Those Who Came Before

by J. H. Moncrieff

  She smiled, for he did resemble a brown bear cub, comical and clumsy, and trying so hard to be ferocious. “Little Bear it is, and Little Bear you shall be,” she said, kissing her son’s nose as he struggled to escape Lone Wolf’s embrace. Sometimes it troubled her that the boy didn’t like to be cuddled or coddled. He was always waddling off on his own, with her forever running after.

  Lone Wolf’s wisdom held true. As her son aged, he became more and more like a bear, strong and steadfast and quick to anger. It was like the anguish and anger of his conception had infected him, a disease that festered in long silences and countless skirmishes.

  It soon became clear Little Bear had no interest in being a healer like his mother and uncle, so Lone Wolf taught him to be a warrior. Her son’s arms and legs grew lean with muscle, and though she had to admit he threw a spear and shot an arrow with astounding accuracy, she took no joy from it. She had seen too much killing, too much death.

  Some nights she dreamt of Grey Mother, and woke with tears cascading down her face. She wondered what the great Elder would think of her child. Would she have taken pride in his fierceness and skill, or would his nature have troubled the woman, as it worried Little Dove? Lone Wolf occasionally dreamt of his sister as well. There were mornings when he was especially quiet and refused to speak for hours, his face set in deep lines, and she suspected Red Sky Dancer had visited him, dancing in a field with a crimson blanket over her shoulders.

  Little Bear grew stronger as she became frail, threads of silver replacing the ebony in her hair, which had always been black as a raven’s wing. She could feel her influence over her son, forever faint, waning further, until it was a challenge to get him to listen to her at all.

  “Respect your mother,” Lone Wolf said again and again. “She gave you life. You would be nothing without her.”

  Though her son worshipped the shaman, even the man’s words had little effect on the boy. He carried some deep resentment toward her, and she was certain it came from the dark time, the time she hadn’t wanted him in her womb.

  She accepted this resentment as part of his nature, as unchangeable as his strength or stubbornness. There was much to admire about her son, but his lack of a loving heart made her weep. It lined her forehead with worry too, for the time of a confrontation with the pale people was drawing near.

  For all of Little Bear’s life, they’d been able to avoid the new arrivals, living off the land and keeping to the forest. They refrained from setting up elaborate camps so they could move quickly as it suited them, following the animals that gave them sustenance or avoiding the pale man’s path. But every moon seemed to bring more and more visitors to the land, and Little Dove saw they would not be able to avoid them forever.

  “You must have a firm hand with him. Teach him respect, to honor the pale ones,” she told Lone Wolf. “It is the only way he will be able to survive among them.”

  Her son was truly one of their people now. It was difficult to remember she’d once fretted over his pallid skin. The only sign of his paternity were his eyes, which had matured into a deep and startling blue. The visitors would never embrace Little Bear, who was part fire and part earth. He would be seen as a monster, an abomination. If he didn’t instantly win their favor, Little Dove feared they would kill him.

  Even after everything that had happened to her, she hadn’t lost her faith in the goodness of people. She had forgotten the shaman’s true nature, the rage that boiled beneath the surface.

  She had forgotten his need for revenge.

  Little Dove was in the winter of her life when she once again heard the voice she’d long been dreading.

  “Well, well, well, what do we have here?”

  Her entire body trembled, her aged fingers opening, depositing the basket of the berries she’d been gathering at her feet. The fruit scattered on the ground, drops of blood on the earth.

  “Looks like a squaw to me, Thomas.”

  “I think you’re right. It is a squaw. Whatever shall we do with her?”

  The men snickered, and in her fright, her bladder released, the warm fluid running down her legs under her deer-hide dress. Her face burned with shame, but the men didn’t appear to notice.

  “Seems we need to teach her some manners. Squaw, look at me when I’m talking to you.”

