Joan had spent the morning with White Ash, and lunchtime visiting with Miss Ann and Smoot in the kitchen. Now Miss Ann was sitting on the guest chair in the corner of the master bedroom while Joan and Smoot sat on the bed and White Ash walked around the room, narrating the events depicted in scenes beautifully wrought with buttons used as beads on variously colored fabrics. The resulting tapestries were unique and poignant works of art.
The dogs sat obediently in the doorway while White Ash pointed at the first quilt, a scene of initiation on a wooded riverbank. “At puberty I was initiated into the Circle of Hope as the Bead-worker Apparent, sworn to celibacy, dedicated to travel, record-keeping and the preservation of the English way of speaking on behalf of the Free Peoples of Mother Earth against the Whiteman.”
She is absolutely believable.
She then passed onto a scene of a young woman praying in a canoe being paddled by a white-faced warrior. “I was canoed to the Place of Joining Rivers to be ordained as a disciple—called ‘nun’ by the Whiteman—of the One Prophet Ascendant, here at his naming place where he was declared the Beginner Messenger by WhiteSkyCanoe in The Time of Departed Grandfathers.”
She’s so cute I want to keep her.
White Ash then pointed to a long beadwork mural of a village scene on a great lake. “The Circle of Hope, among who I was now ordained, travelled to the Speaking against the Black Robes at Tied-bag-lake-town. There we denounced the Whiteman’s interpretation of the Tying to The Tree of Woe of He-Who-Makes-Rivers, and advised the assembled people to drive them back to their smelly place.”
Joan, are you getting this?
That was not spontaneous combustion you saw at Black Ops. He is a time-traveler and he brought this woman forward from among a group of 17th Century Eastern Woodland Indians dedicated to resisting White encroachment.
You’ve eaten too much pussy today. Get it together.
This woman is not insane or deluded, and has no modern reference points beyond what she gets from Gameshow Network, the Real Crime Channel and this bat-shit-crazy-sweet-old-lady!
The young woman now approached a beaded mural of woodland river scenes with some trepidation and narrated. “We were called to a Council against the Whiteman in the year of the Whiteman’s winter count 1627. Here our counsel was overruled and rival tribes attempted to take us hostage. Our white-faces carried us to safety and we wandered for four years, sought after by aspiring war chiefs against the Whiteman’s friends among the Natural Peoples. This was a time of hardship.”
White Ash then squarely confronted the largest mural, which was a scene of carnage, with dead white-faced warriors heaped and scalped on a riverbank and a young woman being raped by a circle of bloody fiends. “The rape of White Ash—married to The Beginner no more…”
This is for real, or this girl should win a Hugo and an Oscar.
Miss Ann was now encouraging White Ash as the dogs whined solemnly. The girl then walked to the next mural, stepping up onto the bed to stroke the beads. “Wolf-Paw, fiercest of Mahican war chiefs made Egg Shell, Mother of the Circle and Keeper of the Thunderhoop, summon DeathSong, the Fury of the Beginner! to aid him in war-making.”
She then caressed the figure of Egg Shell on her knees with a dream-catcher.
Could that be the device? How in hell does a stone-age society possess a time-travel device?
White Ash flicked the figure of the savage wolf-headed chief with her fingernail, before stepping off the bed.
White Ash stood before the next mural; a scene of blood-drenched horror, and addressed it with a rising timbre, “And so DeathSong was summoned from Sunset once again, and did eat the heart of Wolf-Paw while the evil chief yet lived and frightened off the Mahicans, keeping only six as captives to replace the white-faces.”
Yep, that’s my dreamboat, eating men alive.
What-the-hell have you gotten yourself into?
The girl caressed the figure of a feasting wolf-man that was apparently supposed to be Jay and continued to the next mural, a happy seen of sun-fire amid a moonlit night as the young woman of the murals, no longer clothed in white, held hands with the wolf-man. “And so was White Ash brought by DeathSong to his home world, to the house of Grandmother Ann of the Whiteman Towns of Sunset.”
The girl hurried to the next mural, of the wolf-man mounting the woman, while a small wolf swims from the belly of the man into the belly of the woman where a sad little girl sits haunted by the shadow of the sinister Mahican chief. She spread both her arms and shouted, “And DeathSong planted White Ash with his spirit seed which devoured the ghost seed of the Mahicans. A girl-to-be-a-woman and a boy-to-be-a-warrior shall come from her in this very chamber, in this bed!”
Miss Ann was clapping and dabbing her nose and eyes with a tissue while White Ash spun in circles like a little girl, holding her hands to her belly and smiling with her eyes closed in ecstasy.
How much stranger can this get?
You and Smoot alone will know about this girl and her place. She’s been through enough. We can’t let Wong get a hold of her.
You will have to come and look in on her regularly—if for no other reason than that Jay seems likely to stop by when he travels back to this time… and she’s my little baby doll now.
Are you nuts girl? You are really going to buy this time-travel notion?
I saw it, I saw the event horizon. He is somewhere in the past and he will be back.
And what then, haul him into Wong for more experimentation?
Those are my orders, and I get to keep Little Mommy—Hell, she could double as my babysitter too.
White Ash was now holding Joan’s left hand in hers and employing her right hand to wipe the tears from her watery brown eyes with her own black hair. “Joan, he loves the mountains and he is linked to Crossing Rock. It is where he ground-buried the Sunset Demon and sky-buried Meadow Hawk and led the Spaniards to their doom. There are also prophecies about the place. It is on the summer side where the Shenandoah flows into the Potomac. He might seek Three-Rivers there.”
Are you getting this; Little Mommy is giving up your man-eating hunk, her avenging werewolf husband.
You must eat some good pussy you manipulative lesbo queen.
She was suddenly shocked into an incredulous lapse in her newfound belief in time-travel. At the sound of the little boy’s name, a chill did play down her spine, “Three-Rivers, the boy story-teller?”
“Yes Joan, he is the One Prophet, the son of WhiteSkyCanoe. He was brought here to Sunset also, and promised to return to Mother Earth against the Whiteman when they threaten to rape Mother Earth as they did here on Sunset. The sacred place of Three-Rivers and DeathSong together, and on both worlds, is Crossing Rock. Your people call it Harper’s Ferry.”
