I brush past her, too filled with my own dark thoughts to answer. I wander aimlessly through the village and find myself outside Nonschetto’s hut. No one has mended the roof, but it does not matter now. The bad spirits have already entered. The wind brings the smell of wet ashes. Gokhotit sweeps away the black water that has pooled within the bonfire circle. Gray Fox covers the wet ground with leaves and dry branches that have been stored within the lee of the sweat lodge.
Clear Sky lights the bonfire. I join the wailing women who surround the wet and smoking wood, Quetit cling, ing to me. The warriors begin to dance.
“The white man is evil,” Woelfin says, her dark eyes wet with tears as her fingers clutch my arm. “He must die.”
I pull away, hating the feel of her curled fingers. The warriors howl and Clear Sky raises his tomahawk. He curses the Yengee devils and drives the blade into a post.
The warriors’ answering cries of revenge cut through me like a knife. Suddenly, I understand the savage anger that drives them to burn and pillage and I want to go to war alongside them. I want to kill the white man who shot Nonschetto—an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
And yet, just as clear and sudden as my anger, I hear my father’s voice. “If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also ...” And I see my father more clearly than I have in many moons—his pale hands hang limply by his side while dark insistent ones search his clothes for weapons he has never owned.
Gray Fox flings his knife at the painted post. The knife point burrows into the wood, the blade quivering, reflecting the firelight, the awful confusion I am feeling.
I push past the women crowding around me. I run into the forest, blood pounding through my head. Brush pulls at my leggings, grabs my hair and I welcome the pain. Behind me, Quetit calls my name.
I push on, fording the stream where the tree was struck by lightning. Icy water soaks my moccasins. I scramble up a muddy bank and see the clearing in the trees. The clearing where I have prayed to God for strength. The clearing where I have sung praises to Him in the white man’s tongue.
God, the white man has killed Nonschetto.
Grief as dark, as sudden as Nonschetto’s death, envelops me. My chest pounds with pain, as if my very heart were breaking. I curl myself down into a ball and hug my knees. Wings are beating the air above me. Large, black wings. Now I feel them curl around me.
“Tskinnak?” It is Quetit’s voice.
“Go away.”
“Tskinnak. Hold me. Please.”
I open my eyes. Something about the way she reaches out to me. Something about the loss and confusion I see written on her tear-stained face breaks through the blackness that is drowning me. I grab her outstretched hands as if they were my only lifeline. I enfold Quetit in my arms and we rock together, she and I, locked in sorrow.
“Alone, yet not alone am I, though in this solitude so drear ...” I find myself singing my mother’s hymn for Quetit. I sing it for me and for Nonschetto. Where is she now?
In the sky above, clouds drift like wind-blown feathers.
We are all but feathers.
Oh, God, please, be the wind.
CHAPTER Sixteen
Tiger Claw returned in the month the trees crack with cold, one moon after Nonschetto died. I was skinning the carcass of a rabbit when he came through our door-flap. I stared at him, my hands red with rabbit blood, as was the knife I held—the hunting knife Nonschetto gave me.
Tiger Claw looked away before I did. He gave Woelfin two red blankets, a brass kettle he must have looted from a white man’s cabin, a finely beaded belt and a promise of deer meat to see her through the winter. Woelfin was pleased with his offering. She did not scold him for his absence, nor remind him of what he tried to do to me.
But I have not forgotten and I never will. I go to sleep each night with Nonschetto’s knife tucked in the folds of my deerskin blanket. Tiger Claw has watched me finger the sharp steel blade. He knows that I am not afraid to use it. Tummaa still sleeps by my bed. He is almost full-grown now. He is bigger and stronger than Thistle, his mother. Tummaa bares his teeth whenever Tiger Claw comes near. Tiger Claw keeps to his side of the fire and we, to ours.
Clear Sky and his warriors returned soon after Tiger Claw. But seeing the two brown-haired scalps they took in revenge for Nonschetto’s death gave me no pleasure. Scalps cannot bring Nonschetto back to me.
