by Jenni James
“Who are you?” she whispered.
He turned and walked away, resettling the goods he had pilfered from the manor across his back and shoulders. This girl was no trouble to him. She seemed to be fleeing as well. He moved swiftly out of the manor’s shadow and into a field of trussed wheat that bordered the stone hedge surrounding the church. Turning back, he found the girl following him.
He stopped, hoping she would sense his displeasure.
From behind them, a sickly-looking crow flapped overhead then let down on her shoulder. Silent Feathers was a quieter flight and dropped to Ihoke’s shoulder, seeming to size up the newcomers.
“Go back,” Ihoke said sternly.
The girl folded her arms, “No.”
He lifted Silent Feathers from his bleeding shoulder and held the owl into the sky. The owl flapped several times, its wide eyes drinking in the scant light, surveying all around them. It tucked its wings back to its sides, Ihoke brought it down to his chest.
“We are not being followed. You can go that way.” He pointed opposite himself.
“How do you know we aren’t being followed?” she protested.
“The owl sees none behind me.”
Slowly, Robin removed the hood from her head, revealing her face to growing morning light. “Please may I come with you?” Looking around herself, she seemed lost, “I haven’t been outside the manor in many years. I may die if I’m left alone.”
He pointed to the crow, “Your bird may die. It looks sick.”
“He was drowned yesterday but seems okay.”
Ihoke ran a rough hand down the back of his owl, “He will eat your bird if it is sick.”
The crow sputtered as if it understood the inference and screeched. Robin clamped its beak shut, shushing it. Frowning, she scolded Ihoke, “What an awful thing to say!”
Smiling, Ihoke began walking again, not caring if the girl followed anymore, “Smart bird. Maybe he’ll live. Maybe he won’t.”
Robin stumbled along behind the Hidatsa man in his wandering, stealthy path. He was headed to the Parish church, it seemed. When they snuck over the low iron fencing behind the looming minster and into an overgrown patch of weedy roses, she finally asked of him, “Are you a man of God? A priest of some kind? Is that why you have painted your skin?”
His reply was a gruff bark that sent the owl away in a swish of air.
They came upon a handsome stone porch at the side of the church, lorded over by the boughs of an ancient tree. Ihoke scaled the tree as gracefully as a cat, leaving Robin to stare open mouthed at the bottom. After a moment, he dropped from the tree, his burden gone, and looked a long time at the scrawny, straw-haired girl in the too-big cloak.
“My name is Ihoke Tsutsute. This means Slippery fox. My bird is Silent Feathers, Hi tsakakahi tsakihamak. I will try to keep him from eating your drowned crow.”
Relieved, she put a hand to her heart, “My name is Robin.”
“Like a bird.” Ihoke mused.
“A naughty bird. I just stole from the house.” She frowned, “I’ve never stolen anything before.” From the pockets of the cloak, she produced a mound of stale bread and a few worthless trinkets. “I didn’t know what I would need outside.”
Feeling the sudden weight of what she had done and the uncertainty of what was ahead of her, she held back tears. Embarrassed, she pulled the hood back over her face.
“Come with me,” His voice was different from any she had heard in her life. Ashamed of her tears, she shrugged deeper into the cloak.
“Robin under the hood, I will teach you my ways. You are not a thief. Yet.”
Chapter 3
T here wasn’t much in the small room where Ihoke Tsutsute lived. He had a small wooden stool and a few hand-strung leather bags, furs on the floor and tools laid in a neat line. There was an unused door, the little window near the ceiling where they had come in and a thick branch leaned in one corner. Silent Feathers sat unmoving on the branch, looking like a stuffed hunter’s trophy.
They shared a meal of salted pork and tough bread, drowsy from the excitement of the morning. Robin’s crow had settled onto one of the furs and gone to sleep.
“You have a strange bird.” Ihoke commented.
Still chewing, Robin muffled, “He laughs like a man sometimes.”
He grunted, half-grinning, “I haven’t spoken to many people being here, in this place. I live by taking from the fat man in your big house.”
