Charles blinked.
He lay under a light deerskin covering in a room filled with murky gray light and the lingering scent of smoke.
When he rubbed his eyes he realized first that his hands were untied and then that his glasses weren’t on his nose. He squinted. The room looked to be some sort of tent. A skeleton of long poles held a skin of deerhides. Light seeped in through a small opening near the poles’ apex. A word occurred to Charles: “tepee.” He thought: I have just spent the night in a tepee.
That part was easy enough. But how had he gotten here?
The smell of something savory distracted him. He sat up.
A brown clay bowl containing some kind of stew sat a few feet away. Beside it were his lopsided glasses, and a couple of chunks that looked like rocks but, after he’d screwed his glasses on as best as possible, focused into lumpy pieces of bread. Cornbread, he discovered when he bit into one, bland, but starchy and filling. As for the stew, it was the best—well, the only—meal he’d had since the trout he’d cooked the day before yesterday. But so small! In a moment the food was gone.
Charles was licking the gritty bowl clean when a flap folded back and a bolt of light flooded the tepee. A snort of laughter followed the light into the tent. Charles tossed the bowl aside and swiped at his chin. His visitor was the twentysomething Wendat from the hunting party. The man pantomimed Charles licking the bowl and laughed again, then quickly, roughly, bound Charles’s hands much more tightly than either Tankort or the dog keeper had. Charles tried to remain as passive as possible, but when, without thinking, he reached to nudge his lopsided glasses up his nose, the man smacked Charles’s hands down and made a sound that seemed more growl than word. He led Charles out of the tepee and tied him to a tree by his ankle, and then looked him up and down disdainfully. After several of the most excruciatingly awkward seconds of Charles’s life, the Wendat jerked his thumb to his chest.
“Handa.”
Charles, bewildered, frightened, felt his heart lighten. The man was telling him his name! Perhaps—oh please!—he wanted to be friends.
“Ch-Charles Oakenfeld,” he stammered, because even he didn’t quite believe it.
Handa shook his head. He thumped Charles on the chest with a strong, blunt finger.
“Handa-vey.”
Handa-vey?
A pouch hung on a string over the Wendat’s chest. Handa pulled it off and tapped it with the finger that had tapped Charles’s chest.
“Handa-vey.”
He replaced the pouch and pulled his knife from its sheath. He held it in front of Charles and tapped the blade.
“Handa-vey.”
Now Handa tapped the tip of the blade on Charles’s heart.
“Handa-vey,” the Wendat said one more time. He nodded significantly, then turned on his heel and marched away.
While Handa was, apparently, staking his claim on Charles’s blood, the rest of the tribe was busily breaking camp. The tepees came down and were folded inside out, making fan-shaped sleds. The Wendat piled bags and baskets and even a couple of children on these conveyances. A few were hitched to dogs, but most were picked up by two or four people. Charles spotted Tankort taking the pole of one of the four-man teams, but saw no sign of his backpack, either on the young Wendat’s shoulders or on his sled.
Charles searched the branches to see if President Wilson had managed to follow them to camp, but saw no sign of the bird. A short time later, Handa came back and replaced Charles’s sneakers with a pair of moccasins, and then they set off. The pace was slower than yesterday. Charles’s legs were tired after two days’ hard marching, and his tightly bound hands made it that much more difficult to keep his balance. The moccasins, though, were quite comfortable. Not exactly as springy as Nike Airs, but much better than Charles would have expected.
The march lasted the entire day. The Wendats’ moccasinned feet fell noiselessly on the ground, and the rustle of the sleds was only slightly louder than the rustle of the leaves in the wind. Once, as Charles watched, a young man let go of the sled he’d been pulling with three other men and peeled off from the group, unslinging his bow as he faded into the trees. Charles barely heard the ping! of his bowstring, followed a moment later by a short, almost shockingly loud crash. Soon enough the Wendat appeared with a deer draped over his shoulders, and a small, proud smile on his face. The deer was loaded onto a sled and the young man resumed his place with his companions.
Charles noticed something else on the young man—a welted, star-shaped scar beneath his right shoulder. Charles was pretty sure this was the scar left behind by a bullet wound, and now he noticed that many of the tribe bore such scars. Charles couldn’t imagine what it felt like to be shot, let alone to have a bullet extracted from deep within muscle and bone without anesthesia. He remembered what Tankort had said yesterday: Wendat hate English. If the English had done this, Charles could see why the tribe disliked them so much.
