The Book of the Emissaries: An Animism Short Fiction Anthology
Page 21
Just as I could not take another step, the Great Spirit blessed me with the carcass of a great buffalo, the largest I had ever seen. It loomed before me, and four splayed ribs jutted from the snow, providing shelter. Hope renewed, I burrowed, worming beneath the bones and taut hide, just as the last light was swallowed by the norther. There, wedged in my makeshift den, I fell into a deep bear sleep.
When I awoke, all was silent. I emerged from my icy den, and was blinded by whiteness. I marvelled at the Great Spirit's majesty, for snow covered the vast plains. All traces of the white man were gone. I was the only blemish.
And I had never felt so alone.
I turned back to my shelter, to give thanks, and gaped in horror. The carcass was not a buffalo but a covered wagon. A white man's wagon had rescued me. I shouted my outrage across the plains. As the steam of my breath vanished, I sank to my knees.
Before me stood a maiden in a buffalo robe. I knew this was impossible, for nothing could have crossed the plains so quickly. When I saw that she had created no footprints in the snow and cast no shadow, I wondered if I had died in the norther. Had I walked the Hanging Road?
When I asked her as much, she gave me a sad smile. "No. I have need of you still."
"Who are you?" I asked.
"You know me as Aktunowihio, but many call me Mother."
"I am honoured, but what does Grandmother Earth need with this tired, old man?"
"The purity of our land is threatened by my brothers. One brings men to explore. You know him as Wihio, the Spider Trickster. The other is called Wetiko, and he turns men ravenous. In their wake, buffalo are skinned and left to rot. Forests are cleared for roads and houses. Mountains are blasted open. Soon there will be nothing left."
The sadness in her voice matched the sadness in my heart, and I knew right then that I would do anything for her.
"Join my emissary to stop the conquest of our land," she said. "He is Lakota, but he will need the Cheyenne, Sioux, and Arapaho if he is to be successful. You alone know the cost of failure."
Indeed I did. I thought of my nixa's last breath as I stroked her hair.
"Tell me what to do," I said.
"Convince the Northern Cheyenne tribes to join my chief, and he will unite you all with the greatest Sun Dance the world has ever seen. Together, you will be strong."
I gathered myself, ready to cross the earth if need be. "What is the name of this great chief?"
"Sitting Bull."
To Be Remembered
by Megan Grey
A scowling girl wearing dirt-streaked bloomers took out her considerable frustrations on an oak tree, beating it with one of its own fallen branches. She didn’t notice the man in the dark suit approaching until he stood under the leaves of the tree beside her. Watching.
The girl stopped in mid-swing, gripping the branch like a club. She pursed her lips, one of which bled from a small cut.
“Does this poor tree deserve such treatment?” the man in the suit asked with a gentle smile.
The girl considered. Daddy didn’t like her or Pidge talking to strangers, but this one was dressed smart, not all whiskery and rough-skinned like the train yard hobo. “No, but Paul Snook does, and Daddy won’t let me hit him with a stick again.”
The man’s smile widened. He had the straightest, whitest teeth the girl had ever seen. “And what did Paul Snook do to earn such fierce ire?”
“He said that I’m a girl.”
The man lifted an eyebrow. “Isn’t that the truth?”
“But I want to have daring adventures and see far-away lands and have everyone tell stories about me.” She scowled deeper, scuffing her heel in the dirt. "And he said I can’t because I’m a girl.”
“Ah.” The man nodded. He crouched down so his face was level with hers. His eyes were the same green as the leaves rustling overhead, bright and speckled with sunlight. “What’s your name?”
“Amelia.”
From his suit coat, he pulled a deck of cards, though like none the girl had ever seen. These were creamy white with no pictures on either side.
“Do you like tricks, Amelia?”
Intrigued, she relaxed her grip on the branch. Her granddaddy knew some magic tricks, though none with blank cards. “Yes,” she said.
The man shuffled the cards. They coursed and fell through long nimble fingers. “So you want to be a famous explorer? To have everyone remember your name, is that it?”
