Twin Willows: A Novel (22 page)

B
RYAN’S
S
TATION

Each day that he passed at Bryan’s Station brought Stuart Martin new challenges and revelations, but he still felt a mixture of shame and chagrin over his near-disastrous arrival, when he had mistaken the girl Willow for Anna.

“’Twas an honest mistake. You shouldn’t keep botherin’ yourself about it,” Rebecca McKnight told him. But that was easier said than done.

The girl was the first person Stuart had seen the moment he arrived at Bryan’s Station. She had been working with her back to him and hadn’t noticed when he rode in. But Stuart had recognized her dress as the one that Anna Willow wore the first time he kissed her. He had quickly dismounted and gone to her. When he called her name, she turned toward him, obviously startled.

Seeing her after so long a time and with so much expectation overwhelmed Stuart, and he had immediately swept the girl into his arms and kissed her with the pent-up passion of several months. He had come a long and dangerous way with the express intention of marrying Anna Willow, and he had every reason to think that she would be as pleased to see him as he was to see her.

It hadn’t taken him long to find out out how mistaken he was.

“Someday you’ll look back on this time and laugh,” Rebecca predicted, but Stuart doubted it.

“Even if I can, I don’t think Willow ever will,” he said. The girl had avoided him during his first few days at the Station. When she finally realized that he meant her no harm, she gradually spent more time in his company. As Rebecca had done, he pointed to an object and named it in English, and Willow told him the Shawnee word.

“The colonel would be surprised at how much Willow’s learned already,” he told Rebecca one evening as they sat on the doorstone after Willow went to bed.

At the mention of her husband’s name, Rebecca turned away to hide the sudden tears that came into her eyes. In the last few days it had become obvious to Stuart that she was expecting a child. He made an awkward, oblique reference to the fact, saying that Ian McKnight must be quite excited at the prospect of becoming a father again after so many years, but Rebecca surprised him by saying that Ian didn’t yet know it.

“Had I told him, it would’ve made it harder for him to go after Anna Willow,” she had explained.

“You’re a brave woman, Rebecca. I hope Ian appreciates you.”

Stuart had spoken seriously, but to his surprise, she laughed. “Be sure to tell him so when he comes back. A man sometimes needs some remindin’ about such matters.”

Unspoken between Stuart and Rebecca was the knowledge that every day that passed without news of Ian or Anna Willow made it less likely that they would ever see either again.

Rebecca regained her composure and turned back to Stuart with a question he knew that she must eventually ask. “How long do you plan to stay here, Stuart?”

Forever and a day, if that’s how long it takes for Ian to bring Anna Willow home
, he wanted to say. Under the present circumstances, with the fate of Ian and Anna Willow still uncertain, he didn’t want to leave Bryan’s Station. But he didn’t want to impose on the McKnight’s hospitality, knowing that resources were scarce here in the wilderness. And he knew he ought to be making some sort of plans for his future.

Stuart returned her steady gaze. “I came here to marry Anna Willow. If it’s not too much of an imposition, I’d like to stay until she and the colonel come back. I’m sure he’d want me to look after you and Willow.”

Rebecca smiled sadly. “Ah, Stuart, of course you’re welcome to stay as long as you like. You’re more than earnin’ your keep, workin’ around the Station and helpin’ the men bring in what crops the Indians didn’t ruin. But when you feel you need to move on, you’re not beholden to us in any way.”

He nodded. “I appreciate your kindness.”

Rebecca stood and stretched, pressing both her palms into the small of her back. “Hacklin’ flax wears me out. I’d best turn in now.”

Stuart helped her over the doorstone. “I’ll come to see Willow after breakfast. We must keep trying to communicate with her.”

“Yes, but I’m afraid that the only thing on the girl’s mind is gettin’ back across the river as soon as she can. Ian said she was with a Shawnee warrior when he found her. My guess is, that Indian’s still on her mind.”

“If he’s alive, he must still think of her, too. Anyway, maybe we’ll hear something from the colonel tomorrow.”

White Eagle opened his eyes and saw the old woman bending over him, and he had a moment of panic. He didn’t recognize her, nor did he know where he was or even how he had gotten there. He raised his head in an attempt to sit up, but pain convulsed his thigh and brought a wave of nausea.

“Lie still,
nenothtu
, else you undo my medicine.”

“I do not feel like a warrior,” White Eagle said weakly.

The old woman chuckled. “It is no wonder. Had my son Red Pole not seen you fall from your horse on the Scioto Trail, you would feel nothing by now.”