As he peered around for a sign of Tankort, he caught a glimpse of a sled that was different from the others. It wasn’t a sled, for one thing: it was being carried by men at both the front and back ends by a pair of long poles. In the center of the poles sat a square deerhide cube. The leather sides were laced tightly over their wooden frame, and Charles thought there were symbols painted on the sides. Yellow squares, it looked like, inside of which had been painted… lines! Horizontal lines, each smaller than the one above it!
Suddenly he remembered the old man from last night, and the lines painted on his face—the same seven lines etched into the cover of Mario’s book! Then he remembered the feeling of poles beneath him, the sensation of moving. Although it made no sense, Charles knew the poles he’d felt were the very poles holding up the deerhide cube. He knew the old man he’d seen was inside that cube, and that he’d been inside it too. But how? When?
Charles looked at the men carrying the poles. Their burden seemed almost weightless. Indeed, when one man let go of his pole to scratch his nose, the other three didn’t even notice. Yet Charles was sure there was someone inside the cube. He’d seen movies in which rich people and other august personages were carried in chairs like this. What else could—
Charles blinked. Blue sky glittered through the branches and leaves. Then a Wendat face appeared in his line of vision, a woman, joined a moment later by Handa, panting slightly, as if he’d run up. Although he knew no one spoke English, Charles still couldn’t help from saying, “What—what happened?”
“Charzo fall.”
Charles looked over. Tankort was there. The hatred was gone, replaced by derision.
“Charzo hit head. Charzo sleep.”
Charles’s head felt perfectly fine. Confused, but fine. “I did not hit my head. And I didn’t fall. I—” But Charles had no idea what had happened. One moment he had been peering at the mysterious deerhide cube, and the next he was on his back, looking up at the sky. He sat up and looked for the cube now, but there was no sign of it.
“English walk like baby.” Tankort did an imitation of a toddler’s waddle, falling with a loud, theatrical crash to the ground.
The sound snapped the adults out of their inaction. Handa hauled Charles roughly to his feet. A moment later they were marching.
“I did not fall,” Charles hissed to Tankort. “And I do not walk like a baby.” But Tankort only rolled his eyes and toddled away.
They marched on. Twice more Charles found himself on the ground. The first time took him by surprise, but the second time he felt it coming. His vision grew blurry, like it does when you allow your eyes to relax so much they become unfocused. Shapes melted, multiplied. Charles took off his glasses and tried to straighten them, but when he put them on nothing had changed. Every Wendat and sled and tree had grown a twin. It seemed at first that Charles was seeing double, but that wasn’t quite it. The twins walked or slid or swayed a foot ahead of their original. With a start, Charles realized he wasn’t seeing two things at the same time—he was seeing two times at the same time. Then he blinked and found himself on the ground yet again.
The Wendat stopped long enough to feed Charles, apparently assuming the pale-skinned, delicate boy was not used to such hard marching. Charles munched his dried venison thankfully, but, hungry as he was, he was even more concerned about the fact that he seemed to be coming unstuck in time. Could it be that the stream he’d walked up had only a temporary effect? Maybe he’d end up back in his era? Having never traveled through time before, Charles had no idea what to think, and he was pondering various scenarios when Tankort approached, accompanied by an older Wendat. The man’s cheeks bore fresh traces of red and yellow paint, and when he got close enough Charles could see that the familiar seven lines had been scored on each of his cheeks in bright red dye. Around each of the symbols had been drawn a yellow square, just like those on the deerhide cube. The squares enclosed the lines, containing them.
Charles lifted his bound hands and pointed. “What do those mean?”
The old Wendat smacked Charles’s hands away. He dipped a hand in a pouch and hurled a pinch of yellow powder in Charles’s face, causing him to sneeze and sputter for several seconds. The powder fogged Charles’s glasses and got in his eyes, but he was too scared to wipe it away, and he blinked uncontrollably.
The old Indian barked something at Tankort, who turned to Charles.
“Votav says if you speak he will cut out your tongue to keep you from casting spells.”
“But I didn’t—”
A shower of powder cut him off. When Charles could see again, he saw a long stone knife in Votav’s hands. The old man’s eyes were cold above the yellow and red symbols on his cheeks. He spoke quietly, looking directly at Charles.
