by Rick Wilber
In the next room I could hear Bear-With-One-Ear snoring. Even as the dream let go of my heart, I thought now that I was a medicine woman, I could not go on living in my uncle’s house. I must soon build one for myself of oak wood and baked river mud colored white, with a thatched roof of tule reeds. Perhaps I would take Little Gull with me. For a while longer he could live with a woman. Then he must go to Hawk Wing’s house to learn how to be a man.
At that I realized Little Gull was not asleep on his mat beside me.
I should have guessed he would become sick from eating so much! As I knew that, I also knew the sight had given me my answer in a dream. Death had entered our town, and I had remembered its name.
I scrambled up from the mat, my hands shaking with fear.
I found my brother outside his house, smoking a pipe, moonlight cloaking his bare shoulders like finest deerskin.
“Francis Hawk Wing!” I cried. “We’re surrounded by enemies!”
He looked up, his expression ugly in the moonlight. “I saw you kiss the shaman’s slave tonight. Have you come from his bed?”
I took in a quick gasp of cold night air. Then I raised my fist and hit my brother’s cheek with all my strength. His hand flew up to touch the place, but he said nothing.
“Be silent, fool! Little Gull’s gone. And I know the name of these strangers. They’re Spaniards.”
He stared at me. “First Captain fought Spaniards on land and sea! Burnt their ships. Took their treasure. Remember what he wrote? ‘There was never anything that pleased me better than seeing the enemy flying with a southerly wind to the northwards!’”
“Yes, but do you know why he hated them?”
“The papa - and the lies he taught about Sky Father.”
“More than that. Hawk Wing,” I said. “Much more! Remember the stories from the long voyage of the Big Canoes?”
“He hated them for their cruelty to The People. He said every man had a right to be free, not a slave.” Then he frowned. “How do you know this?”
“It came to me in a dream.”
“A dream?” My brother’s expression was incredulous. “Why should I take notice of such nonsense?”
“Because Lark Singing taught me to see before she died! I am the medicine woman of the tribe now. I tried to tell this to Bear-With-One-Ear - but we’re wasting time!”
He gazed at me a moment longer while he thought it over. Then he jumped to his feet, his hand reaching for the crossbow that lay beside him. Hawk Wing ran fast, but I flew faster. Through the sleeping town we raced, to the place I had seen in my dream. Fires flickered where guards kept watch in the Spaniards’ camp.
On the trampled grass where the feast had been held we found Little Gull, a clutch of duck feathers in his hand. His skull had been split open. Blood soaked into the earth around him.
I fell down on his small body, wailing. “Why? Why?”
Hawk Wing dragged me up again. “Later we’ll find out why! Now we must avenge this Spanish killing!”
From across the lake, where the gray-robed priest camped under the oaks, came the smell of roasting flesh, and I gagged. Too much was happening, too quickly.
Inside my head the voice of Elizabeth Lark Singing said, “My time is over. Yours is coming.”
No! I said to the vision. I wanted only to live with my lover and raise children on the shores of Great Sea.
“What can we do?” I cried. “We’re a peaceful people. We’re not ready for war!”
Hawk Wing grabbed me by the arms and thrust his face close to mine. It was mottled red with his anger. “Do you remember the teaching First Captain gave us?”
“Yes.” I looked down at Little Gull’s small body. “But we don’t know how to fight an enemy like this.”
“I know how to fight Spaniards,” Hawk Wing said. “First Captain taught that as the lore of men. He warned us one day Spaniards would come up the coast, even to our peaceful land, and we must be ready. This is why young men spend so much time learning the skills of killing that we need. And we’ve spread this teaching to the men of all the tribes around Lesser Sea. We’re ready!”
“Do you think arrows will suffice against monsters who kill children?” I asked scornfully. “For that’s all you have. Men who wear metal clothes will fight with stranger weapons than you can dream of!”
