Ghost Hawk

by Susan Cooper

  “Too dangerous to help?”

  “You are a runner, you mustn’t stop—you have sworn to run to Yellow Feather!”

  And at that I would have turned to go, but the boy was staring at my face. At the scar.

  He said, “Hawk?”

  I looked at him, and although he was taller and a little changed by the years, I recognized him.

  “Hawk!” He was pleading now. “Hawk!”

  It was the small boy John, who had come to see us fishing, and the man lying trapped under the branch must be his father, who had smiled at me that day.

  So I pulled out my tomahawk.

  “No!” said Leaping Turtle urgently.

  I motioned the boy to stand clear, and I took a great swing to hack at the branch that had trapped the man’s leg.

  It all happened so fast. My tomahawk hitting the branch must have masked the sound of the first shot. As I swung my arm back again, with my axe high in the air, I heard John shouting in alarm, and I saw a puff of smoke, though I never heard the sound of the second shot that blasted a great hole in my chest and killed me.

  PART TWO

  * * *

  PLANTING MOON

  ONE

  Leaping Turtle knew instantly that I was dead. My blood spurted over him as my body dropped at his feet. Instinct sent him diving into the undergrowth, where branches and twigs stabbed him so that he too began bleeding. He did not look back. Stumbling up again, he crashed through the bushes, on and on, until he found a trail. Then he ran southward, sobbing as he ran, mourning his dead brother, tears and sweat mixing on his face. He ran and he ran, toward Sowams.

  And as spirit, I was not free to leave. I was held there by the horror in the mind of small John, and by the tomahawk with the blade of my ancestors.

  I watched. I listened.

  The boy stood shocked into silence, staring aghast at my shattered chest and the bright blood, and at my face with the wide open eyes that could no longer see.

  Two Englishmen came running out of the trees. One was tall and young, the other a short man in soldier’s clothes, carrying the long gun they call a musket. He was grinning down at my body.

  “The Lord delivered us the murderous savage!” he cried, and clapped John on the shoulder. “You’re safe, boy! God be praised we were in time to save you!”

  John shrieked at him. “He was helping us, couldn’t you see? I shouted! I told you!”

  “Are you mad? We saw him attacking you!”

  “He was trying to cut my father free!”

  In a brief instant of uncertainty, they looked beyond my spread-eagled body, and the tomahawk fallen near my hand. They saw the boy’s father lying trapped by the leg, and the other man’s body crushed under the trunk of the tree, and they rushed forward, the small man tossing his musket aside. They clawed at the branches, trying to reach the white man’s broken body, and then fell back as they saw there was no hope.

  “Goodman Ford is dead,” the small man said.

  John was still gazing at the great wound in my chest, caught up in horror. His white shirt was spattered with my blood. “Why didn’t you stop? You’ve killed him!”

  The younger man was angling himself to where the boy’s father was lying.

  “He was trying to help!” John was sobbing. “Why did you kill him?” He was gasping with sobs, on and on.

  The small man swung round and slapped his face. “Stop it, boy!”

  John was suddenly silent. The younger man was kneeling, feeling the father’s neck.

  “Goodman Wakeley is alive,” he said. “Hand me that axe, we must cut the branch away.”

  A long-handled axe with a metal head was lying on the ground near the base of the fallen tree. With strong practiced strokes the tall young man cut through the thick base of the branch that was pinning John’s father’s leg. It was a wonderful axe, far quicker than my tomahawk could have been.

  The weight of the branch came off the man with the last stroke of the axe. They pulled him free, carefully. The small man felt the leg. “The bone is broken,” he said.

  “I will run for a litter,” the other said. “But—Master Kelly—” He hesitated, looking at my body.

  John said dully, once more, “He was trying to help. He was a friend.”

  “A friend!” said the small man. “Hah!”

  “My father will tell you,” John said.

