The Night Wanderer (26 page)

Copying what Pierre was doing, Tiffany analyzed what her hands could tell her in the dark. “Uh, let's see. Dirt, leaves, twigs, rocks, a piece of glass—”

“Keep looking.”

Immediately, Tiffany knew she found something. “What's this? Another arrowhead?”

Pierre could see the object in Tiffany's hand and knew what it was. He'd made several as a child. “No, too big.”

Tiffany rolled it around in her hand for a few seconds, feeling the texture, weighing it, going through a dozen possibilities in her head. It was definitely man-made. Bigger than an arrowhead but roughly the same configuration. So, that meant . . . what could it mean? “It's a spearhead, isn't it?”

Pierre nodded. “I'd say so.”

Fascinated, Tiffany continued to roll it around in her hand. “A spearhead, huh? So this is what they used to hunt deer and animals. Wow, this is neat. You do a lot of this kind of thing, Pierre?”

“Not in a long time.”

She dropped down on her haunches once again and started rummaging through the loose ground. “Dad would love this stuff. Granny Ruth too.”

“But I thought you didn't care about them? At least that's what I thought you said.” In the darkness, Tiffany couldn't see Pierre's face, so she couldn't tell if he was mocking her. His voice gave no clue.

“Just drop it, okay?”

“Consider it dropped.”

“Hey, I found another one, an arrowhead. How many people do you think lived here?” Tiffany stood up, wiping her hands. Using a fingernail, she chipped away at the encrusted dirt on the arrowhead.

“Not hard to tell, really. The size of the area pretty well limited the number of people. At best I'd say no more than fifty, maybe seventy people during the summer.”

Tiffany tucked both the arrowhead and the spearhead into her coat pocket with the other two. She made a mental note to come back here when it got lighter.

“What do you think it was like here?”

“I thought you weren't interested in history.”

“This isn't history. This is right here.” She was still straining to find more fascinating things on the ground.

“Just think, Tiffany. For hundreds or even thousands of years, Anishinabe people lived here. They hunted, laughed, played, made love, and died in the village that once stood here. And in that same village over those same centuries were hundreds and possibly thousands of young girls just like you, asking the same questions. Standing right where you are standing.”

Tiffany stopped scanning the ground. “You think?”

For a moment, Tiffany could almost hear Pierre's eyes close and his mind slip far, far away. For the first time since she'd met him, there was almost a happy quality to his voice.

“Let me tell you what this place was probably like. It was peaceful. Men, women, children . . . families. The village would be divided into family huts: wigwams, lodges, whatever you wish to call them. Everybody would have roles and responsibilities. Fishing would have been good, hunting too. Probably a very happy existence, children playing in the sunlight. Being told stories by their parents and enjoying life.” “Sounds wonderful,” said Tiffany.

“It was, I'm sure,” replied Pierre.

Tiffany sat on the big rock again. “You know, it's hard to picture those days. You hear and read about them and try to imagine it—”

“The same earth you are standing on has been stood on by generations of your ancestors. The air you breathe, even these trees you don't notice, have been touched and climbed by those that came before you. That rock you were sitting on, how many behinds have sat there, watching the sun set?”

“Sometimes I don't know what being Anishinabe means,” she confessed. “According to Tony and his father, it has something to do with taxes. For my father, its hunting and fishing and stuff like that. My grandmother believes its all about speaking Anishinabe. Then there are land claims and all sorts of political stuff that I don't really understand.”

He nodded solemnly. “Yes. It's all those things. And none of them.”

Tiffany took in what the man was saying. She pictured the wigwams, the children running and playing in the water, back when there would have been no European milfoil clogging up the waterway. No cottages on the far end of the lake. Just pure water, forest, and rivers as far as the eye could see. And lots of Tiffanys getting into trouble, no doubt. She found herself half believing she had been living here, a long time ago.

“That doesn't help much. But this is amazing. It really is. You know, I've heard these stories all my life but—”

“You thought they were just stories. You must remember, all stories start somewhere.”

