White Sky, Black Bird

The Great Lakes

Autumn was nearing its end. Almost all the leaves had fallen off the trees, which meant that winter was soon to come. This of course meant that White Sky and Black Bird wanted to make it to the village as soon as possible, but they quickly learned their new companion made that an increasingly difficult task. The ever-eccentric Dr. Härkönen made for a challenging travel companion for several reasons. One was his cargo: the doctor refused to leave without bringing along his most important equipment, so numerous and bulky that the boys had to find him his own canoe to carry them in. Of course, Härkönen himself could not row his canoe or the cargo attached to it with his old and feeble arms, so the boys had to split themselves across two canoes, halving their usual rowing speed. This also meant both the traders tired quicker with each having to row a whole canoe on their own, which meant more frequent stops to rest.

As if all these obstacles were not enough to delay their journey, the good doctor also seemed to have a complete lack of awareness when traveling through the more dangerous areas. More than that, it seemed as though he went out of his way to attract danger to them. White Sky even went so far to accuse him of intentionally doing so, for in the two times they had been ambushed by Longhouse raiders so far, Härkönen merely observed the boys’ fight against them from a safe distance, taking furious notes in one of his books.

The morning after the second attack, White Sky had had enough.

“He’s putting us in danger on purpose,” White Sky complained in their native Anishinaabemowin, so that the doctor could not eavesdrop on them.

“He’s not trying to be loud and cumbersome,” Black Bird returned. “He’s an old man who’s been cooped up in his laboratory. You can’t expect him to understand the nuances of discreet canoeing.”

“And yet he’s traveled all over the world, to further reaches than we could ever dream of. You’re telling me in all those decades he’s never had to traverse dangerous areas? That he’s never had to hide from brigands or cutthroats? You’re too trusting of him.”

Black Bird’s brow furrowed. It was a good point to make, and he could offer no rebuttal. Though they both hated admitting defeat, they had resolved long ago to acknowledge when the other had won an argument.

“I see your point,” Black Bird said. “So let’s talk to him. Maybe he just needs some guidance from us.”

Black Bird turned to the doctor, who was sharing his canoe.

“Doctor,” Black Bird said in French, trying his best to sound diplomatic. “I was wondering if I could share some expertise with you.”

“Oh?” The doctor replied, looking up from the book he was reading.

“It’s just… remember yesterday, when we were discussing Aristotle? And White Sky got a bad feeling, and said we should stop talking until we were further down-river?”

“Yes, but we didn’t.”

“Yes, and in fact after his warning you continued in a louder voice. And then we were attacked by those Snakes.”

“Yes?”

“Well, it’s just that… had you listened to White Sky’s warning, there was a chance we would not have been attacked, and could’ve avoided the Snakes altogether.”

“Possibly. What of it?”

“Well, White Sky is under the impression that whenever danger seems to be near, you try to attract it towards us, rather than try to escape it.”

“Well, he’s very astute. That’s exactly what I’m doing.”

Black Bird felt his heart plunge into his stomach. White Sky shot him a look, sharp and piercing.

“But why?” Black Bird asked.

Dr. Härkönen took off his spectacles for a moment, rubbing his eyes.

“Listen, boys,” he said. “Let me remind you that I am not a philanthropist. I am a scientist, and you two are my enlightened and talented subjects. I have given you advanced weapons of warfare so that you may use them, and so that I may observe their effectiveness. That means I need you two to fall into danger, the more frequent the better.”

Black Bird couldn’t believe his ears. White Sky became so angry that he stopped rowing.

“Let me remind you that you were the one that needed a safe place to stay in the winter,” White Sky said, pointing an accusatory finger at the old man. “Which means you are no longer a scientist or a philanthropist or anything else. You’re our guest. And that’s only if the elders of my village accept our plea to let you stay. If this is how you’re going to act in the village, you can forget my advocating for you. I won’t let a Snake magnet stay under my roof and eat my food, lest you attract what you’re clearly desperate to.”

“Besides, if we’re endangered too often, your experiment will have diminishing returns,” Black Bird said, trying to smooth things over between the two. “The fighting exhausts us, and we sustain injuries, making us less effective each subsequent fight. Thankfully we’ve come out of these last two relatively unscathed, but the more we push our luck the more dangerous these scuffles become. There’s no point in your experiment if one of us dies, including you, by the way.”

The doctor scratched the bald spot of his head, as though it never occurred to him that they could lose one of the fights, and that his own life would be in danger.