Nonschetto is gone and with her is buried all memories of my white man’s home. It was not something that I wanted to happen. It just did, the way new skin covers wounds.
Quetit was watching Woates nurse her newborn son the morning I discovered what the shock of Nonschetto’s death has done to me. It was during the month in which the - ground squirrels begin to run. Quetit, her eyes wide with wonder, turned to me. “Tskinnak,” she said, pointing to the baby. “Was I once small like this?”
“Yes,” I replied, watching the baby’s hand grasp his mother’s thumb, the way that little Gokhas once clutched mine.
“Did I have a mother like Woates?”
“You had a mother and she held you the way Woates now holds her son.”
“What did my mother look like?”
I shook my head. “Quetit, I never saw your mother. Perhaps she had light hair like yours.” I ran my fingers through Quetit’s hair, then stopped to unknot the dry and tangled ends.
“What did your mother look like?” Quetit asked, backing away from my attempt to comb her.
I tried to picture my mother then, wanting to give Quetit a sense of family, but I couldn’t do it. An aching hurt filled the hollow of my heart, for all I could picture was an Indian burial ground with two fresh graves. “I don’t remember my mother,” I told Quetit.
“You must remember something,” Quetit said.
I closed my eyes and with all my aching heart I tried. I saw a dark mist and two oxen pulling a wagon away from me. That was all. And suddenly, I felt so terribly alone, with nothing to fill the years behind me and nothing to look forward to.
“What do you see?” Quetit asked.
“Nothing.” But recognizing the disappointment in Quetit’s face, I said, “I once had a sister. She was like you—good with her hands and quick to learn. She was captured by Indians, too. I don’t know where she is now, and I haven’t thought about her in many moons, for it saddens me. I also had two brothers.”
“And you had a father,” Quetit said. “His hair was gray.”
I did not need to ask her how she knew the color of my father’s hair. Like me, she sees it every day, a dried and shrunken scalp hanging from the pole inside our hut.
But ever since that morning, I have dreamt about my mother. I am walking alone on a vast and treeless plain. Out of a distant mist, she approaches me. I cannot make out the details of her face, but her hair is the color of the hickory nut, once its rind is peeled. Her skin is like white willow leaves, pale and silky. She holds her arms out, as if she were waiting for me. I run across the plain toward my mother. I run on and on, the breath burning in my throat, but I never reach her. The seasons change, winter into spring and spring into summer, but the dream remains the same. It leaves me feeling tired and empty.
Now, on this hot and breathless day, when even the breeze is too tired to blow, I work in our garden patch, hoeing the corn the way I did last summer when Nonschetto was alive. But I do not feel the anticipation I felt then. No one waits for me beneath the oak tree.
A stone whizzes by my face. Quetit’s small figure darts through the corn stalks, followed by three others. “You’re supposed to hit the crows, not me!” I yell.
The corn stalks part and four children emerge, looking hot and dirty. “Tskinnak,” Quetit says, planting her.self in front of me. “It’s too hot to throw stones at crows. We want to hear a story.”
“I do not tell stories,” I say, digging at a clump of thistle trying to crowd out my corn.
“I told you she didn’t,” Stone Face says.
“But she
does,” Quetit says. “Tskinnak used to tell them all the time before Nonschetto died. One was about the rain, a great canoe and a woman who fell through the sky and landed in it!”
“No, Quetit. You have mixed two stories together and made them into one.” I gingerly pull the thistle plant up by the roots and toss it aside.
“Then unmix them for me. Please?”
I lean on my hoe and stare at them: little Nunscheach, with the big dark eyes; Stone Face, his skin pitted with scars from an encounter with a porcupine; Running Water, whose mother gave her son this name because he can’t stand still; Quetit. All their faces are filled with hope. I remember how I felt at their age when I was tired and bored and wanted something to look forward to. I can’t refuse them the pleasure of a story.
“All right.” I throw my hoe down. “The ground is too hard to work anyway.”
Quetit squeals with delight. She and Running Water race over to the oak tree while Stone Face and Nunscheach take my hands and lead me to it.
