by T. Isilwath
Contrary to popular belief, the Principal Cherokee did not embrace animal totems for individuals the way many other tribes did, and traditionalist Cherokees would readily point that out. However, after the forced relocation of the People to Oklahoma, many Cherokee found themselves in close quarters with other tribes of differing beliefs like the Seminole, Creek, Choctaw and Chicka-saw. As a result, some cultural traditions had bled over and been adopted by some of the Western Cherokees. Michael’s family had a few Choctaw relatives as well, and they believed strongly in their totems. He had also once explained to her that his family had other reasons for claiming fox as a totem; reasons that dated back to events that had happened on the Trail of Tears.
So Fox Whose Eyes Are Open had left the Plains and moved to the ancestral home of the Cherokee, leaving behind the life he had known in his childhood. In that way, he was very much like herself: uprooted and relocated under circumstances beyond their control, and she was certain that common bond had drawn them together in the beginning; before they were friends, then lovers and life-partners. But while Fox Whose Eyes Are Open might be Crow Dancing now, he never lost his Fox totem and Fox was always with him.
“Mark Sanders,” the woman called, but she didn’t look to see which of the remaining two stood up to approach the platform. Her eyes were still on Michael, who was still looking back at her through the glass.
She bit her lip to hold back a sudden rush of emotion. She saw him make shushing motions with his hands and knew he was telling her not to cry. She had cried that morning when they held each other in bed, and again when he had walked her to the security station. She didn’t want to cry anymore, but she didn’t know if she would be able to keep the tears at bay.
“I will miss you,” she mouthed silently, knowing he couldn’t hear her through the glass, even as her eyes filled up and a tear rolled down her cheek.
He gave her a sweet smile and put one hand on the window, miming that he would miss her too. She held up her left hand and wiggled her ring at him, making them both smile.
“Ann Filetti.”
‘That’s it. I’m next,’ she realized, looking over her shoulder to see the brunette approaching the platform.
She turned her gaze back to Michael, knowing that her time was short.
“I love you,” she mouthed, and he responded with the universal hand signal for the same.
He pantomimed using the telephone and writing.
‘Call. Write.’ She nodded. “I will.”
She would also write about all her experiences in Tokyo in the brand new journal Michael had bought her. He’d even taped a picture of the two of them in full dance regalia inside the front cover. It was a sweet, sentimental gift, but also a practical one. The Storyteller expected Stories from Japan for her collection, and Joanna was loathe to disappoint her.
“Joanna Tindall.”
Mustering her courage, she stood, shouldering the backpack once again, picking up Iris in her right hand while her left hand took the rolling suitcase, and approached the platform.
“That’s a nice looking man you’ve got there,” the woman commented.
Joanna blushed. “My fiancé.”
“Lucky boy. Okay, this is your GPS transceiver. If you don’t end up where you’re supposed to, it’ll give off a signal and we’ll find you almost instantly,” the woman said, slipping a chain with a small gray box on it around her neck.
“Okay. Thank you,” she said, examining the pendant.
“Now step up to the platform and wait for the signal to go. Then all you do is walk forward and the Gate does the rest.”
“Okay.”
She glanced over her shoulder to the observation window. Michael was still there, but he looked nervous. In front of her the Gate was clicking and whirring, and she felt the platform vibrate under her feet.
“Okay, Ms. Tindall, you can go ahead,” the operator told her.
She gulped and looked at the Gate. She couldn’t see anything at all; there was just a shimmer in the archway, like a film of water running across glass.
“Like this?” she asked, taking a step forward.
“Just walk through and don’t stop until you get to the other side.”
“Okay.”
She glanced at Michael, who waved, then resolutely stepped into the Gate.
She didn’t know if she should expect some kind of resistance when she passed through the aperture, but she didn’t experience any. She only felt a slight pulling as she was drawn in. It was dark in the Gate, but if she looked behind her, she could still see the waiting room and the control booth even as the opening seemed to get farther and farther away.
‘Well, this isn’t so bad. Kinda weird, but not bad,’ she thought, feeling a little more confident.
At that moment the Gate pulsed and bottomed out.
‘What the?’
From the small doorway to the waiting room, she heard an alarm go off.
‘Oh no! What does that mean?’ “Wait! I’m still in the Gate!” She tried to turn back, to head for the exit she could see, but the Gate bottomed out again and she lost her footing, falling to her knees. In the waiting room, she could hear more alarms going off and heard shouting voices.
“Help! I’m still in here!” she cried.
The Gate lurched, sending her tumbling backwards, then the surface underneath her vanished, and she plummeted through black nothingness. She screamed as she fell, watching the light from the exit get smaller and smaller until it blinked out entirely. Her body hit solid ground with a crunching thud several agonizing moments later, and she blacked out from the impact.
Chapter One
When Joanna came to she had no idea where she was. She sat up slowly because everything hurt and managed to slide her arm out of the strap of the backpack as she took stock of her surroundings. She was surprised to find herself on the edge of a small meadow surrounded by tall trees.