“Hold still, Charzo,” Tankort translated, “and you may yet speak your children’s names.”
Charles had never really thought about his tongue before, but it suddenly seemed like a terribly important part of him. As he watched, Votav produced a pair of small wooden bowls. He poured a few drops of water from a leather sack into each of them, then tipped some yellow powder into one, red powder into the other. He mixed the contents of each bowl with either end of a smooth white bone. Charles hoped it had come from a deer or a bear or something, and not a person. When Votav had two smooth pastes, he dipped his bone into the yellow dye. He brought it to Charles’s face and traced a square on each cheek just beneath the rims of his lopsided glasses. The wet paste felt funny on Charles’s skin, and he had to fight the urge to wrinkle his nose, or scratch.
Votav dipped his bone in the red paste. Charles counted the lines as they were etched on each of his cheeks. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, the last so short it was practically a dot. The seven lines on the cover of Mario’s book were now on his cheeks, just as they were on Votav’s, and on the man from last night, and on the cube that contained him.
Suddenly a memory floated up from the depths of his brain. When he was four years old, he had gotten his first pair of glasses. His father had taken him to an optician, who had produced Charles’s lenses with a flourish. He slipped them onto Charles’s nose, and it was only after Charles had blinked and focused and looked around at the new, crisp edges of things that he realized the world as he had known it had been blurry. He’d never realized it because he hadn’t had anything to compare it to.
Charles looked around at the gathered Wendat. They were somehow sharper than they’d been, the ground beneath him was firmer, the smells of soil and pollen and his own sweat more distinct. No, it wasn’t the other things that were sharper. He was sharper. Somehow, the symbols on his cheeks had brought him into focus. Charles wondered if the symbols possessed this power themselves, or the dye from which they’d been made, or Votav.
The old Wendat was wrapping his tools in a roll of deerhide. He said something to Tankort and walked away.
Tankort looked at Charles. The derision was still in his eyes, but there was curiosity too, as if he was realizing Charles was more than what he’d thought he was.
“Votav say you not fall,” Tankort said finally. “Unless you are baby.”
They marched the rest of the day. There were, indeed, no more falls, or blinks, as Charles thought of them, and no more rests either. If anything, the Wendat quickened their pace to make up for lost time. Charles tried to figure out what was happening—what the connection was between Mario’s book and the painted deerhide cube and the Wendat tribe and Drift House and the wave that had crashed off the Sea of Time, but he was so tired he couldn’t quite pin it all down. A dozen stars were winking above the leaves when the party finally stopped. Fires were lit; the deer that had been killed earlier was skinned and gutted and carved into steaks that were soon sizzling over the flames. Charles, again tied to a tree by his ankle, was given another bowl of the stew he’d had for breakfast, as well as another lump of cornbread.
When he’d finished eating, Handa untied Charles and led him to a small circle of men gathered around a fire. In the first tier of the circle sat Tankort and the dog keeper, and Votav, draped in an impressive deerhide cloak trimmed with shells and feathers. The older man who had been in the party that picked Charles up was also there, and two other men Charles had not met before. Along with Votav, about half the men had the squared lines painted on their cheeks. The fresh paint glistened in the firelight.
After he’d seated Charles, Handa went away again, returning with eight skewers of freshly cooked deer meat. These he handed around the fire one at a time, to Votav first, and then to the older man who had been in the party that picked Charles up, and then to one of the new men, and so on down the line. Tankort was the last Wendat to receive a skewer, and the final one was handed to Charles, which gave him a pretty good idea of his status in the group.
For a long time, the contented sound of chewing was the only noise in the forest, and the occasional sizzle as someone warmed their meat in the fire. Charles nibbled at his. It was delicious, but he was too nervous to concentrate on it. Shadows moved in the trees as more and more Wendat came to sit around the fire.
At length one of the Wendat took his half-eaten skewer and stuck the meatless end into the ground. His cheeks were un-painted, his lips moist and shiny with meat juice.
“Handa has claimed your life,” this man said in thickly accented but perfectly clear English, “because he was the leader of the party that brought you among us. If you perpetuate any mischief against the Wendat, he will be held responsible, and he will also have the responsibility of determining your punishment. You will remain Handa-vey, Handa’s blood, until you have shown yourself trustworthy.”
