Night Wings

by Joseph Bruchac

  But what really happened, Dad said, was this:

  When Pmola screamed, the man didn’t do what some people might have done. That man was a hunter and he had observed how predators like the owl and the mountain lion scream to make their prey freeze so that it is easier to grab them. So the hunter didn’t just stand there. He dove to the side and scrambled into a narrow crevice in the rocks. Pmola’s claws scratched the hunter’s ankle, but the winged monster was too large to follow him into that place of refuge.

  Then Pmola spoke. Its voice was a blend of the whistling storm wind and an eagle’s cry.

  “Mmmmy ring,” Pmola shrilled. “Give mmme mmmy ring. Give it to mmme and I will give yooouuu a gift.”

  The hunter realized he was still holding that object he’d found hidden under the stone by Small Lake of the Clouds. He held it up to look at it. It was a large golden ring. Even in the darkness of the crevice, it glittered as if it were on fire. It was beautiful, but the man valued his life more than a ring of gold.

  “Pmola,” the man said, “I do not want to steal your power. I only took this ring to protect myself. All I ask is that you let me go free if I return it to you,” the man said.

  Pmola thrust its hand into the crevice. “Mmmmy ring,” it cried again, “Give mmme mmmy ring.”

  The man dropped the ring into the palm of Pmola’s long, clawed hand. As soon as he did so, that hand was snatched back and the hunter heard the sound of wings beating the air. Then all was silent.

  The man waited a long time before coming out of that crevice. He looked cautiously in all directions, but Pmola was gone. From then on, even though he had asked for no gift other than his own life, that hunter had great good luck. But he never again went anywhere near Small Lake of the Clouds.

  Pmola, you see, despises dishonesty and greed. If that man in the story hadn’t given Pmola back his ring or had tried to trick Pmola, you can bet that something bad would have happened to him. Something really bad. Which is why he didn’t ask for anything special. Not wealth or power. Just his life. And because he was not greedy, he was given more than he asked for.

  I’d be happy if the lives of my own family were safe. If Mom and Dad were not over there and if Grampa Peter and I didn’t have someone trying to pull us into something ominous here. Was my dream about Pmola a warning or a foretelling?

  “So what do we do?” I ask Grampa Peter.

  And I immediately feel dumb because I know what his answer will be.

  But he smiles at me as he says it.

  “Nothing.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Stuck

  Nothing. That is sometimes the strongest answer you can give to someone who asks you a dumb question.

  But even so, as I lie in bed and listen to the wind outside our trailer, I am thinking that saying nothing, and doing nothing, is not going to satisfy Captain Hook or Darby Field or Schmidt or whoever he really is. I saw the angry look on his face and the greed in his eyes.

  Our old stories tell us to be wary of that kind of anger and greed. It can twist a person inside out, and dry up all the good they might have once had in them. As Grampa Peter says, it’s not that there are good guys and bad guys, white hats and black hats. Everybody has the potential for doing good and doing bad. However, when people give themselves over to their worst impulses—greed, jealousy, anger, revenge—they can sometimes crawl so far over the edge, and down into those twisted thoughts, that they’re never able to find their way back up.

  I know in my heart that I’ve looked into the eyes of one of those who left his better self behind so long ago that doing good isn’t even a distant memory. Whoever he is, Darby Field, and everything about him, is bad news.

  And I can’t get to sleep. It’s not just because I can’t stop thinking about this threatening man. And it’s not just that whenever I’m not thinking about that, I find myself worrying about Mom and Dad.

  No, I’ve actually managed to turn off those worried thoughts—almost long enough to go to sleep. I’ve learned how to do this routine where I concentrate first on relaxing my toes, just my toes. Then I relax my calves, then my knees, and so on up the long length of my body until by the time I reach my head—or sometimes even before that—I’ve fallen asleep.

  Problem is, every time I relax my legs, they cramp up because this bed is too short. I can’t straighten out the way I usually do when I’ve managed to get my whole body to go limp. I’m almost there, and then my heels fall off the bottom of the bed and my toes stick out from under the covers, and I am wide awake again.

