SelfSame

by Conway, Melissa

  Sorcha sighed. “Oh, I doubt there’s any danger of that.”

  “Well, then what was that all about?”

  She debated not telling her, but it would take nearly as much effort to brush Paula off as it would to just tell her. So on the ride home, she did.

  Chapter Ten

  Enid

  Not once in her entire life had Enid woken up anywhere but in her bed. When Sorcha had laid down to sleep, she’d hoped that was where Enid would wake up this time, too, but she’d been prepared to find herself out in the open, still in the grass with Joseph.

  She was assaulted by confusing sensations when she came to: the sharp smell of horse, the dull sound of hoofs clumping in the dirt, bright light. She was not lying in her soft bed under her warm bedcovers; instead of the comfort and safety of home, she appeared to be draped over the front of a horse.

  Once she realized where she was, she assumed Joseph had carried her unconscious body to his mount and was taking her to safety. Her next thought was for the children and servants. She tried to move, but her arms appeared to be bound behind her back. Had he done it to keep them from flopping around? She turned her head to let him know she was awake, but from her head-down position, all she could see of him was his leg.

  She focused past the leg to determine where she was, and that’s when she saw him. Joseph was not sitting astride the horse. He was face up on the ground in front of her house, eyes closed, arms and legs splayed and tied to stakes driven into the soil. His shirt was missing and rivulets of dried blood laced his face.

  Horrified, Enid struggled against her bonds. Fingers slid into her hair and grasped a handful. The rider lifted her head by her hair, forcing her face towards him. She’d never seen him before, but there was no doubt this man was one of the Mohawk warriors. He said something to her in his language then spat on the ground in Joseph’s general direction and laughed.

  She didn’t speak, just glared her hatred at him. If the quizzical smile he gave her was any indication, he wasn’t fazed by her defiance. She held off on her tears until the warrior released her hair and her head dropped back down against his mount’s side. He kicked the horse into a walk down the dusty dirt path. She watched Joseph shrink into the distance, praying he was alive. Had the children escaped, or remained hidden? She wondered if she would ever know.

  One thing appeared certain: she wouldn’t be marrying Jedediah after all.

  Hours passed. Her hands had long since gone numb from her bindings and her upper back and neck muscles were knotted into spasms from her attempts to lift her head, which felt like it was going to burst from the blood pooling there. She was thirsty and hungry and desperate to relieve herself. If they didn’t stop soon, she was afraid she’d be forced to humiliate herself right there on the horse.

  She tried to distract herself from the pain and discomfort, but time takes on new meaning when you’re hanging upside down on a hostile Indian’s horse. Joseph had said they weren’t a war party. If he was still alive, he was probably reevaluating that assumption. He’d said they were headed south to rendezvous with their chief in New York. How had he known? It was logical to assume the party had stopped by Bear Talker’s longhouse on the way into the village. She’d looked out the kitchen window and seen that great cloud of smoke. Perhaps it hadn’t been coming from the village, but from just outside it – from Bear Talker’s longhouse. If the Mohawk had attacked Bear Talker it might explain why Joseph had come for her. Had the medicine man revealed to them that she could predict the future? Joseph had flat-out said the warriors were looking for her, but she’d given his statement the more generalized meaning that they would be looking for anyone who lived in the house they’d chosen to squat in.

  God, her head hurt. She’d compounded it by crying uncontrollably for the first hour, so her eyes were swollen and her sinuses thickly congested. Dust kicked up by the horses ahead of them made it even more difficult to breathe.

  The sun was past the mid-day point when they finally stopped. Her captor pulled her roughly from his horse and set her on her feet. Her knees immediately buckled and she sat in the trail as her circulation returned to normal.

  The horses were allowed to drink at a nearby stream and then began grazing on the grass. The men in the party went about the business of taking a break. Something told Enid she wouldn’t have much time to relieve herself. She couldn’t very well do so with her hands behind her back, so she mustered all of Sorcha’s bravado and struggled to her feet before approaching her captor, who was eating what looked like a slice of fruitcake.

