[2014] Wildwood Shadows

by Scott McElhaney

  “Are we going to be okay?” I whispered to Wildwood as two of the male Indians left us to the care of the other.

  Our guide pulled aside a door of animal hide and then went inside.

  “I told them that we were Shawnee travelers without a village to call home. I introduced you as my mate, so in spite of your color, you will be seen as a fellow Shawnee,” she said, opening the same door the previous man had passed through.

  She ducked into the home and then I quickly followed. The man of the house was still lying in a bed of animal skins, but had propped himself up on his elbow while our guide spoke to him. In the center of the room, a small fire burned, filling the home with noxious smoke. There was no chimney to vent the smoke out, so I was forced to contain my need to cough.

  A moment later, our guide left the house, leaving us with the old shirtless man. I was grateful that he remained covered up from the waist down because I feared he might be naked. He spoke something, looking at me as he did so.

  “He asked if you would retrieve his pipe from over by the doorway so we could share a smoke,” Wildwood said, nodding toward the door.

  I turned and saw several items on the ground near the door. I grabbed what most resembled a pipe and brought it over to the man. He wrapped the blanket around his waist and then scooted over to the fire that mostly consisted of red embers now. He poked at the remains of the fire with the end of his pipe, probably in an attempt to rekindle the fire.

  He spoke a few disgruntled words toward the pile of ash and embers and then looked up at us and said something.

  “He asks why I speak another language to you. I explained that you are from a distant land and cannot speak or understand Shawnee,” she said.

  “Ask him if he wants fire for his pipe,” I turned to her.

  She looked at me in confusion for a moment and then I gestured to the camp roll at her waist. She nodded and then spoke to the man. After he said several sentences, Wildwood replied to him and then brought the blanket out and opened it up.

  “He asked if we also brought tobacco with us. We didn’t, of course. He is now packing some tobacco into his pipe, anxious to see the portable fire we brought with us. I did explain that we couldn’t part with it, so it wasn’t something we were willing to trade,” she said.

  I reached out and took the long lighter. I clicked it, showing him how it worked as a flame came to life on the end. His eyes went wide at the sight of the instant flame. I shut it off and clicked it again. He smiled a wide toothless smile. I handed it to him so he could light the pipe. I wasn’t surprised to see that he understood how to make the flame appear after watching me. He did it two more times, and then brought the pipe to his lips and inhaled a few times, lighting the tobacco in the end.

  I was grateful to see that he had no problem returning the lighter to me. He then handed me the pipe, which I feared trying. I’d never smoked anything before and didn’t quite know what to expect. I set the lighter in my lap and then put the pipe to my lips. I inhaled only slightly, but it was enough to burn my throat. I coughed and gasped, reaching out to offer it to Wildwood. They both laughed at me as I cleared my throat multiple times.

  She said something to the man and then put the pipe to her lips. To my surprise, she took two long puffs, inhaling them deeply before blowing the smoke out. The man took the pipe back and then looked at me as he spoke something. Wildwood replied and then they both conversed for several minutes. The pipe was passed around two more times during this conversation and although I did give it another try, I wasn’t able to force myself to accept it anymore. I was getting light-headed and felt like I might want to throw up.

  “He is the chief. I introduced you by your Shawnee name Time Traveler and explained that you are new to living among the tribes. His name is Spirit Talker and he has invited us to stay with them as long as we need to. I let him know that although we might winter with them, we intend to move on in the spring,” she said.

  “We wouldn’t stay and settle down?” I asked, a bit startled by this news.

  “You said I was free, Time Traveler,” she explained, “And one thing I never wanted to do was to settle down in one place forever. All that would ever matter to me would be that we stayed together no matter where we happened to find ourselves. Hasn’t our travelling time been enjoyable?”

  “Well, yes,” I said, “I’ve loved being on this adventure with you. I just thought you’d like a time when you could relax and not be on the constant lookout for snakes, bears, and pterodactyls.”

  “Terra-what?” she laughed and then waved off the reply perched on my lips, “Don’t you see that this is what the current invitation is all about? We’ll harvest with these people, hunt with these people, and when the weather gets real bad in the winter, we’ll pretty much hibernate with them. This will be our relaxation before we start off for new lands.”

  While the thought was terrifying in some ways, it also held quite an appeal as well. I truly did enjoy sleeping under the stars with her and never knowing where we were headed. I smiled at her in that moment and nodded. She turned to the chief and told him we were in agreement. He then told us to round up a few of the younger men and get a house built. After that, we would find our new home among the Portage Lakes village.

  Nehiwe

  The people that made up this tribe were amazing. Their generosity, their strength, and their willingness to help was precisely what got us a nice little dome-shaped bark house built near the path to the lake. That evening, they shared in a feast of corn, pumpkin, squash, beets, and catfish.

  Also that evening, Wildwood and I bathed in the lake, soaping each other up and splashing and dunking each other like two crazy children. The two of us felt completely free and then it was with lightened spirits that we retired early that night to our home and fell asleep smelling like soap and shampoo.

