Night Wings

by Joseph Bruchac

  Stazi goes around the back, opens the door, and pulls out a pair of brush cutters. He goes to the front of the van and begins working on the spruces there, cutting them down and piling them to the side, creating an opening. The smell of the cut spruce branches fills my nostrils. I’ve always liked that scent, but it seems jarring to me right now. It also mixes with the odor of Stazi’s sweat, which makes me think of the musky scent of a dangerous animal. When the big man is done, he puts the brush cutters back and opens the door next to us.

  “Rausen,” he says, gesturing for us to get out.

  When we don’t move quickly enough, he reaches in, grabs each of us by the elbow, and yanks us out as if he were unloading cargo. It’s easy for him to do that because we each have our wrists taped together in front of us. I manage to keep on my feet, but Grampa Peter takes a step, stumbles, and falls to his side in front of Field and the other two members of his crew. That surprises me. My grandfather is usually as sure-footed as a mountain goat. Did he stumble over something? I thought I saw something on the ground as we were yanked out, but there’s nothing there when I look now.

  Tip, who obviously still bears Grampa Peter some ill will, lets out a loud nasty laugh. “No time for a nap now.” He chuckles and pulls back a foot, taking aim at my grandfather’s side as if he were going to attempt a field goal. I’m about to try to throw myself in between Grampa Peter and a rib-breaking kick, but I don’t have to.

  “Tip!” Field steps in front of his stocky henchman with one hand raised. “Not now.”

  Tip grudgingly lowers his foot and steps back. “Later, pops,” he snarls.

  I reach down with my taped-together hands and help Grampa Peter to his feet. It’s not easy. He’s almost a dead weight. His legs don’t seem to want to work right. It’s as if my grandfather has suddenly gone from being as strong and flexible as a man half his age to being an elderly person crippled by arthritis. When he stands up, his shoulders are stooped and his head is down.

  I’m worried about him and angry at the same time. I glare at Field and Tip, who completely ignore me. Louise, though, gives me one of her predatory smiles. She’s enjoying the sight of my grandfather looking like a scared and beaten old man.

  Stazi has paid no attention to any of this. There’s a cold, businesslike air about the way he does things. He gets back into the driver’s seat and pulls the van forward into the space he has cut in the spruce thicket. Then he unloads the remaining gear from the back and begins placing the cut spruces around and on top of the vehicle. When he’s done, Field’s Forbidden Mysteries van has totally vanished from sight.

  Field dusts his hands together. “Excellent,” he says. “Now a bit of set-up, eh?”

  He turns toward Tip and Louise, who have taken out their equipment. The camera Tip is about to use is small enough to hold in one hand. Louise’s sound recorder is the size of an iPod and is clipped to her belt. The microphone she holds up is no bigger than a lollipop. Even the larger stationary camera that Stazi has produced and fastened to the top of a collapsible tripod must weigh only a few pounds.

  Field nods. Then he clears his throat and gestures dramatically. “Many have perished in search of our elusive quarry,” he intones. “Among them, the native elder who gave us the clues that we will follow today, and who showed us the secret path known only to his ancestors, whose feet trod these trackless wastes for untold centuries before the arrival of the first Europeans. I’ll say more about his tragic fall later, about the climbing accident that took his life.” Field pauses and attempts to look pensive. To me, though, he looks like a rat thinking about a piece of cheese he just ate. “Or was it an accident? We must press on without pause or trepidation. Another forbidden mystery awaits us at Pmola’s Peak, where we seek the great winged creature who guards a lost treasure.”

  Field makes a throat-cutting gesture and looks at his crew.

  “Well?” he asks.

  “Perfect,” Louise says, giving him a thumbs-up.

  “Nailed it on the first take, boss,” Tip agrees.

  Stazi just grunts.

  Field favors them all with one of his wide, toothy grins.

  I look over at Grampa Peter. He still has his head down, and his eyes are half closed. Is he sick or hurt? Has he given up? I can’t believe what I’m seeing. I’ve always thought of him as indestructible, like a part of the mountain itself.

  The way he is standing bothers me as much as what I’ve just heard in Field’s overblown monologue. Because if I heard it right, Field was talking about my grandfather. And the tragic fall, the so-called accident he mentioned, is not in the past but is yet to come.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Off the Trail

  When I was a little kid, Mom and Dad used to take me to the Abenaki shop in Conway, New Hampshire. It was a special place because it was the one spot in our state that most people thought of as really belonging to the Abenaki. Many generations of Abenaki people had sold such things as baskets and carvings and crafts on the same site, and the same family, the Laurents, had always been there. The state highway department tried to put a bypass through their land, but the Laurents had managed to stop that—with the help of their friends and neighbors, who may not have been Indian themselves, but who valued the family’s gentle presence. There was even a state historical marker in front of their shop.

  The stories Mr. Laurent told me whenever I visited have always stayed with me. One story in particular is going through my mind right now as we trudge along. It’s about an Abenaki man who wanted to see the Manogemassak, the Little People. The Little People in our stories are kind of like those leprechauns the Irish talk about. They have special powers, and it’s said that they can grant wishes. But they don’t like to be seen unless they are ready to show themselves.

