Night Wings (8 page)

T
he scream is so loud that it makes all three of the people sitting around the fire jump up. Field, in fact, takes a stumbling step forward into the flames, knocking over the pot and producing a string of curses from him as the hot water scalds his legs. Louise and Stazi recover first. Louise shines her light in the direction of the scream, although she doesn’t show any inclination to leave the fire or help. It’s Stazi who bounds off into the night with an agility that is surprising for someone so large. More like some big animal than a human.

To be honest, I wasn’t shocked by that scream. I’m not sure why, but something in me had been expecting it. Was it a kind of gut
feeling that we were being observed? Or was it something else? And then I realize what it was. I’ve always had a really strong sense of smell. And I’d started smelling something as the darkness deepened. There was an unfamiliar scent on the air, almost like the musky odor of a weasel, although stronger.

I feel Grampa Peter’s hands touch my elbow, and I know he is reacting the same way I am. He leans his head close to mine and whispers a word in my ear.

“Kina.”
Listen.

And I do. I listen beyond Field’s complaining voice as he slaps at his legs. Beyond the soft thumping of Stazi’s feet as he lopes toward the place where Tip just screamed. But I don’t hear it yet, the sound I think I’m going to hear. Instead there is a sort of whimper, then Stazi’s voice saying, “Get up,” and the sound of two people coming back toward the fire, one with feet that are unsteady and stumbling.

Louise has been tossing more wood onto the fire. Now it is flaring up so high that it is casting a light well beyond the tents, even illuminating the place where Grampa Peter and I are tethered to the spruce tree. Not that anyone is paying any attention to us.

Stazi emerges, one arm around Tip’s shoulders. Tip is hugging himself. He is so hunched over that he looks almost as if he’s shrunk in size. They sit him down on a log by the fire.

“What in the name of heaven was that scream about?” Field yells at him.

Tip doesn’t even lift his head. He just sits there on that log, clutching his shoulders and shivering.

“Give the man a drink,” Louise says in a sarcastic voice. “That’s always loosened his tongue before.”

Her words actually get Tip to raise his head for a minute to give her a nasty look. Then he grabs the flask that Stazi is holding out to him and tips it into his mouth. It looks as if he intends to chug the whole thing, but Stazi pries it out of his hand after a couple of gulps.

Field gets down on one knee in front of Tip. “What was it?” he says, his tone of voice almost neutral for a change. “What frightened you? Did you run into a bear?”

Tip mumbles something. Field’s reaction to it shows that empathy is not part of his emotional arsenal. He slaps Tip hard across the face.

“Speak up!”

To my surprise, the slap actually seems to jolt Tip back into something like his old self. Maybe
this kind of mean treatment is so familiar to him that it’s reassuring. He lifts his head to look at his boss and speaks more clearly.

“It wasn’t a bear,” he says.

“What,” Field says, speaking very slowly, in the sort of way you’d ask a question of someone who was mentally deficient, “was…it?”

“It was big,” Tip replies. Then, speaking more quickly, as if sensing he is about to get slapped again, “bigger than a bear. It towered over me. And it was black, blacker than anything I ever seen before, and it had broad shoulders.” Tip holds his arms out as wide as he can. “Like this.”

“Oh my,” Field sighs. “Tip, Tip. Who would have thought that there was that much room for imagination in your cretinous temporal lobes?”

“Huh?” Tips says.

Field turns away from him toward the other two and then strokes his mustache. “Bear,” he says in a matter-of-fact, know-it-all voice. “Drawn by the smell of our cooking, no doubt. Made to seem twice as large by his fear and the darkness. It likely turned tail and ran when our boy Tip squawked like a wounded duck.”

“No,” Tip says. His voice is louder than it was before. “It was no bear. Look!”

He opens his arms to point at his chest. Two slashes have been cut to make an
X
across his
down jacket. Not deep enough to reach the flesh, but even with the small feathers beginning to spill out, I can see that those cuts are as clean and precise as if they’d been made with a razor.

“It done this with one finger,” Tip says, pulling at the slashed fabric. “And that’s not all. You know what else?”

He looks defiantly at the others, waiting for them to say something. When silence is his only reply, he answers his own question.

“It spoke to me.” His voice has gotten shaky again. “It spoke to me. It said, ‘Go Away!’”

Grampa Peter squeezes my arm again. And I hear what I’d been expecting now, though the four stunned people around the fire don’t notice it at all. It is soft and comes from overhead, gradually growing quieter as it moves away from us.

Whomp, whomp, whomp, whomp.

It is the sound of wings. Wings bigger than those of any eagle or owl. Wings in the night.

I
’m standing with my back to the edge of the cliff. Although the full moon is bright enough to cast shadows, its light cannot illuminate the depths below. But I know that it is a long way down. My last shuffling step as I walked backward dislodged a fist-sized stone. I almost lost my balance when my heel caught it. Instead, the stone rolled back over the edge and fell and fell while I found myself counting in my head.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven…
And only then, from far below, came the sound of it cracking against the sharp boulders at the bottom of the precipice.

