Spirited (3 page)

The wind answered back, whistling through the branches of the trees in a single voice, like the flute of a brave who has lost his chance at love.

Your time will come.

He turned to the west wind and spread wide his arms. “Thirteen moons since I swore I would paint my tomahawk with the blood of their killers.”

Your time will come.

He pulled his tomahawk from the leather strap on his breechcloth and showed the spirits of the north his unblemished blade. He shook it at the sunny sky.

“Thirteen moons, and my scalp pole stands empty!”

Your time will come.

To the south, he cried, “Why do you not send British soldiers to me, so my wife and my infant son can walk the Road of Stars? I am dishonored, and my loved ones go unavenged!”

He threw back his head and cried out in frustration as he spoke to the firmament. His voice echoed like a rifle shot through the valleys of the purple mountains.
Unavenged… unavenged …it
was a bitter chant of rage and despair.

“I cannot fail in this!” he shouted to the earth below. “My spirit is worthless until I fulfill my vow!”

As if in answer, an icy wind whipped low across the forest floor, raising a whirlpool of desiccated pine needles and leaves the color of blood. The wind grew stronger; its force slapped his hair against his hollow cheeks like a stinging lash. He did not feel it. His chest was heaving. He was dizzy with fury.

The wind carried the leaves and needles into the fire, feeding it; the flames rose higher, feeding the heat in his heart, the heat of his anger. If only he had a Yangee soldier within his grasp; he would make the white devil pay for the destruction of his life.

He would make the Yangee pay for days.

For the death of his young wife, and of his tiny son, only days old…

By every drop of blood inside his body, by every tear he had not shed, he would make him pay.

He threw back his head and whispered to the spirits, “Give me my vengeance. I am dying day by day.”

Your time will come.

“I am tired of waiting! I am a man! I do not sit by the fire like an old squaw!”

The sky darkened; the wood crackled and snapped, and Wusamequin began to dance. He moved his lean body around the campfire, fists clenched, biceps flexed; he danced of torture and revenge.

The spirits of the air watched, and they approved.

The dance of a medicine man conjured powerful magic; and Miantonomi, the father of Wusamequin, had been a shaman unrivaled in power among his people. But his father had died from one of the many
horrible diseases the white skins brought with them from their villages across the great water. His skin erupted in sores; his body shook; he vomited black blood. And there had been nothing his son could do to save him. There was no magic in his medicine bag more powerful than the white skins’ disease.

As soon as his father breathed the last breath, Wusamequin had been elected to his office by the elder women of the tribe, as was their right. They had brought him a beaded belt and led him to a fresh wigwam, where all his possessions had been lovingly arranged for him. His father’s things were burned in his old wigwam that very night, to prevent the sickness that had permeated them from harming Wusamequin.

He had not felt ready to devote himself to his tribe’s spiritual welfare, but he had accepted the honor. His wife had glowed with pride. And she had loved him well his first night as shaman. Their son had grown in her belly after that.

Wusamequin had worked hard to learn what his father had not had time to teach him. He felt strong medicine within him, but he had not yet learned how to call it forth.

Then his wife and child were killed. In less than two years, he had lost his father, his woman, and his seed. It was more than he could bear; he withdrew, and no enticement could bring him back into the heart of the community. Not even the beautiful maiden Odina, who had loved him before he married his wife, and who loved him still.

It was obvious to everyone in the village that his spirit was slowly dying. His grief and hatred were consuming him like wolves starving in winter.

The loss of another medicine man so soon after the death of the great Miantonomi would be a blow to his people. They were already severely weakened by the wars and the constant encroachment of the pale newcomers. The white skin settlers fished out the rivers and cleared the forest to plant their corn; the forest animals were therefore easier to hunt, and the newcomers killed them all.

The white skins brought death in many forms, and the apple-cheeked children of the People of the River lost their fat and became gaunt like old men. Their mothers spent endless hours foraging for groundnuts, leeks, and wild onions. Their vast supplies of cherries, black currants, and blue figs shrank. On the shore of the great waters, their prized oyster beds had been picked clean. The rivers of herring, shad, and trout had thinned out.

As the People grew hungry, the hunters ranged farther away in search of game. The warriors went with them, so desperate were the People for food. And that was when the white devils had struck: when the young men were gone, and Wusamequin and the elders had been left to care for the women and children.

In that, too, he had failed his people.

But the villagers still looked to their warriors and to Wusamequin to save them. Wusamequin concentrated
on learning his shaman’s Way: he alone could part the veil of smokes between the world of men and the world of ghosts and spirits. He was a spirit warrior who walked in moccasins no other man dared to wear.

But he did not wear them comfortably. He did not feel like a spirit warrior. No feathers graced his hair. No woman shared his bed.

And so he danced, red-eyed and tearless, and remembered a time when his wife—whose name he did not speak—had whispered to him, “My great husband, I am so happy in this moment that if I died in the next, I would only laugh.”

She had not laughed. She had died screaming for her baby as two British soldiers shot her with their muskets and left her bleeding and broken. She had died in agony. And her baby …

His baby …

“Bring me peace. Bring me relief,” Wusamequin sang as he danced. In his pain, he ran his tomahawk across his palm, hissing from the cruel kiss of his blade. It was painted red now, but his blood would not feed its hunger. His tomahawk was starving.

