Revenge and the Wild(33)

Sitting near Grah was Rek. He looked much older than she remembered, his black braids now woven with stands of gray. His wife had been raped and killed by a white man around the same time Bena had saved Westie, but that hadn’t stopped him from gently changing Westie’s bandages and treating her wound.

Roasting what looked like a squirrel over the open flame was Chaoha, who’d told her grand stories of a giant eagle that flew around the sun with the earth on its back, and Tecumseh—also known as Tall Buck—who’d sung her songs when she’d woken up from nightmares.

Seeing them brought a burning sense of longing. For Westie, the Wintu village was a place of healing, a place for her tortured soul to be nourished. She’d come to the Wintu with her heart in pieces, and they’d done their best to put it back together with what little they had left to work with.

As she rode by, she was met with words of welcome and smiles as warm as the orange glow of firelight against their skin.

Westie tied Henry up with the Wintu horses and made her way to Bena’s hut, which looked somewhat like a beaver nest. It was a round structure, dug deep into the earth. The roof was made of branches and was almost flush with the ground.

“Come in,” Bena said without even looking up. She sat on a woven blanket, the blunt end of a spear wedged between her bare feet while she sharpened the tip. “It’s been two seasons since you were last here.”

Westie looked around at all the weapons on the walls, bows and arrows, hatchets, spears, and guns. The evidence of the warrior Bena was.

Breathing in the familiar smell of wood smoke, she smiled and sighed. “Every time I step on Wintu land it gets harder to leave. I fear one day I’ll come for a visit and never leave.”

“Believe me, we fear it too.”

Bena grinned when Westie glared at her. Bena was always more generous with her smiles when she was with her own people. It made Westie feel a little better after the crushing blow dealt by Nigel’s words.

“So.” The smile slipped away from Bena’s lips as she concentrated on the tip of her spear. “What brings you out at night?”

“I was hoping to speak to Big Fish if she’ll have me.”

Big Fish was the Wintu chief. The name was much prettier in their native language, but Westie’s tongue could never move the way it needed to to pronounce it.

“I am sure she will be happy to see you.” The smile was back. “She loves a challenge.”

“Well, aren’t you just a riot tonight?” Westie said.

Bena chuckled. “She’s up on the hill, talking to the spirits.”

Westie turned to leave, then stopped at the opening of the hut and faced Bena again. “Is magic really as scarce as Nigel would have me believe?”

Though Westie had seen it with her own eyes when Bena had failed to heal the houseplant and start a fire, she didn’t want to believe it was true.

Bena looked up from her work. “I’m afraid so.”

Westie had hoped Nigel was exaggerating so that she would behave around his guests, and that the change in the dome was some sort of natural phenomenon that could easily be explained away.

“But how? Why now?”

Bena put the spear to the side, picked up a blunt-edged stick, and began to whittle away at the tip. “More and more settlers are calling this continent their home. As the population grows, so does industry. Entire forests are being destroyed to build cities, waterways polluted. Magic is the land. It is in the trees, the mountains, the water, the air. As all those things are destroyed, magic will recede into the earth, deeper and deeper, until those of us on the surface can no longer reach it.”

That was why Nigel used gold for his invention, Westie realized. She’d seen Big Fish use nuggets of it during spells. She wore a chunk of it on a string around her neck. Magic had sunk into the earth and soaked into the gold.

“I’m sorry,” Westie said.

“As am I.”

Westie ducked her head and left Bena’s hut. There was nothing she could do about the settlers, and she didn’t need another burden right then to wallow in. She’d come to the Wintu village with a purpose, and that was to ask a favor of Big Fish.

Westie hiked up the nearly vertical hill. It was too dark to see her footing. She worked solely on memory to get her there, and it seemed her memory wasn’t all that reliable from when she’d been sober either. She didn’t remember trees and rocks in the path the last time she’d walked to Spirit Hill. She fell and scraped her knees. The pain of it nearly pushed her to a breaking point. She cussed the entire way up.

She could see the glow of firelight up ahead and smelled the tangy scent of kinnikinnick burning in the air. The smell brought back a long-forgotten memory of when she had stayed with the Wintu. Big Fish had spent every night on Spirit Hill with her pipe, talking to her creator, asking the spirits for protection over her tribe. Westie had decided she wanted to talk to them too, ask why they’d allowed the cannibals to take her family. She knew only a chosen few were able to talk to spirits, but that wasn’t about to stop her from trying. One night after everyone in the village was asleep, she snuck into Big Fish’s dwelling, took the pipe, and climbed the hill.

Though not a spirit talker, after smoking enough wild tobacco for three grown men, Westie finally saw them—as well as a pink buffalo and dogs dressed in human clothes dancing through the air. Somehow, through it all, she’d forgotten to ask the creator anything and woke up with a brain-splitting headache the next morning. Since then she’d decided to leave the spirit talking to the chief. It was a hard lesson learned, like most. Still, it was a memory that made her smile when so many others hurt.