Return of the Pale Feather

by E. B. Brown

  “No. Speak no more of it. It is finished,” he muttered, shaking off the hand that Winn put on his shoulder. Winn closed his fingers into a fist, and with one powerful thrust struck Makedewa a blow in the chest, knocking the breath from his lungs. Winn grabbed Makedewa by both shoulders and shook him hard.

  “Then go fight, warrior,” his older brother intoned. Makedewa glared into his face, his brother’s steel blue eyes betraying not even an inch of sorrow for him. He admired that about Winn. His brother was always ready to channel his anger into more meaningful tasks.

  He just needed to get the foolish thoughts of Rebecca out of his head. Then he would be back on the path to being the warrior he was meant to be.

  Makedewa shoved Winn’s fist away as he gasped for air, and took off into a jog down to the field.

  Chapter 21

  Maggie

  Winn kept his promise. They remained in the Norse village, and though Maggie knew it was temporary, she hoped his heart would soften toward his kinsmen. He was a man who rarely showed what lay in his thoughts, but to her it was evident he wished for some compromise to their problem. He did not speak of leaving again. It hung between them, spearing the distance further the more time they remained in the village. She wished the problem would simply evaporate, but since the issue was a living, breathing, human, there was no hope for that.

  Benjamin celebrated in his new role as the Chieftain’s son, and by every facet of his behavior, it appeared he planned on staying. Maggie knew the time to leave was approaching fast, but she could not bury that part of herself that wished to stay.

  She immersed herself in learning the Norse ways, and was pleased to see Teyas and Rebecca seemed to like the village as well. Of course, it would be that much more difficult when it was time to leave, but at least for the time being they could focus on something other than running from the next threat. They spent time with her aunt Gwen and the other Norse women, and Finola kept her silent vigil sitting by the hearth most days with rarely a word spoken.

  It was evident that the village was a blending of cultures, not only by the appearance of the people, but by their habits. Elli-dear’s son was not the only half-brave in the village, and there were a few Norse men married to Indian women. She imagined their lifestyle was a combination of the different worlds. One, from the displaced Chesapeake tribe, and the other from the Old Norse.

  Gwen gave bits and pieces of their history, but Maggie had the feeling she held much of it back. Whether it was from loyalty or fear, she did not know, and she would not push the issue. Although Maggie had much to learn of the Norse ways, she already was quite clear on a few things: One did not challenge the newly restored Chief, and one did not mess with Gothi magic. In fact, one was much better off forgetting Gothi magic existed altogether.

  The women spent the day gathering wool on the hills surrounding the training field. As summer drew to a close the weather became less humid, and the manual labor was much easier to accomplish. They broke up in groups to attend to daily chores, some women staying behind in the Northern Hall to start the evening meal while other smaller groups spread out to undertake tasks such as woolgathering and tending the beehives.

  The village was larger than she thought when she first arrived. Everything centered on the Northern Hall, with many Long Houses clumped around it. A deep water well stood in front of the Northern Hall, convenient to a small blacksmith’s cottage and several storage houses. Gwen carried the role of healer, Maggie was not sure if it was due to her Gothi blood or her domineering attitude, but it gave her greater status in the community and as thus, she shared a larger Long House with her husband. The bathhouse was nearly always in use, Maggie recalled with a pleasant flush over her skin. She and Winn had been fortunate to steal a few moments alone there.

  Kwetii ran down the hillside, squealing after Rebecca. The child asked often for Ahi Kekeleksu, but since they arrived in the village he spent all his time cavorting with the other youths, his young female cousin momentarily forgotten. Maggie saw Kwetii point toward the training field. The girl had spotted her cousin, who stood watching the men fight.

  “He’s busy, Kwetii,” Maggie called.

  “Play with Keke!” the girl replied, pointing again with a pout on her round face. Rebecca held an armful of wool above her head, and then dropped it over the toddler. Kwetii laughed as it rained down over her face like soft fuzzy snowflakes. Sufficiently distracted, the child followed Rebecca and helped her return the wool to her burlap sack.

