Jikohnsasee
Michilimackinac (Mackinac Island, Lake Huron)
Jikohnsasee was shaken awake in the earliest hours of the morning, just as the dawn began its slow, inevitable crawl across the land. She saw the face of Kondiaronk above her, worry creasing his brow.
“We are leaving,” he told her. “Pack enough for two weeks’ travel.”
“Why?” She asked, bleary-eyed. “What’s going on?”
“Meet me outside,” he said, turning and leaving before she could muster another question.
Jikohnsasee rolled out of bed, rubbing her temples. What could be so urgent? She wracked her brain for possible destinations that were two weeks away by canoe or foot and came up empty. There was a gravity to Kondiaronk’s tone. Whatever it was, it was serious enough to wash away his usual serenity.
Jikohnsasee packed a few changes of clothes, a tent, and some pemmican into a traveling bag, then stepped outside. The wind was brisk through the village, the sky casting its early-morning grays. No one else had stirred yet, and Jikohnsasee found an odd tranquility in watching a village sleep. She saw Kondiaronk emerge from his own hut with his own bag. He nodded to her, and began to make his way to the shore. She followed.
A canoe was already prepared for them. He loaded both their bags in, then took his place at the helm.
“You want to let me in on this now?” Jikohnsasee asked before she boarded.
“If I do,” Kondiaronk admitted. “You will not want to come. But I need you with me, and no one else. Can you trust me with little more than my word?”
“I can trust you with less,” Jikohnsasee said, and she meant it. She sat into the canoe and took the oar. She planted it deep into the sand, pushing off with her tremendous strength. The canoe launched forward, and it was done. They had left Michilimackinac to a destination she could only wonder at.
Kondiaronk skirted the issue for days. There was a shame that welled in his eyes, like he felt some great guilt or pity at making her come. She could not figure out which it was. Then, on the fifth night of their voyage, he relented.
“I cannot keep hiding this from you,” he said, his eyes haggard and dark. “The guilt of it stirs my mind at night, and I have rarely slept. I… please forgive me. It is not a burden I would ever wish upon you if I could help it. But the canoe I find myself on treads on unsteady waters, and I cannot navigate them alone.”
“Nor do you have to,” Jikohnsasee said, placing a hand on his shoulder. “You are not alone. Stop pretending to be.”
The man smiled, but it faded as soon as it came. His eyes wandered to the campfire.
“We are headed to the westernmost fort of French territory,” he admitted, sorrow in his words. “The one they call Frontenac.”
The entirety of Jikohnsasee’s body seized up, like she was struck with a bolt of lightning. The horror of that past flooded into her head, gripping her with a tremendous panic. The sounds of that night echoed in her eardrums like crashing waves of nauseating terror. The sound of frantic cries, of men trampled underfoot. The smell of death. That awful, horrible stench. She couldn’t handle it—her mind shut down, and she fainted. Kondiaronk caught her, and held her to him. Beyond the prison of her own memory, she could barely make out a faint sound. He was crying.
“Forgive me,” he whispered, just loud enough for her to hear. “Please, please forgive me.”
***
When she came to, they were on the lake again. She opened her eyes and gazed up at the sky. Clouds covered the blue, just dark enough to wonder if it would rain, but not enough to know for sure. More hopeless guesswork.
She sat up, tried to gather herself. Kondiaronk was rowing, keeping his eyes ahead. He must have heard her stir—he shifted ever so slightly. Still, he did not turn or say anything. Perhaps it was for the best. He could, perhaps, not stand the sight of her sobbing.
***
The days still passed silently. Jikohnsasee said little, ate little, slept little. A sickness befell her, more spiritual than physical, but its symptoms were just the same. Kondiaronk rowed alone as she rested in the canoe, tending to her in the evening. He brewed tea to calm her mind and stomach, soaked a rag in cool water for her feverish brow. And deep in the night, when she would writhe and thrash in her bedroll, taken by a nightmare of her own past, he would comb her hair and sing to her. It was an old song, sung to him by his mother, and her mother, and on and on. It was a song unknown to everyone but him, a relic of a people gone, but not forgotten. He was from The Place Where the Mountain Stands*, and he would not let the world, let alone himself, forget it.
