Shadowbrook

by Swerling, Beverly

  “Memetosia hears all that happens in our world, as is fitting. But it was not Uko Nyakwai’s choice to fight Pontiac, revered Chief. Pontiac questioned Uko Nyakwai’s right to the totem given him by the great Ottawa chief Recumsah.”

  Cormac was puzzled by the lack of anger with which the old man talked about the Ottawa. It was the Ottawa who, after everything else in Pickawillany was destroyed, had killed and eaten the old man’s grandson, Memeskia.

  Cormac’s eyes had adjusted to the near-dark of the room. He could see the chief clearly now. Despite Memeskia’s fierceness in battle the French had called him La Demoiselle, the Young Woman, because of the delicacy of his features. Memetosia had the same small nose and large eyes and thin face as his grandson. In his youth he, too, would probably have made a pretty girl. Now he looked gaunt and gray with illness, and beneath his many tattoos his cheeks were covered with the marks that showed that sometime in the past he had survived the great sickness, the smallpox, that had slaughtered so many of the Miami.

  The rheumy old eyes studied Cormac. He seemed to know what the younger man was thinking. He made an impatient gesture, as if he did not wish to discuss the wrongs he and his clan had suffered at the hands of the Ottawa, who were brothers to the Potawatomi. “You call Uko Nyakwai by a name that makes him a Real Person,” Memetosia said, “but he is white.”

  “He walked through the Potawatomi fire, revered Chief.”

  Cormac let the words hang in the air between them. Memetosia knew this to be so; it meant that Quent was Potawatomi by adoption and despite his white skin he was truly Anishinabeg. That could never be undone, not even by a full Miami chief.

  “Ayi!” the old man grunted. “Do not tell me things I know. You waste my time!”

  Cormac quickly bowed his head low. “I beg your forgiveness, revered Chief.”

  The crane-feather stick was waved over his head, dismissing his impertinence and accepting his apology. “They say that you are wise in the two worlds, that you do not give yourself to one at the expense of the other. From many people I have heard this. It is true?”

  “It is as true as I can make it, revered Chief.”

  Memetosia started to say something, but another fit of coughing stalled his words. Cormac looked around, spotted a tankard, and sniffed it. Water. “Will this help you, revered Chief?”

  The old man sipped the water, letting Corm hold the tankard for him. He spoke again. “There are others who are like you and the Piankashaw squaw.” The old man nodded in the direction of the double doors where he knew Genevieve waited. “Others who have the blood of both the whites and the Real People. This is true, is it not?”

  “There are many of us, revered Chief. Some call us métis.”

  Memetosia nodded agreement. “That is true. The one called Charles Langlade, he too is a métis, is he not?”

  Langlade, who had led the raid on Pickawillany, was half French and half Ottawa. Cormac had heard it was Langlade who threw Memeskia into the pot. Ayi! How could he be so stupid as to have forgotten that. “He is, revered Chief, but—”

  Memetosia cut him off with another wave of the crane feathers. “A man can be good or evil and be all Anishinabeg or all white. Why should a mix be any different? Tell me something else—Lantak, the outlaw who no longer obeys his own chiefs, you know him?”

  Cormac tried hard not to show his shock Memetosia seemed to be implying that Lantak was also a métis. He’d never heard that before. “I have seen Lantak, revered Chief, but only down the barrel of my long gun.”

  “It is a pity you never shot him. He is a danger to Real People and whites alike.”

  “I agree.”

  “So will you shoot him now?”

  Cormac had no idea where this conversation was going, or what was truly being said. “If I find him in my sights, I will shoot him. It is as you say, Lantak cannot be trusted by either side. And he preys on squaws and children.”

  The old man nodded. “Yes. That is all true. But usually white squaws and white children. They are our enemies, too, are they not?”

  Cormac spoke slowly, choosing his words. “I have much reverence for your great age and wisdom, Memetosia, Chief of the Miami. But I have also spent many moons thinking of this thing that has come to the lands of the Anishinabeg.”

