Black Bird
Five Nations Territory (Modern-Day New York)
Once again, Black Bird found himself looking into the eyes of death. It was that obsidian hawk, Makade-gekek, ominous and haunting, perched on a rock in the cave he and Anne-Marie were hiding in. Its black, beady eyes gazed at him lidlessly, as if waiting for an answer to a question it did not ask. When the creature first came to him in the third darkness of the midewigaan, he saw it as a spirit of his clan keeping watch over him. Now, he felt like a dying bird circled by a buzzard—soon to be carrion.
By some miraculous twist of fate, the bullet had not killed him outright. It was Härkönen’s journal that saved him—he had tucked it into an inner fold of his shirt just at his breast, the only possession the Snakes did not take from him. The thick leather binding and dense stack of papers slowed the bullet just enough to not shatter his clavicle. But only just. When he took his first bullet during the assault on Wawyatenaak, it was a lesser hit, and he still nearly lost his arm, even after being tended to by Midewiwin in the next village over. Here, there was no one but Anne-Marie, with no medical knowledge at all. She was his only chance to survive the strange malaise his injury brought him.
It was a horrid condition, one he was spared all his life until now, one he did not understand. A smothering heat came and left him, bringing sweat with it. The chills made his teeth chatter and his skin shiver and goosebump. The exterior of his body was left mostly intact from the blow—he had seen bullets crush bones just as often as they pierced the skin. He was spared from both, all thanks to his dead mentor’s journal that now lay in shredded tatters. And still, he was left in this state. It was as if the bullet had been covered in poison, so desperate to kill him, and the toxins had spread into his body, despite the miracle that saved him.
Anne-Marie did what she could. Black Bird rattled off a list of herbs to look for nearby—practically anything he could remember, just in case it would help. If his aunt did one thing for him in all the years he stayed under her roof, it was teach him how to take care of himself. Still, he had no idea what exactly ailed him. What would help, then? He could only guess. He was thankful, at least, that Anne-Marie never doubted him, never complained. She committed all his ramblings to memory, taking them seriously. He was thankful to be cared for by someone (an exceeding rarity in his life), and especially that it happened to be her.
If there was any consolation in all his pain, it was that he knew, at the very least, it wasn’t the pox. He wondered how awful a fate that would be, if what he suffered now was driving him to madness. Through all the many trials of his life so far, this was the first time he felt like he was truly dying. His breathing was short and labored. Consciousness came and left him without warning. He was at the whim of whatever ailed him, powerless to even move during the worst of it.
Worst of all, perhaps, he was left alone with nothing but his thoughts. All he could think about was White Sky. Where could he be? Even the Red Fox who saved him did not know, and he lived in the largest city of Westernmost snakes, which Black Bird was sure his friend would be taken to. He was overwhelmed with confusion and guilt, muddled and mixed by the tumult of his addled mind. It was all his fault. He brought the old man with them, convinced White Sky to let him stay. The man lured the Snakes, though it could not have been entirely intentional—strange and erratic as he was, he did not have a death wish himself. Not that it mattered now. Everyone he had known and loved was dead and gone, and it was his fault. Why should he be the one left alive? Why should he stumble upon a beautiful girl and learn to love again, to believe again that the deep wounds in his soul could be mended? It was not a joy he deserved.
Sleep came in hard, crashing waves, knocking him into stupors and unwelcome dreams despite his efforts to resist them. He was alone in his canoe, flailing hopelessly in rocky rapids with no paddle. He would sleep, then wake, then sleep again. And through it all Makade-gekek watched him, waiting for something. Black Bird wondered what that could possibly be, but he was too tired and too bitter to wonder long. Why should he care? All it ever did was watch. Some guardian.
His dreams were strange, fragmented things, haunting him more often than not. His senses were assaulted and battered while he was awake, yet sleep brought him no reprieve. He heard cackling in the darkness, whispers from beyond the fog. His ghosts were mocking him, gleefully awaiting his demise. In the worst hours, it seemed inevitable, his death. His heart was gripped in a vise, his breathing frantic and pleading. Even through his nightmares, he would beg. Please. I cannot die here. I don’t want to die. I know I should. I know it’s what I deserve. But I am so afraid. Please, please, have mercy.
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He came to know the darkness so well, though it could never bring him any comfort or peace. After the midewigaan, he never thought he would see it again—no, he prayed he would never see it again. It was something no man should ever know, let alone become comfortable with. Its tendrils played in the annals of his mind, nesting in the nooks and crannies. He felt himself slowly corrupting, hour after hour, though what an hour was he could no longer guess. Time became a foreign, abstract thing to him. Was it day or night? How many days had passed since they escaped? How long had they been in this cave? He could not know. It took everything he had just to stay awake for a precious few moments, before the darkness took him again.