And there, with Quetit’s head pillowed on my lap, and Nunscheach leaning against my shoulder, I begin to tell the story about the woman falling through the sky.
“Once there was a land of happy people who lived above the sky,” I say. “There was no sickness nor death in this land, for the Chieftan of the Skies who ruled it was good and kind....”
As I repeat the words Nonschetto once said, I begin to feel as if she were beside me. I see her face in the little children’s eyes, so bright, so filled with wonder. Tears sting my eyes as I spin her tale about the earth’s creation, but I do not stop. For I sense that this might be the answer to my loneliness—to pass on all the stories Nonschetto told. It makes me feel a part of her.
When I am finished, Quetit snuggles in my arms. “Tell the other one now, about the great rain and the big canoe that holds all the animals.”
I struggle in silence to find the beginning of this story, for my mind feels as if it were thick with weeds. “What was the old man’s name?” I finally ask Quetit.
“Noah. You must remember Noah!” Quetit says impatiently.
“Noah.” As I repeat the name, my mind begins to clear. “Once there lived a man named Noah. Noah was ... six hundred years old when the flood of waters came upon the earth. It rained for forty days and forty nights.” What joy I feel when I discover that I have not forgotten this story from the great book in which God speaks to man. As I tell it to the children in words they understand, I begin to feel as if my white man’s family were beside me, too. It’s not that I can picture them, but I feel their presence in my heart.
Even Running Water sits still as I tell of the old man Noah and his great canoe which will save the animals from the waters flooding the earth. I start- to name the animals who board and Nunscheach places her hand on my mouth. “Let me name them,” she says. In her thin, high voice, she sings out their names: the deer; the wildcat; the bear; and so on down to the little mouse, who burrows in the straw and squeaks.
“You forgot the crickets,” Running Water says. “If the old man doesn’t save the crickets, who will sing us to sleep at night?”
“And the owls. What about the owls?” Stone Face says.
They discuss which animals will board and a cooling breeze begins to blow. I lift my head to let it fan my neck and I see Woelfin standing under a nearby locust tree. How much has she heard?
Later, in our hut, Woelfin turns on me. “You poison our children with your white man’s stories.”
“These stories do not poison. They teach the children about the world and how to face both good and evil,” I say, forcing myself to meet her gaze.
“These stories come from the evil ones.”
“No,” I say.
“They come from the people who shot Nonschetto.”
I look beyond Woelfin to the scalp that hangs on a pole beside the door. “The Indian killed my father, but I tell the Indian’s stories. Today, I told the children about the woman falling through the sky and later I will tell them about Meesing, Alcor and the three warriors who hunt for bear. They are good stories. But I will share others I remember, too.” I pause, trying to think of them. “There is the tale of David,” I say, suddenly remembering. “He was a small but brave hunter who killed a giant three times his size. And ... Daniel! He was thrown into a den of wildcats and did not die.” I take a deep breath, amazed at what I do remember, the strong feelings it evokes in me.
Woelfin slants her head and glances sideways at me, the way she often does when she is pondering. “This Daniel. Did he have a white man’s gun?”
“No. The Great Spirit stopped the wildcats from devouring him.”
“And the small hunter who killed the giant? What weapon did he carry?”
“A slingshot—the kind our children often use to kill squirrels and rabbits.”
“Aaaiii! He was a brave man to kill a giant with a slingshot!” Woelfin brushes away a fly buzzing her face. “These people that you speak of, do they build their cabins on our hunting grounds?”
“No, they lived far away.”
Woelfin shuffles to her bed and sits down. “Long ago, a wildcat attacked my son. Its claws were as sharp as hunting knives. Tiger Claw still carries the scars. You must tell him the story about Daniel.”
“He would not listen,” I say, hating the thought of talking to Tiger Claw at all.
“I once cursed my son to save you,” she says, fingering the fringe on her deerskin blouse, then looking up at me. “Many moons have passed since then and he has not harmed you. You must open your heart to him.”