She nodded, still watching the cards flit between his hands.
The cards stilled and he fanned them out. “Pick one.”
She reached out a dirty hand and took a card. When she turned it over, the other side was no longer blank. A picture of an aeroplane was inked on it, the kind of flyer she’d seen dancing through the air when Daddy had taken her to the state fair.
The girl looked in confusion at the man.
“Being a girl has nothing to do with it, Amelia. Being brave is all it takes.” The man pocketed the rest of the white cards. His smile was sharper than before, like the Cheshire cat in her Wonderland book. “And do you know what, more than anything, will make people remember your name?”
The girl frowned, but before she could guess, a voice cried out “Meeley! Where are you?”
Her little sister Pidge came running through the hedge, twigs tugging at her bloomers and pig-tailed hair. “There you are! Paul went home, probably crying and... what’ve you got, Meeley?”
The girl looked down at the card in her hand, her thumb covering one fragile-looking wooden wing. She turned to hand it back to the man in the suit, but he was gone. She grinned. He really was good at magic tricks.
••
The girl, now a woman, gasped for air, her muscles fighting against the bitter sea washing over her. “Fred!” she cried yet again, though she no longer had hope for an answer from her navigator. She needed to cry something, to scream against the unfairness of the waves and thick dark clouds.
Pieces of the crashed Electra could be seen floating a distance away, but she didn’t try swimming towards her plane. In the other direction was land, and she would make it there or die trying. She was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic. She’d been so close to circumnavigating the globe, so close! She could swim farther. She would make it. She'd proved them wrong before, all the Paul Snooks, the cynics and naysayers who believed piloting was only a man's game. She could finance another trip. She would do this again and again, if needs be. She would...
A low moaning filled her ears. For an incredulous moment she thought it was a search plane coming for her, until she realized it was her own voice making that desperate sound. Her muscles were locking up, cramping into positions willpower alone couldn’t wrest them from.
And then everything changed. She was sitting under an oak tree, listening to leaves rustling overhead. She wasn’t wearing bloomers this time, but instead the cold, wet flight suit. She marvelled at the wide azure sky, no longer filled with the ominous clouds that had scattered her radio signal and blocked her sight path.
The man in the suit crouched in front of her and the woman started. “I know you,” she said. Fear flooded her chest. She felt herself flickering between this warm, sunlit afternoon and the icy water dragging her down. “Help me,” she pleaded. “They’ll never find me all the way out here. Please.”
“I have already helped you, Miss Earhart. Wasn’t this what you wanted?”
“What?” she breathed, sinking slowly into the dirt. She scrabbled for the oak tree, but the rough bark slid through her fingers like silk.
“To be remembered. To have stories told about you for years and years.” The man stretched out his hand, but instead of helping her, he plucked from the chest pocket of her flight suit a single white card with an old-model biplane on one side. “And did you ever guess what, more than anything, would make people remember your name?”
The woman could barely hear his words anymore, muffled as they were by the water on every side, drowning the
summer afternoon. She stopped flailing, turning to look at the sky. Her true home, her most fervent love.
“A mystery,” The Trickster said. His eyes, the colour of oak-leaves and sunlight, were the last image she saw before she disappeared beneath the water.
Kudzu
by Ian Christy
Along the hemline of the Table Rock State Park, off a round shoulder of Country Rd. 90 sits a truck stop diner, a long single story island on the shore of a lake of asphalt and gravel. The place wears a mane of green, leafy kudzu; a shaggy carpet crept in from the overgrown lot behind. As the creaking, buzzing, revolving three story marquee sign perched atop two stories of metal pole says, Pearl’s has been servicing farmers and log haulers appetites for food and gas since the New Deal and the TVA paved paths through the Smokeys.
As dawn begins to tickle the undersides of low slung clouds, locals drop heavily out of battered pickup trucks to crunch across the gravel lot towards hot coffee and hearty breakfast. Most of them have been up for hours, rousting, feeding, milking, and mending their way through the morning chores required of a working farm.