  The old man’s gaze became more intent. Perhaps everything he had heard about this young man was correct. “Your skin is white, Cormac Shea. But they say you are truly of the Anishinabeg.”

  “I am truly red and truly white, Revered Chief. When the white men came to our land they created some like me who have inside them the blood of two worlds.”

  Memetosia nodded, encouraging the younger man with his eyes. He waved the stick of crane feathers in a gesture of agreement.

  “I take neither one side nor the other when I say that if the Anishinabeg continue trying to fight the white men, the Anishinabeg will lose. Eventually there will be no Real People left in the woods beside the salt waters, or the great waters without salt, or even in the high hills.” Passion rose in Cormac as he spoke and his white skin no longer mattered. He was truly Indian. “We are no longer happy simply with knives of flint and tomahawks of stone. We want their iron weapons. We want their cloths and their ornaments. We have killed nearly every beaver in our lands attempting to satisfy their hunger for skins, and ours for what they have. But our hunger is never satisfied and we are always at their mercy. We get guns and they come with bigger guns. And there are many more of them than of us. They enslave us with their firewater and sicken us with their diseases. We must find a way to live in peace with the Cmokmanuk, and at the same time remain who we are: Miami and Potawatomi and Fox and Ojibwe, even Irinakhoiw.”

  “Even Irinakhoiw were put in this world by the Great Spirit,” the old man agreed softly. “I have heard what you said. And I take it you do not believe what Pontiac says. That we must band together to fight the whites if the Anishinabeg are to survive.”

  “It may be true, revered Chief. But I do not think it can ever happen. For Pontiac’s plan to work, all the Real People would have to forget all their ancient grievances and fight side by side.”

  Memetosia made a sound in his throat. “To fight beside the Irinakhoiw, the snakes … The sun will fall out of the sky before that will happen.”

  “Yes, I think so, too. That is why Pontiac’s way cannot come to pass.”

  “The squaw out there,” he nodded toward the part of the house beyond the double doors where Genevieve waited, “she tells me you have another plan.”

  At last Cormac understood what he was doing here: Genevieve had told Memetosia of his dream. And if Memetosia had summoned him to his deathbed to discuss it, then the old man must believe that it could be effective. “Revered Chief,” he said eagerly, “I believe we and the whites must divide the land. They will stay in one part and we will stay in the other. We will take the land of cold and snow because we are the great hunters. They will take the rest, the land where the sun shines in every moon, because their crops will grow there. We will trade when it suits us and suits them, but we will have no need to spill blood over the land.”

  “And on which side will you be, Cormac Shea? With the Anishinabeg or with the whites?”

  “I cannot change my destiny, revered Chief. I and those like me will always move between two worlds.”

  The old man nodded. “Yes, that is so. But it is also true that no one can own land. It belongs to the Great Spirit who created it.”

  “I know. But people can divide the land according to how it is to be used, and who may be permitted to make their villages and live in peace.”

  “That is the question,” Memetosia said softly, speaking it seemed more to himself than to Cormac. “Can the whites ever be made into Real People? Can they be trusted to give their word and keep it?”

  “Some of them can.”

  The chief nodded. “So you say. So others say. Tell me, my son,” it was the first time he had used that form of familiar affec
tion with Cormac, “did your totem reveal this plan to you in a dream?”

  Cormac lowered his head, thinking deeply about his answer. A plan revealed in a sleeping dream would carry much more authority, but to lie about such a thing … He could not hope for success if he made a mockery of everything he’d learned at the fires of Singing Snow. If he allowed himself to be more white than Potawatomi, he would no longer be a bridge and nothing he hoped for could come to pass.

  “The way was not shown to me in sleep, revered Chief. It was revealed slowly. Many times in my village, as a boy and later as a man, I would go to the cleansing place, and after I was purified I would open my mind and let the Spirit show me truth. It was in this manner that the way for the two worlds to live in peace was revealed to me. After a long time and much purification.”

