I fingered my line of prizes where it poked against my wet skin, jewelry created of blood and bone. How many times had I passed the opportunity to add something more beautiful to my memories?
“Yes,” I said. “I could do with more of those.”
Cory Skerry lives in the Northwest U.S. in a spooky old house that he doesn’t like to admit is haunted. When he’s not peddling (or meddling with) art supplies, he’s writing, reading submissions at Tor.com or copy-editing for Shimmer Magazine, and often off exploring with his sweet, goofy pit bulls. He’s a graduate of both Viable Paradise and Clarion West, and his work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Fantasy/Lightspeed, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies, among others. For more of his stories, visit coryskerry.net.
And, sure enough, the most evil, cold-blooded thing in his memory was there . . .
DOWN IN THE VALLEY
Joseph Bruchac
Bones, Theo Buck had told him. That was all they found.
Sucked clean of every bit of flesh. So white they mistook them for ice when they saw them and the bottom of the stream that led down into the cedar swamp.
How many went missing?
Seven, Theo said, tapping his walking stick on the ground. The Horsemen were no damn help. Just come in and poked around and then said it had to have been a bear. But there was no tooth marks on them bones.
So what can I do that the Mounties can’t? John Sundown said.
Since it wasn’t really a question, Theo Buck just looked sideways at him and nodded.
John Sundown readjusted the weight of the heavy pack and the rifle as he looked down into the valley. The wind that came up the rocky draw into his face was warm. It carried with it the aroma of new growth, despite the thin snow that clung to the ridges. He recognized the scents of familiar spring plants, the same ones that used to grow near the streams back down on his own reservation—back before the dam was built.
He took a deep breath. Gettin’ too old for this.
Come here, the voice said again.
Not a voice you hear with your ears. Well, maybe not that old.
The valley on the other side of the low range of white-capped Ontario hills seemed just as deserted as he’d been told it would be. The streams that flowed down there still had a plenty of trout in them. But no deer sign since he’d started to climb. No rabbits spooked from the brush. And no smells of smoke as there would have been if there were any people still down there. Even though it had been the favored hunting grounds for half the Anish families hereabouts, no one had set foot in the valley since they’d found the bones of Bill Mink and both his boys at the edge of the bigger of the two cedar swamps.
John Sundown raised his chin and drew in an even deeper breath through his nose. And he caught the faintest trace of another scent, a scent that was majid. In English majid might be translated as bad. But English didn’t do the old word justice.
The eight years he’d been forced to stay at the Indian Industrial School hadn’t taken away his language or dulled his senses. They might have split him from family, cut his hair, stuffed him into a uniform and thrown him into the guardhouse every time he forgot and spoke a word of Algonquin but all that they were able to strip away from him was on the outside.
They thought he’d been civilized. Even the English Master, Mr. Asa Poundshaw never suspected. Boston-bred, the meanest teacher at the school, bald Poundshaw whipped any brown-skinned boy or girl who failed to show proper respect or mispronounced a word. But John Sundown learned fast. He knew who to be afraid of and what he needed to do after his first brutal beating, followed by three days in the cold guardhouse on bread and water. By the time Sundown had been at school for two months, whenever Poundshaw turned his cold fishy gaze to look down his long nose at John, all he saw was a little Indian boy nodding his head in what seemed to be perfect agreement. It was not easy for John to swallow down his anger, to hide the fear that the terrified beating of his heart would give him way. And perhaps Poundshaw suspected that John Sundown’s conversion had been a little too fast. But there were far too many other obviously recalcitrant Indian boys and girls for him who needed to feel the civilizing stroke of his cane.
His last two years there, John Sundown had been more than a model example for the civilizing hand of at the government boarding school. A true dawn-of-the-twentieth-century Indian. Perfect class attendance for four straight terms, second string running back on the Indian football team, member of the school orchestra (playing the cello). One of John Sundown’s poems extolling his teachers was published in the Monthly Arrow—whose Boston-born editor apparently not only lacked an eye for irony but also had not (like John Sundown) looked up the word “acrostic” in Webster’s Dictionary.
For all that school has given freely
Unto this red lad forest bred
Callow before he did receive
Kind instructions, a pat upon his head.
Yea, let me heap up grateful praise
On those who generously granted
Unto me kindly Wisdom’s gaze.
He hadn’t even spoken a word of protest when he was sent out—like all the other able-bodied Indian students—to be a low-paid field worker at one of the white farms in the countryside around the school that made use every summer of cut-rate red labor. Where sometimes a vulnerable young native boy or girl might be used in another way.
John Sundown shook his head at that memory. Figured for sure school had killed the Indian in me.
That had been the mistake of Old Hans, the hulking owner of the farm where John had been “outed,” as they called that system of semi-slave labor. He’d assumed that John Sundown was just another little Indian boy he could take advantage of out behind his cow barn. But John’s being quiet and reliable at his chores hadn’t meant that he was either vulnerable or slow. One of the little tricks you learn playing football against Ivy League boys— Harvard linemen who knew where to jam a knee at just the right time—had come in handy when he felt the ham-like hand of Hans on his shoulder.
