Under a Blackberry Moon

by Serena Miller

  “I know that, but evidently she doesn’t right now. If you try to take Ayasha from her, she might hurt him. Let me handle this.”

  Isabella’s expensive velvet dress was already tattered and soiled from sleeping on the ground. Her hair hung in straggles around her face. She had lost weight and her eyes looked sunken. He pitied her, but he had to get that baby away from her.

  “Good morning, Isabella.” Carefully, he sauntered into her line of vision with his hands in his pockets, as though he didn’t have a care in the world and that it was normal for him to find her here.

  She clutched the baby tightly to her chest, and her eyes darted back and forth as though deciding where to run. That was one thing he was trying to avoid, Isabella running. He didn’t know what Moon Song might do to her if she had to chase her down.

  To keep that from happening, he sat down on another fallen tree several feet away from her. He did not want her to feel threatened.

  “Did you sleep well?” He yawned and stretched his arms above his head. “That’s the best night’s sleep I’ve had since the explosion.”

  She watched him with wary eyes.

  He searched for something to say that she would not perceive as a threat. “That’s a pretty song you were singing. What’s it about?”

  “It’s a children’s song I learned in Paris. Archie likes it. He always has.”

  “What’s it about?”

  “A hen. An egg. A church. Children.”

  “I never heard that lullaby before,” he said.

  “You can’t take my baby away from me again,” she said. “That was mean, telling me he was gone when it was the Indian woman’s baby who was dead. It was horribly mean to switch babies and trick me.”

  “You’re right. If we had done that, it would have been a very mean trick, indeed, but we didn’t. I’m sorry you are in so much pain, Isabella.”

  She held the baby’s head against her neck and began to rock again, faster this time.

  “You’re lying,” she said. “I saw you two kissing. I know you two plotted to steal my baby.”

  He picked up a twig and began to break it into pieces. “How are you going to feed him, Isabella?”

  This seemed to puzzle her. Her forehead furrowed as she thought.

  As though on cue, Ayasha began to whimper and root around on her chest.

  “I think the baby’s hungry now,” he said.

  She looked around, panicked.

  “Moon Song?” he called. “Isabella needs for you to come nurse her baby.”

  It was a long shot, playing along with her illusion, pretending the baby was hers until Moon Song could get her hands on him. But it was the only way he could think of to pry the baby out of Isabella’s arms without the possibility of endangering him.

  Moon Song walked out from behind a tree. She’d figured out what he was trying to do. “You want me to feed the baby, Isabella?”

  Isabella looked at Moon Song and then back at Skypilot.

  “You two are trying to trick me!”

  “No, Isabella,” Skypilot said. “We’re trying to help you.”

  Isabella stood up, wrapped the petticoat more snugly around the baby as though preparing to hand him to Moon Song, then gathered up her skirt with one hand and with Ayasha in the other took off like a shot.

  Never would he have believed that Isabella could move that fast.

  She was taller and her legs much longer than Moon Song’s. The unnatural strength that sometimes comes with great fear or with insanity sent her practically leaping through the forest with as much agility as a deer. Moon Song was driven by the wild desire to protect her son, but she was smaller and it took everything she had to keep up with the larger woman.

  As he took off running after them, he remembered how last night Isabella was so exhausted he was half afraid he was going to have to start carrying her if they were ever going to get to Marquette.

  Her spurt of energy propelled her up the hill and over onto the beach. When he topped the hill, he saw Isabella standing hip deep in the water. Moon Song was wading out to her with her arms outstretched.

  “Please,” Moon Song kept saying, her heartbreak so audible in that one word. “Please!”

  Isabella backed away farther into the lake. She was up to her waist, and a corner of the petticoat Ayasha was wrapped in was dragging in the water. She lifted the baby onto her shoulder. “Stay away. You can’t have him. He’s mine!”

  Skypilot was in the water now, standing beside Moon Song.

  “Please don’t go out any farther,” he pleaded. “We’re not going to take the baby away from you, not until you give us permission to hold him.”