  Dang it!

  I sit up, swing my legs out, and slip my feet into my old soft-soled mocs. I strip the sheets and blankets off the bed and then, in one of those habits you pick up in a military family, I fold them neatly and place them on the chair. I know it sounds anal-retentive, but I just don’t feel comfortable in a messy room. I take the mattress off the bed and lean it against the wall to study the bed frame. I look back and forth and then nod. My idea ought to work.

  I open the drawer of the bedside table where I’ve placed one of my favorite things from my dad. It’s a little Maglite attached to a Velcro headband. It leaves your hands free and you can just turn your head to point the beam wherever you want to light up the darkness. I wrap the headband around my forehead so that the light is on the side just above my right eye and then I press the switch. The high-intensity beam makes a circle the size of a basketball on my bed.

  I turn off the light as I tiptoe out into the hall. I don’t want to bother Grampa Peter and I know I can find my way around in the dark. I don’t trip over any of the chairs or tables, even though there’s not a lot of space between things in the cramped hallway and the tiny living room. I have a great memory. Once I’ve been somewhere, I can picture it perfectly in my mind. But I am going to need light when I’m outside.

  I open the door, slip out, and close it slowly behind me so that it doesn’t bang. No problem. When I’m by myself, I’m hardly ever clumsy. It’s just when I’m in front of people. However, now I turn the light on. Sure, I remember everything that I might bump into or trip over on my way to the back of our trailer, where Grampa Peter has things stored. But on a summer night like this there might be some other things out in the darkness that were not there when the sun went down. Furry things drawn by the smell of our garbage pails that are locked securely in the little shed. Raccoons are not so bad because they’ll back away as soon as a human comes close. Skunks, though, are either too confident or stupid to leave, and I do not want to upset a skunk! There is also the chance that a bear might be out there. Again, nothing to worry about if you give the bear fair warning, but bears do not take kindly to being surprised. Not that a bear will usually try to attack, but if a bear feels cornered and you are between it and its preferred escape route, well, too bad for you.

  I sweep the light from side to side as I walk slowly around the trailer and out back. No midnight garbage snackers. Not even a mouse. Probably discouraged by this noisy wind, which is bending the birch trees up and down like someone trying to string a bow and then changing his mind.

  I get down on my knees and elbows and lift my chin to direct the beam under the trailer. Grampa Peter has all his spare building and repair supplies stored in precise stacks in the twenty-eight-inch-high space between the concrete slab and the floor. Cinder blocks to the left. Patio blocks next to them. Bags of sand and mortar mix up on pallets and covered with plastic. Lumber to the far left. A pile of two-by-fours, another of pressure-treated planks, and a third pile of miscellaneous lumber. There, right on top of the third, is just what I remembered: a six-foot-long by four-foot-wide piece of three-quarter-inch plywood. I can make my bed longer by putting this piece under my mattress so that it sticks out at the bottom. Then if I put two couch pillows between the wall and the top end, I will have solved my sleeping problems.

  I can’t help smiling, the circle of light bobbing up and down as I nod my head. I’m a genius.

  I bend low
and crawl in. An orb weaver spider has made her web across the upper left-hand corner of the opening. Grampa Peter pointed her out to me with a nod of his head when I arrived here. He didn’t have to tell me to respect her. We don’t have some of those stories that the Indians in the Southeast and the West have about the spider being a grandmother, but we know that spiders catch those little insects that like to bite us, so we show them respect.

  There’s plenty of room for me to get under the trailer without disturbing her intricate weaving, and I’m sure I’ll be able to shove the plywood out underneath the web when I work it free.

  But it may take some doing. That three-quarter-inch piece of plywood is heavier than I thought. I grab it with one hand and pull. It doesn’t budge. I try taking hold of it with both hands. I don’t have any leverage at all and once again the plywood stays put. But I don’t. I lose my balance and fall forward, scraping my hand against the rough edge of the plywood sheet.

