Firebrand's Woman

by Vanessa Royall

  “Come with me!” ordered Gyva, in a tone that brooked no refusal.

  “Where?”

  “Up to the village where our people are gathered.”

  “Hah! You speak presumptuously of our people, you of mixed blood.”

  “That will be of no importance, after what I am about to show.”

  “Have caution,” smirked Swallow, not at all as afraid as Gyva had expected her to be.

  But Gyva did not dwell upon it. She was determined once and for all to show how perfidious Hawk and Swallow had been, and to see Torch become the true, unquestionable chief.

  Teva and the tribespeople were still in deliberation when Gyva pushed Swallow into their midst.

  “And what is this?” cried Hawk, his eyes going from Swallow to the beaded pouch in Gyva’s hand.

  “I am about to display evidence—” Gyva declared, turning to meet the eyes of the people, “evidence that the manhood ritual has been tainted since the first event.”

  This was an accusation akin to one of sacrilege. A somber, almost threatening mood, with an undercurrent of alarm, came over the tribe.

  “Are you certain of this?” Torch asked, most severely.

  She was a little surprised that he was not more pleased with her strategem, but too excited to give his reaction much thought. She pressed on, opening the pouch, and drawing forth the handful of wooden nails. She held them aloft.

  “The very same nails,” she cried, “that were buried in the footpath at the hurdle, to injure the fastest of our runners, to sabotage his chances to become chieftain!”

  She swept them all with her proud glance. “I daresay other events were also tainted.”

  Torch did not move. His face revealed nothing.

  All Gyva could see, for an eternal moment, was Swallow’s smooth smile.

  “This is a most serious accusation,” the old seeress said, her voice more sad than grave.

  For the first time Gyva felt a quiver of doubt. The people were not responding as, in her excitement, she had expected. They were looking at the nails, true, but they did not see in them the indisputable evidence Gyva herself had seen.

  “Swallow,” spoke Teva, “what say you to this accusation?”

  The crafty maiden answered confidently, and with a touch of anguished innocence. “I was asked to help in the clearing of the earth that is now our playing field. And I did take several of the nails as a remembrance. I pray that I did not give offense by so doing.”

  The people muttered darkly, watching Gyva with angry eyes. More trouble from the mixed-blood! And now Gyva knew the folly to which her desire for revenge had led her. She had disgraced herself utterly this time. And yet she had been so certain of her evidence.

  “A pernicious and baseless accusation,” Hawk declared, “requires the judgment of the tribe on the person who has made the calumny. A false accusation is a crime against the harmony of the tribe.”

  “Yes, it is so,” called the people, speaking one to another.

  “Banishment is the usual sentence,” Hawk reminded them, helpfully.

  “I shall not go,” Gyva declared, containing her anger with an effort of will, and trying to hide humiliation behind a pride sorely wounded.

  “There! You see!” cried Little Swallow gleefully. “She causes trouble and makes false accusations, and then does she yet possess the temerity to announce that the will of our people is not applicable to her. What gall has this one of mixed blood!”

  It was clear, from the words spoken by the few as well as those unspoken by the many, that Gyva’s position in the eyes of the people was deteriorating by the moment. Teva, to whom the people turned, possessor of knowledge and ancient law that she was, could not without a display of capricious favoritism ignore or overrule the right of Hawk and Little Swallow to bring Gyva to lawful sanction. Thus she could not ameliorate the situation with a quick judgment of dismissal, especially since the people were in a state of high agitation. Torch perceived the witch-woman’s dilemma and sought at least to postpone whatever trial might be visited upon the girl whom he had loved so well.

  “This is a grievous matter,” he declared, “but it is not preeminent. We have other important concerns. One of our children languishes now in the hands of the white jackals. Our war party might even now be shedding blood to save our sacred homeland. And the matter of the chieftaincy awaits Teva’s counsel with the spirits of the dark sky. Let us turn first to these important matters and—”

  “Nay! The fair-skinned maiden of deception may flee the tribe and thus escape justice!” So shrieked Little Swallow.

