The Survivors: Body & Blood (book 3)

Spy Games, pt. 2

"Two, maybe three of those four, I think I can explain from this," she said. "But the rest? Tell everyone I'm sorry? Tell Lizzie I tricked her? I'm thinking that means she killed Lizzie, which for some for some reason I am unwilling to believe, or she's referring to colonial history, meaning when she said during the witch trials that Lizzie and the others tortured here," she said.

"What does your gut tell you?"

"I don't know, honestly," she said. "I keep thinking of the last conversation I ever had with Lizzie, when she finally started telling me something about Raven. I read it from her that she was friendly with Abigail, that she didn't know why Abigail said they did the things they did. Alexander had told Lizzie that they'd be accused, not that their friends would accuse them of torture."

"So what does Pretty-shield have to say about the rest of Abigail's ominous messages?"

"When she was a kid, she and a friend dug up a human skull that looked human, only bigger and sectioned off differently on top. They brought it back to their father, and he told them he could tell it had strong medicine — for lack of a better term, let's say spiritual power, or magic — and they should put it back where they found it. Pretty-shield believed this was evidence that a people like humans but not quite humans lived there long before her people did."

"Creepy and potentially accurate," I said. I came to sit next to her.

"It gets better. She tells a story about a Red Woman. It's one of the tribe's classic legends. Let me read it to you."

I sank back in the chair and let myself just listen.

She opened to a marked page and began to read. ""There were strange things in the Crow country, like that big skull, that told of people who came before us. Once on a trip in the mountains, one of the men, Three-wolves, took the rest of us to a place where he had found a round pile of red-stone arrow-points. I never have seen so many pretty arrow-points as were there. Some were very long and slim, and there were many, many tiny ones, and all of them red. The pile was round, and this tall.' She indicated about fourteen inches, it says. Then Linderman asks her, "Did you take those arrow-points?' and she says, "No, no. We never touch such things. Some Person, that is, sprite, had put them there. It was a medicine-pile.' Then she goes on to say, "I believe the stone arrow-points that are everywhere came from Red-woman, the first woman, who was a very bad person. Her bones were stone. Long, long before the horse came to us, our people caught Red-woman and tried to burn her. But when the fire had burned away her flesh and her stone bones were very hot, a rain came. This rain, falling upon the hot stone bones made chips fly in all directions over the world. These chips are the stone arrow-points that are everywhere,' which I can't say why, but I think that's relevant. She goes on, "Redwoman was a bad person, and yet she was the first woman to live on this world. I do not believe that she ever had a beginning, as we do. I think she was always on the world, and that like the E-sahca-wata' — Old-man-coyote, their creator — "she did much harm and very little good. I believe that she was finally drowned, as you shall see, and that this is the reason why nobody has seen her during my lifetime. I have already told you that once my people caught her and tried to burn her.' And then, "I ought to tell you that there are those among us who believe that Red-woman is yet alive and on this world.' Finally she tells the story of a boy, a widow's son, who, in an early springtime, was following men hunting deer in the mountains. They made him carry a lot of things, and one time when he went to lift the heavy pack, a woman appeared and took it for him, trying to help. She convinced the boy to come after her, deep into a dark forest. Then she said to him, "Let me see your arrows' and counts them. He had four arrows, but when she handed them back to him, one was red, one was blue, one yellow, and one black. She had made them magical in some way, gave them medicine, as they say. Then she said, "Shoot one of your arrows as far as you can in that direction.' He did as she said, she told him to do another, and he did another. But something was happening. The more he shot arrows, the farther away from his people he got. Fog set in, and they're separated by fog, until finally it becomes clear that they've left his people behind. After he shot the fourth arrow, they were standing in front of Red-woman's lodge in a land entirely different than his own.