The Becoming - a novella (10 page)

Shocked by this
development, Stephen knew immediately he could never allow his child to be
raised as an Abnaki. The heathen savages refused to permit the introduction of
Christianity into the community, and Stephen was well aware of what that meant
for his child: suffering in the fires of hell for all eternity. Although he had
never met his baby, although he had only known for twenty-four hours that he
even
had
a baby, Stephen realized he must do something to give his
little daughter the opportunity to experience eternal salvation.

So he had begged
the Native girl for a chance to meet the infant, to see his child if only once,
and she reluctantly agreed. Stephen thought how strange it was to have fathered
a baby with a savage girl whose name he didn’t even know. They had tried
numerous times two years ago to relate their names to each other, but the
language barrier was simply too wide—the savage girl’s name sounded like
nothing more than guttural nonsense to Stephen, and he assumed his name sounded
the same to her.

Stephen was
surprised the Native girl had agreed to his request, as she was clearly
suffering tremendous pressure from the village elders. The savages had never
expected to see the band of traveling missionaries again, and the Native girl
was obviously worried that either she or her baby would suffer some horrible
fate Stephen could not comprehend thanks to their return.

All the more
reason, Stephen thought, to rescue my child from this primitive land, to give
her a chance at a real life back in England
. His parents would be shocked
by the baby’s arrival, but he knew they could provide proper care for her until
Stephen could return home following his missionary calling and raise her
himself.

Now, the night of
the promised meeting, Stephen sat perched on a mammoth boulder, body heat
leaching away in the freezing cold of the Great Forest. He feared the young
mother had changed her mind about allowing him to see his baby. Perhaps the
elders had somehow learned of the meeting and were even now holding her
captive, forbidding her to leave the village. He hoped not; it would make a bad
situation that much worse.

But at last the
girl padded silently down the narrow hunting path. On her back a sling made of
thick animal fur had been fastened and buried deep inside it, swaddled in still
more fur to ensure warmth, was Stephen’s child. The baby was fast asleep, and
the Native girl was reluctant because of the cold to lift her out of the sling,
but Stephen glimpsed her luxurious head of jet-black hair peeking through the
top of all the fur. Her hair was thick and full and had a sheen and color
identical to that of the Native girl.

The Native girl’s
entire body was shaking but not due to the temperature. If there was one thing
the missionaries had learned about the savages in this strange land, it was
that they knew how to keep warm in the winter. They survived in this harsh and
unforgiving climate by utilizing skills perfected over the course of centuries
to overcome the frigid winter temperatures. No, this was something else—the
girl was clearly terrified. Stephen was glad he had decided to rescue his child
from the clutches of these savages; it seemed obvious to him that something was
very wrong.

As he admired the
baby—or at least the top of her head—the remainder of the close-knit band of
traveling missionaries appeared, stepping out from behind trees, bushes and
rocks and surrounding Stephen and the Native girl. He watched tensely as she
turned a full three hundred sixty degrees, looking from face to face in terror,
understanding instantly she had been tricked, that this late-night meeting was
not going to go as planned.

Stephen hated
having to ambush the frightened Native girl like this, but he could think of no
other way to wrest his baby away from clutches of the Abnaki savages. After
meeting the girl in this isolated location last night—a good two miles from her
village and at least another mile from the missionaries’ camp—and discovering
that he was a father, he had requested council with the rest of the group.

The men had been
unanimously shocked by Stephen Ames’s admission of having lain with the savage
two years ago, but they quickly agreed that action must be taken to remove the
innocent child from the heathens, that she be provided the opportunity to grow
to adulthood in civilized society. In a strategy session lasting deep into the
night, a plan had been hastily devised. Stephen would meet the Native girl as
agreed, and the remainder of the missionaries would show themselves upon her
arrival. The resulting show of force, they reasoned, should be sufficient to
intimidate the frightened girl into handing over the baby.

After that meeting
had broken up, however, Stephen had learned from his closest friend that the
missionary leaders convened a second session, one to which Stephen Ames had not
been invited. They suspected separating the child from her mother might not be
so easy and knew they might require a second, more forceful plan, to be
utilized in the event the young savage resisted. That was all the information
Stephen had been able to pry out of his associate but was more than enough to
cause him grave concern.

Now, as Stephen
watched with his heart in his throat, the young girl turned on her heel and
began hurrying as quickly as she was able with a sleeping baby on her back down
the narrow hunting path. She found her passage blocked almost immediately by
two of the missionaries. They approached her with their hands held out, palms
up, in identical gestures of supplication, speaking to her calmly, telling her
she had nothing to fear. Stephen knew she did not understand and could see
things were spiraling quickly out of control.

He rushed up from
behind, hoping to avert disaster, but as he did the rest of the group closed in
on her as well and now she had nowhere to go, nowhere to run. The young mother
tried to shoulder her way past the man nearest her as Stephen reached for her
elbow and missed. The missionary shoved her roughly, and she tumbled into the
forest ringing the path. Stephen shouted and the man grabbed for the baby and
that was when all hell broke loose.

***

Abnaki war cries pierced the air as
savages seemingly materialized out of nowhere, rushing to protect their tribal
member. They moved quickly and within seconds had fully surrounded the
missionaries. One warrior struck the man who had pushed the girl, hitting him
in the face with his fist. Blood spurted and bone cracked and the man fell to
the ground with an anguished cry.

This seemed to
panic the missionaries, and one of them pulled a strange-looking silver
cylindrical device from the pocket of his long overcoat, pointing it at the
Abnaki warrior who had rushed to the girl’s defense. Fire erupted from the end
of the cylinder and a frighteningly loud boom shook the woods as the side of
the warrior’s face disappeared in a pink and grey stew of blood, bone and
tissue. The warrior dropped to the ground and lay still.

