The Broken Land (11 page)

“Easy now,” I whisper to Gitchi, who’s started to growl every time Elder Sister Gaha—the soft wind—whistles through the blackened husks of longhouses. It unnerves me, too, sounding so much like weeping that I keep spinning around, expecting to see someone following us.

My searching gaze finds only heaps of smoldering bark that, not so long ago, were walls and roofs.

For days I’ve deliberately avoided entering such villages, fearing lurking enemy warriors, but not today. Cautiously, I duck through one of the holes in the palisade and proceed across the ash-coated plaza. All that remains of the eight longhouses are blackened pole skeletons.

The air is smoky, difficult to breathe. I look around the destroyed village for any living creature—even the dogs have vanished—then I step inside a house that once stretched over six hundred hands in length. The gleam of dawn falling through the burned frame scatters the ground with rectangular squares of pale lavender. As I search, Gitchi’s paws shish in the ash behind me. Pots, baskets, and weapons are missing. No shreds of burned bedding hides cling to the sleeping benches.

This is not war.
Warriors ransack longhouses. They throw things around and take only what they most value. This house is empty. That can only mean that people packed up and walked away. Then the men must have set fire to the village to deny the enemy a refuge. Or perhaps the enemy burned it to prevent the villagers from returning to their homes.

I slip out through the palisade and head north again. I keep anticipating warriors. Either Hills warriors or Standing Stone. If the Standing Stone People attacked this village, someone should have been left to watch the trails. On the other hand, there may be Hills warriors hidden in the shadows, waiting for the enemy to return.

I do not see a single sentry.

There are, however, people. At every high point on the trail, I see fires winking across the forest, and sounds carry in the stillness: the ringing of an ax chopping wood, children crying, pots clacking, dogs barking. Ordinarily people leave their villages in the summertime to go hunting and fishing in distant parts of the country. Only a handful remain to tend the fields until their relatives return for harvest in the autumn. But this is something far more sinister.

The trail enters a dark section of the forest, and I slow my pace. Footprints mark the mud. I silently kneel to touch them. The edges of the tracks are not hard. Fresh. Two people. Probably a man and a woman.

I give Gitchi the hand sign to be quiet and creep forward with ghostly skill until I see them sitting on a log to the right of the trail. They sit alone in a pile of human bones, strips of jerky in their hands. Every now and then they rip off a hunk and chew it, but it is a curiously leisurely activity, as though they have not a care in the world, as though the sun-bleached skulls, shoulder blades, and skeletal hands that surround their moccasins are a mirage.

Just loud enough for them to hear, I call, “Hello, I’m a friend. May I continue on the trail?”

The man leaps to his feet and squints at the darkness where Gitchi and I stand. “I can tell by your accent that you are Standing Stone, as we are. Yes, join us, friend!”

I walk forward with my arms spread, showing them I have no weapons. The man searches me with his gaze. He’s seen around twenty-five summers and wears his long hair in a single braid down his back. His pug nose and small black-bead eyes give him a mean look, but his smile eases first impressions. He waves for me to come closer.

“Are you hungry, friend? We don’t have much, but we do have good venison jerky.”

“I would be grateful to join you. Thank you.” I count skulls as I walk. Eight.

The woman, perhaps twenty summers, takes another bite of her jerky and chews. She appears exhausted, or disheartened. The cheeks of her narrow face sink in over her bones, making her eyes seem larger and more deeply set. As she watches me, her pointed nose casts a shadow upon her cheek.

I lower my arms as I approach, and the man digs around in his belt pouch until he draws out a strip of jerky, respectfully steps around the boneyard, and extends it to me.

I take it with a grateful nod. “You are very kind to share with me. I know these are starving times.”

Neither of them mentions the human bones, partially covered with newly fallen leaves.

The man says, “We share with everyone we see. If you can’t share with others, you have no right to expect others to share with you. Sit down, friend. There’s plenty of room on this old log.” He drops onto the log beside the woman and continues smiling at me.

The difference in their expressions makes me uneasy. The man seems happy and careless, while the woman is carrying the weight of the world on her narrow shoulders. Even in the cool air before dawn, I can smell her fear sweat.