  She spoke loudly so everyone in the party would hear; hoping one of them spoke English. “Please remove the bindings.”

  Her captor looked over at an older man, who said something. It must have been a translation, because her captor looked back at Enid and shook his head no.

  “If you do not, I will be forced to wet my skirts and you will have to smell it for the rest of the trip,” she declared.

  The older man laughed and translated again. Her captor’s face fell into a disgusted grimace, but he stuffed the rest of his meal into his mouth and fumbled with her bindings. All five men watched her closely as she went off the trail in search of a suitable spot to go. She was too desperate to be concerned that they could see her – besides, her skirts provided enough protection that they didn’t see anything anyway.

  She was surprised to find that the small knife she’d secreted away in her under-pocket was still there. Not that she had any intention of using it.

  The older man who’d translated gave her a drink from his canteen and a small portion of his meal. It was a cake of dried meat and berries that she chewed and swallowed quickly. When her captor gestured that she should put her hands behind her back so he could bind her again, she balked.

  Turning to the translator, she said, “Tell him I won’t fight or try to escape. Please ask him to let me sit upright.”

  He obliged, and a minor argument ensued. Finally, a man with his hair singed on either side of his head in a traditional Mohawk snapped out what Enid took to be an order because all discussion ceased. With no humor in her heart whatsoever, she made a mental note that the Mohawk with the Mohawk was the boss of this operation.

  Her captor set her upright on the horse and mounted behind her. He snarled something in her ear and she understood the threat perfectly well without knowing what his actual words meant.

  The afternoon passed more tolerably, although now that her physical discomfort had been attended to, her mental torment had free rein. Since the first ships made harbor on these shores, colonial girls and women had been stolen from their families and integrated into various Native American tribes. Enid knew she was now a slave. Whether her life would get worse or better remained to be seen.

  Chapter Eleven

  Sorcha

  She woke to find Grammy Fay sitting on the side of her bed, patting her leg.

  “I came in to check on you a few minutes ago,” Fay said, “and you were crying again.”

  The skin of Sorcha’s cheeks felt tight from dried tears. “It wasn’t me. Enid cried herself to sleep.”

  “You are Enid.” Fay’s voice was soft and sympathetic. “What happened?”

  In an unemotional voice, Sorcha gave her an abbreviated version of events while Fay rubbed the same spot on her leg through the bedspread until she thought she would scream. When she’d finished describing Enid’s kidnapping, and before Fay could say more than, “Oh, Sweetling, how terrible for you,” she slipped out of bed and went to stand in the bathroom doorway.

  “I need to get a handle on this,” she said. “I can’t keep letting Enid disrupt my life. So please don’t ask me any more questions…not today. Okay?”

  Her grandmother gave her a sad smile and nodded.

  Sorcha took her shower, fixed her hair and pulled on her clothes in a zombie-like trance. She wanted nothing more than to call Paula and cancel attending the football game, but if she didn’t go, she’d sit around the
house moping. She’d told Fay she didn’t want Enid’s life disrupting her own, so she’d best get on with it.

  The game was scheduled to begin at 10:00 am, so she had a chance to catch up with her parents at the breakfast table. Her mom had simmered a batch of steel-cut oatmeal with cinnamon. Enid’s gnawing hunger from the day before seemed to have transferred itself to Sorcha, because she devoured her portion and asked for more. The conversation was by necessity limited to Sorcha’s life; her parents had never believed in Enid and never would. They had no idea she was still under the ‘delusion’ that Enid was real.

  In the lane, Paula was uncharacteristically late. When she did arrive, Luanne was sitting in the passenger seat. Resignedly, Sorcha opened the back door, but to her astonishment, found Ben sitting behind Paula. She avoided eye contact, got in next to him and fastened her seat belt as Paula drove off. No one spoke for several seconds until Luanne turned around in her seat. The smile was absent today. “Hey.”