His heart was starving.

“Give me peace!” he shouted.

Another wind shot through the clearing. Sparks flared into the sky, sizzling against his bare chest and shoulders.

“Give me back my loved ones!”

He stomped his feet; he whirled in a circle. The drums of the spirits cannonaded through the treetops;
clouds gathered above him and crouched, low and ready.

A third time the wind gathered its forces, and this time the spirit of the wind blew his essence into Wusamequins mourning fire.

The smoke billowed and coiled like the whitewater of a rapids; then it thickened and rose in a column, a waterfall of smoke rising up into the air. Wusamequin danced, passing his tomahawk through the scented mists, through the veils that were parting between this world and the other.

The smoke undulated as it found form, and Wusamequin fell to his knees in exhaustion. He rose up, kneeling with his arms crossed over his chest.

The column roared and Wusamequin whispered,
“Aquai” Hello.

It rushed and billowed, and then his spirit guide stepped into the world.

His guide’s name was Great Bear, and he loomed at least six hands higher than his human nephew, Wusamequin. He was covered in brownish black fur, a giant of the forest. Great Bear had come to Wusamequin six winters earlier, during the youth’s initiation into the world of men, first appearing when Wusamequin had left the tribe to walk his vision quest. Miantonomi had been pleased by his son’s adoption by Great Bear, who was a powerful totem.

“We have need of such an ally in these hard times,” Miantonomi had told the proud, happy youth. “This speaks well of your favor with the ancestors, my son.”

Now Great Bear held out his powerful, sharp paws in greeting, each as wide as Wusamequin’s chest, and bellowed at the man who, in his despair, had summoned him. Great Bear’s head was as big as the campfire, and each of his eyes was larger than Wusamequin’s fist. His teeth were sharp and very white, and he smelled of the other place where he dwelled—of sweet grass and clear waters, and air that had never been breathed by men.

Of the Land Beyond, the paradise where the People lived after they left the world, in preparation for the journey on the Road of Stars.

Wusamequin, my nephew
, Great Bear said.
You are suffering. I am glad you have called me.

Wusamequin decided to dance his conversation with Great Bear. He had voiced his rage, and so he would remain silent out of respect for the Great One. Though he had shouted his demands to the spirits, it had been his dance that had called Great Bear from the invisible world to him.

Wusamequin rose and spread forth his arms.
The spirits say my time will come. I am tired of waiting for justice, my uncle.

I understand, my nephew. Turn around.

His heart filling with hope, Wusamequin obeyed, exposing his back to the enormous bear.

Great Bear extended his paw and traced the scar that ran the length of Wusamequin’s spine, beginning at the base of his skull and trailing to the small
of his back. The wound had cut very deep.

The British soldiers had assumed that it had killed him. Knowing that the braves had left to hunt, they attacked without warning, without provocation. He had been in the sweat lodge when he heard his wife screaming. He had burst out of the lodge and run to the wigwam, run as hard as he could….

Clear your mind, my nephew
, Great Bear urged him.
Your fury blinds you. It fragments you.

As he turned back around, Wusamequin stared unsmiling at his beloved spirit guide. Both his father and his guide had taught Wusamequin that this life was both a journey and a test. As a man and a warrior, Wusamequin must prove his valor and his courage; he must die with a clean conscience that he had done his best at all times. He must provide results in order to be able to face seven generations of his ancestors. He must have triumphs to share when it came time for him to count coup—to speak of his victories over the challenges laid before him. He must prove to them that he was worthy to sit with them at the council fires, or he would be banished from their company and wander in shame and degradation for all time.

The blood trickled from Wusamequin’s palm into the fire, each droplet hissing as it hit the flames. It must not be his blood only that nourished the fires of this world.

His enemies must burn for what they had done.

You are my guide, Great Bear
, he reminded the huge creature.
It is your duty to accompany me on my path, and to assist me so that I may count coup.

Great Bear growled and waved his paws. His jaws opened, closed. Saliva roped from his great teeth. Then he lowered his head and raised it again, nodding at the shaman.

And so I shall, my human nephew. I promise you this very day, I will show you the path you must take to answer the true prayers of your heart.

Wusamequin’s heart soared. Hope fed his fierce anger.

You will help me hunt soldiers to kill?
he persisted.
Yangee warriors to feed my tomahawk? Scalps to proclaim the restoration of my honor, so that my dead son may also sit proudly at the council fire of my ancestors? That he may count coup on his own behalf, and then walk the Road of Stars with his mother?

His spirit guide growled at him again and lowered his paws. Then he spoke in the language of this world’s bears.

Proud, angry man, I will give you what I say I will.

Still balanced on his hind legs, the bear ambled in a slow circle and tumbled forward onto his front paws. Then he lumbered into the forest, looking over his shoulder once, as if to urge his disciple to follow.

Wusamequin trotted behind Great Bear into the thick stands of trees. Above his head, the storm clouds gathered and began to rumble. They covered the sun, and as Wusamequin entered the forest, he
was cloaked in darkness. But he knew the way among the trees and streams as surely as his son had known the way to his mother’s breast.

Without hesitation, the young medicine man followed Great Bear deep into the woods.

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