Storyteller

by Patricia Reilly Giff

They stood in a circle around me, wondering what to do with me. But I was no longer the girl who had left the door to the henhouse open. I was no longer only the girl who had spilled the soap fat, who had burned the bread. I was another person entirely.

  I would go to battle with them.

  “There is still a half day’s march. If she stays with the wagons,” Miller said, “the pace will be easier.”

  That was true. I knew it would be hard to keep up with that marching army, even though we must be close to our destination.

  “She will be safer in the rear, too,” Miller told Father, as if I couldn’t hear, as if I were just a child.

  I didn’t listen to the rest. I was so tired. Too tired to eat. Almost too tired to sleep. I went through the trees, not far from where they stood, and lay on the rock-hard dirt, looking at the motionless leaves above me.

  It was much later when Father knelt beside me with water and a crust that I was hardly able to chew.

  Father spoke. “I can only imagine what these weeks have been like for you, Zee. But I know you survived terrible things.”

  I felt a sudden burning in my throat. To have him say that was almost worth those weeks alone.

  “The anger I feel is only because I want you safe. You and John are all I have now.” His voice was thick. “And that small bit of land on the edge of the river.”

  “If I had stayed back,” I said, “and something happened to you, I would have nothing.”

  He was silent, but even in the dimness, I saw that he understood. I reached up and put my arms around him. I had never done that in my life. I didn’t have the courage to say that I loved him, but he knew that; I was sure he did.

  I slept then until light sharpened the world around us, and we were faced with a day that promised to be hot. A terrible day ahead of us.

  I ripped off a shred of my under petticoat to dip into a water jug and clean my face, then tied up my heavy hair so it would be out of my way.

  Miller was in front of me. “I have a ride for you with men bringing up food supplies,” he said. “There’s only a small bit of room, but they promised it for you.”

  It was hard to thank him, but I did, telling myself I was truly grateful.

  Father put his hand on my shoulder. “Remember what Old Gerard has taught you,” he said. “Should it be necessary, melt into the trees, go back. Live, Zee. Live.”

  elizabeth

  TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

  Elizabeth is up early, and Libby, too. “I still have to go to work today,” Libby says. “Terrible, your last day, but—” She runs her hand over Elizabeth’s hair. “You’ll have an adventure.”

  “I’ll tell you all about it tonight, every single thing,” Elizabeth says as she and Harry get ready to leave.

  It’s a poor day for a Monday in spring, a morning filled with unrelenting rain. Moments later they’re in the truck with rivulets of water running along the side of the road. Even though the windshield wipers beat back and forth, it’s almost impossible to see.

  Harry leans forward and swipes the pane. “The park will be closed,” he says, sounding irritable.

  Elizabeth wonders why they aren’t turning back. But suppose they do. She pictures the day going forward: saying goodbye to Harry, going into the empty house to wait for Libby, sitting in that chair for the last time, watching the rain cascade off the leaves, her full duffel bags behind her in the corner.

  But Harry doesn’t turn back. He’s talking about Brant, the leader of the Iroquois.

  Elizabeth had seen a picture of him in Harry’s book and thought how cool he looked, slim and dark-eyed.

  “His tribal name was Thayendanegea. A mouthful, isn’t it? He was there with St. Leger.” Harry glances at her. “The Iroquois wanted the British to win because the Americans were crowding them out, building farms smack in the middle of their hunting grounds, and pushing into their villages.” He takes a breath. “Let’s eat now. We’re almost there.”

  She sits back, chewing on the sandwich Harry had made for her in Libby’s kitchen. It was pretty bad, crusts off, edges ragged, and the cheese inside a poisonous yellow. He made one for Libby’s lunch, too. It was worse than anything Libby could have ever put together.

  At last they pull off onto the side of the road, and Harry is right. The park is closed, a thick chain looped low across the wide path. Who in his right mind would walk around this place today?

  Harry drums his fingers against the steering wheel. He grumbles at the weather, at the closed battlefield site.

  “Do you have an umbrella or something?” he asks.