  “Is that not what you wished?” Torch replied coldly. “Banishment?”

  “Not without the sanction! Not without the trial!”

  “Ah!” said Torch. “I am soothed by your regard for the procedures of law.”

  But Swallow had erred in the passion of her speech. Members of the tribe began to perceive unseemly rancor in a maiden who claimed, in all innocence, to have been wronged.

  “Torch is Correct,” the people were saying now. “Let us resolve the chieftaincy first, and from that all things shall follow.”

  Thus was it decided. Teva returned to her wigwam, to pray and meditate upon the dreams, seeking in them the hidden prophecy of good fortune for the Chickasaw. The tribespeople pursued their normal activities for the remainder of the day, but thought often upon the matter of the dreams. Tension simmered in the village by the time of the evening meal, a pervasive unease—almost distress—caused by many things. Gyva held to her wigwam, making do with a repast of bread and dried com, not because she feared to go out amongst the people, but because she realized that her appearance would only exacerbate a dangerous situation.

  Finally the sun fell behind the Twin Mountains, and from the doorway of her wigwam she watched it descend and disappear. It was not yet chill, but she shivered. She shivered because, whether Torch became chieftain or not, her own life—all that it had been, all that it would be—hung in the balance. If Hawk became the leader, Gyva would surely be cast out of the tribe. And even if her own lover should prevail, she might still be charged with lies and brought before the tribe for judgment. And then she might still be banished!

  Watching the Twin Mountains blend into the purple sky, then shadow against it, then disappear, Gyva felt herself spinning upon a delicate point of time. More and more fragile became the beloved earth upon which she stood; darker and darker grew the surrounding abyss. Cloud cover came up this night, speeding in about the mountains, borne on a wind from the west. The west. From there the wind came, and there had Torch sojourned in his dream. There, far off, flowed Father-of-the-Waters, of which she had heard around the winter fires, but which she had never seen, believed she never would see. There, beyond the mighty river, must be a land of warmth and plenty, a place to which one might pass after death. It seemed so peaceful to think upon.

  I shall not die, she thought, pulling herself together. I shall not die until I am ready. Nor shall I suffer banishment, she added defiantly.

  Later, upon the soft but unbefitting rabbit skins, Gyva heard the sentries taking up their positions, calling softly to one another. Perhaps the war party would return by night; perhaps Roo-Pert Harris would come with his red beard and his jackals, thirsty for Wood. Let them come.

  Darkness drifted in slowly upon Gyva. She closed her eyes and saw behind them flashing patterns of colored light, gossamer filaments of sleep come to soothe her mind in the wrap and warmth of dreams. It came, sleep did, without her knowledge, and she was far out into the mountains where she had never been before. There was a sense of many people with her, behind her; but she could see no one, and she felt alone. Yet in spite of her solitude she was not distressed, nor did she feel isolation. She divined a great barrier somewhere ahead, a barrier that was at once as wide as time, as rich as a golden road…

  But dreams, to Indian maidens, are simply dreams, not portents, and even in sleep Gyva knew that images were only dreams. And so she
vanished to a darker place, where everything and all she was curled softly and warmly and deep.

  The Book of Exile

  Chapter I

  He could no longer walk, and so they dragged him into the village, behind horses. His hands were tied behind his back, a stout length of wood thrust through the knots. Twisted, the wood cut off circulation altogether, and the wood had been twisted many times. The man’s wrists were cut to the bone, but he could not feel the pain. He was unconscious, near death.

  “We have a prisoner,” crowed Fast River, a young brave returned with the war party. “The only one strong enough to survive.”

  “A great victory has been given us!” cried the others. “The white men are dead in ravines and bushes and riverbeds.”

  “And this one will soon join them,” said Arrow-in-Oak. “But not so quickly.”

  “He looks dead already,” observed Teva, coming from her wigwam.

  In truth the captive did look lifeless, slumped face-first in the dust. Villagers gathered around.

  “See, he wears buckskins.”

  “It is true. A buckskinner. A killer.”

