Black Bird
Five Nations Territory (Modern-Day New York)
Despite all the misfortunes he had suffered in his life, Black Bird was thankful that they hadn’t yet destroyed him. There had been times he had almost surrendered. When he was fifteen, surviving alone in the wild, he considered it. After the loss of his father, the destruction of Wawyaatenak, the disappearance of his best friend, he considered it. As he wandered through the lands of the Anishinaabeg, scorned by his own countrymen as an ill omen, he nearly succumbed. Yet still he continued on, some scant hope in his heart that there was a place for him in this cruel and confusing world, that there was some part he could play.
Now, he was glad to have listened to that hope. This girl brought something out of him, some aspect from the deepest parts of his soul. Even he wasn’t fully sure what it was. It emerged awkward and malformed, slowly molding itself with each passing day he spent in her company. What shape would it be tomorrow? The wondering kept him going, gave him a reason to wake each morning.
Of course, it was not all bliss. They were still, after all, in the land of his enemy. They had made it past the Western Door, and were somewhere between the second and third of the Five Nations. Every time he and Anne-Marie started to feel comfortable and safe, they would hear a den of Snakes slithering beyond the bend. And though they had always managed to hide or avoid them thus far, there had been more than one close call, and Black Bird was never able to let down his guard. Nor would he want to, in the company of a girl so keen to unravel every fraying thread of his self.
That unraveling was as painful as it was joyous. It was a strange, exhilarating, terrifying feeling, to be known, to be slowly and methodically discovered. Through their silly games to pass the time, Anne-Marie had not only started to learn who Black Bird was, or thought he was—she made him unearth and confront parts of himself he had never even considered. It was not necessarily that she changed him—these thoughts and feelings had always been there. Only, they had been buried somewhere so deep he would no longer think of them himself—never erased or destroyed, influencing the rest of him through the unseen machinations of his subconscious. His mind, that complex and confusing thing, never seemed to listen to his instructions—it hid parts of himself from himself, forcing the most painful memories to forget themselves (though never entirely). Or perhaps, they were not the most painful, for what could hurt more than what he had just endured? The more he spoke with her, the more she unraveled him, he began to realize that what he buried were not the worst memories, but the ones he was the least equipped to handle. Most of them were from his early childhood—memories of his mother, before and after the illness that took her, fragments of his father’s scant presence, the ache of his absence.
With each passing day, each resolution of their game, more and more of that pathetic child was uncovered. He never allowed these secrets, which even he was not privy to, to emerge voluntarily—in fact, he fought against it, especially in the first few weeks. He shut Anne-Marie out, even shut himself out, forcing the loving and hopeful part of him down into the miserable abyss inside him. Over time, though, this proved to be an impossible task—the child in him cried out to be known, to be soothed and coddled and sang to the way it never was. Its frantic pleas boiled to the top of him until it spilled from his mouth in some awkward, humiliating fashion. It was embarrassing, he felt, to be a stranger to himself, to learn about his own life at the same pace that she did. Moreso certainly because of how fragile he realized he was. He was a man, by Manitou! All this time he thought he’d become tougher, hardened by the necessity of his experience. How did it take twenty years to know what the boy in him had always needed?
And as harrowing as this ordeal was, he was thankful to be enduring it with her. Anne-Marie never judged or mocked him, for she, too, underwent this same transformation. It was an odd and tender symbiosis—two souls, scorned by this world, finding refuge in one another. He taught her to be stronger, she taught him to be softer. She was the strangest of sanctuaries—she was from another world, unable to fully grasp his trials, past and present. Yet still they melted away at the sound of her voice, of her laughter. It gave him hope, distant as it was, that they would one day fade forever, and he could selfishly indulge in the pleasance of her company without worry or sorrow.
Still, there was a part of him that would likely never recover, wounds too deep for even her to soothe. The mind, that fickle creature, in all its misguided efforts to protect him, sometimes caused more harm. It was his mind, after all, that brought his nightmares, constant and blood-curdling. It was his mind that made his youth a distant, vague haze, rather than a painful memory. Even now, it warped his perception, corrupted his thoughts. He was lucky to sleep three hours in a night before he jolted awake, fearing some inevitable attack. It was a particularly cruel curse, to have inherited his father’s deepest traumas, to have it echo his own. How many of the Wendat felt like this, lived like this, in those last few years? On the verge of destruction, watching their loved ones disappear, devoured one after another by the ever-gaping maw of war? It was enough to drive even the sanest minds to madness. And as Black Bird felt his own sanity start to slip away, guilt began to creep into the now-vacant space. Hypocrite that he was, to hate his father for the failings he felt himself succumbing to. But how was he supposed to feel any different? He was a child who needed a father’s love and never got it. His mind tossed and wrestled with itself each sleepless night, an ouroboros of confusing contradictions.
