The Loved and the Lost (24 page)

“Okay, buddy,” Lincoln replied. “We're just worried for ya, man. We love ya.”

“I know,” Hansum answered. “Go.”

Hansum watched Lincoln run through the gates and catch up to the crowd, which was funneling into a very large longhouse off the main square. When the last of the throng disappeared inside the cedar bark building, a single man was left standing by its entrance. He was looking right at Hansum. His skin was deep brown and he wore long straight hair to his shoulders. His black eyes were like coal and, even from a distance, gave the impression they could ignite and glow red hot at any second. His mouth was a long, wide slit turned down in what seemed a permanent frown. For the first time in a long time, and despite all his recent training, Hansum felt surprised. He took a deep breath and was about to call out, but the man turned and walked in among the other longhouses, disappearing.

‘That was weird,' Hansum thought, and then walked through the gate and into the village. He touched his communications device. “Can someone tell me where my lodgings are?”

A few longhouses down, a boy and a girl, both about twelve, were playing keep-away with a soccer ball. They stopped and touched their communications nodes. Hansum knew the local communications A.I. had found some errand runners to show hospitality to a visitor. They seemed to listen to some silent instruction before looking around. When they saw Hansum, both came running with big smiles on their faces.

“Hey, you're him,” the boy said, sliding to a halt, his bare feet kicking up dust.

“Yes, I am,” Hansum replied. The girl was staring gap-mouthed at him, up at his face and then down at his scarred hand. Hansum held it out and she looked away.

“Sorry for staring,” she said. “It's rude.”

“No problem. Can you show me where I'm staying?”

“Follow us,” the boy said. “It's on the other side of the village. Want to run? I watched you run through the forests the other month. I'm a good runner too,” and the kids turned and started jogging. Hansum felt good to be getting exercise. They ran left and right, twisting around the longhouses that were definitely not laid out in any specific fashion, neither in a grid nor a wheel. It was all willy-nilly. “Too bad we can't run through the longhouses,” the boy called out. “What's it like running through trees?”

“Zippy!” Hansum answered, and he and the children laughed. It took several minutes to get across the village and many people stopped to watch, but Hansum paid them no attention.

As his escorts slowed down, Hansum noticed one set of eyes he couldn't ignore. The man with the eyes of coal was again staring at him. He was standing at the base of a very large black walnut tree. The tree's trunk was at least five feet across and its canopy spread out a good fifty feet in diameter.

“We're here,” the boy said, puffing as they came to a halt in front of the guest longhouse. The two children watched Hansum and the man staring at each other. Then the man turned and walked away, again disappearing between the narrow paths between the buildings.

“Who's that?” Hansum asked. The kids twisted their tanned faces, as if to ask, ‘You don't know?'

“That's the Deganawida,” the girl said with awe in her voice. “The spiritual leader of our
whole
territory.”

“When he's around, us kids don't mess around.” the boy added. “He gives me the heebie jeebies.”

“Bandy, don't talk like that,” the girl scolded.

Hansum laughed. “Thanks for bringing me here. Where's my room?”

Bandy touched his node again, muttering. “In here . . . sir. Yes, I called him sir,” he added testily to whomever he was talking to. Hansum smiled. Bandy reminded him of a younger Lincoln.

The interior of the guest lodge had a walkway down its length, with woven willow-strip walls separating the hall from the guest rooms. Colorful woven blankets acted as doors to each room, reminding Hansum somewhat of the curtained doors back at the della Cappa home. He found his quarters roomy and high, the walls and roof supported by a series of cedar and hickory poles. Other poles were lashed horizontally to create platforms for sleeping and storage. A thickly-padded sleeping mat and beautifully hand-woven blankets were neatly folded, waiting for Hansum's comfort.

There was also a bowl of water and soft towel on a small ash side-board. Hansum washed his hands and face, dried them, and then sat on the edge of the sleeping platform. He drummed his fingers, thinking what to do. He reached over to his luggage. It was a long and narrow case, custom built to suit his needs. Loosening the woven ties, he opened the lid and took out a top layer of shirts and trousers. Below was the reason he needed the case to be so long, his sword with its scabbard and belt. He placed them on the bed, hung his clothing on pegs, and then lay down to nap.

