Firebrand's Woman

by Vanessa Royall

  On the grassy bank above the river, she glanced around. Finding herself unobserved, she raced down to the river, her moccasins stirring the white pebbles there, and rushed into the sheltering embrace of the weeping willows.

  Torch was not there.

  Had she made a mistake? Had he been delayed? Gyva let out a short, involuntary murmur of disappointment, almost a moan. Already her body was flowing for him; already her breasts were tingling for his kiss. The summons had been clear enough, had it not? She had been in her wigwam, sewing patterns of stars into her best buckskin, when she heard the sound of someone outside the wigwam, on the side that faced the forest.

  “Gyva?” A man’s whispered voice.

  “It is I,” she had replied.

  “To the usual place. Now. And hurry.”

  The usual place? There was only one such place, and urgently she had come to it; but now Gyva stood beneath the willows and did not know what to think. He had to have been delayed; perhaps someone had detained him in the village on a tribal matter. She waited for several moments, thought she heard someone approaching, decided she hadn’t, and finally stepped out into the sunlight. The day was warm, the river bright, and a timeless penumbra of shimmering haze hung over the mountains. White pebbles gleamed like snow beside the blue, rippling waters; the brilliant green of the grass almost sparkled against the darker green of the forest.

  Yet as Gyva stood by the river, wrapping about her the warmth of day, the beauty of throbbing earth, she felt a strange chill, as if some appalling creature, familiar but unknowable, had flown down upon these hills. The perception was so startlingly clear, so uncanny, that she looked again, long, at all the beloved things around her, assuring herself that they were still with her. And they were; but she felt it still—a tension, a premonition—and she thought she heard the beating of terrible wings in the distance.

  Hoping to discard this formless flicker of woe, she began to walk along the river, downstream from the willows. She kept the willows in sight, and certainly did not intend to go far, since Torch might appear at any time. But she went a little too far, nonetheless. Because standing quite brazenly before a hedge of radiant wild honeysuckle were Torch and Little Swallow. The girl had allowed her shirt to slip away from her shoulders as she circled her arms around the warrior. She was pressing her breasts against his bare chest, and her body moved, barely moved, serpentlike and insinuating against his. They would not have seen her had she been able to suppress the gasp of agony and heartbreak that rose from her heart to her tongue.

  Never, in spite of all that was later to happen, would Gyva ever catch the smell of fragrant honeysuckle on the wind without feeling sharp violation, a sense of tragedy and loss. Now she thought she knew what it was she had felt moments before by the willows. The sound of wings had been an omen.

  “Gyva!” Torch exclaimed, hearing her anguished cry, and raised his lips from Little Swallow’s tender mouth, which formed a sweet smile for the maiden betrayed.

  Broken and humiliated, Gyva found herself racing upriver, past the willows, up the green grassy slope toward her wigwam. She did not sob; Teva had said it did no good to cry, and besides, Gyva was Chickasaw. But if she could only go into the dark silence of her wigwam, and lay down upon and among and within her panther skins, and lose herself forever within their soft embrace…

  But people were running toward her from the village, many people, shouting, trying to tell her something. What was it? She could not understand because she could not hear, and she could not hear because her wounded heart thundered and thundered in her ears. Several women intercepted her, and then a brave, who put his big arm around her waist, almost as if to keep her from plunging off some unseen precipice.

  “Four Bears,” they were saying, “Four Bears…”

  What? What was this of the chief? Not now, not now. Her heart had room for thought of but one person now.

  “Four Bears is…”

  Then she managed to pull herself together, and the brave who held her spoke clearly above the nattering of the others.

  “Four Bears is dying, and he calls for you.”

  The shock of the news sobered her somewhat, and pulled her mind from the other sorrow, at least for the time being. Four Bears was more than chieftain to her, and more than grandfather. He had been her father as well, and her protector and guardian.

  “Where is he?” she asked. “How did the end approach him?”

  “It was but minutes ago. He was on his way from council hall to the wigwam of Teva when suddenly he fell upon the earth and did not move. He has been carried to his own wigwam, and lies there now.”

