Moccasin Square Gardens

by Richard Van Camp

  “Three days ago in the future?”

  It’s supposed to be a joke, but she nods. “I saw Hell. There were hundreds of dancers. All Native. Fancy dancers. Shawl dancers. Button blanket dancers.”

  I swallow hard. “Go on.”

  “There were fields of bodies around them, and they were dancing. Some had been dancing for days. It was the older women who lasted, because they had discipline. The younger ones were bleeding through their moccasins. The drummers had had their left feet pulled off, so they kept time with their right. They’d had their eyes sucked out. They were singing blind, and some had their tongues missing.”

  “My God,” I say.

  She starts to cry. “What’s worse is once they can’t dance anymore, the Wheetago—and there so many of them … so many different kinds now. They can’t wait to rip people apart in front of their families.”

  “Wait. But what are they dancing for?”

  “The mother. She is a queen. She eats the dancers and then gives birth to a Wheetago. She vomits them.”

  I cover my mouth.

  “Hell is coming, and you’re a part of it. You’re a prayer warrior, and you’re also my husband.”

  I swallow dry as my heart blooms. “What?”

  “There’s a future war, but not in the way you think. Site C Dam, Muskrat Falls, Standing Rock …”

  “What? That’s happening now.”

  “It all goes wrong. It’s a set-up.”

  “For what?” I reach for her arm. She pulls away.

  “For the Wheetago and their mother.”

  “What?

  “You will name her The Mother of All Tusks,” she says. “She will be born because when they expand the Tar Sands, the workers will uncover a Wheetago that will bite one of the women from the local community. It’s all destined.”

  I close my eyes. Why does this feel real? Why do I already know this?

  My neck starts to burn from hickeys; my back is shredded from Valentina’s claws. I shake my head. No headaches. Holy sweet mercy. Usually by now I’d be gripping my head, rocking back and forth, praying to be thrown into a sea of ice to stop the pain.

  “What if you’re wrong? What if you’re, like, in a coma and dreaming this, or I am?” I thought of that Facebook meme: What if the adventures of Indiana Jones are the dreams of Han Solo while he’s locked up in carbonite?

  “Don’t believe me?” she says. “What’s coming back has been waiting for global warming for all its many lifetimes, under the ice. It is patient. Starving.”

  “So, the Wheetago have been doing what all these years?”

  “Praying. And they’re learning our dances now. They’re learning our songs. I have a feeling they want to teach all of this to their children.”

  I feel the thrush of cold terror blow through me. What do I really know about her? There are rumours that Valentina is a deity, that she is a being of forever, that she’d also come back to witness the signing of the treaties. When was that … 1899 for Treaty 8 in Fitz, 1921 for Treaty 11? She had downed Gunner and his buddies last night to save me from a snapped spine. Last night in the dark we made ferocious love. Holy moley. But is she sane?

  “Valentina,” I say. “You can’t just drop this on someone. I need more proof.”

  “Okay,” she says. “Tell me the story your grandfather told you. The one you never wanted to believe.”

  I sit up straight. “My grandpa?”

  “Tell me,” she says, “about what Pierre saw in Fort Fitzgerald when he was a boy.”

  I remember slowly. “My ehtsèe,” I start, “wanted to work with the men in Fort Fitzgerald when he was young. He wanted to help unload the barges. He lied about his age. ‘Holy man,’ he said, ‘they worked you hard, but they fed you good.’”

  “This was when?”

  “The thirties, I think.”

  She glances out the window before looking back at me. “Go on. Hurry.”

  I concentrate. The terror of Grandpa’s story starts trickling back.

  “As he was walking with the men to receive their work orders, he saw someone chained on a hill. I have seen this hill. It’s low and solid. I will never walk on it. This person was chained and staked to the hill face down. An old woman was guarding the person with a piece of long willow. Thick. Like a staff. As they got closer, my grandpa heard people saying, ‘Don’t look at it.’

  “Of course, as he got closer, he snuck a peek.

