Witchy Winter

by D. J. Butler

  The shadow of the sweat lodge in which Nathaniel lay looked strikingly like a bear. Ma’iingan shifted left and right slightly, and the shadow still appeared to be a bear, moving as Ma’iingan moved, keeping its muzzle and powerful paws pointed at Ma’iingan.

  What had happened after the boy had climbed the central beam and then fallen off? Ma’iingan had built the boy a sweat lodge because it was what he would have done for himself, and then he’d heard the voice of his manidoo, commanding him to slaughter the horses. He’d done so, and then the voice had gone silent.

  Was this the sort of thing the Midewiwin did in their lodges? Ma’iingan wished his father were here, so he could at least ask. His father would say he couldn’t reveal Midewiwin secrets, but he would drop a hint, or make a joke, or share a reassuring smile.

  “Free me,” George said in a hesitant voice. “If it’s to undermine Old One Eye, I’ll help.”

  Ma’iingan wanted the help, but he was afraid to take the offer. Not while Nathaniel was unconscious and wounded. If George and Landon decided to attack Ma’iingan together, he’d be in trouble.

  “I want to trust you,” he said to George. “You value your honor, na?”

  George frowned. “Yes.”

  “So I won’t bind your mouth while I deal with Old One Eye’s men. You can call out for help, but I hope you won’t. I value my honor too, and as soon as I can, I’ll set you free.”

  He was counting on more than just George’s honor; he was relying on his guess that George wouldn’t want Old One Eye’s men, of all people, to see him tied up and humiliated. And also on George’s fear of the crazy Indian who had kidnapped him, tied him up, and then slaughtered four horses in front of him. He stood George against the center pole, tying his hands on the opposite side to lock him into a tight embrace with the wood.

  Landon tossed aside his own coat and hat and shrugged into George’s, which were much brighter purple and which glittered with ornate gold embroidery. They were near enough the same height and build; it would have to do.

  George looked down into the tiny sweat lodge. Did he see the shadow-bear, as Ma’iingan did?

  “Let me go,” the Earl’s son said.

  “Henh. But not yet.” Ma’iingan nodded at the approaching soldiers. “How close?” he asked Landon.

  Landon ran to the wall and peered through again. “Closer,” he said. “We have a minute.”

  “We go now.” Ma’iingan grabbed his German rifle and checked the powder. “Landon, you must hold your fingers together, your fists as one.”

  “Like this?” Landon did as he was bid.

  Ma’iingan nodded. “You’re my prisoner, you’re George Isham. We’ll exit that way.” He pointed north—the approaching soldiers came from the east.

  “They’ll run us down.”

  Ma’iingan nodded. “Henh. We must take their horses.”

  “It’s too bad you killed the ones we had.” Landon nodded at the corpse of one of the animals in the corner of the barn.

  Ma’iingan didn’t answer. He’d done as his manidoo had bid. The horses had filled the curing barn with the reek of drying blood. Had they also aided God-Has-Given in his flight into the heavens? Had he flown into the heavens?

  What had really happened?

  Ma’iingan wished he were Midewiwin, or at least a wiser man than he was. A more spiritual man, so he could understand what was happening.

  But right now, it was good that he was a man who could sneak and shoot. “Come.”

  He slipped through a small door on the north side and crept in the shadow of the building to a ditch a short distance away. He could see the six soldiers more clearly now, approaching the barn with their short rifles raised to the ready.

  “Weapons on half-cock, men,” said the only mounted man among them. Their leader, probably. “It could be vagrants.”

  They had seen the fire.

  “If it’s vagrants, we should shoot them anyway,” one of the soldiers grumbled.

  “It could be a picknicking gentleman, lighting a small fire to warm himself from this chill while resting from the hunt,” the leader snarled. “You do not shoot until I tell you. And keep your voices down.”

  Ma’iingan pulled Landon behind him and crept down the ditch. They passed the soldiers going the other direction, and then came up behind the tethered horses.

  “It’s a pity we Haudenosaunee are not better horsemen,” he murmured to Landon.

  The boy shook his head. “You really need to decide what kind of Indian you are.”

  “We all do, na? Words of wisdom. You mount first, and I’ll cover you.”