His head instantly burst with images and sounds from the river . . . again. Hansum cursed, gritting his teeth and pulling the pillow over his head. He kept his eyes shut, determined to sleep, but it was no good. He couldn't stop the stream of images that came at him every time he tried to relax. And the sounds from those memories, they seemed to ring louder in his ears than when he lived them. The thundering of the horse's hooves, the clash of the swords, the screams of the dying animals and the roar of the river, they just wouldn't let him be.

Hansum kept telling himself he must be overcoming these ghosts in some ways though. He was succeeding brilliantly in his training and had even been given the accreditation of “journeyman” the other day. But was suppressing all he had gone through really working? If so, why was he acting harshly to everyone? Why did he constantly walk around feeling like he was going to explode? He knew his friends realized something was wrong. They were taking the brunt of it. And there was a practical danger. As the group leader, he knew his bad attitude could cause a diminishment of trust. This could compromise the mission. And most critical, he knew Arimus realized there was a problem. Maybe that was why he didn't want him to be at the meeting earlier. Why wouldn't his head stop spinning?

Less than a minute after lying down, Hansum opened his eyes and stared at the curved posts and bark covering of the longhouse roof. More awake than ever, he continued drumming his fingers and then sat up. He sighed. Perhaps a walk would help. More exercise might clear his head and allow him to sleep. Almost out the door, he turned and went back to his bed, picked up his sword and clipped the belt around his waist. In the corridor, he passed by several staring guests.

Walking into the bright sunlight, Hansum looked around to get his bearings. He remembered how the village was laid out from the air, Lake Onondaga to the east, fields and forests to the north and west. He turned away from the busy part of the village and worked his way through the tight spaces between several longhouses till he reached the palisade. Hansum pulled himself up to see the broad expanse of crops and, beyond that, a line of trees. Grasping the pointed tops of the fence stakes, he pulled himself over and dropped to the other side.

“Is everything all right?”
a voice in his head asked, obviously a local security A.I.

“I'm fine, thanks,” Hansum answered. “I just want some privacy and exercise.”

“Very good, honored guest,”
the voice replied.
“You shall have it. Call if you need assistance.”

“Thank you.”

As soon as Hansum walked in among the tall maize plants, he was again in shadow. It felt quite fine to be on his own for a while, outside and hidden from staring eyes. It was also interesting to see these fields close up. Hansum's father was the head fruit and vegetable elder of his village, and had told him about the ancient Haudenosaunee society's feat of terraforming hundreds of thousands of hectares into a productive commons of farms, hunting grounds, orchards and woodlands. When Europeans arrived, they found a whole territory of well-tended lands. The Europeans marveled how, outside the fields of crops, there were forests with huge trees, selected for their bark for housing, and nuts and fruits for eating. And there was little undergrowth because of a yearly, skillful burning. Europeans wrote about forests they could drive a wagon through for miles. The burning also encouraged certain game animals to come for the tender greenery that sprouted after the undergrowth was cleared. There were also stands of trees grown as poles for housing and fencing, to be harvested every few years.

The agriculture of the field crops was also very sophisticated. The field that Hansum was walking through contained what were known as the “three sisters.” Hansum's father explained how maize, climbing beans and squash were grown together in what was called “companion farming.” The beans climbed up the stalks of the maize and the squash leaves acted as a mulch to keep the soil from drying out. As well, and one wonders how many hundreds of years it took for the ancients to figure this out, the elements which one plant took from the ground, the other replaced, allowing the field's nutrients to diminish more slowly.

After about ten minutes of walking, the field of three sisters ended and another one, also with heritage crops, began. A field of little-barley was followed by a mixed field of maygrass, chenopod and knotweed. The heritage crops were kept close to the village for visitors to see.