  Her eyes were slits of suspicion. “You keep trying to trick me.”

  Moon Song was creeping closer. Isabella noticed and took another step backward.

  “Stop it, Moon Song!” he said. “She’ll go out too far if you don’t.”

  His warning came too late. A wave came in, larger than the others, enough to cause Isabella to lose her footing. She thrashed around, trying to keep her balance and save herself, and in so doing, she dropped Ayasha into the water.

  In a flash, Moon Song dove headfirst into the lake and started swimming under the water to where Isabella had dropped the baby. Skypilot waded farther in, following Moon Song. Isabella came up, spluttering and gasping.

  “Help me!” She grabbed hold of him.

  “Stand up!” He shook her off. “It’s not even over your head.”

  He was no swimmer, but he held his breath and ducked beneath the crystal-clear water with his eyes open, trying to find the baby.

  All he saw was Moon Song.

  The same wave that had knocked Isabella over had evidently sucked Ayasha back out into the lake before Moon Song could get to him.

  Again Isabella grabbed at him. Again he shoved her away. He might not be an expert swimmer, but he would help Moon Song find that baby or he would die trying.

  He went under the water over and over, holding his breath as long as he could, casting about wildly, trying to get a glimpse of the child. Ayasha had been wrapped in that white petticoat, but that had drifted off and now floated by him with no infant in sight.

  “I find him!”

  He rose up and saw Moon Song trying to swim while holding on to her baby’s limp body. He was a full foot taller than Moon Song, and his feet were planted firmly when she got to him. He grabbed the baby from her and, using his greater strength, plowed through the waves, holding the child by the feet, head down. The minute he was out of the water enough to do so, he turned the child upside down over his knee and squeezed his belly, expelling the water from his lungs. Then he tilted the baby’s head back, covered the baby’s mouth and nose with his own mouth, and began to puff air into the infant’s lungs just like he’d been taught by those wonderful volunteers so long ago.

  Moon Song had dredged herself out of the water and was pulling on his arm. “What you do? What you do?”

  “Stop it!” Skypilot shook her off and continued puffing air into the child’s mouth and nose.

  Moon Song backed away but kept circling him, wringing her hands and reaching for her child, which Skypilot refused to give up.

  And then came the moment that he had been praying for desperately. He felt Ayasha stir. He took his mouth away and watched as the child took his first breath and began to wail.

  Moon Song put the child up over her shoulder and bounced and patted him, her face a study in relief. “How you know how to do this?” she asked.

  “I saw a demonstration when I was in college.” He sat down in the sand, completely wrung out.

  Moon Song stood over him. “Where is that white woman?”

  He glanced around and saw Isabella wandering down the beach. The waist of her red dress had torn, and now the hem of it dragged in the sand. The elaborate upswept hairstyle she had worn on the boat had long ago turned into a ragged mass. It streamed down her back, wet, tangled, and matted. She walked with a li
mp.

  “Please hold Ayasha?” Moon Song’s voice was low and deadly. “I go teach lesson to that baby-stealer. Big lesson!”

  “No, Moon Song. Don’t hurt her. She isn’t right in the head. She didn’t know what she was doing.”

  “She steal Ayasha again.”

  “We won’t let that happen,” he said wearily.

  “How we keep it from happen?”

  “Neither of us will sleep at the same time or leave him alone with her for an instant. She was a nice person until she snapped. You don’t know how you would react if you were in the same situation, Moon Song.”

  Moon Song stared at the apparition limping down the beach and gave his words consideration.

  “Keep white woman away from me.”

  They spent the rest of the day with the three of them spread out in a thin and ragged line. Isabella limping along in front of them. Skypilot in the middle. Moon Song bringing up the rear. He strode ahead once, to try to talk to Isabella and see if she was snapping out of it. She wasn’t. She stared at the ground and did not acknowledge his presence or his questions. She did not speed up or slow down, she simply kept putting one foot in front of the other as her limp grew worse and worse. By midafternoon, Isabella’s walk had slowed until their journey became little more than a crawl.