  Ma’iingan leaned against the rail fence with one elbow, pointing his German rifle toward the backs of the soldiers. He wouldn’t shoot them from behind, but if they turned, he’d be ready.

  Landon mounted easily.

  Ma’iingan unhitched the remainder of the horses, then climbed onto one. He’d only ridden twice before, and his seat was awkward. The heavy leather saddle didn’t help—he felt as if his hip bones were being stretched unnaturally far apart.

  “I’m giving birth,” he whispered. “And to my surprise, it’s a horse.”

  “I guess I know now you’re not Sioux,” Landon said. “They leap onto their horses, and ride as if they were one with the beast.”

  “Na? Well, you should hear what they say about the people of Johnsland.”

  “What do they say?”

  “Ride!” Ma’iingan said. Then he pointed his rifle at the sky, over the heads of the soldiers.

  Bang!

  The soldiers’ leader fought to keep his own horse under control and his men wheeled around, throwing themselves under cover. Ma’iingan and Landon Chapel raced up a narrow lane toward the highway.

  “It’s the Indian!” one of the soldiers shouted.

  “He’s got Master Isham!” cried another.

  Ma’iingan and Landon both hunched low over their mounts’ shoulders, and then the bullets came. “Not too fast!” Ma’iingan called to Landon. “If we leave them behind entirely, they may go into the asemaa barn. We want them to follow us. Also, stay close to me. They won’t want to shoot George…I think.”

  Landon mumbled something inaudible and slowed his pace.

  They reached the end of the lane and turned onto the larger road. Ma’iingan risked a look back; the soldiers who had collected their horses were now mounting. Their leader had waited for them, and was spurring them on with curses and kicks. Two of the soldiers—those whose horses Ma’iingan and Landon had stolen—trotted ahead.

  “Well done, George Isham,” Ma’iingan said, and clapped Landon on the shoulder.

  The boy slid and began to fall out of his saddle.

  “Whoa, whoa!” Ma’iingan grabbed Chapel by the front of his borrowed coat and stopped his fall. “What’s wrong?”

  Then he saw the dark blood flowing down the boy’s side.

  “I can ride,” Landon murmured. His face was pale.

  Ma’iingan looked around. Snow carpeted the fields and forest around them. His experience with Zhaaganaashii was that almost none of them could track, but the snow would change that. They needed to outrun the soldiers, and they needed to do it on the road.

  Only Landon was wounded, and Ma’iingan was a poor rider at best.

  “Don’t fall,” he exhorted the boy.

  He reloaded the German rifle.

  It wasn’t easy, doing the work on horseback. He kept his attention on the gun, the ramrod, and the powder horn as he worked, and that wasn’t easy, either. He was tempted to look up at the approaching soldiers.

  But he stayed focused, reloaded, and then raised the gun, sighting along it.

  The leader rode in front now, having passed the two men running on foot. Three more men followed, further back.

  “Mother earth and father sky forgive me,” Ma’iingan murmured. They were the same words he’d said as he’d slaughtered the horses in the barn.

  He shot the leader’s mount in
its breast.

  The animal went down with a single scream, throwing its rider into the adjacent field. Ma’iingan’s own horse objected, neighing loudly and leaping sideways, and Ma’iingan struggled to regain control.

  He reloaded.

  Bang! Bang! Bullets whizzed past him in the darkness, close enough that he could hear their trail through the air.

  “Landon, you’re still with me, na?”

  No answer.

  Ma’iingan spared a sideways glance and saw the boy slumped over the neck of his horse. The animal cantered away up the highway.

  He held his fire until the second rider approached the spot where the first horse lay dead, and its rider struggled to get back over the fence and into the lane. Then he shot, again at the horse, and again dropping it. The second horse fell right on top of the first. Its rider tumbled to the ground and lay still, neck twisted at an unnatural angle.

  The running soldiers reached the two horses’ bodies and threw themselves to the ground behind the corpses, taking cover and loading their own rifles.

  “Maajidook.” Ma’iingan had slowed the soldiers, but he had also given them a wall behind which to shoot.

  “Look at Master George!” One of the soldiers yelled. “The Indian’s hurt him!”