White Eagle looked around the
wegiwa
in which he lay. It was obvious that the woman tending him was a
chobeka s’squaw-o-wah
, a village medicine woman. Often their practical remedies were preferred over the rituals of a tribe’s official medicine man.

“What is this place?” he asked.

“The Chillicothe on the Scioto Trail,” she replied.

Pain shot through his leg, and White Eagle gritted his teeth and moaned as he remembered all that had happened—how the
Shemanese
had shot him and taken Willow away—how he’d tracked them almost to the river and then realized, too late, that he might not be able to make it to the nearest village.

“Willow,” he murmured, and the woman chuckled.

“This Willow again! From sunup to sundown, that has been the only word your lips have said.”

White Eagle’s eyes flew open. “How long have I been here?”

The woman put a soothing hand on his brow. “
Sehe
,” she cautioned. “If you are ever to leave this place, you must rest.”

White Eagle put out his hand and gingerly touched his throbbing thigh. “Does this flesh die?” he asked.

“Not yet. You are spared to some purpose, perhaps.”

Once more White Eagle attempted to raise his head. “I must go—gather warriors—find Willow—”

The old woman offered White Eagle a drink of something bitter from a wooden cup, then gently but firmly made him lie flat on his back again. “
Wuhkernekah
,” she said.

“Tomorrow is not soon enough,” White Eagle wanted to say, but his tongue was suddenly heavy. He tried to keep his eyes open, but he soon wearied with the effort.

I will sleep now
, White Eagle told himself. After he woke, he would feel better. Then he would get on Mishewa and go after Willow.

W
ACCACHALLA

It was the time of harvest, and the men and women of Waccachalla had much to do. The men hunted and fished daily, while the women sun-dried corn, beans, and apples, and ground meal from corn and a variety of seeds. The fish and game the men brought in had to be smoked or dried for the coming winter. Anna worked, too, not only because it was expected, but also because having her hands occupied kept her mind from dwelling on her situation.

Several days after her strange interview with the medicine man, Anna was spreading apples out to dry when she noticed that the villagers seemed excited. A woman was going from group to group, apparently telling them something that caused an animated discussion. In the way they had worked out to communicate, Blossom indicated to Anna that there would be
psai-wi oui-then-eluh
, great feasting that evening.

Thinking it would be a dinner in honor of the harvest, much as she’d known in her childhood in Pennsylvania, Anna pointed at the food around them and made eating motions.

Blossom shook her head and touched Anna’s arm. “
Mat-tah
, An-na. An-na
psai-wi oui-then-eluh
,” she said. Her solemn expression was so uncharacteristic that Anna thought that the girl must be teasing her. Once again, she felt frustrated at her inability to talk with these people with whom she now lived.

I wish I had my father’s ability to understand Indian tongues
, Anna thought. As a small child she had watched him use sign language with Shawnee and Mingo Indians at the Bedford market, then talk fluently to a group of Delaware. When Anna asked him how he’d learned their languages, he’d shrugged as if it had been nothing. “I just listen to them, lass. Never forget that ye always learn a deal more listening than ye do talking.”

Anna had remembered the advice, but so far it hadn’t served her very well in Waccachalla. From her first hours in captivity, Anna had closely observed everything the people did, and carefully listened to the words they spoke, yet rarely did she understand the full meaning of what she heard.

Later that day, however, when Blossom took her hand and led her to the creek, Anna readily understood that she was to bathe herself. Even though the shallow water was always cold, Anna enjoyed the opportunity to wash in it. She waded into the water and sat down, shivering. Standing beside her, Blossom brought up sand from the creek bed and scrubbed Anna’s face and arms until her skin felt raw. Then Blossom applied the underside of a strip of slippery elm bark to cleanse Anna’s long hair, and helped her rinse it.

When a shivering Anna came out of the water, Blossom handed her a plain linen shift in place of the doeskin robe that she’d been wearing. The garment was so identical to the summer shirts that her father and most of the other men at Bryan’s Station wore that Anna had no doubt it had been plundered from some white settlement. Worse, it might have been taken from a settler killed by Waccachalla warriors. Reminded again of her father, Anna’s heart ached with fear that she might never see him again.

I won’t allow myself even to think of such a thing
, she told herself.

Trying to think only in terms of the present, Anna leaned back against a warm rock by the creek bank to let the sun dry her heavy hair. Anna’s hair fascinated Blossom, who liked to touch it. When she had invited Anna to touch her hair, Anna had been surprised at how much coarser it felt than her own. Now Blossom lifted and spread Anna’s hair until it was dry.

