C.E. Murphy - Mountain Echoes

“No.” I sighed. “Sickness can be carried on blankets and clothes, on trade items. That’s why your people got sick before they ever even saw white men. I...” I had to try. It was useless, it would make no difference in the long run, but I had to try. I switched to English, because I knew she underkneer stood me and I didn’t have words in Cherokee to describe a vaccination process. “If the pox sickness comes, there’s a way to protect your people against it. Take scabs from the wounds and grind them up, then sniff them. It’ll make most people a little sick, and some will get very sick and die. Maybe one in ten. But if you don’t, it might be as many as nine in ten.”

“Walker?” Morrison sounded horrified.

“It’s how the Chinese vaccinated against smallpox for hundreds of years.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I used to play the what-would-happen-if-I-got-thrown-back-in-time? game, back before I started getting thrown back in time. I used to look things up to prepare myself for not having running water or penicillin or whatever.” I could tell from Morrison’s expression that this was not a game he was familiar with. “Look, it doesn’t matter, but it’s a real vaccination process and...and I have to try.”

The elder’s attention was hard on me. “You know of our future. It pains you.”

“Yeah. Yes,” I said more politely, and the stone in her turned to granite.

“Then retreating deeply will not help. The darkness comes no matter what we do.”

I remembered, vividly, how Méabh and Caitríona had both seen a darkness on the horizon, an oncoming storm, and for a heart-wrenching moment I was desperately grateful that visions of the future were not part and parcel of my usual skills. “Tell your grandchildren to adopt white men into their families, and to have those white men buy land. That land will be all that belongs to you, when the darkness comes.”

She looked utterly blank. “Buy and belong?”

“Just remember the words,” I said unhappily. “Teach them to your grandchildren, and to theirs, and someday it’ll make sense.”

Morrison said, “Walker?” again, and, tense with frustration, I muttered, “Most of the Eastern band of Cherokee, the people who managed to stay in the Carolinas and Georgia instead of being forced onto the Trail of Tears, were allowed to stay because a white man they’d adopted owned hundreds of acres of land and let his adopted people live there. That and the Qualla were all the Cherokee had left. It doesn’t matter, all right? I can’t help, and I know it, but I have to try. ”

“Maybe you are helping,” he said quietly. “Maybe this moment is why they end up with the land they do, instead of everyone being relocated to Oklahoma.”

“If it is,” I said bitterly, “it isn’t enough.”

“No.” All the compassion in the world was in that one word. “But it’s all you can do.”

For a moment I could do nothing but stand there with my eyes shut, hoping the tears wouldn’t leak through. The old woman touched my chest, fingertips light against my breastbone. I opened my eyes, looking down at her as she spoke.

“There are always sorcerers and darkness in the world. We will never do enough. But we hear, and listen, and try, and for that the Great Spirits love us, and gather us to them when our battles end. I will teach my grandchildren your strange words, and we will breathe the sickness in hopes of remaining well, and remember you for the gift of trying.”

Tears spilled down my cheeks, both for her gratitude and for my futility. She wiped them away and tasted one, which at least shook a startled la a p>

I made an instant resolution to eat only organic vegetables and moderate amounts of grass-fed meat for the rest of my life, but shook my head. “I would love to, but I can’t. I have to find my son. Do you know of where sorcerers would go to gather death magic and pain and hatred?”

“That is not a way any of the People should live, even those who are not of the People. But when our scouts and hunters go far, they return from the north with tales of war. They tell stories of the Northern and Eastern tribes driving each other further to the West, into the plains lands where they fight again with new enemies. They say the land is as red as the Lower World, stained with blood of the People.” She brought down the power circle around us, face strong and sorrowful. “Go that way, and you may find the heart of darkness.”

They insisted on feeding us before we left, and since I wasn’t sure when I’d eaten last, I was glad to accept. They fed us a veritable feast of deer and possum and a few things I couldn’t identify, all of which was enough to make my constantly hungry belly round and content for a little while. The elder, whose name I never did get, thought we should wait until morning to leave, and it was hard to argue on a full belly and a couple of days of no sleep. Morrison and I were given blankets to share, blankets woven and patterned in styles I’d never seen.

“This is what it looked like,” I said to him, under the cover of a crescent moon and the blankets. The Milky Way sprawled above us, clearer than I’d seen it since I was a kid in the wilderness with my dad. The only sounds were the wind carrying light voices and the avid songs of horny bugs, and the only scents of small fires and clean human beings. “This is what America looked like before Europeans got here. All of this life and all of these images we’ll never see on our end of time, because it’s all been destroyed.”

“Then hold on to every minute of this,” he suggested, “because we’re the only ones who ever get to see it. Walker, do you have any idea...do you have any sense of how incredible this is? I’m not sure you do.”

I turned my face against his shoulder and closed my eyes. “Which part, that we’re chasing black magic across time, or that we’ve just finished having dinner with a people who nearly went extinct?”

“Either,” he said, quiet and steady. “You do that, Walker. You phrase everything like that, making light of it. Some things deserve more respect than that. The power that pulled us into that deserves more respect. You deserve more respect, even from yourself. Especially from yourself.”

“Heh.” It was sort of a laugh, muffled against his shoulder. “You’re probably right.”

“I am right.”

“I can’t, Morrison. I can’t take it seriously that way. I’d be overwhelmed. Making stupid jokes is the only way I can cope. I don’t know how you and Gary take it in stride. I mean, Gary, God. Gary goes charging along just asking for more all the time. I wish I was like that. I wish I was like you, unflappable.”

Morrison chuckled. “You think I’m unflappable? Even with the number of times I’ve blown my top at you?”

“It’s not like I haven’t given you cause. But when it counts, yeah. You’re unflappable. Witness our current situation, for example. I told you we’d time traveled and all you said was, ‘So what do we do next?’”

“I’ve spent a lot of years cultivating an unflappable exterior, Walker. Would it make you feel better to know I was as amazed as a kid on the inside?”

“Maybe.”

We lay down, Morrison taking my hand and putting it over his heart, which beat a lot more quickly than a quiet evening stargazing might account for. “I am,” he said quietly, “in awe. It’s hard to doubt you, Walker, even if what you’re selling is outrageous. I’d like you to be able to see that.”

“I’m still not used to this. I know it’s been more than a year and I should probably have adjusted by now, but I still feel like I’m running to catch up. There are so many fires burning, and apparently I’m the one with the skill set to put them out. If I could just get them doused so I could sit back and breathe for a while, maybe I could take the time to be impressed. I’m just afraid if I take the time now I’ll lose whatever handle I’ve got on things. I have to be sarcastic and unimpressed so I don’t scare myself into immobility.”