January, 1783, A Half-day’s Stalk above the Headwaters of the Potomac

Plunging Egret had been detailed by Red Jacket to assess the vulnerability of the white settlements along the upland valleys of the Beautiful Steps. From these heights their pale enemies would surely descend the lesser rivers that fed the Good-River come spring, for the war against their fathers was nearly won, and they would come to claim the lands of the Summer People. He had chosen Sparrow, Walks-in-moonlight and Medicine-quill for their discipline, as much as for their prowess. It would not due to bring hot-blooded warriors who would let this scout turn into a blooding. If that had been the intention Red Jacket would have chosen Turtlehawk, who would have selected his bloodthirsty brothers.

Plunging Egret sat with his back to the others, having awakened first to look out on the grayed world. They had slept sitting up upon a matt of fresh pliant evergreen boughs. He could hear the slight tinkle of the mountain-creeping stream where it wriggled its way down toward the cabin of Old Gray Eyes, who the Mingoes named Deer Foot, and the Longhouse Men called Old Mother Moon, claiming that she was no white woman at all, but the grandmother of men who flew down from the moon to gather the spirits of fallen warriors and hunters lost and set them twinkling in the sky above the Starlit Path.

The insane white woman had long been known to haunt the upper reaches of the rivers, staying close to where the waters were young. There was one tale of some Big Waters harassing her, that being the one that Old Tobacco-pipe used to tell to explain why the Big Waters had mysteriously disappeared in the time of his grandfathers’ grandfathers. They would give her cabin a wide berth, never descending to its elevation until they hit the headwater of the WildGooseRiver and the infiltration stage of the scout began.

His head felt heavy and he found himself drifting off to sleep even as the sky grayed from iron to flint; presenting an image of a stone blanket raised over the bare treetops. Somehow he knew that the sun would sleep behind that blanket for the entire course of this day. His companions whistled faintly behind him as Sleep kept them in Her grasp. Where he, the leader, should have awakened Medicine-quill, their bundle-keeper, he instead slept, turned inward to the realm of dreams that advise the half-awake and prepare him for the day. This was not a war party—though it might be understood as a war planning party—and the sun seemed likely to sleep for days to come. They could wake refreshed in a short time and partake of Mother Cornsilk’s dried meal.

A snowflake struck his nose with more weight and a deeper chill than should have been, waking him to the gray day; however old it was it being too gray to say.

His eyes shuddered open, crusted closed already by a light sleet he had not felt, his medicine-man and his two braves still whistling the light snores of youth behind him—all seating like one human fire amid this great gray winter. His head lay back on the base of Medicine-quill’s bent neck, who slept now an unnaturally deep sleep, his chin to his chest.

Plunging Egret looked up through the towering alder and birch, their upper branches reaching up into the winter sky, seeming to be calling the increasingly heavy snow down from She who mounted the Starlit Path with the twinkling eyes of fallen warriors and lost hunters. Amazingly, after two days of continual gray cloud cover, without seeing more than a hint of the sun, and feeling it die without seeing it set every time he looked back along the trail toward Cornstalk’s Town, there was a break in the clouds far above, framed like a dream-catcher by the upward reaching hands of alder and birch. Seemingly pouring from the rent in the cloud blanket far above came the blizzard of falling snow to spread above them and sink like milky ice into the drier powder all around.

This snow is unnaturally cold and unseasonably wet. It should be crisp and dry. We should be awake—where is the medicine bundle?

The lead warrior of this tiny effort by the Shawnee to lift the cover of the blanket of the Whiteman’s fading war to see what was underneath, sat straight with a start and looked to the medicine-pole suspended above the Y-stick at his feet, to see it missing, replaced by a scalp; a much decorated Mingo scalp, the scalp of a warrior of great reputation who had served the redcoats based on the button cluster at the base of the quills. The skin, hair and ornament trophy of some silent victory was not fresh, nor was it oiled and cured, but hung as a recent mark of victory for some subtle hand.

A chill drove through his chest and made the bristles of hair emerging round his scalp-lock tingle with dread anticipation. He elbowed Walks-in-moonlight and Sparrow as he leaned back and growled low in Medicine-quill’s ear, “We are hunted. Our medicine is taken.”

All three of his highly disciplined fellows woke and stirred ever so slightly, the four of them each scanning their zones of approach. He looked above after seeing nothing, and then noticed that She—the ghost-faced moon—was veiled once again behind the blanket of clouds that the AllSpirit sometimes covered over his wife and children in the cold times of Deep Winter.