  “I go ahead,” Moon Song said. “Find food.”

  “That sounds fine,” he said. “I’ll stay behind and keep an eye on her. I don’t want her to wander away.”

  Moon Song took off at a mile-eating trot with Ayasha bouncing along on her back. Skypilot hoped that if he ever had a baby, it would be as good as Moon Song’s son. That little boy had been through so much and yet rarely whimpered unless he was hungry or cold. It was as though those black button eyes were too busy absorbing everything he saw to complain or cry.

  Moon Song soon disappeared around a curve in the lakeshore, and he didn’t see her again until they came upon her as she bent over what looked to be a steaming hole in the ground.

  “Mussels,” she explained. “Found wild onion too.”

  When he got there, he was amazed at what she had been able to accomplish. She had dug a hole, built a fire, and dredged mussels from the sand and water. When she saw them coming, she scraped away the hot rocks and, using pieces of driftwood as utensils, offered the half-opened steamed mussels to him and Isabella.

  “Very good,” she said, cracking the shell all the way open and scooping a tender morsel into her own mouth to show how it was done.

  “Look, Isabella.” He put his hand on Isabella’s arm to stop her plodding, onward progress. “Moon Song has made a meal. You can stop and rest awhile and eat.”

  “Here.” Moon Song tried to put a cooked mussel into Isabella’s hand. “Give you strength.”

  Isabella allowed the mussel to drop from her limp hand and kept walking.

  “You need to eat something,” Skypilot said. “This will help you stay alive.”

  Isabella wouldn’t stop. She just kept plodding on. Annoyed and hungry, he grabbed her arm and forced her to stop. It was only then that she seemed to notice him. She looked straight at him, and her eyes were as wild as the wind. Then, with no warning, she opened her mouth and began to scream.

  He’d heard Isabella scream the night of the steamship explosion, but this was different. There was no emotion in this scream. It was as though she had become a sort of force of nature.

  He dropped her arm and took several steps back as she continued to scream and scream. It was the single most hair-raising thing he’d ever experienced, and that included the years he had spent trying to help slaves escape.

  What was this . . . this thing Isabella had turned into? Nothing in his experience, from his Bible college training, to his time in the ministry, to working in the lumber camps, had prepared him for this.

  Finally, when he’d gotten far enough away from her, she stopped abruptly, like a teakettle that had been taken off the fire, and once more began to walk west along the shore.

  He walked back to the fire where Moon Song was consuming aromatic mussel meat, and then he turned back around and watched Isabella walk away.

  “Huh,” Moon Song said. “Look like she not hungry.”

  It was such an understatement in the face of such bizarre behavior that he glanced at her to see if she was joking. A look of dry humor flickered behind her eyes.

  “I have no idea what just happened,” he said. “But I certainly won’t try that again!”

  Moon Song simply shrugged and kept eating as she squatted beside the small cooking pit. Without another word, he joined her in breaking open the mussels and throwing the shells over his shoulder. After they finished, refreshed and reinvigorated by the food, it was no problem to catch up with Isabella, who had slowed even more. It touched him that Moon Song folded some cooked mussels into a scrap of the sheet fabric she’d saved.

  “For Isabella,” she said. “If she change mind.”

  There came a time in the middle of the afternoon when Isabella stopped and simply sat down.

  “Do you want to rest, or are you ready to camp?” Skypilot asked her.

  Isabella did not reply.

  “You hungry?” Moon Song offered her the little bag of mussels she’d been carrying, but Isabella did not acknowledge them.

  Moon Song gave up. “I go find firewood.”

  Skypilot sat down beside Isabella, but she did not acknowledge his presence. She just kept on with that empty stare. He glanced down at her feet and saw that her shoes were coming apart. No surprise there. They had never been made for walking long distances. Then he saw blood seeping out of a busted seam.

  “You’re bleeding!”