  Knees weak, shoulders quaking, Little Dove shuffled in the grass until she faced her tormentors. She tried to plead with them not to hurt her, to leave her be, but she’d forgotten the strange sounds of their language. She could only remember her own.

  The men laughed. “She’s an old one, isn’t she? What are you saying, squaw? Speak up, will you? We can’t make any sense out of your muttering.”

  She saw then that this was not the visitor she’d been dreading. These men were too young. They were of him, though, of that she was positive. She recognized the eyes, the same eyes she saw every day. Had one of them been the child she’d once suckled? It was impossible to tell.

  “She may be old, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have some fun with her. You remember what Father said.” The man seized her by the elbow. She cried out in pain, feeling her elderly bones grind against each other, but he ignored her distress as he yanked her close. The smell of him was foul, and she was taken back to that day when everything had changed, when the stink of his father’s breath had made her gag.

  “Remove your filthy hands from her.”

  Little Dove stiffened, hearing the danger in that voice, though the men holding her did not. They craned their necks, searching for the source and not finding it.

  “What will you do if we don’t?” The one called Thomas said, pressing thick, wet lips against her cheek.

  “Then it will be my pleasure to kill you.”

  For so long she’d begged Lone Wolf to teach her son the pale man’s language, hoping it would help him assimilate, but the shaman had claimed Little Bear had shown no interest. Was this one of the medicine man’s tricks, or had her son fooled them both?

  The men guffawed, but she detected fear behind their merriment, and felt the grip Thomas had on her ease as Little Bear revealed himself. Tall and thick with muscle, he looked as powerful as the trees surrounding him. He’d painted his face as Lone Wolf had shown him. His eyes burned with hate.

  Raising his arm, he pointed his spear at Thomas’s face. “Release my mother.”

  She closed her eyes, praying that these men would show more intelligence than their father had, that they would recognize the threat standing in front of them.

  “Ah, feck off, you crazy savage,” Thomas muttered, and before he could speak another word, Little Dove heard a whistling sound and then a thump as her son’s spear struck the man in the forehead. She screamed as Thomas fell backwards, nearly taking her with him.

  The other man turned to run, but he was peppered with arrows before he could take a step. He collapsed beside his brother, their blood running together on the grass.

  Little Bear was silent as he moved forward to retrieve his weapons, his face impassive as he yanked his spear from Thomas’s forehead and cleaned it with a leaf. He paid her no attention, not even when she clutched his arm.

  “Why did you do that? Why did you kill them? Now you have brought war upon us.”

  Her son would die at the hands of his father’s people, never recognizing their connection, the tainted blood that flowed through them both.

  “Let the war come.” He returned the arrows to the quiver he always wore, and she finally recognized he’d prepared for this moment for a long time. Lone Wolf has used my son as his instrument of vengeance. “They would have hurt you, Mother. Like they did before.”

  “What do you know of that?” Her tone was harsher than she’d intended, but his conception had been her secret to keep or reveal, no one else’s. “What did Lone Wolf tell you?”

  In his war paint, Little Bear was unr
ecognizable as her son. “Nothing more. What else is there to tell?”

  She bent to gather the berries she’d lost, the ones that hadn’t been trampled, as an excuse to hide her face. Her son could still look through her as he always had. She couldn’t risk him learning the truth. What if he hated her, or even worse, hated himself?

  “You shouldn’t have done this. Killing is not our way.”

  “Lone Wolf taught me otherwise.”

  Why must he always be so unrelentingly stubborn? “Lone Wolf is wrong. He still grieves the loss of his sister. His mind is not clear.”

  “These men destroyed our people. They deserved to die. They are fortunate I showed them as much mercy as I did. Look at them – they did not suffer. They got a better death than they deserved.”

  “These men were not yet born when our people passed on. They shouldn’t have paid for the crimes of their forefathers.”

  “You would prefer I’d let them disrespect you, Mother? Is that your wish, to have had their disgusting, grubby hands on you?”

