Chapter Twenty-Four

Miskenupik Cult

Cleve walked past the gallery many times before but never with the intent to enter. Until today. The small white clapboard cottage stood upon a limestone bluff overlooking Death’s Door Harbor. It was set back at the edge of a large field, one-quarter mile from the main road. Fragrant, yellow flowers dotted the landscape on this summer day.

Visible from the front window was a painting eerily reminiscent of his three cards. He studied it. A fair skinned woman walked a moonlit path upon green water. The woman’s long, auburn hair was bound at the nape of the neck by a garland of red roses. Her bleached linen caftan was so thin as to be almost sheer. She walked away from the viewer and toward a nearby island, whose shore was bleached white by the light of the moon. She held a candle in the upturned palm of her hand and the flame reached longingly toward the violet of the night sky.

The painting’s tone suggested both femininity and loss. It revealed power but also sacrifice. The work spoke to a remote and primitive part of Cleve’s soul. He walked into the white cottage.

“May I help you?” The woman gave Cleve a reticent smile as she looked up from her book. She sat behind a large, leather-topped mahogany desk, the only piece of furniture in the small gallery. The rectangular space was paneled with dark cherry and the absence of skylights lent the dimly lit interior a feeling of oppression. The artwork hung from thick frames of walnut, each piece illuminated by warm track-lighting.

The art was mostly Menominee-influenced works. Simple wooden canoes were piloted by warriors fighting their way across a turbulent green sea. Eagles hovered majestically over limestone bluffs of marbled hue. A lone Menominee princess stood bound within a circle of diseased-looking staffs.

Cleve approached the proprietor. She had dark hair and an alluring smile . “Yes,” he replied to her invitation. “Can you tell me who painted the moonlight walker?” He pointed to the front window.

“I did,” she answered hesitantly. Cleve was unable to ascertain whether her wan smile was muted pride in her work or something else entirely, something mysterious and connected to the somber violet tones of her work.

Cleve walked closer to the desk and offered an extended hand. “I’m Cleveland Umbra. My friends call me Cleve.”

“Winnow,” she replied.

Cleve grimaced involuntarily and immediately apologized. “You really don’t look like a ‘Winnow.’”

She offered a sheepish smile.

“I get that a lot. Actually, I’m giving serious thought to a change in name.” Cleve looked more closely at the dark-haired beauty before him. She was even prettier up close. Her face was lightly freckled, which he found charming, and her voice was tinged with an undercurrent of barely discernable excitement. It was as if those privileged enough to converse with her would join her on an exotic adventure.

Cleve released her hand reluctantly and couldn’t help but stare. She looked up at him expectantly, and an awkward silence filled the dark room. He found himself unable to release his gaze from her, and his feeling of certainty grew that this was a woman who walked upon the knife edge of two worlds.

The unmistakable tragic melancholy of Billie Holiday descended from the four ceiling-mounted speakers in the rectangular space. “I’m all for you body and soul,” she sang to a lover who had already made up his mind to leave Lady Day. Cleve became suddenly self-conscious and averted his eyes from Winnow.

“What can I do for you?” she asked.

“I think it is I who can help you,” he replied. She looked at him expectantly, and he produced from the breast pocket of his coat a small envelope with no obvious markings. Winnow studied the strange man whose proffered gift gave her cause for concern. He was well groomed, wearing a white dress shirt with black jacket. He was a tall and athletic black man, handsome and confident. He looked like a lawyer. She hesitated to take the envelope.

“It’s not a summons,” he told her. She took the yellow envelope and opened it without further hesitation. She retrieved one of the cards. She marveled at its cool tombstone quality and studied the bestial figure with his two slaves. The work was similar in detail to her paintings. The same downward brush strokes, the predominance of dark and muted colors, the suggestion of transition from one stage to another. She knew the origin of this miniature work. She had seen its likeness in a book. The same book from which she found the inspiration to create Walker of Moonlight.

“How did you get this?” she asked accusingly.

Cleve laughed at her inability to hide her excitement. “Yes,” he whispered quietly. “You do know how powerful it is.”

“It is a Miskenupik,” she said. Her hands were trembling, ever so slightly. Cleve had not heard the term before. There was much about the magical works he had yet to discover. He had come to the right woman. He knew his three paintings were somehow related to this woman’s art.

“I will show you what this can do,” he told the speechless artist. All that I ask in return is that you share with me everything you know about these Miskenupik.” He pronounced this last word carefully, as if its very articulation released unchecked power.

Cleve asked Winnow if they could sit somewhere more private. She led him through a paneled door to a lounge in the rear of the cottage. He took a seat upon a large brown leather sofa while she sat at the other end. She offered him coffee, but he declined. “You’ll want to sit closer,” he advised. She slid along the sofa until her right hip was touching his left. “Much better,” he said. She chastised herself for displaying naive trust, but this charming stranger had in his possession a work of art not thought to exist.

Cleve held the Miskenupik between them so that they could both see. The female prisoner now stood to the left of her male counterpart. Winnow could have sworn it was the other way around. The chains also seemed tighter around his neck than hers. She had not noticed that detail earlier.

Swirls of green water above the demon’s head became more thickly textured. Winnow blinked several times to clear the mirage but it intensified. Several air bubbles rose almost imperceptibly toward the top of the painting but then disappeared from view. The demon’s eyes, two black disks framed by a buffalo head, focused on Winnow. They had been shifted toward the prisoners earlier. He smiled a beast’s smile, and the small gallery lounge became filled with the scent of barnyard filth and rotting vegetation. Winnow almost gagged in response, but her fascination with the moving scene prevented it.

The demon pointed his arm at the motionless male prisoner. Impossible. Winnow pressed the parchment between her fingers, feeling for a hidden computer chip. There was no chip, no glass screen, no digital processor. It was as if the painting became animated, one detail at a time. She completely lost herself to the work. She could feel the prisoner’s terror.

The otherworldly quality of the work disappeared as quickly as it had arisen. Winnow couldn’t mask her disappointment. “Why did it stop?”

“I was hoping you could tell me,” Cleve said.

“You haven’t awakened it?”

Cleve’s hesitant look informed her he had not. She inhaled deeply and then sighed. Empathy for the male prisoner in the card caused her throat to tighten. Had she not also been a victim? Never again.

“We’ve got work to do,” she said. Cleve smiled.