  “He shall pay. We shall see him die!” cried a young brave, eager to make entertainment with their helpless captive.

  “He was a coward as well,” one said. “When we attacked, he did not resist. Why, I believe he did not even carry a knife.”

  Gyva pushed through the crowd to take a look at this odd white jackal who was so timorous. Dirty, bloody, and unconscious, he was not prepossessing; but she saw that he was tall, with a strong, broad-shouldered body, and that his hair was golden, like corn silk or flax. Someone pushed him onto his back. Gyva looked more closely. The captive was handsome, at least for a white man. He looked very intelligent, and not unkind.

  “Let us get him to the gallows,” someone urged.

  “No,” demurred Teva. “There are other affairs which we must first consummate.”

  She began to explain what had transpired since the war party had departed the village, and now the braves looked around, saw that Torch and Hawk had returned from their quests of the vision. A new wave of excitement rose from the people, for clearly Teva had spent the night in contemplation, and now must render a judgment.

  “Take the prisoner to a wigwam, and post a guard,” ordered Arrow-in-Oak. “Later, after the chief is named, we shall skin him alive, as a symbol of what we mean to do to our white neighbors in Harrisville.”

  Spirited cries of affirmation met this suggestion, and the buckskinned captive was dragged to a dwelling and thrown unceremoniously inside. Gyva thought she saw him open his eyes for a moment; she was certain that she heard him moan in pain.

  The braves had brought with them several bundles of the white man’s belongings, and eagerly the women of the tribe set to examining them. Strange it was that here among buckskin jackets and heavily woven shirts were also the fine dresses of a white lady, and even the clothing of a child! But there was little time to wonder about the matter. A summons to council was heard.

  Every member of the tribe gathered in the center of the village. By this time those who had heard the dreams on the previous day had related them to the returned warriors, provoking much excited discussion. Hawk and Torch took up positions on either side of the old witch-woman, and she raised her arms to quiet the tribe. All but ignored, Gyva hung about the fringes of the crowd. She saw that Hawk’s hotheads were massed together near the two candidates, and also that all of them were armed. Little Swallow, her chest swelled today by much more than her proud breasts, turned her head this way and that, as if showing off, or practicing a posture worthy of a chieftain’s wife.

  Never had Gyva felt so lowered in the eyes of her tribespeople. To have permitted such a one as Little Swallow to beat her so badly…

  “Sleep was no friend to me on the evening past,” Teva began, “for my heart suffered beneath a burden weighty as the world.”

  A hum of anticipation rose from the assembled tribe.

  “It was my fate from birth, either the blessing or the curse of He-Who-Dwells-in-the-Clear-Sky, that I be selected to ponder difficult things, as the blood-mark upon my face attests. I accept this responsibility because I cannot flee it, although many times throughout my life—and this is one such time—I would gladly have given up the duty, and been born instead a small creature happy beneath the green boughs of our forests, content to live from moon to glowing moon within the caverns of our hills.”

  The people nodded. Not many of them, today, would have wished to bear the responsibility of interpreting so crucial a matter as a chieftain’s vision.

  “Times have grown more and more difficult and threatening during the suns I have seen. In the old days, candidates returned from the forest with visions easily read, the meaning of which was clear to each and every one. But in these more trying times, complexity abounds. It is as if Ababinili wishes to try us in all things.”

  She paused for a long time, and the people regarded her. Hawk and Torch stood motionless, their eyes upon a far distance. Neither displayed the least tension, and yet what thoughts must be flashing through their minds I Power, glory, the long burden of responsibility…

  Gyva tried to touch eyes with her lover, but it was useless. As she had speculated earlier, so did she again: Whether chieftain or no, a part of him was lost to her now, was above her now. But if only she could climb together with him to those places, share with him all that was or would be!

  “You have heard the visions of Torch and Hawk,” the seeress was saying. “And upon those visions I have spent the dark hours of the night. There was no moon, and thus even without heaven’s light did I struggle.”

  Now, as one, the tribe gasped and then cried out. For beneath the flesh on the face of the withered crone, blood began to rise and course into the mark of the hand.