And that was not all his mind did. He had always approached things in a different manner. The late Härkönen always told him he had a knack for patterns, for reading between the lines. White Sky always took things very literally, which made him great at mathematics and overt analysis, but for Black Bird, this was never enough. He wanted to know the great Why’s of the universe, to learn the beat to which life’s drums were played. And while he had always had an inherent gift for it, this gift, like the rest of his psyche, had warped into something new and strange. Patterns were no longer something he picked up on—rather, they were thrust upon him, battering his senses against his will. He saw things everywhere, connections between the lines of reality’s fabric. Only, he didn’t know whether these were real or figments of his imagination.
This strange uncertainty around his own thoughts and perceptions bothered him more than anything else. If he could not trust his own mind, what could he trust? And more importantly, how could Anne-Marie trust him? Would she feel the same, think the same, if he laid bare the truth that he himself barely understood?
These thoughts swam in ambling circles in the mire of his heart, day after day, week after week. Like all of his other secrets, though, it could not lurk beneath the surface forever. That damnable girl, her innocent curiosity, prying him open, question by question, extracting every last wisp of his forsaken soul on that near-endless river.
“Tell me something you’ve never told another soul,” she asked of him, their game having progressed by now to a deep, fundamental state. Each question took time and care to think of, and even more to answer.
Black Bird leaned against the back end of the canoe—it was Anne-Marie’s turn to row. He looked to the sky, as if it would provide an answer for him, that he could continue to hide. But then, of course, that would mean he’d lose the game, and White Sky would never forgive him for losing a fair contest. Where was he now? Black Bird didn’t know what he should pray for. Dead and at peace, living and suffering. A small spark in him hoped that it would be neither, but he had seen enough of this world to know better.
Black Bird mused on what to tell her, and Anne-Marie didn’t pester him—she knew how long the questions took now. His first thought was to his father, to his vision quest with the wabanow. His Wendat blood flowed freely from his pores, begging to not be forgotten. Then again, his uncle likely knew. Even White Sky had his suspicions.
He could tell her that he loved her. That was what this feeling was, wasn’t it? Whenever his eyes wandered, they somehow landed on her. In the scant few moments he dreamt of something lovely, she was always there. What else could this be but love?
No. It wasn’t time. He didn’t know when the right time would be, or how he would even recognize it, but it wasn’t now. This strange feeling, if it was love, was too new, too terrifying to even feel, let alone to share.
Black Bird looked out to the water, and as if to answer him, he saw a turtle ambling slowly by the riverbank.
“I’m hungry,” Black Bird said suddenly.
“You haven’t answered,” Anne-Marie said, crossing her arms.
“I will, I will. Let’s stop and eat first.”
Anne-Marie acquiesced, steering the canoe over to the eastern bank. As soon as they dragged it onto land, Black Bird leaped out, scooping up the turtle. It squirmed uncomfortably in his grasp, and he carried it happily over.
“No,” Anne-Marie told him, concern and disgust in her face. “Absolutely not. I’ve finally gotten used to the rabbits.”
“You misunderstand,” Black Bird said with a laugh. “He’s going to help me answer the question.”
To prepare for their lunch, Black Bird kindled the fire, and Anne-Marie skinned the rabbits. She had come so far in only a month—now, that once-feeble girl carried her own weight. She rowed the canoe most of the time, giving Black Bird a much-needed opportunity to study, and she skinned the rabbits and cleaned the fish. She nearly fainted the first time he showed her how, and here she was, like it was nothing. She, just like him, fell into the steady rhythm of each other’s company, finding a peace in it.
As they set the rabbits on sticks to grill over the fire, Black Bird grabbed the turtle again, who had tried in vain to scurry away. It predictably retreated inside its shell. How convenient, he thought, to be able to hide whenever, to know you’ll always be protected. Still, he only needed the shell to prove his point.
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“Take him for a moment,” he told Anne-Marie, handing the turtle to her. “Look at its shell. What do you see?”
She studied it.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to be seeing,” she said.
“Just describe it to me.”
“It’s got these ridges along the side…” she said, running her hand across them. “And it’s made up of these segments.”
“And how many sides do these segments have?”
“Six,” she said, after counting.
“Right,” Black Bird said, nodding.
“So what?”
“This by itself is rather unremarkable,” he explained, taking a few moments to find the right words. “But together, they create a pattern. What I’m trying to say, I suppose, is that if I had never caught this turtle and brought it to you, you might never have looked upon its shell, and you might go your whole life without noticing it’s made up of a series of intricate hexagons. But I can’t help but notice. I notice them, and other things, everywhere, all the time.”
“Explain.”
“Alright. Have you ever seen the inside of a beehive?”
“No.”
“Well, if you did, you'd see it’s made up of these tiny little structures the bees make called honeycombs. And do you know what shape the honeycombs are?”
“Hexagons?”
“Hexagons.”
“Well, isn’t that just a coincidence? What do bees have to do with turtles?”
