The Native Star

by M. K. Hobson

  She followed them to a wide clearing on the shores of the slow Sacramento River. It was ringed with oaks and shaggy cottonwoods, and within it stood several round dugouts, domed with willow and tree bark. Campfire smoke drifted against the gray afternoon sky. Children chased one another, making high hooting sounds; dogs nipped at their heels. Women chatted over stone mortars, clay pipes clamped between black-stained teeth.

  When they stopped, Emily slid down from her saddle. The man in the black felt hat took both horses’ reins; without a word, he led the animals away.

  “Hope you see your horses again,” Emily muttered, watching as a group of young boys clustered around the animals, laying light brown hands on their warm glossy sides.

  “Spoken with all the broad-mindedness and generosity of spirit I’ve come to expect from you, Miss Edwards,” Stanton said. “He’s taking them to food and water. Come along … Komé will be waiting.”

  “Komé?”

  “Komé is the tribe’s Maien, of whom I spoke earlier. She’s a very powerful practitioner. I want to get her opinion on the stone in your hand.”

  “So you meant to ride down here all the time?” Emily said. “You could have told me.”

  “And listen to you complain about it all the way from Dutch Flat?” Stanton looked at her sidelong.

  They stopped before a long low house, much larger than the other dugouts. They stood outside and waited for what seemed quite a long time. Long enough for the rain to pick up again. Emily pulled her hat down and peered at Stanton from under the brim.

  “Well? Shouldn’t you knock or something?”

  “She knows we’re here,” Stanton said.

  And indeed, a few moments later, an old woman came out of the long house, ducking underneath the low door. She leaned heavily on a feather-tipped staff. She was followed by a large dog, wrapped in a brightly colored blanket … but no, Emily thought, it was not a dog. It was a girl who couldn’t be more than fourteen, whose back was bent so drastically that she could not stand, only creep along in a painful shuffle. She kept her balance with one hand on the ground, her long black braids dragging in the dirt as she hitched herself along. When she looked up at Stanton and Emily, her eyes narrowed suspiciously. Emily knew it was rude to stare, but she could not take her eyes off the girl, who came to rest by the old woman’s feet.

  “Hiti weychin, Komé,” Stanton said, raising a hand.

  The Holy Woman was cheerful and chubby, with bright white teeth. Her skin was a rich russet, and black tattoos ran from the bottom of her lower lip over her chin and down her throat, disappearing into the collar of her soft doeskin tunic. Her ears were pierced with thick cylinders of blackened, polished bone, and beads glittered from where they had been woven into her salt-and-pepper hair. Even the cut-glass beads, however, could not match the sparkle of her eyes as she looked at Stanton and Emily. She smiled broadly, as if they’d both done something vastly amusing.

  “Komé, Miss Emily Edwards. Miss Edwards, Komé.” The introduction was spoken so formally, Emily wasn’t sure whether to curtsy or bow or shake hands, so she did a bit of each and ended up looking silly. Stanton began speaking haltingly in Miwok. It was clear he was no expert in the language, but the woman bobbed her head indulgently, as if listening to a favorite grandchild.

  “Show her your hand,” Stanton said.

  Emily pulled off her glove. Then she stretched her arm to extend her hand, not wanting to step any closer to the girl at Komé’s feet, having gotten the distinct feeling that she might get bitten. The stone winked dully in the heavy gray light of late afternoon. The old woman glanced at it, but it didn’t appear to interest her. Emily’s face, on the other hand, she seemed to find fascinating. She searched it, muttering as she pinched Emily’s cheek. She then held Emily at arm’s length and looked her up and down, appraisingly. She squinted at Emily’s ankles, her waist, her hair. All the while, she talked under her breath in a creaking monotone.

  “Sizing me up for the cook pot, no doubt,” Emily muttered.

  Indeed, even Stanton seemed frustrated with Komé’s unwillingness to get to the point. He shook his head and said something that cut her mutterings short. The Maien looked at him, shocked, then gave a big boisterous laugh. She hit Stanton fondly, punching him in the arm with her little gnarled fist.