  “If ye would like to learn to weave, I can send ye to Sigrun Olafsson. She’s the finest we have,” Gwen called out. Maggie plucked a handful of loose wool from a low lying tree branch and shoved it in her sack.

  “That would be nice, I’d like that,” she replied. She did not have the heart to admit to her Aunt that their stay would likely end soon. Maggie looked downhill to the training field, where Winn was in the midst of a fight with Cormaic. The other men stood watching in usual formation, egging them on with whoops and howls. Since the day Winn had beaten her cousin, they had fought each other daily, and last she heard the score was dead even. Both men were formidable warriors, and neither were willing to be the last defeated.

  Winn seemed to enjoy sparring with the men, and Maggie wondered how difficult it would be for him to leave them. She knew he still felt the pull of responsibility to the few remaining Paspahegh, and that he still wished to live near the Nansemond village. As much as she wanted to stay with the Norse, she could not ask her husband to abandon the last remnant tying him to the tribe. Yet she wished, someday, he might think of the Norse as his people in the same way. To her, it was the only way to stay clear of the danger to come, especially after learning the fate of the Roanoke Colony. Although she often answered Winn’s questions about the future, he still insisted on making his own way for their family. It was certainly no democracy in their household; Winn would decide where they would settle, and that was the end of it.

  “He’s a fine man,” Gwen commented. Caught staring at her husband, Maggie blushed. Sun-darkened skin gleaming, tensed over the striated muscles in his chest and arms, he certainly looked the part of royalty as he raised the heavy sword over his head and sent it crashing down onto Cormaic’s wooden shield. She was surprised to see him wear a pair of wool braies like the other men, long, slim pants tied at the waist with a cord that fit him quite fine. Very fine, in fact.

  “Yes, he is,” she murmured. Gwen broke into hearty laughter.

  “Aye, I meant my Erich, but yer husband is fetching, too, dear!” the woman giggled. Maggie laughed along with her.

  Kwetii let out another shrill cry, and at first Maggie did not recognize it as anything other than playful chatter. When Rebecca picked up the toddler and Kwetii continued to wail, however, she dropped her gathering bag and ran over to meet them.

  “What happened?” Maggie asked. Kwetii’s face was screwed up like one round red apple as she cried, tears coursing down her cheeks. Maggie took her from Rebecca’s arms, which quieted her tears a bit, but did not serve to make her much less miserable.

  “I think it was a bee. Look, there on her neck,” Rebecca said.

  Maggie pushed the child’s gunna aside to reveal the skin of her throat. Near the base of her neck, where she should have a tiny hollow, was instead an angry welt the size of a ripe cherry.

  “It’s just a bee sting, sweetling, you’ll be okay,” Maggie soothed her. Kwetii half-sobbed, half-hiccupped.

  “Hurts, mama!” Kwetii cried. Maggie was startled to hear the child’s voice come out coarse instead of high-pitched. When Kwetii took in a breath, it made a whistling sound.

  “Gwen—do you have something to make this go down? It’s swelling up fast,” Maggie asked, her unease steadily rising. The welt seemed to be growing by the second, and each time Kwetii inhaled or exhaled, she made a peculiar strangled sound.

  When Gwen took a look at the swelling and her face lost color, Maggie swallowed back her own panic.

&
nbsp; Kwetii had never been stung before. What should have been a simple childhood boo-boo was rapidly turning into an emergency. It seemed her child was allergic to bees, and they had no way to help her as her throat closed off.

  “Take her back to the village,” Gwen said.

  “Mama?” Kwetii wheezed.

  “Hush, sweetheart, hush,” she whispered, pressing a kiss to her daughter’s forehead. Kwetii was a solid toddler and carrying her was no easy task, but Maggie cradled her close the best she could as they hurried back to the village.

  *****

  Kwetii continued to wheeze with every breath as the day wore into night. They tucked her into the cot in Gwen’s Long House where they could best keep watch over her. Finola kept her silence, staring into the fire as she swayed idly in a rocker next to the hearth. It unnerved Maggie to see her in such a state. She would give anything to see the woman break free from her torment and join them again. Even when Gwen bent down and looked into Finola’s eyes, asking her to help Kwetii, Finola still did not stir.

