Shaman by Robert Shea (nice books to read TXT) 📖

know there are some feelings that cannot be reasoned with.

Pierre realized that he was still crying. Raoul, having let go of his arm, was looking at him with disgust.

"I loved Sun Woman," Pierre stammered. "For him to speak of her so—to speak so of our love—"

"Surely," Elysée said, "Raoul spoke in the heat of anger."

"I don't take back a word," Raoul said in a hard, flat voice.

But, though it was hard to read the features behind that fierce black mustache, Pierre thought he saw uncertainty in Raoul's face. As if Raoul finally understood that he had gone too far.

He drove me to try to hit him. He's never pushed me that far before.

Perhaps, Pierre thought, Raoul would now apologize. Appalled at his own words, he might seek to be reconciled.

I will make no more overtures. He meets every attempt with insults.

Pierre waited. He could see Raoul struggling within himself. Perhaps Papa's suggestion that he might lose his inheritance had made him realize what consequences a rift between them could have.

Of course, I would never disinherit Raoul. There's no one else who could manage the estate after I die. And I may be gone sooner than anyone expects.

Pierre saw Raoul's broad chest swell as he took a deep breath. Now, thought Pierre, surely Raoul was going to apologize and ask forgiveness, and they would work out some way that Sun Woman and Gray Cloud could be brought here without stirring up old hatreds.

Raoul said, "Don't bring Indians into this house, Pierre, I warn you. If any Indian tries to claim he's a member of my family, I'll make him wish he had never been born at all."

The pain that might one day kill him sank its teeth deep into his guts. Raoul's words seared him like a branding iron. He felt his shoulders sag.

Raoul turned his back on his brother and his father, and the clump of his hard leather boot heels echoed through the great hall.

"Raoul!" Elysée cried. He held his hand outstretched, as Pierre had when Raoul was about to smash the Limoges vase.[71]

Looking down at those glistening white shards scattered over the flagstones, Pierre wondered what would happen when Raoul inherited the de Marion fortune. Would he destroy it in one of his rages as he had this beautiful object that had been part of the family treasure? Or would he use its power as he used his fists and pistol and knife, to destroy others?

The de Marion fortune.... Once it had been a huge tract of land in northeastern France dominated by the château of the Counts de Marion, held by them so long that no one knew when or how they first obtained it. Just as the origin of the de Marions themselves was something of a mystery.

Converted into gold, the de Marion fortune had sailed, with Elysée, the last Count de Marion, his countess and his children, across the Atlantic. Elysée, in the early 1780s, had foreseen the bloody upheaval that would sweep away the king and the nobility of France. He had made a friend of the American ambassador to France, Thomas Jefferson, and had thought much about Jefferson's new nation. Their revolution was over and done with. The de Marion fortune might thrive in those United States.

And on the American prairie the de Marion fortune had purchased a vast new estate and built a new château.

Elysée sighed and took a step toward his chair. Pierre turned the chair toward the fire so that its wings would gather in the warmth of the small fire and hold it around his father's body.

"Would you consider not bringing this woman and this boy here?" Elysée said as he sat down. "To keep the peace in our family?"

Pierre hesitated. For ten years Sun Woman and Gray Cloud had lived in their world, and he in his. Why provoke so much strife now by trying to change that?

But Gray Cloud was the only son he would ever have, and if he left things as they were, he would die without knowing him.

"She is my woman—in truth, my wife—and the boy is my child," Pierre said. "Raoul has much. They have little. Raoul is wrong to cling to this hatred. To give in to him would mean abandoning these two people to whom I owe so much. As soon as the weather is a little warmer, Papa, I mean to leave for Saukenuk. And I do dread what may happen, but, yes, I still mean to come back with my wife and my son."

[72]

5
Star Arrow

White Bear. My name is White Bear.

The sun, shining down through branches dotted with budding leaves, warmed his back. He wore the knife his father had left him sheathed at his waist. His eyes searched among the branches of the trees. He did not know exactly what he was looking for, but Owl Carver said that he would know it when he found it. He stopped at the base of an oak tree and looked up.

He thought he heard something moving through the bushes on the upriver side of the island. He stopped peering at the branches and looked up at the sky.

The black trunks of the oaks and hickories rose above him. He felt as if he were standing in a circle of wise old men, who were there to advise and protect him. Ever since that time of sitting in the sacred cave when his soul had gone out of his body, whenever he was by himself he never felt alone. He felt the presence of spirits in all things—trees, birds, plants, rocks, rivers.

After a moment's listening he heard nothing strange and went back to his search. He had chosen this island because he had come here many times at different seasons with his mother, gathering plants for medicines. Today he was looking for one thing. Somewhere on this island grew the branch from which he would cut his medicine stick. Owl Carver had carefully instructed him.

It will call to you out of the forest. It may be of oak or maple or ash or cedar or even hickory. You will know it because it will not be like any other branch you see, and your eye will be drawn to it.[73]

A cloud drifted over the sun, and his arms and shoulders suddenly felt cold. The coldness felt strange, and he remembered that his spirit guide, the White Bear, was said to live in a very cold place. He stood still. He felt he should wait for something to happen.