  “What is she saying?” Emily whispered furiously. Stanton paid no attention to her, but rubbed his arm as he spoke to the old woman again, separating each word carefully. With a smile, the woman took Emily’s hand again and looked at the stone more carefully. The twisted girl shuffled closer, too, reaching up to put both her hands on Emily’s arm. Her eyes were turbulent pools. There was a question in those eyes, a question that Emily wished she knew how to answer. A question she wished she understood.

  The strange moment was broken when the Maien threw up her hands and waved Emily and Stanton away, peppering them with a rapid verbal staccato. She turned back toward her longhouse, and the girl shuffled after her without a backward glance.

  “She’s got no more time for us tonight,” he said to Emily, taking her elbow. “She and Lawa have to get ready.”

  “Lawa? That bent girl?”

  “Her daughter,” Stanton said.

  “She gave me the shivers.” Emily looked up at Stanton. “So what was all that about? She went on and on.”

  “When speaking to Komé, threshing the grain from the chaff can be a taxing pursuit.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She congratulated me,” Stanton said. Emily knit her brow at him.

  “Congratulated you? For what? You haven’t done anything.”

  “The congratulations were part of the chaff,” he said. “The grain, on the other hand, was her insistence that the stone is watching us.”

  “Watching us?”

  “Watching over us. Protecting us.”

  “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” Emily snorted. “If the stone was watching over us, it certainly wouldn’t have sucked up all that magic you tried to throw at the raccoon. Indeed, given the evidence, it seems more likely that the stone would like nothing better than to see us in our graves.”

  “She said that the stone was trying desperately to speak to us. But it cannot, she said, for it does not have the tongue to speak and you do not have the ears to hear.”

  Emily looked at him.

  “It’s a mineral, Mr. Stanton.”

  “As I said, she can be somewhat abstract in her expression. The point is that she speaks of the stone as if it were … alive.”

  “Min-er-al.” Emily emphasized each syllable.

  “A few magical theorists have pursued the question of whether the Mantic Anastomosis possesses a kind of nonhuman consciousness.” Stanton rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “They’ve all been dismissed as crackpots. But that’s understandable, because to believe that it does implies that we might have some sort of responsibility to it. And no one likes responsibility.”

  “Leaving magical theory aside …” Emily stroked the stone with her thumb. “What if it does have some kind of consciousness? What would that mean to us?”

  “I can’t answer that,” Stanton said. “But it would be interesting to know what it was trying to tell us, wouldn’t it?” Then, sniffing the air, on which a succulent and meaty odor wafted delicately, his eyes closed with pleasant anticipation.

  “Finally,” he said. “Dinner is served.”

  Faced with the dinner offered by the Indians, Emily would much rather have eaten soggy bread and cheese from the horses’ saddlebags. But, for the sake of politeness, Stanton insisted that she at least sample the Indians’ feast.

  “What’s this?” she asked, pointing to a pile of mush that had been presented to her on a broad, flat oak leaf.

  “Maskala. Acorn bread.” Stanton was shoveling his down like a sailor who hadn’t seen port in a week. “Acorns are a staple of their diet.”

  Emily tasted it gingerly; it was bland and slightly bitter, like
cornmeal soaked in water and seasoned with black tea. Emily forced down a couple of bites and deemed politeness more than served. Stanton, however, helped himself to seconds. The Indians seemed to find feeding him a challenging entertainment. The women brought dish after dish and he worked valiantly to keep up the pace. Finally, they brought a great wooden platter of steaming meat. Emily took a whiff, recognizing it immediately.

  “Raccoon!” She looked at Stanton suspiciously. “Don’t tell me—”

  “Waste not, want not,” Stanton said taking a piece of meat with his fingers.

  “Is it safe to eat?”

  Stanton took a big bite.

  “The Indians have been feasting on Aberrancies for years,” he said, licking a thumb. “They call them ‘tragic gifts of the earth.’”