  “The person was shivering, shaking, trembling. He or she had rubbed their own feces into their hair. They’d eaten off their own lips, their own fingers and one whole side of their face. This person looked up at my grandpa and their eyes met. He froze. The being raised its arms off the ground and, as that happened, my grandfather felt the strength leave his body. He collapsed.

  “The old woman started whipping the Wheetago and yelled in Cree, ‘Let him go!’ The unholy beast did. It took my grandfather a full day to feel like himself again. He was so weak after.”

  Valentina nods. “That was only a glimpse into their power. They can stop shells from firing. As your grandfather saw, they eat their own lips, and most of their fingers. They’re always suffering. The more they eat the hungrier they become; the more they drink, the thirstier.

  “But in the future—our future—they start to decorate themselves for something. They have Oracles that use animal spit and medicine to kill from a distance. Some have sewn or pushed sticks and antlers into their bodies. They use ptarmigan bones and suet to tattoo each other. These Wheetago are older than Christ, and they have been counting on our greed as humans to warm the Earth so they can return. That thing on the hill, it was a scout.”

  “Fuck,” I say.

  “In the future, we just saw them, you and me and our girl, humming. So many of them, looking at the moon, shivering like bats. Their corridors are growing.”

  “Corridors?”

  “Their range is expanding globally at 144 miles a day.”

  “Stop,” I say. My jaw hurts. I’ve been grinding my teeth as I listen and dig into her truth. “Okay. Okay. If I believe you, what am I in the future?”

  “Besides being my husband?” She runs her hand up my arm. “Because of us, I give birth to one of the greatest Wheetago hunters of all time: our girl.” She levels her eyes in the direction of somewhere I don’t know. “Now it’s time for us to leave this place and begin to train.”

  “If this is really true,” I say, “I need you to do that thing again. No tricks. Bring me your worst memory from the future.”

  She holds out her hands to me to show me she’s holding nothing.

  “I’m not sorry you will see this,” she says as she places her palms against my ears. I hear a roaring, and I see people picking blackberries along burning hills. Some seem to be walking back to their camp. As I zoom in closer, I see women and men dragging themselves along, carrying buckets. Ahead of them people are kneeling and rolling berries with their fingers to create jam. The people dig into open skulls that are tied to trees, mixing the brains with the berries. These people have no hair, no feet, yet they’re still alive. Screaming, drooling, twisting. There are seven creatures on a hill watching them, like priests. Flame flickers above each of their heads. The priests are decorated for war: huge antlers rise from their skulls and throats. At the top of the hill stands a bull Wheetago. It is hunched, huge, trembling in its ferocity. It has the mouth of a hammerhead shark with a thigh bone rammed through its cheeks. The hill it stands on is made of human and animal bodies torn in half and drained.

  The Wheetago sniffs to read the wind. A Patroller. I somehow know this. The guard hairs around its neck are like those of a big cat. Behind it are more hills made of bodies with more bull Wheetago perched on top like pawns. Shovel Heads, we call them. Patrolling. Guarding. You can hear their bellies boiling if you get close enough to them. Behind
them, on the biggest hill of all, I see the Queen. She is a human giant, giving birth to more Wheetago through her mouth, just like Valentina described. Hundreds of other Wheetago approach, holding human heads like chalices served up as offerings, full of brains mixed with blackberries. The Queen licks blood from her mouth and drinks from one skull. Then another. Then another. She looks in my direction. Her eyes say it all: she hates the world and she hates us. She bares her teeth and makes a grabbing motion towards me. She wants her children to kill and eat the world. She holds up a skull. It’s upside down. It has the face of Valentina, eyes open. Mouth torn apart. An ear hanging from a braid. Beside her two Hair Eaters have a girl. The most beautiful little girl I’ve ever seen. She’s like a little Valentina. Golden. One Hair Eater steps on the girl’s arms as another rips her legs apart, and I realize this is our girl. “No!” I scream. The Mother of All Tusks throws her head back and howls.

  The seven priests raise their hands to the sky.

  The bulls rake their heads back and forth. As they join this howl, the earth around them moves. The hills of skulls sway.