  Without delay Gyva rushed to the chief; and the others followed her, sadly but stoically. This death, now imminent, had been a long time coming, but it would be greatly felt, because the man was great.

  The wigwam was gloomy and chill. Two women were building a fire. Four Bears lay on his back, wrapped in bearskins. The chief had received his name because at the hour of his birth four great black bears had appeared at the corners of the village, sentinels of the life force, bringing him into the world. The witch-woman knelt beside the chief. She motioned Gyva closer.

  “He is very close to death,” she said.

  The old chief was pale, and already his skin seemed to be falling in toward bone, tight on the high cheekbones and black in his eye sockets. But he saw Gyva there and was able to gesture with a tiny movement of one hand: Down. Come down to me.

  She obeyed, and he tried once, without success, to speak.

  The fire was burning now, with faint heat. “Bring water,” grunted Teva to one of the women. When she did, the witch-woman took from a pouch at her belt a small brown root, called for bowl and pestle, and ground the root into a fine powder. This she mixed with the water, then lifted the chiefs head and bade him drink. The potion’s effect was temporary, but immediate. Four Bears smiled weakly.

  “Grandfather…” Gyva began, a sound of desolation in her voice. In a short while this man would be no more. This man who had saved her life, or at least brought her back for a life among her true people. She had heard the tales around winter fires so often that it seemed, through the darkness, beyond the shadows, that she could actually see Four Bears thrusting at Jackson, and Chula Harjo slashing back with his long mean white man’s killing-knife; that she could see Four Bears opening a huge gash in Jackson’s forehead. But why had he not died? Did he possess enchantment of some kind?

  “You were on your way to my wigwam?” prodded Teva. “Can you tell me why? Was it important?”

  Four Bears managed a nod. “Dream,” he muttered, on feeble lips.

  His voice seemed already to come from far away, as if his spirit were already departing the village and the mountains, leaving his body to collapse here under their eyes, a discarded husk of nature and time.

  “Tell me,” Teva urged.

  Four Bears gathered what was left of his plummeting strength.

  “I saw…Chula Harjo…

  “In the dream?”

  He nodded. “As if…he were here.”

  Gyva placed her hand on her grandfather’s forehead, which was clammy and cold. She felt no pulse at his temple.

  “Chula is nemesis…of…”

  “Of the Chickasaw?” asked the witch.

  “And…more…”

  “Shall we all perish, then?” scoffed the old woman. “What is this tale you leave with us? Our braves, our women, our children need hope.”

  “Perhaps…not all perish. One with…strange name…may yet save us…”

  Gyva thought that she knew the portent. “Firebrand!” she cried excitedly. “He shall become chief and—”

  Four Bears moved his head a little from side to side. “Not Torch. Strange name, not of our people. Unclear…to me.”

  “What did it sound like in your mind?” demanded Teva, seeking clues, signs. “Of what image was it conveyed in your dream?”

  But the effort had already exhausted the old warrio
r. His eyes closed, his head tilted sideways. He still breathed, but sporadically, with a rattle that made Gyva shiver. All through the afternoon Gyva and the seeress stood vigil, and when the young maiden would ask “yet?” with her eyes, the soothsayer grunted and muttered, “Soon.”

  “Will he speak again?”

  “If the Great Spirit wills it Hush. Heaven and earth are about to mate now, as they do for every birth, for every death, and the wings of the warrior of death shadow these mountains and tremble the air.”

  Startled, and cold anew, Gyva remembered the unearthly feeling she had had down by the river, the unheard but perceptible flutter of shivering wings. The thought brought back that terrible image of Torch embracing Little Swallow, and the ache in her heart, already savage from death, doubled and tripled her pain. Why had Torch done such a thing? To send for her, that she might witness his faithlessness firsthand?

  If he did not love her, even after all the pleasure she had so happily given him, why could he not have told her? He did not have to end their love by breaking her heart. Or perhaps he thought some heartless shock would drive her love away, that she would recover more quickly if she grew to hate him.

