Skin of the Wolf

by Sam Cabot

  The screeching continued. Livia could feel fury and fear pushing against the skylight glass; she could feel a murderous bloodthirst starting to rise. She eased away from the ridge, slid down the slope, and jumped to the ground.

  42

  A long-haired young woman in boots, jeans, and a flannel shirt—Indian winter regalia, Michael thought—smiled as she admitted him to a wide central hall. Polished wood and gleaming white walls surrounded them, a patterned marble floor lay under their feet, and a leaded glass window lit the curving staircase. Open doors on left and right revealed high-windowed rooms with carpets on parquet floors. A third doorway, farther back, offered a glimpse of a dining table among walls of paneled oak.

  These European spaces were built to hold European objects: Revolutionary-era oil paintings, thin-legged wooden chairs, delicate blue-and-white china. Art and furniture to evoke centuries of tradition, to comfortingly connect the frightening, raw New World to the tamed fields and pacified forests of the Old.

  What Michael saw, though, was Native pieces everywhere. The carpets on the parquet were Navajo rugs; Hopi masks hung from the moldings. On a rough chest stood a pair of Mohawk wedding baskets, the kind his parents had exchanged in the Longhouse. Ojibwe dream catchers swayed overhead, and a beaded, fringed shawl lay over the railing. The dining table was made of thick, uneven timbers and surrounded by hand-built chairs. The air jangled with the mismatched confusion of it all.

  With a shyness that surprised him, the young woman asked, “You’re Michael Bonnard?” and when he said he was she smiled again and ushered him to a fourth, closed door. She knocked, opened it, and said, “Abornazine, he’s here.” Giving Michael another quick look—an almost awed one, he thought, as though he were a person of note—she stood aside for him to enter, then withdrew.

  Across the room a white man sat smiling behind a desk in front of the windows. His weary, weathered face was framed by long gray braids. Turquoise-studded silver bracelets circled his wrists and a medicine bag lay against his chest.

  “Gata,” he said. “You are welcome here.”

  Michael strode forward, tamping down a flash of anger at hearing his Indian name used by someone he hadn’t given it to. “Peter van Vliet?”

  “Abornazine.”

  Ignoring the correction, Michael said, “I’m looking for my brother. Edward Bonnard.”

  “Tahkwehso.” Van Vliet nodded. “I’ve sent for him.”

  A new voice spoke. “And I am here.”

  Michael spun around.

  Edward stood in the open doorway, black hair loose around his shoulders. “Welcome, brother.” The fringes on his buckskin jacket swayed as he walked into the room. He held his right hand out. Michael hesitated, was immediately ashamed, and stepped forward. He gripped Edward’s forearm as Edward gripped his.

  “Thank you,” Edward said. “I thought you might not greet me.”

  “You’re my brother.”

  “But we fought.”

  “We’ve fought before.”

  Edward gestured to Michael’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. Have you—”

  “I’m fine.” Michael cut him off.

  “And your friend—I didn’t mean to—”

  “Spencer’s fine, too.”

  Edward’s dark eyes held Michael’s. “That’s very good. Brother, I’m surprised to see you here. I don’t know how you found this place but I hope I can hear you say you’ve come to join us.”

  “I’ve come to talk.”

  “You’re angry.”

  “Yes.”

  Into their silence, van Vliet spoke. “I think when you understand our work here, your heart will change.”

  Michael looked wordlessly at van Vliet, then turned back to Edward. He spoke in the Mohawk language. “Will you walk with me?” He nodded to the field beyond the windows.

  “Happily.” Edward answered in Mohawk, also. “Since we began here I’ve wanted to tell you, to show you our lives and our work. It’s been my dream that you’ll join with us. Even, that you’ll lead us. That would be your right and nothing would please me more.” Edward moved around the desk to stand beside van Vliet. Switching back to English, he said, “But we’ll talk here.”

  Van Vliet’s gaze stayed steady on Michael. “You’d honor me, Gata,” van Vliet said, “if you sit while we talk. I can see you’re tired and in pain. Shall I call a healer?”

