It’s real, she exclaims in her head, pressing into the wood and floor to confirm they’re solid. Above, on the highest racks, canoes lay above every cot. On the middle platform, baskets, pottery, braided corn, and a mishmash of items dangle from rafters. A bow and pouch stuffed with arrows catch her eye, niggling her mind.
“O:ya’ ketgë’ óísëhda’?”
Twyla gasps, glaring at the teenage girl leaning over the pallet. Her face a stranger’s and her tongue foreign, but she understood her question. “Another frightening dream?”
The strange girl brushes raven hair from her frowning face. “Teka?”
Teka? Is that her name?
“Atgëh, get up, Teka.”
The name snatches her breath, rousing fear. Deep in her sentience, she perceives she doesn’t belong here, but she can’t recall her name, family, friends, or home. Her chest tightens. The room’s stifling humidity presses on her lungs. She gasps for air, clutches her heart, springs from the floor, fleeing through the open timber door into the sweltering summer night. Hindered by the long dress, she gathers the ankle-length skirts above her knees, and runs as fast as her legs can carry her.
With ballooning anxiety, she sees the large village longhouses enclosed in towering palisades blur in her panicked dash. Beyond the village square, she staggers through the palisade gate toward dim fields sloping to dense woods, scrambling into tall cornfields through a never-ending row. Deep lanes of stalks thrash at her face, obscuring her vision. Disoriented, winded and frightened, she stops in the center of the never-ending row, sinks to the ground, rolling back on her heels.
Wiping sweat and hair from her brow, she gapes at the disconcerting length of strands swinging below her waistline, pulling raven tresses in front of her widening eyes.
“No! what happened to my hair? What’s going on?” she wails.
She drops the strands, feels her thighs, and holds out her tattooed hands and arms. This body belongs to someone else. What in God’s name happened?
Nauseous, she tugs at the tight choker around her neck, frees the pelt ties, unraveling it from her throat. An acute recognition stirs reflexes in her fingers, circling the familiar wolf-face carved into the bone choker.
“Teka!”
Startled, she jerks her head toward the girl from the bed advancing with a mature woman. On her hands and knees, she scurries off the visible path into the cornstalks, springs off her hands, and rushes across several rows, battling sharp blades beating at her face until she’s too tired and disoriented to run farther.
She sinks to her knees. Nausea shoots from her throat, splattering the ground. With the back of her hand, she wipes her lips, clutches her bloated belly, believing she’d ingested something foul to cause such queasiness. Cornstalks tower in a dizzying spin above her head. Sensing her consciousness waning, she reaches for a blade-sharp leaf, slitting her palm. She recoils, sways on her knees as stalks float on the sultry breeze above her head, bending and crunching under her tumbling weight. Rows of stalks rustle as four moccasin-clad feet advance toward her, fading in her dwindling vision.
“Wake up, Teka.”
Twyla swats a hand tapping her face and opens her eyes to a worried round-faced girl’s almond-shaped brown eyes, catching the starry constellation over the cornfield.
“Nisáya’da:wës, what’s happened?”
A wolf howl resonates around the field. Alarmed, Twyla peers through swaying cornstalks with slight wooziness, confusion, and a sour taste in her mouth.
“You scared me, sister,” the girl says, brushing hair from her eyes as she’d done in the longhouse. The anxiety in her tone is genuine, as is the concern in her eyes.
“Teka?”
Vexed, Twyla rises from the bed of cornstalks, holding her forehead and shaking her head. “Please, stop calling me Teka. That’s not my name,” she declares. “I don’t know who I am, who you are, or where I am,” she explains, stunned to discover she’s speaking their dialect with fluency, though another language sounds in her mind. English, her dialect, she believes.
The girl peeks at the older, regal woman with a hint of knowledge in her eyes.
“Ahji’, I’m your sister, Garrentha.”
The older woman’s brows knit. She releases a long exhale and looks at her decorated hands tattooed with myriad symbols from her wrists to her fingers. “Nó’yëh, I am your mother, Jawanda. This place is your home,” she says, clasping her palms in a steeple at her chest. “You may doubt what I tell you, but soon, you’ll perceive your reality.” She sighs deeper and lowers her chin on her prayer-mudra hands. “You’ve awakened to a different time.” She stares unblinking at Twyla’s impassive mien. “The fuzziness will fade in a while.”
“How many hours was I unconscious?”
