Skin of the Wolf (25 page)

T
he old blind man, Bradford Lane, was having trouble waiting. Edward could tell that Abornazine was, also. Neither spoke, but they drummed their fingers, rubbed their foreheads, crossed and recrossed their legs as they sat in the warm, plant-filled room. Some of the elders said it was a fault in white people’s blood that caused this lack of patience. Edward thought not. He blamed a weakening of the spirit that came from long experience, both personal and cultural, of getting one’s way. Of defining one’s way as apart from and in opposition to the way of the rest of Creation. But when he saw Abornazine stand, take three steps to nowhere, and sit again—Abornazine, who’d done his best to walk the path of the People since boyhood—Edward considered if it might be true. A genetic failure, his brother would call it. Michael’s work, his wasted life, was his own failure: studying the genetics of the People, the makeup of their blood, instead of learning and being transformed by the simple truths he’d been born to understand.

Edward himself sat unmoving, smelling the damp soil in the clay pots around him, feeling the moist warmth on his skin. He was as anxious as they to see this Ohtahyohnee, to know if the mask
being brought to them was the true one, but nothing he could do would make it arrive sooner.

Bradford Lane, at first, had not wanted it to arrive at all. Abornazine, after listening to his caller with obviously growing excitement, agreed to some arrangement and said into the phone, “Bring it here.” He gave Lane’s address.

“What the hell are you doing?” Lane had barked at him. “Whoever that is, I don’t want them here and I don’t want you here, either, Peter. Leave now, unless you’re prepared to tangle with Hilda.”

“It’s the Ohtahyohnee,” Abornazine had said, lowering his phone. “She’s bringing it.”

“Who is? Estelle? She’s bringing it back? What are you talking about?”

“Not Estelle. Though why don’t you call her? Ask her if it’s at Sotheby’s. The one you sent.”

“Why should I?”

“Because, Bradford, I’m fairly certain that the one that’s coming is the real one.”

Lane had made that call, and, thumbing his phone off, said, “It’s there. It’s fine and it’s going nowhere and the whole place is under armed guard. What the hell is coming here and who the hell is bringing it?”

“The real mask is coming. Katherine Cochran is bringing it.”

Lane frowned. “What makes you think it’s any more real than the one at Sotheby’s? Where did she get one? And why is she bringing it here?”

“She knows what I can do.”

“What the hell are you— Oh, my lord. Not seriously. The Ceremony, you’re talking about? She wants to see you do an Awakening Ceremony? Am I the last sane person left on earth?”

“Maybe, Bradford, you’re a cynic whose faith is about to be restored. Now, we’ll wait.”

For twenty minutes the three of them had sat, Abornazine vibrating with excitement, Lane irritated, though curious and growing more and more impatient, and Edward quiet. If this was the real Ohtahyohnee about to arrive, he would need his strength.

E
ven sitting a few feet from the bundle as she drove, Katherine could feel the power of the Ohtahyohnee through the blanket, through the deerskin. She regretted leaving the box. It had its own history, it might have had things to teach. But it would have slowed her too much. The weight and heft of the mask alone had been almost more than she could handle.

Remorse for the death of the Protector came and went. Perhaps she could have found another way. She’d gone hoping—expecting—only to talk to him. To thank him for his untiring attention to the mask and to relieve him of the burden she knew it must be. The Protectors, the stories said, were stewards, keeping the masks safe until their true owners came again to claim them. They were priests, the Protectors, a line of Jesuit religious men from a society founded at the time of the wars and diseases, when the nations were just starting to understand that the new pale tribe from over the sea had not come to share the bounty of the land, but to seize it to use and destroy. The society and its oath remained a secret so deep that its existence was hidden even from others of its order.

Katherine was not a medicine woman. She couldn’t perform the Ceremony and it would be wrong for her to try. But nothing
happened by accident. Almost exactly a year ago Peter van Vliet had told her, as though sharing a confidence he couldn’t keep to himself any longer, that he’d been taught the Awakening Ceremony. And now, the Ohtahyohnee had appeared. A false one, to throw others off the trail; and the true one, a path to which had been opened to her. She’d first understood the possibilities when Livia confirmed Katherine’s own doubts. What followed had been a great deal of thought and a tense conversation with Ted Morse, filled with gentle, veiled threats from Katherine and stammers and sweat from the restorer, and then, finally, her answer.

