age fifteen
Adirondack Mountains, New York
Summer in the year 1855
Around me, chickens and sheep roamed freely, clucking and baa-ing as the smell of sweat and manure blanketed the next small village we had stumbled upon.
It was another ordinary day, another tribe, and I stood on the sidelines, skinning fish with covered hands and watching boys learn to fight inside a barricaded area. No grain sacks were worn to cover their faces. The boys had found a sameness in one another and moved about the village with a sense of belonging. A pack.
Helmets made of leather adorned their heads, some thrice their size, and they fought with bare fists and wooden clubs, sharp stones driven into the ends. Dusty air refused to settle, stirring with every match and transition.
Strands of Mother’s blonde hair fell from its pin when she nudged my shoulder with hers. “Keep your eyes down.”
I chopped the head off another fish. The sun was high, and I felt every drop of sweat sliding down my hairline beneath the grain sack.
“Again!” a burly man named Bly shouted, shoving his son in the chest. Chayton fell to the ground, the back of his head bouncing off the earth.
Chayton’s pet dog growled, showing its teeth from the sidelines.
A wet bark with drool flying from the mouth.
All around, the boys laughed. It was a sound I had grown accustomed to.
And Chayton resembled my dear friend Paco in a way that made me think of him. I wondered if Paco had noticed my departure. If he ever rid himself of the fear of hunting. I imagined him at the age of fifteen, too. Taller and stronger. But then the mockery aimed at Chayton snatched me from my thoughts. To this land. To this tribe.
With my eyes fixed on the scene before me, I slammed the blade down on the wooden block. The fishtail popped up before falling onto the dirt-covered ground at my feet. I did not break my stare as I reached into a nearby bucket for another fish.
Bly stomped on Chayton’s ribs, and Chayton turned his face into the dirt, letting out an empty cry. The kind that takes your voice away.
“Get up, you coward!” Bly shouted in their native language.
My muscles stiffened, and I gripped the knife’s wooden handle in my fist.
Mother begged me in a whisper to leave it be, but before I could stop, I already found myself within the barriers of the wooden fence with only one goal in mind.
Bly turned to me, wearing animal hide as armor.
“What is the matter with you, wendigo?”
Monster. Assumptions had already been made about me.
Everything about me differed from them. My height, my hidden face, my gloved hands that were two doors into the past, and my eyes which I had been told many times mirrored the soulless creature living within me.
Though Bly could not see my lack of expression or hear my angry-stricken heart pounding inside my chest, I remained stoic beneath the sack.
I shed my gloves and picked up the club from the ground.
I tossed it into the air and caught it with my left hand.
The training club was heavy and unbalanced, intending to build muscle in the arms, when a memory invaded me: skinning wood into stakes under a sweltering sun and a pot of melting iron hanging over a fire, blistering my feet. A reminder that I had built them that way.
The boys surrounded me in a circle, howling with laughter at my brazenness toward Bly by standing here. I tried to shut them out of my mind and took a step forward when one shoved my left shoulder blade.
“Why do you not take off your sack?” the boy asked.
The question paralyzed me.
Then another shove to my right shoulder from a second boy.
“What are you hiding under there?”
And another. “Will you feed on our souls like the malevolent cannibal you are?” asked a third, and I urged my foot forward.
By this time, Chayton was standing again, but the insults had already shifted from him to me. Perhaps it was what I wanted. The reason I’d jumped the fence. To take back the taunting because I couldn’t bear to see it targeting someone who did not deserve it.
One more step, and I was peering down at Chayton’s domineering father.
Bly cocked his head with a challenge in his smile. “Are you just going to stand there?”
I scanned my surroundings. All the boys had their humor-filled eyes narrowed at me. William, a European settler the tribe had taken in, watched from afar under the tree’s shade, peeling an apple with the sharp side of his blade. Even he had stopped what he was doing to witness the exchange.
Bly poked the point of his club into my shoulder.
“Come on, then!” he shouted.
An animalistic growl left me, and I charged after him.
Our weapons clashed, and Bly blocked my advance. Kicking him in the midsection, I swung my leg up, followed by another blow to the staggering brick. Bly used his shield to block the impact, took many steps back, flexed his chest, and narrowed his eyes.
“Again!” he shouted, angrier than before.
Right step, swing, blow. Left step, swing, blow. Thunder erupted between us, the earth sustaining me in the fight, its pulses spreading through my feet and legs. All the boys stepped back and formed a large circle around us.
Bly was known to be the fiercest warrior in the tribe, and though he met each advance, he could not get ahead. While he remained on defense, sweat leaked from his brows. He was tiring, much like the white-tailed deer I would hunt every morning.
I took Bly to the ground and sat atop him. My blade pressed against his throat.
At times, I was sure the sack had turned me into a shy boy who disliked being the center of attention. Other times, especially at this moment, my desire to cut through cruelty overpowered me.