“You’re right,” he said. “I hadn’t considered either of your points. I apologize, gentlemen. I promise I shall not intentionally try to endanger us any longer.”

“Thank you,” White Sky said sardonically, returning to his rowing. Black Bird followed as well, though his worries lingered, troubling him. He had misjudged the doctor when White Sky had accused him, and it was not the only concern about him the younger brother carried. Black Bird had originally written them off given White Sky’s usual distrust of white folks, but if this one was true, the others suddenly carried more merit. The doctor was not exactly deceitful–after all, when Black Bird accused him of beckoning Snakes to them, he flatly admitted he was doing so. But did that make him trustworthy, just because he didn’t lie? Black Bird couldn’t tell yet, and that worried him greatly. If he attracted Snakes to the village just to satisfy some scientific curiosity, the results could be disastrous. Even if they weren’t, White Sky would never forgive Black Bird for convincing him to let the doctor come. Black Bird was already beginning to regret convincing him.

In another hour or so, the boys stopped to take a break and rest their bodies. They took their canoes and cargo out of the river, setting them on the ground by the riverbank. They split up for different tasks for efficiency: White Sky, being the better scout, headed out to scope out the surrounding area to make sure it was safe and to gather some wood for a fire. Black Bird tied down and secured the cargo, then grabbed a small spear from his canoe to try and catch some fish for lunch. He squatted by the riverbank, trying to make out the discreet trails in the water. Dr. Härkönen sat behind him, watching him work.

“He doesn’t trust me, does he?” The doctor asked.

“You just admitted to purposefully putting him in harm’s way,” Black Bird returned, trying to not let his frustration and betrayal show in his voice. “Would you trust a man who did that to you?”

“I suppose I wouldn’t. But I rebuke the idea that I was putting you in harm’s way. You are both excellent warriors, equipped with superior weaponry. You will not lose to these small bands of thugs.”

“You don’t know that,” Black Bird said. “Every fight we’ve had so far we’ve been outnumbered, and the outcome is never clear. We should thank White Sky for always seeming to know when they’re coming–surely you’re not dumb enough to think superior weapons are enough to win even when ambushed.”

“You’re angry with me.”

Black Bird ignored him. He saw a small disturbance in the water, and lunged at it with his spear. He pulled his weapon out of the water–no fish. The boy stood and turned to the old man, unable to contain himself any longer.

“Yes, I’m angry,” he said, gritting his teeth. “I’m angry that you treat us like an experiment, that our lives are just some game to you.”

“Watch your tongue,” Härkönen replied, his tone more blunt and cutting than Black Bird had ever heard. “I understand your anger, which is why I apologized, and I’ve already agreed to cease my behavior. But you will not insult my experiment, and you will not call it a game. Just because you cannot perceive its scope does not mean this is something I do for frivolity or fun. This project is larger than the lives of you or your brother, and it is larger than me. Yes, I know that every time the Iroquois attack us, there’s a chance the weaponry and training I’ve given you are not enough, and that they might kill all three of us. I’ve accepted that risk.”

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“But you haven’t shared that risk with us! You hide and obscure your intentions, and you feign innocence until I accuse you of something! We’re supposed to accept how far-reaching and momentous your work is, but you don’t trust us enough to confide in us the smallest detail, even as you use us to further it!”

The doctor sat on the ground, stewing in the boy’s words. To Black Bird’s surprise, the old man smiled.

“I should never have taught you how to properly debate,” he said. “I never thought you would use those skills to make a fool of me.”

“I’ve been arguing with White Sky for as long as I can remember. You’ve schooled me on rhetoric and dialectic, but I had still been practicing both long before I met you. You’re like the other white men. You think you invented everything, that you are the pioneers of all advancement. Do you know how important dialectic is to the Eastern folk of the Dawnland? Every respected sachem they have is a master orator, capable of speaking for hours using only metaphors and riddle-like prose. You consider yourself a well-read scholar, but you would not even be permitted to read our Lore-Keepers’ scrolls, and you would certainly not be able to parse a single glyph on them!”

“You’re wrong, Memeskoniinisi. Take a second to breathe and calm down. You’re angry, rightfully so, but it is starting to cloud your mind. Here, sit down with me. Let me try explaining my perspective.”

Black Bird didn’t want to listen to anything the old man had to say, but he was right. He was angry, and his anger was only growing by the second. So he sat down.

