SelfSame

by Conway, Melissa

  He rested his hand lightly on Fay’s arm and Sorcha saw her look down at it and then back up to Skip’s face. He was around her age and not unattractive, with his longish seventies-style shag haircut and the same slightly-hooked aquiline nose all the Webster men seemed to have. He had far less natural charm than Ben, but Fay was mollified nonetheless.

  “Alright,” she said grudgingly. “I suppose there’s nothing you can do, but really, there should be an intelligence test or something before giving out hunting licenses.”

  The officer shot Skip a grateful look and left with a parting, “Call right away if he comes back.”

  Fay started to close the door, but Skip said, “I’m afraid Ben and I can’t stay.”

  “Oh, that’s too bad,” Fay said. Sorcha winced at the almost simpering look on her grandmother’s face. Fay was long out of practice when it came to flirting, but it looked like Skip had inspired her to try. He wasn’t blind to it, either, from the gleam in his blue eyes.

  Sorcha felt Ben come up close behind her. Softly, he said, “And love is in the air.”

  She elbowed him in the stomach and was rewarded with a satisfying, “Oof!”

  He didn’t try to kiss her this time when he left, and she couldn’t decide whether she was grateful or disappointed. On the one hand, she could do without a PDA in front of her grandmother and Skip, but on the other hand…she wished she and Ben could be alone.

  In bed, she lay awake thinking about who wanted her dead and why. Two hundred years ago, the Webster family had put into motion an entire society dedicated to protect her, so it stood to reason that whoever wanted to harm her also had roots back to Enid. Given the insignificance of Enid’s life thus far, Sorcha couldn’t imagine what she could have possibly said or done to bring this down upon her. And why on earth had the Webster family gotten involved in the first place? Sorcha knew it was pointless to think about it, but the same stubbornness that had spurred her to search for Enid’s date of death was sending her thoughts spinning now.

  As she finally began to doze, those thoughts drifted to Ben and his selfless act of courage; how he’d lured the gunman’s fire and then chased him away, probably saving her life. It wasn’t the first time it occurred to her that there was more to Ben than good looks and sarcasm.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Enid

  Upon waking, Enid found herself under her mother’s scrutiny again. Bluebird held up the remains of the dress Enid had cut apart the day before. She’d taken care to hide the scraps beneath her sleeping furs, but it appeared Bluebird had discovered them while she slept.

  “Why have you done this, and where is the rest of the cloth?”

  Enid had no ready lie at hand, so she winged it. “I – I pulled it apart to make a blanket.” She looked around her, as if the fabric in question should be nearby.

  Bluebird’s face froze into an affronted mask. “Do you suggest that it has been stolen? Here among those who have given you food and shelter?”

  Confronted by her mother’s illogic, Enid felt as if the world tilted just slightly on its axis. Bluebird had kidnapped her, but could not see her actions for what they were. For all her mother knew, Enid could have been happy with her father. It took a monumental effort not to lash out at her. While Sorcha could allow the bonds of self-control to stretch once in a while, Enid could not afford to, not here.

  “Perhaps I dropped it on the way to the latrine,” she said.

  Bluebird looked skeptical, but seemed willing to let it slide. “Spotted Fawn has gone with Walks Like a Moose’s sister. You need to prepare for your meeting with the medicine man. I will allow you to wear my finest robe. When the sun is higher, we will bathe. Until then, you will make yourself useful.”

  Enid was introduced to the ‘sisters’ her mother had mentioned, three round-faced women whose resemblance to each other was so strong they must be real sisters. The tallest of the three carried an infant in a cradleboard on her back and looked at Bluebird with an undisguised enmity that Enid’s mother didn’t seem to notice. All three women spoke a smattering of English, and as they instructed Enid in preparing squash for baking, it became rapidly clear that although her mother had been adopted into the clan, she had not been accepted by all. Perhaps it was the laconic way she helped with the chore at hand, producing far less than the others. Or maybe it was her attitude, an unsubtle superiority that possibly stemmed from the knowledge that she was more attractive than her sisters.