  Emily took a piece of tragic gift meat and tasted it. It was aggressively gamey—a flavor that reminded her unpleasantly of the hard winter just passed. She wondered what Pap was doing. What was he eating? Was he eating? Mrs. Lyman would see to it that he got his meals, wouldn’t she? The old busybody wouldn’t abandon Pap just because everyone in town thought that his foster daughter had run off with a traveling Warlock … would she?

  Emily’s worried thoughts were interrupted by a general mumbling from the people around them. Komé came into the middle of the circle. She was followed by Lawa—limping, shuffling, and bent. In her hands, the girl clutched her mother’s staff.

  Komé was magnificently arrayed in a skirt of iridescent magpie feathers and a hat of flicker plumes. She wore a tunic and leggings of white deerskin, fringed and beaded. Taking the staff from the bent girl, Komé began to chant, a sibilant song that resonated with gravity and meaning. All around her, the feasters stilled in respectful silence.

  Stanton used a handkerchief to wipe his hands, then leaned close to murmur in Emily’s ear:

  “You might find this interesting. Komé will lead a spirit dance to night to pray for the soul of the dead raccoon. It’s a fascinating magical ceremony, with roots in the most ancient traditions on the North American continent.”

  “Then I’d better get as far away from it as possible.” Emily thought of how Stanton’s magic had been sucked into the rock in her hand. She certainly didn’t want to do anything that would interfere with the satisfactory disposition of the spirit of the evil raccoon. Besides that, thinking of Pap had left her feeling somewhat low-spirited and weary. “I think I’ll just go to sleep.”

  One of the women showed Emily to a hut that was used for storing food. It was dry and tidy, full of finely woven baskets brimming with acorns and dried meats. Herbs hung from the ceiling, and Emily looked them over with a professional eye. Balsam and purple milkweed, black nightshade and mountain misery, rattlesnake weed and monkey-root—even desert lavender. She crumbled some in her hand, sprinkled it all around herself, wishing she could empower it with a rhyme of general protection. But since she couldn’t, she satisfied herself with the relaxing odor.

  On the floor had been laid a massive pelt, large as the fancy carpet in Mrs. Bargett’s reception parlor. Emily felt the fur between her fingers. Beaver, the largest beaver one could imagine. Another “tragic gift,” no doubt. She wondered how one went about cleaning black slime off a pelt that size.

  Wearily, Emily curled up under her soggy buffalo coat, the smell of which did battle with the lavender and won handily. She did not sleep. The Maien’s slow rhythmic chanting made the darkness vibrate. It made Emily’s nerves jangle and her muscles tense, and even when it started to rain again, the soft pitter-pats on the leaves overhead did nothing to soothe her. After what seemed an eternity of frozen wakefulness, there was a noise at the door. She felt for the heavy rock she’d hidden beside her. She lifted it, ready to brain any redskin who came looking for trouble, but it was just Stanton. He came in, shaking water off his coat.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Edwards, but we’ll have to share. It’s a foul night, and I have no intention of sleeping outside after the day I’ve had.”

  “Suit yourself.” Emily made her voice diffident, certainly not wanting to reveal her relief that Stanton would be nearby. “I can’t sleep anyway.”

  “Then you won’t mind a little light?” Stanton took a small spirit lantern from his saddlebag. She heard him snap his fingers and mutter, “Flamma.”

  The wick of the spirit lantern burst into brilliant flame. He shook his head, his eyes narrowing with thought.

  “You were yards away from me today, and the stone sucked up the magic like a sponge. But here you are not two feet from me, and I can summon flames.”

  “Something forced my hand up to catch the magic. I couldn’t have stopped it if I’d tried.”

  “I have a theory as to why,” Stanton said.

  “Of course you do.” Emily sat up and wrapped her arms around her knees.

  “Remember I said there was a distance correlation? That is, the farther away you are from the source of the magic, the less likely the stone is to grab onto it? I believe there’s also a force correlation. The greater the force of the magic, the more the stone seeks to absorb it.”

  “So, the more powerful the spell, the more likely the stone is to suck it up?” Emily said.

