Spirited by Nancy Holder

Wusamequin’s own and that of his enemies. He caught the girl staring at the wolf in horror. Then she turned and silently retched.
    Wearing his ceremonial blanket, Oneko met the party at the boundary of the village. He held a coup stick and he regarded Wusamequin with pride. There was sorrow, too, for the one who had died.
    As he surveyed the two prisoners with a cold gaze, he said, “Wusamequin, are you avenged? Did your tomahawk drink the blood of Yangee soldiers this day?”
    Wusamequin held his head high. “Yes, great Sachem.” He gestured to the collections of scalps that fluttered against the leggings of the warriors. “You will hear us count coup at the fire tonight. Tashtassuck has a wound, but he is well.”
    Oneko smiled broadly. “My heart soars for all of you. This is a wonderful boon for the
keutikaw
of your family.” He gestured to the bloody group of men. “Now go to the sweat lodge and purge death from yourselves. Don’t bring death into our village.” He glanced at the captives. “Although we will happily kill these two at our fires tonight.”
    Wusamequin said nothing. But as he turned to accompany the other men to the sweat lodge, located in a clearing on the village outskirts, he heard the white woman call after him in a voice filled with fear and despair.
    “Sir! Sir, I beg of you! Do not leave us!”
    Though his heart urged him to turn to her, give her some gesture of reassurance, he made no effort to respond. She was the slave, not he.
    And most likely, she would be dead by morning.
    Unless I receive a sign to spare her. If I do spare her, her life will belong to my people, and she will be a slave until the day she dies.
    “For the love of God, help us!” she shouted.
    The girl had fallen to the ground, and she was curling into a ball and covering her head as Oneko’s wife, Wabun-Anung, delivered a sharp kick to her ribs. The grayhair, sprawled beside her, was bleeding from a fresh blow to the head.
    So the taunting of the condemned had begun.
    “Great Sachem!” he called to Oneko.
    His chief glanced from the spectacle to the medicine man.
    “Yes, Wusamequin?”
    “We need to ask the white skins about the plans of the Yangees,” he reminded Oneko. “Where they were going and why. We need to keep the prisoners alive and able to speak until that time.”
    Sasious spat on the ground beside Wusamequin.
    “Why bother? They’ll only lie. That’s all the white skin devils know how to do. Lie. Better to kill them and be done with it. Tonight is the
keutikaw
, the great feast to mark the passage of thirteen moons, when we will end the mourning of your dead loved ones. It’s fitting they should die tonight.”
    Oneko looked from Sasious to Wusamequin. Wusamequin saw the glimmer of interest in his eyes; the great chief knew that bad blood simmered between the two of them.
    Wusamequin had not understood the woman’sbarrage of Yangee words. She had spoken too fast. That was no source of shame to him; he spoke more English than any other tribal member. In the days when things were better between the People and the Yangee, he had spent a lot of time with a Yangee trapper named James Anderson. James Anderson had taught him English, even shown him many of the markings that were used to record thoughts. The People used beaded belts in the same way as James Anderson’s “papers,” and Wusamequin wished he could have learned James Anderson’s Way before they had separated.
    Oneko said, “Sasious speaks truth. We were once great friends with the Yangee. We believed his words and treated him as a brother. And the People of the River have suffered terribly for that trust. The Yangee told us he was our friend. And then he killed your wife and son, Wusamequin.”
    The Sachem gestured to the prisoners. The young woman had thrown herself on top of her father’s still form and was kicking out at anyone who tried to come close enough to harm him. This had set most of the village to laughing—an