“
Oui-sah
,” Blossom said, which Anna had learned to be the Shawnee equivalent of “it is good.” Taking Anna’s hand in her usual way, Blossom led her back to the
wegiwa
, where Standing Crane was waiting for them. The chief’s wife motioned for Anna to sit down, then worked a pleasantly fragrant ointment into Anna’s hair before she plaited part of it into a tight braid.

“Why do you do this?” Anna asked. From her first days in the
wegiwa
, the chief’s wife manner toward her had reflected mere resigned acceptance of Anna’s presence. This day, however, a subtle change seemed to have come over Standing Crane, and she smiled faintly as she made a dramatic gesture of opening a small wooden chest and taking from it an elaborate hair decoration.

Like other such ornaments worn by Indian men and women alike, this one was made of feathers placed inside a round bone and bound with a rawhide strip. But its one unusually large, pure white feather, and smaller, iridescent blue-black feather made the ornament far more elaborate than any Anna had seen. In addition, intricate sky blue and red beading, worked in the same geometric pattern that Anna had admired on the chief’s vest, covered a large part of the rawhide strip that bound the feathers to the bone.

“It is beautiful,” Anna murmured, then added, “
Oui-sah
,” Although “good” and “beautiful” didn’t mean the same thing, both Blossom and her mother understood and seemed pleased that Anna liked the ornament.

Standing Crane took a long time to weave the decoration into a strip of Anna’s hair. Its blue-black feather followed the contour of Anna’s right cheekbone and moved as she turned her head.
I wish I had a mirror
, she thought. Even without seeing herself, Anna knew she must look more Indian than ever.
More like my
mother,
perhaps
, she thought. She wondered what her father would think if only he could see her.

When Standing Crane finished her work, she motioned for Anna to stay where she was, and began to tend her daughter’s hair. She added an ornament similar to Anna’s, but much smaller. Finally Standing Crane unrolled a buffalo hide to reveal an elaborate doeskin robe hidden in its folds. Although it was obviously far too large for a woman, Anna first thought that the chief’s wife intended for her to wear it. Instead, she handed it to Blossom, who took the folded robe carefully, and holding it over her outstretched forearms, left the
wegiwa
.

“That robe must belong to Black Snake,” Anna said aloud. Recognizing her husband’s name, Standing Crane nodded. She pointed to herself, waved toward the
msi-kah-mi-qui
, gestured to Anna, then traced a wide circle in the air with her hands before she brought them together.

Standing Crane’s gesture reminded Anna that she would be the focus of the feasting that evening.
But why?

The answer that came to her momentarily stopped Anna’s breath.
Perhaps the chief plans to give me to one of his warriors during this feast
.

Anna quickly rejected the idea. Like most of the Waccachalla villagers, the few unmarried warriors seemed almost afraid of her, and took care not to come close to where she worked. Only her captor had shown the slightest interest in Anna, and from the way the chief had treated that warrior, she’d thought herself free of him. Still, Anna often caught her captor staring at her, and she sensed he watched her every move. Could he have persuaded the chief to change his mind?

So absorbed was Anna in her speculations that she hadn’t taken notice of the young girl’s return. Now she saw that the girl and her mother were both putting on the same kind of richly ornamented robe that Blossom had just delivered to her father.

“
Oui-sah
,” Anna said. She didn’t have to feign admiration—their almost white shifts were beautifully fringed and adorned with delicate beading and finely wrought quilling. She watched Standing Crane put on a headdress similar to the medicine man’s, only much smaller; then both mother and daughter stepped into beaded doeskin moccasins.

Standing Crane motioned to Anna. “
Wepetheh
,” she said.

Anna stood and gazed down at the linen shift she still wore, then back at the woman.
Surely they don’t expect me to go to a feast dressed
in a
man’s shirt
. Anna pointed to the doeskin robe she had been wearing, but the chief’s wife merely shook her head and repeated the command to come with her.

Anna was acutely aware of the contrast they made as she walked toward the council house between the elegantly attired mother and daughter.
At least my headdress is beautiful
, Anna reminded herself. She drew herself to her full height, lifted her chin, and walked with dignity.

As they approached the council lodge, Anna heard the sound of drums, the instruments that often regulated the pace of life in Waccachalla. Some half-dozen men sat in a semicircle outside the council lodge, beating in unison on skins stretched taut over hollowed wood. Anna had heard these drums beaten slowly for the warrior’s funeral and much more rapidly for the feast that had honored the warriors’ return. Now the drums’ beat sounded somewhere between celebration and sorrow, almost as if in anticipation of some awaited event.