  “Aye!” she cried, feeling the heat of the blood. “My hours were well spent, for now comes the sign to me—spectral or benevolent, only history will say—but it comes, and I shall ride it like a golden wind, and I shall tell the tale to thee!”

  Even the mountains seemed to quiet now, and the colored birds, and the myriad animals that shared Chickasaw earth. Lush green wind-bent grass straightened in the silence, and the sky itself stilled in hush above this magnificent land that had been gifted to the nation for as long as the rivers flow.

  “Hawk has brought back to us a vision as clear and direct as the point of an arrow piercing the heart of a man.”

  “Yes! Yes, he has!” cried the hotheads and many others.

  “While Torch has been presented with, and has in turn presented us with, a strange vision at once soothing and disquieting.”

  Silence.

  “And while I lay upon my pelts, I pondered this throughout the night. The clear vision as opposed to that which is more obscure, and in suffering and travail did I struggle to interpret what wisdom is and what life is.”

  The mark upon Teva’s face was purple now, and the blood throbbed so powerfully beneath it that the handprint seemed to flex and relax upon her visage.

  “And in the end it came to me,” Teva said, “that life is neither clear nor direct. I believe there is, somewhere, buried in sand along a river upon this earth, or hidden among golden crystals along the paths of heaven, a stick upon which is indeed written the secret of life. I believe we shall one day know that secret. That we do not know it now is neither our defect nor that of Torch, but—”

  At the sound of but the hotheads shrieked and wailed. They were certain Hawk had the power now.

  “But,” repeated the witch-woman, “to have been gifted with even a glimmer of such a deep mystery is a mark of special favor, both to our people and to Torch.”

  She put it to them simply, a decision of heaven.

  “By his vision, as much as by his strength and example, Torch is our new chief!”

  Gyva felt her heart flood with joy, and a great cry of gladness rose up from the people, or rather, from most of the pe
ople. The hotheads were silent at first, muttering to one another. Little Swallow, whom Gyva glimpsed, seemed simultaneously stricken with fever and possessed by rage. Hawk was frozen to his place on the earth, his face a mask of hurt and disbelief and anger.

  Torch’s expression did not change. He was as he had always been, and yet he had changed. All knew it. He was above them now, and would forever regard them as from a slight rise. No longer would he merely give his attention, offer his concern. No, in future he would bestow them as one would a gift, and in that wise, too, would his offerings be accepted…

  “No!” Hawk screamed then, “I do not accept it!”

  Before anyone could react, before most of the tribespeople even knew what was happening, he had seized the knife from his belt, vaulted over Teva, and thrown himself upon Torch.

  If such sacrilege had ever before been committed, it was beyond the memory of the tribe. Even the hotheads were initially astounded, though not so much that they refrained from reaching for their own weapons. If power was indeed to be seized, then let it be. After all, Torch could not be chief if he was dead.

  But Torch’s vision, and Teva’s interpretation, bore no trace of taint. Hawk’s first thrust buried his knife in the ground, and while he struggled to draw it forth, Torch twisted free and leaped to his feet, drawing his own knife from its leather scabbard.

  “Do not do this thing, Hawk,” he warned. “I would be your friend as well as your chief, and the tribe has need of your courage.”

  But Hawk, having already commenced his assault, was not to be gainsaid, or dissuaded, by words alone. Rising from the earth, he slashed forward, the knife in his hand meant for Torch’s heart.

  “Heaven and visions I curse,” he roared, “the spilling of blood is what makes chief and man!”

  Torch, with a deft flick of his hand, sent his knife through the air. It struck Hawk directly in the heart, stopped his forward plunge. Hawk’s heart was already dead; his brain lived on for a fleeting moment. In that moment he seemed to remember what he had been, had hoped, seemed to recognize what he had become, and to realize the horror of what he had attempted to do. Still on his feet, and gripping the hilt of Torch’s knife as if trying to pull it from his breast, Hawk looked at the man who had killed him and said, “So the tribe is yours. I go now to…seek…the golden stick…”