Garrentha chuckles. “Niyódöhö:dö’ gӓ:hgwa:’, many moons,” she replies, casting her eyes heavenward at the bright celestial body.
“Moons? What do you mean?” Twyla asks, searching Jawanda’s concerned brown eyes, an expression she recalls, but she doesn’t recognize this woman’s face.
Jawanda sits at her side, takes her hand, narrowing her keen gaze.
Twyla’s heart warms with the glint in her eyes. A vague image of a woman flickers in her mind. Someone with the same stare.
“This might sound strange, my dear Teka, but we both traveled through the gateway of time.” She acknowledges Teka’s scowl of disbelief with a nod and slow eye blink. “Memory loss happens during acclimation. I know this because I’ve experienced it. A little boost will help you remember quicker, daughter and future grandchild. Just as Tessa suspected, you followed in her steps through the sacred door. She said one day you’d discover the truth and travel her path. For reasons I’m not aware, she said your mission begins where hers ended among our people. Your future name is Twyla. Here, you and Tekakwitha are one.”
“No, that’s impossible… I have no memory of traveling, let alone entering this doorway.”
“You won’t remember the portal, but you’ll recall how you arrived there soon.”
“Sister, you worried me, running at such speed into the field. You must be careful now that you are with child.”
Jawanda frowns at Garrentha and smacks her hand in disapproval.
“Child?” Twyla mumbles, glancing at her abdomen. “No, I can’t be.”
“You are two moons with child,” says Jawanda.
She strokes her belly’s slight swell, realizing morning sickness, not spoiled food, caused her nausea and fainting. “Where’s the father, and why didn’t I wake in his bed?”
“War,” Jawanda states with distaste.
“Five days ago, Pilan left the village,” Garrentha says, peering at Jawanda.
“Pilan?” she whispers, staring heavenward as a bright shooting star splits the twinkling sky.
Awareness storms through Teka’s eyes.
Garrentha senses Twyla’s memory is returning. An instant awareness will strike her mind as it had Jawanda’s. But she hopes memories of her rank as huntress and warrior recede longer, fearing she’ll harm the unborn child with her spirited activities. “Teka. Twyla. My sister of two worlds, you must protect Pilan’s child.”
Garrentha’s words go unheeded as Twyla follows the shooting star across the heavens. Memories of a man calling her Twinkles arouses a flurry of mental images, faces, names, and emotions. Diaries? She glances at Jawanda, recalling Grams’ words.
“I’m only a stone’s throw away.”
“Tessa?”
Jawanda nods her head. “I am Jawanda now. It’s been two moons since Tessa’s last visit. But I keep most of her memories of your world.
An immediate pain stabs her heart. “Grams died a year ago.”
“As I suspected,” Jawanda says.
Twyla touches her belly and asks, “How far along am I?”
“Two moons, two months.”
She studies the choker in her grip, evoking images of a woman digging under a tree. Three moons wed. Three moo
ns with child, sounds in her mind. Teka and Pilan. She dies in her third month of pregnancy. Twyla’s memory of Twilight Ends revives bit by bit with each piece of information.
Sullivan’s Expedition… Soldiers will arrive soon and destroy this village.
“Where has Pilan gone?”
Garrentha beams at her recognition. “So, you know who you are now, my future sister. Our men joined allies with the Mohawk Chief Brant. Jawanda and Pilan tried to prevent our people from entering the war. But he couldn’t stop their alliance with Brant. He and Mingin left only to protect his brother, the man I am to marry, Sagoyewatha, from engaging in the ambush.”
Ambush. Joseph Brant.
Twyla’s mind races, trying to recall the day of the attack. Tessa never mentioned a precise date, only the month and year. In September 1779, Sullivan’s soldiers will arrive at the village.
“What month is it?”
“It is our harvest season, August,” Jawanda replies.
It’s not September yet, she thinks with relief. Jawanda divulged her mission begins where Tessa’s ended, one she couldn’t fulfill as the portal never returned her to this time after her first visit. Tessa couldn’t warn them, but she can. How could Jawanda lose Tessa’s knowledge of the Iroquois Confederacy’s looming destruction? Do the gods of time travel erase memories of their fate when they leave past forms?
Change history… Images of Jayson charge her mind with overwhelming emotions. Is he searching for her? Has anyone discovered she’s missing from the inn?
