Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History (38 page)

Marie interrupted again, her chin jutting forward in a way that made Thomas proud even as it frightened him. Here was the girl’s spirit he remembered, but now it raged at him. “Why was that more important?”

John put his arm across her body, holding her back. “Marie–”

“No!”

Thomas put up his hands. “We tried, your mother and I. They said if we took you out without permission we would go to jail. We wrote letters, I worked to make more money, and then the war–”

John stepped forward. “It doesn’t matter. Mrs. Fotheringham got us out.”

For a second, Thomas’s heart soared, but then he saw the unforgiving set of his son’s jaw.

“She’ll take us to their country house, she said. When the strike is over, we’ll come back. Then they’ll have us in a real school.”

Thomas’s throat was suddenly so dry he could barely speak. “You have a home already. I can take you back.”

“No!” said Marie. “You can’t make me be Indian!”

“But I–”

She shook her head and crumpled, pulling her fists up to cover her face and ears. “I don’t want to go into the shed! Please!”

Thomas’s heart pounded as he recognized the tone in her voice. That same terror ripped from his own throat when he would relive his friends being blown apart by shrapnel, the whistling shriek of an incoming shell –

But there she was, even as her brother held her tight to soothe the shudders that wracked her body. She had known horror while he was away.

Thomas lurched out of the chair and fell to his knees, crawling toward his children until he could wrap his long arms around their shivering backs.

John tried to throw his arms away, but Thomas hugged them tighter. “I know. I don’t know what, but I know it. I know it.”

“You can’t,” said John.

Thomas wanted to tell them, he knew what it was like to be sneered at for being Indian, how the white men in his unit had welcomed him the least and the last. How he’d had to go the extra mile, literally, in his recon duties, to prove himself. The only comments had been about how he was older than most of them; but the unspoken remarks were what lingered.
Indian. Illiterate. Savage.
His first sergeant had assumed Thomas could only read animal tracks, that he fed himself by hunting with a bow and arrow and wouldn’t understand tire tread marks, boot prints, or the sound of German soldiers creeping through the muck of no-man’s-land.

His daughter’s words,
You can’t make me be Indian
, dredged all that back up.

After long moments of sobbing, he quieted and their breathing became less ragged. He didn’t know how long Mrs. Fotheringham would give them before coming to claim his children, but so far her footsteps still echoed only from the first floor.

“Niniichaanisak,” he said, before switching to English, “you don’t have to be anything but what you are. And you are beautiful. If you could see the way your ancestors’ faces shine in yours, you would be proud. As I am of you. You are so strong. And we can be strong together, not pulled apart to be put into other people’s places.”

Marie looked up at him, her dark eyes hard and her cheeks glistening. “I can’t go. They took my baby. They might do something.”

Thomas glanced to the side; his hearing wasn’t as good as when he was a wolf, and it had been worse since the thunder of the war, but he was pretty sure not even the maid was close enough to hear through the door. He dropped his voice to a whisper. “Pimaatisi giniichaanis. We hid her, your baby. Your mother and I. The teachers at the school think she died in the hospital, but we took her. She’s with your uncle, now, back home.”

“What?”

“Shh, shh, we had to keep it a secret. Until we could get you out. Both of you. Will you come?”

Marie’s lip trembled and she made a choking sound.

John grabbed Thomas’s upper arm. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

“We were afraid, too.”

The sound of an automobile growled and sputtered to a halt from the street out front. In the lobby downstairs, footsteps clattered across the tile floor.

“They were coming to take us in a car tonight,” said John.

“You don’t have to go,” said Thomas. “You can come with me.” He cracked a tiny smile. “But you’ll have to walk.”

His son and daughter shared a long look.

Thomas caressed their shoulders and backs roughly. “There is more power in you than they know. And there is something else I can share with you, when the time is right. Think of some of the stories we shared when you were little. You know the ones. The ones you wanted to be part of, about the mahiinkanak.”

Slow remembrance of driven-out words crinkled Marie’s brow. “The… the wolves.”