Robin laughed.
He sat on a fox fur and leaned against the wall, “As your people mark time, I have seen twenty seven years. I came here from a place very far and very different. I miss my people and my language.”
“You speak well, if my language is not your own. Master Townsend has guests that can barely hold polite conversation. French is so terribly messy to listen to. It makes my ears ache.”
Ihoke pointed above himself, “My ears ache. Eight bells. Four times during daylight.”
“Yes, I hear them from the kitchens. Third bell sends me to linens and wash.” She added hurriedly, “I’m thirteen. That is, I have seen thirteen years. I’m not supposed to know that. I’m not supposed to count or read or write.” With a sly shrug, she grinned, “But I can.”
It was quiet for a moment before Ihoke said quietly, “You are not a boy.”
Nodding, Robin agreed, “I am not a boy. They call me horse-face and say I’m ugly, though.”
Ihoke assumed a very serious tenor as he spoke next, “I have carried with me the ways of my people, the Hidatsa, the ways of the Stone Hammer Society…Mi’i Mau’paki...these are boys who are taught to become warriors, boys who are taught stealth through stealing. I am old enough now to be a clan father and to teach a boy how to raid.”
Catching a hint of excitement, Robin despaired, “But I am not a boy.”
“No,” Ihoke conceded, “You are not Hidatsa and you are not a boy. This is not my land and I live a stolen life.” He held out his hand, palm open, “You may buy your place among the Mi’i Mau’paki now.”
Uncertain, Robin hesitated, “But I’m not a boy Idasa.”
Empty palm waiting, Ihoke corrected her, “Hidatsa.”
She patted the pockets of her borrowed cloak and came up with nothing but a handful of crumbs, a broken bit of chain, a bent fork and a wrinkled feather from the drowned crow. She put it all in his hand and sat back, waiting for him to throw it back in her face because surely, this was not enough.
“This is all you have?” he asked.
She hurriedly tore the cloak from her back, “This, too! You can have this. It would fit you better anyhow.”
Ihoke placed the handful of objects next to him on the fur, “A boy who gives all he has to become Mi’i Mau’paki will be a strong member. Keep your cloak. You will need it.”
Chapter 4
T he bells had tolled seven times; nearly two days had passed since she had run from the manor. She felt like an apprentice to the master craftsman of an art so obscure and ancient that it held reverence.
That is, it would seem reverent if bells weren’t gonging in their ears during lessons.
Ihoke made her soft leather slippers and taught her how to walk on the quiet parts of her feet, even in the cavernous, echoing chancel aisle inside the church. Cloaked, slipping between stone pews and the light spilling from the great windows overhead, they had snuck upon the inhabiting priest in the Sacristy. Sitting alone in the little room beside the chapel, the priest was oblivious of their presence.
Ihoke was proud of his silent novice when they emerged from the minster with a few food items and two pieces of gold. Placing a hand on her shoulder, he admonished, “Now go put these from where you have taken them.”
Robin’s face fell, “Put them back?”
“Your skill is strengthened by honor. You do not need these things. You have eaten. You have no use for gold today. You should give back to those you take from.”
“You’ve been stealing from the manor for years
! What did you ever put back!” she argued.
“I have given back what I can. I have plied stones from the hooves of your master’s horses, closed drafty doors carelessly left open, fed the starving washerwoman given scraps like a dog from the back stoop.”
Robin pictured the half-blind slop house croan, her aged fingers grasping for burnt crusts and carrot strings that went to the pigs.
“Never take and leave nothing in its place,” he said slowly.
Ihoke gathered up Robin’s hair and brought it to the side of her head, lashing it into place with a length of hand-braided rope. Daubing his fingers into a mound of wet clay he had dug from the small cemetery behind the church, Ihoke left a swath of mud across Robin’s cloak front. After it had a moment to dry, he scratched the likeness of an animal onto it.
“A rat?” she questioned.
