Apparition Trail, The (37 page)

The sound caused Chambers to open his eyes in surprise. He had the presence of mind neither to speak nor to let go of the feather we both still held. By the way he was looking around, I guessed that he couldn’t see the woman in the smoke — but when she moved, causing her skirt to rustle slightly, his breath caught. He tipped his head, as if listening.

“Stone Keeper,” I said, using her proper name. I vowed that I would never again call her by the name Four Finger Pete had given her. “Why are you crying?”

“My daughter is dying.”

I expected her to answer in the broken English I’d heard her use when I’d first met her on the
North West
. Instead, she was speaking in another language — probably Peigan. It didn’t matter; just as I had understood the chiefs in the shaking tepee, so I understood her now.

It seemed that Chambers could hear Stone Keeper, as well. “Where is Iniskim?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Stone Keeper said. She did not glance in his direction but instead stared straight at me with her sad, dark eyes. “Iniskim is lost. You must help her, Thomas. She must reach the Manitou Stone.”

“Why?” Chambers interrupted in a strained voice. “So your people can work their terrible magic? You must know where Iniskim is. Tell us. Now!” The feather I was holding shuddered, and I realized that Chambers’s hand was shaking.

I was about to rebuke Chambers for trying to bully Stone Keeper into telling us something she clearly didn’t know. After the way she had been treated by Four Finger Pete, it was an unkind approach to take. Then I realized what Stone Keeper had just done. She’d called me by my true name: Thomas.

Chambers hadn’t noticed. I glanced at Leveillee and Corporal Moody. Both were still wrapped in their blankets, fast asleep, as senseless as if a spell had been cast upon them.

“Why must Iniskim reach the Manitou Stone?” I asked Stone Keeper.

“If she doesn’t, she will die.”

“Didn’t taking Iniskim into the tunnel cure her fever?” I asked. “I thought that, by being transformed into a buffalo—”

“Taking the shape of a buffalo gave my daughter the strength to run, but in order for her to live, the spirit inside her must reach the spirit world.”

“Why?” I asked.

“She was not meant to walk this earth so soon. She must return to the spirit world, if my daughter is to survive.”

I was confused. Who was the “she” Stone Keeper was talking about?

Chambers grasped the answer more quickly than I, even though he could only hear Stone Keeper’s words, not see her. “Your daughter Iniskim,” he said, looking through the smoke rather than at it. “There’s a spirit inside her body, isn’t there — a spirit forced to enter the physical plane and share her flesh.”

Stone Keeper nodded.

“For what purpose?” Chambers asked. “To enact the Day of Changes?”

“Yes, Albert,” she whispered. “That is the reason.”

Stone Keeper looked quickly down at the coals then, as if suddenly realizing that she was talking to two white men. The smoke from the fire began to resume its natural course, no longer eddying into the whorls that formed Stone Keeper’s body. Her face started to fade. I saw that the buffalo chips had nearly burned out; there was very little red among the ashes.

“Stone Keeper, wait!” I said. “If we promise to help Iniskim, will you tell us more?”

The smoke paused.

I touched my stomach with my free hand. In the excitement of having contacted Stone Keeper, I’d been able to ignore the constant pain that filled it, but now the twisting nausea had returned. Leveillee and Constable Moody both seemed to be fast asleep, but just in case they were secretly listening, I chose my words carefully.

“You already know one truth about me, and I suspect you know others,” I told Stone Keeper. “Look into my heart and judge whether what I say is true. I want to help your daughter, but I am duty-bound to do everything in my power to prevent the Day of Changes. Is there a way that I can do both?”

A breeze blew across the buffalo chips, fanning them back to a rosy glow. The smoke from the fire thickened into lazy curls.

“Help Iniskim to reach the Manitou Stone so that the one who shares her body can return to the spirit world,” Stone Keeper said.

“Will that stop the Day of Changes from coming?” I asked.

Stone Keeper seemed reluctant to answer.

