Chapter Fourteen

The Miskenupik Rediscovered

“The tarot from your stories are real, aren’t they?” I asked. My heart beat rapidly and my hands were shaking. “The Kesemanetow and the Miskenupik are real.” This I stated as fact.

“Yes.” There was excitement in Isabel’s voice. She returned her small pile of paintings to the bedside drawer and fished out a manila folder. She placed it on her lap.

“My people once closed the Path of Tyranny, but the Pillar did not die. The Miskenupik have been rediscovered. We tried to destroy them with our smoke ceremony but we were unsuccessful.”

I recalled the story Isabel told me long ago. “My grandfather, my father, and I were performing a smoke ceremony at sunset. The Path Breakers poisoned the fire. They both died.” Isabel lived. Her disease and loss were her sacrifice. All confirmatory tests for her diagnosis had come back negative. Her story was true.

I smiled when I realized the irony. Isabel was renovating my belief system the way I had my Victorian home. She was replacing small windows with grand ones to let in more light. Would Historical Sandy knock on Izzy’s door, demanding that she keep things to society standards?

Isabel slid her folder my way. After taking a measured breath I opened it and retrieved the first item from the small pile. It was a charcoal drawing of a child with two adults. The raven-haired girl was dressed in traditional Native American garb. Each generation of Menominee warrior kneeled on the beach in front of a fire surrounded by a circle of blue stones. The caption beneath the drawing read, “Sacrifice.”

The smell of wood smoke wafted from the drawing. I could hear the faint sound of a receding tide. A lone gull cried out mournfully from within the artwork. Impossible.

The drawing’s sounds and smells disappeared as suddenly as they arose. I lifted the paper closer to my nose and inhaled deeply. The acrid scent of charred oak was barely perceptible.

“There is much more,” Isabel scolded me. “Read on.” I shook away the mirage and retrieved the next item from the folder, a news clipping, dated one year prior.

NATURAL CAVE FOUND UNDER STURGEON BAY

Sturgeon Bay, WI, March.

The discovery of the third longest natural cave in Door County has been announced recently. The cave was discovered last month by construction workers who were working on a basement extension for Grace Station, a children’s chronic care facility.

Students from the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay, and members of the Wisconsin Speleological Society (WSS) explored the two sections of the cave. Later a map was made of their findings.

They reported the north section to be only six and a half feet beneath the presently standing Grace Station building and to be 141 feet long. Most of this section is rather tight with layers of exposed fossils embedded in the cave walls.

The south section of the cave is larger, measuring 174 feet long, for a total cave length of 315 feet.

Shortly before the cave entrance was to be permanently sealed, members of the WSS convinced Doctor Cleveland Umbra, Medical Director of Grace Station, to save the cave. Doctor Umbra toured the two sections of cave and was delighted by their untarnished natural beauty. He claimed his measurement of the north cave exceeded three hundred feet, but that finding was invalidated by the experts. Nevertheless, Doctor Umbra consented to their request.

Two tunnels were built out from each basement wall and four-feet-by-four-feet steel doors were installed in the basement walls to allow permanent access to the north and south caves. These doors have been locked, and only visitors approved by Doctor Umbra and the president of the WSS may gain entry.

The children’s chronic care facility is now one of the most unique buildings in the nation, having direct access to a cave on both ends of the basement. The cave is entirely natural, being formed along a joint in the 60,000-year-old Niagara dolomite limestone.

The third item in the pile was a letter-sized piece of cardboard with three undated color photographs affixed. The title was handwritten in black ink: North Cave Entrance. The first picture depicted an unidentified man walking into the entrance to the north cave. The ceiling and walls had been artificially enlarged using power tools, so the man had to stoop very little to gain entry.

The middle picture was taken at a point deeper into the cave. The main passage seemed to meander toward the left while a smaller passage forked acutely to the right. Funny that the article had not mentioned this important detail. The handwritten caption beneath this picture was Uncharted passage discovered.

The third picture was the most interesting. It was a close-up of the wall separating the uncharted passage from the main cave. Many fossils could be seen embedded in the wall, but the photographer focused on an engraved symbol hidden amongst the fossils. The symbol was the outline of a fish rising from the water. The shape was similar to the Christian symbol seen on bumper stickers, but positioned vertically with the head up and tail down. Beneath this picture was the caption: Marker for the Broken Path. The setting sun as obscured by clouds. The fractured sunset. Many false paths created by the obscured sun, none leading home.”

I looked at the picture again. The fish symbol did look like a distorted sunset with the fish’s tail representing the many diffracted paths of flame upon the water. “None leading home.” The symbol had nothing to do with Christianity. This was the mark of the Miskenupik.

“The man who found the Miskenupik has also learned how to awaken them,” Isabel informed me. I shifted my focus from the folder to her.

“How are they ‘awakened’?” I stressed the word for emphasis.

“Awakening requires sacrifice,” she answered. “We make self-sacrifice. They sacrifice others.” I looked into Isabel’s disfigured face and understood.

“The children of the bay,” she explained, “are victims of past sacrifice. You cannot help them just yet. There are living children whom the Miskenupik now hunt. I cannot save them. But you can, my walker of fire.”