  “Enough, boy!” the man snapped at him. “You were mistaken! With our own eyes we saw him attacking you—did we not, Daniel?”

  “We did!” said the other. He was still standing over my body, as if asking what to do.

  And the small man made his decision.

  “The savage requires no record,” he said. “Some hearts in the colony are excessive tender, as we have seen. A threat has been removed, and one sinful heathen is no loss to the world.”

  So they picked up my body, one man at the head and one at the feet; they swung it like a bag of corn and tossed it as far as they could into the undergrowth.

  Small John watched them. He was sitting beside his unconscious father, hunched on the ground, rocking to and fro. He made no sound.

  The tall man hurried away. The other pulled a few branches over the ground to cover my spilled blood. Then he stood beside John, looking down at him.

  “Get up, boy,” he said, “and hearken to me. The Lord by his Almighty power brought us here because he loves Christians, not the Devil’s spawn. The Indian is of no consequence. I killed him for good reason, though I shall not brag of it. As you may know, I am Walter Kelly, and my friend is Daniel Smith. If you slander those who have rescued your father, none will believe you. Do you understand?”

  John said, very low, “Yes, master.”

  He was ten years old.

  Men came hurrying soon with a litter, and none of them gave John much thought. He kept out of their way as they picked up his father, as gently as they could, and placed him on the litter to be carried to their settlement. Some other men had arrived with tools, to begin the long task of sawing through the felled tree to release the body of the man who lay dead beneath it.

  Nobody paid any attention to John as he edged close to the undergrowth and picked up my tomahawk, which had been pushed aside by the litter and was lying hidden by grass. He slid it up under his jerkin, where it rested awkwardly against his shoulder but was hidden, and he followed the little procession as it moved slowly away.

  TWO

  On the day that I was killed, Leaping Turtle took his grief and his rage to our father Yellow Feather, but was not comforted. Instead he was persuaded, by our peacekeeping leader, that he should not seek vengeance. “Remember that there are good white men as well as bad,” Yellow Feather told him, “and remember that there is strength and safety for us in living alongside these people in peace.”

  So the next day a group of our people went quietly with Leaping Turtle through the trees to find my body and to carry it home to our village, where my friend tamed his own sorrow to comfort my sister Quickbird and my grandmother Suncatcher. They grieved in the old ways, with the sounds and tears of mourning, blackening their faces with charcoal because the light of life was gone, and they buried my body with its head to the southwest, and my knife and my bow and arrows beside me. Leaping Turtle had found the knife still in my belt when they went to take my body home. But he had not been able to find my tomahawk.

  None mentioned me by name after I was gone. It is our custom. One Who Waits took some of my clothes and hung them ceremonially in a tree near where my body was buried. There they hung until the wind and weather tore them apart, and birds took torn pieces to help make their nests, and the rest fell into dust.

  As for me, I was free but not yet truly freed, and so am I still. I am spirit, outside time but still following its flow. I am held here by the disharmony caused by my violent death, which would change the whole course of life for the boy John.

  And I am within boundaries. I can see past and present, though not future. I
can hear speech and thought no matter what its language. I may not intervene. I may be seen, if I choose, and I may communicate, if I choose, but only in a certain place, and at certain times. Each of us who has lived on this earth knows the place to which he or she would choose to belong.

  The Great Spirit in his wisdom holds me, like the bird I was named for, to wheel over all, to observe all, and to tell this story.

  To tell the story of a boy and an axe, a tree and an island. And to wait until Little Hawk is freed to fly.

  THREE

  Four young men carried John’s father on a litter made of linen cloth strung between two poles. It was a bumpy journey but he did not wake. They were following one of the old paths of my people, leading to what was once the village of Patuxet, before the plague killed everyone in this part of the land. Now the white men from England had their own big village there. They called it Plymouth. At its center was a fort built on a hill, and all round the settlement there was a wooden wall taller than a man, broken by a pair of great gates.