A huge shape looms over me, its wings—as black as its eyes—spread wide, its claws
glittering like obsidian razors. Its unblinking stare is focused right on me, its muzzle like that of a huge dog, with teeth in sharp, even rows like those of a bat.

There’s no place to run or hide. I’m trying to figure out if there are any words that might make a difference, words that I can say to the old one that is gazing down at me the way a snake might stare at a mouse.

What was it that my mom said to me about the way a soldier behaves when there’s no escape? Stay calm. Don’t beg for your life. Be honest. I take two slow, deep breaths.

“Old one,” I say in Abenaki, “I did not choose to come here.”

Pmola leans closer. I smell its rank breath. “But you are here.” Its voice echoes inside my head as a long, taloned hand reaches for me.

I open my eyes. Pmola is gone. I am back on that bed of moss next to my grandfather, who is snoring softly. I’d thought I was so hyped up that I couldn’t possibly fall asleep. But I remember now that the last word my grandfather whispered to me was
“Oligawi.”
Sleep good. And I did, even if I didn’t dream good.

I’d have to be a total idiot not to understand the message in that dream.
Get out of here!

But how?

It will be morning soon. The only light is still that of the moon and the distant stars, but I can sense that dawn will soon be breaking over the ridges to the east of us. Despite what happened during the night, what Tip saw or thought he saw, Darby Field and his crew decided to press on. We’re only a “look” away, as distance was always measured in these mountains by my Abenaki elders. From here you can see the peak that is their destination, near Small Lake of the Clouds. That’s where my grandfather told them Pmola’s treasure is hidden. It’s a steep climb, taking us above the tree line, but it won’t take them more than an hour or two.

If we get there and they find what they are looking for, I have no doubt about what will happen to Grampa Peter and me. On the other hand, if what I think is there is waiting for them, then I have a good idea of what will happen to
all
of us.

What to do?

“Listen.” Grampa Peter says that word so softly into my ear that I doubt even a bat could hear it if it was more than an arm’s length away. And speaking of quiet, I hadn’t even realized that he’d
stopped snoring and sat up. That’s how silently he moves. I don’t know how I managed to keep from jumping when I felt his warm breath against my ear a half second before he spoke.

I listen. And with fewer words than you’d think would be necessary, he tells me what we need to do. Because I have long, strong legs and can run faster than him, I have a certain part to play. He has another.

I start to ask him about how we are supposed to free our hands, but when I raise them up I notice something. The duct tape has been cut through, probably while I was sleeping. My wrists are no longer fastened together.

I hold out my hands. “How?” I whisper. Maybe a little too loud.

Grampa Peter grabs my collar to pull me back close to him. He gives me a little shake and then whispers into my ear, “No Lakota.”

It is everything I can do to keep from laughing. He’s just told me a silly joke in two words. The word
hau
, which sounds just like
how
, is the Lakota Sioux word for “hello.” Here we are in deadly danger, and he is indulging in corny Indian humor.

Some people who do not know our family well think my grandfather is a little crazy, because
he has this tendency to laugh at very strange times. Some of his old Marine buddies told my dad that Grampa Peter would even start chuckling and telling rapid-fire jokes when he was in combat in Vietnam and the Vietcong were coming over the wire. But humor is a great thing if you can use it to slow down your pounding heart, to calm your fears, to make you focus in a situation where other people would be lost in panic. To be able to laugh in the face of peril, of absolute evil, is actually a very powerful thing.

So I play along and say “How?” again, but in Abenaki.

This time he gives me a straight answer.

“Houdini,” he whispers.

He holds out his hand. There’s a box cutter blade in it. Its edge glints in the moonlight. He holds up his left foot and shows me how the heel of his shoe pivots out when you press it a certain way to disclose the secret hollow where he had the blade hidden. Just like his hero Houdini always had lock picks and other little devices concealed on his person, my grandfather was prepared. I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, one of the old traditions among our Abenaki people is that no one can ever bind or tie down a real medicine man. Which is why
my grandfather sometimes says that Houdini could have been an Abenaki.

Grampa Peter hands me the blade. He doesn’t have to whisper anything when he does that. I know what he is silently saying to me.

You know what to do with this.

I nod.

H
ave you ever been walking through the woods and come upon what seems to be a wounded partridge, stumbling away from you with one wing flopping loose, as if it is broken? Naturally you walk toward it. If you’re a kindhearted person, it’s because you want to see if you can help it somehow. If you’re a hunter—and not a particularly bright one, I might add—then maybe you see it as an easy bird to catch for your dinner.

But just when you are almost ready to grab it, that bird flutters up and staggers a little farther away, maybe dragging its other wing this time. That is when, if you are a smart hunter, you catch on. In fact, if you know anything about
the behavior of mother birds, you haven’t even tried to catch it because you know it is trying to lure you away from its brood of little ones, which are hiding in the bushes in the opposite direction from the one that Mama has been trying to get you to go.

