Wet Contact
Theondaga hefted the ax he’d forged from one of the white thing’s thunder sticks. He walked on the sides of his feet through the pine needles of the underwood. Ferns brushed his leggings. Even the wind made more sound than he. The one he followed, the one dressed like a witch, the one covered in the uncured fur of dead things only made a little more sound than that.
He’d almost thought they might be men after the black robe had learned their language. Then they’d caught him acting like an animal behind the longhouse with one of the village boys. He hadn’t screamed like an animal when they took the oyster shell to his manhood. The way he’d just kept making those rhythmic droaning sounds made ‘Daga wonder whether the black robe had even been alive. It would make sense. Sometimes, when one of the humans drowned they washed up from the On’ta’Riao all bloated and white. Yeah, it would make sense if they were dead, it would make sense of a lot of things.
Like the smell of them.
If they were alive, they never washed, reeking like death and sickness, hatred and shit. Nothing living ever smelled like that. Even the WhiteBacks never stank so much. Only dead things smelled like that: a stench of ancient rot to make the stomach clench. The black robe smelled better than most of them, but even he washed rarely, and when he did, he rubbed white stuff that smelled like rancid fat all over himself, and then his skin had bubbled like the froth at the mouth of a raccoon with the watersickness.
Little feather had learned some of the flat toneless grunting sounds they called language, and before they’d taken Black Robe’s tongue she said it had called the Seneca unwashed savages. ‘Daga had to struggle not to laugh at that. Black Robe knew better, he’d tried to get us to stop bathing … huh … he said the water bore sickness. As if running water could make you sick.
He knew drew near to the one he hunted. He smelled the death before he got within a hundred strides. He slowed down and crouched low, keeping his abdomen close to his thighs as he moved towards his quarry.
There.
The ringing sound of the metal-teeth letting go. A laugh now, from the witch man. An exclamation as another trap was pried loose of its prize. ‘Daga felt the bumps rise on his arms and legs like the skin of a plucked quail. He didn’t like these white things, he didn’t like them at all.
He crouched behind a large bramble and waited. These destroyers were inefficient, wasteful takers, leaving behind everything but the skin and fur of the things they caught. In the dappled light of the undercanopy, ‘Daga had a hard time telling where the furs stopped and the man’s facefur started, caked and dirty, matted together. Blood-stained hands, red, with brown underneath, peeled away the skin of a wolf, that twitched and kicked as he flayed it alive. ‘Daga pulled back on the bowstring.
A flock of doves lit into the canopy from a bush near the trapper. Blue eyes, looked up, squinted, looked around the horizon. This one had a thunderstick. Daga froze, breathing through half-open mouth and nose, slow breaths, embracing the wind and shadows.
Blue eyes looked right at him and his gaze lingered for several breaths before moving on. Then, standing, throwing the blood-wet hides onto the pile over his shoulder, the bear-like destroyer walked into the shadows. Headed for Huron country.
After several minutes, ‘Daga walked to the traps and using a rotted limb, hit the trigger in the center, metal jaws clapped shut, sending shards of rotten, moss-covered wood to splatter against ‘Daga’s buckskin leggings.
Daga wasn’t about to betray the wampum and cross the river. He turned around and started the days’ long walk to the beginning of the trapline. Bearman would be back, checking his traps again on his way to the white thing’s hive. Nuamstardahm.
‘DAGA WALKED, HEAVY-SHOULDERED. The dim light of the waning moon filtered through the skeletal fingers of the canopy. Almost home, he smiled when he thought about his little ‘Qua and her braided locks smelling like smoke and leaves, the way her little three-year-old body clung to him whenever he returned from a journey. His empty belly growled, making him realize how much he looked forward to the blackberry pemmican his wife would surely have put the finishing touches on. The smell of smoke, meat and hair shook him from his reverie. His fatigue lifted and he became the buck as he flew over fallen logs. He knew the smell, he’d caused it once before, it was the smell of humans, on fire.
He fell to his knees when he saw the pile of embers where his little longhouse once stood. He saw them then, the corpses of his wife and daughter, his wife half buried in the rubble of the longhouse, his daughter not 4 strides from her mother. He didn’t understand what he saw. Only that the snow around their heads was full of blood.
Their hair. Where is their hair? Darkness swallowed him.
THE PAIN WAS UNBEARABLE, the witchbear must have grown wise to ‘Daga’s tracking him. They might have been dead, but that didn’t mean they weren’t stupid, ‘Daga was going to pay dearly for underestimating the white things. He took a deep breath and thought of ‘Qua. He thought of her dead, limp weight, how much heavier she was in death, he thought about the blood. He thought about how her pants had been missing and the knee prints in the snow.
