Pieces Of Eight

Chapter 14

Dark Hand and Dreamer stood at the rail of the ship, wrapped in their blankets. They looked at the other five ships of the fleet, and they looked out to the open sea beyond the harbour. They stood in silence and wondered what to do, for there was a great unease among the Patanq, and fifty warriors stood waiting their word.

It was not that the ship was bad or uncomfortable. There were two hundred and forty-nine Patanq aboard, and to a people accustomed to being crammed in a smoky long house, there was room enough. Nor was there the least threat from the ship's crew, who numbered only twenty-five and were not fierce men.

The problem was that the ships had not moved since the Patanq had come aboard.

"Do you think they truly wait for the wind?" said Dark Hand.

"Yes," said Dreamer. "They need the wind to fill the sails, and who can command the wind?"

"But the wind blows all the time."

"It blows the wrong way."

"The old women say the sailors can bring the right wind if they choose."

"Nonsense!"

"And the old women talk to the young women, and they talk to the warriors."

"Then let the warriors talk to me, and not mutter in corners!"

Dark Hand gathered his courage.

"Dreamer… I speak to you now for the warriors. They fear that a great mistake has been made. They believe we should never have given up the homeland."

Dreamer sighed. He closed his eyes. He looked back forty years…

He was eight years old, it was the Time of the Planting — the year's most joyous festival, with singing, dancing and feasting, and the young women of the Sisters of the Corn running from house to house, drenching everyone with water — supposedly to drive out things evil, but actually in fun.

It was night. The village slept behind its moat and heavy palisade: whole tree-trunks trimmed and set in place, with watch towers, fighting platforms and gates. Inside, there were four long houses, each a hundred paces long and twenty wide: timber-framed, bark-covered, round and smooth, highest in the middle, sloping towards each end, and cut with smoke- holes for the hearth-fires. In each house, many families slept on their benches, surrounded by kinfolk.

It was peaceful and quiet, until the Dreamer awoke and screamed. He saw the lights that flashed, and he howled and sobbed as the pain stabbed again and again. Around him the people awoke and grumbled and coughed and spat and scratched themselves, and asked what was the noise… until they heard that the Dreamer was dreaming again. Then they fell quiet and listened, because already the child had a reputation.

The Dreamer's father and mother were young. They were inexperienced. But the grandmother was a powerful matriarch, and she summoned her even more powerful brother, Teller-of- Stories, leader of the False-Faces. This revered wise man got up in the middle of the night, donned his mask of office, and hurried to the Dreamer's bedside. It was dark in the long house, with more shadow than light from the fires, and people were clustered around the bed where the boy lay moaning and vomiting into the bowl his mother had put beside him.

"Ah," said Teller-of-Stories, seeing this great crowd all talking and pointing and looking over one another's shoulders in awe and in fear. And the old man nodded in satisfaction that so many were here to see his magic.

So he sat on the ground by the child, and he rocked to and fro, and he chanted a powerful poem, and shook a tortoiseshell rattle, and the people echoed the responses… After a while, the child was comforted and ceased to howl. When he opened his eyes and saw the red mask, and recognised the noble figure sitting beside him, he smiled.

"Ahhhhhh," said the people, and they smiled too. And when dawn came, and the sun shone, the people entirely lost their fear of what the little Dreamer might have dreamed this time. But later, when Teller-of-Stories talked with Dreamer and heard what the child had seen, even Teller-of-Stories trembled. And then he thought deeply and summoned all his considerable knowledge and experience, and gave his explanation.

"The things you have seen are not of our nation," he said, "nor any nation of the Iroquois peoples. We have no 'Satan', we have no 'Hell' — this is nonsense from the priests of the white man! You have heard these things from them."

"No, Teller-of-Stories," said the child, "I saw them myself."

"It is not possible."

"It is. I saw Satan."

Teller-of-Stories sighed.

"There is no Satan. Listen now to the truth!" He closed his eyes and began to tell one of the Great Truths: "In the beginning, the daughter of Sky Woman had twins…" But then he looked at the child, and smiled. "You know this already. You tell it."

Dreamer nodded. Of course he knew. Everyone knew. He spoke:

"She had twins. One was called Upholder-of-heaven, Sky- Grasper and Sapling. He was the right-handed twin who made all that is straight and beautiful in the world. The other was not born but cut his way out of his mother. He was called Warty-Skin, Ugly-Face and Stone-Blade. He was the left- handed twin, who made all that is crooked and ugly in the world."

"You see?" said Teller-of-Stories. "There is balance in the world. Beauty balances ugliness, but goodness and badness are the acts of men! There is no god of evil."

"There is," said Dreamer. "He is Satan. I have seen him."

Dreamer opened his eyes and returned to the present. The dream of Satan was only the first of many dreams. They had taught him much about the power of the white man. Now he turned to the warriors, who stood apart in the gathering dark, afraid to approach him.

"Come here, my brothers," he said. "Come close and we shall sit down together." So they came and they sat. They sat in council as if around a fire, and Dreamer spoke.

"Who says that we should not have left the homeland?"

It was a long council. Every man spoke who wished to, and Dreamer listened to them all, not seeking to argue or interrupt.

"Now listen to me," he said when the last man was finished, and a proper silence had shown that his words had been considered.

"You say that we are strong? That we are one of the seven nations… the Mohawk, the Oneida, the Patanq, the Onondaga, the Cayuga, the Seneca and the Tuscarora?"

"Yes!" they said.

"And I say that if we were seventy nations the white man would still be stronger, because he makes iron and we do not." He looked at them. "Or perhaps I am wrong? Perhaps there is one here that can show me how to make a musket? And the powder and lead to feed it?"

They were impressed. But this was just the beginning. Dreamer had much more to say and it was fearfully convincing.

"So," he said, when he was done, "we are finished here. There is nothing for us in our homelands. Believe me, for I have seen it! Within our children's lifetime there will be no long houses, no nations, no confederacy. We shall be gone — " he shrugged "- except as mice, in the corners the white man does not want."

Silence.

"So we must move the nation," he said.

"Yes," they said.

"But now, you say, 'If we must move, then we should go by land.'"

"Yes," said some.

"And march through the lands of the other nations — when already the confederacy is failing, and trust is dying? No, brothers! They would not let us pass, and we are the smallest of all the nations and could not fight our way through."

Silence.

"So we must go by sea. We have bought ships with gold. It is the only way to save the nation. We shall go north to open lands where we shall make a new homeland. We shall survive! Listen, my brothers, while I tell you of the new lands we shall win…"

They smiled and made themselves comfortable, for Dreamer painted wonderful pictures with words.

It was dawn before the council ended. Dreamer had calmed the doubters: a great achievement, for his plan demanded unimaginable courage of a land-locked, forest people. And all this he did with the same arguments that he'd used before, and would doubtless have to use again, for it is commonplace that men must hear the truth many times before they will believe it.

Finally, with these great matters settled for the present, and with the sun rising out of the ocean, and the women bringing food and drink, Dreamer should have relaxed. But he couldn't because, as so often it did when the work was done, blindness struck the centre of his eyes, and the shimmering crescents flickered yellow, violet and black… and Dreamer knew that he would suffer.

And in the suffering there came another vision of Satan.

And Dreamer saw the Hell that, despite all his efforts, Satan was bringing to the Patanq nation.