That’s my job. Lure them away. It’s going to take precise timing for them to not catch on to what I’m doing. I’ve been sitting here, just at the edge of the clearing, waiting for the right moment. Not that I haven’t already been real busy. I made good use of that box cutter blade before bringing it back to Grampa Peter.

Why didn’t the two of us just make a break for it, try to put as much distance as possible between us and Field’s gang? We could have done that, maybe even gotten away before they caught up with us. But there’s a good chance that we would not have made it. And even if we did get away, they might have decided not to chase us but to head to their original destination. And that is something that neither Grampa Peter nor I want to see happen.

There is another reason why Grampa Peter and I are doing things this way. We both have a feeling that unless we do try to stop them, unless we keep them from Pmola’s treasure, we will never
find our way home again. Because as soon as we set out on that trail yesterday, our journey took a turn that it is going to be hard for you to believe.

We went back in time.

Grampa Peter explained that to me. “We’re not just up,” he said, holding up his index finger and then pointing it over his shoulder. “We’re back.”

It made sense to me. That is why we haven’t seen any airplanes or other hikers. That’s why their cell phones couldn’t get a signal and their GPS units couldn’t make contact with the satellite. Where we are now, there aren’t any. It also explains what I saw just a little ways back when I was making my preparations. After I’d crept away from our sleeping captors and was out of earshot of them down the trail, just before I got to those trees that were the right size, I startled a little herd of some hoofed animals that were sleeping for the night. They took off down the hill, but not before I got a real close look at their broad horns and the white and cream color of their coats. They were caribou—animals that have been extinct in northern New England for over a century.

To understand what I’m saying or to even begin to get close to believing it, you have to think a little bit like an Indian. Not a modern-
day Indian whose head is totally into the European reality that has been piled up on top of this continent like landfill over a wetland, but a Native person who still remembers and believes in the wisdom of our old people. To us, time is not a straight line, and the past is never left behind. Instead, everything is a circle, and things keep happening again and again. Like the turn of the seasons or the movement of the earth around the great sun that makes day and night, day and night in an endless cycle.

I’m not talking about time travel, like in those corny movies when someone goes back in a machine or a souped-up car and does things that change the present and the future. I’m talking about stepping into a past that is always with us, a past that was then and is also now, where the flow and the balance remain unchanged. You won’t meet yourself as a little kid or see your own great-grandparents, but you will—if you’re Indian—find yourself in the ancient reality, the old earth that your ancestors knew. It’s always been there and it will always be there.

Those old beings, like Pmola, are at the edge of European reality. They’re just stories to most people. But, as my mom explained to me once,
they make sense to those of us who don’t see life in black-and-white terms. If you can’t find Sasquatches, for example, maybe it isn’t because they are just a legend. Maybe it is because they live most of the time in that other reality, the one that flows between past and present. They know the trails that lead back and forth between then and now. And our old Indian people knew those trails too. Sometimes we would only follow them in our dreams. But other times we could walk there on our feet. We could travel in ways most white people don’t think possible.

I’ve been listening carefully. I can no longer hear my Grampa Peter making his way along the trail opposite this one, the trail that leads upward. I can hear the sounds from the three tents, though.

I can hear Tip tossing and turning, talking to himself in the midst of the nightmares he’s having. I’m pretty sure I know what they are about. I can hear Darby Field snoring, making as much useless and irritating noise in his sleep as he does when he is awake. Louise, in her little tent, makes a sound as she sleeps, too. But it is more like a big cat purring than a snore. The quietest sleeper is Stazi. He’s the one I am most worried about. He already caught me once, and
if anyone knows enough to figure out what I am up to, it’s him.

The first light is just turning the clouds red and gold, coloring the hills to the west. It’s time. Darby Field has turned over and stopped snoring. He’s starting to wake up. I take my position next to the tree where we were tied. We’ve left the little piece of metal that Grampa Peter used to pick the lock still in place in the key slot.

“Run, Grampa!” I hiss in a harsh whisper that is plenty loud enough to be heard. Then I take a few clumsy steps and deliberately fall on the ground the way someone would who’s been tied for a long time and whose legs are half asleep and whose hands are duct-taped together.

“What!” The yell from Field’s tent tells me he’s heard just what I wanted him to hear. He pokes his head outside in time to see me get back to my feet and start running awkwardly toward the trail down the hill, my hands held up in front of me as if they were still secured by tape.

I don’t have to look back to see what is going on behind me: Field staring at the place where we both were tied, seeing the picked lock. The other three come out of their tents, Tip stumbling, Louise as lithe as a panther, and Stazi
already fully dressed with his boots on his feet and the look of a hunter in his eyes. I am out of their sight and running for real now, vaulting over rocks, scooting around boulders, but I am not too far away to hear Field’s bellow.

“Get them!”

And then the sound of thudding feet in pursuit.