  Oddly, the dynamic between these women and her mother reminded Enid of Kristin Barber and her clique. Bluebird was the interloper, but she’d either gained or taken some advantage that put her in a position of leadership.

  After the squashes had been tucked carefully around most of the banked fires in the longhouse, Enid was hustled outside by her mother. For Joseph’s sake, she was glad the weather had drastically changed, and the small amount of snow that had fallen yesterday had all but melted. A group of young men were playing a rowdy game of lacrosse on a flat dirt lot adjoining the corn field. They stopped to stare at Enid as Bluebird marched her past.

  Everyone seemed to be taking advantage of the warm morning sun. The shore of the bathing spot was teeming with children. Mothers stripped them naked and herded them into the frigid water two or three at a time. Enid saw a girl of maybe three refuse to step into the water. She clung to her mother until the woman peeled her little fingers away from her skirt and set her into the river up to her thighs. The child didn’t cry out until a slightly older boy who was already in the water splashed her – then her shrill scream startled some nearby birds from the trees.

  Bluebird stripped down and washed, too, this time. Enid kept her underclothes on again, ignoring the snickers of the other bathers.

  On the way back to the longhouse, a flash of pale lavender caught her eye; the dried-up petals of several late-blooming flowers protruding from a low plant. She stopped and quickly reached down to grasp a handful of the plant’s wilted leaves. It was Bee Balm, which would make a good antiseptic rinse for Joseph. She shoved the leaves into her left sleeve, for lack of a better place to put them.

  Her mother plaited Enid’s hair and then turned her back so Enid could return the favor. Bluebird had said she would allow Enid to wear her best robe, but the soft deerskin tunic she was given was plain in comparison to the beaded dress Bluebird wore over her skirt and leggings.

  This time when they walked through the village, Bluebird strolled importantly along with her chin raised. Enid sent several longing glances in the direction of the latrine, which she couldn’t see over the palisade. Would Joseph manage to remain hidden and safe? Would she ever have a moment to herself to sneak food to him? It seemed unlikely today.

  The medicine man lived separately from his clan in a domed wigwam about a hundred yards upstream of the bathing spot. From the way her mother was acting, Enid expected him to be an imposing figure, and that assumption proved correct. The man in the brightly decorated robes who swept the curtained door aside and stood on the wigwam’s threshold was of average height and build, but his unpleasant countenance oozed arrogant disdain. Unlike Bluebird’s arrogance, it was not gained from knowing he was attractive. His hair was singed on the sides in a Mohawk, but he had a small, pinched nose that reminded her of a woman’s nose job gone wrong in Sorcha’s world. His eyes bulged out alarmingly and his lips were thin in a wide mouth. Overall, the Haudenosaunee medicine man looked like a fish, albeit a royal one. Enid was immediately wary of him, even though he politely held the door skin aside so they could enter.

  Walks Like a Moose was already there, sitting on a fur near the medicine man’s fire. The wigwam was roomier than she’d expected, but dark and smoky with a bitter burnt-hair smell. As her eyes adjusted, she saw that the walls were covered with bundles of dried tobacco and herbs, with the occasional mask or dried gourd hung from the curved poles that supported the deerskin walls. Enid blinked in surprise at a European-style bed and chest against the far wall. Atop the chest sat an
unlit oil lamp, an inkwell and some loose papers.

  She’d expected Bluebird to have to translate, but the medicine man said, “I am James Butler.”

  Enid produced an awkward curtsey. “Enid Thompson.”

  “Your mother tells me you were born with two spirits. I have met such people in my travels across the ocean to the white man’s homeland. They are born as men, but have a second spirit within, a female one that confuses them. Tell me, is this the case with your second spirit?”

  Before Enid could open her mouth to deny it, Bluebird said, “Enid does not have a second spirit, but one spirit split in two. The other half of her spirit lives in the future.”

  James Butler’s eyelids flickered in a way that suggested he already knew this. Walks Like a Moose would have told him everything Bluebird had revealed about her daughter. “Let the girl speak.”

  Enid was nervous but prepared. “My spirit is whole and lives only within me. My mother remembers the young girl who loved to tell tales.”