  Memetosia nodded, slowly and with much gravity. “Sometimes that is how the Spirit speaks. Yes. I, too, have opened my mind to my totem in these last days of my time here.” He reached beneath the blankets and came up clutching a medicine bag. “I came here to this place, even though I knew I was beginning to let go of my spirit, to speak with the white chiefs,” Memetosia murmured. “I thought I must try one more time …”

  “Try what, revered Chief?”

  “It doesn’t matter. They are more concerned with each other now than with us.” The rasping whisper was weaker now and Cormac had to bend close to hear the words. “There is going to be war between the French and the British.”

  “There is always war between the French and the British.”

  “Yes. But with every sunrise the drums grow louder in their ears. There was a fort made by the ones who call themselves Virginians, where the two rivers meet in the country of the snakes called Mingo.”

  “Fort Necessity,” Cormac said. “Uko Nyakwai told me about it. The young man who is called Washington, he—”

  “He was surrounded by the French and their big guns, and they killed all his horses and mules and oxen and he surrendered. The French were fools and let their enemies walk away, so they must fight them again, but someday—soon I think—one will truly win and the other will truly lose. When that happens the winner will be strong enough to crush the Real People entirely. We must protect ourselves against that day. Perhaps by Pontiac’s way, perhaps by yours. But some method must be found. If we go on as we are, they will eat our flesh and throw our bones into the fire.”

  “Memetosia speaks wisdom.” Cormac could smell the sourness of the old man’s breath, the unhealthy reek of his ebbing life.

  The hand holding the medicine bag snaked toward Cormac. “Take this, Cormac Shea who is both white and Anishinabeg. It is the most precious gift I can give. Take it and when the time is right, use it.”

  “Revered Chief, how will I know—”

  The old man had closed his eyes. He turned his face away and made a languid, dismissive gesture with the crane feathers. There would be no more talk.

  The medicine bag was a pouch smaller than the palm of Cormac’s hand and made of fine, very soft deerskin, pure white and decorated with red and black crane symbols, tied tightly with a long deerskin thong fashioned into a large loop. Corm fingered it cautiously. There were a number of hard, uneven objects inside, not flat like coins or small and tubular like wampum.

  On the sofa Memetosia sighed loudly. The old hawk clearly didn’t want Cormac to examine his gift in his presence and wasn’t going to explain its significance. Corm slipped the looped thong over his neck and tucked the medicine bag inside his shirt where it didn’t show, then backed out of the room.

  There was only one brave guarding the door. Cormac wondered where the other had gone, but before he had time to worry, Genevieve walked toward him. She seemed to be studying his face. “Well?”

  “He’s resting. No worse than when you saw him.” Her piercing glance was unnerving. He did not really think it was the condition of the aged chief that was causing her such anxiety, but what else? And was it his imagination that she was staring at the thong around his neck?

  “You look so tired, Cormac.” Now she sounded more like herself, motherly as she’d always been with him. She touched his cheek and started to trace the puckered skin of his scar, even though she knew he hated for anyone to do that. He pulled away. “Sorry,” she murmured. “But—” She broke off, her tone and her look changing. “Come with me,” she said firmly. “I’ve something to show you.”

  He glanced at the Miami still guarding the doors to the room where Memetosia lay dying. The brave’s face betrayed nothing. He felt naked without his weapons; presumably they were still in the front hall. But the mystery of the medicine bag was more compelling. He hurried after Genevieve.

  There was a Miami squaw in the kitchen, kneeling beside the fire stirring something in a big pot. Cormac smelled the familiar reek of rancid bear fat and parched corn, probably the special white corn grown only by the Miami. The Lydius house had become a Miami village. “This way.” Genevieve hurried him through the stone-lined dairy behind the kitchen, and the herb-drying room beyond that, through the kitchen garden, past rows of potherbs, and squash and beans and pumpkins ripening in the high summer heat. In a few strides they reached the woods that covered much of the Lydius land. Cormac was grateful for the shade. “Where are we going?”