‘Daga’s heart slowed, he felt the cool fire of his bloodthirst encompass him. The pain didn’t matter, he was dead anyway, buried in the earth, beside his wife and daughter. He stuck his thunder ax in the metal-teeth and pried. Now that it was loose from the trap, he finally looked at his foot. The right one was smashed, the restriction of the trap now gone it immediately swelled until blood burst from the teeth marks of the trap. His whole leg below the knee throbbed with each beat of his heart. He got up and took his first step upon the twisted stump. Storms exploded in his head, with each step the lightning of his agony blinded him to the forest around him.
The embers should still be burning, he knew they were, they had to be.
He walked all night, falling to the ground occasionally when the pain grew too bright, too large.
At the camp, as the sun rose, he knelt gingerly beside the smouldering fire. He placed the thunder ax deep into the red coals of the fire. He knew this was going to hurt, shrugged, felt the magic of his death consume him. On some level he knew essential wrongness of what he was becoming. He had no other choice, they had made him like them, he knew the name of his enemy. And he knew the red coats they wore.
He took a deep breath, placed the leather strap in his mouth and pulled the thunder ax from the coals. Now, it shined, shimmering red. He raised the thunder ax and accepted the counsequences, at least the trap hadn’t gotten his ankle, with work, he’d still be able to run.
He swung the red ax down.
PETER ALLYN SMELLED SOMETHING. It was not a good smell. Like one of the graveyards at West Ealing after a hard rain. What he smelled was the ancient smell of death.
He turned, looked, lifted the musket. He raised his nose and sniffed the air, the smell was getting stronger, familiar but wrong, corruption.
If the damned savage hadn’t screamed so loud he wouldn’t have missed. He fired, wondering how the damned injun had got so close without him hearing. Peter raised his musket to block the injun’s first strike, and for a moment they stood like that. There was something wrong with this one. What was that hanging around his neck? Then he saw the shriveled black toes and he knew, he’d seen this one’s tracks on and off for the last year. What kind of animal wore its own severed foot around its neck? The he saw them, the tight skin stretched over round wooden hoops, the underside cracked and shiiy, painted red. He had many: blonde, brown, red, none black. Blue eyes looked into brown and were swallowed by the emptiness they saw. Peter barely felt the stone knife as it slid into his guts. He knew how sharp these damned savages could get those stone knives. The strength left his arms and his musket fell to the ground a split second before he did.
Face down, he tried to crawl, something slick and wet was under his knees, he screamed when he realized it was his own intestines. The empty howl was the first of many. Peter would make before he bled out from the exposed bone and flowing vessels of his cranium.
“Please … God no … please.” His flat language fell of deaf ears.
‘Daga Graylock placed his knee in the middle of the witch thing’s back, reached down and pulled back the head by its red, red hair.
He’d almost thought they might be men after the black robe had learned their language. Then they’d caught him acting like an animal behind the longhouse with one of the village boys. He hadn’t screamed like an animal when they took the oyster shell to his manhood. The way he’d just kept making those rhythmic droaning sounds made ‘Daga wonder whether the black robe had even been alive. It would make sense. Sometimes, when one of the humans drowned they washed up from the On’ta’Riao all bloated and white. Yeah, it would make sense if they were dead, it would make sense of a lot of things.
Like the smell of them.
If they were alive, they never washed, reeking like death and sickness, hatred and shit. Nothing living ever smelled like that. Even the WhiteBacks never stank so much. Only dead things smelled like that: a stench of ancient rot to make the stomach clench. The black robe smelled better than most of them, but even he washed rarely, and when he did, he rubbed white stuff that smelled like rancid fat all over himself, and then his skin had bubbled like the froth at the mouth of a raccoon with the watersickness.
Little feather had learned some of the flat toneless grunting sounds they called language, and before they’d taken Black Robe’s tongue she said it had called the Seneca unwashed savages. ‘Daga had to struggle not to laugh at that. Black Robe knew better, he’d tried to get us to stop bathing … huh … he said the water bore sickness. As if running water could make you sick.
He knew drew near to the one he hunted. He smelled the death before he got within a hundred strides. He slowed down and crouched low, keeping his abdomen close to his thighs as he moved towards his quarry.
There.
The ringing sound of the metal-teeth letting go. A laugh now, from the witch man. An exclamation as another trap was pried loose of its prize. ‘Daga felt the bumps rise on his arms and legs like the skin of a plucked quail. He didn’t like these white things, he didn’t like them at all.
He crouched behind a large bramble and waited. These destroyers were inefficient, wasteful takers, leaving behind everything but the skin and fur of the things they caught. In the dappled light of the undercanopy, ‘Daga had a hard time telling where the furs stopped and the man’s facefur started, caked and dirty, matted together. Blood-stained hands, red, with brown underneath, peeled away the skin of a wolf, that twitched and kicked as he flayed it alive. ‘Daga pulled back on the bowstring.
A flock of doves lit into the canopy from a bush near the trapper. Blue eyes, looked up, squinted, looked around the horizon. This one had a thunderstick. Daga froze, breathing through half-open mouth and nose, slow breaths, embracing the wind and shadows.