Latecomers claim the few remaining swivel stools along the bar and slide into vacant booths against the plate glass windows while Pearl delivers beaded glasses of ice water and pours hot coffee into mismatched mugs. The windows afford a view of the parking lot, gas pumps, a couple tractor trailers, an empty highway, fields beyond, and faded mountains in the distance through a stringy curtain of kudzu tendrils.
“The problem with that plant is what’s living in it.” Sal sets his cup on the counter with a dull clunk. “Snakes. Copperheads swum up from the creek. Diamondbacks in from the fields. Black snakes thrilling out from the barns. Rattlers stretching out from the caves to yawn in all the shade.”
Down the length of the counter, weathered men and women bob their heads knowingly.
“That damn plant is payback for us bombing Japan.” Jonah’s teeth flash through the underbrush of his beard, eyes peeking out from beneath the oil-stained brim of his John Deere hat. “Don’t care what the government claims. That weed didn’t show up to keep the hillsides from washing away; it was a little thank you miss me not from Tokyo. And it brought the snakes out with it.”
“Gotta walk ahead of your herd.” Marly pulls the plastic stir stick out of her coffee to poke the air. “Walk around poking the weeds with a stick and hollering up a fuss.” She resumes stirring swirls of cream into the black void of her coffee.
“Gotta wear boots up to your knees, too.” Sitting one stool down from Marly, Fern tilts her mug on its heel to inspect the residue of lipstick she discovered on the rim. “Thank the good lord those things can’t fly.” She wipes her finger against her lower lip and holds it next to the brim. The colour streaks match. She nods slightly. “Most days, I just get my boys to drive around with the tractor and flush ‘em out.” Fern chops the counter with the side of her hand. “Hoe works best after that.”
“Don’t want to be getting that close, myself,” Sal says, waving a fork defensively across the counter, fending off invisible snakes. Numerous chuckles ripple soft and low down the length of the space. Earl rubs one thick hand over the knotted shapes of his other, particularly that spot where the last knuckle of his thumb used to be.
Richard says, “Got the boy out there now trimming the bangs off the barn. Getting to be I need to put up signs to tell me where the ends of the property are. Can’t find the fences or that old outhouse – ”
“I remember sitting in that thing once and making the mistake of looking up.” Jonah acts out the scene, looks up, his eyes go wide. “Black Widows nesting up there by the dozens, every one of them looking at me like I’m some big, juicy fly.” He snorts. “Talk about a scare; I damn near didn’t have a constitutional again for a week.”
Richard chuckles. “I’m betting the spiders can’t even find the outhouse these days. My back lot is overgrown, every bit of it.” He takes a swig of coffee and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “That stuff comes creeping in overnight, tapping the windows to say hello when you wake up come morning.”
A plate of food lands on a paper mat in front of Sal. Pan fried meat, buttered toast, cheese grits, pair of eggs sunny side up. “Thanks, Pearl. Looks like the new kid ain’t breaking the yolks no more.”
Pearl grunts as she fetches more plates of food from the ledge. “Just don’t let him near the deep fryer. Kid could burn water.” Plates delivered, Pearl pours refills for farmers and truckers before pausing to help seat a Mother and her toddler son, a sleepy, clingy boy wearing a pull-up diaper and a Sesame Street tee.
The diner fills with the sounds of breakfasts getting delivered and consumed until open-mouthed chewing gives way to fresh conversations, some louder than others.
“I gotta get somebody to clear off the roof and the back lot,” Pearl says as she catches her breath and leans on the counter. “Another week people will see my sign up there from the road and wonder why it’s pointing to a bush.”
“My boy could do it for ya, Pearl,” Richard says as he swabs egg yolk up with his last corner of toast.
“I appreciate the offer, Richard. Don’t have a lot of extra money, though.” Pearl slaps the register next to her. “Times is tough all over.”
“Nah, Pearl.” Richard pops the soggy corner of toast into his mouth, speaks around it. “You just give him a couple of those pies to bring back, call it even.”
Pearl rearranges the smears on the lenses of her glasses with the corner of her apron.