A shaft of sunlight fell on the black trunk of a tree a short distance in front of him. Where the light struck the tree, a branch was growing out, pointing right at him. He might not have noticed it if the light had not fallen in just that way.

At the end of the branch three bright bur oak leaves were growing. This was the Moon of Buds, and the limbs of most trees bore only the many round swellings that would, as the days grew warmer, open and spread into the first leaves.

But the three oak leaves at the end of this branch were fully grown, fat leaves with deep, irregular lobes.

It was as Owl Carver had said. This branch called out to him from the forest.

He went up to the tree, and as Owl Carver had taught him, he said, "Grandfather Oak, please let me have your arm, to take with me to make strong medicine for our tribe. I promise I will not hurt you, and I will leave all your other arms untouched so that you can grow strong in this place."

It was a small, new branch growing out of the tree at eye level. When trimmed and stripped it would be just the right size for a medicine stick. He would dry the leaves and keep them, too, he decided, as part of his medicine bundle.

With his knife he reverently cut the branch away from the tree trunk.

A voice behind him said, "My son."

He jumped, startled.

At once he recognized Sun Woman's voice. As always, a warmth flooded through him at the sound.

Still, he was angry with himself. How could he let someone slip up on him like that?

He turned. He looked into his mother's brown eyes, level with his. Not so long ago, he remembered, he had to look up to see into her eyes.

He saw pain tightening the muscles of her face. Her lips trembled as they parted. Only a few times had he seen her in such distress, and his heart beat harder. What was wrong?

"You must come back to Saukenuk, my son," she said.[74]

"I have found my medicine stick, Mother. But now I must trim it here and peel the bark in the place where I found it. Owl Carver told me how it must be done."

She swept a hand across her body to say no to that. "It is Owl Carver who says you must come now. Leave the stick here. The spirits will protect it, and you can come back to it later. A man has come to our village. You must meet him."

Tears on her brown cheeks reflected the bright sun.

"What is wrong, Mother? Who is this man?"

Again the hand gesture, rejecting his question. "It is better you see for yourself."

"But you are sad, Mother. Why?"

She turned away, the fringe of her doeskin skirt swirling about her shins.

He laid the severed oak branch at the base of the tree he had cut it from, and with thanks to Grandfather Oak, turned away.

Baffled and apprehensive, he followed Sun Woman through the forest to the edge of the island, where he saw her small elm-bark canoe pulled up beside his.

Silently they paddled their canoes side by side upstream along the narrow stretch of black-green water that separated the island from the riverbank. The Rock River was in its spring flood. Paddling against the powerful current strained White Bear's muscles. He glanced over at his mother and saw with envy how easily she wielded her paddle. She seemed to know how to do everything well. But an expression of sorrow was frozen on her face.

They left the island behind, and soon White Bear saw the hundred lodges of Saukenuk through the weeping willows, hackberries, maples and oaks that grew along the riverbank.

They grounded their canoes on tree roots growing on the edge of the river. Sun Woman beckoned, turned her back on him abruptly and started walking through the woods by the riverbank. White Bear followed.

They passed two newly made graves in the shelter of the trees, mounds of earth, each marked with a willow wand with a strip of deerskin attached to it. Coming out of the woods, they walked, amidst the band's grazing horses, through the blue-grass meadow surrounding the village. Beyond the meadows, as far up and down the river as White Bear could see, stretched stockade-fenced fields[75] where the first shoots of corn, beans, squash and sweet potatoes dotted the freshly turned black earth like pale green stars in a night sky.

White Bear followed Sun Woman into the concentric rings of long lodges with peaked roofs, built of wooden poles and walled with bark sheets, laid out in the sacred circular pattern. Here the Sauk lived all summer, three or four families to a lodge. But today the outskirts of Saukenuk seemed empty. White Bear was surprised to see no one at the riverbank or about the lodges.

Sun Woman walked past the lodges with back straight, legs stiff, her arms rigid at her sides, her head high. Never once did she look back at him.

Reaching the heart of Saukenuk, he saw that all the people were gathered in the central clearing around Owl Carver's medicine lodge. As Sun Woman approached the crowd, a child spied her and tugged its mother's skirt. The mother looked first at Sun Woman, then at White Bear, then whispered to another woman standing next to her. That woman turned, and then the whispers spread in every direction and more and more people looked. The crowd parted, making a path through which Sun Woman walked with her stiff stride. White Bear followed.

At the end of the pathway through the crowd sat Owl Carver and another man, side by side at the door of the sacred lodge. Owl Carver's long white hair spread like a snow-covered spruce tree. His chest was bare save for his necklace of megis shells, and was painted with diagonal stripes of blue and green, the colors of hope and fear.

White Bear slowed his steps, studying the man seated beside Owl Carver. His heart thumped hard when he saw who it was.

This was the man he had seen in his vision with the White Bear and the Turtle. He stood still, his mouth