Chambers broke the silence. “It won’t stop it,” he guessed. “It will only delay it from coming for another nine months, until the spirit can be reborn. Isn’t that right, Emily?”

Stone Keeper’s downcast eyes confirmed this.

“It takes months for a child to be born,” I said. “At least that’s something. That should give us plenty of time to destroy the stones that shape the ley line.”

“No one can stop the Day of Changes,” Stone Keeper murmured. Her eyes rose to meet my own. “Not even you. The medicine men have dreamed it for many hungry winters now: when White Buffalo Woman returns, so will the buffalo.”

“Tell us more,” Chambers said. The antagonism he’d displayed earlier was completely gone; now his voice was filled with curiosity, instead. “If Constable Grayburn is to help your daughter, he has to know the nature of the spirit that shares her body.”

“The spirit inside my daughter is White Buffalo Woman. She once walked this earth in human form, in the days when the buffalo were so many that the prairie was black with them. We have not seen her for many, many winters, yet she watches the herds still — sometimes as a white buffalo calf, and sometimes as a white crow. She has seen the herds dwindle, hunted until there were too few buffalo left to feed our people. She has heard our prayers — and she has prepared for her return.

“It was said that when White Buffalo Woman returned to this earth in human form the buffalo would also return. That time was to come in spring, when the Moon of Eggs was full.”

I made a quick calculation. The Indians count moons, rather than months: thirteen moons make up their year. The Moon of Eggs — so named because it is the time when wildfowl build their nests and lay eggs in them — fell in late spring.

Chambers glanced up at the sliver of moon overhead. “The Day of Changes wasn’t supposed to take place until after April, when the moon’s dark side had completed its rotation toward the Earth, was it?”

“Why then are the chiefs trying to transform the white settlers into buffalo so soon? Why didn’t they just wait for the Moon of Eggs?”

“For many winters now, our people have gone hungry,” Stone Keeper said. “Many have died, and some even turned
wendigo
and feasted upon human flesh in their desperation to survive. The chiefs needed to find a way to make the Day of Changes come before winter, so that our people would not face starvation again.

“Chief Poundmaker knew that his buffalo-calling stone had the power to change humans into buffalo, and that other buffalo stones also had this power. Chief Little Pine remembered that the Manitou Stone had once marked a medicine line of great power — power that could spread the buffalo-calling stones’ magic across the prairie. But the Cree could not use this magic until White Buffalo Woman was summoned to this earth — for that, they needed the help of my people.

“Chief Big Bear began meeting with the other chiefs, and with Poundmaker’s help convinced his enemies that the Day of Changes could be made to come early — if the Blackfoot Confederacy and Cree joined their magic. And so the Motoki women began working their medicine upon my unborn child, forcing White Buffalo Woman to come before the moon had fully turned.”

I mulled over what Stone Keeper had just said. I had heard of the Motoki before, but only in passing. Mary Smoke had used the word once, in one of her stories, and I’d asked her what it meant. She told me only that it was a sorority of sorts — a group of old women within the Blackfoot Confederacy who were allowed to dance with the buffalo hunters before the men set out to hunt. Given what Stone Keeper had just told us, I suspected there was much more to it than that. The Motoki were medicine women.

A sudden inspiration struck me. Here was a way to bring the conversation around to the subject I most wanted to ask about.

“Is Strikes Back a Motoki?” I asked.

“No,” Stone Keeper said. “But she wanted the buffalo to return as much as any of the Motoki did. She dreamed that my child was still alive inside me — but that it would soon die without her medicine — and came to find me.”

I frowned at this news. I had hoped that Strikes Back might want to prevent the Day of Changes, if her hatred of Red Crow was strong enough — but it looked as though she was firmly on the side of the chiefs.

I leaned forward eagerly, at last daring to ask my question. “Where is Strikes Back now?”

“She is dead.”

“Dead?” I croaked. The words struck me like a blow. It took a moment for me to find my voice again. “How do you know?”