  There was a strange atmosphere in the car, like everyone but Sorcha knew something and they were reluctant to share. She forced herself to say, “How’s it going?”

  Paula glanced over at Luanne and said, “Well, it’s been an interesting morning.”

  Luanne had seemed so light-hearted the previous two times Sorcha had met her. Now her words, “We need to talk,” sounded serious to the point of curtness.

  Sorcha looked at Ben. His lip was no longer swollen, but the bruise under his eye had gotten darker. He was slumped slightly in the small space the compact car afforded him, and his knees came up almost to his chest. Today he had no charming smile for her; his manner was subdued.

  “You told her,” Sorcha said.

  “I had to.”

  A scoffing little laugh escaped her. “Why don’t you people stop beating around the bush and tell me what the hell this is all about?”

  “We know who you are,” Luanne said.

  Sorcha met Paula’s eyes in the rearview mirror, but this morning the warning look was noticeably absent.

  Unsure, Sorcha said, “Paula?”

  “I neither confirmed nor denied,” Paula said. “But you need to listen to what they have to say.”

  Luanne shook her head. “Don’t blame Paula. As soon as you mentioned Bear Talker to Ben, we knew.”

  “Suspected,” Ben said.

  “At least I always believed,” Luanne retorted.

  “Yeah, okay,” he muttered, looking out the window.

  Suddenly the convoluted conversations with Ben about Bear Talker made blinding sense. “Wait a minute,” Sorcha said. “Your little secret society has something to do with…me?”

  Luanne pressed her lips together and appeared to be considering her next words. “We have to be careful what we tell you.”

  Her meaning might seem obscure to anyone else, but Sorcha read between the lines: they knew things she didn’t – about Enid’s future.

  “Oh,” she said softly.

  The very concept of someone other than her grandmother and Paula knowing about Enid, believing in Enid, was foreign to everything she’d learned to do to protect herself over the years. Just in case she misunderstood, she said, “Tell me her name.”

  Luanne didn’t ask what she meant. She looked at her brother, who shrugged his agreement that it couldn’t hurt.

  “Enid,” Luanne said.

  Paula shot a quick look over her shoulder. “I didn’t tell them.”

  “I believe you.”

  They’d reached the bus stop. Sorcha wondered where Luanne was going on a Saturday, but didn’t ask. Luanne got out, but leaned inside and spoke to Ben. “They called a special meeting this afternoon. Make sure she’s there.” She shut the door and walked away.

  Sorcha was too shell-shocked to even crawl into the front seat. She just looked at Ben, queasily wishing she hadn’t eaten all that oatmeal.

  “It’s where Bear Talker’s longhouse used to be,” he said. “The meeting.”

  “Yeah, I kinda figured.”

  When they got to the school parking lot, he put a hand on Sorcha’s arm to stop her from leaving. Paula gathered her things and left them alone in the car.

  Ben sat up straight and studied her face until Sorcha began to feel uncomfortable. “What?”

  “You don’t look like her.”

  A thrill of something like excitement went through her. “You have a picture? No one’s ever done a portrait of me – I mean Enid.”

  He winced. “So much for not telling you what you don’t already know.”

  “Your sister said you didn’t believe. Is that why you wigged out on me?”

  “I didn’t wig out.” It was a weak protest. He looked down at his hands, clasped loosely between his open knees. “I was raised to believe in a story passed down through the generations for two hundred years. Didn’t get all the details until I was old enough not to go around blabbing, but yeah, it’s hard when you’re asked to put faith in the impossible.”

  “I’d like to hear that story.”

  “Not from me.”

  “Then who?” She was getting frustrated.

  “You have to live it.” He gave her a rueful smile. “Look, I need to ask you something. What day is it tomorrow for Enid?”

  She shrugged. “It’s tomorrow, exactly two-hundred and thirty-six years ago.”

  His countenance didn’t change, but his eyes flickered. Was that concern she saw?

  “Why?” she asked.

  “What was yesterday like for her?”