Thomas nodded. “I couldn’t tell you everything then, because sometimes a story has to be told at different times. But if you want to come with me, that story is waiting for you. You’re already a part of it, and you cannot be made to feel less than human in it. I don’t have a big house. Or much money. But I can give you that.”

“Children!” called Agnes from the staircase landing. “Grab your things.”

There were deep voices from the entrance downstairs and quick feet clattered up the staircase.

Thomas held his breath as his daughter and son broke their gaze and turned to look at him.

“We’re coming,” said John and Marie. Together they went to the door and opened it. Agnes stepped back, startled. “Are you ready?”

John raised his chin and looked at her, the spitting image of Clara’s father facing down an Indian Affairs agent thirty years ago. Confusion pinched her face. John and Marie started down the stairs. Thomas turned to Agnes and said, “Goodbye,” and followed his children.

Two men waited for them on the main floor. Their shirtsleeves were rolled up and each carried what looked like a section from a wagon-wheel spindle, long as a baseball bat. Their dark eyes locked on to Thomas as he stopped on the tiled lobby. He knew by the straight-backed air of authority coupled with the rounded shoulders: they saw themselves as above the law. Given their neckties, vests and matching trousers, he guessed these were two of the “special constables” who had replaced the police.

Mrs. Fotheringham’s hand was still on the doorknob, and the two men brushed past her.

“This the one?” said the taller of the two, glaring at Thomas.

“There’s no need for trouble,” said Mrs. Fotherinham. “Thank you all the same, sirs.” She threw a glance at Thomas, cutting around in front of the burly men. “I did not call these men here, I assure you. Agnes! Offer our guests some tea while I speak to Mr. Greyeyes.”

The constable ignored her. “All right, chief, let’s go.”

“It’s OK,” Thomas said with a slight smile, “you can call me Corporal.”

The shorter constable, whose face was dark with stubble, stepped forward and pulled a revolver from his pocket. “I don’t take orders from savages. Push off!”

The taller constable grimaced at his partner. “What the hell are you doing? Think we can’t handle this the old way?”

“After them Bolsheviks pushed us around Tuesday, the boss said we should let ‘em know who’s in charge. Well, this is it. Come on, chief. Outside.”

“Gentlemen, please–” Mrs. Fotheringham said, holding out her hands.

“It’s all right,” Thomas said to her softly. “We were just leaving.”

“What?” Mrs. Fotheringham’s eyes flicked to Thomas’s face and then to his children. “John? Marie? Is this true?”

“We’re going,” said John. “And no white man is going to stop us.”

The constable cocked his gun. Thomas’s pulse quickened. He knew how badly things could go and the sooner they were outside, the better, even if the constables followed them out. As a wolf, he’d have had no trouble; but there was no time to change. “No one asked you, kid,” said the armed constable.

“Sir!” said Mrs. Fotheringham, her voice carrying a note of panic. “I must ask you to leave. This is not a police matter.”

“We’ll see about that,” said the taller man. He pointed his great stick directly at Thomas’s face. It brought back the image of a German rifle Thomas had stared down for a split second before ducking – one of the times as a wolf he had prowled too close to enemy lines and been spotted. That shot still rang in his ears, even though it had missed him. “You,” said the constable. “Outside. The little brave and the little squaw can stay here.”

Thomas fought to keep his mind clear. He couldn’t afford a flashback to the war now. “It’s fine,” he said weakly, then repeated himself, more loudly, and added, “I’ll go.”

He stepped toward the constables, his hands up. They wouldn’t know to make him put his hands behind his head like he’d done with POWs; these two didn’t seem like veterans of anything but street brawls.

Mrs. Fotheringham moved as if to put her hand on his shoulder but the constables still had their weapons up and she hesitated. “Mr. Greyeyes, I do apologize. Please stay.”

“It’ll be better if I go,” he said, looking the taller constable in the eye. Without rank insignia, it was hard to know which of them was boss, but when in doubt it was always best to take out the bigger opponent.