  And I see a flash.

  I come back. Ears ringing.

  I’m freezing, cold, terrified.

  Oh my God. It is the end of the world, and we have caused this by doing nothing.

  “See?” Valentina says.

  “Was that our daughter?”

  She leans down and kisses me. “We have to go.”

  “Wait,” I say. “That was you? You and I …”

  “We have a few years,” she says and smiles. Then she’s crying. “You can save her. Four Blankets Woman says you can save her, but you have to come now.”

  “What about you?” I ask.

  She looks at me and wipes her eyes. “Don’t worry about me. I have another way.”

  My heart is pounding, and I need water. I try to think. “What is our daughter’s name?”

  “Ehdze,” she says.

  “For the moon,” I say.

  “For moonlight.”

  “Whoah,” I say. I get the tingles. That was always my favourite word in Tłı̨chǫ.

  “Hurry,” she says. “Everything starts now. Take my hand and we’ll leave. But you can never come back, because there’ll be nothing you want to come back to.”

  I look around. This house. My life. The world I know or knew. I take her hand just to see what will happen. Valentina. The woman who’s in all of the photographs of the treaty signings, if you look close enough. Ageless and war-torn.

  “Ehdze,” I say and get the tingles again. Moonlight. I’m going to save our daughter. We’re going to change this.

  I take my wife’s hand.

  She squeezes

  We vanish

  and are reborn into the Full Fleshing: the Return of the Wheetago.

  Wheetago War II: Summoners

  You know what happened at Bear House. Three weeks ago …

  For the record, I cannot hear much of what you’re saying. I’ve lost most of my hearing in both ears, so I’m just going to start.

  No, Sir. I cannot answer that. That is our Clan Business, and you know better. You released the names of those who passed before you should have. There’s a fourth sister, and this is how she finds out? After Kateri’s through with me, she’ll come looking for you. I promise. We have protocol for a reason, and you blew it. Can I start?

  I think we all agree that what happened to us out at The Halfway led to the taking of Outpost 5.

  For those of you who don’t know, we took a bush school on a field trip outside of Outpost 5, at what we call The Halfway. The children could choose either to get porcupine quills with Teacher Norma or to set snares for rabbits and grouse with Yellow Hand, Norma’s husband, at The Gate. The children we were charged with were the group who chose Norma: her daughter, Sarah, and seven other smaller kids. Each was marked in the way of the walrus or the caribou—this signifies if they are guardians of the land or the sea. Each child and teacher wore Silencers around their chests along with life jackets that were brightly lit in case there needed to be a quick evacuation or body Recon.

  I remember Norma. Her fierce eyes. How she sang. No song or prayer will ever be whole now without her. I mean that.

  “Okay, everyone. Gather round,” she said. “Today we’re going to learn how to harvest porcupine quills.”

  I remember Sarah asking, “Mom, is this the trail where the Na acho used to pass?”

  Norma nodded. “Yes, my girl. A long time ago, Na acho, the giant ones, used to pass here. See that mountain? Look along the sides. That was all scraped smooth by giant beavers as they made their way south for war.”

  The kids and us, the guards who were supposed to be protecting them all, looked up in astonishment. You could see the huge scrape on the face of the rock. The Na acho were the ancient ones, the giants that used to roam the Earth: giant beavers, giant eagles. Christ, we could sure use them now.

  “Will they ever return?” a girl asked.

  “Of course they will,” young Sarah said. “With great evil spilling into the world, we have to have faith.”

  The group quieted at this. We were amazed someone so young could be so wise. Sarah had been spending time with Old Man, the Chanter. I wondered if these were her words or his.

  “Dove told us they heard mermaids singing under the ice here last spring,” one of the shyer boys said. Amos was his name.

  A child named Stephen added: “My mom says Dove is both a girl and a boy.”

  Who is Dove? Dove’s our Shifter. Our Moon Watcher. Yes, Dove is a Shifter. I’ll tell you what: after you hear what happened, you won’t be rolling your eyes when I mention that name. Can I continue?