“He does not open up his heart to me,” I say bitterly, thinking of the hurt he has inflicted on me and the heavy silences that now lay between us.
A beseeching look enters Woelfin’s dark, hooded eyes. “Tiger Claw needs a wife to soften his hard edges,” she says gently. “You know how to fish and plant and sew. You would be a good wife for him.”
Time was when I would have welcomed Woelfin’s words of praise. But not now. Not when they are linked to Tiger Claw. “I am only twelve winters old,” I remind her, wanting to end the conversation.
“Soon you will be gathering milkweed floss to absorb your monthly flow. You will be a woman. Then we will talk more.” She neatly folds the bearskin she’s been keeping on her bed and tucks it in the basket where she stores winter clothes.
“Dreams haunt my sleep,” I say, appealing to her superstitious side. “In my dreams, I always walk alone.”
“Dreams change,” Woelfin says mildly. “I will wait. Aiiii!” She fans her face. “It is too hot to move. Tskinnak. Bring me water from the stream so that I may cool my feet.”
The months pass—I turn into a woman. Woelfin sees me gather milkweed floss, but she does not mention marriage. I don’t know if it’s because she believes in dreams or because Tiger Claw is too often gone, fighting the war against the white man. Messengers often bring news of this war into the wilderness where our small village lies protected by hills and valleys thick with brush and trees. They say the mighty Iroquois Nation has joined the French, the Delaware and Shawnee. One month, we hear that the English forts are toppling; the next, the French. I fear that soon all the rivers will run with blood. Even the friendly stream that winds through this wooded valley past my hut.
CHAPTER Seventeen
I have lived in this village for three and one-half winters now. I have marked the passing of time with Nonschetto’s hunting knife, carving small slashes in the willow tree that arches over the stream. I do not mark the days anymore, only moons.
The slashes remind me that I used to be someone other than Tskinnak, the blackbird. I can’t remember the someone’s name or from where she came, but sometimes I feel her wandering within the hollow of my heart, searching for a home. Sometimes I dream—seeing her run toward a woman with hair the color of the hickory nut. I wish dreams came true—that I could feel the warmth of a mother’s arms surround me.
For three and one-half winters, the Indian ha
s fought with the white man. Several of our warriors have died in battle and, along with other women in our village, I have mourned the sadness of their passing. But now, in this month of spring thaws, a new wind blows through our village. It sings a new song, a song of peace. This morning, a Delaware Indian I have never seen before rode a lean and lathered horse into our village. He said he was a messenger, sent by the English!
In front of all our warriors, he presented Chief Towigh with a belt of wampum which had two figures on it. One stood for the English, the other for the Indians of the Iroquois Nation and their nephews, us, the Delaware. The two figures were holding hands.
“Brothers of the Ohio region,” the messenger began. “You see by this belt that we all stand together now, joined hand in hand. Men, you must bury your tomahawks in the ground, sit by your fires with your women and children and smoke your pipes in safety. Let the French fight their own battles. The Indian’s war with the English is over.”
I rejoiced at this happy news. Now husbands could stay with their wives and bring them meat and soft furs to clothe their bodies. Now fathers could be with their children. But Tiger Claw glowered at the messenger’s proclamation. He dismissed the belts of wampum the messenger gave Chief Towigh with a disdainful shrug. I believe that war gives purpose to Tiger Claw’s life. Without it, he has nothing.
Woelfin greeted the news with an impassive face. I’m certain she was disappointed that the English were triumphant. She hates the Yengee devils, who, she claims, unlike the French, want to possess all Indian land. Yet I’m also certain she was not sorry that bloodshed would soon end.
Quetit and I were not allowed to hear all the messenger had to say, for Woelfin saw us standing beyond the circle of the listening warriors and shooed us away, saying the messenger’s words were not for our ears. That the fire was going out and we need wood to feed it. The weather has not yet turned warm.
But a strange excitement fills me as we now search for kindling. I heard the messenger say that this word of peace comes from Easton, a white man’s town in Pennsylvania. A man of God brought this news to the Ohio region. A man named Christian Frederick Post.
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