“I tried to find Strikes Back, when Iniskim first became sick with fever. When I heard that Strikes Back was dead, I did not believe it: her medicine was so strong that I thought she would never die. Then I spoke to a man who had seen her body, bound in buffalo hide and resting in a tree, and I knew it must be true. Strikes Back was dead. Red Crow shot her.”

“But why?” I asked. “Red Crow is one of the chiefs who is working to bring about the Day of Changes. Wouldn’t he have been pleased with his sister for bringing Iniskim back to life?”

Stone Keeper shook her head. “The Motoki had already selected another woman to give birth to White Buffalo Woman: Red Crow’s second wife. By restoring Iniskim to life, Strikes Back prevented this wife from having this honour.”

“Can Strikes Back still work her magic, even as a ghost?” I asked.

Stone Keeper shrugged — a gesture she must have picked up from her white husband.

“Where does her body lie?” I asked, wondering if we could use the woman’s corpse to contact her ghost.

“I do not know.”

“What was the name of the man who saw her body?” I persisted. Perhaps the fellow could lead me to the bier on which Strikes Back lay.

“He was once called Many Eagle Feathers, but he no longer uses this name.”

“You mean Peter?” I asked, stunned. The coincidence seemed unbelievable. Peter was the half-breed scout I’d spoken to just a few days ago, when our patrol had been preparing to set out for the ford. Then I remembered that Peter’s Catholic faith led him to believe that the Devil was the source of the magic that Strikes Back wielded. It made sense that he would have sought out her body, to make sure that she was dead — but if this was the case, what had he meant by his comment that he was “still paying” her for healing his arm? And why had he spoken of her in the present tense, as if she were still alive?

I suddenly realized something. For all I knew, I might be talking to a ghost, even now. “Stone Keeper,” I asked hesitantly. “Where are you now? Are you … alive?”

“I am asleep — dreaming in my father’s tepee. He found me at the ford, and forced me to return to his lodge. He hopes Iniskim will come to me. If she does, he will give her human shape again. She will die soon afterward — her human form is too weak to hold two spirits for long — but the chiefs do not care. As long as White Buffalo Woman walks our world in human form when the moon is full, even for a few moments, the Day of Changes can be made to come.”

Hearing Stone Keeper talk about her father — Chief Mountain — made me realize that she had left part of her story out.

“How did you come to leave your tribe,” I asked softly, “and wind up with a brute like Four Finger Pete?”

The smoke swirled gently as Stone Keeper sighed. “When the Motoki women began forcing the spirit of White Buffalo Woman into my child, I could feel her sicken inside me and realized that she would not be strong enough to carry White Buffalo Woman’s spirit inside her. She would die before her first winter.

“I knew that our people needed the Day of Changes to come in order to survive, but I was selfish. I didn’t want it to be my daughter who died. I told my father that I had used the woman’s root to wash the child from my body — that there was no baby — so the Motoki women would cease their magic. It was a lie, but my father believed it. He wanted to kill me, but my mother persuaded him to give me to the white man instead.”

“When Iniskim was born a few months later, I saw by her pink eyes, white hair and pale skin that the Motoki women’s magic had worked, after all. White Buffalo Woman’s spirit had entered my child. Iniskim had lived long enough to be born, but her body was too weak to hold two spirits, and she died that same day.

“Two days later, Strikes Back gave my daughter life again. She entered the spirit world, and led Iniskim’s spirit back to her body, as I had begged her to do. But she tricked me, and did something I had not expected: she also led back the spirit of White Buffalo Woman.”

Angered though I was at the news of the duplicity of Strikes Back, I was proud of the way that Stone Keeper held in her grief as she told her sad tale. She was a brave woman who had done everything she could to save the life of her child.

“The medicine of Strikes Back was enough to keep my daughter alive for many moons, but it was not strong enough to do this forever,” Stone Keeper continued. “Iniskim sickened, and eventually a fever took hold. I could see that she was about to die a second time. When my husband decided that we should travel up the river, I saw my chance. I would find some excuse to stop at Victoria Mission and go to the Manitou Stone. White Buffalo Woman could use it to leave my daughter and return to the spirit world.