by C. E. Murphy
I stammered through “I’m of the People, of a far-away tribe,” to expressions of growing disbelief. One of them said something to the effect of, “You speak the language of the People poorly.”
I nodded in embarrassment. I would no doubt speak it poorly by their standards anyway, given that the language had almost certainly changed over the past few hundred years, but my lack of fluency made it a lot worse. I wished to hell I could reach back in time and waken the depth of immersion speech I’d had when I was about eight. There’d been a year or so there when Dad and I spoke almost exclusively Cherokee, until I turned into a brat and started refusing. I wanted to kick my younger self, which was not an unusual sentiment for me. This time, however, I had Renee, and gave her a hopeful mental poke. Not so much for the kicking myself, but maybe for the awakening long-dormant language memories.
She gave me a priss-mouthed look, but then she slipped into what felt like a meditative state, as if she was centering herself to bring up what I needed. I whispered, Thank you, and in the meantime tried scraping together what I did remember on my own. “We’re lost.”
A snicker that was pure body language and no sound at all ran around our group of captors. I muttered and tried again. “I’m a shaman—”
Suspicion and clarification settled on them in equal parts. It wasn’t particularly couth, in my mental image of things, to go around announcing one was a healer, and I thought they might feel similarly. People who actually claimed to be shamans were possibly more likely to be sorcerers. On the other hand, the expected unexpectedness displayed by a shaman probably went a long way toward explaining my bizarre costuming.
The next round of rapid speech went completely over my head. It ended with the spokesman pointing interrogatively at Morrison as a headache began pounding behind my left eye. I had understood Méabh, who had stepped out of the other end of time speaking ancient Irish. I had understood Lugh and Nuada and I understood Cernunnos, none of whom spoke English as a matter of course. I had no idea why I couldn’t understand these men.
Except I hadn’t been able to understand my cousin Caitríona and Méabh when they’d both started speaking Irish. The magic translator had shorted out somehow then.
And I spoke Cherokee. Not a lot, but apparently enough for the magic to figure I was okay on my own. It took everything I had not to clutch my head and rattle it in frustration. Instead, I hissed, “Can you understand them?” to Morrison, who nodded in rightful bewilderment.
It would not help our case for me to stomp around in circles shouting imprecations at myself and my magic. Instead I took the deepest, most calming breath I could, and suggested, “You talk to them, then.”
“Me?”
“Just try, Morrison. I think they’ll be able to understand you. It’s this sort of field effect. It worked with Caitríona and Méabh in Ireland, anyway.”
Morrison’s expression suggested I had begun speaking a foreign language, but he turned to the Cherokee spokesman and said, “No. I’m her companion, a...” He shot me another look, obviously wondering if shamans typically had handlers who helped keep their feet on the ground.
They didn’t, as far as I knew. The spokesman, however, didn’t seem to think a handler was a particularly strange thing for me to have. He spoke again, rapidly. Morrison’s shoulders went back and this time the look he cast at me was faintly alarmed. “No. Yes? I don’t know. Walker, they want to know if we’ve been touched by the gods, if that’s why we look so pale. If I say no are they going to kill us?”
“They’re not able to kill us.” That, at least, I was firm on. “And tell them no, pale-skinned people aren’t gods, they just come from far away.”
“Are you trying to change history, Walker?”
“Yes. I’ll let you know if it works.”
Morrison made a sound of actual amusement and said exactly what I’d said, in English, except the Cherokee spokesman understood him when he clearly hadn’t understood me. I wanted to hop up and down with frustration. Magic was stupid. Cool and awesome and amazing, but also stupid. Morrison and the spokesman exchanged several sentences, including mine and Morrison’s names, and—this much I caught—the spokesman’s, as well. He was Gawonii, and I was beginning to think he was the guy smart and brave enough to have shot at me.
“They think they should take us back to talk to their shaman. What do you think?”
“I think it won’t...” I stopped, then reconsidered. “I was gonna say I think it won’t get us any closer to finding Aidan, but I could be wrong. Just because I can’t track magic doesn’t mean their shaman can’t. Ask if they’ve seen any other newcomers. No, never mind, if they’d seen those wights they’d be trying to kill us, not talk to us. Yeah. Tell them we would be honored to meet their shaman.”
That, at least, was a right thing to say. Two dozen satisfied Cherokee warriors formed up around us, and marched us three hours upstream down the river I’d just followed downstream. It was late afternoon by the time we got back to the village, and now that we were safely captive, every single person turned out to give us a once-over.
The children thought we were hysterical. They darted between the warriors, snatching at my coat and Morrison’s jeans, tugging at shoelaces and making quick grabs at our gun holsters. Morrison smacked one kid’s enterprising hand as it got too close to his pistol. The boy yelped, then skittered back with the air of a child uncertain if he should be infuriated or thrilled. He, after all, had actually touched one of the strangers, which I figured had to be worth quite a lot of street cred.
The adults were equally curious, but far more wary. The men escorting us said what they knew about us—that much I could follow—and it was clear many of them weren’t certain if they believed we weren’t gods or spirits of some kind. I wasn’t sure if claiming we weren’t helped or hurt us, but I did know for damned sure I was not going to reinforce the idea by agreeing to it.