  Double dang! I hold my right hand up to my mouth so I can use my teeth to pull out the splinter I’ve just stuck an inch deep into my palm.

  As I suck on the wound, I try to think. What is it that Mom always says? If you can’t make things work one way, try doing the opposite? Yes! I roll over onto my back, hook my feet under the edge of the trailer, and reach back over my head to pull the plywood toward me. One, two, hup! Success! The plywood comes free from whatever was holding it, slides smoothly forward, and then stops. Right on top of me!

  I’m sort of stuck. Also the plywood has hit the switch on my Maglite, and I am now in total darkness. I pull my legs in so I can wiggle onto my side and get out from under the wide piece of pressed lumber that is making me feel like the cheese in a sandwich.

  I try to do it as quietly as possible, without knocking against any of the supports under the trailer floor. The wind has suddenly died down and the night is quiet.

  Or is it? Are those boots crunching the gravel of our walkway? I hear the thud of feet hitting the trailer steps at a run and the sound of the front door—right over my head—bursting open as a heavy body hurls itself against it!

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Got Him

  “The old man first!” A thin reedy voice with an English accent.

  “Got him.” The second male voice is one that I haven’t heard before. Unlike Darby Field, this man has a nasal South Boston accent.

  “Where’s the kid?” A woman’s voice with the kind of hoarseness in it that comes from smoking too many cigarettes.

  Three of them. I start trying to struggle out from under the board that has me trapped. I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I have to do something. Run for help, try to fight them.

  Suddenly two loud thumps come from right over my head. Spaced just right so there is no doubt what they mean. Grampa Peter must have been awake and aware of what I was doing all the while I was creeping around and crawling under the house. Those stomps on the floor are his signal to me.

  Stay where you are!

  I freeze in place, but I keep listening.

  “Where’s your grandson?”

  No answer, of course.

  “I know how to make him talk,” South Boston growls.

  There’s the sound of a scuffle, a thud, a groan, a body falling to the floor.

  “Unh, unh, unh…you old…unh, unh.”

  It’s not Grampa Peter who’s rolling on the floor in pain, but South Boston. The man obviously never learned that it isn’t wise to try to muscle a Marine—even one who’s in his late sixties.

  The woman with the hoarse voice is laughing. “Come on, Tippy. Get up. This can’t be the first time you got kicked in the groin.”

  There’s the sound of furniture being pushed aside, a man pulling himself to his feet.

  I tense up, afraid of what he’s going to do now to Grampa Peter.

  “I’m gonna break your—,” the man called Tippy begins to growl.

  But Darby Field’s voice cuts in. “Tip, you can forget about physical persuasion. Now back off like a good lad. And you, sir, if you try anything like that again, I shall put a twenty-two-caliber slug into your knee. Sit down. Excellent. Now Louise is going to do a bit of scouting around to see if she can locate your beanpole of a grandson.”

  Feet walking across the floor, the door opening and closing, the wide beam of a heavy-duty flashlight visible through the cracks in the apron that goes around the base of the trailer.

  I slowly pull my knees up to my chest. I hope I can’t be seen under here. I put my hand over the luminous dial of my watch. I don’t want to risk the chance that its glow will give me away. I also look down at the ground. Eyes reflect back the beam of a light. Also there’s this sort of sixth sense that all people have, the feeling you get when someone is looking at you. If you don’t believe me, try staring hard at someone’s back and see if they don’t turn around. Or try looking at the face of the driver of a car coming at you in the opposite lane. Nine times out of ten that driver will make eye contact back.

  Louise—she must have been the woman with the Yankees cap and long brown braid in Field’s truck—is making her way around the trailer slowly, methodically. The way she’s moving, though, gives me hope. Her steps are tentative. She’s bumping against things, almost falling, and catching herself. She’s obviously one of those city people who is not used to such dark. The strong scent of her perfume, which I could smell even through the floor of the trailer, is getting closer. I sense her crouching at the opening under the trailer.