  Maggie worried Kwetii would fuss and cause the swelling to worsen, but as the hours passed the sting seemed to take a toll on her little body, and she drifted in and out of sleep. Gwen smeared a thick clay poultice over the sting to ease the swelling, which seemed to help, but the child continued to struggle with every breath despite the efforts. It was all they could do to keep her resting until the swelling subsided.

  Epi-pens, she thought. They had epi-pens to fix it in the future. Perhaps she was no better than Marcus. If she could take Kwetii to the future and know it would save her life, would she do it?

  Winn placed his hand over hers where it rested at Kwetii’s side.

  “Lay down your head,” he said softly.

  “I can’t,” she replied. She would not admit to him that she feared the child would stop breathing, and although she remained silent, she knew he could see the tears on her cheeks. The thought of sitting by helplessly as her child died from a simple bee sting was beyond her comprehension.

  Her husband uttered a sigh as he rose to his feet, pulling her with him. As she opened her mouth to protest, he touched her lips gently with his thumb and shook his head.

  “Stay here. I will return.”

  She nodded mutely and watched him leave. She sat back down at the bedside and took Kwetii’s hand. The child uttered a whistling sigh as the breath struggled past her tiny constricted air way, but otherwise did not stir.

  When Maggie felt a hand on her shoulder she assumed it was her husband, but she was shocked to discover her assumption was wrong. Although her blue eyes were still glazed a milky white, Finola stood beside her, looking down at Kwetii.

  “Fret no longer, dearest. This will pass. The child will live,” the old woman said, her words a harsh utterance through her cracked lips.

  “You—you don’t know that,” Maggie stammered. She was torn between terror at seeing Finola standing like a ghost beside her and relief to see her slumber interrupted. Yet the woman she had known was somehow different now, a darker, guarded version of the healer she loved. “Gwen!” Maggie called out.

  No matter what the reason for her semi-recovery, the woman was too frail to remain at Kwetii’s bedside. When Gwen entered the room her face paled at the sight.

  “Oh, my, sweet Odin! How did she get in here? Fer sure, Finola, come away! It’s no place fer ye here!” Gwen admonished her. Gwen put her arm around Finola’s shoulders and tried to steer her to the door, but the old healer would not budge.

  Finola reached out with a thin, wrinkled hand and placed it on Maggie’s arm.

  “Kwetii will play with her brother when spring comes. Ye shall see. He will have the eyes of his father, and the spirit of his mother, like this one, here,” Finola murmured, looking down on Kwetii. She touched the child’s cheek with one finger, and then let it drop to her side as Gwen led her back to her chair.

  Gwen joined Maggie a few moments later, her skin a fretful pallor as she trembled.

  “She looks a fright. I’ve never seen one return from a journey, but perhaps she still has some fight left. It’s the bad visions that send her away from us. Maybe the good visions will steer her back,” Gwen nodded, as if to herself, then patted Maggie softly on her shoulder. “Aye, if she says yer breeding a son, then it is truth. Did ye already know?” Gwen asked.

  “No. I—I didn’t know for sure,” Maggie replied quietly.

  “Well, now ye know. And ye know yer daughter will be fine soon,” Gwen assured her.

  Maggie’s hand slipped down over her belly. She had suspected, but ignored the signs, too wrapped up in the discord of their lives to acknowledge what her body was telling her. Although it gave her comfort to hear the prediction of a healthy son, the glimmer of hope that Kwetii might yet survive was what she focused on.

  Winn returned later with a sack in his hands. She glanced up at him through tear-swollen eyes.

  “Finola woke and she spoke to me. She said Kwetii will be fine,” she whispered. She did not mention the rest of Finola’s predictions, keeping the news close to her heart for the moment. There would be plenty of time to share it with Winn after Kwetii was healed.

  “Gwen told me. Finola is a wise Seer, I am sure she speaks the truth.”

