your canoe in the back, and you can put in on the Miami and head north from there.”
“Are you sure, James?” Silver Thorn inquired. “I do not want to take you away from your day’s work on
the farm when Neeake and I can walk the distance.”
For herself, Nikki held her breath and prayed she wouldn’t have to trek almost fifteen miles on foot through the wilderness. She could have jumped for joy when Galloway replied gallantly, “It’s no trouble. I need to make a supply run one day this week anyhow, and it may as well be today.”
By wagon, bumping along the rutted road at a snail’s pace, the trip took four hours. As they neared town, Nikki was astonished at the contrast between what she knew as Dayton, Ohio, and what constituted the city in 1813. Though she knew better, she somehow still expected to find high-rise buildings dominating a city of nearly two-hundred-thousand residents. Instead, she spied a small valley community of perhaps a few hundred people. In place of crowded thoroughfares and interstate highways was a handful of narrow streets. Gone were the sprawling suburbs, the bustling shopping malls, the car lots, and industries.
On the bright side, however, there were no smelly exhaust fumes, no haze of smog, no barrage of billboards cluttering the landscape, and no roar of engines or blaring horns.
Skirting the southern edge of the town, Galloway directed the wagon along a lane leading down to the Great Miami River. “Aren’t we going into town?” Neeake questioned.
“That might not be wise for you and Silver Thorn,” the farmer responded. “The whites and the Indians aren’t on real good terms these days, what with the war and all. It’s best to avoid any confrontations.”
He and Silver Thorn unloaded the canoe from the wagon bed, and within minutes they were ready to cast off. The two men shook hands. “You take care now,” Galloway said. “Watch out for scalawags, and try to steer clear of the military. Some of those young soldiers are fresh from the East and eager to collect scalps. They don’t know a peaceful Indian from a turnip and couldn’t care less.”
Silver Thorn nodded. “We are headed north and will soon be away from your white villages.”
“Good. If you see Tecumseh, give him my regards and tell him he’s always welcome at the homestead, whether Becky is there or not.”
“I will relay your greeting,” Silver Thorn vowed. “Thank you for your hospitality, James, and for saving us a long walk today. My bride is not yet used to such lengthy excursions.”
Galloway hesitated, then said, “Silver Thorn, I don’t mean to poke my nose into your affairs, but should you be taking her north with you? You know how your brother and his followers feel about whites these days, and it’s plain by the way she looks and talks that she’s not an Indian. She can stay with us while you’re gone, if you’d like.”
“No. Neeake is my wife, and where I go she goes also; but I thank you for your kind offer.”
Nikki stepped forward. “Don’t worry, Mr. Galloway. I am part Shawnee, so perhaps they will accept me more readily than you think.” She dug into the side pocket of her backpack and pulled out a folded five-dollar bill, holding it out to him. “Please accept this in payment for the clothing and convey my gratitude again to your lovely wife.”
With Silver Thorn’s help, Nikki managed to board the canoe without mishap. They pushed off, with a final wave of farewell.
James Galloway stood on the bank and watched as they glided swiftly into the distance. Only as Galloway turned to leave did he recall the money Nikki had pressed into his hand. Paper currency, usually issued by individual banks or by the state, was often next to worthless here on the frontier, but he hadn’t wanted to hurt her feelings. Unfolding it, he gave it a cursory glance. Then, taking a closer look, his brow furrowed in confusion. The bill, with a stated value of five dollars, displayed the portrait of a gaunt bearded man Galloway had never heard of. His name, printed below his image, was Lincoln. On the back of the bill was a painting of a huge, pillared building called the Lincoln Memorial. Upon closer inspection of the front of the note, Galloway gasped. The date, in minuscule but clear print, read 1993!
“How peculiar!” he wondered in bewilderment. “First her strange clothing, and now this fake currency! What manner of female is Silver Thorn tangled up with?”
Though Nikki understood from the conversation between Mr. Galloway and Silver Thorn that this section of the country was sparsely settled, she’d still expected to see some signs of habitation along the riverside just north of Dayton, if only the sporadic cabin or two. When she mentioned the lack of such to Silver Thorn, he explained.
“The settlers have learned that it does little good to build too near the river, for it floods badly in the spring. Those who have tried have lost their cabins, their livestock, even their lives to the Great Miami.”