So she’d hurried to talk to the Protector. A helpful student had seen him go in the direction of the chapel. Katherine had no idea when she followed him into the vast, dim room that the mask was near. If he hadn’t unwound the blanket, if the resplendent face of the Ohtahyohnee hadn’t leapt at her out of the gloom, her response might have been more measured. But the unexpected sight had called forth that ferocity from deep within that she’d first felt on a summer evening so many years ago, as a young girl on the edge of the swamp spying on the secret ceremonies of the Seminole. The naked young boy kneeling in front of the singer seemed to have no reaction at all, but Katherine, hidden in the cypresses, had been staggered by a wild, skyrocketing exaltation. When it passed, hours later, she found herself in a different part of the cypress grove, exhausted and hopelessly bereft. From that night on she’d devoted her life to the understanding of what had happened, in the faint hope that she might find it again. Van Vliet’s boast had triggered a hunger in her that she’d barely dared to admit, and when Morse led her to the true Ohtahyohnee, that hope blazed like the light of angels.

But Father Maxwell had tried to keep the Ohtahyohnee from her. She was sorry he’d died. Yet the purpose of his life was to serve
this mask, and the mask no longer needed him. His place in the afterlife was assured, and she had no doubt the Creator would greet him with thanks and praise.

Katherine had reached her destination. She announced herself at the gate and was buzzed in. Leaving her car, she cradled the bundle and ran toward the house. A wild north wind whipped bare tree branches overhead, changing, second by second, the pattern of the stars. Oh, glorious! Just before she stepped onto the porch she turned to look at the moon, starkly white and full. A promise, an abounding hope, like her own, and inexorable. Nothing men could do could stop the phases of the moon. Nothing any man could do, now, could stop her from reaching her true self.

She rang; she was admitted. In the jungle warmth of a plant-filled solarium she found Bradford Lane, and Peter van Vliet, and a long-haired man she didn’t know. Van Vliet and the other man stood as she came down the steps; it was keenness, not courtesy, she could see that in their eyes. Lane remained seated but he leaned forward, as tight with anxious desire as the other two.

“Peter.” She nodded. “Bradford.” She was mildly astonished to hear her own voice, speaking normal words in normal tones as though nothing had changed.

“Are you all right?” van Vliet asked. “Your face—”

“What?” She touched her cheek where it stung and was surprised to see blood on her fingertips. “Nothing, it’s nothing.” She turned to the third man. “Who are you?”

“Tahkwehso.” Smiling, he reached for the bundle in her arms.

She took a step back. “Not you. Peter. If you can do what you say. Otherwise I’m gone again.”

“I can,” said van Vliet with quiet confidence. “If the mask is real. Give it to Tahkwehso. He’ll know.”

She frowned, but after a moment lay the bundle in the man’s arms like a mother handing her newborn to a stranger. Tahkwehso sat and she watched his long fingers untie the deerskin cord. The folds of the blanket slipped to drape over his knees as he lifted the mask free of the sack. Little about him changed. His impassive face, his quiet body, appeared as they might have if he’d been inspecting a cooking pot someone was offering for sale. But the light Katherine saw in his eyes was identical, she understood, to the dazzling hope inside herself. Only in him, it wasn’t hope: it was knowledge.

“The mask is real,” he said.

“Give it to me!” Bradford Lane burst out. “What the hell do you people know? If it’s the real one—if it’s
mine
—I’ll be able to tell.”

Tahkwehso rose to walk across the room. As he did the angle at which he held the Ohtahyohnee changed. The black, bottomless eyes stared straight into Katherine’s. Her breath caught, her pulse hammered. She’d seen the mask only in the chapel’s dimness and she’d wrapped it as soon as she held it. Now, in the bright room, the Ohtahyohnee’s gaze seared her, scorching the lifelong layers of her own mask to find and ignite her true heart. Icily terrified, burning with need, she couldn’t turn away.

It turned away from her, allowing her to breathe again, as Tahkwehso laid it across Lane’s lap. The old man ran his fingers along its carved surfaces, inside and out. He wrapped his palm around its muzzle, traced the savage teeth. No one made a sound. Van Vliet smiled softly, his gaze riveted on the mask. Beside Katherine, Tahkwehso stood, taut, without movement or expression.

Hoarsely, Lane spoke. “This is my wolf mask.”

Katherine answered, “The Ohtahyohnee
.
”

“What is at Sotheby’s?”

“One made to replace it.”

“Where did you get it?”

“From the man who stole it.”

“Who was that man?”

“Monsignor Maxwell.”

“He was a thief?”