  Ma’iingan turned his horse, nearly knocking himself out of the saddle in the process, and caught up with Landon Chapel. The boy raised his head to grin weakly at Ma’iingan.

  “Did we do it?”

  “Henh, we did. Now hold on tight.”

  Ma’iingan snatched the reins of Landon’s horse and pushed his animal forward. They had a long and circuitous ride ahead, to get back to the barn, and they couldn’t afford to get too far ahead of their pursuers.

  Bang! Bang!

  * * *

  “Mutter Hohman, guten abend.” Wilkes bowed politely.

  The old woman standing in the rectangle of warm yellow light that was her open doorway looked closely at Kinta Jane. Snow swirled down around Kinta Jane, obscuring the path at her feet and freezing her to her core. “You’ve brought her.”

  “It’s time. May we come in, hexenmeistres?” Wilkes smiled.

  “It’s time. The meat you left for that dog of yours is almost gone. You may come in, but you mustn’t be so formal with me.”

  “Mutti Hohman, then.”

  “Mutti Hohman.” The old woman shrank to one side, and the shifting shadows of her face made her eyes look cavernous and the three thick hairs on her chin extraordinarily long. “It would make me feel young if you called me Georgina.”

  Isaiah Wilkes urged Kinta Jane through the door and then followed her, shutting the door behind them.

  In the sudden warmth of the cottage, Kinta Jane took a deep breath. They had traveled two days from the cloister, riding horses that Wilkes had brought with him and leading two mules, laden with winter gear and food. The previous night, they’d slept in a farmer’s barn a mile off the highway, having traded several pounds of dried beef for the privilege. Mother Hohman’s cottage was somewhere near Youngstown, but this wasn’t country Kinta Jane knew at all and it was mostly obscured from her view by a blizzard.

  “I don’t need a young woman, Mutti. I need a powerful one.”

  The crone nodded, smiling wistfully. “Ich weiss es, mein freund. Very well. I’m ready. Are you?”

  “Give me a moment.” Wilkes turned to Kinta Jane, gesturing at a sturdy wooden table beside a kitchen fire. “Please sit.”

  Kinta Jane sat, her limbs obeying her stiffly, and after a moment’s delay. The house had only two rooms on the ground floor: a kitchen and a sitting room. The sitting room was full of books, and the kitchen was full of jars. At the back of the kitchen, steep wooden stairs climbed to a loft.

  Wilkes disappeared out a back door of the cottage. Kinta Jane heard the growling of a dog.

  The hexenmeistres opened a jar on a high shelf and removed a rolled sheet of yellow paper. Smoothing the paper out on the table between her and Kinta Jane, she sat. The paper bore a strange arrangement of letters:

  SATOR

  AREPO

  TENET

  OPERA

  ROTAS

  She noticed Kinta Jane looking at it. “This is an old charm. Older than the rest of the hexing I’ll attempt for you today. This was around before there were Germans; it’s Latin.” She chuckled. “It’s as close to gramarye as I come, and I hope my uncle Otto isn’t disappointed with me for doing it. The Sator Arepo is older than our Lord.”

  The growling from behind the house became an urgent and angry bark.

  Kinta Jane raised her eyebrows in question.

  “The Sator Arepo is merely a defensive tool. I have letters inside the walls of the house, of course. But the Sator Arepo will give us additional protection. What we’re asking for is delicate, and it may attract unwanted attention. We don’t want it to go wrong.”

  The barking ended suddenly. The back door opened and Wilkes returned, holding one hand at shoulder height. In his other hand, he held a bloody knife. “Shall I put this in its place?”

  “My boy, you’re many things, but you’re no braucher. Give it here.”

  Mutter Hohman cupped her hands; Wilkes leaned forward and deposited something in it, something pink and long.

  A tongue.

  A dog’s tongue.

  Kinta Jane felt ill.

  The hexenmeistres held her cupped hands over the sheet of paper with its square acrostic. “Wrap your hands around mine, child,” she said to Kinta Jane. “This is your magic, too.”

  Wilkes took one step away, but watched closely.

  Kinta Jane wrapped her fingers around the outside of the witch’s hands. They were thin, bony hands, but they felt hot, as if they were full of blood. Or fire.

  Or maybe it was just that Kinta Jane’s own fingers felt like icicles.