The man says, “I am Kanadesego, and this is my wife, Pandurata. We are the Snipe Clan, Watha’s lineage, from Cornstalk Village.”

“Were,”
the woman corrects him.

I note the man’s suddenly downcast eyes and say, “I’ve been traveling for a time and seen nothing but empty villages. Do you know what happened?”

“Are you deaf or stupid?” Pandurata asks sharply.

I look at their clothing, at the holes in their moccasins, the worn spots in their capes, their lack of jewelry. They probably Traded everything they had for food.

“Diatdagwut,”
Pandurata whispers, as though frightened to say his name out loud.

Diatdagwut is the transformed son of a great witch, a white beaver who lives in magic waters. He rarely appears to humans, but when he does, it means disaster.

“He’s been appearing everywhere, in every Standing Stone village.” Kanadesego smiles brightly. “Yes. The world is coming to an end.” My gaze flicks from one to the other. “Was your village attacked?” “No, I just told you,” Pandurata says. “It’s Diatdagwut.”

When I say nothing, the two villagers return to eating their jerky. The bones at their feet shine. In a matter of moments, the color of the air changes, bleeding pink with sunrise, and the forest slowly goes from gray velvet to a soft reddish hue. Wind Mother rustles the brittle autumn leaves.

I tear off a chunk of jerky with my teeth and hand it to Gitchi, who swallows it in one bite and wags his tail.

As I rip off a bite for myself, I examine the bones. Surely the clan matrons would not have ordered the abandonment of their villages based upon a few sightings of Diatdagwut. Something else must have happened.

I chew and swallow before I say, “I don’t understand.”

The woman jerks around to stare at me suspiciously. “Why? Have you been witched? Is your afterlife soul loose?”

I am stunned by the charge. If a person is fortunate, one of his souls travels to the afterlife at death, while the other remains with the body forever. Sometimes, however, a person’s afterlife soul gets shaken loose, often by a blow to the head, and wanders aimlessly into the forest until it becomes irretrievably lost. That’s what causes insanity.

“My souls are fine,” I insist.

Kanadesego examines me carefully before he whispers to her, “What do you think?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t always show right away.” She leans toward me to stare into my eyes, then pulls back. “Sorcerers fill the skies. Ohsinoh has been spotted in many places at once.”

Ohsinoh is the most powerful witch in our country, an evil man who wears a beautiful cloak of bluebird feathers. He is also known as the Bluebird Witch.

“If you haven’t been witched, what are you doing out here?” Pandurata asks abruptly. “The Standing Stone People long ago left these hills. Where are you from?”

Kanadesego seems to be holding his breath, waiting for my answer. I see his hand slowly edging toward his belted stiletto.

“I’m from Yellowtail Village.”

“Yes, but how did you get out here?”

Their fears are growing, but I don’t know why. I glance at the bones again. Kanadesego’s hand now rests on his stiletto.

“I’ve spent the past twenty days on a vision hunt and am headed home.”

“A vision hunt? Way out here? You should have gone seeking a Spirit Helper closer to your village. These hills are cursed.”

Kanadesego nods. “The end is upon us, friend. It’s only a matter of time before the human False Face dons a cape of white clouds and rides the winds of destruction across the face of the world.”

Our people have a legend that foretells the coming of a half-man half-Spirit False Face. It is prophesied that he will don a cape of white clouds and ride the winds of destruction across the land, wiping evil from the face of Great Grandmother Earth. We have to memorize the story by the time we’ve seen eight summers.

“Yes, I’m sure that’s true.”

I reach up to touch the sacred shell gorget my father gave me twelve summers ago. It is hidden beneath my cape, but its image appears clearly on the canvas of my souls, the twisted face with buffalo horns and serpent eyes, falling stars tumbling down … . They must think I’m touching my heart to emphasize my beliefs.

Pandurata hisses, “This is a dark time. A time of despair. After the human False Face rides, the world will be reborn, fresh and clean. All lost souls will be found and shown the way to the Land of the Dead.”