Everyone in the village must be here
, Anna thought as they came to the
msi-kah-mi-qui
. The chief’s immediate family and those of the medicine man and the elders of the village occupied places of honor inside the council lodge itself, while everyone outside crowded as near to the entrance as they could, so as not to miss anything that went on inside.

Anna noticed her captor sitting with several other men in an area near the drummers, dressed as they had been when they had danced in honor of their dead warrior. Opposite them sat a group of young women in fringed and beaded doeskin dresses, whose shell ankle bracelets suggested that they would dance later.

As soon as Anna set foot inside the council house, the drums abruptly stopped, leaving an almost palpable silence. Black Snake sat much as he had the first time Anna had seen him, but he was dressed far more splendidly in fringed buckskin trousers over a red breechclout, plus the elaborately beaded vest Anna had seen before. His ensemble was topped by a bearskin thrown across his shoulders.

Motioning for Anna to remain standing, Blossom and Standing Crane took their places behind the chief. Then Sits-in-Shadow came forward to chant and dance around Anna, much as he had done in the medicine lodge. When he stopped, he touched the gourd to the top of her head, down each of her arms and legs, and finally tapped the toes of her moccasin-clad feet before he stepped aside.

Immediately Black Snake came forward, raised both his arms, and began to speak in a loud voice.

I wish I knew what he was saying
, Anna thought. She took comfort that neither his words nor his demeanor seemed threatening, nor had he called any warrior to come and stand beside her. She could make out only a few of his words, among them “Willow” and “An-na.”

At length he finished speaking, and stepped back. Blossom and Standing Crane came forward to stand before Anna.

Standing Crane put both her palms on Anna’s shoulders and looked into her eyes, her face expressionless. “
Nee dah-nai-tha
An-na,” she said, then stepped aside for Blossom to take her place.

Blossom smiled as she said, “
Nee the-tha
An-na.”

Before Anna could consider what it all meant, Black Snake rose, put his palms on her shoulders, and repeated his wife’s words: “
Nee dah-nai-tha
An-na.” Then he added, “
Newe-canetepa, Wishemenetoo; weshecatwelloo, keweshelawaypa
.”

Standing Crane turned back to Sits-in-Shadow, who handed her a soft doeskin robe, beaded in the same design as the ones that she and Blossom wore. Standing Crane stepped forward and held Anna’s headdress to one side as Blossom helped her put it on.

A group of older men who had silently watched the proceedings rose, and one by one, placed their hands on her shoulders and repeated Black Snake’s words: “
Newe-canetepa, Wishemenetoo; weshecatwelloo, keweshelawaypa
.”

Anna didn’t know how she was supposed to respond, so she merely made her expression as impassive as theirs, and slightly inclined her head to each man. When the last elder had passed before her, the chief took Anna’s hand and led her to the door of the council house.

“
Nee dah-nai-tha
An-na!” he cried loudly.

Immediately a shout went up from the villagers. From the way they looked, Anna thought many of the villagers didn’t seem particularly pleased with their chief’s pronouncement.

Taking her arm, Black Snake then walked with Anna to the place of honor beside the central firestone. Standing Crane took her seat to her husband’s right and motioned for Anna to sit on his left side, next to Blossom. When they were settled in their places, Black Snake raised his hand, and the drummers began a slow beat.

The fall twilight had faded into darkness during the ceremony in the council lodge. Now wood was added to the fire that always burned in the firestone, and flames leaped up, casting fantastic shadows among the dancers as they formed two lines opposite one another.

The dancers began murmuring, “
Ya ne no hoo wa no
,” a chant that gradually grew faster and louder with each repetition.

Anna found herself swaying in time with the beat of the drums and the sound of their voices. A strange rhythm vibrated inside her bones, and she closed her eyes and let herself be drawn into it. She had a fleeting sense that she had done this before, that she had sat in a circle of celebration, had even taken an active part in it. Part of her mind was always aware that such a thing was not possible, yet it all seemed somehow familiar.

This must be the way my mother felt when her people danced
, Anna thought. Perhaps the lonely white trader Ian McKnight and the Indian maiden Silverwillow had first seen each other at just such a dance. Perhaps they had fallen in love at that very moment.

The beat of the drums and chanting of the villagers continued to a frenzied crescendo, then stopped abruptly. Anna opened her eyes to the realization that, whatever Silverwillow’s situation might have been when she had met Ian McKnight, hers was now far different. She believed that the chief had adopted her as his own daughter, perhaps saving her from being given to her captor.

But Anna also wondered if being made the chief s daughter could mean that she was expected to stay in this village for the rest of her life.