“He was a Protector.”

Lane shook his head. “The oldest stories . . .”

Katherine said, “The stories know.”

“Tell me how
you
knew.”

“From the man who made the other.”

“That man?”

“Ted Morse.”

“He can’t have.”

“He had photographs.”

“Photographs are nothing.”

Katherine walked slowly forward to stand beside him, beside the mask. “The photographs, and the details. From the Hammill papers. And Maxwell’s knowledge. And,” she added, “you had no sight.”

Lane drew a sharp breath. “But when I held it, why didn’t I know?” He stopped. His face changed. “It was the fire. It was the fire, wasn’t it?”

“It took years to make the mask. Years, from the time Gerald Maxwell came here. Maxwell knew your sight was failing. By the time of the fire it was gone. No one else had seen the Ohtahyohnee
.
”

“Maxwell set the fire?”

“Making sure it wouldn’t come near this room. In the chaos he slipped inside and switched the masks. Morse said that’s what
Maxwell planned, and he understood everything had gone well. After the fire you never took the mask down until Estelle came for it, did you?”

“No. No, I didn’t. I couldn’t bear to. Why did he do it?”

“Morse? Because Father Maxwell paid him well and promised never to sell it or show it. Father Maxwell didn’t say more, but Morse understood.”

“Understood what?”

“That Father Maxwell was this mask’s Protector. Each mask has one.”

“The masks are all gone.”

“Or they’re not. This one is still here. Every Protector has sworn an oath to continue to seek his mask and safeguard it if he finds it.”

Lane sat silent; then he smiled. “The copy—tell me. How good is it?”

“It’s very, very good.”

Lane nodded, still smiling, his hands on the Ohtahyohnee
.
Katherine turned to van Vliet. “Peter. Your promise.”

“Yes,” he said. “Although . . .”

“Oh, here it comes!” Lane roused himself from his reverie. “You told her to bring you my mask and you’d do the Ceremony. You promised to turn her into a deer or some damn thing, didn’t you?” Katherine could see a laughing anger kindling in him, driving out the clouds of uncertainty, of confusion. “But now you’re going to tell us why you can’t. The night’s too dark or the wind’s too strong or the Great Spirit isn’t talking to you right now, is that it, Peter? So you’ll just take it with you, and maybe another time? In your dreams, bully boy.”

“To do it here”—van Vliet spoke uncertainly to Tahkwehso—
“where we haven’t prepared, where there are two without the Power who’ll merely observe . . .”

“You’ve performed the Ceremony for hundreds and most have turned out to be nothing more than observers. And”—Tahkwehso grinned—“how can you know neither of these two will respond? The blood of the People flows through many veins.”

“Oh, my God!” Bradford Lane bellowed. “You think Hilda and I are Indians, too? Holy smokes, I haven’t had this much fun in years.”

“The moon is full,” Tahkwehso went on, “the wind is high, and the sky is clear. It is a good time.”

“The moon will be full again next month.” Van Vliet turned to Katherine. “Come to Eervollehuis. You’ll meet others, you’ll share our life. I can prepare.”

“Not there! Not next month!” Katherine felt a jolt of fear, a blaze of rage. “Now! Here! Or I’ll take it away with me. I’ll find someone else.” Before she could reach for the Ohtahyohnee a powerful arm wrapped her shoulders and held her in place. It was Tahkwehso; immediately she calmed, feeling his heartbeat. He spoke to van Vliet.

“A month is a long time, and for you as well, my friend. The power in this mask will buttress your own declining strength. A successful Shift will increase it yet more. I wouldn’t want to see you wait another month.” Van Vliet still looked uncertain, and Tahkwehso said, “She is ready. Tonight is good, I think. You will succeed.”

“The other crazy man speaks!” yelped Lane. “You’ll do it tonight, Peter, and by God, you’ll do it here, or I’ll get Hilda to shoot you all.”

Van Vliet looked from one to the other and nodded. “Tonight, then. And here. But I’ll need a drum.”

“Hah! Another goddamn excuse! You think the best I can offer is a stewpot with a wooden spoon, and then you can tell us that’s why it didn’t work. Unfortunately for you, Peter, I have a drum. Too new for Sotheby’s to care about, they wouldn’t take it. A Chippewa drum, deer hide, with a rising sun and bear tracks. Wait, I know. Bear tracks are the one thing that screws the Ceremony all up, right?”

“No.” Van Vliet smiled. “Bear tracks will be fine.”