I take another bite of jerky. All my life I’ve heard stories of the One Who Is to Come. They still stir my blood. My heart beats faster; my lungs work. But my interpretation is different. As the warfare has grown more brutal and desperate, I’ve become more and more certain that the human False Face is already here, already riding the legendary winds of destruction. There have, in fact, been times when I have wished for it. Anything to end the struggle and the suffering. To blot out the hopelessness I see in the eyes of children.

I swallow my last bite of jerky and heave a sigh.

“We are on the road to find him, you know,” Kanadesego says. “You should join us.”

“To find whom?”

They blink, glance at each other, and stare at me as though I’m stupid. “The human False Face. Some say he’s already in the forest battling the sorcerers, as is prophesied. We are going to seek him out and help him.” Kanadesego seems pleased with this mission.

Pandurata scowls at me. “You really don’t understand, do you? The whole country north and south of Skanodario Lake is like this.” She gestures to the empty smoldering village visible through the trees. “We are not content to wait for the end. We’re going forward to meet it. To help bring it about. And we’re taking our dearest ancestors with us.” She reaches down to stroke a skull.

As the forest brightens, the birds begin to sing and hop from branch to branch over our heads. The musty scent of moist leaves fills the air. I take some time to appreciate the beauty before I say, “I have felt that way myself, especially when the battles were most terrible.”

Kanadesego sits up straighter. “You were a warrior, then? I thought perhaps you were a shaman, a holy man.”

A sensation of emptiness swells my chest, as though desert walks in my heart and my souls are becoming wastelands of hope. “I was a warrior for twelve summers.”

“Then you must have seen the signs,” Pandurata insists. “Have you not seen Diatdagwut, or witnessed the flocks of
gahai
that filter through the forest? I have a friend who saw the Forks River turn to blood.”

I dare not state my opinion for fear that they will attack me, or worse, stop talking to me. I need to hear their stories. But I’m thinking that I myself have seen rivers turn to blood—rivers swollen with the bodies of the slain—and if the Forks River turned to blood, the Hills People and their mad chief, Atotarho, are more likely to blame. I silently offer a prayer for the dead and turn my attention to her words about the gahai.

Gahai are not Spirits of the first order, but lights that guide sorcerers as they fly through the air on their evil journeys. Sometimes gahai lead their masters to victims, other times to places where they can find charms. Her question, of course, goes along with her impression that the forest is filled with sorcerers, like Ohsinoh.

I reply, “Maybe it is the end.”

“Oh, it is,” Pandurata says fervently. “Last summer was like winter. The crops wouldn’t grow.” Tears catch her voice. She swallows before continuing, “And now this sickness.”

My gaze rivets on her lean face. “What sickness?”

“Have you not heard? The witchery is more powerful than anything we’ve ever known. Even the old stories do not speak of such as this. As soon as the witches shoot their charms into your body your afterlife soul flees, and no Healer can find it and bring it back. It is lost, doomed to forever walk the earth.”

That’s why they wanted to know if I’d been witched. They fear I carry the sickness.

Kanadesego whispers, “The pain is excruciating. Eventually the body wastes away. As soon as it does, the charm is released and it leaps into another body. Death is everywhere. We were Trading in Canassatego Village when it struck our own village. Traders brought word. That was one moon ago. We waited until ten days ago to go home and gather our loved ones.” He glances at the bones. “Now that the curse has swept Standing Stone country clean, it is striking at the heart of the People of the Flint.”

Terror rises like a hot storm in my veins. “Twenty days ago, I was with a war party that attacked a Flint village. The people there were sick. Which Flint villages are affected today?”

“I don’t know. They’ve suffered from the witchery for perhaps two moons. Long enough that most of them are gone. The Hills People have barely been touched. That makes everyone suspect that Atotarho and his witches loosed the sickness.”

As I stare at Kanadesego, my souls seem to rise above me in the dawn-drenched air, and when they do, I am back with her, back to summer afternoons and a thousand blessed moments … .
Breezes laden with the kicked dust of warriors on the move … her fingers trailing down my face
…

“Did you hear me?” Pandurata says.

“Forgive me? What did you say?”

“I said that one by one the nations are crumbling. There’s no one to tend the fields, no one to fight off invaders. Even the women who survive have no milk to suckle their babies.” She paused. “You don’t believe me, do you?”