Black Bird had always suffered from nightmares, especially since the attack on the village and the loss of his father. They varied in their subjects, their lengths, their cohesiveness, as all dreams did. He had never lent them much credence—at least, not consciously. They, like his other ghosts, seeped into him quietly, taking their places as subtle puppeteers of his psyche. He was always crankiest after a bad sleep, his biggest outburst at White Sky or Anne-Marie secretly influenced by a dream that bothered him, even if he could not remember it once he woke.
Now, the nightmare was all he knew. During his brief moments of lucidity, he fought to keep his eyelids from shutting, knowing what lay in wait for him. It was a battle he always lost. As soon as his eyes closed, they were upon like screeching vultures. Every fear he’d ever felt, every repressed desire, every pang of guilt, every bleeding fire of hatred and hurt. Dreams were always strange things that played by their own odd rules. These phantoms before him were incomprehensible—eldritch chimeras stitched together from his own feverish madness. They peppered his senses relentlessly, vision after vision. Härkönen lying on the snow, bleeding out, rats crawling out from his eyes while he smokes a peace pipe. The great horned serpent Gaasyendietha, spewing shells of wampum rather than fire, hacking and puking them up onto the shores of a beach. His mother sitting by a glass window in a white man’s home, brushing her hair—each comb bringing a lock with it, until there’s nothing left to comb out but her skin, her muscle, her bone. The faces of his future white classmates at Harvard morphing into White Sky’s, laughing and laughing and laughing. Bound to a wooden post in a longhouse, surrounded by Snakes. They methodically peel his skin off with metal scrapers, rolling and kneading it like doe, heating it over the fire pit till it hardens, fashioning it into spears. His eyes become bullets, his bones into rifles. And through it all, he can still see. In the corner of these visages, a visitor lurks. Not Makade-gekwek. Something more sinister. Vaguely humanoid, shrouded in all three darknesses, like it was born swaddled in them. Two gnarled horns on his head. He heard his father’s ramblings, the ones he committed to heart as a child, so unused to ever hearing them. It could be nothing but the Christian devil Lucifer, the king of Hell. He watched all these torments silently, his presence exuding a smothering weight that slowly crushed Black Bird’s throat until he could no longer breathe. I’m going to die. Tears streamed down his face before boiling and turning to blistering oil, smoldering in the dirt of the longhouse. I’m going to die. I’m going to die. I’m going to die.
Then, he woke. The first thing he saw was Anne-Marie. His father has spoken to his son of the devil, but he had also spoken of angels, the guardians of heaven. She looked to him as one, her worried face shining from the light behind her that shrouded her head like a halo.
Slowly, his senses returned to him. His forehead felt cool and damp. She had torn off a part of her skirt, using it as a makeshift rag to cool his sweat-drenched brow. The water dripped down his face, soothing his fever. He felt Anne-Marie grip his hand and squeeze it tight in hers.
“Ça va, mon Oiseau noir?” She asked him. Gifted as he was with language, he could hardly translate now. Not that he needed to—her words in his ears were a balm made of honey.
He somehow mustered the strength to sit up, if only to be closer to her. The rag fell onto his lap, and she grabbed it to put it back. His head began to burn up again with fever, but he ignored it, his eyes frozen on hers. He wished he could look into them forever. It took so much just to keep his own open.
“Sleep,” she cooed, and he was thankful he understood the word. “Sleep, and conserve your strength.”
He tried to respond to her, to tell her what awaited him if he slept, to beg her to save him. His throat was parched and hollow, and he couldn’t muster a single word. His mind fizzled when he tried to think of French. Anne-Marie saw him struggle, and she stroked his hair tenderly before cupping his cheek in her palm.
“Sleep,” she said. “And don’t be afraid. I’m right here with you.”
Black Bird felt his energy leave him as quick as it came, and he could keep himself upright no longer. He used what little he had left to say something, anything to her.
“Gizaagi’in,” he uttered. The words came strained from his tired lips—it was a labor to even speak them, but he needed to. They came as if without his knowledge, his heart overriding his mind to ensure it was said. She deserved to know. The world deserved to know. And as soon as he said it, he collapsed again, falling awkwardly into her lap. And this time, as he faded away into dream, the nightmare didn’t come. By some miracle, he found himself resting peacefully for the first time since the bullet struck him. Gizaagi’in. He finally told her, and he finally found some serenity. In his state, he didn’t have the strength to tell her it meant “I love you”.