  “Evidence seems to support it,” Stanton said. As he spoke, he took out the telescoping blade he had used earlier in the day. The segmented blade, when fully extended, was about three feet long and brilliantly shiny. Using his handkerchief, Stanton began cleaning it.

  “Nice little knife,” she said. “Carry it around to peel apples, do you?”

  “It’s called a misprision blade,” Stanton said, squinting along its edge. “Useful for many things. But you can’t let them get dirty. They might fail to open at an inopportune time.”

  There was a pause in the chanting outside. Emily relished the sweet sound of rain echoing in silence. But within moments the chanting resumed, now to the accompaniment of drums.

  “They’re still dancing?” Emily said, sounding more snappish than she would have liked. “In the rain?”

  “They’ve moved into the earth lodge.” Stanton wiped a speck from the bright metal. “You really are afraid of these people, aren’t you?”

  “Why shouldn’t I be?” Emily said.

  “I would think you might have some sympathy for them. Driven from place to place to make room for wheat and sheep. Doesn’t that strike you as a bit unfair?”

  “Well, what use are they making of the land?” Emily said. “They don’t farm, or ranch.”

  “Sometimes I wonder if everything must always have a use,” Stanton said.

  “Well, as far as I can see, Indians don’t.”

  “Is that your considered opinion, Miss Edwards?” Stanton’s tone was chilly. “I suppose you agree with President Grant, that the Indians should be relocated and reeducated? Dressed in suits and made to be useful?” He gave the blade a fierce swipe with the cloth. “Or perhaps your opinions run closer to those of Little Phil Sheridan, who only likes Indians when they’re dead?”

  “Spoken like a sanctimonious easterner,” she hissed. “I’m perfectly aware that you think everyone on this side of the Great Divide is ignorant and unfair and reckless to boot. But your ‘friends’ have shown themselves perfectly capable of giving as bad as they get. I’m sure you’ve never seen that side of them, Mr. Stanton.”

  “And you have?” Stanton’s voice was derisive.

  “Yes,” Emily spat fiercely, “I have.”

  Then she was silent for a long moment, confused by her own sudden vehemence.

  Why on earth had she said that?

  Surprising as an easterner like Stanton would probably find it, Emily hadn’t seen many Indians in her life in Lost Pine. And the handful she had encountered, she’d given a wide berth to. She’d certainly never been harmed or even threatened by an Indian. And yet … there was something in the back of her mind, calling insistently to her, demanding to be remembered.

  It was like watching a strange glimmer of light move in a wel
l of complete blackness. She was silent, watching the distant brilliance as it grew and expanded into a memory—a memory she’d never had before.

  “Miss Edwards?” Stanton’s voice prompted, but she hardly heard it. She was staring at the rough dirt floor, but she wasn’t looking at it. She was looking through it at the memories welling up behind her eyes …

  A late summer night.

  The plains, brooding dark beyond borders of moonlight. Sleeping next to her mother’s warm body under a heavy wool coat. The sound of calls—Indian calls, urgent and terrifying. The clop of unshod hooves on hard-packed clay soil. Her mother scrambling to her feet, screaming. Running.

  “My mother,” Emily said in a monotone, narrating the strange images as they bloomed within her brain. “I was with my mother. We were traveling across the country. I was very young, and they chased us. Braves in paint. They were yelling at her, calling her names. They were angry at her.”

  Emily held onto the memory, clung to it tightly. She looked at her mother’s face, trying to fix an image of it, but for some reason, all she could see were her mother’s eyes, glowing and glossy with fear.

  “She was terrified,” Emily whispered. “We got away from them, but I don’t know how. They had horses. They could have caught us and killed us if they wanted to. Maybe they just wanted us to go away.” She paused, the sting of remembered tears making her eyes ache. “They didn’t have any call to scare her like that.”

  Stanton collapsed the misprision blade. The soft click of it broke Emily’s concentration. The images scattered like blown leaves.

  “I’m sorry about your mother,” Stanton said. He tucked the knife away, and was silent for a moment before speaking again. “But why in heaven’s name was she traveling across the country with a child, alone?”

  Emily shrugged, shaking her head.