“Admit defeat,” I said in their native language, gripping the club with an angry hand. The sharp and metallic sound of my voice shocked us both. It was the first time I had spoken a word to any of them since arriving.
In the reflection of Bly’s wide and angry eyes, I saw my own.
My eyes were black, and in them, all the colors of every cold, storybook night.
Bly covered his surprising loss with a chuckle.
“Concede!” I shouted again in English, disdain clutching the two syllables.
Bly looked away with a false smile, his head falling to the side and his quiet tribal words meeting my ears. “I give up.”
I jumped off him and threw the club to the ground at his side. The crowd parted down the middle as I walked past. The grain sack attempted to block their insulting whispers that wanted to violate my ears, but it failed.
“What have you done?” Mother hissed as I blew passed her.
My back was pinned to the outside wall of our hogan, and on the other side, Mother’s screams poked the night’s eye. She would be fucking for hours.
The red moon set off a summer haze in the sky, settling high and offering weak lighting as I threaded the envelope between my fingers. Although this envelope was the only gift that had ever been given to me, I was unable to open it. Thus, I slipped it back into my waistband and returned to my sketchpad that was resting on my knee. Head down, a set of familiar eyes stared back at me from the drawing. The burnt drawing tool was still warm between my fingers, and I upturned the eyes, the charcoal lines gliding smoothly across the rag paper like glass.
Routine was my savior. In the morning, I hunted, and at night, I read and drew the face engraved in my mind. It was a face I’d never seen before, but one I could not rid myself of as it held me through the loneliest of nights.
A startled babe let out a strangled cry. My gaze lifted to a woman sitting across the way, breastfeeding under the full moon.
The babe held on to the mother’s finger in a strong grip.
It was a familiar trust I understood all too well, but at what point would the babe grow to need more or begin questioning everything he knew?
A loud shout boomed across the land.
It had come from the direction of Chayton’s hogan.
I rolled the sketchpad and tucked it into my waistband as I stood.
Moonlight landed on Bly storming back inside his hogan. Beside the door, Chayton sat against the wooden siding, clutching his dog to his chest. The commotion stirred the rest of the tribe, sending them into their hogans for the night, doors closing all around.
I whistled to call Chayton’s attention.
Though I was used to the whispers of the others, Chayton had never paid me negative attention. Perhaps he was different. I had not made a friend since Paco, and there was a hunger within me for a connection with someone other than Mother.
Chayton’s sad eyes lifted and found me.
Standing to his feet, his expression morphed into anger. I carefully approached, seeing his dog lay limp with a broken neck in his arms.
Another cautious step closer. “Did … Did your father do this?”
Chayton looked at me as though I were not human, as though the words I had spoken were foreign to him. Perhaps he did not understand English. Before I could try again in his language, Chayton hugged his beloved pet one last time before dropping the heavy, dead animal into my arms.
“This is your fault,” he said to me.
His shoulder shoved mine when he stomped past.
With my arms full, I stood in a daze, my heart battling sheer malevolence. Had his father been so angry over what I had done that he broke the dog’s neck? I turned back, watching Chayton walk away, fading into the night, a boy trapped and inured to the dark and ill side of humanity. I was only trying to help, I wanted to call back to Chayton, but it was my fault. Mother was right, and as always, others suffered the consequences of my actions.
I laid my hand on the dog’s side. He’d already been dead for hours. All body warmth had left, and his chill rushed inside me. The animal deserved to rest in peace, so I descended into the woods to seek a burial place.
After reaching a small clearing, I knelt down and laid the dog on the ground. I closed my eyes and stroked the rugged black fur, recounting the details of this day leading up to this moment, wishing I had not made things more difficult for Chayton. If only I had stayed back as Mother advised.
But how could I not do something that was within my nature?
How could one witness cruelty and do nothing to stop it?
It was a reminder that I was not one of them. Praying to the same gods and eating from the same animal would never unite us. What would it take, and how far would I have to go to prove myself?
The constant battle I struggled with repeatedly triggered something within me. Rage and grief came into existence, sending hot tears sliding down my cursed face, making the sack feel like a furnace.
I continued stroking the dog’s fur, out of my head, out of my mind.
The air around me turned cold. The paper thing in my chest crumbled. The wind rustled between the branches, and vibration came from the soles of my feet and rushed to my fingertips. I felt it everywhere—a white-hot energy blasting through me.
Then the dog’s lungs expanded beneath my palm, taking a full breath.
My eyes popped open.
The dog’s tail thumped against the earth with a wag.
My breath caught in my throat, and I fell back onto my hands.
I watched as the wolfish thing lifted his head before climbing to his feet.
We locked eyes.
“You were dead,” I whispered into the night. “I am certain of it.”
He shook out his fur, perked his ears, and took off through the woods between the trees.
He disappeared as if he was never dead.