  No, that would never be…

  But imminent death drew Gyva’s attention away from her own sorrow. Four Bears faded through the afternoon, and Gyva grieved for him; yet she was happy, too. He would know no more suffering; he was soon to become immortal. All during the long day, as Four Bears traveled toward another world, the tribe gathered outside his wigwam, holding vigil. The sun descended behind the purple mountains, and dusk came to envelop the village like fog. A wild strangeness came into the air. So long had Four Bears lived, so long had he fought to guide the destiny of his people, that it seemed almost unimaginable that he should die. The moon was up and the stars were flickering when the soothsayer studied Four Bears, lifted her head, and turned to Gyva.

  “Go out now,” she said, “and choose the youngest and strongest among the blooded warriors, for our new chief shall come from their number, and bid them come here.”

  The maiden rose and left the wigwam and stood in the open air, where all eyes were upon her. The question, unspoken, was “Death?”

  She gave neither sign nor answer, but passed among the assembled throng, proud of bearing, possessed of great outer calm. Yet her heart thundered more and more as she passed from Hawk, giving him the order, to the others—Long Talon, Swift River, Arrow-in-the-Oak. Finally she reached Torch, whom the jackals called Firebrand. She stood before him, with all the others watching, and betrayed not a flicker of the feelings with which she was at that moment besieged. She tried to block from her mind the image of Torch embracing Little Swallow.

  He looked down at her, with eyes full of pain and…something else. Bitterly did it please her to see the pain, and well did he deserve it!

  “Teva bids you enter,” was all she said, turning away from him as a proud princess would, yet as he stepped forward he might as well have trod upon her heart, which had fallen from her breast and lay now in the dust before him.

  When the young braves were inside, Teva spoke.

  “Take him up now,” she ordered, “and his bearskins, too, and carry him out beneath the stars, that his spirit might more quickly find the direction of heaven, and that our people might know that one era has ended and another has begun.”

  Gyva did not fail to see the eager look upon the brash visage of Hawk. Well had he prepared for this day, and perhaps he had even prayed that it come soon. The great raid that had been planned for today against Harrisville had been put in abeyance due to Four Bears’ condition. But Gyva knew that Hawk had in mind a yet more ferocious foray, with, if possible, all the nations commingled in blood.

  Warriors, three on each side, stretched the bearskins taut beneath the chiefs dying form and carried him from the wigwam out into the night air. No one spoke; even the little children were still. The warriors lowered Four Bears to the earth, then stepped back a pace, looking down at him. Teva knelt at his head. She took his cold hand. All watched the mark of the hand upon her face, for if blood flowed into it now, perhaps some saving wisdom might be possessed by the tribe.

  The breath of Four Bears came, a horrible, racking gasp, then did not come for a long time. Gyva leaned forward, between the broad shoulders of Hawk and Torch. She thought her own heart had ceased.

  But the great chief was not yet quit of life. He grabbed for air again, lungs clutching, and then again, and again. Gyva experienced the horror of watching suffering without being able to assuage pain. The mark did not grow scarlet upon Teva’s face, and gloom as well as sadness rose and rode on the air above the tribe.

  Then Four Bears’ eyes flickered open, and the six standing warriors were reflected in them. Four Bears blinked, and coughed. His gaze turned to Teva, and on his mouth appeared a grimace that might have been a smile.

  “Ixchay,” he gasped, giving the greeting. “Now I believe it is time…”

  And together did the Indians, all of them, look toward the sky. Into the air came the quick, sharp chill that Gyva had known beside the river, and from the sides of dark mountains swooped the implacable wings of the warrior of death. The half-moon hung in the sky, a sphere of both darkness and light. Gravely the old people of the tribe studied the moon and the sky, nodding to one another, pushing forward now to glimpse Teva, who still held the hand of Four Bears. The chief’s eyes were on the stars, and he seemed to be listening intently to a distant voice. He was beyond speech now, and only the dull glow in his eyes indicated a frail, tenuous connection to this village in the hills.