  So Norma held her hands out. “Okay now. Let’s focus on the lesson of today,” she said.

  She motioned for us to approach the body of a dead porcupine as she pulled on thick gloves. “Here we are. I saw this little one yesterday when we were picking berries. We’ll drop tobacco in honour of this little life’s passing.”

  As I scanned the horizon and trees, doing my job, I could smell the fresh smoky tobacco they passed around. The students knew not to distract us. There were four other guards, Kateri’s three sisters and a distant man—Stanley, they called him—who could fell a Wheetago from a mile away. Stanley was an ace at using his .30-30 to take out the eyes of a Shovel Head. I saw that myself at least five times.

  What happens when a Shovel Head is blinded? The others eat ’im. It’s pretty to see Hair Eaters turn on each other like that.

  So the teachers and students dropped tobacco and offered it to the earth and to our Mother.

  “Today,” Norma said, “we give thanks for all we have. My husband’s birthday is soon approaching, and I want to make him new moccasins. Our camp is low on beads, but you can use porcupine quills to decorate just about anything if you know what to do. Lucky for all of us, Aunty knows what to do.”

  The kids beamed. I could feel it. No matter what happened after, I can go back to that last exact perfect moment.

  Uncle Ned was with us as well. I’m not sure why he was there. Bored, maybe. Maybe he wanted to feel the sun on his face. Maybe he wanted to watch the children learn. We’ll never know now, will we?

  The guards: each of us was tattooed, pierced and marked with the sign of the caribou. Two of us had dreadlocks and a side shave. One had her hair tied tightly in a bun. Like the others, each of us had a pair of military-grade Silencers. All it takes is for one Wheetago to scream, and it can freeze the lot of you. I’ve seen that … or I should say I’ve seen what a group of humans looks like after. You never forget it. The Wheetago suck the brains of their victims out through their eyes once the victims are frozen. That means you see your murderer coming. You can’t do a thing.

  We were armed with Decapitators, flares, machetes, handguns, rifles. I’d left my Decap
itator at home that day, thinking I had enough with my rifle, side piece and flare gun. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

  It was a beautiful day. The leaves were yellow, gold. Frost had been on the grass earlier that morning. No wind. You could hear for miles.

  I thought I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. My hunting glasses: if a bird passes, those glasses catch the reflection. When I’m hyper-aware, I move quick. We all turned. Nothing.

  Can we come back to this later? Why? ’Cause I have a theory, that’s why.

  Norma showed Sarah and the other students how to take care in pulling out the porcupine quills with a tool she’d built. They were pliers she’d modified. I took the time to admire the shawls that Norma and her daughter wore. Norma’s shawl covered her belly and had a caribou on it. Sarah’s had a caribou as well, but it was a young one. Innocent. The women, they had started loomin’, and what they were turning out was beautiful. It brought hope, which is a dangerous but welcome thing. We were all feeling human again. Norma was pregnant, eight months. And here she was with her daughter preparing gifts for Yellow Hand’s birthday. I thought to make him one of my famous T knives. They’re small but lethal.

  On this expedition, Sarah was the oldest. I can say I truly knew only three of the smaller ones. The Outpost was growing. We had hope. Strength in numbers. My three little buddies were Tyler the Blond, Alex the Bulldog and Shane the Fearless. Those were my names for them.

  I remember laughter. Uncle Ned was smiling at the time. He looked young; his face was clear, radiant. He looked at the twin suns before he met my eyes. I admired his braids, how his wife had wound stained moosehide into them. He always carried his Silencers around his throat. All he’d need to do was duck and they’d be on in a heartbeat. I’d copied him the second I noticed the way he had shaved them down and covered them with moose—

  Then Ned winced. I recall watching him. His face twitched. That was when it happened. He winced when he saw how one of the guards—Old Mah—looked at a bird on the ground with its wings fanned out. It was a magpie. Old Mah was still wearing her teddy bear in a baby carrier. She had lost her baby. You know the Wheetago. One of their priests—or Oracles, as you call them—had sewn what was left of her boy into the bark of a tree.