  “Huuuh,” she mutters to herself as her beam of light reflects off the web of my orb weaver friend, “spiders.” The light is directed away, and her feet move off.

  “Thank you,” I mouth to the spider, who has just repaid my respect by protecting me.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Looking

  “No sign of the boy,” Louise says. She’s back in the house with the others.

  “And a great help you were,” Field says in a sarcastic voice.

  “Hey, I’m a soundperson, not bleedin’ Chin-gachgook or Pocahontas. You want an Indian guide, don’t look at me.”

  “My dear,” Field replies, with the long-suffering tone of a genius having to deal with idiots, “that is precisely why we are obtaining the services of our elderly and stubborn friend Mr. Fortune here.” He chuckles. “To guide us to fame and fortune. But that grandson of his was to be our means of, one might say, gentle persuasion.”

  “From the looks of his room,” Tip says, “He wasn’t here tonight. His bed ain’t even made.”

  “Maybe he’s sleeping over at a friend’s house,” Louise suggests.

  “Hmmmph,” Field says. “Just finish duct-taping the old man’s hands together—at the wrists and the elbows, Louise. From what I’ve seen, Mr. Fortune here may not be an easy one to control. No, leave his legs free. He has a bit of walking to do. And Tip, do keep him out of the frame when we’re shooting. No visual evidence. Just the trail, scenery, and then close on me.”

  The door opens and the steps creak as a heavy person puts his weight on them, takes a deep breath.

  “Oh, Pauuuul!”

  I almost jump at the sound of my name. The “come-out, come-out, wherever you are” tone to Darby Field’s voice tells me he’s just calling into the night on the chance I might be within earshot.

  “We have your grandfaaather.”

  Smug, self-assured. If I were standing out in the darkness beyond the trailer and I had a rock, I’d heave it at him. But I stay put.

  “What’s the matter, lad? We shan’t hurt you”—then—under his breath—“much.” He clears his throat. “But we will certainly begin doing some rather severe physical harm to your grandfather if you don’t assist us.”

  The thought of what they might do to Grampa Peter if I don’t do what he asks almost makes me decide to give myself up. But I’m not stupid. I remember what Dad and Mom told me about hostage takers, how the only thing that makes them happier than having one hostage is having two.

&nb
sp; And I think of other lessons they taught me:

  Don’t ever give up an advantage in combat.

  Don’t let your emotions get the better of you.

  Think one or two steps ahead of your enemy.

  I don’t know much about Darby Field, but I know I can’t trust him. He wants to use me to make Grampa Peter lead him to Pmola’s treasure.

  That familiar chill runs down my back. It’s bad enough to have a greedy person threatening your life. But Darby Field isn’t just greedy. He wants to find a creature that most people think is just a myth, and the legendary treasure that belongs to that creature. That is just plain crazy.

  I remember one of the stories Grampa Peter told me about a day when he was out in a canoe with an Abenaki friend of his. It was getting close to dusk when they saw something in the sky.

  “Look,” his friend said. “It is the Old One with Wings. I will call him down.”

  “Don’t,” Grampa Peter said.

  But his friend didn’t listen. He made a gesture and spoke some words. Pretty soon that winged thing up in the sky began to circle down closer. It was bigger than a hawk. Bigger than an eagle.

  Grampa Peter’s friend began to get worried. “I will send him back,” he said.

  But his voice was uncertain as he raised his hand to make another gesture and spoke. And that big winged shape just kept getting closer. Now they could see its red eyes.

  “Help me,” his friend pleaded.

  “Here!” Grampa Peter replied, digging in his paddle to turn their canoe toward the shore.

  As soon as they hit the beach, Grampa Peter jumped out and ran toward a huge old pine that had been tipped over by a high wind, his friend close behind him. There was a hole in the blue clay bank at the base of the tree, made by the roots pulling out of the ground. Grampa Peter dove into that hole, turned, and pulled his friend in after him. A hard wind was blowing by then, and other trees were starting to fall. The two of them huddled together until the wind stopped.