  Disrespect. Such a gentle word for the searing pain that had cleaved her sex in two, had humiliated and shamed her and robbed her of any joy in living.

  “You should not speak to me this way. It is not how a son should speak to his mother. I gave you life.”

  He curled his lip, and she was dismayed to see how capable he was of ugliness. Could this be the same little boy who had staggered over to her on dimpled legs, laughing and smiling? What had blackened his heart so?

  Lone Wolf.

  She cursed the shaman under her breath. He had no right to tell her child such horrible things, to damage him in this way.

  “Only through duress. If Lone Wolf hadn’t watched over you, you would have extracted me like a disease. Isn’t that right, Mother?”

  The blood rushed to her face, roaring so loudly she couldn’t collect her thoughts. Still, she had to try. “The event of your conception was…difficult. It is impossible to explain, as you are not female and will never in your life be used as I was.” She swallowed hard, but her throat remained dry. “My indifference ended when I felt the flutters of life inside me, when I felt you. I have loved you from that moment with all my being, exactly as I loved my daughter.”

  She’d hoped her words would soothe him, erase some of the painful ugliness Lone Wolf had used to poison her son’s mind. His eyes hardened.

  “No, it is not true. You don’t love me. Even now, you fear me. I felt your rejection in the womb, and I feel it now.”

  A cry escaped from her broken heart as she dropped to her knees at his feet. She reached for his hide boots, wanting to pull him to her, but he stepped away. When had he grown so hardened? How had she missed the hatred in his face?

  “You need not cry for me, Mother. Lone Wolf has accepted me as his son, and together, we will take back the land for our people. We will no longer hide in the shadows as if we have something to be ashamed of. You can stay here and pick your berries and serve as their instrument as they require. I won’t trouble you any longer with my misguided loyalty.”

  He slipped into the forest and vanished as silently as he’d arrived, and she collapsed into the leaves and wept, feeling more broken than she had after the pale man had used her, after Grey Mother had died in her arms, for she had lost her only remaining child.

  Her child, who had become a monster through Lone Wolf’s diligent tutelage. What fresh horrors would he unleash on the pale man’s people? How far would his lust for revenge carry him? How long before his vengeance resulted in his own death?

  One thing she was certain of.

  Blood would be shed.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  My eyes snapped open. A sickening stench filled the room, like rotting meat mixed with something metal, industrial.

  Ugh. What is that?

  Stomach churning, my gorge rose, and I choked back bile to keep from vomiting on my bed. The stink was overwhelming, unbearable. I had to get away from it.

  “Reese!” My mother’s voice – shrill, impatient. Like she’d been calling me for some time without a response. Maybe she had. She was probably the reason I was awake now. “Reese.”

  “What?” I yelled, sounding every bit as irritated as I felt. In that moment, I hated my mother, hated the way she fussed and nagged and tried to control my father and me. Why couldn’t she just fuck off? Why couldn’t she just fuck off and die?

  “Detective Greyeyes is here to see you. And there’s someone with her.” Her voice was softer now. No need to holler, as she was right outside the door. The idea of my mother separated from me by only a piece of flimsy particleboard made me panic. She couldn’t come in, couldn’t smell this foulness – she’d freak. I needed to open a window.

  “She isn’t here to arrest me again, is she?” Stupid bitch.

  “No….” Mom paused, as if the thought hadn’t occurred to her. “I don’t think so. Why would she be? You haven’t done anything wrong.”

  Maybe I hadn’t before, but I had the sneaking suspicion that had changed some time in the night. The awful smell was terribly familiar. My heart thumped harder in my chest, until I fantasized I could hear it, pounding away beneath my T-shirt. The room was flooded with sunlight, too much light for it to be early morning.

  “Reese, are you all right? Do you need help?” The knob turned, and I bounded from the bed, slamming the door shut with my weight. Mom let out a little squeak of surprise and I didn’t want to kill her any longer. Why would I want her dead? She was my mother, and pretty decent, as far as mothers went.