He heard Medicine-quill click the sighting with his tongue as he felt the other two uncover their muskets. His zone of approach clear, he uncovered his broad black oak bow, made from the sacred Waterland tree that the Whiteman valued so for his war boats and the Seminole guarded with such determination, sliding a brass-tipped arrow along the belly and joining the knock with the linx sinew string. Armed he turned onto his weak knee and peered over the shoulder of Sparrow, who was raising his musket and sighting along its black iron barrel at the figure that turned his blood to ice.

She stood in her white dog-hair dress which swept the snow. She did not look white in the least, not even pale, her hair was the color of flint, her face the shade of the dead winter sky. She was not young or old ugly or beautiful, but rather all of the traits one could not easily recall.

Oh Grandfather above help us!

She glided toward them as Sparrow and Walks-in-moonlight crouched to either side, and he kneeled next to Medicine-quill, who now rose, and intoned lifelessly, “I go. Do not strike her. You are hunted.”

With those wintry words their medicine-man stood like an arrow and walked off through the falling snow toward the Gray Woman, who seemed to glide from tree to tree. Medicine-quill followed the Gray Woman down the mountain toward her cabin.

Sparrow hissed, “We are doomed!”

“No brother, we are saved by Medicine-quill," whispered Plunging Egret as their spiritual medium plodded along after the gliding woman, out of sight and down the mountain.

Walks-in-moonlight groaned in objection and they both broke approach zone discipline and turned to hush him, only to have their already chilled hearts frozen to brittle ice.

A youth of lore flooded his mind in the brief instant it took for him to pivot and draw his arrow. To his right stood Old Death Wind, the tireless hunter of the Redman, he who skulked through the unbroken forests along the spine of mountain that was the backbone of the world. He was taller than most of the starved white soldiers Plunging Egret had known; was as tall as a wilderness-bred warrior or a white chief, but stronger than most. He wore a raccoon hat, and tassels hung from his pierced ears. His skin was as dark as that of a natural person, not so pale as that of most of his kind. His dark skin bore the pocks of the Whiteman’s disease, the curse that coursed through their veins and poisoned the air for the people who had been borne to the world, rather than hatched in the guts of the Whiteman’s festering towns. His buckskins were greased and chalked against the snow, his hair braided like a woman’s down to his hips—the greatest scalp of them all should any warrior manage to lift it.

The man who was best known for never having an empty gun was withdrawing his soul-stealing trade knife from Walks-in-moonlight’s belly in such a way as to open the buckskins and let the entrails spill out like a riot of slain summer snakes, heaping the snow with gore even as the man pranced over their falling brother like a deer bounding over a deadfall and slashed Plunging Egret’s wrist to the bone, releasing his grip on the great bow and causing his life blood to arc along the snow. He drew his arrow from the string with his strong hand and plunged it into the Whiteman’s shoulder.

He drew back his arrow, the brass arrowhead staying in the man’s shoulder even as this silent enemy pulled Sparrow’s trade musket from his shivering hands—hands that reflexively reached for his gushing neck slit from ear-to-ear by the wicked knife, above which Sparrow’s teeth ground in determination to live even as his eyes lost all hope and drifted within…

There was no hope in living, not with this arm filleted to the bone all around. He tossed his arrow in the pocked face of the expressionless killer and drew his tomahawk for one leaping attack. As he raised up on his lead foot and pushed off with his rear foot, launching himself in a death leap, the merciless enemy calmly glided to the side behind Sparrow’s kneeling and dying form, reversed the musket with a flip of the hand, cocked it with the same big hand—the wrong hand—and let loose the iron musket’s magic, the thunder hiss that sent the pebble of soft metal ripping through Plunging Egret’s striving heart, dropping him nearly dead in the snow.

He saw only the stinging reddening snow, until his face was lifted as if by the hand of the AllSpirit to look into the fading eyes of Sparrow who waited his turn. The sucking-pop of his scalp lifting from its head seemed to kill Sparrow where he kneeled, who fell over as if in sympathetic soul-flight.

I am beyond the world of pain Grandfather.

As if in answer the terror-saturated womanly shriek of Medicine-quill carried on the gray wind up to his leader’s now floating head, announcing that perhaps there was a place beyond the world of men that was not un-free of suffering.

A crow of iron cawed in the day that was a rock-colored night above a comfortless blanket of white.