***
Before she knew it, they had reached their destination. The wooden fort loomed like an omen in the distance. Places carried their own traumas. Some believed their memories were longer than that of a man—a stone might stand in the same pond for a thousand years. So too could things possess things—evil had that nasty habit of lingering, seeping into the trees, the rocks, the water, the land. It was palpable as they approached. The air was thick and heavy, the earth muddied with blood. They rowed somberly to shore, the water’s edge coagulated by the ghosts of her comrades. Sorrow consumed her, filling her throat, overwhelming her senses. Grief was a blanket, dark and cold, and it smothered her.
Nostalgia was a strange thing. It snuck into her mind, a subtle visitor she never bade full welcome to. Even though she was happier now, even though her past was something she had run from, that she strived now to leave behind, she still could not help but reminisce. This fort was once home to her, haunted though it was now, and she could not deny that there were once happy times here. In those early days, before the invasion, when she was a firebrand, when she taught and learned from that poor boy with the bitter eyes. She supposed hers were too, back then, but the water of the lake was too muddied to see herself.
At the gate, Kondiaronk announced himself, and the two were granted passage. The Rat was a friend to the French, or at least, he made a great effort to be perceived as such. The two trudged through the mud into the main yard, but Jikohnsasee could look at nothing but the ground beneath her. She did not see him first, then, but caught his scent—his particular pungence was unmistakable and unforgettable.
She looked up, and there he was. Not the grand traitor, the Onontio, but his mewling, sycophantic toady, the Vicomte of Chatellerault. Seeing him burned red in her eyes, and her gut began to boil into a rage. Had Kondiaronk not placed a soft hand on her, and stepped in her path, there was no doubt in her mind that she would have killed the man then and there.
“Bon après-midi,” Kondiaronk called to the Frenchman. The Victome, who seemed to be lost in thought, turned to see them. His eyes widened when they reached Jikohnsasee, like a snivelling rodent caught in the gaze of an owl. But Kondiaronk stepped in front of him, too, half-obscuring their views of each other.
“I don’t believe we’ve met,” the man said, taking the creature’s hand and shaking it. “I am The Rat. You must be the commander in charge of this place.”
“Um… yes,” Vicomte muttered. His eyes darted to and fro, and never in the direction of Jikohnsasee. “Well actually, no. I am overseeing it temporarily, while it is dismantled.”
This news took them both by surprise.
“Dismantled?” Kondiaronk asked. “But why?”
The Vicomte shrugged. His callousness reignited the flame in her, blazing.
“The governor considers it too remote, too hard to defend and reinforce. Had a nasty incident a while back. If we can’t use it effectively, the Iroquois will. So it’s going down.”
“You used us,” Jikohnsasee barked, taking a step forward towards the Vicomte, and he took a step away. She took another. Then another. Then another.
“We were fodder to you. An experiment. A rounding error on your staff. My men died so you could test the waters of this damned pile of logs.”
She bared her teeth like a wolf—she was her brother’s sister, after all. Kondiaronk stepped back to her, turning and whispering in her ear.
“Take a walk,” he said in his mother tongue.
“What?!” She snarled.
“Take a breath and listen to me. Our existence balances at the edge of a knife. We cannot rush to passion—it is a privilege we cannot afford.”
“He killed them, Kondiaronk. It was him that sentenced us here. I must avenge them. I must—”
“You must live, and thrive, since they could not. You have worked so hard to learn the virtues of peace, of serenity. Why throw that away on a worm like him?”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
The man mustered a smile, and patted her enormous shoulders.
“I have made you suffer much by bringing you here,” he said. “I will not have you suffer more. Take a walk beyond the walls of this suffocating place, and find yourself again. Remember how you’ve changed, what you’ve learned. Remember the woman you are now.”
Jikohnsasee grit her teeth, fuming. Kondiaronk’s calm demeanor was infuriating. He didn’t understand. He wasn’t there. He did not see, feel, hear what she did. He did not know her grief. Who was he, to command her? Why did he bring her here, only to not take her side?
“Fine,” she shot back, turning on her heel. “And as I remember, I shall forget the man I thought you were.”