“Thank you. Listen–the other white men that are here, the English and the French, even the Dutch who abandoned this place. They all think that God chose them to claim this ‘New World’ as theirs, and that you and all the other stewards of these lands are just unwashed savages waiting to be conquered by them. I know better. I have been all over this sphere we call “Earth”, enough to know that God does not grant a single race or culture his grace. He grants it to individuals, not peoples, and those individuals can be found all over. I have studied from the Sufis of Dhamar, the magicians of Cairo, and the Illuminati of Castile. I know the wisdom your elders carry, the knowledge you’ve carefully cultivated. The reason I want to stay the winter in your village is to learn a glimpse of that knowledge, in exchange for my own.”

Black Bird stood again. He was calmer now, but he didn’t want to continue this conversation any longer. He was tired of listening to the doctor talk, and besides, he hadn’t caught any fish yet.

“It is not my village,” he said as he gathered his spear again, squatting by the water. “It’s White Sky’s, and it’s a substantial burden on him and his family to take care of us this winter. You should remember that the next time you try to get him killed.”

Black Bird did not even have time to catch anything before White Sky returned, a bundle of firewood noticeably absent from his person.

“We need to leave,” he said, panting. “I saw Snakes. Not safe. We keep moving, take another break in an hour or so.”

“How many?” Black Bird asked. “What were they doing?”

“Small band–only three, I think. They captured a white man, and were torturing him. Strangest looking white man I’d ever seen–his head was completely bald, but there was a long thin scar running down it, like someone had sliced his head open perfectly down the middle. And–”

“He’s missing his left ear,” Dr. Härkönen interrupted.

“Yes, he is,” White Sky said, surprised. “How did you know?”

Dr Härkönen stood, his eyes darting around the place in worried contemplation.

“Boys, we need to ambush them,” he said. “It’ll be two against three, but we’ll have the drop on them–the odds are good.”

“Absolutely not,” White Sky said. “You just promised to not bring the Snakes to us, and now you think you can circumvent that by seeking them out instead?”

“I realize that,” Härkönen replied. “But this is an exception. We should go now, quickly."

“You want us to fight for you, you need to confide in us,” Black Bird said. “Why is this suddenly so important to you?”

Härkönen hesitated, but the boys stood their ground. If they were going to get any information from the secretive old man, it would have to be when his back is against the wall.

“The man they’ve captured…” Härkönen began. “He’s a friend of mine. Another scientist. If they got him while traveling, he could have had his research papers on his person. Do you want the Iroquois to have whatever it is he was experimenting with?”

“I don’t know, but clearly you don’t,” Black Bird said. “So what was he experimenting with?”

“I… I don’t know. I swear I don’t know. We only share our experiments with one another once they’re complete and we consider the results to be reliable. But it’s important, whatever it is, and more importantly it’s my duty to finish if the Iroquois kill him. I don’t want it to come to that, but if he’s still alive there’s a chance. Please.”

The boys looked at each other, for once thinking the exact same thing. None of them trusted the doctor right now, and certainly they didn’t want to stick their necks out for a random person. At the same time, the mystery of the Snakes’ captor and his research intrigued them. In the end, curiosity outweighed self-preservation

“Fine,” White Sky said. “But you will be quiet as a mouse, doctor. So help me, if you alert them to our presence I will feed you to the Snakes myself.”

The three crept up the hill and through the woods until they arrived at the Snakes’ camp. The Snakes delighted in torturing their captured victims–for them, it was a way to display their dominance, a way to truly show their captors that they had beaten them. In their process of forcibly assimilating their defeated foes, torture was also used as a rite of passage–because the Snakes considered themselves to be a superior people, unbothered by mundane troubles, one was only worthy to become a Snake if they were resilient enough to withstand a great deal of suffering.

The three Snakes stood surrounding their captor, who knelt on the ground, his hands bound behind his back, his eyes covered in a blindfold. Sure enough, his head bore no hair, a perfectly straight scar bisecting his scalp. Where his left ear should have been was only a misshapen lump and a hole. The Snakes took turns mutilating his extremities, and must have supposed the man looked incredibly asymmetrical, for one began to carve off his remaining ear. The man screamed in bloody pain, and Black Bird and White Sky took positions behind trees on opposite ends of the clearing. Dr. Härkönen hid even further back, as the boys had told him to not involve himself until the fighting was over.

