“Start talking.”
Chapter One
“I know you’re very hungry, and you’re not feeling well. You’ve been such a good girl. Can you stay silent just a little longer?”
Asila looked into the solemn dark eyes of the child in her arms. “I’m going to sit you right here, Salai. This tree will keep you safe. If an evil witches comes, you scamper up into the branches like the little squirrel you are named for.” She smiled at the toddler, knowing even if her words were not understood, her reassuring tone would keep the little one calm.
Salai was a quiet little girl, hardly any trouble. But she couldn’t go days without food as Asila had learned to do. As a Cherokee medicine woman, she prepared herself for healing ceremonies by fasting. Foregoing all food and drinking only the water that flowed from crevasses in the rock face of the mountains, she would venture into the wilderness alone for days.
For the last week, Asila had been harvesting cattails from the wetlands. She ground them into a paste that she fed the child, hoping Salai would be able to keep down the bland mush. Asila showed her how to dip her tiny fingers into the gooey, raw mix and then lick it off, making a game of it. But now, Salai had refused to eat even that, and she was sick with worry.
The wild berries were long gone from the meadows. Whatever bears hadn’t eaten, flocks of wild turkeys stripped from the branches, picking them clean. Normally, Asila could have fed them well, hunting the plentiful wild game living in the forest. But she dared not betray their presence by bringing down so much as a rabbit. If she trapped one, building a fire to cook it was out of the question. Soldiers were everywhere, roaming the woods, searching the barns and even houses of the white settlers.
But the child had stopped eating. No matter how Asila tried to coax her with tender shoots and leaves from the bounty provided by the Great Mother, Salai turned her head away and refused to open her mouth. Her tiny body was wasting away. The dreaded Fever raged through her. She lay listless, never making a sound. Only her dark eyes moved, following Asila around the clearing as she worked, sorting through their meager stash of possessions.
Asila blamed the soldiers for the child’s illness. They had invaded her village, bringing with them their diseases. It gave her yet another reason to hate them. The Old Ones told of how over half their number had died when white men first came to the mountains. Not long ago, members of her tribe had fallen ill after coming in contact with a settler. Sometimes she was able to use her Medicine to cure them. But her remedies had been created to heal wounds and ease the pain of childbirth. Her ancestors never had to fight the Evil Spirits the white man breathed out.
Asila had lost so much. She prayed she would not lose this child, too.
She needed to brew a Medicine for the little girl. She’d gathered the necessary herbs and blossoms yesterday, following the Old Ways, chanting prayers and burying red beads in the holes left when she needed to harvest an entire sacred ginseng plant, roots and all. All that remained was to steep the ingredients in boiling water, then coax the child to drink. Asila needed the element she’d been named for. Fire.
She’d been hiding in the forest for the past two days, watching the cabin.. Its only occupant seemed to be a tall young man. He watered the pig and the cow early in the morning then headed out to tend his crops in the field. So far, he’d been gone each day till dusk.
Asila knew signs of a fire coming from a settler’s home wouldn’t draw the attention of the soldiers, even in the heat of summer. But a plume of smoke rising from deep in the woods would have a search party mobilizing within minutes after it was spotted. Her only option was to risk breaking into the cabin to heat water and brew the desperately needed potion.
She crept silently to the edge of the forest, crouching behind the thick glossy leaves of a mountain laurel to watch and wait. It wasn’t long before the man came out of the barn carrying a small knapsack and a hoe.
Though his face was young, he plodded down the lane with the gait of an Old One. She stayed motionless till he was out of sight. Then, with one last look back at where she’d hidden the helpless child, Asila dashed across the clearing.
Pushing open the door, she surveyed the interior of the cabin. Though only a single room with rough log walls, someone had worked hard to make it a warm and comfortable home. A stone fireplace centered on the wall across from the door allowed light and heat from the fire to reach every corner. In front of the fireplace sat a rocking chair, its smooth curved seat fashioned from a single slab of maple. Bright-blue-and-green calico blocks sewn into a quilt covered the bed against one wall. Curtains made from calico strips hung at the windows on either side of the cabin. A scrap of blue fabric trailed from a workbasket hanging on a peg in the wall. All touches of a woman, though she’d seen no evidence one lived there.
A tall cupboard with open shelves stood against the wall across from the bed, displaying a meager assortment of plates and cookware. Asila grabbed an earthenware bowl off the center shelf. She sat the bowl and her bundle of herbs on a wooden table next to the cupboard and turned her attention to the hearth.
Glowing coals were mounded under an iron pot hanging from a metal tripod in the center of the hearth. Asila’s mouth watered at the aroma of deer meat and vegetables simmering in broth. When he returned, exhausted from a hard day’s labor, the farmer would have the comfort of a hot meal to greet him.
Asila lifted the lid and peeked into the bubbling pot. Surely he would not miss a little of the broth. And Salai needed the nourishment.
She murmured a prayer of thanks. “Before I leave,” she told her Spirit guide, “I’ll get some of this for the child. If I add a little more water to the pot, he’ll never know.”
She took a metal coffee pot from the mantel and set to work. Half a bucket of water remained from the farmer’s morning chores, enough for her needs. After rinsing the pot with a little of the water, she filled it and sat it directly on the hot coals.
Her thoughts went to the child alone in the woods. She’d taken a huge risk, leaving the little one lying helpless on the ground. But she had blessed the clearing, asking the Spirits of the forest to watch over Salai until she returned. Her unseen guardians had kept her and the child safe until now.
Asila’s heart ached for the rest of her people, torn from their homes and forced to journey on foot over a thousand miles to an unknown land. The old ones, the babies – she knew many of them would not survive to see the new home they’d been promised. But they could not fight the entire white man’s army. The price of rebellion was death.
She’d heard the fate of Chief Tsali and his sons. Their bodies lay in a hastily dug grave, riddled with lead balls from the soldiers’ rifles. Their crime? Resisting the order to pack up and leave their tribal lands. Instead, they fled into the woods to fight the soldiers of the white man’s government.
Her own clan had been rounded up at the point of bayonets and held at Fort Butler then dragged away for the punishing march to the barren flat land of a reservation in Oklahoma. They were joined by other clans from Georgia and North Carolina and Tennessee, all herded together by a government that had sworn to honor tribal boundaries and leave them to live in peace on their sacred lands.
Of all her clan, Asila alone had escaped, only because she had been on one of her vision quests deep in the forest. She returned to her village to find everyone gone, her home in ruins. Asila screamed and fell to her knees in the rubble.
Tears streamed down her face as she gathered what little remained of her family’s possessions. Their homes had been looted by the soldiers before being razed. Whatever they didn’t steal they burned or smashed. Crops were stripped from the fields, the council house in the center of the village reduced to ashes.
Asila scavenged a few chipped clay pots from the communal storehouse, adding them to a pile along with her bow and arrows. The tribe had long since adopted the weapons of the white man, and most Cherokee braves could shoot long-barreled rifles with deadly accuracy. But the Spirits she encountered in her vision quests warned Asila not to abandon the Old Ways completely, and as a girl she’d spent hours learning to hunt with her grandfather, both with a sling and her treasured bow and arrows. Had she had not taken them into the woods, Asila was certain her bow would have been burned, too, and the arrows reduced to splinters.
She headed for a cave near the river, planning to hide the few items that remained from their once-thriving village.
Asila thought she was falling back into the dreamlike trance of her quest when she approached the mouth of the cave and heard a faint keening wail coming from within. Were the Spirits of the ancestors inside, mourning the fate of her tribe?