It started to drizzle. She hardly felt it, or the mud at her feet. Everything was a blur. She was so angry. It filled every inch of her, bleeding out her eyes and fingertips. She regressed to the woman she once was, furious and vengeful. She stomped rather than walked, only when she realized that she was actually marching, she stopped. She was marching. Why was she marching? Try as she did, and she had tried so, so hard, she could not run or hide from that past, from who she used to be. Her future seemed so entangled with it, inextricable. What hope was there for her? From the day she was born, she was a ghost. She fell to her knees, feeling the rain on her back for the first time. She could hold it in no longer—she began to cry, hunched over in the mud. Why? Why was she made to remember? What cruel god or spirit would wish this fate upon anyone?
“J… Jikohnsasee?”
The voice her name came from was both foreign and familiar. She rose, turning to look in the direction it came from. Her eyes widened. It was a man she roughly recognized, though she knew he was a friend. No, more than that—he was a comrade-in-arms. Lithe and tall, gaunt to an almost ghastly degree. He was Harrounyou of the Wolf Clan—The Sky Within The Water.
Jikohnsasee gathered the strength to stand, though she couldn’t muster anything else. Her mouth gaped, and he, confirming who he was, bore a grin, and rushed towards her.
“I cannot believe you still live,” he exclaimed. “We thought you were certainly dead.”
“We? Are… are there more who survived?”
Sky-Within-Water smiled, though it was a somber one.
“A handful,” he said grimly. “Well, exactly four. Myself, Bark-Carrier, Sky-Size, and Big Skull.”
“Four,” Jikohnsasee repeated. It was a relief to know but a meager one. So many dead and gone.
“But why are you here?” She asked. “Why have you not traveled to Michilimackinac, as we planned?”
“We could not,” Sky-Within-Water sighed. “At least, not yet. At first, it was not by choice—each of us was either wounded or ill, and would not survive the journey there. Once we recovered, it became another matter. The Western Door folk had left by that point, content that they had destroyed us. We hid in the forests until they were gone, at which point we came back to the fort. The deaths of our brothers weighed heavy on our conscience—we could not leave until we had buried them.”
Jikohnsasee nodded, and strangely, a wave of relief washed over her. The matter of her dead comrades had weighed heavy on her every day since the escape. Killed and left to rot in the mud, their souls would never find peace. What they needed was a burial,
“So they are buried, then,” she said with a smile.
Sky-Within-Water shook his head.
“Not entirely,” he said. “We have not yet completed the rite. It is selfish, but we… well… we have been waiting to see if there was anyone else, alive or dead. We have not been able to bring ourselves to finish it.”
Jikohnsasee nodded. There was a grim finality in that act, an acceptance. Waiting was an act of denial, one self-imposed to defend their fragile psyches, already teetering on the precipice of madness and despair. She did not blame them.
“Show me to the others,” she said. “Let us finish it together, and put our brothers to rest.”
The survivors had carved out a small encampment in the nearby woods. They were all as thin as Sky-Within-Water now, malnourished from a cold spring in the wild. Even He Will Have a Skull of Such a Size, who had boasted both the biggest head and belly of their half-company, looked emaciated now. All their eyes brightened to see her, and they rushed to her side at once.
“Sister!” They exclaimed. “Our dear sister! You are alive!”
Her eyes water to hear them again, reminiscing of the times when there were more than just five of them, when their laughter would echo through the halls of the barracks. Still, it was enough to know she was not truly alone anymore.
She embraced the four in a hug with her enormous arms, squeezing them to her until they couldn’t breathe. She released them when she heard them wheeze and sputter, forgetting her own strength.
“I am so happy to see you all,” she said, tears welling in her eyes. “I am so, so happy.”
“As are we,” Sky-Within-Water said. “Come. We will show you what we’ve been working towards all this time.”
The four led her to a mound, deep in the forest. The dead in their culture were buried together—just as they all lived in one village, so too did they share one grave. The pit was wide and deep, yet pristinely maintained—no easy feat with the heavy rains of spring. It must have taken a great effort to dig and keep, especially given how their bodies had atrophied. A pride swelled in Jikohnsasee’s chest for her men—they had done the right thing, staying here.
“Do you know the names of all those who died?” She asked. “Are you sure of them?”
“Some,” Haskutache the Big Skull said. “Some survived the initial escape, like us. There were eight or ten, I think, in the beginning. But they did not survive the wounds they were given, or the sicknesses the cold spring brought. One died of some starvation, even though he was fed the same as us. We are still not sure of the exact cause.”
A somber silence hung in the air for a moment. Hastahyetahk, Who Often Carries Bark, took a step towards Jikohnsasee, and placed a hand on her shoulder.
