The Skrayling Tree (5 page)

I had not expected to awake at all. When I did, I felt a surprising sense of well-being, of safety. I was lying on springy
turf, tightly wrapped in some sort of blanket. I could smell the sweet grass and heather. I was warm. I was relaxed. Yet I
remained calmly aware of the danger I had escaped and of the urgency of my mission. In contrast to my earlier experience,
I now felt completely in control of my body, even though I could barely move a finger! Had I reached the realm where my husband
had been taken? Was Ulric near? Was that why I felt safe?

I could see the grey, unstable sky. It was either dawn or twilight. I could not turn my head enough to see a horizon. I moved
my eyes. Above me a man’s face looked down at me with an expression of stern amusement.

He was a complete stranger, but instinctively I knew I had no reason to fear him. I had found my imagined warrior. The smooth-shaven
face was well proportioned, even handsome, and decorated with elaborate tattoos etched across his forehead, cheeks, chin and
scalp. His head was mostly shaven, the only piece of hair worn in a long, gleaming black lock interwoven with three bright
eagle feathers, but his healthy copper skin told me that he was not one of those who had captured my husband. He wore earrings,
and his nose and lower lip were pierced with small sapphires. On his
temples, cheeks and chin was a deep scarlet smear of paint. Running down either side of his chest were long, white scars.
Between these scars a design had been pricked into his skin. On his well-muscled upper arms were intricately worked bracelets
of raw gold, and around his throat he wore a wide band of mother-of-pearl which seemed to be a kind of armor. His tattoos
were in vivid reds, greens, blues and yellows and reminded me of those I had once seen displayed by powerful shamans in the
South Seas. A nobleman of some sort, confident of his own ability to protect the wealth he displayed with such careless challenge.

He regarded me with equal frankness, his dark eyes full of ironic humor. “Sometimes an angler prays for a catch and gets more
than he bargains for.” He spoke a language I understood but could not identify. This was a common experience for moonbeam
walkers.

“You
caught
me?”

“Apparently. I am rather proud of myself. It was less exhausting than I had expected. I enjoyed the dancing. With the appropriate
incantations and trance, I laid out the robe with the head facing the moon and the tail facing the water. I did as I had learned.
I invoked the spirits of the wind. I called to the water to give up her treasure. Sure enough there was an agitation in the
air. A strong wind blew. Being in a trance, I heard it from a distance. When I at last opened my eyes I found you thus and
wrapped you in the robe for your health, your modesty and because the incantation demanded it.” He spoke with a sardonic,
friendly, slightly self-mocking air.

“I was naked?” Now I recognized the special sensation of soft animal skin against my own. Whatever one’s notions about taking
a fellow creature’s life, that touch is irresistible. While I’d accepted my adopted culture’s ways, I had no special concern
about being seen undressed. I had far more urgent questions. “But what of the medicine shield?”

He frowned. “The Kakatanawa war-shield? That was yours?”

“What happened to it? I was caught up in a violent wind which seemed to have intelligence. It deliberately separated me from
the shield.”

The warrior was apologetic. “I believe—you’ll recall I was in a trance—I believe that is what I saw spinning away in that
direction. A wind demon, perhaps?” He pointed to a thickly wooded hillside some distance away around the lake. “So it was
a medicine shield and has been stolen by a demon. Or escaped you both and gone home to its owner?”

“Without me,” I said bitterly. I was beginning to realize that this man had, through his magic, somehow saved my life. But
had he or the elemental diverted me from following Ulric? “That shield was all that linked me with my husband. He could be
anywhere in the multiverse.”

“You are of the Kakatanawa? Forgive me; I knew they had adopted one of you in their number, but not two.” He was obviously
puzzled, but some sort of understanding was dawning, also.

“I am not a Kakatanawa.” I was no longer quite so thoroughly in control of my emotions. A note of desperation
must have come into my voice. “But I seek the shield’s owner.”

He responded like a gentleman. He seemed to understand the supernatural conditions involved and lowered his head in thought.

“Where is its owner? Do you know?” I began to struggle in the soft robe. With a word of apology, that elegant woodsman knelt
down and untied rawhide knots.

