White Sky, Black Bird

Bodéwadmi Territory (Modern-Day Michigan)

Black Bird awoke in the early hours of the morning, before the sun had risen. Truth be told, he had hardly slept, tossing and turning in the night. Even now he felt restless from anticipation, his heart fluttering in his chest. Today was the day he would leave this village with Dr. Härkönen, and seek out the midewigamig, the Grand Medicine Lodge a few days’ travel from the village. He had made the decision to partake in the doctor’s experiment, and willingly infect himself with the pox.

It was not an easy decision, and part of him still worried whether it was the right one. But no one else in the village would agree to such a thing, and to Black Bird, it was too big of an opportunity to waste. The stakes could not possibly be overstated—if the doctor’s theory was true, and this ‘variolation’ worked, it would change the fate of the entire world. Black Bird would share the cure with the village, then with their neighbors, and so on and so forth, until every single man woman and child of the Anishinaabe were free from the pox. And even further, they could share it with their Dawnland cousins to the east, and all other tribes they called their allies. Once they were all immune, they could fight back against the Snakes and their other enemies, securing their own place and dominion in these lands. The pox had taken thousands upon thousands—it was almost unthinkable to imagine how things would have changed if his people had this cure ten or twenty years ago.

Black Bird left the wigwam, jogging into the nearby woods. He needed to clear his head from the worries that clouded it, the questions that nagged at the dark recesses of his mind. Because of course, if the doctor was wrong, Black Bird would be infected with the pox, and die. Death by the pox was an ugly, painful thing. It covered your skin in boils and pustules, forced you to isolate yourself from friends and family, lest they catch it too. It was what took Black Bird’s mother when he was just a child, and the memory of her dying alone in the sick hut still tore at his heart. He would risk death himself if it meant saving his kinsmen from that same empty loss.

Black Bird’s breath fogged in the cold winter air as he kept a steady pace through the woods. The winter forest was a quiet place, even lonely. The beasts had all hunkered down to sleep in their warm burrows and caves, and all the birds had flown south to more temperate climes. A young black bird was the sole inhabitant now, his only company a copse of naked trees, the leaves on their branches replaced with snow. It was a strange feeling, but one he would have to get used to. The doctor said the experiment would take a week or two, and he would not see another soul until it was over, successful or not. Black Bird took a deep inhale, the frosty wind filling his nostrils. It will work, he told himself. The doctor is a genius, and he would never suggest something he didn’t think would work. Right?

By the time he returned from his excursion, White Sky was awake, pacing back and forth inside their wigwam.

“Don’t scare me like that,” White Sky scolded his friend upon seeing him. “I was afraid you had already left.”

“Without saying goodbye?” Black Bird returned. “Come on, man. Do you think so little of me? That I would leave without notice when I might never return?”

Black Bird did not intend his last sentence to carry the gravity that it did, and his question cast a stark silence in the room. Neither of them said anything—it was hard even to look each other in the eye. Then suddenly, White Sky embraced his friend in a hug. Black Bird smiled, and held him tight.

“You will return,” White Sky told him. “Hell, I’ve seen you survive worse.”

“I know,” Black Sky said. “I know I have. But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t terrified.”

The two ended their embrace, and White Sky patted Black Bird on the shoulders.

“I am, too,” he said. “It’s all too much—I’m still in disbelief the doctor suggested it in the first place. Who could have guessed the old man had such a vital piece of knowledge tucked away in his pocket?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time,” Black Bird said. “I’ve never met another man, white or otherwise, who knows the things he does.”

“Neither do I. I wish I could peer inside his mind for a bit, see what he’s thinking, why he does the things he does.”

The two boys stood in pensive thought. The memories of the doctor’s strange and mysterious practices turned to worries in their minds—attracting the Snakes intentionally, his membership in a supposed secret order, the black box he took from his dying comrade. There was still so much neither of them knew about the old man, and likely never would.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“Why do you suppose he’s doing it?” White Sky asked. “Why us? And why now?”

“I don’t know,” Black Bird said. “But I have a hypothesis.”

“Your new favorite word, ever since the doctor taught you it,” White Sky grinned.

“That’s just what I mean. He’s taught us so much, and yet he’s also plunged us into danger. Normally, that would make no sense—if he’s spending all this time teaching two people, and those people were to die, he would have wasted his time. Let alone that he was accompanying us, which put him in danger as well. But then I began thinking. He’s been very deliberate with us, you know, ever since the beginning. And ever since he’s been here, he’s been complimenting our people, our culture, as being more advanced and well-reasoned than the others.”