‘What the? Did I land in the middle of the Meiji Shrine? What happened?’
Meiji was the only place in the urban center of Tokyo where she knew such tall trees could be found. She’d read about it in the Japanese travel books she had purchased for her trip, but if the meadow was part of the Meiji Shrine, it wasn’t what she was expecting.
‘Okay. Do not panic. First, are you injured?’ she asked herself, getting her emotions under control.
She mentally examined her body for areas of pain, and tested all of her limbs and extremities to make sure they were intact. Aside from a headache that was building, and a few scrapes and bruises, she was unharmed.
She rolled up her T-shirt and inspected her insulin pump, making sure it had not been damaged by the fall. She had one of the newer, very small nanopumps with a built-in glucometer that had just come out recently, and she had it attached to her abdomen with a special patch. The nanopump was about 1/2 the size of her old pump, and it was practically invisible under her clothes.
It monitored her subcutaneous glucose levels at regular intervals and warned her if her sugars rose too high or fell too low. Thankfully, her pump looked fine.
‘Thank God for small favors. Okay. Next, check your gear.’
Rolling over to her knees, she looked behind her to inspect the camping backpack and found that the frame was bent.
“Crap. Well, you guys are buying me a new backpack,” she said to no one, then suddenly remembered her guitar. ‘Oh no, Iris!’
She searched frantically for the instrument and found her nearby. Crawling over to the padded black case, she unclasped it and inspected the instrument for damage. Thankfully, Iris appeared to be unharmed.
‘Thank God. Next I need to check my diabetes bag.’
The rolling suitcase had landed on her other side and she made her way to it. Cursing under her breath, she pulled out the gifts she had planned to give to her host family: a handmade wooden flute for their son, a hand-woven blanket shawl for their daughter, a small 2-cup cast iron teakettle for her host mother, and a handmade deersk
in wallet for her host father. Underneath was her black diabetes bag where she kept all of her insulin and related supplies. She opened the small, red bag inside the larger bag to make sure the vials of insulin were
intact. Miracle of miracles, all five vials appeared whole and undamaged, as did her spare blood sugar monitor. She hadn’t needed the external glucometer since she had switched to the combination insulin pump/glucose meter, but it was always good to have a backup testing method just in case something went wrong with the pump.
“You guys are sooooo lucky.”
Unfortunately, the one item that had not survived the ordeal was her laptop/tablet PC. The small 12” computer had been in its case, strapped to the backpack, and it had come loose during the fall. It had been flung several feet away, and, even without trying to turn it on, she could see that it was damaged beyond saving. The casing was cracked in two places, and part of the corner had snapped off. Maybe the data on the hard drive could be salvaged.
“Ok, you are so buying me a new laptop! And that’s just for starters!” Repacking everything, she unclipped her handheld pc/cell phone from the waist of her jeans and turned it on, intending to call for help, but was very distressed to find that she had no signal. That was odd because the service she used was based on satellite technology and she should get reception anywhere.
‘What’s going on here?’
Without the phone to call for help, she had no choice but to settle down and wait for the cavalry to arrive. According to her watch, she’d been out for about fifteen minutes so she expected someone to show up shortly and explain to her what the hell had happened.
As far as she could tell, she wasn’t in any immediate danger, and she saw no compelling reason to go searching for answers, at least not yet. Not knowing where she was, and uncertain as to exactly what had gone wrong with the Gate, she felt that it was best for her to just stay put and let the guys on the other end find her. With a little luck, someone would come running out of the trees carrying a remote receiver and a medical bag, and all would be well. In the meantime, she figured she’d focus on her list of demands and tried to recall if the wavier had covered anything like this.
As she waited, her back set against the trunk of a tree, she took the time to look around and enjoy the view. In front of her was the meadow, warm and sunny in the afternoon light. Behind her was deep forest and lots of it, the kind where sunlight only barely reached the ground through the canopy. All around, she could hear the sounds of the trees and the creatures that lived within them, but nothing else. Somehow the lack of man-made sound seemed unnatural, and she wondered how far away she was from the nearest road. It had to be far because she couldn’t see any of Tokyo’s skyscrapers.
‘No road sounds. No machine sounds. I know Meiji is big, but is it big enough so that you can’t hear the city at all?’
She looked up at the blue sky and noticed the absence of jet trails.
‘No jet-trails either. Am I even in Tokyo?’
Twenty minutes passed and there wasn’t even a hint of anyone looking for her. She inspected the GPS around her neck and wondered if maybe she’d had the dumb luck of getting the one that had the dead batteries, but when she pressed the call button the indicator light came on, and the receiver made a loud chirp, so she guessed it was working, or at least she hoped so.
“Any minute now guys. You can show up any minute. Really,” she said.
Not that where she was wasn’t awfully nice. She rather liked the trees and meadow, and lack of human-made noise, but she knew she couldn’t stay there.
Besides all she really wanted to do was take some medication for her headache and go lay down for a while.