  “I wish I could see those Manogemassak,” I said to Mr. Laurent when he first told me about them. I was only five years old then.

  “Ah,” he said, going down on one knee. He was a very tall man, and I remember how big his hands were when he reached out and placed them on my shoulders. “There was a man who said that very thing, not long ago. He knew that the Manogemassak had a certain place by the river where they came at night. They used the clay to make pots and sometimes left little swirls of clay that people would find. So, do you know what that man did?”

  I shook my head.

  “That man decided he could trick the Little People. He put his canoe down by the river and left it there upside down for several days and nights. When he thought those Little People must have gotten used to it, he went and hid under that canoe and waited until dark, sure he would see them and not be seen. Do you know what happened then?”

  I shook my head again, even though I had a feeling, young as I was, that it was something unexpected.

  Mr. Laurent smiled. “That man did not come home the next day or the next, and people went looking for him. They found his canoe right side up at the riverbank. At first they saw no sign of the man. Then someone noticed a big pile of clay, about this tall and this long.”

  He held a hand up to my chest and then spread both of his long arms out to either side.

  “It was sort of shaped like a person. And there was a little hole in the head where the mouth would be. That clay was as solid as a rock, but when they listened at the mouth hole, they thought they could hear a faint voice saying, ‘In here, in here.’ They broke the clay open with rocks, and there was that man who had wanted to see the Little People. He was weak and could barely talk. They took him home, and after a few days he finally told them what had happened. As he hid under his canoe and it got dark, he began to hear soft whispering voices. Then, all of a sudden, his canoe was flipped over, and he felt little hands all over him. The next thing he knew, he was trapped inside that mound of clay.”

  Mr. Laurent looked down at me. “So,” he said, “what do you think of that?”

  I remember pausing and scratching my head. Then I looked up. “I would like to see the Little People,�
�� I said, “if they would like me to see them.”

  Why am I thinking of that story right now? Because as I’ve gotten older, I’ve better understood the lesson that Mr. Laurent was sharing with me. We don’t have to see everything or solve every mystery. In fact, there are some things that we do not need to know, things that should be left alone.

  If trying to see the Manogemassak without them wanting you to see them is a dangerous thing to do, think of how much more dangerous it is to go looking for a being as powerful as Pmola. Talk about being between a rock and a hard place!

  We’ve been on the hidden trail for an hour now and we are way off any of the regular hiking routes. I’ve actually walked part of this very trail before with my grandfather, but everything seems different today. Usually when I am out in the woods, every step I take that leads me away from roads and cars and the sounds of the modern world feels like a step toward freedom. Not so today.

  And there is something else. The land around us, even the sky above us, feels different. Do you know how sometimes the air seems to tremble because a big storm is coming? It’s that kind of feeling. The air has that clean, edgy scent of ozone in it.

  I look up at the sky and squint my eyes. There’s not a cloud in sight, but I think I can see something way up there, circling. Maybe it’s an eagle. Maybe not. I know it isn’t an airplane. I actually haven’t seen a single vapor trail from a jet since we left the van hidden in that spruce thicket, and on a clear day like today that’s strange. Commercial jets cross over here all the time, and air force planes also use the sky over the White Mountains. In fact, I remember one time when Grampa Peter and I were walking a trail not far from here and a whole group of those little single-passenger ultralight planes came buzzing over like lawn mowers with wings. But today there’s nothing.

  Someone shoves me hard in the back.

  “Move,” a voice growls.

  I don’t have to look back to know it’s Tip. He’s probably hoping I’ll fall down when he pushes me, like Grampa Peter did. He’s itching to get a kick in on one of us when Field isn’t looking. I keep my balance, even with the heavy pack on my back, and continue on up the trail.

  Oh yeah, the pack: Field strapped it to me before we started on the trail. I’m not sure what it contains, but there has to be at least forty pounds of stuff in it. I’m used to backpacking, so I’m not having much trouble carrying it, though I do resent being both a doomed captive and a beast of burden. Yet another reason for me to glare at Field’s broad back as he strides up the trail ahead of me, unencumbered by anything other than a walking stick.

  When we set out, I’d wondered how the four of them would do hiking a trail. I sort of hoped that they’d be soft and not used to this kind of mountain walking. I imagined them stumbling and falling and getting worn out to the point where Grampa Peter and I could slip away from them.

  No such luck. The four of them seem to be experienced hikers, and even Louise changed into well-worn hiking boots before we started on our trek. I guess they have all gotten toughened up by searching out forbidden mysteries in other parts of the world and gracing other indigenous people like me and Grampa Peter with their friendly presence. From what I’ve overheard, it sounds as if being chosen to be a guide for this group of psycho documentarians is like being invited for a swim in a shark tank. For example, one of the cliff faces we just passed reminded Louise of “the one that Quechua guy in Peru fell off when we were filming ‘Lost City of Gold.’”

  How have they gotten away with it? I suppose I don’t have to ask that question, do I? These days the world is full of remote and dangerous places where law and order don’t mean much if you are a poor, uneducated peasant. No one pays attention when one more peon meets with an unfortunate accident. Especially if the people that peasant was working for are famous and wealthy westerners.