Blue eyes looked right at him and his gaze lingered for several breaths before moving on. Then, standing, throwing the blood-wet hides onto the pile over his shoulder, the bear-like destroyer walked into the shadows. Headed for Huron country.
After several minutes, ‘Daga walked to the traps and using a rotted limb, hit the trigger in the center, metal jaws clapped shut, sending shards of rotten, moss-covered wood to splatter against ‘Daga’s buckskin leggings.
Daga wasn’t about to betray the wampum and cross the river. He turned around and started the days’ long walk to the beginning of the trapline. Bearman would be back, checking his traps again on his way to the white thing’s hive. Nuamstardahm.
‘DAGA WALKED, HEAVY-SHOULDERED. The dim light of the waning moon filtered through the skeletal fingers of the canopy. Almost home, he smiled when he thought about his little ‘Qua and her braided locks smelling like smoke and leaves, the way her little three-year-old body clung to him whenever he returned from a journey. His empty belly growled, making him realize how much he looked forward to the blackberry pemmican his wife would surely have put the finishing touches on. The smell of smoke, meat and hair shook him from his reverie. His fatigue lifted and he became the buck as he flew over fallen logs. He knew the smell, he’d caused it once before, it was the smell of humans, on fire.
He fell to his knees when he saw the pile of embers where his little longhouse once stood. He saw them then, the corpses of his wife and daughter, his wife half buried in the rubble of the longhouse, his daughter not 4 strides from her mother. He didn’t understand what he saw. Only that the snow around their heads was full of blood.
Their hair. Where is their hair? Darkness swallowed him.
THE PAIN WAS UNBEARABLE, the witchbear must have grown wise to ‘Daga’s tracking him. They might have been dead, but that didn’t mean they weren’t stupid, ‘Daga was going to pay dearly for underestimating the white things. He took a deep breath and thought of ‘Qua. He thought of her dead, limp weight, how much heavier she was in death, he thought about the blood. He thought about how her pants had been missing and the knee prints in the snow.
‘Daga’s heart slowed, he felt the cool fire of his bloodthirst encompass him. The pain didn’t matter, he was dead anyway, buried in the earth, beside his wife and daughter. He stuck his thunder ax in the metal-teeth and pried. Now that it was loose from the trap, he finally looked at his foot. The right one was smashed, the restriction of the trap now gone it immediately swelled until blood burst from the teeth marks of the trap. His whole leg below the knee throbbed with each beat of his heart. He got up and took his first step upon the twisted stump. Storms exploded in his head, with each step the lightning of his agony blinded him to the forest around him.
The embers should still be burning, he knew they were, they had to be.
He walked all night, falling to the ground occasionally when the pain grew too bright, too large.
At the camp, as the sun rose, he knelt gingerly beside the smouldering fire. He placed the thunder ax deep into the red coals of the fire. He knew this was going to hurt, shrugged, felt the magic of his death consume him. On some level he knew essential wrongness of what he was becoming. He had no other choice, they had made him like them, he knew the name of his enemy. And he knew the red coats they wore.
He took a deep breath, placed the leather strap in his mouth and pulled the thunder ax from the coals. Now, it shined, shimmering red. He raised the thunder ax and accepted the counsequences, at least the trap hadn’t gotten his ankle, with work, he’d still be able to run.
He swung the red ax down.
PETER ALLYN SMELLED SOMETHING. It was not a good smell. Like one of the graveyards at West Ealing after a hard rain. What he smelled was the ancient smell of death.
He turned, looked, lifted the musket. He raised his nose and sniffed the air, the smell was getting stronger, familiar but wrong, corruption.
If the damned savage hadn’t screamed so loud he wouldn’t have missed. He fired, wondering how the damned injun had got so close without him hearing. Peter raised his musket to block the injun’s first strike, and for a moment they stood like that. There was something wrong with this one. What was that hanging around his neck? Then he saw the shriveled black toes and he knew, he’d seen this one’s tracks on and off for the last year. What kind of animal wore its own severed foot around its neck? The he saw them, the tight skin stretched over round wooden hoops, the underside cracked and shiiy, painted red. He had many: blonde, brown, red, none black. Blue eyes looked into brown and were swallowed by the emptiness they saw. Peter barely felt the stone knife as it slid into his guts. He knew how sharp these damned savages could get those stone knives. The strength left his arms and his musket fell to the ground a split second before he did.
Face down, he tried to crawl, something slick and wet was under his knees, he screamed when he realized it was his own intestines. The empty howl was the first of many. Peter would make before he bled out from the exposed bone and flowing vessels of his cranium.
“Please … God no … please.” His flat language fell of deaf ears.
‘Daga Graylock placed his knee in the middle of the witch thing’s back, reached down and pulled back the head by its red, red hair.