At that Hawk Wing smiled. “You think so because you’re a woman! That long metal stick they carry? That’s an harquebus. Oh, better perhaps than the two First Captain left with us so long ago. I can’t make one, but I know how a gun works, and if I get one from the Spaniards, I’ll use it against them! But, tell me, Red Deer. Do you truly know how to see? How to tell me where the advantage lies when I make war? Can you take Lark Singing’s place? Will you do that?”
No one could take Lark Singing’s place. I wept again, for Little Gull, for our people in the terrible days that the sight showed me would come, for the blood that would flow before we were rid of our enemies. And I wept for myself with the heavy burden of sight.
He was impatient with my tears. He shook me hard. “Well? Give me an answer!”
“I’ll do it.”
“Good.” He released my arm. “Then I’ll kill this Moraga before he knows what’s happened! With him dead the Spaniards-”
“No!” I said sharply. “You don’t know as much as you think about these enemies. First you must kill their shaman, Palou.”
“Red Deer-”
“I have seen this, Hawk Wing! Listen to what I say. And when that’s done, seek south for the shaman called Junipero Serra, and kill him too! Serra is the papa’s wolf that would devour us as First Captain warned.”
“I’ll gather the men,” my brother said. “We’re ready. We’ll kill all who travel under the Spaniards’ banner!”
“Hawk Wing,” I said as he turned to leave.
“Yes?”
“Spare Angelito.”
“He’s one of them!”
“Leave him for me.”
“Done by English who are well disposed if there be no cause to the contrary. If there be cause, we will be devils rather than men.”
Thus began the years of blood and fire that I had seen in the smoke-dream in my grandmother’s hut. My memory quails before the task of retelling the death and the suffering of the Miwok during those years. (I tell it now only that you will understand that sometimes evil things must be done in order for good to come of them.)
The first arrow my brother shot took the priest Palou, and the second, the warrior Moraga. Then I learned the wisdom of my uncle Black Otter’s remark, for we had the enemy surrounded. But even so the Spaniards were not easily killed, though there were few of them. They fought like demons. The battle lasted three days, and many of our own died too. I remember Bear-With-One-Ear was killed in that first battle, for he was old and slow-moving, and Black Otter with him. And when Hawk Wing and his warriors had finished in the river meadow outside our town, the dead lay in rows under the sun, their corpses crawling with flies, for there were too many to cremate all at once.
Angelito came to me, on the second day of the battle, begging shelter. I took him into the house that had been my uncle’s but was mine now and I concealed him from my brother’s warriors, hiding him under the blankets on my own bed. First Captain had told us Spaniards were our enemies, but I thought that The People must defend each other. Angelito did not argue when I gave him back his own name. I held him close to my breast while Death stalked outside with his fellow riders. Famine, Pestilence, and War. In spite of the danger outside we lay in each other’s arms and were happy. We spoke of children we would have together, how the rivers of our blood would run together and create a tribe that would stand proudly against tall enemies. Miwok, Chumash, English - no mere Spaniard could frighten us!
When the battle was over at last and there was time to mourn the dead, I wrapped Little Gull’s stiff body in his blanket and laid him on the funeral platform. I took First Captain’s knife that had hung over the
hearth to cut wood for the fire, and White Cloud went with me. It was a hot day, the valleys clotted with the odor of death, the sky full of smoke from the funeral fires.
“Little bird lover, I tried to warn you,” White Cloud said, laying pine branches on my brother’s body. “This wouldn’t have happened if you’d stayed in bed.”
Something stirred in me then, like a blind worm in the cold earth. I felt my destiny rising to confront me as I looked at my lover. “Why do you say that?”
“Because he tried to save a duck Lieutenant Moraga wanted. I told you these Spaniards were meat eaters.” Then he laughed his easy laugh. “You should have served more than fish at your feast!”
“You saw this?” I said slowly. No! I said in my mind. No! I will not accept this hard destiny!