  We spent the next day getting to know some of the others in the village. After realizing that Wildwood was stuck doing all the talking and translating, I asked her to start teaching me the language of the Shawnee. She took to the challenge immediately and I made sure to be an attentive pupil.

  We spent a lot of our time walking along the lake and in the woods as she taught me. She would have me repeat the words for various things over and over again. Partway through the day, she decided it was also time that I learn how to hunt with a bow. During my language course, she took me into the woods and gave me an in-depth course on how to aim the bow, how much tension to give it, and when to release the arrow. I could never quite get it into the target, but at least I was finally shooting the thing without whipping my wrist with the string.

  This became the way of things for us during our first several days among the Portage Lakes Shawnee. I was retaining a lot of their language and could even ask some of the smaller questions by the time about two weeks had passed. I could still shoot the bow, but I couldn’t hit the target. I was also able to skin and gut a deer, a rabbit, and a groundhog without any help. I’d learned how to spearfish also during that time. I was really starting to become a true native by the time all of Wildwood’s future saw an abrupt change.

  I hadn’t been counting the days we had been living there, but it was probably about two or three weeks when Wildwood started getting sick. My first thoughts had led me straight to smallpox, but these symptoms were much different. She had no fever and no skin irritations of any kind. Truly, all she seemed to suffer from was nausea. And the nausea wasn’t a constant problem throughout the day, but it did come and go at random times. Sometimes all it took was a certain smell to trigger a bout of nausea. Other times, nothing at all seemed to trigger it.

  The tribe did have a doctor, but I’d already learned not to trust his methods. It was like he treated every problem with guidance from the spirits and a dosage of some herbs he smashed up into a nasty slimy tea. I hadn’t been his patient, but I’d heard enough from Wildwood who had heard from others in the village.

  We went to the doctor finally after
she had gotten fed up with the sickness. She no sooner entered his tent before he diagnosed her. He told her what he believed she suffered from, but then asked a few more questions to verify if the symptoms coincided with his assessment. Finally, he prescribed her a spearmint tea that should help to settle her stomach. He then explained that he had nothing to offer that could actually cure her of her ailment. Because ultimately she had fully succumbed to a severe case of pregnancy.

  While I was excited about such news, Wildwood was devastated. Not that she didn’t want to have children with me, but rather, she didn’t want to have children yet. She had a thousand adventures planned and a whole wide world to explore. She was the great huntress that couldn’t be burdened with a child. To Wildwood, she had just been told that she has terminal cancer and probably had about eight months to live.

  This wasn’t the same way I took the news. All I could see was a little dark-haired Wildwood with fat cheeks and tiny hands. All I could see was an adorable dark-skinned baby who relied a hundred percent on her mother and father and I had no problem with that at all. I wanted a little Wildwood, but I wanted it to be loved by both of us. At the time of the news, I couldn’t imagine that baby being loved at all by one of us. That unborn child was being held in contempt and since it was mine as well, it seemed that I was being held in contempt as well.

  We returned to our home after that and Wildwood simply crawled into bed. She asked that I light the candle that was now just a half jar. I did so, afraid to ask how she was doing. I could see it in her face and even while we were at the doctor, I could see she was asking for alternative solutions. I never thought someone would be asking about an abortion in the fourteen or fifteen hundreds.

  Wildwood lay back and stared at the ceiling, breathing deeply. I knew she was breathing in the lilac scent of the candle because she told me once before that it made her feel at peace. I was grateful that I still had another candle that we hadn’t even lit yet.

  “I would be having this baby in early spring,” she said, “I’d spend the harvest season and the winter being pregnant and useless. Then in spring, when we’re ready to set off for new destinations, I will be recovering from having a baby. How do I take a crying baby out into the woods while attempting to hunt deer?”

  “Stop, Wildwood,” I said, “We both know that the roles have been reversed since you and I met. I can’t hunt, even after you taught me how to. I don’t really do anything that the Shawnee men do and only recently did I learn how to skin a deer. You know all these things, so why do you think the baby would be with you while you were hunting?” I asked.

  “Where else would it be?” she turned to me, “You sound like you’re believing that you would stay here in the village with the baby while I go out on a hunt? Where are your breasts?”

  I hadn’t thought of that, but that’s because I still had a twenty-first century mind. While it was no big deal for the husband to take care of an infant in my era, it couldn’t really work here. We had baby bottles, formula, and whatever else it was that women used to fill up bottles for later. Nothing in my knowledge of future technologies offered me a way to bypass the mother’s breast in this world.

  “But the baby doesn’t eat all the time,” I stammered, “After you feed it, I can do the rest. In my world, the man is very involved sometimes. We help take care of the children in whatever ways we can.”

  “You really want a baby?” she asked.

  “Yes, I think I really do. It would be part you and part me,” I said, “It would be beautiful. It would be the best hunter in the world one day, not to mention the best at starting fires. And why does the adventure have to stop? We can still go to other places with a child. We can still hibernate for the winters and seek out distant lands in the summers.”