John Sundown smiled at the thought of how OId Hans had limped for a week afterwards—and kept a respectful distance away from him for the rest of that summer.
He shaded his eyes against the rising light of the late June sun with his left hand. This valley was at least a mile wide, maybe four miles long. A river flowing through it. Marsh lands and a little lake at the far end where the cliffs came down. Spruce, hemlock, balsam and pine on the higher slopes, then birch and beech, cherry and oak and maple. Everything here seemed just about right—at first glance—for him to locate what he was looking for. He’d find the useful plants his grandmother had taught him about when he was little, before the Indian agent had him shipped off down to Pennsylvania. The land down there ought to be right for all kinds of medicines, even the ginseng that they’d pay a hefty price for back down in the States, and then ship it off to the Far East where it was used as a medicine for just about any ailment. Ginseng roots were worth their weight in gold. And just like gold, ginseng drew greedy men to Indian lands to dig it out. So now it is rare and worth even more.
They never gathered medicine the way we do, John thought. He touched the tobacco pouch at his side. He was only four when Grama Sabbatis put a handful of tobacco in his palm.
Put that down there by the roots. Don’t hurry. Show your respect and thanks. Explain how we need its help. Ask permission before you pull it up.
That plant had seemed to jump into his hand after he did that. And they only took that one plant, not even the biggest one of the family of plants they found growing there. That way there would always be more of that medicine when they needed it.
Healing was like that. You had to take it slow, be patient. And there was a lot of healing he had to do. It was hard to believe how much he’d seen in the last few years. Two years of college at Dickinson after Carlisle. Then enlisting when America entered the war.
He’d been in France, a member of the Expeditionary Force, when it had come to him. Come to hi
m after the blast deafened him and threw him twenty feet through the air. Come while the shrapnel was still so hot in his thigh he could smell his own flesh burning.
The voice came. He’d never heard it before, but he recognized it. It was the same voice his Grama told him she first heard when she was twelve winters.
Wake up, it said. You have a job now. You must help heal the people.
A voice as everyday and as matter of fact as that of one of his superior officers. But an inhuman voice, one without breath, spoken inside his mind.
First, stay alive. Lead your men.
He had done that. He got up. Moving faster than any man should with German steel lodged in his thigh, he’d roused his company. Black men, every one of them. The Army would never have assigned white men to be led by an Indian, even one who was an officer and had gone to engineering school. Then John Sundown had led them down the trenches, across the no-man’s land of night, safely away from the gas attack that flowed in behind them like a yellow burning fog over the flat marsh land, its long fingers strangling and suffocating those who had not followed him.
The armistice came a week later. Like tens of thousands of other soldiers in a dozen different uniforms, he had limped away from the bitter land they’d watered with their blood. Packed his kit bag, threw in a few souvenirs, boarded a troop ship at Brussels. A month later he was back home in Maine on his grandmother’s porch.
Slowly he drank the tea she’d made for him from the same tin cup given him since John was a little child.
I’m here to help, Nokomis, he said. They both smiled after he said that. Even though she had ninety winters, she could still split wood as good as a man half her age, and there were as many on Indian Island who feared her as there were those who respected her.
If a bear in the woods runs into Grama Sabbatis, it was said, that bear turns and runs for its life.
It’s good you come here for help, Nosis, she said.
Then they both sat for a while listening to the river . . . and his breath which still rasped every now and then.
You heard the voice, she finally said. He nodded.
Good.
Summer began to walk away towards the south and the wind held a hint of the northland’s breath. The leaves were falling. John hunted birds and small animals for food. Deer were all gone now from around Indian Island. He worked a few odd jobs in the town to get flour, sugar and coffee. Cut wood, kept the stove burning, grew stronger. By the time of the Freezing Moon, his lungs were clear again. His hip no longer ached every time he drew a breath. That was when the moon was as full of light, as a wise old woman’s face. His grandmother told him stories as she had done when he was little. Her words were as healing the clean air, the familiar land beneath his feet, the music of the good river flowing near her cabin.
When early the Moon of Maple Sugar came, they tapped the seven maples by the edge of the road that led to home.
First medicine gift, Grama Sabbatis said, handing him a cup full of the sweet sap before they began boiling it down in the old iron kettle to make syrup.
Drink it.
He drank. It washed away the last of the darkness stuck in the center of his chest.
Then it was the Moon When Frogs Sing. She handed him his pack. Go. Gather medicines along your way. Help the people. Heal when you can. And when the need arises—as it will—use those other skills you learned at war. You will know when.
He hadn’t told her about the letter in his pocket from his old school buddy. A letter he had picked up that morning from the store where mail was delivered. Hadn’t mentioned he would be leaving.
But of course she knew.
John Sundown had nodded, shifted the strap of the Winchester over his right shoulder. Then she wrapped her strong old arms around him and held him tight for a long time. An embrace that was, he knew as well she did, the last his fierce old grandmother would ever give him.