  Michael didn’t move. “I’m a doctor. Peroxide, antibiotic ointment, gauze, adhesive tape. I said I’m fine.” None of that, he knew, was as good at its job as the teas and poultices his grandmother used to brew. If there really was an Indian healer here his shoulder and side would benefit from a visit. But what was an Indian healer doing here? What were any of these people doing here? “What is this place?”

  “My home,” said van Vliet. “And therefore the home of my friends.” He spread his hands. “My ancestors named this place ‘Eervollehuis.’ Honorable house. No honor is to be found in the lives they lived. But sheltering the work Tahkwehso and I are doing here, the house will earn its name.”

  “Your work?”

  “In this place,” Edward said, “our lives will start to change. All our people’s lives will start to change. That’s our purpose here—to begin that change.”

  “Double-talk,” Michael said. “Another off-rez Indian settlement, another taking-back-the-land? Old news. And whatever your so-called purpose is, a young woman died last night so you could accomplish it. Or am I wrong?”

  “No,” said Edward, without heat. “You’re not wrong.”

  Michael didn’t let his face change, but he felt as though he’d been stabbed. Until that moment he hadn’t realized how much he’d wanted to be mistaken about what had happened at Sotheby’s. Nor how sure he’d been, at the same time, that he was right.

  “She gave her life,” Edward said. “The cause was just. Once our goal is accomplished, we’ll honor her gift.”

  “I don’t think she’ll care.”

  “The dead hear our words.”

  “Edward.” Michael looked at his brother. “Edward. Why?”

  “She might have said what she’d seen.”

  “Who’d have believed her?”

  Edward nodded. “Brother, you may be right. I wasn’t thinking clearly. I’d Shifted.”

  Michael’s eyes flew wide. He looked to van Vliet, smiling behind his desk.

  “No, it’s all right,” Edward said. “He knows. Some of the others also know.”

  “The identity of a Shifter?” Michael spoke in disbelief. “You’ve revealed yourself?”

  “And though I’ve said nothing to them, the ones who know about me also wonder about you.”

  Michael looked over his shoulder at the door. “That young woman—the way she looked at me—”

  “Yes. Kuwanyauma. She’s Hopi but she was educated in white schools.” He smiled. “Your own scientist ways, she understands them. Her learning in genetics tells her that my twin may well have the same Power I have.”

  Michael continued to stare at his brother. “I don’t understand. The Law, our grandfathers—why did you do that? Why did you reveal yourself?”

  “It was necessary. Some of the ones who come, come believing, but some are skeptical. They come in hope but they have strong doubts. Abornazine says doubt can obstruct the Awakening and the Shift.”

  “Of course it can. You don’t need him to tell you that. Anything that interferes with the intense emotional state. That’s Grandfather’s teaching.”

  “Gata, the wisdom you possess is precious,” van Vliet said. “Please stay and share it with us. With the people.”

  “I have no wisdom. What I have is knowledge. From the traditional people, and also the good that can be taken from the white world.”

  “There is none,” Edward said shortly.

  “Really? Yet yo
u stand beside a white man in a white man’s house and ask me to stay. Tell me: the people who come here—what is it they come believing? Hoping?”

  “They believe in the Awakening Ceremony. They hope it will succeed.”

  “The Ceremony?” Michael stared. “You’ve revealed the Ceremony? Edward, what are you doing? Are you throwing away everything we were taught?”

  “Of all men, you can ask me that?”

  “I’ve never broken my oath.”

  “Your life is a broken oath.”

  “My life has been about us! My research, my work—”

  “White man’s science. It destroyed us.”

  “No. White man’s greed did that. Science is neutral. Edward, you’ve always refused to hear, but listen now. Come walk with me.”

  Edward shook his head. “Speak, but speak here.”

  “No.”