  Of course she forgot to bring an umbrella. But as they sit there, the rain tapers off. Shreds of mist rise in pale tendrils over the park grounds.

  “That’s more like it,” Harry says, and opens the truck door. They step over the chain to stand on the grass, which squishes under their feet. She looks around, thinking, August, a summer day, hot, steamy, maybe; hard to move, Patriots wishing they could sink down, rest their feet, wipe their damp faces.

  She must have said it aloud. Harry nods. He waves his hand over the expanse of lawn. “Mammoth trees crowded together, their branches laced into each other. The mosquitoes unrelenting. You couldn’t see two feet into the woods on each side. There were some horses and carts, but most of them walked, carrying heavy muskets.”

  Harry stops, and she sees the park, its trees dotting the mown grass. “Coming from the fort are Brant’s Iroquois, St. Leger’s Englishmen, the Loyalists. Almost every family in the Mohawk Valley had men fighting on one side or the other, and many had brothers fighting on opposite sides.”

  They begin to walk, Elizabeth telling herself that Zee might have been right here; her own footsteps might cover Zee’s.

  Harry holds her elbow and pulls her back. She looks down into a narrow gorge, the bottom choked with trees and weeds.

  Where did it come from? It was as if a giant had scooped out the earth, leaving the sides impossibly steep.

  “The ravine,” Harry says. “There was a narrow road made of logs. They started down strung out in a thin line all the way back.” He shakes his head. “They crossed the stream on the bottom and started up. The enemy was hidden on both sides.”

  He doesn’t have to tell her the rest. She sees how it was. The screams, the shouts, the noise as the enemy came out of the trees, howling, firing, shooting arrows, surrounding them.

  Surrounding Zee.

  How terrifying it must have been. Her fist goes to her mouth. “How many died?”

  “Half,” he says. “More than four hundred, right there on a sweltering afternoon in August.”

  She swipes at her eyes.

  “It’s sad,” he says. “But it was a long time ago. And we won the war. We’re here. Americans. Free.”

  “But Zee,” she says.

  He hesitates. “I know something about her life,” he says slowly. “I woke up last night thinking about her and those marks in the corner of the picture. The answer is right there in the drawing. I couldn’t believe it.”

  She takes a breath. “The bundle of sticks?”

  He smiles. “We have to go into Utica. You’ll be able to see for yourself.”

  zee

  EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

  That morning I thought about my life. Would it end that day? Or would I somehow have the fortune to come through the battle alive?

  We kept waiting for the order to march. I heard angry mutterings; the rumbling became louder. “We’ll go, with or without Herkimer!”

  John leaned over, his face uncertain. “Herkimer doesn’t want to leave. Some say he’s afraid. Others that he fears for his men and the slaughter. He’s sure that there will be an ambush. He just doesn’t know where.”

  “What do you think?” I asked.

  “He’s fought before,” he said. “He knows more—”

  But Miller cut in. “Try not to worry about it, Zee. Remember you’ll be toward the rear. You heard your father. Go back as soon as you hear—
”

  “Like a coward?” I said angrily.

  A group of men were scrambling to move out, so there was no time for him to answer, and no choice for Herkimer. The general gave the signal to march just before they rushed headlong through the forest without him.

  Miller hurried me to one of the last wagons and stood there as I climbed to the seat. He reached out. “Your father is right, Zee. You must live, even if we don’t.”

  I shook my head.

  “Don’t you know we’re fighting for you?” He reached up and touched my hand. He was silent for the barest second. Then he smiled. “Who could ever think you were a coward?”

  He went forward and I looked after him as long as I could see his homespun jacket. “Live, Miller,” I whispered, echoing my father.

  At last the cart lumbered after the marching men. But after a short time, they were so far ahead that I caught only glimpses of them through the trees.

  As the morning wore on, I jumped at the call of one man to another, at the metallic click of a weapon. I stared into the trees for movement. Sitting on the rough wagon seat, I began to wonder. The men beside me were in no hurry to move forward. They fell farther behind, allowing wagons to overtake them and somehow pass them on that narrow path. And then I realized. It was deliberate. They were as afraid as I was.