Black Bird paced back and forth as he talked, trying to hash out his reasoning on the fly.

“It’s almost like we are the test subjects of his experiment,” he continued. “Only, this experiment is a titanic and far-reaching one. What if he’s had this cure for a while, and has just been waiting for the right people to give it to? He’s seen the Snakes, and knows them to not be worthy of it, and perhaps we aren’t the first young traders to have done some work for him. But we are the first to have truly impressed him, enough that he has come to stay with us, to see how we live, how our people think. Maybe this is some grand trial to him, to see what will happen once he tips the scales of fate in our favor. He’s given us weapons the other tribes can’t match, taught us knowledge they don’t have. Now, he’s giving us a cure to an illness that plagues the whole continent, and we alone will be the custodians of that cure. He has chosen us because we have impressed him—not just you and me, but our village, our elders, our people as a whole. He has deemed us worthy of all these boons, of being given the tools and weapons to fight and defeat the other tribes.”

White Sky took a moment to pore it over.

“It’s an unsettling thought,” he said. “I don’t really like the idea of being reduced to the subject of an old white man’s experiment. And I hate even more to think that the fate of all our people relies on one man’s eccentricities.”

“I don’t like it either. But it has borne some rather exquisite fruits for us so far, don’t you think?”

Black Bird brandished the metal dragon on his waist. The pistol really was exquisite, far nicer than any he had seen on the river.

“It has,” White Sky admitted. “And I will pray to Gitche Manitou or any other god that will listen, every night you are gone. I will ask that we are granted one more fruit, far larger and more sweet than all the others. The fruit of your safe return, of a cure to this terrible plague.”

Now the boys’ excitement outweighed their fears. Their hearts raced with excitement, energy coursing through their veins, their skin flecked with goosebumps. What a strange and exhilarating feeling it was to be at fate’s edge, to see the grand tapestry of history woven before your very eyes. The future had never been more uncertain, and yet the boys had never been more hopeful.

“Do you have any idea what this’ll mean for you?” White Sky asked. “You’ll be a hero, a figure of fable that parents tell their children stories about. The man who survived the pox, who risked his own life to bring the grand panacea to his people.”

“I’ve tried not to think about it,” Black Bird said. “I don’t think I’m ready for that kind of responsibility.”

White Sky suddenly sighed, and looked down at his feet.

“What?” Black Bird asked. “What is it?”

“You are a braver man than I,” White Sky said. “It shames me to admit it. I wish I was as brave as you, that I would volunteer myself for this. I think all the men of the village feel the same way—it should be one of us that does this for the good of the village, and not push that burden on you. But… I don’t know. I just can’t bring myself to do it. Something inside my heart, inside my soul, knows that this is not meant for me. It’s meant for you.”

“Can I tell you the strangest thing?” Black Bird asked. “I feel the same way. Or, I guess the opposite. I’m afraid, and excited, and worried. And yet in some ways I’ve never felt more calm. I’m ready for this, whatever might come from it. I really do think it’s meant to be me, that I’m the only one who can do it. I’m not sure why, I just… I’m at some strange peace with all of it.”

“Black Bird?” The boys heard the doctor call from outside. “We should get on with it—the elders say we need to leave around now to make good time.”

White Sky grabbed his comrade’s shoulders firmly, a gesture to reassure them both.

“I’m glad to know you’re at peace,” he said. “And I’ll pray that that peace never leaves you. Go well, and I await the return of a legend.”

Black Bird smiled, and he left the wigwam, with his friend in tow. He walked in tandem with the doctor out of the village, trailed by all its members. Before he left, each of them went to him, showering him in kisses and hugs and prayers of safe travel. It filled his heart with joy, to be loved by a community, to be important to people. It was something he had never really felt in his own village—a strange thing to be sure, to feel like an outsider until you left your hometown. Now he was surrounded by a new family, a family who not only cared for him, but now relied on him for their future. And he would not let them down.

“Are you ready?” The doctor asked. He was dressed in a large winter coat, his face obscured by a thick scarf. Black Bird tried to glean something from him—some intention, some part of the inner workings of his mind. But all he could see were the old man’s eyes, and they were as deep as infinity, impossible to deduce.

“I am,” Black Bird said firmly. And now it was not just to reassure himself—it was true. He was ready to undergo this next trial, to survive it, to become the first of his people immune to the wind of death. He was ready, as his brother put it, to become a legend.