Eliot Pattison - Eye of the Raven

"I haven't enough paper," Van Grut protested.

"Make them small."

The Dutchman sighed, then reached into his pack.

Ten minutes later Duncan lowered his knife and approached Stone Blossom, the matriarch. "Do you have English words?" he asked.

"A little," the woman said stiffly. "My son Skanawati teach me."

Duncan paused, then realized he should not be surprised that the woman who was clearly the matron of the village was also the mother of Skanawati. "The spirits have empowered my friend's hands," he said. "He wishes to help you leave something of yourself with your lost ones."

"We have readied gifts for them," the woman said, confused. "Old prayers have been spoken over their new grave, since before dawn."

As Duncan looked back the Dutchman was approaching, tearing away a quarter of the sheet in his hand. The woman hesitantly accepted the paper, then cried out in fear as she saw her image sketched on it. She threw it down and began chanting words that had the sound of a curse.

Moses was suddenly at Duncan's shoulder, speaking reassuringly to her. Calmed, she bent and tentatively touched the drawing. A younger woman leaned over it, her eyes growing round before she snatched it up with an exclamation of awe.

"There are witches in the tribes," Moses said, "who sometimes are burned just as in old Europe. Stone Blossom said it was witchcraft, but I told her no, it was the spirits speaking through this stranger, who came from across the big water to honor the village of Skanawati. I said he was making a tattoo of her memory, to leave with loved ones."

Duncan offered a grateful nod. He had grown to greatly respect the Christian Indians, not just for their spiritual fortitude, which often exceeded that of Europeans, but for the adept way they navigated the ground between worlds.

The work went speedily now, with more and more spirits lifted as Van Grut offered one and then another sketch of the villagers. Young girls returned to the village and carried down wooden planks laden with cornbread, smoked eels, and crocks of fresh water. As the others ate Duncan slipped up the trail toward the new communal grave, toward the scent of fresh tobacco burning with other herbs.

Conawago sat cross-legged on a blanket, rocking back and forth, chanting prayers to sanctify the new grave. Duncan slipped onto a boulder in the shadows of a sassafras tree and watched, the Nipmuc seemingly oblivious to his presence. The gentle voice worked like a salve to his tired, aching body. He did not know how he would find the strength to continue down his treacherous path without Conawago at his side, but at least for now his friend was where he belonged, standing in for Skanawati, the father the village had lost.

At last he retreated down the path, realizing he was famished. He ate heartily of the eel and cornbread, then helped the villagers finish wrapping the last of the bones in swathes of fur as Van Grut completed the last of his sketches.

He heard a new pitch in the conversations, a new strain in several voices, and looked to see that the Indians were now addressing bundles of bones, saying farewell as the bones were covered for a last time, slipping the sketches done by the Dutchman into the bundles before tying them tight. Tears were flowing freely, and several women clutched small bundles to their breasts, whispering the last words of a mother to her child.

Finally the slow procession began up the path to the grave overlooking the river.

"I am grateful to you, McCallum," came a quiet voice by his shoulder. Moses was solemnly watching the single file of mournful villagers. "Every European I have known who encountered this practice has been revolted by it, condemned it as barbaric. I have always thought it very civilized. I know Christians who bless new homes, but it has always seemed better to me to bless the homes of the old ones. If we do not respect those who have gone before, how can we respect ourselves?"

Duncan, nodding in agreement, recalled another cemetery, that of his clan, which had been dug up and ravaged by English raiders. They had hung the corpse of an uncle branded as a traitor, then destroyed most of the markers. But his parents and grandparents had banished the horror by digging new graves and summoning the clan for a gathering-illegal under English law-to reconsecrate them.

It was not the time to ask the questions he so wanted to ask the villagers. It would not be for hours.

"Where will they go?" he asked Moses. "I mean, where is their new village?"

The Moravian's eyes narrowed in warning. "Do not ask them. There are hidden valleys, in uncharted land. Skanawati wants them far from English rum, far from English traders. He asked me to visit them, with some of Rideaux's Delawares, to teach his people how to write sounds on paper. He wants his village to record all the old stories, the names of all the old spirits."

"Do you believe with Rideaux, that those of the tribes have uncorrupted hearts?"

Moses considered the question a long time. "I believe many Europeans have lost the way of their hearts."

"They have lost their true skins." The words left Duncan's tongue unbidden.

Moses nodded. "You have had a good teacher."

Duncan looked up the trail to the new grave, where Conawago still chanted. In that moment he wanted more than anything to steal away with the old Nipmuc to one of their mountain hideaways and leave the rest of the world behind.

When he finally returned to the new grave, behind the slow, murmuring procession, Stone Blossom was seated beside Conawago. As each bundle was placed in the wide pit, lined with fur and moss, those carrying it spoke, raising the bundle toward the sky and calling out the name of the dead, sometimes twice, even three times before setting it down and arranging the gifts that would be buried with it.

He saw the old woman reach for the bundle of white fur that had been used to wrap the first set of bones he had cleaned, one with heavily tattooed skin. He found a place behind her and sat to listen as she lifted the bundle and spoke. Her words brought the sound of new lamentation among the villagers, many of whom offered their own short prayers. When she finished, ready to place the bones on a bear fur at the center of the mass grave, she raised them one last time and called to the sky.

"Skanawati! Skanawati! Skanawati!"

A chill ran down Duncan's spine. He looked about, trying to understand. Skanawati was in the hands of the magistrates, waiting to be hanged. Skanawati had been in the Shamokin and lands north for the past six months, yet Red Hand had insisted he had been in the western lands, killing a surveyor. And now Skanawati was being buried, having died months earlier.

As the village arranged the pots, blades, and combs that were the final gifts to the dead and began filling the grave with soil, Duncan turned to Moses. "I ask you, my friend. Explain to me how Skanawati can be in so many places."

"There has always been a Skanawati," Moses said enigmatically. Then he saw the tormented way Duncan looked at the bundle of white fur as it disappeared under the soil. "Perhaps there is something you must learn about the high chiefs of the Grand Council. When a man is raised to a seat of the council he takes its ancient name."

Duncan considered the words for a moment. "You are saying the Skanawati held by the magistrate has only had the name for a few months?"

"Less than a year. The old chief died of the pox, and the title was given to his nephew, who had trained to take on that burden for many years."

Duncan's mind raced. The chief awaiting hanging could not have killed the first surveyor, Townsend, but the prior Skanawati could have. "What was he like, the last chief?"

"A great and noble warrior, as was his duty. Stone Blossom says there is an essence that passes from one Skanawati to the next."