Gentle Wind
Penobscot Land (Modern-day Maine)
She had done it. She had won!
Wlelômsen basked in it. She knew that it was a small victory, in the grand scheme of things—they rebuffed a meager retinue of two dozen men. Still, they were thwarted so easily—her own side had not suffered a single loss. This was the result of her triumph at Kahnawake. This was the strength of a united Wabanaki. Should New England be fool enough to attack them again (and she was sure they would), they would be ready. They would win.
The attackers were put to death as swiftly and humanely as one could expect. This was, after all, an act of war. No formal declaration, no mighty army to march on their lands. Just a disparate handful of vagabonds, bloodthirsty and eager to conquer. But war had begun all the same. While the men drank and feasted to celebrate their victory, a dark cloud hung over the revelry. It shone a dark and sullen sheen in the eyes of those who knew what would come tomorrow. The oldest veterans, the men with missing eyes and fingers, even the young Milapskicuwon. Two wolves howled inside them—jubilant and somber, hopeful and terrified. Gentle Wind felt the clash, too. It clung to her with the bite of ice, then melted into relief, then hardened again. Ever the cycle, that endless tumult of this age run rampant.
Of course, there were other thoughts in her mind, too. Some danced and teased like the trickster Gluskabe, distracting her from the worries that nagged. Her eyes could not help but drift and wander to Taqanansis, who drank and belched and laughed. His was a tremendous bellow of a laugh, ringing loud and mighty above the din of festivity. In her ears it was a splendid song, mellifluent as the thrush and mourning dove. Gentle Wind forced herself to turn away from him in time, wary of that affectionate stare unbecoming of a widow. Still, she perhaps lingered just a bit too long, savoring the look of him in a way that one would notice if they were watching.
She did her due diligence, making her way to every chief that had come, smiling and thanking them in her calm, diplomatic way. Not all the Wabanaki were here—not all were needed, for a triviality like this. They needed enough to overwhelm their attackers, to shock and awe the man John Goodman, that he would return and spread tales tall and hyperbolic of their new union. She was honest, and did not intend to kill him—at a time like this, certainly, she could not afford to rush to judgment or passion. More than just being duped, she knew that he was one of few men of relative import in New England who was sympathetic to her and her people, and that support she could not squander, even if he was half a fool. If there was to be war, the Dawnland folk would need as many John Goodmans as they could find.
She stopped at Little Salmon, greeting and thanking him as she did all the other sachems, taking care to do so with no greater affection. He played his part as well, though he with less subtlety and grace than her (two qualities which, despite his good character, he was not known for). He could not, alas, keep his smile from spreading too wide, his hands clasping hers too tenderly. And when she nodded, and moved on to the next chief, he could not help but watch her go.
Round the fire she went, collecting tithes of goodwill to cash in once the election came. It seemed both distant and looming, so far removed from the worries of tomorrow’s war, yet clearly intertwined. Part of her wished that she did not carry such ambition, that she would be content enough to be with Little Salmon, and not to rule and shepherd her people. She wished, too, that she could be transported through time, until the election was over and done, until she could cast off her widow’s veil. Fantasies she could not fully indulge in. War was coming, and coming soon. She needed to rule, if only because she was the only one who could shield her people from the storm clouds gathering on the horizon. Arrogance that, perhaps, but she believed it, and perhaps she was owed it, after all these years as helpless observer. No more. Fate had willed her husband to pass, and fate would carry her on the wind of her namesake to greater heights—not to serve her ambition, but to sate it, to give it purpose. And of course, to grow strong enough to blow against the fouler winds to come.
The last man she stopped for was a surprise to her—the Frenchman, Saint-Castin. He looked up at her, the un-brushed whiskers of his long beard up-curling into a smile.
“Bonjour, madame,” the man said.
Gentle Wind just nodded. Her grasp on French was roughly as tenuous as her English—better, but not fluent by any means. Between the two, she preferred English—the sounds made more sense in her brain, for some reason. French words were like strange, slippery eels that wriggled around the smooth pond-stones of her understanding. English words, by contrast, were clunky and unwieldy blocks of wood, but she felt more comfortable hewing them into shape than grasping at the eels in the silt-shrouded water.
“Merci,” she said, trying to remember the right words. Her long and impassioned declamation to John Goodman was pre-rehearsed, and she found it harder to speak outside her native tongue when forced to improvise.
“Thank you for coming,” she managed.
“Bien entendu,” the man mused. “I was pleased to see l’éttonement parmi les imbéciles.”
Gentle Wind nodded again, half-understanding. Remember to smile, she told herself, but only so much—pleasant, not flirtatious.
As Saint-Castin continued to talk (which he loved to do), her mind drifted beyond to the shadow that loomed behind him. Saint-Castin had come here, then to represent Madockawando, but he had not come himself. This was not unexpected—he was still sore, it seemed, from the council fire at Kahnawake. Still, his absence would be noticed by the others. Madockawando was Pαnawάhpskewi, same as her. More than that, he was the most powerful and influential among the White Rock folk. If his presence here would have been an endorsement, his lack thereof could be seen as a condemnation. Still, Gentle Wind tried to not let it bother her. She knew he would oppose her at every turn—even moreso as the election approached. They disagreed on much, and had little in common besides their mutual love of their people and their appetites for power. Worse still, he perhaps saw her as a threat to his own rule and influence. Perhaps she was.