  “Then”—van Vliet stood, silver bracelets jingling—“then, Gata, listen. You and Tahkwehso, you’ve been taught, you’ve trained, you’ve practiced. You’re the only ones. When the Shifters Awaken they’ll need someone to teach them. Someone to help them. Tahkwehso is just one man. Please stay with us and help your brother. Help your people.”

  “What are you talking about? Are you saying there’s someone here who can perform the Ceremony?”

  “I can,” said van Vliet.

  Michael looked at him hard. “No,” he said. “Ceremonies are passed through generations. The Awakening is no different. Families have rights to their objects, to their dances. A medicine elder will pass the Ceremony to a son or daughter, a niece, nephew, cousin. Not a stranger. Not a white man.” He turned to Edward. “I’ve found six. Hopi, Cree. Two women among the Coeur d’Alene. A Seminole in Oklahoma and a Saulteaux Ojibwe, in Saskatchewan. Edward, this is my work. This is what I’ve been doing, all our lives. You’ve refused to hear my story but I can tell you. I can—”

  “There was a Navajo,” van Vliet interrupted. “Atsa. He taught me.”

  Michael frowned. “Atsa died ten years ago. Before I began searching. I was never able to speak to him.” Reluctantly, he added, “I’d heard rumors.”

  “They were true. He was a hundred and three when he died. I had lived with him for nearly a year. I was his student. I learned many things. One was the Awakening Ceremony.”

  “He taught a white man?”

  Van Vliet shrugged. “None of his children, no one around him, wanted to learn. They scoffed. He knew my heart was sincere.”

  In the silence Michael became aware of the ache in his shoulder, the burning in his side. “The children here,” he said, “have you done the Ceremony for any of them?”

  Van Vliet and Edward exchanged a look Michael didn’t understand. “I’ve done it seven times,” van Vliet said.

  “With what result?” If, at that moment, Michael had been asked whether the scientist or the Shifter in him wanted the answer more, he couldn’t have said.

  Van Vliet shook his head. “Not successful.”

  Michael felt an odd sensation: relief, gratification, and disappointment in equal measure. “That’s what I thought. You were taught nothing.” He could see the scene: a Navajo grandfather, his children scattered, no one to take notice of him. Van Vliet was company, he was someone to tell stories to in the chill of the desert night, someone to teach dances and songs to in the blazing heat of the day. But the Awakening Ceremony, its correct way, its chants and its secrets? Not that.

  “You’re wrong,” said van Vliet. “Four times when I did it, the Shift was provoked. But each time something . . . went wrong.”

  Michael’s stomach tightened. Before he could speak, Edward said, “It’s why we need the mask, brother.”

  “I worked so hard,” van Vliet went on. “I tried to learn the intricacies, to master everything Atsa wanted to teach me. I fasted, I sweated, I danced for hours under the hot sun. Everything he asked. But I was only able to do the Ceremony once under his direction, and that child didn’t react. And then Atsa died. His family didn’t want me to stay, wouldn’t let me take his drums or dolls. So I came back here. I’ve spent the last ten years collecting the objects I thought I needed. When I met Tahkwehso I knew the time for the work had come.”

  “And I knew the same,” Edward said. “We were brought together for this. For the people.”

  “I’ve done the Ceremony seven times,” van Vliet went on, “four with results that prove I’m doing it correctly. But it’s not enough. The objects I have aren’t powerful enough to make up for my lack of nuance, of skill. I need the mask.”

  “Four results from seven Ceremonies?” Michael shook his head. “You’re doing nothing. You’re just seeing what you want to see. It’s much too high a percentage for the genetic reality.”

  “Brother, your genetics—”

  “Edward! Truth is truth. Four out of any seven children won’t have the Power, no matter how well the Ceremony’s done.”

  Again, Edward and van Vliet looked at each other.

  “You say something went wrong,” Michael said warily. “What was that? The children—what happened to the children?”

  “Not children, brother. The farmers, the ranchers. Auto mechanics, housewives, teachers, and steelworkers. From the reservations, and from the cities. Men and women. Not individually, and not children. There’s no time for that. In groups, for adults. That’s why these people have come. Abornazine has been doing the Ceremony for them.”