  So Field and his gang have gotten used to it, I guess. And they think it’ll be just as easy to get rid of us when we are no longer useful to them. They’re wrong about that. They don’t know who my parents are. If anything happens to me, my mother and father won’t rest until they’ve tracked down the people responsible for my death.

  Whoa! This thought is not at all comforting. I’m already writing my own obituary. I look over at Grampa Peter, who is trudging along with his head down. He looked so old and frail before that they didn’t even try to put one of the packs on his back. Field didn’t want to take a chance on Grampa Peter giving out before he had showed them the way to go. So he is pretty much being left alone, aside from Field coming back to ask him at each turn in the trail which way to go and Grampa Peter lifting up his shaking, infirm, taped-together hands to point out the right direction.

  I’ve heard about stress making people grow old overnight. About people’s hair turning white from fright. Stuff like that. But I never thought I would see that in my own grandfather, who has always been as tough and resilient as an old cedar tree. Is it possible that he might be faking it?

  There’s a big rock across the trail. We can’t go around it, because the brush is thick here on both sides. Grampa Peter is having a hard time getting up over the boulder. If my hands were not still taped together, too, I’d reach out my arm to help him. Instead I lean my shoulder against him as a support. His foot skids on the rock and falls back against me, both of us stumbling partway off the trail into the brush. The scent of crushed cedar needles fills my nostrils, and then the smoky leather scent that always clings to my grandfather. He’s landed right on top of me. I find myself looking up into his smiling face. Then I feel his hands pressing against mine. He whispers a word into my ear.

  Stazi, who has been bringing up the rear of our little party, wades into the brush to pull us out. First Grampa Peter, who seems so shaken by his fall that he grabs holds of Stazi’s shirt and has to be pried off. Then he has to sit down, pathetically gasping for breath as the rest of the nefarious crew comes back to make sure their antiquated guide is still capable of keeping on.

  This gives me plenty of time to shove the rope that Grampa Peter passed to me into my shirt and under the waistband of my pants. By the time Stazi reaches in to extricate me from the brush, I have also managed to get the smile off my face that appeared when I realized some things. One, of course, is that Grampa Peter really has been faking this routine of being a tired old man. He’s playing possum. Another is that I had indeed seen something on the ground when we were yanked out of the van. It was a coil of thin nylon rope that must have been lost by some previous hiker. And it was plenty long enough to be used the way Grampa Peter told me to with that one word he whispered.

  “Snares.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  One Big Bird

  “No bars.”

  We’ve stopped for our four captors to drink from their canteens. Tip is frowning at his cell phone and tapping it with an index finger.

  “Tip, Tip.” Field’s patronizing voice comes from behind me. “You’re wasting your time with that. Reception is spotty at best in mountains such as these, filled with magnetite ore. And who were you about to call?”

  “Just tryin’ to check my messages,” Tip complains. “No law against that.”

  Field looks at an electronic device of his own that he has pulled from one of the many pockets in the khaki vest he put on just before we started our hike. And now he is frowning too.

  “Strange,” Field says to himself. He looks over at Grampa Peter as if to ask him a question, but catches himself before he does so. He’s learned that even though my grandfather may look as if he is about to keel over and die at at any minute, it hasn’t done a thing to loosen his tongue.

  Field shoves the device in his hand in front of my face. “Know what this is, boy?”

  I nod my head. “It’s a GPS unit.”

  We see a lot of them up here. I have never used one myself. Having lived near here all my life, I don’t even use a guidebook like the ones put out by the Appalachian Mountain Club. But these days most hikers and hunters and
fishermen carry GPS units with them whenever they go out. On a nice day in the summer, you can sit on certain high spots that look out over the main trails and see three or four different parties of flatlander hikers walk for a hundred yards or so, then stop to check their satellite coordinates, then walk, then stop, and so on all the way up the mountain. As if they could get lost on a marked trail in broad daylight. Actually, maybe they could.

  “Well?” Field snaps.

  “It isn’t giving you a reading,” I reply.

  “I know that. The question is why.”

  I don’t know the answer to that. I understand why Field is confused. There’s nothing, except for that big bird that is still circling high above, between us and the location of that geosynchronous satellite. Strange. I almost say he really should hand it to Grampa Peter, because if anyone in the world can get a piece of electronic equipment to work, it’s him. But I am not about to go out of my way to be helpful. So all I say is, “I don’t know much about stuff like that.”

  “Idiot,” Field snarls. I think for a minute he is going to hit me with the GPS.

  Stazi comes up just then. He’s holding his own GPS unit.

  “Might be sunspots. Solar flares can interfere, ja?”

  “Hmmpph,” Field says, then jams the GPS back into one of his pockets, turns on his heel, and almost bumps into Louise, who is looking up into the sky, shading her eyes with her palm. Why he didn’t notice her behind him is beyond me. Her perfume, which smells like a mixture of rotting roses and a cat box overdue for a cleaning, is so strong that I can tell whenever she is within a hundred feet of me.