  In through the open gates they went, and children ran up the center street, calling of their arrival.

  The houses were shaped like boxes, with slanted roofs of reed thatch. A chimney of stones and dried mud rose from one end of each roof, to carry away the smoke from the fire inside, and beside each house there was a small garden, edged with boards so that the soil was higher than the ground all about. People stopped digging their gardens and came running as the litter bearing John’s father arrived. So did others watching from the houses. The young woman who ran fastest, anxious, was John’s mother, Margaret Wakeley.

  The litter was taken into her house, and she followed it in, with two of the women and the tall young man who witnessed my death, Daniel Smith. He appeared to be full of concern. The women were both older; like Margaret and all these women, they were dressed in heavy clothes with long sleeves, and full skirts down to the ground, in spite of the spring sunshine.

  Nobody noticed small John pause for a moment to drop my tomahawk behind the woodpile before he went into the house.

  The men carrying the litter moved Benjamin Wakeley very carefully onto a bed. He was still unconscious. He lay there pale and motionless, even when one of the older women took hold of his broken leg. The other woman helped her, with a skillful touch. The two of them must have been the nearest thing these people had to a medicine man. They did the right thing, putting the broken bone in line and tying the leg with straps to two pieces of wood, which would have been so painful if Wakeley were awake that it was a good thing he was not.

  More than anything, I could feel the fear and grief in John’s mind as he watched.

  This little room had boards as a floor and a bed at either side, without much space in between. The house was very crowded with all these people. From the other room two small girls were peeping wide-eyed; I guessed that they were John’s younger sisters, with a neighbor woman holding their hands.

  Daniel Smith said, “It was a large tree to be taken down by only two men. I fear he hit his head most grievous hard when he fell.”

  “His head hit a rock,” John said. “The tree knocked him down.” He gave a great sob, and his mother put out a hand to him.

  “And killed poor Goodman Ford,” said one of the two older women. “Goody Ford is in great grief, I must go to her. God bless you all.” She gave Margaret a hug, squeezed John’s shoulder, and went out.

  The other woman was feeling all round Benjamin Wakeley’s head with gentle fingers.

  “A damp cloth on his forehead, my dear,” she said to Margaret, “and the Lord willing, he will wake in good time. The sleep will help him heal.”

  But it didn’t, and he did not wake. The religious leader of this colony, a white-bearded man they called William Brewster, came with his wife, and with them was the man who had killed me, Walter Kelly. They all prayed to their God over Benjamin Wakeley, and Daniel Smith and Master Kelly prayed as loudly as any.

  “And the Lord be praised that you came upon this sad accident in time to save him,” Master Brewster said to them.

  “Praise him too for preserving us from attack by Indians,” said Master Kelly. “Who were close by, but went away when we fired our guns.”

  His eyes were on John, but John would not look at him.

  “Amen,” said everyone in the room.

  With help from her neighbors, Margaret fed soup to her children and put them to bed. Then she sat on the bed where her husband lay propped against pillows, and held a cloth moistened with cool water against his head.

  John stayed beside her, exchanging the cloth for a cool one when it grew warm.

  She said softly, after a while, “Thy shirt is bloody. Give it to me tomorrow.”

  And the words came spilling out of John in an urgent whisper, because he had to tell her.

  “Mother, there was one Indian, but he came to help, after the tree fell. He had his axe out, to cut Father free—and Master Kelly shot him. And it was Hawk, the Indian with the scar, that I told you of, who was good to me, at the fishing—”

  He broke off, as the tears came into his voice.

  “What?” said Margaret, bemused.

  “That’s Hawk’s blood on my shirt,” John said, trying to whisper, trying not to cry. “I tried to stop Master Kelly, but he killed him.”

  All this ran through Margaret’s mind like water; she could spare no thought for anything but her husband. She heard only John’s distress, and she reached for his hand.

  “I know you did all you could, my dear,” she said.

