PROLOGUE

LITTLE FORT, ILLINOIS, 1835 A.D.

Naawe could hear the screams of the wide-winged lake birds as she hurried up to the place where Dessa was hiding. The white birds moved swiftly, flying in wide circles. Naawe was high enough above the place where the water crashed against the rocks to look down at them. Some swooped down to the Mitchigami. Others walked or ran on long legs across the sand, seeking food. She looked for the boats of the Neshnabek, her people, but there were none. Nampizha was angry today. There were many places close to land where his breath could be seen breaking the water. Not even an offering of tobacco would calm him. Perhaps, as her grandmother had once told her, it was good that the “hairy faces” came, bringing horses.

Soon there would be no Neshnabek here, not in boats, not on horses. Already her people were traveling over land far from the waters where Nampizha lived. They would cross the great river to the land far beyond and never see this place again. The time for leaving had come, but she would not go with them. Soon she would be alone. She would have to stay away from the trails marked by her people, stay away from the kitchimokomon who said that Neshnabek land was now theirs. She would follow the lake north, to the place where it met the small river. There were other Neshnabek there whose land the kitchimokomon did not own.

Naawe stopped and closed her eyes. She listened to the sound of the water as Nampizha thrashed beneath the surface. She listened to the screams of the wide-winged birds. She took one more look at Mitchigami, the great lake that went to where the sky began. Then she turned away, toward the tall trees that held back the sun. She stepped on the flowers that grew in the places the sun did not reach. Small flowers, green and white now, with thick, sharp leaves that were not crushed when she stepped on them.

Once she left here, she would not see this place again. She would be far from here now were it not for Dessa, whom she had found hiding two days ago. Dessa was also running away. She was also frightened and alone. The kitchimokomon was looking for Dessa, too. Not because he owned her land, but because he owned her.

Naawe heard Dessa before she saw her, heard soft cries and moans, then grunts and fast breathing. Naawe moved toward the sounds of pain, careful not to be heard or seen in case it was the kitchimokomon who were here and not the baby whose time it was to be born. When she reached a place of many bushes, the sounds were louder. Naawe crouched and listened. Then she heard the cries of a child, not the loud cries that she had heard before when Neshnabek women gave birth, but a quiet cry, as if the child had no strength. Naawe stood. She parted the bushes until she came to the place where Dessa lay. The baby, smeared and bloody, was on her belly. Dessa’s blood flowed, soaking into the grass. Naawe took the pouch from her back, reached in and found the pitchkosan for childbirth. She opened the otter-skin bundle and took out the root for bleeding that would not stop.

Later, when it was the time before the stars, and the sun went to the place away from the lake and the sky became dark, Dessa put her boy child to her breast.

“What do you name him?” Naawe asked in the language of the kitchimokomon.

“Samuel, for his father,” Dessa answered. She stroked the child’s dark hair. “We leave here soon, so the white man cannot take him.”

“You should come with me,” Naawe said. “The child will grow strong with what I have in my pitchkosan.”

Dessa shook her head.

“Dessa, you ran away from the kitchimokomon, who you call white man. When he caught you and your people, only you got away. He has taken the others to the dark place, the place of death. Come with me, before he finds you.”

Dessa shook her head again. “North,” she whispered. “We go north. Tonight I go to see if they have hung out the quilt that tells us when it is time to leave here.”

The house with the quilt was the house of the kitchimokomon. Naawe did not trust any of them. She did not know why Dessa did.

Dessa held out her sleeping child. “I will not be gone long. Will you watch him?”

Clouds hid the moon when Dessa left. Naawe held the sleeping baby in her arms. She should go now, while the kitchimokomon expected her people to move west, but the child was not strong, nor was his mother. The medicines that would make them strong were in her pitchkosan. Perhaps if she gave them to Dessa and told her how to use them … the baby stirred, gave a few weak cries and went back to sleep.

Naawe listened to Nampizha, stirring up the waters of the great lake and making the water crash against the rocks below the bluffs. The god of the waters was angry. He was warning her away from this place. She listened to him speak and was afraid.