The deeper we got into the village, the older the crowd became. There weren’t nearly as many elders as I expected, and it was clear the younger men and women were fiercely protective of them. Finally the gathering split, revealing a woman whose presence was so powerful that if she’d been carved of stone and unable to move, I wouldn’t have been surprised.
She was strong-boned, her hair threaded with white, and if she had been beautiful in her youth it had faded into something more enduring than beauty. Rock seemed more bending than she, and oaks more swayable. She stood with an alacrity that belied the weight of stone within her, and made chattering sounds to shoo our warrior escort back. They scampered like children, losing none of their dignity as they did so, and the medicine woman stalked a slow circle around us. More than stalked: I didn’t need to trigger the Sight to feel the power she laid down, creating a barrier with her will alone. It rang of keeping things in, and I did not want to test my mettle against it.
“You are strong with spirits,” she said to me, and to my shock I understood. Renee clicked with satisfaction and I sent a wave of gratitude toward her, then nodded as respectfully as I could at the ancient shaman. She sniffed and stalked around us the other direction, but she certainly wasn’t lifting the power circle. If anything she was strengthening it with a counterpart, walking widdershins to her first and redoubling the magic flexing through. I’d never seen anyone do that before, and didn’t dare call up the Sight to take a good look at it. I honestly had no idea what would happen if I started pulling down power within the confines of her circle. I didn’t think it would end well for me.
When she’d completed the second circle she stood in front of us, arms folded and scowl magnificent. Better than anything the Almighty Morrison had ever thrown at me, and he’d come up with some doozies over the years. “You do not belong here,” she informed me, with exactly the right inflection to suggest I had better get explaining, Or Else.
I genuinely did not want to find out what her
Or Else constituted, and equally genuinely didn’t think I could convince her with anything less than the truth. “I’m a Walkingst—”
She cut me off with a motion so sharp I actually felt a slice of power touch my throat, numbing my vocal cords. “Use the language of the People.”
Jesus. I glanced nervously at Morrison and muttered, “Can you understand me when I speak Cherokee?” in that language. His expression went carefully blank and I ground my teeth. In English, I said, “Sorry. She wants me to use Cherokee and I don’t know how to make the magic translate so you understand.”
“We have bigger fish to fry, Walker. Talk to her.”
There were a thousand reasons I loved that man, but his determined practicality had to be in the top ten. I gave him a grateful and perhaps slightly soppy smile, then turned back to the elder.
Her black eyes were sparkling, and I had the distinct impression she’d understood us. If I ever got hold of whoever made shamanic translation magic work, I was going to eat their brains until I understood it all. Speaking slowly, because even if my memory of the language had resurfaced, the centuries had still changed it, I said, “I will speak the language of the People if you will forgive my clumsiness with it. My family spirit is the Udalvnusti.”
“The unchanging,” she said. “But you are greatly changed from our ways.”
In English, under my breath, I said, “You have no idea,” then gave an explanation my best shot. “My spirit guide has brought me here to find my son, who was stolen by sorcerers and brought to this time.”
“He is not here. There is no one here corrupted by sorcerers, or dressed as you dress.”
“I think they took him to this time but another location. Do you know of...of a place of great pain? Of great fighting or illness?”
Her eyes darkened. “Everywhere. Stories came with the traders, stories of people with skin like his—” and she nodded at Morrison, who was as fair-skinned and Irish as his name “—and with the stories came sickness, though we never saw men with skin like yours.” She included me this time, fairer-skinned by far than she was, though I had a slightly gold burnish compared to Morrison. “We are what is left of ten villages, we who were not sick or became well again. We came to this valley, where there is water and game, and where we thought the sickness could not follow. Did sorcerers bring it?”
“No.” I sighed. “Sickness can be carried on blankets and clothes, on trade items. That’s why your people got sick before they ever even saw white men. I...” I had to try. It was useless, it would make no difference in the long run, but I had to try. I switched to English, because I knew she understood me and I didn’t have words in Cherokee to describe a vaccination process. “If the pox sickness comes, there’s a way to protect your people against it. Take scabs from the wounds and grind them up, then sniff them. It’ll make most people a little sick, and some will get very sick and die. Maybe one in ten. But if you don’t, it might be as many as nine in ten.”
“Walker?” Morrison sounded horrified.
“It’s how the Chinese vaccinated against smallpox for hundreds of years.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I used to play the what-would-happen-if-I-got-thrown-back-in-time? game, back before I started getting thrown back in time. I used to look things up to prepare myself for not having running water or penicillin or whatever.” I could tell from Morrison’s expression that this was not a game he was familiar with. “Look, it doesn’t matter, but it’s a real vaccination process and...and I have to try.”
The elder’s attention was hard on me. “You know of our future. It pains you.”
“Yeah. Yes,” I said more politely, and the stone in her turned to granite.
“Then retreating deeply will not help. The darkness comes no matter what we do.”