  Who could ever think you were a coward?

  If I stayed with them, I might miss what happened in front. I felt my lips, dry and cracked, with my rough fingers, then grasped the side of the wagon and slid down. How easy it would be to return to Fort Dayton. Who would blame me?

  Instead, I went forward. I passed one supply wagon after another, feeling the strength in my legs, in my feet. I passed stragglers ahead of the wagons. Once I stopped for water and glanced up at the glints of the sun.

  Somewhere far ahead of me were Father and John; somewhere ahead was Miller. I began to run. Branches whipped at my hair, scratching my cheeks. I passed grim-faced men marching in twos and threes, who barely noticed me.

  I heard the terrible sound of firing; the burning smell of it wafted back to me. The noise of muskets, of shouting, of screaming, was almost deafening; the air was filled with smoke. A small group of men retreated along the path, careening into me.

  I threaded my way through them, and then through the men who were moving forward. I ran, gasping, searching. Where was Father?

  And then, without warning, men disappeared in front of me. I stopped just before I went over the edge of a deep ravine.

  To go through that ravine, our men had to scramble down a log road and cross a narrow stream before they began the climb up again. The first men, led by General Herkimer, had almost reached the top when muskets began to fire and tomahawks were hurled.

  My hand went to my mouth. The enemy had hidden in the dense trees on both sides of the ravine. We were surrounded.

  I slid down, my hands torn by thickets, stung by nettles, my feet bleeding. At the marshy bottom men fought, blood spattered everywhere.

  Herkimer had been right about the ambush. Everywhere I looked were men in British uniforms and Iroquois shrieking terrible war cries.

  An old man with gray hair to his shoulders and a hatchet in his upraised hand came toward me, but then he was gone, and standing over him was one of our own, covered in blood. He yelled something to me, but it was impossible to hear.

  There was no way to move back, almost no way to move forward. I stumbled over someone’s legs, and confused, I thought he was sleeping, his arm bent under him, a thin line of blood staining his jacket.

  He was only the first. Steps in front of me, bodies lay in awkward piles.

  Someone grabbed me, holding the back of my kerchief, almost choking me.

  I fought to be free of those arms, reaching back with my fingers as I was dragged into the trees, my heels digging into the ground.

  The sounds I made were low and deep. I managed to turn and reached for his face, his eyes. I heard his ragged breath, and as he raised his hands against me, I twisted away.

  I didn’t look back; I took quick glimpses at bodies on the ground, some moving, others entirely still. Breathless, I looked at faces, at clothing, at boots and legs, searching for Father, for John. Even if their faces were covered or gone, I’d know their hands.

  And Miller’s hands. I remembered Miller breaking off a mushroom, and in a few quick strokes with a nail on its surface, he’d drawn Stout Lucy, the cat.

  I thought then that if I saw any of them on the ground, I might not be able to keep to my own feet.

  Miller.

  Imagine.

  What had he said that long time ago? I will draw you a hundred times, Zee, a thousand. I saw Miller tearing strips of bark from the birch tree, chunks of charcoal in his fingers, to squiggle lines and shapes. Drawing Stout Lucy, the trees, the river. Drawing me.

  And I’d never given it a thought.

  Above me was the sound of rumbling. A cannon? The sky darkened as if it were night, split through with jagged streaks of lightning. The rain came; huge drops spattered the blood-soaked leaves of the trees, pounded on the bodies that lay on the forest floor, puddles forming in their clothing, in the crooks of their arms or legs.

  The firing died away and left only the sound of thunder rolling across the sky, and the moaning of those who were wounded. There would be no fighting, no firing, while the storm lasted. The gunpowder had to be kept dry.

  As I reached the high ground on the other side of the ravine, I saw that Herkimer had been wounded. Someone propped his saddle against a beech tree, so he could direct the battle when the storm was over. He sat, pipe in his mouth, pointing, telling the men, “Stay together, two by two, back to back, one to load, one to fire.”