He nodded. “I had just gone back to camp.”
“And did nothing?”
He gazed at me. “What could I do, Red Deer? I was only a priest’s servant!” He turned back to heap more wood on the pyre.
Now I saw what it was First Captain had really warned us of. The real danger lay within us if we forgot ourselves, if we became slaves, smiling though we were bound. Even a man like White Cloud - so beautiful! so fine! - could become a slave in his heart.
I knew immediately what I must do, yet I fought it. The path of my life forked here, but I did not want to choose! Why can I not have both? I cried in my pain.
Once the power has taken a woman, her life is straight and clear, but very hard. And there is no going back.
So I closed my heart against my lover, and I filled my mind with the teachings of First Captain. While White Cloud’s back was still turned, I drew out First Captain’s knife. My hand trembled so much, I needed the other to steady it, but I stuck the knife deep into his ribs.
He gave a great, ragged gasp and half turned to me, dragging the knife out of my hands. “Red Deer!”
“You named yourself correctly, Angelito,” I said. “You became one of them.”
A stain as scarlet as the berries Little Deer had been picking when he first saw this man spread over his back where the knife still protruded.
“For the love of God-”
“For the love of The People, Angelito.”
Blood bubbled at the corner of his mouth. He stared at me, his eyes already filming over. He stumbled, holding out his arms to me to steady him.
I stepped back and let him fall. Enemy! Enemy! I said over and over in my mind so that I would not cry.
I, too, could become a devil when there was cause.
After a few days Hawk Wing gathered men from many tribes along the coast of Great Sea and the inland valleys all around Lesser Sea and at my urging led them south to find Junipero Serra. Gray Seal went south with my brother, but Fog-On-Water remained here to hold the tribes together when they were gone, teaching them to trust no Spaniard, nor show mercy to gray-robed priests who would have given them none.
My brother’s warriors found Serra a year later, with a party of Spaniards at the big mission he had built on the large bay where seals and sea otters played in the kelp and The People foraged for abalone. I had seen him there in a smoke-dream.
I was still in mourning for my uncles and for Little Gull, and I was nursing the infant when they brought Serra back to our town. I was surprised to see how small he was, and how frail. He walked with a limp, his shoulders bowed under the hot sun. I had thought this wolf must be a giant to have such power to harm us. It did not seem possible that such a weak man could create such havoc. The power of an evil shaman is such that he can make himself appear harmless, like a coiled snake waiting to strike. I knew he was the one who was truly guilty of my lover’s death, for it was his teaching that had corrupted White Cloud so that I had been forced to kill him.
“See,” I said to the infant. “This is your father’s murderer!”
But it did not help the pain.
We kept little Serra for a while in a hut, because Fog-On-Water said we should see if these Spaniards would trade for him, to get him back. My uncle sent a message to the mission in the valley of the bears where White Cloud had been born, but there was no answer. We began to see that although the Spaniards were wolves, the pack might be small or too far from the den to have power if we attacked them. We knew now that we could win.
So when the apples ripened on the trees and the breeze off the inland sea cooled the evenings, I made Hawk Wing kill Serra too. The Miwok rejoiced with a feast. But I held my infant close to my breast and mourned for White Cloud in secret in my house.
Even that was not the end of it. All that year and the next and the one after, Spaniards came riding into Nova Albion with guns. But we had a few of the guns we had taken from Moraga’s men in that first battle, though we soon ran out of powder for them.
I was wrong. The crossbow is strong and efficient, and arrows can kill as well as guns. And when that was not enough, I built fire and tipped the arrows with flame and gave them to my brother to shoot. Our warriors followed up each flight of arrows, racing yipping and yelping like coyotes into the midst of the Spaniards, who did not know whether to beat out the fires or beat off our warriors. So we held them off.