Immediately bows
were drawn and arrows launched by the Abnaki tribal members and knives and
hatchets appeared. More silver cylinders were drawn out of more missionary
pockets, belching more fire; the awful booming noises crashed through the
forest and men on both sides of the conflict fell.

***

Stephen screamed and tumbled to the
ground as he was struck in the shoulder by a hatchet thrown from he knew not
where. He had known the missionary group would be armed; they always carried
weapons when dealing with savages, but they had never before been forced to use
them against this particular tribe.

His left arm felt
numb and his hand tingled violently; he knew he was badly injured. Blood
covered his shoulder and ran down his chest in a great wave. He looked for the
Native girl, the mother of his child, but could not find her. Smoke from the
missionaries’ guns hung thickly in the air, obscuring the moonlight and casting
the scene in an eerie nightmarish hue. Screams rent the night, whether from
missionaries or tribesmen Stephen could not tell.

His vision began
to narrow; he found himself peering down a long tunnel and soon the black edges
of that tunnel began squeezing his vision into a steadily shrinking circle. The
screaming and the cries of anguish now seemed to originate from a point much
farther away than they had previously, although Stephen knew that was not
possible. He was lying in the middle of the battle zone. He guessed he was
dying and wished he could hold his baby daughter just once.

Then nothing.

***

Stephen Ames opened his eyes. He
was still lying on the frozen ground of New England in November. He felt
incredibly, bone-chillingly cold, colder than he ever had in his entire life.
He was surprised he was not dead and wondered how long he had been lying in the
forest unconscious. He attempted to stand up and only then realized he could
not move. Stephen knew that unless someone helped him, and soon, he was going
to die. He was surprised to discover the prospect didn’t frighten him.

Moving his head,
which seemed to be the only part of his body he could convince to work
properly, Stephen scanned as much of the area as he could see. Bodies littered
the forest, some of them Abnaki tribal warriors and some of them missionaries;
men Stephen had lived and worked with for the past three years. A few of them
were moaning softly, but most lay unspeaking and unmoving. Stephen suspected
the majority of them were dead. Blood was everywhere, congealing on every
surface, more blood than Stephen would ever have imagined possible.

His most pressing
thought—his only clear thought, really—was for his baby. Was she still near? He
didn’t think so. None of the bodies he could see on the ground appeared to be
those of women; although he knew he could not see all of the dead. He hoped
fervently that the Native girl and his child had somehow escaped the carnage,
as unlikely as that seemed.

Motion in his
peripheral vision caused Stephen to peer down the hunting path. The smoke from
the gunfire had by now cleared, and the moon shone brightly in the frigid
November sky. Struggling up the path was an elderly Abnaki tribesman. Stephen
had never before seen the man and that was strange; until now he thought he had
met everyone in the small tribal village at least once. The man looked older
than anyone Stephen had ever seen—ancient even. Lines etched his face which was
haggard and drawn. Tears rolled down his cheeks. He took slow, measured steps
and remained utterly silent as he reached the scene of the bloody conflict.

The old
tribesman’s arms were laden with strange-looking items like roots and cloth
sacks filled with what Stephen could not imagine. At last the man reached a
point roughly in the center of the carnage and set all his accoutrements on the
ground in a neat pile. He still had not said a word as far as Stephen could
tell.

Stephen thought
briefly about crying out and alerting the ancient Native to his presence. He
knew that by doing so, he would probably seal his fate. The man would certainly
kill him after what had been done to his fellow Abnaki tribal members. But
Stephen didn’t care if the man killed him; he decided he would welcome death
after this tragic night had gone so horribly wrong, but he was curious as to
what the old man was doing all by himself in the middle of the night in this
place that reeked of treachery and death and destruction.

He remained quiet
and watched the scene unfold. The elderly Abnaki sat cross-legged on the cold,
hard ground, arranging his materials in a tight semicircle. It appeared to
Stephen that the man was chanting under his breath—his lips were moving but
Stephen could hear nothing.

Stephen knew
enough about the customs of the Abnaki and about Natives in general to know the
elderly man was performing some sacred ritual. He was a tribal medicine man, an
individual possessed of incredible power and mysticism. His voice was now
intelligible to Stephen, strengthening in volume as he continued to chant. He
mixed ingredients into a great bowl placed on the ground in front of him. The
man added water to the mixture and stirred slowly for a long time, staring into
the distance and chanting. Tendrils of steam rose lazily from the bowl, clearly
apparent in the bright moonlight, despite the fact there was no fire beneath
it.

Eventually the
elderly Native stood, moving ever so slowly, and walked among the bodies
littering the forest floor. He stopped at each of the Abnaki dead, smearing
some of the mixture on the foreheads of the men and ignoring the missionary
dead.

Stephen’s vision
began to waver and he knew he would soon be joining his fellow missionaries in
whatever afterlife awaited them in the wake of this disaster. He hoped God
understood he had not planned this slaughter and prayed he would still be
permitted entrance into heaven. He prayed also that his daughter, the baby he
had met just once, was alive; although he knew that was unlikely in the
extreme.

As the ancient
Abnaki medicine man padded silently among the Native bodies, performing his
mysterious ritual, Stephen Ames slipped into unconsciousness for the last time.
The freezing cold vanished and the world went black, and Stephen was grateful
there was no pain.

1

Present
Day

George Hooper was lost. He was also
hungry and wet, thus completing what he had come to think of as his own
personal trifecta of misery. A steady drizzle fell silently from the slate-grey
skies, making George shiver and long for the warmth and comfort of his living
room. He tried to take his mind off the chill by picturing himself sitting in
front of a roaring fire, three fingers of bourbon warming his insides as he sat
in a rocking chair doing nothing in particular, maybe watching the Yankees on
TV or reading a good book.