Perhaps twenty miles upstream, though it was hard for her to properly estimate the distance, they did pass a tiny settlement. Silver Thorn told her it was called Washington. “That’s odd,” she said. “I don’t recall a town down this way by that name.”
The puzzle was solved nearly an hour later, when Silver Thorn directed the canoe to shore. Instead of disembarking immediately, he simply sat and stared at the surrounding landscape, a pensive look on his face.
“What is it?” Nikki asked softly. “Why do you look so sad?”
“This was once my home for a time, as was Chillicothe before it.”
“Oh. Your village was here?”
He nodded. “The one called Lower Piqua.”
She blinked in surprise. “Piqua? I’ve been here . . . there! Oh, for heaven’s sake! That town we passed, the one you called Washington, is known as Piqua in my time. That’s why I couldn’t place it before. They renamed it, in honor of the village you had here.”
He shrugged and offered a bleak smile. “Then perhaps it was named well. Piqua, in our tongue, means a man formed out of the ashes, as told in the accounts of the creation of the Piqua band.”
“Truly?” Nikki was fascinated. “Just like the Christian version of creation?”
“Similar to the tale in your Bible.”
To her surprise, he pushed the canoe back into the current and headed the craft northward again.
“Aren’t we going to camp here?” she asked. “It will be dark soon.”
“I do not want to camp so near a white settlement,” he told her. “We will go on, to the place where the Miami joins with the Loramie.”
“I’m familiar with that name, too. There’s a fort there, isn’t there? And a Lake Loramie?”
“There is a fort some distance up the Loramie River. We will pass close to it tomorrow. But I know of no lake.”
“No matter. It’s probably one of those small lakes which was formed later, by damming the river. I think that’s how they created Indian Lake, too, but I’m not certain. I do know that Lake Saint Mary’s is totally man-made, and supposedly the largest in the state.”
“Perhaps this is so, with your Saint Mary’s Lake. But there is a place, centered between the village of Wapakoneta and the Mad River, near the origin of the Great Miami, which we call Indian Lake.”
“Really?” Nikki scanned her mental map, trying to recall the area more distinctly. “I’ll be darned. It’s got to be the same place. Well, I’ll have to remember this. It will be an interesting topic to discuss with my students when I get back since Indian Lake is practically in their own backyard.”
This sparked his interest even more. “You come from the region of Indian Lake? In your time, you live near it?”
“About fifteen miles away, actually, and about seven miles north of Wapak. It just so happens that I live in a township known as Shawnee and I teach at Shawnee School. Both were named after your tribe, of course.”
Silver Thorn took a minute to digest this information. “So, though you claim the Shawnee no longer live here in your day, we are not forgotten altogether.”
“Not at all,” she agreed. “I suppose everything comes full circle, if you wait long enough. In 1996, we’re quite proud that the Indians lived in our locale. There are schools and towns and lakes and all sorts of things named after various tribes such as the Shawnee, the Ottawa, the Miami, and others I can�
��t recall right off hand. They . . . you . . . have become an honored part of our heritage and history.”
“I wonder if it is worth being driven from your land merely to be honored and remembered in later history?” he submitted with bitter irony. His face twisted into a grim mask, the pain and anger raw in his eyes. “To my mind, it is too great a price for too little recompense. A grievous cost, to be paid with the blood and tears and pride of my people.”
“I’m sorry, Silver Thorn,” she offered for lack of anything more comforting to say.
“It is your loss also,” he reminded her. “But perhaps, when we reach Wapakoneta and speak with Chief Black Hoof, he will offer wise council and hope. Perhaps, together, we can devise a way to alter our fate.”
“We’re going to Wapak?” she exclaimed. “Is that where you’re taking me? My gosh! That’s practically home to me! Some of my friends live there!”
“Were I you, I would survey the village with a new eye, Neeake,” he recommended dourly. “See it as it is now, to the Shawnee, and equate it to the place in your time. Then, when you have done this, tell me which is better, your village or mine.”
That night they set up camp near the river and made their bed beneath a canopy of stars. Dressed only in her bikini panties and her T-shirt in lieu of a nightgown, Nikki lay snuggled next to Silver Thorn, a small bouquet of wild violets resting near her head. Silver Thorn had picked them for her, poetically comparing them to her eyes. He’d also gently removed a large splinter from her finger and kissed it well again. Her fearsome Shawnee was really such a sweetheart beneath his well-muscled, sometimes-gruff exterior.
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