  “Father will tell them Hawk was our friend,” John said. He choked on the words, and tried again. “Father will tell them, won’t he?”

  “Of course he will,” said his mother. She kissed his forehead. “Hush now. You must rest. Try to sleep.”

  So together they said one more prayer for Benjamin Wakeley and then John curled up in the covers at the other end of the bed, and in a while fell asleep.

  Margaret stayed awake, sitting wrapped in blankets beside her husband. Just before dawn her eyes closed out of sheer fatigue, and for a few minutes she too slept.

  When she woke, Benjamin’s breathing was very faint and slow, his closed eyes deep and shadowed.

  “Ben!” she said in alarm.

  John scrambled up and came to her. There was no time to call for help, nor could any help have been given. Each of them had a hand softly touching Benjamin Wakeley’s face when he stopped breathing altogether and his spirit went away.

  Now John had watched three men die in the space of a day and a night, and this third death was by far the most terrible, because he loved his father dearly.

  Margaret’s friends and neighbors came in and out of the house all day to give help and offer sympathy. One of them was Daniel Smith, and with him once more was Master Kelly, who clearly had high rank in this community even though he was so small a man. They both said kind words to Margaret and her two little daughters, and on their way out of the dark house they came face-to-face with John, who was carrying in some logs from the woodpile.

  He looked up at them with no expression on his face.

  Daniel Smith said, “Your father has gone to the Lord, John. He is in a better place, and free from all pain.”

  Master Kelly said, “We mourn the passing of a God-fearing man, for only such are welcomed to the arms of the Almighty. As the psalmist says, ‘the Lord is King forever and ever; the heathen are perished out of his land.’ ”

  He looked very hard at John, as if he were challenging him.

  “Yes, sir,” John said. He was looking straight back at Master Kelly without respect, and his voice was cold. Kelly frowned, but others were coming, so he walked on. John went into the house with his firewood.

  When he was sure the two men had gone, he went back out to get more wood. He looked carefully round to make sure nobody was watching, and he slipped behind the wood-pile to the place where he had dropped my tomahawk, and used his father’s wood-splitt
ing axe to dig a shallow hole in the ground. Then he took my tomahawk and buried it there, putting a rock on top so he could find the spot again.

  He looked quickly all around him, and he said unhappily to the air, in a voice hardly above a whisper, “I’m sorry, Hawk.”

  I sent him comfort silently, and perhaps my Manitou put a little of it into his mind.

  The next day two graves were dug in a piece of land not far from the community’s meetinghouse, where they gathered to worship their God, and with a few solemn words from Master Brewster, the people buried the bodies of Benjamin Wakeley and the other man who was killed by the tree, Goodman Ford. There were wooden markers set nearby to remember other people who had died—men, women, children, babies. Though the white man’s plague didn’t hurt the white men, they had had a hard time learning how to survive in this land.

  In the weeks after that John’s mother, Margaret, wept often, and had the two little girls and John kneel down with her as she called on God to help her feed and clothe them. She and John worked hard in their garden, digging and planting, and the little girls did their best to pull weeds in spite of their long sleeves and skirts. These people’s stern religion seemed to demand that they cover as much of the body as possible, as if it were a shameful thing. The women were not even allowed to show their hair, and wore close little caps on their heads indoors and out, and even when they slept.

  The man Daniel Smith came often to offer help, when he was not working with Master Kelly and Captain Standish on building fortifications. John tried to avoid him, and was not happy when his mother smiled gratefully at Daniel and began calling him by his Christian name as if they were friends. He couldn’t look at Daniel Smith without being back in the bloodiest day of his life, when his world had changed.

  And all the time he remembered me. Whenever his father’s death came into his mind, he thought too of mine. Hawk . . . If I hadn’t called out . . . If I hadn’t said his name . . . Hawk . . . Hardly a day went by when he didn’t glance to make sure that the place where he had buried my tomahawk was still undisturbed.