  “Don’t come in. I’m not dressed.”

  “Okay. Well, please hurry. I don’t know what’s going on, but they look upset.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Three o’clock. We figured you must have been tired after your big adventure yesterday, so we decided to let you sleep.”

  Big adventure. The sarcastic edge to her voice.

  My illicit trip to the reservation. It was coming back to me now. I wasn’t supposed to drive because of the problems with my vision.

  Except those problems appeared to be over. My vision was as strong as it had ever been, if not better. Everything in the room looked sharper and brighter. I watched the dust motes and lint dancing in the air like lovers. I’d never noticed how much junk was floating around in the atmosphere before. Why hadn’t I seen it? It had to be some trick of the light.

  Three o’clock. I hadn’t slept that late since my worst college bender, and I wasn’t drunk. Still, something was off, different.

  I could no longer smell whatever it was that had nauseated me when I’d woken up. Either I’d gotten used to it, or it had never existed. It had probably been a dream.

  When I heard my mother go back upstairs, I reached for the doorknob. If Greyeyes was here, it was important. Better hurry. I’d splash some water on my face and brush my teeth for a minute and then—

  Then I saw my hand. It was crusted with blood, brownish-red flakes falling from it, drifting to speckle the carpet as I watched. My other hand was the same, gore embedded into the nails.

  From the knees down, my legs and feet were coated in crap – dried mud and leaves and who knew what else. The nausea surfaced again, and I yanked the door open and ran for the toilet.

  I vomited until my stomach was empty and aching, tears and sweat mingling on my face.

  The sickening stench had been real after all.

  The sickening stench was me.

  * * *

  “I’m really sorry. I don’t know what’s taking him so long. He said he would be right up, but he’s been having so much trouble, you see, with his eyes….”

  “I’m here, Mom. You can stop apologizing now.”

  Detective Greyeyes waited on the loveseat, looking like she hadn’t slept in days. Kinew stood to greet me, offering his hand. I was scared
to take it. What if I’d missed something? What if he could smell the blood on me? But it would raise more suspicion if I didn’t shake. I had no choice.

  His eyes searched my face as his strong fingers grasped mine. “Doing all right, Reese?”

  “As good as can be expected, considering.”

  “We were hoping you wouldn’t mind going for a little drive with us. We need to talk to you.”

  I glanced at the doorway where my mother fretted, twisting her hands. “What about?”

  “We’d rather this stay between us for now.” Kinew’s eyes flicked to Detective Greyeyes, who nodded. They both looked like they’d come from a funeral. I didn’t like this, didn’t like it at all. What had I done? I suspected they were going to tell me, and the truth was, I didn’t want to know. “If that’s all right. We won’t keep you long.”

  “Reese has a lawyer. He shouldn’t be talking to the police without his counsel present.”

  Way to go, Mom. Watching those cop shows had obviously paid off. She’d crossed her arms, probably in an attempt to appear forbidding, or at least stern.

  “This isn’t about the case,” Greyeyes said, her voice as hoarse as if she’d been talking for hours. “It’s unofficial. Even if your son did say something incriminating, which he won’t, it wouldn’t be allowed in court.”

  “I don’t understand. If this isn’t about the case, why do you need to speak to him?”

  Good question, Ma. Of course it was about the case. They wouldn’t be here otherwise. Couldn’t she tell that something else had happened? It was in their matching grave expressions, the somber mood they’d brought into the house like a shroud over their shoulders.

  Kinew cleared his throat. “A member of our community passed on last night, Mrs. Wallace. Someone who thought highly of your son. We thought Reese might want to pay his respects.”

  Crazyhorse? Oh fucking hell. I’d ended up liking the old guy, or at least having respect for him.

  Hopefully he’d died peacefully in his sleep, rather than having his skull cracked open by some cop with a grudge.