  “A kid? They will get hurt and stumble. They will tire easily,” she said, a hint of a smile peeking through her features.

  “Just like me! But you’re the one who said it doesn’t matter how long it takes to get somewhere. We can set up camp early in those first few years,” I said, kneeling next to her, “I’ll carry the child on my back if I have to.”

  She looked up at me for a moment and then propped herself up on her elbow.

  “Do you really think we can do this? You don’t think a child would force us to settle down forever in one place?”

  “I know for certain that a child wouldn’t do that. I’d like to add that maybe the child would be more adventurous than you, Wildwood.”

  “But would you still love me as I get fat?” she asked, patting her stomach.

  “I’d not only love you, but I’d already love what’s inside of you as well,” I said, placing my hand on hers, “Besides, I think you’d look cute with a baby bump.”

  And that was the moment I would find out later that Wildwood had decided not to take her own life. She chose to carry the baby to term in spite of the fact that such a decision would change her life forever.

  Tanniwe

  Harvest season came and we all joined in the effort to bring in the bounty. We’d probably been living among these people for about ten or eleven weeks now, so we were already feeling like part of the family. Wildwood was starting to show now and she didn’t let that change who she was at all. Since she was still a huntress at heart, she left the village with four other hunters on a mission to bag a full-grown bear or a nice buck. I joined with the ones who were left behind to bring in what remained in the fields.

  By the end of the day, we had literally filled a vacant home with vegetables, most of which was corn. The hunting party hadn’t returned and since dusk had come, it was accepted that they had probably made camp somewhere and intended to continue the hunt tomorrow. Wildwood had already explained to me once before that this was a common practice among hunting parties.

  I enjoyed a hearty meal with the village. I knew enough Shawnee to converse very lightly and the people were very forgiving where I couldn’t seem to catch on. I had decided that I really enjoyed the company of these people and if only Wildwood was willing, I wouldn’t really mind living among these people indefinitely.

  I retired to my hut after dinner and although I wasn’t really tired, I decided to crawl into bed and cover up. The evenings were getting much cooler lately and this meant that we needed more and more blankets. Thankfully, I was able to keep the hides of the two deer I’d skinned. I hadn’t learned the skills of tanning hides, so I had to rely on others to turn the skins into blankets for me and Wildwood.

  I lie there under three blankets, staring at the darkness. I might as well had my eyes closed for all that I could see. I thought about the new life I’d been living over the past couple months and I was amazed at the way I’d adapted. I wasn’t just referring to the fact that I was “managing” or “coping” but the fact that I was now fully part of this world and I was very happy about it. I could speak some of the language; I could catch fish and prepare them; I could avoid snakes and poison ivy; I could start a fire with dry wood; and I could potentially kill something with a bow and arrow. And in a few months, I’d be both a father and a husband and this didn’t frighten me at all. To my surprise, it was exactly what I wanted.

  Pondering these things, my mind continued to drift to all the worries and cares that this world presented me with. Before I realized what had happened, those thoughts turned into dreams after my eyes had closed. I was so sound asleep that by the time I would wake again, it would take me several seconds to understand what was going on.

  “Maddox!” she whispered, “Time Traveler, wake up! Hurry, get up!”

  I heard her words and saw her face in the candlelight, but it didn’t make any sense to me. I wondered just then why she was holding a Yankee Candle by her face and why she was in such a hurry. Then I suddenly wondered why she was even home at all.

  “Get up! We have to leave!” she said.

  Her blackened hands finally reached for me and pulled me into the sitting position.

  “I packed up everything, so a
ll I need you to do is get dressed and come with me,” she whispered.

  My mind finally caught up with everything. I could see the camp roll, the shotgun, and the backpack set neatly beside the bed. She handed me my jeans and my boots. I was about to ask her what was happening, but she placed a finger to my lips and whispered for me to hurry up.

  I got dressed and quickly tugged my shoes on. All the while, she rolled up our bed which now consisted of four animal skins. She crammed them into the backpack and then handed it to me.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  Just then, I noticed that her hands weren’t black, but actually more of a burgundy color. Her new poncho, which she actually wore as a dress, was also covered in burgundy splatters. My first thought was that she had come home from the hunt with a significant kill, but that wouldn’t explain her worried expression. She kept the candle with her and picked up her bow as we neared the door.

  “I need to know-”

  “Nothing… I’ll tell you in a bit,” she interrupted.

  The world outside our home was dark and the quarter moon was high in the sky. All I could do was follow Wildwood’s candle. She led the way out of the village and to the path that led into the woods. When I felt we were at a safe distance, I finally asked her again.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, more frustrated than before, “Tell me!”

  “It’s awful, Time Traveler,” she burst into tears, “You don’t want to know.”

  “Tell me! Why are we leaving in the middle of the night? I don’t want to leave.”

  She turned to me and held up her bloodied hand so it was close to my face.