Jayson’s voice resonates, more poignant than it had hours ago. “Altering the past might cause a catastrophic aftermath. There’re reasons for conquest, war, famine, and pestilence, devastations only the ever-powerful Great Spirit can change. I’d approach time travel as an opportunity to witness, not change Iroquois history.”
But the life of his unborn child may sway his resolve. If Teka, Pilan, and the child survive, their future lives may alter. She glances at her belly and grimaces at red smearing the tan smock. Blood from the sharp cornstalk she gripped before fainting, an omen of child and mother’s fate.
Worry steals Jawanda and Garrentha’s eyes, gazing upon the bloody harbinger.
She frowns and looks away from their worried faces, wondering how to tell them of tragedy to befall their village. How might Tessa convey Washington’s retaliatory fires?
Twyla sighs and lifts her gaze at the two doting women. “I remember.”
They smile and help her from the ground.
Arm in arm, Jawanda and Garrentha lead her through dense cornfields toward the thriving settlement ahead. Teka’s world fills her mind, the last image of Pilan leaving the village, and their passionate life together in the Wolf Clan. Memories of the two women by her side arise with much esteem and affection, Jawanda, the influential, wise clan mother, and Garrentha, her confidante, best friend. She grips their arms, knowing each of their tragic losses.
Catastrophic images blitz Twyla’s mind. Visions of orange flames consuming crackling cornstalks arise as they stride onward. Below her bare feet, she envisions coal-hot soil. She gazes at the approaching protective palisades enclosing the village, sensing soldiers’ ringing whoops around walls as fires destroy their homes. Images she’d seen in future textbooks and museums, a life far removed from a past she lives again. Now aware of looming destruction, tears well in Teka’s eyes, their eyes.
Twyla strokes her belly with Teka’s hands, sensing her deep love for the unborn soul and the child’s father. A passion that grows ever greater the longer she remains in her body. The heavens did not put her here a month before Sullivan’s arrival by pure chance. No, she perceives her mission, to right time’s wrong, to warn the Seneca tribe, people of the Wolf Clan, to leave this place before soldiers ravage their property. She can’t change war, but she can and must save lives before she returns to Twilight Ends.
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Acknowledgments
Foremost, thanks to my family for their endless support, encouragement, love, and lending an ear often to my incessant queries and concerns. I’m so proud to be a member of your family and have you in my corner: Ouida and James, my guardian angels.
Thanks to Miika Hannila at Next Chapter Publishing, Terry Hughes for your wonderful editing skills, and Next Chapter’s fantastic support team.
Thanks to my alpha and beta readers, both wonderfully gifted and supportive authors, and writers I’ve grown with and learned much from, for your support, constructive feedback, sterling friendship, having faith in my work, and reading every one of my books. You’ve made this journey an amazing venture. I often believe you were placed in my life at the right moment and suspect you two are guiding angels: Bebe and Jina.
Thanks to a talented author, Lawrence E. Crockett for your constant support, review of my work, insightful feedback, being near the phone when I needed to vent away my frustrations, and for always making me laugh. You are another angel by my side.
Thanks to my wonderful friends, who’ve stuck with me throughout the years for your exceptional friendships, belief in my abilities, and for being a part of my life: Mirna Hamilton and Julie Chan and many others.
And thanks to readers for purchasing and reading my story.
About the Author
E Denise Billups is an author with a rare mixture of Southern and Northern charm. She was born in Monroeville, Alabama, and raised in New York City, where she currently resides and worked in finance and as a freelance columnist. A multi-genre author of fiction, she's published three thriller novels – Kalorama Road, Chasing Victoria, and By Chance. She's also written several supernatural short stories – Off the Grid, Ravine Lereux: Unearthing a Family Curse, The Playground and Rebound. As an avid reader of magical realism, mystery, suspense, and supernatural novels, she was greatly influenced by authors of these genres.
Currently, she is working on the second installment of the Twilight Ends Trilogy, to be released in 2021, and Tainted Harvest, a paranormal historical fiction novella.
Thank you for reading Twilight Ends: Keepers of The Gate. If you enjoyed the story, please leave me a review at the merchant where you purchased the book. I appreciate your reviews, which support my success as an author. Again, thank you for reading Twilight Ends!
E Denise Billups
www.edenisebillups.com
More from the Author
Kalorama Road
Ravine Lereux: Unearthing a Family Curse
Chasing Victoria
By Chance
Rebound
The Playground
Coming Soon
Off the Grid: A Paranormal Short Story
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