“Not just bees, and not just turtles.” Black Bird began, his excitement thrumming in his mind. He rushed over to his collection of books, and pulled out one of them, a red leather tome with golden lettering: Micrographia. He thumbed through the pages until he found what he needed.
“Look,” he showed her. “The man who wrote this book has a device called a microscope that allows you to see things too small for the naked eye. He’s drawn a diagram of an insect here. Look at its eyes!”
Anne-Marie studied the page for a moment.
“They’re made up of tiny little hexagons,” she gasped.
“Again and again, they appear to me,” Black Bird said. “Ever since I was a child. Not these patterns always, either—there are so many, if you take the time to look.”
His point made now, Black Bird grabbed the turtle from Anne-Marie’s lap, carrying him down to the river and returning it to where he first saw it. Coming back, he sat next to Anne-Marie, watching the turtle escape into the water.
“All my life, I had thought that these were just arbitrary things,” he said. “That they didn’t really mean anything. Then a few months ago, I found a teacher. He was a very smart, very strange man. He taught me about another very smart man who believed that everything had a true Form. Everything we see and perceive is some bastardization of a true quality, imperceptible and unknowable to mortal men. Ever since my teacher mentioned it, I can’t stop thinking about it. To me, the best clue to these Forms are the patterns they create. These hexagons mean something. There’s a reason it’s been chosen—by the turtle, by the honeybee. And I don’t know why, but I feel like if I can understand that reason, I can understand the whole world, and all of its infinite mysteries.”
“So why do they choose it?” Anne-Marie asked.
Black Bird shook his head.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But I desperately want to find out. And I’m not the only one. This is the magic of reading—you’ll find someone who lived across the world from you a hundred years ago who thinks and feels just the way you do.”
Black Bird fumbled through his collection, finding a small pamphlet nestled between two larger tomes.
“This is a paper on snowflakes,” he said. “Written by another genius named Kepler. ”
“He dedicated a whole paper to snowflakes?” Anne-Marie asked, a bit incredulously.
“Why not? Have you ever stopped to look at a snowflake, to really admire its structure?”
Anne-Marie shook her head.
“If you had, you’d notice they’re different in shape and size, every single one. And yet, despite all their differences, they always have the exact same number of points.”
“Six,” Anne-Marie said, realizing his point.
Black Bird nodded.
“Kepler wondered why this was. Never seven, never five. So why six? He had some theories, but didn’t reach an exact conclusion—the mystery remains. I want to… I want to discover the answer. To this, to so many other questions. I can read the patterns—they call out like shining lights in the shallows of my mind. But I don’t know why they do, or what they mean, if they mean anything.”
Black Bird let his words trail off as he became lost in thought. After a few moments, he turned to see Anne-Marie looking at him. A heat of embarrassment rose in his cheeks. I’ve said too much—showed her too much of me.
“Do… do you think I’m strange?” He asked.
“I think you’re amazing,” she replied. “Never in my life would I have noticed something like that. I imagine most people wouldn’t. I suppose that does make you strange, then, in the truest sense of the word. And isn’t that a wonderful thing to be, don’t you think, when everyone else is so plain?”
Black Bird shrugged. He never knew how to respond to kindness, stranger that it was to him.
“Your turn,” he told her.
Anne-Marie cocked her head to the side, confused.
“What do you mean?” She asked.
“Tell me something you’ve never told another soul.”
At the mention of it, she seemed to think, though only for a moment. Then, her eyes widened ever so slightly, and her cheeks reddened, as if she arrived at an answer that she couldn’t speak of.
“That,” he said, pointing at her. “Whatever just possessed you. That’s what I want to know.”
“I can’t,” she said, her voice exasperated, like the mere thought of it was suffocating her.
“Sure, you can.” Black Bird inched closer to her, not allowing her to escape from it. “Why can’t you?”
“It’s a secret.”
“I told you mine.”
“Yes, but it’s… it’s different.”
“I don’t think it is.”
Her eyes wandered from him, but she did not move away as his face came closer and closer to hers.
“I…” She stuttered, to the same beat as his heart. “I…”
Her lips quivered in some pained anticipation. His gaze drifted to them, his own mere inches away. Tugged forward by a mixture of instinct and desire, they began to purse. Closer and closer.
Then, a sound. A crunch of leaves and twigs behind him, and Anne-Marie, distracted by the moment that had unfolded between them, now snapped to look at it. He saw her eyes widen in terror, and he began to turn, then stopped. He saw it, too, though not behind him—in front, to his right, to his left. Men of the longhouse, armed with muskets. He had not heard them coming—they must have seen their fire from afar, and snuck in while the two were lost in their conversation. You fool! You idiot! Panic gripped his heart, paralyzing him. His mind screamed at him to run, but his body didn’t listen—his feet were leaden, his tongue turned to cotton. All he could do was sit there as they slowly closed in, familiar jaws snapping shut to seal his inescapable doom.