“No doubt with the other Kakatanawa,” he said. “But that is where I am going, so it’s reassuring for me. I do not know how
they will receive me. It is my destiny to carry my wisdom to them. The fates begin the weaving long before we understand the
design. We will go together as our mutual fate demands. We will be stronger together. We will achieve our different goals
and thus bring all to resolution.”

I didn’t understand him. I stood up, wrapping myself in the robe. It was wonderfully supple, the skin of a white buffalo,
decorated with various religious symbols. I looked around me. It was just after dawn, and the sun was making the wide, still
water shine like a mirror. “If you told me your name, your calling and your purpose with me, I would be at less of a disadvantage.”

He smiled apologetically and began busying himself with his camp. Behind him was the rising sun, now clearing the furthest
peaks of a massive mountain range, its orange light pouring across forest and meadow, touching the small, undecorated lodge
erected on the grassy lakeside. From the wigwam came a wisp of grey smoke. It was a hunter’s economical kit. The lodge’s
coverings could be used as robes against the cold, and the poles could function as a travois to carry everything else. A hunting
dog could also be used to pull the travois, but I saw no evidence of dogs. The shadows were dissipating, and the light was
already growing less vivid as the sun climbed into a clearing sky.

My host seemed in very high spirits. He was a charming man. Nothing about him was threatening, though he radiated a powerful
personality and physical strength. I wondered if his tattoos and piercings marked him as a shaman or sachem. He was clearly
accustomed to authority.

I was obviously no longer on the Nova Scotian coast, but the surrounding world did not look very different from the landscapes
I had just left. Indeed, it was vaguely familiar. Perhaps it was Lake Superior?

Pulled up on the grassy bank of our natural meadow was a large, exquisitely fashioned canoe of glittering silver birchbark,
its copper-wound edges finished in exquisite wooden inlays painted with spiritual symbols. There was no sign of another human
being in the whole of creation. It was like the dawn of the world, a truly virgin America. The season was still early autumn
with a hint of winter in the freshening breeze. The breeze did not overly alarm me. I asked him which lake this was.

“I was born not far from here. It is commonly called Gitche Gumee,” he said. “You know the Longfellow poem?”

“I understood Longfellow mangled half a dozen languages in the process and got all the names wrong.” I spoke, as one sometimes
does, in a kind of cultural apology,
but I was also remembering something Klosterheim had said. I was fairly certain this man was not just a modern romantic adopting
a favorite role in the wilderness. I doubted, if I looked further, I would find a station wagon nearby!

This man was wholly authentic. He smiled at my remark. “Oh, there’s nothing wrong with what Longfellow included. The rituals
remain in spite of the flourishes. Nobody ever asked the women their story, so their rituals remain secret, undistorted. There
are many roads to the spirit’s resolution with the flesh. It is with what old Longfellow excluded and what he added that I
have my quarrel. But it is my destiny to bring light to my own story. And that is the destiny which I dreamed in that journey.
I must restore the myth and address the great Matter of America.” He seemed embarrassed by his own seriousness and smiled
again. “As if I’d hand over the spiritual leadership of the Nations to a bunch of half-educated Catholic missionaries! There
is no trinity without White Buffalo Woman. So it is a triptych missing a panel. That ludicrous stuff Longfellow put in at
the end was a sop to drawing-room punctilio and worse than the sentimental ending Dickens tacked on to
Bleak House.
Or was it
Great Expectations?”

“I’ve never been able to get into Dickens,” I said.

“Well,” he replied, “I don’t have much opportunity myself.” He frowned slightly and looked up at me. “I don’t want to take
credit for more than is right. While it is my destiny to unite the Nations, I might fail where an alter ego might have succeeded.
One wrong step, and I
change everything. You know how difficult it is.” He fell into frowning thought.

“You had better introduce yourself, sir,” I said, half anticipating his answer.

He apologized. “I am Ayanawatta, whom Longfellow preferred to call ‘Hiawatha.’ My mother was a Mohawk and my father was a
Huron. I discovered my story in the poem when I made my dream journey into the future. Here. I have something for you …” He
threw me a long doeskin shirt which was easily slipped on and fit me very well. Was he used to traveling with such things?
He laughed aloud and explained that the last man who tried to kill him had been about my size.