Hansum then came to large plots of mixed crops, vegetables from all over the world. The citizens of this area were certainly proud of the Haudenosaunee heritage, and showed it, but it couldn't be said they didn't welcome food gifts from around the globe. There were carrots, beets, sweet and hot peppers of all colors, blueberries, huckleberries, potatoes, asparagus, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, celery, chard, cucumbers, okra, onions, peas, radicchio, radish, rhubarb, shallots, spinach, sweet potato, tomatoes, turnips, and even watermelon and yams. Hansum, like most children growing up in a village, knew them all, for part of all of Earth's cultures now was to have youth work in the fields that fed their region.

“Finally,” Hansum said, feeling relaxed. “I'm thinking about something else.” Hansum stopped and took in a deep breath, attempting to sense everything around him: the song birds, the insects, the rustling of the plants in the wind. He felt a calm coming over him. But as soon as he stopped thinking about the Haudenosaunee horticultural practices, his mission forced itself back into his mind. He put a hand on his chest to stay his anxiety. Why was he getting anxiety attacks and what was taking Arimus so frigging long to contact him?

Hansum broke out into a trot, running for a good ten minutes, trying to tire himself out. Finally he came to the end of the fields and walked into the forest. Most of the trees had massive trunks, four to eight feet thick and reached well over a hundred feet high. Their widespread canopies intersected with each other, making an immense open space below, like the interior of a great building. The massive trunks and high ceilings made Hansum think about the unforgettable churches of medieval Europe. Alone and hidden in this glorious cathedral of nature, Hansum slid his sword from its scabbard and began running through one of his warm-up routines, lunging, slashing, moving his feet agilely over and around the massive roots, skills that he would no doubt find himself using one day.

Then Hansum heard noises, a bleating and hooves running. He froze and listened carefully. The source of the noises was close by. He stepped behind a tree as a man's voice called out.

“Hurry, hurry. We must run him down. Don't let him rest,” and then there were more footfalls through the leaves.

Hansum picked his way carefully around one tree and then the next, practicing his stealth. As he came around the great trunk of a shagbark hickory, he stopped and looked on in silence.

About fifty feet away were two men bent over a roan-colored lump on the ground. He could tell the man with his back to him was older. He pulled an arrow from a good sized white-tailed buck and patted the dead creature kindly on its shoulder. Without pause, he then pulled the animal's front legs forward and pointed to the back legs, indicating to a young man of about fourteen to pull on them, to expose the animal's belly. The young man stood up, but did not move.

“Come now, slave,” Hansum heard the gentle voice of the older man say. “We must do this before the blood settles. Do not worry. This is something you will get used to and one day enjoy. I promise you.”

The young man blew out a breath to steel his courage. He grabbed hold of the animal's large muscular legs and pulled. As he did so, he slipped and fell back on his backside. Hansum chuckled to himself.

The older man raised his head and looked at the youth. Hansum was surprised when he saw who it was. It was the stone-faced man, the region's spiritual leader, known as the Deganawida. Now that Hansum heard how gently he instructed the young man, the hard face seemed less ominous.

“Come. Get up and watch, slave.”

Hansum knew that being a slave in some of the native cultures of North America was not as evil a thing as it had been in others. This had been a culture that didn't use money as its social glue. Therefore, when people needed help, were captured in war, or were just failures in making a living for themselves, they could become slaves of another family or elder. It was similar to being an indentured servant or apprentice, as Hansum had been. A slave could end up marrying into a former owner's family or buying his freedom through work or goods. Often, slaves didn't live with their owners and only owed them work part-time.

In the situation in front of him, Hansum presumed this was a hard case boy from another community who had been given to the Deganawida to learn life skills. Hunting and providing for one's self was a sure lesson to that end — not as severe as a Hard Time History Camp, but maybe this boy wasn't as bad as Hansum had been.

The young man was up on his feet, but still several paces from the carcass. The Deganawida took out a sharp hunting knife from a beautifully beaded sheath on his leg. Hansum could see, even at a distance, the gray-silver glint of the hand-forged, multi-folded steel. “Come, come closer slave. That's better. Now watch carefully, for you will do it next time.”