  Bluebird gasped in indignation, but James Butler smiled. It wasn’t a pleasant look for him; he resembled a boy about to squish a bug and then poke at its guts with a stick.

  “I have learned much on my journeys and brought that knowledge home to my people. There grows a wild plant in these hills that we have found many uses for over the centuries. Its Latin name is Cannabis sativa and when smoked, it can coerce an unwilling person to be truthful.”

  Enid didn’t react. Sorcha and her friends had never smoked pot, but she’d heard it referred to by a number of names, including cannabis. From what she’d been told, there was a very good chance the weed would get her to talk, and quite volubly, but she didn’t allow her concern to show on her face.

  Bluebird said, “Give it to her.”

  Enid met her mother’s eyes, which were glittering with hostility. James Butler made a move towards the back of the wigwam, but shouts from outside pulled his attention away from his goal.

  Over the sound of several voices raised in panic, a woman’s screams could be heard. Enid didn’t understand the words, but the others did. Walks Like a Moose scrambled to his feet as the medicine man grabbed a mask from the wall, strode swiftly to the door flap and ducked outside. Enid followed as her mother and step-father went out to see what the commotion was. A dozen or so people flanked a woman who was running up the path, screaming, with a limp child in her arms. James Butler, now wearing the mask, rushed to meet her and took the child. He barked a command and someone removed their robe and dropped it to the ground so he could place the child upon it.

  From where she stood, Enid couldn’t tell if the unconscious child was a girl or a boy. After a brief moment examining the child, the medicine man straightened up and bellowed, “Enid Thompson!”

  It was the last thing Enid expected, to be suddenly singled out in the middle of what was obviously a great tragedy for the tribe. Did he blame her for this? Would he tell them her arrival caused it?

  He stood and turned toward her as Walks Like a Moose grasped her upper arms from behind and forced her forward. She saw the child, a naked girl with blue-tinged lips. Her sparse black hair clung wetly to her skull.

  Drowned.

  The medicine man spoke in his native tongue from behind the distorted, grimacing red face of the mask. His voice was somehow magnified, the cadence and volume of his words increasing at the end of his proclamation. Then he pointed at Enid and translated what he’d said to the onlookers. “The Great Spirit sent me a vision. If you spoke truth and your spirit is whole, the child will die.”

  Enid inhaled sharply, but otherwise didn’t hesitate. She dropped to her hands and knees and gently tilted the girl’s head back. There was no need to listen for breath sounds because it was obvious there weren’t any, but she held her fingers to the girl’s neck, hoping for a pulse. When nothing fluttered there, she ran her fingers down the girl’s chest until she found the breastbone, then clasped her hands, locked her elbows and began compressions. After 30 quick thrusts, she placed her mouth over the child’s and forced two breaths into her lungs. The girl’s slack, cold lips felt nothing like the plastic mouth of the dummy Sorcha had practiced on in Health Class.

  As she kept at it, she vaguely heard the mother’s subdued sobs and the murmurs of the crowd. She tried to remember how long she should keep the CPR up before conceding death. If the child had been submersed for too long, nothing she did would bring her back. The murmurs were becoming grumbles as the people watching saw no improvement.

  “One, two, three, four…” Enid hadn’t realized she’d begun counting aloud. Her breath was coming faster now with the unaccustomed exertion and her thighs burned from supporting the weight of her torso. Just when she began to think it had all been in vain, that the child would die and Enid would be torn apart by those watching her fail the medicine man’s challenge, the girl’s eyes opened and she began to cough. Then she spasmodically pulled her knees to her chest, rolled to her side and vomited a copious amount of water onto the ground.

  The crowd, which had grown considerably while she worked, shouted its approval. Enid found herself nudged roughly aside by the girl’s mother, who pulled the coughing and choking child into her arms. Helping hands wrapped the hypothermic girl in robes.