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After a time, she grew tired of indulging the Frenchman’s yarn, and bid him a polite farewell. Her acknowledgments finished, she wandered from the great fire, led by a rising curiosity in something else. She let the wondering take her, wresting her from the worries and concerns of her station for a time. On she went, until she reached a certain wigwam, its entrance guarded by her sort-of-nephew, Milapskicuwon. He leaned against the wigwam’s wall absent-mindedly, trying not to fall asleep from the boredom of his post. He perked up when he saw her, though, and stood at attention.
“Take the Englishman,” she told him. “Get him some food. He’ll need a full belly for his trip home tomorrow.”
The man nodded, and disappeared inside for a few moments. Gentle Wind hid from the door as her nephew emerged from it with the white man in tow. She was not here for him, anyway, and the less he knew about her plans for him, the better. Once they passed, she slipped inside the wigwam to where her errant thoughts beckoned—the man she had come to know as Antoquan.
He was sitting cross-legged against the wall of the wigwam, his hands bound in front of him. His eyes were distant, as though he saw beyond the walls to some other place. He did not even register Gentle Wind until she sat down across from him. Even then, he said nothing. It was not a cold or rude rejection of her—his mind was simply elsewhere.
“There’s food still,” she told him.
Antoquan just shook his head and smiled.
“Hunger has not found me, for some reason,” he said. The unmistakable brogue of the Wampanoag sounded through him. It was a rarity to hear, nowadays. How many among them were left? A few hundred at most, scattered like autumn leaves. So many killed, the survivors clapped in irons and shipped across the sea to some distant and terrible place, their fates still unknown. A mighty nation of fifty thousand in her great grandfather’s time, reduced to little more than a warning. If the Wabanaki grew too weak or complacent, they would be next.
Gentle Wind thought on this for a while, studying the man. After a time, he grew tired of being observed.
“You’ve come here for a reason, I hope,” he said. “Or do you make a habit of gawking at your prisoners?”
“I’ve been thinking about you,” she admitted.
“You’re in luck,” the man said, a jovial grin spreading across his face. “I’ve been unmarried for years now.”
Gentle Wind ignored him.
“What will you do after you lead the Englishman back?” She asked him.
“Return to my home,” he said with a shrug.
“And where is home for you?”
“I’ve built a small cabin by a pond. I have a modest acreage. Should I speak to your father? I was unaware the White Rock women needed a dowry.”
Gentle Wind allowed herself a small smile, but let it fade.
“Your home is among them, then,” she said. “The whites of New England.”
Antoquan sighed, reclining against the wall of the wigwam.
“I made my choice twelve years ago,” he explained. “I fought for an English army, commanded by an English captain. I worship the English God, who has become my God now. I have donned an English name—Isaac. Even now, it sounds foreign in my ears. The English have this lovely idiom—I have made my bed, you see, and now I must lay in it.”
“But why? I have visited the praying towns they corral you into like animals. I have seen the way you’re forced to live. You’ve forsaken your villages for poor simulacrums! And you’re content with this fate?”
“Content? How can I be content? My fate can never be one of contentment. It was sealed the moment my own King, who I trusted more than anyone, lost himself. Fate is not something you choose, would-be saunskwa of these White Rocks. God wills it, whatever it will be, bad and good and everything else. Time and time again I have read their bible, and all I have learned is that it carries no great answer, either. Metacom’s brother was taken from him, killed by the English. What madness did that bring him? What tremendous fire burned in his furious heart? I would learn it, before long. He started a whole war to avenge Wamsutta, even if it meant the ruin of his own people. When he killed my brother, then, purging his dissenters, how could I not feel the same? I felt that fire, Wlelômsen. I felt that fury. I would burn my wigwam down, my village, my whole nation, just to see that murderer go with it.”
Gentle Wind said nothing at first. It was her way, after all, to listen well to words that cut so deep. All her life she had listened, and pondered, and she came to know the virtue of doing so. If there was one thing her husband had taught her, it was the value of words, and how important it was not to squander them.
So, she thought on what he had said. She had not considered that Antoquan was made turncoat by the same vengeance that started this mess in the first place. A great sadness welled in her heart—she could not help but entreat more pleasant fantasies, daydreaming of a world where none of this had happened, where the people of this land and Those Beyond the Sea could share this great bounty of a continent together in harmony. She supposed the man across from her might dream the same, yet both of them knew the truth. The English cast those fateful dice the moment they let Wamsutta die in that prison cell. The Great War was fought and lost, and the Wampanoag were gone.
“It has been a time,” she said finally. “A long while, actually, now that I think about it.”
“Not nearly long enough.”
“Perhaps. But perhaps not. A forest burned will bloom again. Despite everything. Look now, Antoquan—we are a family united. Each day, we add more to our fold. You said you have seen the Pennacook—they wish to join our family, too. We have plenty of room—our new wigwam is vast and welcoming.”
Antoquan did not discard her words—he took her invitation, played with it in his mind. He wore a smile on his face, but his eyes were the saddest she had ever seen.
“Perhaps one day,” he told her. “But not today, and not tomorrow. Perhaps not for a while or ever. I’ve much to do, and might not have the time to visit. Haven’t I told you? My son is to be married upon my return. English weddings are a big event—lots of ceremony. Much to do, you see.”
Gentle Wind chuckled. That was that, it seemed. She rose, taking one last look at the man.
“Take your time,” she said. “My hand remains open to welcome you—it is a patient thing, you see.”
“You may find an issue in that, saunskwa. Generosity can be a weakness—I have known those keen to exploit it.”
Beyond the wigwam, Gentle Wind looked to the party still roaring beyond. She squinted to see that far, but their visages were unmistakable—the Saint-Castin had cozied up to John Goodman, spinning his usual yarns as the man ate.
“You are wiser than you know,” she said. “And truer even still.”