My brother was the boldest of the warriors, merry in the face of every danger, taking risks that made lesser men tremble, always attacking the fiercest of the enemy, never satisfied until he had killed the leader with his own hands. The Miwok said of him that he was First Captain himself, come back to us in our time of need.
One day Hawk Wing, too, was felled by the guns and lay on the ground, half his stomach gone. It took him a long time to die, and little I knew to ease the pain. But by then we had taken many of these weapons from the bodies of our enemies, and even the young women had learned how to use them. The Spaniards were already in flight when I laid my brother on his funeral pyre.
“There must be a beginning of any great matter, but the continuing unto the end until it be thoroughly finished yields the true glory.”
Nova Albion, 1840
I tell this long tale of killing and being killed that you who have never known anything but peace should understand what it is you have dreamed this night.
Nova Albion is free from the threat of its enemies. Friendship and trust have spread among The People of a hundred towns around Lesser Sea. We have not forgotten to be vigilant, but until this night you have known nothing of war or bloodshed. We have lived in peace under the laws First Captain gave us, showing friendship to all who are friends to us, and punishing those who would harm us. Each year that passes brings more of The People up and down the coast and far inland to accept our laws, for they are just and wise. Our houses rise up the hills; our harvests prosper; our canoes sail far out over Great Sea for fish and across Lesser Sea to trade with our neighbors. Nova Albion thrives! And Spaniard has become only a name to make naughty children behave.
Look in this mirror. Do you see how the child gives way now to the young woman? I will braid your beautiful red hair while we talk of the vision the smoke gave you. Sky Father answered my prayer, though not as I had expected. Many bloodlines run in your veins, and you will need the wisdom of all of them.
That evil men should once again lust after our land is not surprising. This time they come from the east, but what of that? The descendants of the once-proud Spaniards in the south are weak and disorganized; we have nothing to fear from them! And though this metal you saw puzzles me - yellow as the sun, you say? - even that perhaps I have seen in flecks of sand on the beach at low tide by the river’s mouth.
Travelers carry tales of strife and bloodshed across a great land that stretches from sunset to sunrise. Everywhere outside the boundaries of Nova Albion people fight to protect their land from invaders. They are not as strong as we are. Since those days I have spoken of, we built more smoke towers across the mountains and deserts to our east so that we might be warned when our enemies come. For as First Captain taught, he whose eyes be open to the horizon shall not be taken unaware by storm.
<
br /> I have outlived my daughter, and I am glad my time is over and yours coming. The power has chosen you, and perhaps like me you will be called upon to sacrifice your desires and dreams. Yet I have learned something. Life itself is the answer, and a destiny larger than our petty wills drives us on, like the Big Canoes crossing Great Sea. We do what we do because of that.
I do not doubt there will be trouble. The smoke-dream does not lie. Your dream tells me we will continue to the end and take the victory once again.
Still, I am puzzled. This new pack of wolves, you say, speaks the tongue of First Captain, for his sake we will hold our fire until we determine whether they be honorable men, and perhaps we shall make a treaty among equals. Have no fear. First Captain taught us well that though our enemies be many, yet we shall defeat them if there be cause. We shall remain free!
Yet I wonder what he would think if we have to kill English?
Lisa Goldstein is the award-winning author of more than a dozen novels and several dozen short stories. She is the winner of the National Book Award for her novel The Red Magician and the Mythopoeic Award for her novel Uncertain Places. She won the 2011 Sidewise Award for Best Alternate History–Short Form for this story, which takes on religion and politics in an alternate Elizabethan England and Al-Andalus, where our hero Tip meets Queen Elizabeth, Arab scholars, and some rebellious steam-driven homunculi.
The copper arrow on the dial swung into the red, and Tip grabbed a bucket and ran to the water pump. She filled her bucket, hurried back to the homunculi in danger of overheating, and poured the water down the hole in their bench. Steam shot out of the hole and she jumped back. When the air had cooled enough she bent to read the dial, watching as the arrow wavered and then settled at a lower temperature.