Another half hour went by. There was still no sign of anyone coming to her rescue, and she began to notice the forest taking an interest in her. Both Elisi and Michael had taught her the way of listening to nature, how to hear the voices of the trees and understand what they were saying. To most Anglos, or even an Indian who had turned his back on the old ways, such a notion was ridiculous, but Elisi was a traditional Cherokee, and she walked the path her people did before the White man came. It was this teaching that she had instilled in her orphaned granddaughter, and her beliefs were reinforced by Michael and his own Native path. She had learned that the earth would play dead if she wanted it to, but if she showed proper respect and acknowledged the beings around her as conscious entities, it would come alive for her and help her as much as it could.
Right now, the trees that had a clear line of sight of her were whispering to the trees behind, and there was much excitement at her sudden arrival. When she turned to look at them she wasn’t sure what surprised them more: the fact that she could understand what they were saying or that she actually spoke to them.
‘Hello, Tree-brothers, could you please tell me where I am?’ she asked.
Of course, asking a tree where it was was rather like asking a fish which way was up.
:Where? Here. We are here,: they answered helpfully.
‘Yeah, I kinda figured that out already. Thanks anyway.’
She settled back against the tree again and stared out at the meadow. So far she’d been there for over an hour, and there wasn’t even a peep from anyone looking for her. The pounding in her head didn’t seem to be getting any better either. Closing her eyes, she willed the pain away, hoping to alleviate some of her discomfort, and before she knew it she was feeling drowsy. The trees were lulling her, their calming energy creeping into her through the ground and the trunk she rested against.
:Rest. Stay a while and be at peace,: they said.
‘I shouldn’t fall asleep. I should stay awake and listen for the search party.
It will be hard for them to spot me in these trees,’ she answered, then her mind argued, ‘You have the GPS and the alarm will go off when they find you…’
:Rest. You are safe here.:
‘Okay, just for a minute…’ she decided, closing her eyes.
When she woke again it was getting on sunset, and she had been asleep for almost two hours. The sky was starting to turn a lovely shade of orange in preparation for the reds, purples and blues of twilight, and there was still no sign of a rescue party.
‘I guess they aren’t coming for me.’
But in her heart she already knew that. It was obvious that something had gone horribly wrong with the Quantum Gate, and she’d been sent somewhere far from where she was supposed to be.
‘Wherever I am, I must be hard to find because it’s been three hours, and, if I am in Japan, they’d have located me by now. Maybe the distance was too
far. The man behind the desk said it was the furthest they’d ever sent someone within the Private Sector. Maybe the Gates approved for civilian use aren’t as powerful as the ones the military has. It would make sense. The Army didn’t want the technology shared in the first place from what I’ve heard. It could be that this version of the Gate just isn’t capable of such a long distance trip.’
Slowly she stood, still sore from her rough landing, and looked around.
‘Well, there’s nothing I can do about it right now. Even if I wanted to go looking around, it’ll be dark soon. I should stay nearby but I need to find shelter. I also need to build a fire to make food before my blood sugar bottoms out.
I need water and a place to make camp.’
The meadow looked inviting but there didn’t seem to be any water there and, for some reason, it just didn’t feel right. After years of refining her survival skills, she had learned to trust her instincts, and right now her instincts were telling her to head into the forest. Reaching into herself, she touched the warm place in her solar plexus and breathed deeply, feeling the energy of the earth moving under her feet.
‘Which way?’ she asked.
Knowing the answer would reveal itself, she cast her eyes about and almost immediately spied a narrow game trail leading into the forest.
‘There.’
She slipped her arms back into
the straps of the backpack, grateful that the frame hadn’t been bent enough to poke her in the side, picked up Iris and her rollaway suitcase, and headed down the path. Several yards into the forest, the trail forked and she stopped at the juncture, trying to decide which way to go.
Again she reached into her center, opening herself up to the voices of the trees and the breath of the forest.
:This way,: the trees to the left beckoned, and she obeyed, turning down the left fork and following the narrow path.
She took note of the types of trees, and she saw species that looked very similar to the ones she was familiar with like oak, maple, and pine. Most of them were deciduous, so that meant it was a temperate or sub-tropical climate.
‘Great, that really narrows it down, doesn’t it?’
There was thick undergrowth and the pungent smell of decaying, wet plants. The forest could be considered a jungle, and the sounds of birds and other denizens of the woods made loud calls as she walked. She tried to identify the sounds, but the only one she was absolutely sure of was the caw of a nearby crow. Being that crows could be found just about everywhere, the presence of Crow didn’t tell her much at all.
She walked on, going deeper and deeper into the trees, following the tiny, barely visible track through the forest, until she had traveled what she estimated to be about a mile before the game trail abruptly ended, and she found herself on the edge of a small clearing canopied by the forest. Here the undergrowth was sparse, leaving only a smattering of grass and some exposed tree roots, and she could hear running water somewhere nearby.
The presence of a flat, dry area in close proximity to running water would have been enough to make her choose the clearing as her campsite, however there was one other factor that clinched it for her and that was the trees.
The trees were huge, towering giants, and they bordered the clearing in almost a complete circle. They were cedars, a tree most sacred to her people,