The Snakes, preoccupied with their ritual, did not notice the rifle that poked out into the clearing, nestled in between the crook of the tree to stabilize it. Black Bird pulled the trigger, loosing the first shot into the closest one’s back. The Snake fell, and the other two immediately turned to see Black Bird reloading the rifle. One sprinted towards him with his tomahawk in hand. The other ran to pick up his own rifle. The boys had prepared for this, though, of course, and it was White Sky’s turn to do his part. He rushed out from the closest part of the forest, rushing the Snake with the fishing spear before he could grab the rifle.

The one in front was upon Black Bird before he could finish reloading, but that was fine. After all, Black Bird made a point of loading it slowly and conspicuously to draw their attention and ire for White Sky’s ambush, and leaped away from his rifle to avoid a tomahawk swipe. Normally, the snakes did not like to fight with their tomahawks–it was a tool first and foremost, only used for fighting when there was no other option. After all, it was far inferior in its reach to a spear, and Black Bird took advantage of this, retreating to stay just outside of his attacker’s threat range. The Snake’s anger grew with every missed swipe, and with anger came an exploitable recklessness. After moving backwards several paces, Black Bird suddenly lunged forward as the Snake readied his next blow, taking him by surprise. That second of hesitation was all he needed to produce his dragon, holding it close to the Snake’s chest and pulling the trigger. The second one fell.

Back in the clearing, White Sky struggled more with his opponent, who seemed to be the strongest of the three. He had managed to grab his rifle, using it as a staff to deflect the boy’s spear stabs. A fully-grown adult, he easily outmuscled the young Fire-Keeper, and knocked the spear out of his hands with the butt of his rifle. White Sky scrambled to reclaim it, but the man was on him in an instant, kicking him onto the ground. White Sky barely rolled out of the way as the rifle slammed into the dirt next to him, fumbling for his dragon. The Snake readied another strike, and White Sky managed to get his hands on the pistol quick enough to pull the trigger. In his frantic haste, however, he failed to notice that the bald man was kneeling right behind his opponent. The dragon fired, spewing its breath on the Snake below the waist, but a score of the pellets flew through the Snake’s legs and into the bald man’s back. The Snake cried out in pain, dropping to his knees, and White Sky took the chance to grab his spear and pierce it through the Snake’s heart.

Black Bird ran to his friend, and the two knelt in the grass, panting heavily, energy coursing through their blood like a hot fire. The doctor rushed to the bald man, frantically trying to gauge his wounds.

“What have you done?” Dr. Härkönen cried.

“I’m sorry,” White Sky said, his breath heavy. “I… I didn’t mean to. Honestly. He was going to kill me… I didn’t see him behind… I’m sorry…”

“He’s dying,” the old man said, “I can’t save him anymore.”

“Klaus,” he said, snapping his fingers in front of the dying man’s eyes. “Klaus, hört mir zu. Klaus!”

The bald man coughed a small pool of blood onto the grass, then looked up at the doctor.

“Ah. Paavo. Mein geliebter Rivale. Warum ist mir so kalt?”

“Wo ist es, Klaus? Wo ist es?”

“Sie haben es mir genommen. Irgendwo…”

The man’s voice faded, and the light left his eyes. He fell forward, collapsing onto the doctor. Härkönen pushed the corpse off of him, standing and wiping the blood off his tunic. He turned to the camp and began tossing around everything, looking for something. He pushed aside two sacks of food and grabbed an ornate wooden box. It reminded Black Bird of the wiigwaasi-makakoon, the protective boxes made of birchbark that the most important scrolls were hidden in.

“Thank God,” he said, motioning a cross over his chest. He searched his friend’s body, finding a small gilded key. He opened the box with it, checking its contents. From the distance, the only thing Black Bird could make out was a piece of paper with a symbol drawn on it: a black cross nestled inside the petals of a red rose.

“I’m sorry,” White Sky repeated, too dazed from the fighting to muster tears for such a horrible accident.

“Don’t be sorry for him,” the doctor said. “Be sorry for yourself. You’re the one who killed him, so you’ll be the one to finish whatever research he was working on. It’s your duty now, not mine.”

The old man looked around warily.

“Let’s get moving,” he said. “Since you’re so concerned about danger, I don’t want to stick around to see if these three have any friends."

Black Bird helped his younger brother to his feet, and the two made their way back, shoulder-to-shoulder. There was a strange, somber dread that crept into their hearts whenever a fight was over, when there was nothing but the silence of death to follow the cacophony of desperate dodges and battle cries that filled the air just a few moments before. Though they had now slain their eighth Snake, it never seemed to get any easier.