  I held my face to the rain, my mouth open; the water bathed my face, but only for a moment. A man stood alone, holding a musket. I jostled his arm. “If you show me,” I said, “I can load that.”

  He looked at me and nodded.

  The rain stopped as suddenly as it had started. The war cries began again, along with the sound of the muskets. But now Herkimer’s men were in better control.

  I stood against the back of that man I had never seen before, so close I could smell his fear, closer than I’d ever stood next to anyone. I tamped down the powder, working slowly with my stiff hands, working endlessly.

  Then the man was on the ground, and someone pushed my head down. “Stay there. Do you want to be killed?” Not a voice I knew.

  I darted away from him, not thinking about anything. Everything was color: the orange of the sun, the shiny green of the washed leaves, the red of the blood everywhere.

  Father lay against a log, and I knelt next to him, my arms around him, until I was sure he was gone. I rested my head against his chest.

  I saw them at home, John in the field, Mother turning the cheese pans.

  And Father. Father. I held him tight.

  I heard a new call. “Oonah, oonah,” an Iroquois shout, repeated over and over. And someone said, “It’s their call to retreat.”

  Was the battle over? Was this the end of it? Father dead, and so many others lying in the ravine around me, gone forever, or wounded so badly they’d never stand again.

  How could John and Miller have come through this? Nothing was left. Who could tell whether we’d won or lost?

  Someone pulled me to my feet. “We’re going back toward Fort Dayton,” the voice said. I realized it was the boy I had ridden with in the wagon the day before. “My father’s gone,” he said, “and the wagon.”

  I raised my hands helplessly. I had no energy to move.

  “We can’t bury the dead,” he said. “The ravine has become their cemetery. Come with me.”

  “But my father—”

  “Go along without her,” a voice said.

  I closed my eyes. It was Miller, alive.

  Miller.

  elizabeth

  TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

  Fort Stanwix spreads itself out in front of El
izabeth and Harry. Inside the information building, open now, a plump woman wears a Revolutionary War–era dress. She loops a strand of hair back into a Zee kind of cap. “Do you have a question?”

  “I know about the ravine, and the terrible ambush …,” Elizabeth says. Her voice trails off with embarrassment.

  And now a group of kids surrounds them like a flock of chicks, waiting to ask the woman something. One even pulls at Elizabeth’s sweater.

  She looks at Harry helplessly. He rocks back on his feet, smiling, first at her, then at the woman, whose name tag reads Jane.

  Harry smiling? Harry proud?

  The woman leans forward. “I bet you’re the smartest girl in your class.”

  Elizabeth steps back.

  “Of course she is.” Harry sounds so definite, so positive, that she feels her face flush.

  They let the kids have a turn talking to the woman, and sit on a leather bench to watch a film about the battle of Oriskany.

  Elizabeth thinks of what the woman said about her, of what Harry believes. That she’s smart. Her throat begins to burn as she turns to Harry. “My father says I don’t think,” she says slowly. “I’m actually pretty useless.” She raises her shoulder. “There isn’t anything I do well.”

  Harry stops watching the film. “Tell me about Zee,” he says, “or Oriskany. Or the fort. Tell me one thing.”

  She’s silent.

  “I want to hear just one fact,” Harry says again.

  Elizabeth searches her mind. From the fort window she sees the flag rippling in the wind.

  She begins. “Colonel Gansevoort was in charge of the fort. He was not much more than a boy, and his father had told him to defend Stanwix even if it killed him. He was ready to do that, he was strong and brave, but he wanted a flag to wave over the fort, something that stood for what they were. He remembered the flag they were talking about down in Philadelphia.”

  Elizabeth leans toward Harry. “They ripped up the scarlet sleeve of someone’s coat, the blue from someone’s jacket. They cut stars from a sheet, uneven stars, but still stars, and sewed it together. It was such a makeshift thing, but when they looked up at it, they told each other they were fighting for that, a new flag, a new country …” Her voice trails off. “I read a little about it.”