  “You’ll see. It’s just there. Look.”

  They had reached the banks of a small stream that cut across the edge of the property. Beside it was a newly made clearing, the stumps of the cut trees still creamy and fresh. A space had been made that was big enough to accommodate a small wigwam formed from willow saplings stuck in the ground in a circle and tied together at the top and covered in skins. There wasn’t any chimney opening that Cormac could see, but he spotted a fire pit for heated stones just inside the flap that served as a door. It was a sweat lodge; he could feel the heat from where he was standing. Another Miami, almost as old as Memetosia from the look of him, was moving between the wigwam and a second fire, this one with a lively blaze that was being used to heat the stones for the pit inside the lodge.

  “I knew as soon as I saw you this morning that you needed this,” Genevieve said. “I asked Takito to make everything ready for you. As an honored guest.” While she spoke the old man squatted beside the fire pit at the door of the lodge and used two forked sticks to probe the heated stones.

  It was unthinkable for Cormac to refuse the high hospitality of the sweat lodge; the steam bath was both a religious ritual and a mark of affection and esteem. “I do not deserve such an honor,” he murmured.

  “Nonsense. We made it for Memetosia, to soothe his old bones and help him prepare for death. Now you must use it to prepare for life, for what you must do.”

  Corm’s mind was racing, trying to sort out the remarkable events of the past few hours. He’d already decided Genevieve must have played a part in events of the day. How else would Memetosia have known that Cormac had a plan for the survival of the Anishinabeg? Maybe she also knew the old chief had given him a gift. Maybe she knew what it was. If so, she knew more than he did.

  He could feel the deerskin pouch resting against his chest. It seemed to generate its own heat. He sensed Genevieve waiting for him to mention it, but she didn’t say anything. Instead she called to the old man tending the fire of the sweat lodge. “Takito, I have brought you the brave called Cormac Shea. He is of the Potawatomi people from the village of Singing Snow.”

  The old man put down his sticks and got to his feet. He moved slowly, and his body, naked except for a breechclout, was ropy with age. One leg was shorter than the other and his gait had a distinctive leftward lurch. “Kihkeelimaahsiiwaki,” he murmured. I do not know him. “But I have heard of his deeds and his skill with the long gun.”

  Cormac was starded to see a whole-skin otter medicine bag around his neck He lifted his hand in greeting, then realized Takito was blind; there were rough scars where his eyes should have been. The tattoos on his cheeks and forearms were distinctive and confirmed the messag
e conveyed by the medicine bag. “I am honored to meet a priest of the Midewiwin,” Cormac said. “I am not deserving that such an esteemed healer should prepare the sweat lodge for me.”

  The Midewiwin priesthood was active among the Potawatomi as well as the Miami and Ojibwe and Ottawa. When they were formed, the Great Spirit had chosen to communicate with them through means of an otter who helped a brave whose leg had been crushed in an accident (a Potawatomi, according to the way Cormac had heard the story). The otter told that first Midè priest that in exchange for the loss of his leg he and those who joined him would be given means to protect the Anishinabeg. After that it became common for many members of the Midewiwin to sacrifice a part of their own bodies at the sacred festival that conferred priesthood. It was possible that Takito had gouged out his own eyes.

  The priest pointed at the sweat lodge. “Everything is ready. Come.”

  Cormac looked around for Genevieve, but she was gone. “With your permission, esteemed priest, I will prepare myself for this great honor.”

  There was a place at the edge of the clearing where three tall pines formed a natural curtain around a flat rock ledge at the edge of the stream. Custom demanded that Cormac enter the rebirth of the steam lodge as he had entered the world at the time of his first birth, entirely naked, without even a totem or a medicine bag of any sort. He took off his moccasins and trousers first, folding them neady, stalling before he must remove his shirt, trying to sense any prying eyes. Instinct told him he was alone except for the old priest squatting beside the fire pit, chanting.