“I bet this place is full of stories.” She could feel the heavier spearhead in her pocket.

As if on cue, Pierre stood up, his weakness gone momentarily. “Want to hear one? It's a very old story. It's a bit frightening. Think you can handle it?”

“I'll try,” she said, her voice full of sarcasm. Then she shivered. “And I'm not shivering from your scary story either. I'm just very cold. And wet.” She pulled the coat tighter.

“Well, let's do something about that then,” said Pierre. He took one of the arrowheads from his pocket, along with the house key Keith had given him. Kneeling down, he gathered some dried grass and twigs together into a small pile on the gravel. Tiffany watched him curiously as he started striking the key against the arrowhead.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Making a fire. This arrowhead is made from flint. The key from steel. Put the two together with a sufficient amount of force and you get a spark. Now put a spark and some dried kindling together and you get fire. If it's done properly.”

“And you know how to do this?” Suddenly a spark flew from the collision and landed in the dried grass. Pierre blew gently on it until it caught and became a small fire. He added more twigs until they became engulfed in flames, then larger pieces of wood. In no time at all, he had a comfortable if modest fire going.

“I've done it before. It's one of those things you never forget.”

The small fire created a cocoon of light and heat. Wanting to help, Tiffany pulled an old log over and they sat down on it. She sat with her legs facing the fire, in the hope of drying her pants and warming up her numb legs. Across from her sat her new friend, letting the light and memories flood over him.

Finally semi-comfortable, Tiffany felt a lot better. The feeling was returning to her toes. “You know, if I had something to eat, things would be just fine.” Almost immediately, a jar of bread-and-butter pickles appeared in front of her, resting on Pierre's hand.

“I thought you might be a bit famished. I'm sorry, but it's all I could grab in such short notice. They seem to be everywhere. You want?”

“Damn right I want.” Eagerly, Tiffany grabbed the jar and forced open the lid. Sloppily, her fingers dug out a handful of the pickles and quickly shoved them into her mouth.

Watching her eat the pickles with so much satisfaction reminded Pierre of his own situation and he quickly looked away, uncomfortably aware of the emptiness in his stomach, and the potential for tragedy that always hovered above him.

“Perhaps I should have brought a fork,” commented Pierre. Tiffany shook her head, she was quite content. She picked out a few more before she tried to speak between chews.

“Maybe I'm turning into my grandmother,” she said, licking her finger. “I'm sorry. You said you were hungry too.” Tiffany offered the jar to Pierre, who declined.

“No, thank you. I'm not fond of pickles. But you enjoy.” And she did.

Still looking into the fire, Pierre thought about his next words. He had promised the girl a story. He'd amassed quite a few over the years, but he knew the one he should be telling her. One of those types of stories that was too wild to be true . . . but you never knew, it could have happened. Those make the best stories. He took a deep breath, deciding how to begin.

“This story was told to me by my great-grandfather—”

“The one that was from here?” Tiffany interrupted.

He nodded. “Yes, that one. This is a story that supposedly happened a long, long time ago. Nobody really believes it happened, but I do. And he swore it was true.”

Tiffany leaned forward. “Granny Ruth says all her stories are true too.”

“Perhaps as long as three hundred or even three hundred and fifty years ago, things were very different. The white man had not yet come to this part of the country. And when they did arrive, they were poor, often starving, looking to get rich off furs and gold if they could find any. In many places, Native people held the balance of power. In most cases, they helped the white man survive in this country, prevented them from starving, dying of scurvy, and things like that.”

“Yeah, I remember reading about that stuff in history,” said Tiffany.

“But your history books wouldn't have told you that one time, a very young man, just a little older than you, from a small Anishinabe village similar to the one that stood here, was bored with life, even though he was still very young, and wanted adventure. One day he decided to go with a French trader back to this stranger's country, to see what could be discovered. He wanted to see more than what his village offered. He snuck away without telling his parents. He was young and already thought he knew everything . . .”