  The soothsayer looked up and let her gaze swing to the west, and at that moment a flash of blood began to pour beneath her skin, outlining the print of the sacred hand upon her face. The villagers saw it and exhaled as one. Good omen or bad? Small children, gifted with the keen, innocent apperception that is the lodestone of childhood, now sensed an excitement in the air. A few began to sniffle in fear of the unknown, but they were quickly enjoined to silence by their elders.

  Blood poured into the mysterious mark by which the Great Spirit had made Teva holy. Even Four Bears saw it, but he was too far gone into night to make a response. A portent? A prophecy? Pray let it be good for the people of our nation. Perhaps now they would learn more of this one with the strange name whom Four Bears had found in his dream.

  But that was not to be—not then. Suddenly, although there was no true sound, the vault of heaven, the stars, the moon, seemed for an instant overlaid with a canopy of velvet blackness, so dark did the earth become. The people of the tribe looked toward one another, but for that single instant they saw nothing, saw no one. Four Bears shivered upon his death pallet of bearskins and opened his eyes wide. He alone saw what had come for him out of the sky. Over his withered features came a sudden, glowing burst of ineffable joy, a glorious acceptance of that which all the others feared but could not see. And with a final effort he turned slightly and reached toward his granddaughter, Gyva, who stretched out her hand. He seized her wrist and held it tightly. She was all but pulled forward by his last burst of strength, and sank to her knees, facing the chief’s pallet, upon the earth between the feet of Torch and Hawk. The mark was brilliant on the face of Teva, and together did the old woman and the young maiden touch the chief as he passed over. The world hushed, time flickered, and then Four Bears was beyond them all, forever, mounted upon a steed of wind, the warrior of death his brother now, the two of them galloping in glory, bound for a hunting ground far beyond the North Star, where a dazzling necklace of light stretched on forever.

  “Look!” shrieked a child.

  The canopy of velvet receded; the moon and stars burned bright.

  And all of them turned to see, standing in the shadows at the corners of the village, four great black bears silently watching.

  Another moment and they were gone. Their task was completed.

  “What was the omen, old woman?” demanded Hawk.

  The bod
y of Four Bears was not yet cold, and already the young brave lusted for a future of power.

  Teva shook her head. “I have told you the words that I heard. One with a strange name may save us, if we are very fortunate.”

  Hawk frowned. Hawk-of-the-Sky was not a name strange to the tribe.

  “Perhaps I shall change my name,” he said. “But we did all observe that upon the moment of the old man’s passing”—Gyva noted that Hawk avoided the word Chief—“the mark of sooth on your face glowed like a coal in the hearth.”

  “Ah! Is that so?” asked Teva. “Now you would do best to see to the safety of the village tonight, you and the other young braves. We women must wash and dress and pray upon the body of our chief.”

  Hawk seemed inclined to contradict the soothsayer’s choice of words, and clearly he did not believe that she had not sensed wisdom at the moment of death. But there would be time enough to make a stand regarding these things on another day. The death had finally come, the death he had been waiting for; and beautiful, rolling vistas of power stretched out before him.

  “Come,” said Torch, “let us meet briefly at the council wigwam, and decide upon the posting of sentinels for the night. Then we must turn to the matter of the Choctaw and the Fox.”

  “The Choctaw and the Fox? Why, what of them?” asked Hawk with some heat, as if he had been challenged.

  “Because,” Torch explained calmly, “we were to rendezvous with them for the attack against Harrisville. We could not do so because of Four Bears. They must be apprised of what has happened here, and mollified if they have been angered or offended by our absence.”

  “Cater to the Choctaw?” spat Hawk. “Why ought we humble ourselves before them? They will think it weakness, and—”

  “It is but courtesy and good sense to be frank with allies,” Torch explained.

  Hawk curled his lips contemptuously. “You are not chief yet,” he sneered.

  “Neither of you is chief yet,” interrupted Teva.

  “And perhaps neither of you will be. The manhood ritual will test everything you have to give, and all you have to offer. So let us bury Four Bears on the morrow and proceed to the selection of whomever Ababinili wishes to be chief.”