“It was Gyantwaka,” he said. “We could not figure out what ailed him. It seemed even he in his great wisdom did not know. I’m very sorry.”
Jikohnsasee nodded, though it took every muscle in her tremendous body to keep from collapsing. She had carved out a space in her heart for the hope that he still lived, and now she was forced to feel the hole it made.
“And of Chrétien?” She managed. Why do I ask? Why do I torture myself so?
The men shook their heads.
“We could not return to the site while the Western Door remained,” Big Skull said. “The ones we know died are the ones who survived at first. By the time we were able to gather the rest, they were skeletal.”
“Some of the bones buried here might not be ours, then,” she said grimly. “They might not be our brothers. They might be their killers.”
The silence lingered. The thought bothered them all. Sky-Within-Water eventually shrugged.
“We are all brothers in the dirt, I think. The realm of the dead carries no nation’s banner.”
The funerary rites of the Chonnonton was more than just a burial—It was a feast for the dead. The food they had with them was paltry, however, so the five survivors resolved to postpone the feast until they reached Michilimackinac, where they could honor the lost properly. Together, they piled the last of the dirt atop the corpse, and performed the rest of the rites, laying their comrades to rest.
“Come,” Jikohnsasee told them when it was done. “I have made more allies in these months. There is a home waiting for all of us.”
They walked shoulder in shoulder back to the fort. Her anger at Kondiaronk had faded with the bliss of meeting the survivors, and when she saw him emerge, she ran up to him.
“Look,” she said with a smile, showing him to the others. “My brothers-in-arms were here! Four still live!”
He did not return her smile. Rather, he seemed gravely ponderous. It was a look that bothered her.
“This is excellent news,” he said, though his own face betrayed him. He introduced himself to the others, and them to him, though his reputation preceded him.
“What’s wrong?” Jikohnsasee asked. “You look almost sick.”
“I’m afraid I bear foul news,” Kondiaronk explained. “The incident here was only half of the reason they’re demolishing the fort, Jikohnsasee. The truth is they will no longer have any need of this fort. They intend to sue the Five Nations for peace.”
“What?!” Big Skull growled. “They were the ones to start this war in the first place! Why would they do such a thing?”
“The war was a lie,” he explained. “A way for the Onontio to endear himself to the eyes of his chief across the seas. The chief believes the Western Door to be completely and utterly defeated, and so the war was a success to them. They will try for peace now to prevent retaliation from the other nations.”
“Surely they will not agree to it,” Jikohnsasee said. “Surely they will get revenge for their brothers.”
“I thought the same,” Kondiaronk shrugged. “But apparently they are sending a delegation to the fort to negotiate the con. It will be the last order of business before the place is destroyed for good.”
What was left of the Deer stood there, fuming. This was a betrayal of the highest order. They had committed themselves as sworn allies to the French, only to be used as pawns and discarded. They had lost what little they had left of their people to little more than a farce.
“There is still hope, I think.”
The four turned to Kondiaronk. A wry smile formed on his face.
“I meant what I said earlier,” he said softly, taking a step towards Jikohnsasee. “We must be tenacious to survive. We must be clever, cleverer than our enemies, and even our allies. One misstep will surely lead to our doom. But there is a home at the end of the river. There is a future for us, if we’re careful. We must ensure we can make it there.”
Jikohnsasee and the others nodded. Everyone agreed. Kondiaronk began to pace, thinking as he spoke.
“We cannot thrive if the French and Five Nations are at peace,” he continued. “That much is clear. The Five Nations are a wildfire—if left alone, they will continue to burn the forests around them, until there is nothing left but flame. The French are the best positioned to combat them, so we must continue to fan the flame in their direction.”
“You’re saying we pit the two against each other,” Sky-Within-Water said. “But how are we to achieve that? We have no power or influence yet.”
“You use the two terms interchangeably—that is a mistake. It is true we have no power, but influence is a funny thing. Even the smallest snake can have a deadly bite.”
Kondiaronk looked to the southeast, to where the Five Nations lay.
“I am truly glad to learn you have survived,” he told the four. “I doubt I could achieve this with Jikohnsasee alone, mighty as she is. But six? And five of them proud Deer Warriors, at that? That’s certainly enough to ambush a meager envoy, don’t you think?”