As he told his story, Pierre's mind wandered back to long-forgotten adventures. Of famous and not-so-famous people he had met.Of all the places his eyes had seen, ranging from the cold steppes of Russia, to the rugged beauty of Scandinavia, all the way down to the warm sands of the Mediterranean. He had made few friends over the years, his very nature forcing him into a life of solitude. But occasionally there would be a warm light in a cold window.

There was Karl in Austria, who introduced him to the game of chess. José, who taught him to bullfight by the light of the moon one warm spring. And Sarah in Scotland, who had saved his life by allowing him to stay in her barn as the sun began to rise. He verbally painted their pictures with the warmth of distant memories. And yet in Europe, there always seemed to be a war. Somebody was always fighting somebody. There was lots of death, destruction, and horror, more than anything he could have imagined in his childhood. Every square inch of land on that continent had been fought over, sometimes several times, ever since people had started to record such things.

His own brutal acts seemed pale in comparison. He remembered a time in Switzerland when he had been caught in a blizzard for two nights and was desperate. He found haven in a small thatched house high on a mountain. And sustenance from the family that lived, or had lived, there. On the shores of Sicily, gazing southward to the far-off shores of Africa, he came upon a sailor on the beach who had been fortunate enough to survive a shipwreck, but not his encounter with Pierre. Another time, pursued by peasants in a now-forgotten country, he had been forced to take refuge in a crowded soldiers' garrison and, for a short period of time, live off the horses in the stable.

Every once in a while, in a crowded street, on a lonely beach, or through a frost-tinted window, he would occasionally catch a glimpse of somebody who, for a split second, was the spitting image of the long-departed Anne. Then, the guilt would once again flow through him. Of all the atrocities he had committed in his travels, that first one, to the only woman in that accursed country that had shown him any affection, was the one he regretted most.

He remembered all of this and told the girl, holding back nothing, glad to rid himself of the memories. He talked and talked, weaving such an intricate story that the girl felt she was actually there. Or, at the very least, that Pierre L'Errant had been there. At times she was scared, the stories of hundreds if not thousands of lives being taken brutally to quench the thirst of the dark killer. But Tiffany could also feel the longing of this wanderer, the pain of not being able to return home.

After what seemed an eternity, Pierre stopped talking, and only the crackle of the fire could be heard.

TWENTY-SIX

T
IFFANY HAD LISTENED to every word Pierre had told her, amazed. His vivid descriptions and passionate delivery almost made it seem like he had been there. This was better than any book they had made her study at school.

“A Native vampire! That is so cool!”

Unknown to Tiffany, Pierre had a lemon-sized rock in each hand, and he was squeezing them firmly. He was using almost all his strength to tell the story, and what was left over to squeeze the rocks, so he would not be aware of her proximity. And her blood. Amid the crackle of the fire, he could hear the thump-thump of her young heart, pumping buckets and buckets of blood through her body. He squeezed the rocks harder, feeling one splinter in his right hand.

Without Tiffany seeing, Pierre tossed the shattered rock aside and then added a scrap of wood to the fire. He struggled to pick up the story. “Think about his predicament. He was trapped on a foreign continent, so he spent what seemed like an eternity wandering Europe, learning, seeing, experiencing, and, more importantly, trying to lose himself in the crowd. Not to draw attention to himself. This goes on for hundreds of years.”

Tiffany threw some twigs on the fire, sending sparks up into the sky. For a moment it made Pierre's eyes appear to be glowing again. He seemed to be staring at her, or through her. “So why didn't he just find a way to go home then?”

“It was too dangerous. Travel by boat was always hazardous, and no telling what time of day the boat would dock. And while a part of him longed to return to the land he once knew, another part of him didn't. In a way, he was afraid. He wanted the land and the people he had left behind to remember him as he was, not as he had become. So he was trapped.”

“So how does the story end?” Pierre could see her anxious breath in the night air.