He began expertly to dismantle the wigwam. To close down his fire he simply put a lid on the pot he carried it in and secured
it with a bit of rawhide. The lodge’s contents were folded in the hides and rolled into a tight bundle. The firepot was tied
on top. I saw now that the poles were made of long, flint-tipped spears. He laid these along the bottom of the canoe and put
the bundle in the middle. He had broken the entire encampment with little evident expenditure of energy.

“You seem very familiar with English literature,” I said.

“I owe it a great deal. As I said, through Longfellow’s poem I discovered my destiny. I had reached the time of my first true
dream-quest. I dreamed a dream in which I saw four feathers. I decided that this meant I must seek four eagles in the places
of the four winds. First I went into the wilderness and took the north path called The Eagle, for I thought that was the meaning
of the dream.
It took me into a land of mountains. It was not a true path. But in leaving that path, I found myself in Boston at the right
time. I was looking to see if I had a myth. And if I had a myth I had to find out how to follow it and make it true. Well,
you can work out that irony for yourself. I entered a time in the future long after I had died. I learned strange skills.
I learned to read in the language of these new people, whose appearance at first astonished me. There were many amiable souls
in those parts more than willing to help me, though the self-righteous voices of the bourgeoisie were often raised against
my appearance. However, learning to read that way was part of my first real spirit journey. For once I had opened my spirit
to the future, I received not just a vision of the founding of the Haudenosaunee, the People of the Same Roof, but I saw what
was to follow them, unless I trod a certain path. In order to find the future I desire, I must maintain the immediate future
as exactly as possible.”

“You weren’t offended by Longfellow’s acquisition of various native mythologies?”

“Longfellow was genial, lively, kind. And hideously hairy. As a Mohawk I inherited a distaste for male body hair. The Romans
were the same, apparently. Yet, for all that, the poet’s good nature cut through any prejudice I felt about his appearance.
He had an eccentric, springy gait and bounced when he walked. I remember thinking him a bit overdressed for the time of year,
but he probably considered me underdressed. I hadn’t acquired these.” He fingered his tattoos with modest pride.

“I was originally interested in the transcendentalists.
Emerson planned to introduce me to Thoreau, but Longfellow dropped into Parker House that day as well. It was by chance that
we had occasion to talk. He was not entirely sure that I was real. He was so absorbed in his poem I think he suspected at
first he had imagined me! When Emerson introduced us, he probably considered me some sort of noble savage.” Ayanawatta laughed
softly. “Thoreau, I suspect, found me a little coarse. But Longfellow was good-natured almost to a fault. It was a fated meeting
and played an important part in his own journey. I understood his poem to be a prophecy of how I would make my mark in the
world. The four feathers I had mistaken for eagle feathers in my dream were, of course, four quill pens. Four writers! I had
made the wrong interpretation but taken the right action. That was where the luck really came in. I was a bit callow. It was
the first time I had visited the astral realm in physical form. Sadly, that phase of the journey is over. I don’t know when
I’ll see a book again.”

Ayanawatta began to roll up his sleeping mat with the habitual neatness and speed of the outdoorsman. “Well, you know we use
wampum in these parts, to remind us of our wisdom and our words.” He indicated the intricately worked belt which supported
his deerskin leggings. “And this stuff is as open to subtle and imaginative interpretation as the Bible, Joyce or the American
Constitution. Sometimes our councils are like a gathering of French postmodernists!”

“Can you take me to my husband?” I was beginning to realize that Ayanawatta was one of those men who
took pleasure in the abstract and whose monologues could run for hours if not interrupted.

“Is he with the Kakatanawa?”

“I believe so.”

“Then I can lead you to them.” His voice softened. “I have had no dream to the contrary, at least. Possibly your husband could
be or will become the friend of my friend Dawandada, who is also called White Crow.” He paused with an expression of apology.
“I talk too much and speculate too wildly. One gets used to talking to oneself. I have not had a chance for ordinary human
conversation with a reasonably well-educated entity for the last four years. And you, well—you are a blessing. The best dance
I ever danced, I must say. I had expected some laconic demigoddess to complete our trio. I wasn’t even sure you were going
to be human. The dream told me what to do, not what to expect. There is an ill wind rising against us, and I do not know why.
I have had confusing dreams.”