  She didn’t appear to hear him. Carefully, and making no sudden moves, he got on his knees and began unlacing her high-topped shoe. She didn’t seem to notice. It was as though she had gone far away in her mind and had forgotten that she even owned a body, let alone realized that it was hurting. What he saw after he unlaced her shoe sickened him.

  One side of her right foot was so blistered and raw it looked like someone had poured boiling water over it.

  “Moon Song,” he called. “You’d better come see this.”

  In spite of her anger with Isabella, even Moon Song was appalled.

  “She no walk anymore, feet like that.”

  When he took off her other boot, he found it was not quite as bad, but it had been rubbed raw in several places too.

  “We won’t be going any farther today,” he said.

  Moon Song did not have her grandmother’s expertise, but she knew a few plants that could heal a wound and immediately went in search of a sage plant she had seen awhile back. While gathering the sage, she also saw a newly fallen birch tree, from which she cut two large rectangles of bark.

  When she got back to the camp, she shaped the first rectangle of bark into another cooking pot, just like the one she’d had before, dipped water into it, then tore the sage leaves into shreds and allowed the mixture to simmer. When that was finished, she set it off to one side to cool. She picked up the second sheet of bark, but Isabella, who had been practically comatose since nearly drowning in the lake, snatched it away.

  “No,” Moon Song chided, holding her hand out for it. “This is for tea water.”

  Isabella ignored her and smoothed the bark out on her lap.

  “What is she doing?” Moon Song said.

  Skypilot had managed to spear a large fish and was roasting it over the fire just as he’d seen Moon Song do. He turned the fish over and continued to roast it. “I have no idea why Isabella is doing anything she’s doing.”

  A piece of half-charred wood that had fallen away from the fire caught Isabella’s eye. She snatched it up, even though a tiny curl of smoke still rose from it. She flattened the birch bark on her knees and began to make quick, slashing marks with the blackened stick upon the smooth, white inner surface of the bark.

  Moon Song looked over her shoulder and watched.

&
nbsp; Using birch bark as drawing paper, or to record rituals or maps, was not new to Moon Song. Her people had been doing that for centuries. They had many birch bark scrolls they treated as sacred.

  Still, she had never seen anyone making such fast and furious marks before. It was as though Isabella was possessed. She frowned as she drew, and spittle flew from her open mouth.

  Moon Song continued to peer over Isabella’s shoulder, astonished. Chippewa women loved to make intricate decorations upon their clothing. Some made intricate designs on birch bark by folding it and leaving bite marks that when unfolded blossomed into lovely patterns, but she had never seen any of her people do anything remotely like this.

  With quick, sure strokes, Isabella had drawn a picture of a man’s face. To be exact, it was Colonel James Hatchette’s face, and it was so lifelike that it seemed almost like magic. Moon Song could not imagine how anyone could make a face appear with a burnt stick and some birch bark.

  Isabella finished the drawing, stared at it, added a couple more strokes to perfect it, and then tossed it onto the fire.

  It was such a miraculous piece of work in Moon Song’s eyes, she almost snatched it out of the fire to save it, but Skypilot grabbed her hand. “That’s her picture and she should be allowed to do with it as she wishes.”

  Isabella closed her eyes and relaxed against the boulder behind her. A big sigh escaped her.

  Moon Song’s head was still reeling from what she had seen. How could anyone make a man’s head just appear like that?

  “Is that stew you were making ready?” Skypilot asked. “It’s certainly smelling good.”

  “Stew?” At first, Moon Song had no idea what he was talking about, then she understood. “Oh, that is medicine for Isabella’s feet.”

  She had gotten so caught up in watching Isabella draw that she’d forgotten the poultice. It had cooled to the point that she could put it on the bad places of Isabella’s feet without hurting her.

  “Pity.” Skypilot smiled. “For a moment, I thought you were whipping us up a Thanksgiving dinner.”

  “You joke?” She wasn’t sure.

  “Yes, Moon Song. That was a joke. Sage is one of the spices my mother used when she was cooking turkey.”