  “Oh, you could say she had a pretty bad day.”

  “Just tell me, Sorcha.”

  “Really? Is that how it works? You and Luanne and your secret buddies come along and ask questions, order me around and I get nothing in return?” She reached for the door handle. “I don’t think so.”

  She got out, slammed the door, and hurried across the dirt lot. The game had already started, so there weren’t very many students around. He caught up to her just before she got to the pavement. “Sorcha!”

  The loud growl of a rapidly approaching engine drowned out whatever else he said. She glanced around. John Nelson’s jacked-up black truck was speeding down the aisle, straight for them. Ben threw his arms around her and dragged her between two cars. John, his head sticking out the window, pulled up and laughed raucously.

  “WOO, Coz, you should see the size of your eyes!” he shouted. There was a strip of white tape over his nose, and both eyes had thin black streaks under them.

  “Yeah? Get out of the truck and say that!” Ben yelled. Now it was Sorcha’s turn to throw her arms around him – to prevent him from hauling John bodily out the truck window.

  John popped the clutch and spun his tires in the dirt, sending rocks flying as he sped away. Ben’s tense body leaned in the direction he’d gone. She realized her arms were still grasping him around the chest when he turned his head, bringing his face to within inches of hers. Her heart had already been racing from nearly getting run over, now it skipped a beat or two as his brown eyes looked into hers. She pulled away quickly, but later, when she was supposed to be watching the game, she remembered the intensity of the look and wondered what would have happened if she hadn’t.

  She and Paula sat several rows up from Ben, who was hanging out with the same group of kids he sat with at lunch. The teams were evenly-matched for once and the game was exciting, but not as exciting as the unofficial half-time show. Kristin Barber and her cheerleading squad did their thing, shaking their pom-poms and riling up the crowd, but as soon as the last cheer rang out over the audience, Miles Blumenthal, quarterback and all-around team hero, stomped onto the field and grabbed Kristin by the arm. Sorcha couldn’t hear what they were saying, but it was obvious from their gestures and furious faces that they were having a very public fight.

  “Dang,” Paula said, stretching out the word.

  Sorcha looked around for Ben and caught sight of him down on the sideline talking to, of all people, Dalton. She had a moment of pure
panic as it occurred to her that Ben knew how Paula felt about Dalton. All she could do was hope he kept his mouth shut. She was glad Paula was distracted by the spectacle on the field. Sorcha glanced over just in time to see Kristin slap Miles in the face. The crowd roared its approval.

  “I love it when royalty shows its ugly side, don’t you?” Paula had a big grin on her face.

  Sorcha murmured an appropriate response, all the while watching Ben make his way back to his seat. He paused before sitting down to scan the crowd. She thought maybe he was looking for her, but noticed him staring off at a group of young men who were flaunting the rules and smoking on school property. John Nelson was among them. He took a deep drag before flicking the burning cigarette butt in Ben’s direction. Then he turned abruptly on his heel and walked towards the parking lot.

  After the game, the question of how Sorcha was supposed to get to this big secret society meeting was answered by Paula.

  “I offered to drive you if they’d let me attend,” she said.

  Sorcha was relieved. “Good. I mean, that you’ll be there. You know all about Enid, so why wouldn’t they let you go? I hope I get a straight answer about, you know, why this secret society started in the first place. It’s logical to assume Enid tells someone about me…” she stopped. Enid already had told someone. Bear Talker – and Joseph. The thought made her hopeful for the first time that Joseph hadn’t been dead after all.

  She hadn’t known what to expect from the meeting. Her mind conjured up everything from a Native American powwow dance around a bonfire to a midnight grove of masked, chanting men. Instead, it was a bright, cold afternoon and there were about forty men and women milling about or sitting in folding chairs arranged in two rows in a big circle. When she and Paula tentatively entered the grove of pines, everyone got up and came over to shake their hands and say hello.

  Sorcha was nervous, and with all the new faces immediately forgot just about everyone’s names.