So, after two months of steady travel he had come here. He’d traveled some by wagon, some by train, more by walking. Then a week on the waters of the big lake and then upstream on one of its tributaries by canoe to reach Theo Buck’s reserve. Theo had been the right end on their team at Carlisle.
He found his old friend sitting on the front step of the trading post, holding a walking stick with a bear’s head carved on top of it. Theo had always been good with his hands. Best student in the art classes at Carlisle. Pop Warner, the school’s football coach and a lover of art, had bought half a dozen of Theo’s paintings.
Theo raised the stick in greeting, pointed with his chin to the steps next to him. John Sundown sat.
You got my letter, Theo said.
Ayup.
Theo cleared his throat, spat.
Remember the stories you told me about your grandmother?
John Sundown nodded.
Turns out, Theo Buck continued, my own grandfather knew her. Turns out a bunch of our old people knew her. Knew about her. Knew that she could, he paused, tapped the stick against the steps, handle things.
That is true.
I have heard, Theo said, his voice cautious, that you can handle some things.
I can try, John Sundown said.
Then Theo had told him about the valley.
Below John Sundown, the next day, the valley was quiet, mostly.
You come.
That voice again. Were the silent words said in Indian or in English? Or neither one?
Setting up his camp took no more than the time for the sun to travel the width of one hand down the sky. He’d learned to travel light when he was a boy. Never carried a tent or all the camping equipment the weekend outdoorsmen seemed unable to live without. Just an oil cloth to stretch over the lean-to frame of straight limbs he’d cut, stripped, and erected against the side of the big boulder that blocked the northwestern wind at his back. If a man had a good knife, he could make about anything he needed from the woods. He’d allowed himself the luxury of a cooking pot, a spoon, and his grandmother’s tin cup—which he’d found in his pack. But nothing more in the way of cooking supplies. Left more room for the other things as well that he’d stowed in the heavy pack on his back. Things that might save his life or make a difference. The pot hung now over the small fire he started with flint and steel. His coffee would be ready in another minute or two.
No animal tracks, he thought, chewing on one of the pieces of venison jerky he’d brought.
No birds singing. Not one.
Why am I doing this?
Because I can.
The dark came quick, rippling along the valley like dark water filling in a pool. He’d gathered enough wood to keep the fire going through the night, dry logs laid up so he could just shove their ends further into the fire as they burned. He checked his rifle, making sure it was loaded. A good gun, this lever-action Winchester. Better than those they’d given them to use in Belgium and France. He could get off a dozen shots from it in as many heartbeats. He laid it close at hand on his side away from the fire. He could roll to it and have it up and ready to shoot in a heartbeat. Then he reached under his shirt and pulled what looked like a thin black rope. In the old days, when a man went to sleep in a strange place he would tie a little of his own long hair to a tree root. That way nothing could come in the night and take your spirit. After his years in the boarding school and in the army, where barbers held just as much sway, the hair on his own head had still not grown back much further than his shoulders. But this rope of hair that he carried with him was even better than his own. His grandmother had braided it from strands of her own hair, hair that had never been cut but flowed down, still dark as midnight in the forest, even though she had now seen more than ninety winters.
John Sundown tied one end of the hair rope around his left wrist and then tied the other to one of the gnarled fingers of the venerable cedar tree that had wrapped its roots like an elder’s brown hand around one side of the boulder.
I tie myself to the earth, he whispered. I cannot be taken from
this place. Something called from the far end of the valley.
You come.
A breathless call. Not a song. Far from that. Nope, John Sundown said.
He wrapped his fingers around his grandmother’s hair and slept.
He woke up before dawn. Took a pinch tobacco from his pouch and offered it with a prayer to the rising sun, dropped it into the fire.
Then he checked his gear. He had all he needed. And he was hearing it again.
You come.
I’m coming. But you might not like what I’m bringing.
As he made his way along the trails that were overgrown now, no sign of deer tracks or any other, he thought. Was it new here? Had it come from some other valley that it stripped of life? Or had it been here a long time sleeping, then woke up hungry, ready to eat until it was time for another long sleep?
He leaned back against a big stone
Can I do this? he said to himself.
Don’t ask if you can. Just try. That will be good enough.
He grinned at the memory of her words, so strong that they came clearer to his mind than that call—which was not so far away now.
Okay, Nokomis. I try. He straightened up and began walking again.
It’ll be a pond or a deep spring. Like in the old stories. I’m almost there.
You come.
Hurry. Hurry.
Don’t be late for roll call.
You are going to get demerits in my book, young man.
A ruler across your knuckles will remind you not to be a lazy savage. Quick time, march!
Whoa!
John Sundown stopped himself.
He was so close now that the breathless voice had almost overwhelmed his senses. Not just one voice now but a passel of them.
Using my memories against me, eh?
John swung the gun off his shoulder and squatted down, still a hundred yards from that pool of water that had seemed so enticing just a moment ago. A shiver went down his back at the thought of what lay below the placid surface.
Listen.
The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, 2013 Edition Page 46