Charles was conscious of dozens of pairs of eyes on him. Speaking as respectfully as he could, he said, “You speak English. How?”
“My own story is one that would break your heart,” the English-speaking Wendat said after a long pause, “as would that of any of the individual men and women who make up the remnants of my nation. Once I had a wife and children, but now I have only myself. All of the people around you have lost wives or husbands, children, parents, their home. Tonight I speak to you on behalf of all of them, to tell you our story, and to find out if you are enemy or friend.”
Charles took a moment to process this information, then said in the politest voice he could muster, “Can I at least know your name?”
“I am called Grabant. Only recently have I taken on the role of speaker for the Wendat, since my predecessor was killed in the wars between the English and French.”
Charles saw heads nod and shake around the dimly lit circle as the names “English” and “French” were spoken, and he said, “Were you… I mean, are you Huron?”
Heads shook at this word too, sharply, negatively, but only Grabant spoke.
“We are Huron in the same way that you are Handa-vey: because someone more powerful chose to call us by a name of their choosing. Huron is a French word, not ours. We are Wendat.”
Charles nodded. “I know about this war. You fought with the French, against the British and the Iroquois.”
When Grabant answered, his voice was quiet and serious and edged by some sharp emotion that could have been anger or pain. “At first we fought because we were foolish enough to believe the French would help us if we helped them. But then we just fought for our lives. In the end we realized that all you can do in war is try to survive.”
Charles felt chastised by the Wendat’s words. “My friend told me all the Hur—all your people were killed.”
“That is very nearly true. Once the Wendat were the most numerous people to live on the northern shores of the great waters that divide us from the Iroquois. Our villages were clean and well tended, with great longhouses in which we ate and slept without fear, working our gardens and turning to the forest for meat. This tiny number that you see today is all that remains.”
“How many—”
“One hundred seventy-two. Once we were numberless, but now we number one hundred seventy-two.”
Charles was silent for a long time. He wasn’t sure what to say, so he touched a finger to his cheek. The dried paint on his cheeks felt like paper.
“Is this to protect me? Or protect you?”
The Wendat glanced at Votav, who continued to stare impassively into the flames.
“It is a precaution,” Grabant said. “Time flickers around you strangely, and these symbols will keep you—and us—in one place.”
Charles glanced around the circle. “Not everyone has the symbols. You don’t.”
“Not everyone believes time is as easy to shape as Votav does. We have heard the stories for generations, but none of us has ever slipped ourselves, let alone journeyed through the fog.”
“The fog? Where are you going anyway?”
Grabant’s eyes narrowed, almost as if he’d been expecting this question. “We are being led far away. To a place no English-or Frenchman will ever come to. As the deer must stay with deer and the wolf must stay with wolves, so our people and your people must remain forever separate.”
At these words, Charles’s mind flashed to visions of what he knew lay in the future: Europeans spreading unchecked west, south, north across the continent, with the native populations confined to reservations encompassing a fraction of the land they’d once lived on. In a way, Grabant’s desires would come true, Charles thought. But probably not in the manner he or his people were hoping.
“Your presence is troubling to us, Handa-vey,” Grabant continued. “Our people have already wandered far from the places we knew. These lands are colder than the ones we left. But neither French nor English have ever been seen in these parts, and we had hoped to stop soon. There is still time to plant squash and beans and corn for the fall harvest. Time to build warm shelters for the winter so we won’t have to huddle in tents to keep from freezing. But if your presence is a sign that others like you are not far behind, we shall have to keep going. And, perhaps, we shall have to leave a warning behind.”
Charles gulped. “Warning?”
Grabant paused, contemplated his words. “The Wendat are not a warlike people. We have always lived in peace with our neighbors until the French came, and the British, and the Iroquois. But we will fight if we have to, to protect ourselves. Our ancestors say, if you have to go to war, do not leave your spear at home, or your bow, your hatchet, your knife, or your wits. Do you understand?”
“I’m not sure.”
With a flick of his finger, Grabant made the piece of skewered meat in front of him wobble like a metronome. “There are some among us who want to mount your head on a stake as a warning to any who come after you. The Wendat are not yet helpless, Handa-vey. If you think otherwise, you are much mistaken.”