  Stiffly, Enid stood and stared at the ground. Whether James Butler had truly had a vision or had merely guessed that Enid’s knowledge of future things could save the child was irrelevant. He’d given her an impossible choice, and he’d done it to force her hand. She knew what she would see in his eyes when she gathered enough courage to look, and she was right. He’d removed the mask, and his face was suffused with triumph, but in addition, the medicine man looked at her with something bordering on admiration. When he ran his gaze down her body and back up again, she felt her skin crawl.

  If she thought she would be thanked, she was mistaken. The mother of the girl spoke a few grateful words to James Butler and then she and the rest of the crowd walked back down the path. It was as if Enid was invisible.

  James Butler narrowed his eyes at her. “You expected thanks, but she sees you as the tool I used to save her daughter.”

  “Is that what I am to become? A tool?” Enid flashed on the derogatory slang meaning of tool in Sorcha’s world, and certainly felt like one.

  “All people are tools to be used as the Creator sees fit.”

  He walked past Bluebird and Walks Like a Moose on the way to his wigwam. “I accept Enid Thompson as my apprentice. We begin on the morrow.”

  Back at the longhouse, Bluebird made Enid change into the outfit she’d worn the day before, and the rest of the afternoon was spent pounding dried corn into flour. After that, the tribe held an impromptu celebration in the main clearing. A hunting party had brought down a large buck the day before, and it had been roasting on a spit all day. Torches were lit when the sun went down. The family of the near-drowned child presented James Butler with corn mash and tobacco. He and a group of men and women wearing masks similar to his danced and chanted and shook rattles.

  Now that Enid had been given the honor of becoming the medicine man’s apprentice, Bluebird had reverted to the caring mother she’d been that first day. She was so falsely solicitous, in fact, that Enid felt smothered. At the first opportunity, she faded as far back from the merriment as she could, finally finding the right moment to make a break for the latrine.

  The moon was a mere fingernail in the sky, making the trek a dark and spooky one. The wind was calm and a low fog had begun to form. When a young man and woman who’d apparently snuck away to be alone together came out of nowhere, she shrieked in fright. They laughed and the woman said something in her language, but Enid hurried on. In the near-blackness, it took her some time to locate Joseph’s hiding spot, but she was confident that if she could hardly see ten feet in front of her, then no one would be able to see her.

  Just outside the hemlock thicket, she whispered, “Joseph!”

  For a moment she feared he’d gone, or
had been discovered or – it was too painful to contemplate what else might have happened – but he made a sound like, “Uh.”

  She crawled inside. It was pitch black. Enid felt his hands fumble for her until he found her shoulders. He couldn’t very well ask her anything, so she began to talk quietly.

  “I brought you some food. Baked squash, very soft.” She reached inside her robes and untied her pocket. His hands slid down her arms and she managed to pass the squash to him. To mask the sounds he made trying to eat it, she continued talking.

  “The other half of my spirit lives in a time of great knowledge. I have learned that once your injury heals, you will be able to train yourself to speak again. You do not have to be mute. Can you write?”

  He said, “Mm,” and she immediately apologized. “I will try not to ask questions.”

  He found her hand and drew his finger along her palm repeatedly until she asked, “Is that a ‘y’ for ‘yes?’”

  He said, “Mm,” and then wrote the ‘y’ again.

  “Let me feel an ‘n’ for ‘no,’” she said.

  He made the ‘n.’

  “So the answer to my question is yes, you can write. I wish it were light so you could write in the dirt and we could talk. I was not free to come until now, but I was able to sneak away because the whole village is celebrating. Can you hear it? If it does not hurt to make sounds, you could say one ‘mm’ for yes and two for no.”

  He said, “Mm.”

  “Are you finished with the squash? It was as much as I could hide. Did you also finish the tea I made you? I brought a handful of bee balm leaves, but did not have a chance to steep it. I hope you filled the pot with snow before it melted-”

  His hand found her mouth and he pinched her lips together with his fingers. She laughed, but with her mouth shut, it forced an indelicate snort out her nose. He released her lips and cupped her cheek briefly before sliding his fingers into her hair. His other hand found the small of her back and urged her closer. He didn’t try to kiss her this time, just pulled her into his arms and held her.