I remembered, vividly, how Méabh and Caitríona had both seen a darkness on the horizon, an oncoming storm, and for a heart-wrenching moment I was desperately grateful that visions of the future were not part and parcel of my usual skills. “Tell your grandchildren to adopt white men into their families, and to have those white men buy land. That land will be all that belongs to you, when the darkness comes.”
She looked utterly blank. “Buy and belong?”
“Just remember the words,” I said unhappily. “Teach them to your grandchildren, and to theirs, and someday it’ll make sense.”
Morrison said, “Walker?” again, and, tense with frustration, I muttered, “Most of the Eastern band of Cherokee, the people who managed to stay in the Carolinas and Georgia instead of being forced onto the Trail of Tears, were allowed to stay because a white man they’d adopted owned hundreds of acres of land and let his adopted people live there. That and the Qualla were all the Cherokee had left. It doesn’t matter, all right? I can’t help, and I know it, but I have to try.”
“Maybe you are helping,” he said quietly. “Maybe this moment is why they end up with the land they do, instead of everyone being relocated to Oklahoma.”
“If it is,” I said bitterly, “it isn’t enough.”
“No.” All the compassion in the world was in that one word. “But it’s all you can do.”
For a moment I could do nothing but stand there with my eyes shut, hoping the tears wouldn’t leak through. The old woman touched my chest, fingertips light against my breastbone. I opened my eyes, looking down at her as she spoke.
“There are always sorcerers and darkness in the world. We will never do enough. But we hear, and listen, and try, and for that the Great Spirits love us, and gather us to them when our battles end. I will teach my grandchildren your strange words, and we will breathe the sickness in hopes of remaining well, and remember you for the gift of trying.”
Tears spilled down my cheeks, both for her gratitude and for my futility. She wiped them away and tasted one, which at least shook a startled laugh out of me, and she smacked her lips. “Your body is poisoned with bad air and sick food. I would be full of tears, too. You should stay and breathe our clean air and eat our good food until you are cleansed.”
I made an instant resolution to eat only organic vegetables and moderate amounts of grass-fed meat for the rest of my life, but shook my head. “I would love to, but I can’t. I have to find my son. Do you know of where sorcerers would go to gather death magic and pain and hatred?”
“That is not a way any of the People should live, even those who are not of the People. But when our scouts and hunters go far, they return from the north with tales of war. They tell stories of the Northern and Eastern tribes driving each other further to the West, into the plains lands where they fight again with new enemies. They say the land is as red as the Lower World, stained with blood of the People.” She brought down the power circle around us, face strong and sorrowful. “Go that way, and you may find the heart of darkness.”
Chapter Sixteen
They insisted on feeding us before we left, and since I wasn’t sure when I’d eaten last, I was glad to accept. They fed us a veritable feast of deer and possum and a few things I couldn’t identify, all of which was enough to make my constantly hungry belly round and content for a little while. The elder, whose name I never did get, thought we should wait until morning to leave, and it was hard to argue on a full belly and a couple of days of no sleep. Morrison and I were given blankets to share, blankets woven and patterned in styles I’d never seen.
“This is what it looked like,” I said to him, under the cover of a crescent moon and the blankets. The Milky Way sprawled above us, clearer than I’d seen it since I was a kid in the wilderness with my dad. The only sounds were the wind carrying light voices and the avid songs of horny bugs, and the only scents of small fires and clean human beings. “This is what America looked like before Europeans got here. All of this life and all of these images we’ll never see on our end of time, because it
’s all been destroyed.”
“Then hold on to every minute of this,” he suggested, “because we’re the only ones who ever get to see it. Walker, do you have any idea...do you have any sense of how incredible this is? I’m not sure you do.”
I turned my face against his shoulder and closed my eyes. “Which part, that we’re chasing black magic across time, or that we’ve just finished having dinner with a people who nearly went extinct?”
“Either,” he said, quiet and steady. “You do that, Walker. You phrase everything like that, making light of it. Some things deserve more respect than that. The power that pulled us into that deserves more respect. You deserve more respect, even from yourself. Especially from yourself.”
“Heh.” It was sort of a laugh, muffled against his shoulder. “You’re probably right.”
“I am right.”
“I can’t, Morrison. I can’t take it seriously that way. I’d be overwhelmed. Making stupid jokes is the only way I can cope. I don’t know how you and Gary take it in stride. I mean, Gary, God. Gary goes charging along just asking for more all the time. I wish I was like that. I wish I was like you, unflappable.”
Morrison chuckled. “You think I’m unflappable? Even with the number of times I’ve blown my top at you?”
“It’s not like I haven’t given you cause. But when it counts, yeah. You’re unflappable. Witness our current situation, for example. I told you we’d time traveled and all you said was, ‘So what do we do next?’”
“I’ve spent a lot of years cultivating an unflappable exterior, Walker. Would it make you feel better to know I was as amazed as a kid on the inside?”
“Maybe.”
We lay down, Morrison taking my hand and putting it over his heart, which beat a lot more quickly than a quiet evening stargazing might account for. “I am,” he said quietly, “in awe. It’s hard to doubt you, Walker, even if what you’re selling is outrageous. I’d like you to be able to see that.”