“Runty kitchen mouse,” he grinned, “As they suppose you are. This is your costume, not who you have become.”
He twirled the crooked crow feather she had used to purchase her membership into the society of thieves between his fingertips. “You have not seen enough years to make your own medicine yet.” Leaning forward, he tied the feather to the loose ends of her hair. “You are not a boy and will never be a warrior that needs his medicine bag. But you are Mi’i Mau’paki in this place and you will need strength. You will need wisdom.”
He pointed to a band on his forearm. On it was a small satchel of fur. “I made my medicine after coming across the great waters on a stinking ship of pale men who hated me. I waited for the Great Spirit to send a protector to guard me in battle and grant me success when I hunt. I dreamed of a small fox and when I woke I didn’t think I would find my protector, for one has to hunt their medicine from the dream. This is a foreign place with many different animals. But England has many foxes and I found her and took her fur.”
Holding out his other arm, he pointed to a thicker band further up near his bicep, “I keep this medicine to remind me that I know nothing of this world. In the great city to the North called London, they keep animals in cages that I never dreamed could be. A great, hopping creature they call kangaroo from a land very far away. Like me. I am far from where I am from. The kangaroo is the strangest animal I have ever seen. I made a talisman of his fur, as well. There were thundering beasts with great barbs on their faces. Screaming, long-limbed demons called monkeys.”
Ihoke shook his head, still amused at the memory of such things. “I needed only the hopping one’s fur to remember.” Reaching behind his head, he let out his black hair across his shoulders. He sifted with his fingers until finding three large brown feathers seemingly sewn into his hair.
“These I keep to remind me of my home and my people. They are from a bird foreign to this place, like me. I have come to know it as your people have named it; turkey. I have forgotten how the Hidatsa named it.” He suddenly had his curved dagger in hand, “A man with the darkest skin I have ever seen wanted to use this on me when I was in that great city in the North.” Indicating the two medicine bags on his arms, Ihoke seemed smug, “I have strong medicine. I was told this is the blade of a Hassassin, one who believes in a Great Spirit called Allah. It is not skin but I feel it is medicine.”
Entranced, Robin was hesitant to speak for fear her voice would break his stories apart. He seemed to enjoy telling them so very much.
Squirming, she had to ask, “Is my feather medicine?”
Ihoke looked at the bedraggled crow sitting on the window sill. “If you kill the bird, it would be medicine.”
He laughed when the crow dove out the window as if it understood then shook his head at Robin, “You are not old enough to dream and hunt medicine. But your strange bird brings you luck.”
She stroked the feather lovingly and squared her shoulders, “Am I ready, Ihoke?”
He smiled, “I like the way you say my name. It has been many years that another has spoken my name.”
“Ihoke Tsutsute,” she teased, exaggerating her voice to a deep rumble, “Which means Slippery Fox.”
He pulled the hood of her cloak over her warrior’s hair arrangement, shadowing her face, “Tsakaka Miktakoa i Apoka,” he retorted, “this means Robin Under Her Hood.”
Taking more wet clay with his fingers, he distorted her features until only the whites of her eyes were visible.
“You would have been a clever boy, Tsakaka. I would have been a good clan father.”
Evening was creeping through the window, coloring the sky with a final spurt of sunlight before dropping into the mellow coolness of nighttime. Ihoke and his Stone Hammer Apprentice crept onto the roof of the church and waited for the stars to appear.
Chapter 5
I hoke wondered how a person could be owned by his name being on parchment. Rather, her name being on parchment.
Robin belonged to the fat man the way his cutlery and candlesticks belonged to him. Given up or abandoned by her family, she became a slave to the manor when she was very young. Her full given name was carefully inscribed on a large swath of lambskin vellum in the fat man’s study, rolled and tucked away with the names of his other slaves.
“Only you may own your name. Take your name back.”
Whispering Ihoke’s command, Robin stood within the master’s stable beside a mare. Nickering contentedly, the horse grazed for straw at her feet as she waited for the circulating guards to clear out.