“Sounds like a plan, Richard. Tell him there’s tools in the shed, if he doesn’t want to drag his own over.”
“You mean your middle one, don’t you Richard?” Sal asks.
“Of course,” Richard says. “My youngest doesn’t want anything to do with this life, how we live it. Come of age, he won’t be able to hop a bus to the city fast enough.” He pushes his plate away; the paper mat goes with it. “Go to work up in some glass tower making more things the world doesn’t need.”
“Have to say, I’ll miss having him around to fix my computer when it goes on the fritz,” Jonah says, drumming his fingertips on the counter. Fern and Marly both nod agreement.
“Like when my mail all went missing that one time,” Fern says.
“If you wouldn’t click on every link people send you,” Marly says, causing a few laughs. “I mean, complete strangers you’ve never heard of send you something out of the blue.” Marly pokes Fern’s shoulder. “Didn’t strike you the least bit odd?”
“That’s getting noted in the old log, Marly,” Fern says, smile creasing up into a wink, tapping her temple with a yellowed nail. “Making fun of Fern has repercussions.”
“Send him around about noon, Richard,” Pearl says as she collects plates from the counter and dispenses them into a big grey plastic tub. “I’ll feed your boy lunch and show him what needs to be cut back and cleared.”
“Not going to be hard to spot; just go find the big lump where the truck stop should be and start cutting.” Jonah snips the air with two fingers. “Don’t stop snipping until you find a diner!”
“Then cut a little more just in case,” Sal says.
“And tell ‘im to watch for snakes,” Marly says. “They can climb, you know. Don’t want one of those things dropping on your head.”
Richard slugs back the last of his coffee and squeaks sideways to rise up off the swivelling stool. “He’ll be by, Pearl, soon as he’s done his chores.”
“Thanks kindly, Richard. Howdy to Neta for me.” Pearl hefts the bin of dishes with a grunt and hauls them towards the kitchen for a trip through the washing machine. “Hey doll!” she yells as she crosses the threshold into the kitchen, “How about some help here?”
“Heard the Woodmans got some goats to roam their property to help trim back all that kudzu,” Sal says as he holds the heavy diner door open for others to pass. “Couple meat goats from a cousin in Chattanooga. And a bunch of Nubians from Frank’s place.”
Through the open door sounds roll into the diner of work boots on gravel, of heavy doors squeaking open, of suspensions settling under added weight, of a couple engines turning over.
“Betty told ol’ Ben he had to have one sort of kids or another to live on a farm.” Sal waves as Marly and Fern slip out.
Richard plucks his coat from the stand back by the restrooms. “He’s gonna have a hell of a time trying to milk all those things.”
“Pearl told me her oldest makes tea with it to stay off the bottle.” Sal grimaces. “Can’t imagine how foul that concoction must taste.”
“I’ve heard stranger.” Richard chuckles.
Richard walks back up the aisle toward the door, passing the Mother feeding bite-sized bits of food to her toddler as he does laps back and forth around the vinyl bench of the corner booth.
“Mornin’, ma’am,” Richard says, touching the tattered brim of his mesh-backed cap. “You got much road left ahead of you?”
The Mother looks up with tired eyes, nods, and musters an appreciative smile. “A little ways to go still, but I think we’re pretty close.”
“Lots of pretty countryside to see out here,” Richard says, nodding.
She nods. “Exactly what we needed. Life got so hectic for us in the city; we desperately needed a change of scenery. And he’s so busy; we had to get out of that condo.”
The farmer nods, casts the kid a wink. “I have three myself, two boys and a girl. Different as night and day. They’re a handful, but I wouldn’t trade ‘em for the world.”
“I bet.” She shovels up a bit of hash browns and aims it towards her son’s mouth. The boy opens up for the food without looking up from the paper mat he’s fervently wearing down a crayon on, creating broad stroke maps of cosmic orbits. “It’ll be interesting to see how he chooses to turn out. He’s like a sponge right now, so full of questions.” She grins. “And opinions.”