  “Have you spent the day in prayer and reflection, asking our Lord for forgiveness, strength, and success in all your endeavors?” the witch asked.

  Kinta Jane shook her head, confused. She looked at Wilkes for support, but his face was impassive.

  “Never mind, child, I have. And as sayers of prayer go, I’m a mighty woman. Now open your mouth.”

  Kinta Jane hesitated, but obeyed. The witch looked into her open mouth, and a single tear formed in the corner of each eye, sliding slowly down her parchmentlike cheeks. “Great God of heaven,” she said, “forgive us for the things we feel we must do.”

  The witch shoved the dog’s tongue into Kinta Jane’s mouth.

  Kinta Jane couldn’t breathe. The tongue was hot and wet and tasted of blood. She gagged, but the hexenmeistres only pushed harder, forcing the tongue into place as if it were Kinta Jane’s own.

  Out of survival reflex, Kinta Jane raised her hands to her face.

  The hexenmeistres snatched them both in her own, and slammed them down onto the table. Then she pulled Kinta Jane’s face forward with her fingers gripping Kinta Jane’s teeth. Kinta Jane looked down and saw that her face was over the Sator Arepo diagram.

  “Gottes Wort und Jesu Muttermilch und Christ blut!” The witch’s voice jumped an octave, into a shrill and unnatural tremolo. “Ist für alle Wunden und Brandschäden gut!”

  The old woman released Kinta Jane’s hands. “Hold the Sator Arepo,” she murmured.

  Kinta Jane’s mind reeled, but she pressed both hands down on the sheet of paper, feeling it crinkle beneath her fingers. She felt as if she was the paper; something grabbed her.

  The witch touched her thumb to Kinta Jane’s left cheek, and with it made the sign of the cross.

  Kinta Jane gagged. The alien tongue in her mouth twitched and she fought not to swallow it. It leaped and flopped like a fish on a riverbank, struggling to come out of her mouth.

  “Amen!” the witch cried.

  Then she pressed her thumb to Kinta Jane’s right cheek and made the cross again.

  Kinta Jane’s stomach roiled. She pushed the table as if she were holding onto a life-ra
ft with all her might. She struggled not to retch. A hand she couldn’t see squeezed her throat.

  Wilkes watched calmly.

  “Amen!” the old woman cried again.

  She pressed her thumb to the underside of Kinta Jane’s jaw. The tongue rolled uncontrollably in her mouth, and the witch made a third cross.

  “Und amen!”

  The letters on the Sator Arepo burst into sudden flame.

  Kinta Jane pulled away, her palms scorched, swallowed—

  and the tongue pressed against the roof of her mouth naturally, as if it were her own. Kinta Jane swallowed, tasting blood.

  Above each door, the wooden walls of the cottage burst into flame. These flames too were letter-shaped, though they weren’t the Sator Arepo charm. Whatever they were, they were written in the ornate gothic lettering favored in the northern Duchies and in German Ohio.

  The hexenmeistres released her patient and toppled backward. Stepping forward, Wilkes knelt in a smooth motion and caught the old woman in his arms.

  “Is she alive?” Kinta Jane asked, and then clapped her burned hands over her own mouth.

  She could talk.

  She had a dog’s tongue in her mouth, and she could speak.

  “There was resistance. Even here, so far from the confluence of the rivers, the King’s power is great. She’s breathing.” Wilkes stood, carrying the witch in his arms, and headed for the narrow stairs. “I’ll put her to bed so she can rest. You and I will watch over her tonight, and in the morning, I think she will be well.”

  “And the dog?” Kinta Jane staggered to her feet, feeling the strangeness of having a working tongue in her mouth again. She found a kitchen rag, wrapped one hand in it, and began beating out the flames above the kitchen door.

  Wilkes climbed the steps with his burden, which now seemed tiny and pitiable. “What dog?”

  * * *

  Cahokia had no Polite order.

  It had no college of magic, not that Luman had ever heard of and not that he could find now, either.

  It had wizards of some sort. Someone had built the mounds—could that all have been done by manual labor? Slaves too lightly dressed for the sudden avalanche of snow shivered past Luman in the central market square where he stood, and he shook his head.