Although he was only ten years old, Charles had had his life threatened before, by the mermaid Queen Octavia. But the mermaid had been careless—at any rate overconfident—and, as well, Charles had had his uncle to help him, and Susan and Murray, not to mention Pierre Marin and the Time Pirates. But Grabant had spoken in a calm, matter-of-fact voice about beheading Charles, who was suddenly, acutely conscious of the circles of hostile eyes ringing him, and the empty forest beyond them.
“I, um, that is, well—”
Suddenly a voice rang out of the dark trees.
“Stay where you are!”
Instantly, knives appeared in the hands of every Wendat seated around the fire.
“Drop your weapons!” another voice cried out. “Back away from the boy!” There was a pause—during which, Charles noted dismally, no one did any backing away—and then a third voice called out, “We have you surrounded!”
On the other side of the fire, Grabant made subtle movements with the fingers of his right hand. Although Charles didn’t actually see anyone move, he had a sense of fewer shadows around the fire.
“Do not delay!” a fourth voice cried. “Step away from the boy or my men—RAK!”
Charles, who had been as mystified by the voices as the Wendat, suddenly understood. A moment later, a young man appeared carrying President Wilson. He held the parrot upside down by the legs, like a chicken. As always when he was stressed, President Wilson resorted to a stream of abuse.
“Unhand me, you foul miscreant, or I will flay the flesh from your bones with my talons!”
It was pretty obvious that President Wilson was in no position to do anything of the sort, but given the fact that his captor probably spoke no English, it was a particularly hollow threat.
At the sight of the bird, another murmur went through the circle. Charles thought it was directed at President Wilson’s strange appearance—he was sure the Wendat had never seen a parrot before, let alone a bird that could talk. But the situation turned out to be somewhat different. Grabant leaned over and spoke to the man next to him. As he talked, he made the circles around his eyes that Charles had seen so many times in the past few days, and Charles thought he detected a distinct expression of relief on his face. The second Wendat nodded, glancing at Charles with what seemed to the boy a look of newfound respect, then slipped off into the darkness.
Grabant turned back to Charles. His expression had changed yet again: there was a cautious smile on his face.
“It would seem Tankort was right about you after all.”
The last time Charles had spoken to Tankort, the young Wendat had voiced his hatred of Charles, then made off with his backpack. Charles wasn’t sure he wanted Tankort to be “right” about him.
“Are you deaf, imbecile!” President Wilson was still screaming. “You continue to hold me at peril to your own life!”
Grabant nodded to himself. “He insisted you were of the trader’s kind. That is why Handa let you live in the first place.”
Charles felt he almost understood what the Wendat meant, but not quite. Too much had happened too quickly—he couldn’t add it all up. President Wilson’s screaming in his ear didn’t help matters any.
“Curse you, cretin! Release me or they’ll need to use dental records to identify your body!”
“The trader?”
Grabant’s brow furrowed in confusion. “Perhaps you did not realize our name?”
Now Charles really was confused.
“Your name is… Wendat. Isn’t it?”
Grabant nodded. “Yes. Wendat. It is an old, old word in our language. It means ‘People of the Floating Island.’ “
People of the Floating Island? Did he mean the Island of the Past? And the trader? Pierre Marin had been a fur trader, before he discovered the secrets of time travel. President Wilson said Pierre Marin had learned to navigate time from the Huron. Could it be…?
Just then the Wendat who had left the circle reappeared carrying a long pole. One end was sharpened into a stake, and Charles, who remembered Grabant’s threat to mount his head on a pike, felt a shiver travel down his back. But the man only stabbed the sharpened end of the stake into the forest floor, allowing Charles to see a horizontal bar mounted at its top. The bar was about a foot long, and scored with familiar-looking scratches.
“Is that a—” Charles was too overwhelmed by the odd turn of events to finish his question.
“Come, Xerxes,” Grabant said now. “I apologize for the undignified way we have brought you among us. But it has been so long since we have played host to you or anyone else from the Sea of Time that we have started to disbelieve our own memories. This man did not know who you were.” And, gently taking President Wilson from the boy who held him, he set him on the well-used perch.
President Wilson glared balefully at the circle of Wendat. His plumage, Charles saw, was ragged and ruffled, making him look simultaneously bigger and smaller than the parrot Charles was used to seeing.
“Xerxes?” he said finally, in a mightily aggrieved voice. “I’ll show you Xerxes.”