Ihoke warned her of using the doors, of how they squealed on their hinges, so she sized up the windows on the first floor, wondering if she were tall enough to get into one of them. Several torches were lit between herself and the kitchens, the shadows meager if she chose that route.
Turning her attention to the garden, she puzzled whether the gravel walkway would alert the guards.
“Too slow,” a voice hissed behind her.
She whirled, seeing nothing. Looking up, Ihoke was but a dark smear in the hayloft.
“I don’t know which way to go.” She despaired, pulling the cowl of her cloak further over her face, “Everything seems noisy.”
“The moss in the garden. The soft places between trees. Use the stones as you would use them crossing a river.”
She looked up again but Ihoke was gone. Just as a guard passed under the light of a torch near the open stable doors, she saw her mentor slip away from a horse stall, the ghostly flit of Silent Feathers’ wings gliding along behind him.
She had counted the guards and knew within the hour three more would trudge through the stables. With a brisk lunge, she was over the stall door and churning toward the entrance. The scattered hay quieted her run and she paused only a half beat before dashing out into the night, willing her feet to find the softest paths as she scurried toward the gardens.
There was a hedgerow of pruned boxwood running the length between the outer and inner gardens. Being small enough to crouch behind this, Robin worked her way forward, quietly praising her soft leather shoes not only for their comfort but for their quiet. A break in the hedges gave her pause.
To her left, a guard was stopped in his route around the grounds, head thrown back, bottle to his mouth and glugging away at something. He let go of the bottle and belched, then laughed to himself.
Thinking he was properly distracted, Robin darted across the break, not stopping when she heard behind her, “Hey? Who was that?”
Heart pounding, she moved forward as quickly as she could in the uncomfortable crouch. In the dark, she didn’t see the statuary until she had collided with it. With a grunt, she tumbled out from behind the hedge and sprawled onto the gravel path.
She scrambled to her knees and cursed at the noise her feet made against the tiny stones. She tripped, skittering like a frightened cat until she came into the shadows of a great, weeping tree with limbs dangling to the ground.
Waiting for her heart to calm, she hung her head in shame. The guards had been alerted, already she could hear voices carrying throughout the gardens.
After a moment, she noti
ced the sounds getting further away, echoing from the other side of the manor. She heard the mighty front gates clang shut, gravel spattering, guttural cries as if a battle was being formed.
Fearing for her mentor, she started forward but the memory of Ihoke’s words slowed her feet.
“Take your name back!”
Thrust forward by this, she scaled the tree.Going as high as she dared, she found herself level with a third story window, she had but to walk out on the limb to reach the stone ledge.
Toes forward, arms out for balance, she inched forward.
Whomever placed the crisp, white feathers on the arrows was a master. The wood for the shaft of the arrows was smooth and supple, as well, complementing the fletching trimmed with precision and obvious skill. Perhaps these were the most lovely arrows Ihoke had ever had the pleasure of using.
Drawing the gut string back to his cheek, feeling the gentle caress of the feather, he loosed the arrow, loving the thrum of the bow, watching as it struck home, grazing the cheek of one guard and stopping the other in his tracks as it whistled past his midsection.
“Taffer!” The guards shrieked, “Show yourself!”
Notching another, Ihoke waited for the growing number of sentries to converge on the gates. He sent a blunted shaft into the metal plate on the door, grinning at the way it left a resounding din that scrambled the guards into frenzy.
He counted all exterior watch and was glad to see four of the seven guards from inside had responded to his diversion.
Robin was clear to enter the manor.
Silent Feathers returned to the arm of its master, flapping once, twice, three times, giving Ihoke the sign that the girl was well on her way.
He fished an odd-looking arrow from his quiver. On its end was a small, tied bundle. After checking that it was lashed tightly to the shaft, he sent it singing into the torch opposite the congregating cluster of guards. In a shower of sparks, the torch erupted in flames, climbing the stone wall behind it and spilling onto the ground like a fountain of fire. All the bodies near it fled in terror, crying witchcraft.