The tremors rippling through his body subsided and Thomas slowed his breathing. He’d come back later for his children. They’d wait for him, after he’d dealt with the constables. It was going to be all right.

Suddenly John leapt from the foot of the stairs, knocking Mrs. Fotheringham back as he grabbed for the constable’s truncheon. “You can’t take him!”

Thomas shouted “Don’t!” as the other constable fired.

Thomas watched his son crumple and fall. Other soldiers who had come back with shell shock might collapse into a ball, covering their ears, or attack the source of the disruption. But for Thomas, much deeper instincts kicked in, twisted by the horrors of modern war. He changed.

His clothes bulged and ripped beneath hulking furry shoulders. The revolver thundered again in the small space, but Thomas was already lurching right at the smaller constable, pushing him down, and the shot went wide. Something hard crashed down on his back and head, again and again: the other constable’s truncheon. But now his clothing hugged him in shreds. He was the mahiinkan.

The constable fired uselessly at the wall, unable to free his arm from Thomas’s teeth; the sound brought back memories of the trenches. At any moment a shell would come screaming out of the sky and destroy them all.

He shook the man like a rabbit. Bone snapped, the constable yelled, and the weapon clattered away on the floor. Thomas wheeled to face the other, still raining blows down on him with wild shouts he could barely hear in the fading echo of the revolver shots. Turning his great lupine snout to the side, he seized the man’s rib cage in his jaws and crushed it. The constable gasped and crumpled.

Mrs. Fotheringham screamed and ran back into the sitting room. Thomas was conscious of his son’s body on the floor beneath them, unmoving, and using his massive neck muscles he hauled the constable away from him. The urge to tear the man to pieces gripped him, but Thomas paused. He sought the quiet he’d sometimes known in the boreal forest long ago, a deeper echo of who he was.

His daughter stood frozen, clutching the handrail, a look of horror twisting her mouth and eyes. The maid, Agnes, had disappeared upstairs – he heard her wailing. His son lay in a widening pool of blood near the body of the smaller constable whose arm Thomas had mangled.

He crossed the lobby in a single leap and pressed his paws on his son’s still form. He reached deep with his mind, down through the earth, to pull up enough power to heal the damage in his son’s chest, knit the sinews and flesh back together, and make it whole beneath the black pads of a dire wolf’s paws.

Long moments passed. No one made a sound.

When it was done, he allowed the power within the earth, the Great Mother, to change him back into his human self, clothed now in the tatters of his uniform, kneeling with his hands pressed onto his son’s back.

There was no movement. He crouched down, cursing his still-ringing ears, but when placing his head onto his son’s back, he felt it: a heartbeat.

Sobs shuddered out of Thomas. His son lay motionless but alive, and the sounds around him came as if from miles away. Mrs. Fotheringham staggered past, making for the back of the house. She slammed the door behind her. Marie slumped down on the wood staircase. After a long moment, Thomas looked up at her.

“We need to bring you to your daughter,” he said.

Marie shook her head, staring at her brother. “How?”

“Marie!” he said. “We must go. John will recover.” He wrapped his arms around his son, pulling his body up off the blood-slick tiles. Usually, after the change, Thomas felt renewed, energized; but trying to heal another always drained him. Now he felt cold and tired in a way that took him back to the day after Vimy Ridge, a victory that did not mean the end of anything. There was only hope in a new beginning.

He stood, raising John in his arms as he had years earlier. “We named her Marion.”

“Who?”

“Your daughter. Because she looks so much like you.”

Marie put a hand on the dark wood banister and pulled herself up. “What will we do?”

Thomas took a deep breath, listening hard outside. He could drive, but he had no intention of stealing the constables’ automobile. A borrowed boat, however, might be the best way out of the city.

“To the river bank. The Red flows north. Selkirk isn’t that far, and I can get help there.”

“Kipaapaa…” she said clumsily, wincing.
Father
.

“Shh.” He kissed her forehead. “Your mother would be proud of you.”

Together they bore John out the open front door, into the deep indigo of summer twilight.

Art by Jennifer Cruté