  43

  Edward watched his brother stride in fury from the room. The last quarter hour had been spent in fruitless argument. Edward and Abornazine had struggled to explain their work, their methods and their goals. Michael wouldn’t hear them. His words when he’d learned what they were doing were bitter and harsh, aimed particularly at the numbers of people at each Ceremony—fifty, sometimes sixty—and the fact they were adults. His predictions were dire and his heart would not soften. Finally, enraged, he’d turned on his heel. Now he was leaving.

  Edward was torn: his heart went with Michael but his duty lay here. Damn Michael! Damn him for this anguish, this cleaving of himself that Edward had known since childhood. Edward was inseparable from Michael in the deepest of ways, but he was also inseparable from their people. These two opposite, unbreakable connections pulled him agonizingly apart now, as they had from the day Michael chose the white world over their own.

  “Go to him,” Abornazine said.

  Edward shook his head. “The way he spoke, the things he said about our intentions—you heard. His heart is flint. He won’t be persuaded.”

  “Go in any case. If you talk to him alone it might be different. Right now he can’t see past me. Regardless, it will ease your own heart to try. Go, Tahkwehso.”

  Edward hesitated; then he hurried from the house.

  Michael was on the roadway when Edward caught up with him. “Brother,” Edward said, speaking in Mohawk, “I thought you wanted to walk together.”

  Michael stared wordlessly, but he left the gravel and set off uphill across the ragged grass. Edward fell into step with him, into the icy wind.

  “You’re wrong,” Edward said into Michael’s angry silence. “Please hear me. Your words just now, the fears you expressed: some of that may come to pass. The Power might overwhelm some new Shifters, people without the traditional ways. But they’ll learn. They’ll study and practice. As we did. As you and I did, when we were young.”

  “We were young! These are grown men and women. Their ways of being in the world are set. Do you think you and Abornazine know better than our grandfathers? The Ceremony’s always been done only for children. Don’t you think there’s a reason for that?”

  “The world was slower then. Now, to find the children, one by one, to Awaken them and train them and wait for them—brother, there isn’t time! The seas are rising. The land is poisoned, the birds are dying. If the Shifte
rs aren’t Awakened soon, Mother Earth will die before the children come of age.”

  “And who will train them, Tahkwehso? You? All these men and women blinded by new ways to see, deafened by sounds they’ve never heard? Thrilled beyond words by the sensation of the Shift itself, as we were at first, wanting nothing but to feel it again? Who’ll teach them? Abornazine? Look at him! He’s old and feeble. The man’s a joke. The worst kind of white man.”

  “He’s not a joke, brother, and he’s a white man but he loves the people. Our people, our nations. And he’s dying.”

  Michael stopped walking. Edward turned to face him squarely. “That’s the other reason it has to be soon. And why we need the mask. He’s weaker than he has been. His powers are fading. He can do the Ceremony, but he won’t live much longer.”

  Quietly, Michael said, “That’s why the healers are here?”

  “The healers are here because they come to us, with the same hope as the others. Living here now, there are nine. None have been able to cure him, not even to slow the disease. He’s been to white men’s doctors, too. They told him to go home and prepare himself to die.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “If you are, it’s weakness. A man you despise is dying. A warrior would rejoice.”

  “You love him. My sorrow is for you.”

  “What I’m asking of you is not your sorrow.”

  “Edward,” Michael said. “Edward, other people can also do the Ceremony. Our people. I told you, I’ve found six. There must be more. We can bring them the children—”

  “What children? How will you find the children? How will you coax the parents to do something they haven’t done for generations? And what if the people you’ve found are mistaken? Are lying, are wrong, have forgotten? What if they don’t have the dolls and the drums and the masks they need? Abornazine can do it now, brother. But not for much longer.”

  Michael stared across the field. “My research, Edward. Please listen. Please let me tell you.”