  He sank down beside her and took something from the sack. His eyes were hollow beneath his thick brows, creased at the edges as if speaking aloud pained him.

  “I bought this for you when we were in town. I meant to give it to you when I returned.”

  He handed her a small, leather bound book. It was worn around the edges, but the stitching was intact and it still smelled of tanned hide when she flipped through the pages. It was handmade, with shimmering golden flecks pressed into the paper, and a flat jade colored stone embedded in the cover beneath the etching of a rainbow.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said.

  “John Jackson said it belonged to an English Princess. How he came to have it, I do not know, but he parted with it, no less. I thought it might make you smile when you read it to our daughter,” he said softly.

  He brushed the tears from her cheek and placed a gentle kiss on her forehead.

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “You read. We will listen,” he said.

  Winn placed the open book on the bed next to Kwetii and thumbed to the first page.

  She rested her shoulder against his and started to read. Although she squinted at the scrolled Old English words, she had little difficulty reading the familiar first lines.

  “Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess. She lived in a grand castle…”

  *****

  Maggie woke to the sound of a gentle snore. Tiny fingers were twisted in her hair, gently pulling in rhythm with the rise and fall of Kwetii’s chest. It was a purring snore, one she made often when sleeping. The strained whistling sound was gone.

  Winn stirred when Maggie moved and she placed two fingers to her lips to silence him as he opened his mouth to speak, his blue eyes wide and hopeful. There would be time later to tell him her news, but for now it would wait as they enjoyed the peaceful slumber of the little girl between them.

  “It is time to give her a new name,” he whispered. “She has earned one of her own.”

  “I like her name,” Maggie said softly. Winn smiled.

  “As do I, but we cannot call her little one forever. She will not like that when she is grown.”

  “Do you have another name?” she asked. The question had never occurred to her, even though she knew it was common for the Paspahegh people to have several names throughout their lifetimes.

  “Opinkwe,” he said, his voice low. “The boy with a white face,” he added, more as an afterthought to himself rather than to her unasked question. “That is what Opinkwe means. It is my secret name, one I tell no man, lest he take my spirit by calling my true name.”

  Her throat tightened at the sadness in his tone. She leaned into his chest and settled back against him, pulling his
warm arms around her.

  “You, ntehem,” he said as his lips pressed into her hair, “You have no need to call my true name. My spirit is already yours to command.”

  She smiled.

  “I will hold you to that, warrior,” she answered.

  Chapter 22

  Winn

  Winn watched the dancers as the music pounded around them. It was like the Paspahegh dances he was accustomed to in some ways, with a crowd gathered in a circle around those who knew the steps. The rumble of a deep hollow drum pounded out the beat, and the singing of the women along with the squeal of a lyre rounded out the melee. Maggie danced with the other women, swirling past him in her long flowing gunna, her arms locked at the elbows with Teyas as they laughed. The long dress reminded him of the time she spent with the English, and although he knew it was not the same, it still caused a stir of annoyance down deep.

  “Erich says you plan to leave. Is there naught I can say to keep ye here?”

  Winn eyed his father. He stopped calling him Pale Feather, a title which he could see clearly irritated the man, yet Winn still struggled with how to speak to him. Marcus took a sip from his drinking horn as Winn considered his response.

  “Jarl Dagr. Marcus Neilsson. What should I call you, father?” Winn asked as he continued to stare into the crowd. Marcus cleared his throat.

  “Dagr Markús Neilsson is the name borne to me. Jarl is by right of blood, as is the title of Chief. Dagr Markús was the name given to me by my father to honor his father. And Neilsson marks me as get of my sire. Call me what ye will.”

  “I have only known you as Pale Feather,” Winn replied. He left the rest unspoken.

  “Well, the Paspahegh called me that. Use it if ye must, it is only a name.” Marcus drained the last of the mead from his drinking horn and held it out to Winn. “There’s more to these people than ye know. Take this horn. It belonged to my father, and his sire before him. I give it now to you, my eldest son, so that you will know your place here among your people.”