“Are you saying a moose is smarter than us?”
“I am saying a larger brain comes with a price. Our better instincts are oft put down by our reason.”
“Well, I don’t know about that. But there is something odd about it. Now, a single wolf will clear the woods for miles—but what is there that will chase a wolf away?”
If the doctor had an answer to that, he kept it to himself.
As the sun sank into the dark waters of the lake, painting the surface with fiery bars of expiring light, a group of elders appeared at the shore to meet us. Our arrival, it appeared, was not unexpected. We were greeted with great solemnity and were offered fresh fish and cured venison, which we gratefully accepted, supping by the roaring fire a stone’s throw from the lakeshore, with the gift of warm blankets thrown over our laps, for the temperature plunged dramatically with the quitting of the sun. The entire village turned out for the meal—though we were the only ones eating. The villagers stared with intense, if mute, curiosity. White people were a highly uncommon sight this deep in the backcountry, Hawk explained; even the missionaries rarely visited here, and the few that did left heavyhearted. It seemed the Sucker people had no worries about the fate of their immortal souls.
They knew Sergeant Hawk and spoke to him in their tongue. I could make out hardly any of it, of course, except the words “Warthrop,” “Chanler,” and “Outiko.” The adults kept a respectable distance, but the children gave in to their fascination, easing closer and closer until they had clustered around us, and one by one they reached out with hesitant fingers and stroked my white skin and felt the coarse wool of my jacket. An elderly woman rebuked them, and they scampered away.
Another, much younger, woman—one of the shaman’s wives, I later learned—escorted us to the wigwam of our host, a dome-shaped structure composed of woven mats and birch bark. The shaman was alone, sitting upon a mat near the small fire in the wigwam’s center, wearing a wide-brimmed hat, and draped in a ceremonial blanket.
“Tansi, Jonathan Hawk,” he greeted the sergeant. “Tansi, tansi,” he said to Warthrop, and waved us to sit beside him. Our sudden appearance in his village did not seem to faze him in the least, and he regarded the doctor and me with mild curiosity and little else. Unlike many of their displaced, hounded, and murdered brethren, the Sucker clan had been, but for the occasional visit from the well-meaning but misguided missionary, left alone by the European conquerors.
“I heard of your coming,” he said to Hawk, who translated for our benefit. “But I did not expect you to return so soon, Jonathan Hawk.”
“Dr. Warthrop is a friend of Chanler’s,” said Hawk. “He is ogimaa too, Okimahkan. Very strong, very powerful ogimaa. He’s killed many Outiko, like you.”
“I have done no such thing,” protested the doctor, deeply offended.
Jack Fiddler seemed bemused. “But he is not Iyiniwok,” he said to Hawk. “He is white.”
“In his tribe, he is called ‘monstrumologist.’ All evil spirits fear him.”
Fiddler squinted in the smoky light at my master. “I do not see it. His atca’k is hidden from me.”
His fathomless dark eyes lighted upon me, and I squirmed under their quiet power.
“But this one—his atca’k is bright. It soars high like the hawk and sees the earth. But there is something . . .” He leaned toward me, studying my face intently. “Something heavy he carries. A great burden. Too great for one so young . . . and so old. As old and young as misi-manito, the Great Spirit. What is your name?”
I glanced at Warthrop, who nodded impatiently. He seemed annoyed that the renowned medicine man had taken an interest in me.
“Will Henry,” I answered.
“You are blessed by misi-manito, Will Henry,” he said. “And a heavy burden is this blessing. Do you understand?”
“Don’t you dare say no,” the doctor whispered ominously in my ear. “I didn’t come two thousand miles to discuss your atca’k, Will Henry.”
I nodded my counterfeit assent to the old Iyiniwok.
“What he loves does not know him, and what he knows cannot love,” said the ogimaa. “Eha, like misi-manito—that which loves, which love knows not . . . I like this Will Henry.”
“I understand it’s a nearly inexhaustible topic, but if we are quite finished singing Will Henry’s praises, can we get to the point, Sergeant?” asked the doctor. He turned to Jack Fiddler. “Pierre Larose is dead.”
Fiddler’s expression did not change. “I know this.”
“That is not what you told me, Okimahkan,” said Hawk, startled by the admission. “You told me you didn’t know where Larose was.”
“For I did not know. We found him after you left us, Jonathan Hawk.”
“What happened to him?” Warthrop demanded.
“The Old One called to him—Wi-htikow.”
The doctor groaned softly. “I understand, but my question is why was he mutilated and left for carrion? Is this the way of your people, Jack Fiddler?”
“As we found him, so we left him.”
“Why?”
“He does not belong to us. He belongs to Outiko.”
“Outiko killed him.”
“Eha.”
“Flayed the skin from his bones, impaled him upon a tree, and did this.” The monstrumologist dug into his rucksack and removed the organ that had once animated Pierre Larose. Sergeant Hawk gasped; he didn’t know Warthrop had kept it. Calmly our host accepted the macabre offering, cradling it in his gnarled hands as he studied it in the firelight.
“You should not have done this,” he chided Warthrop. “Wi-htikow will be angry.”
“I don’t give a tinker’s damn if he’s angry,” said the doctor. He gestured impatiently to Hawk, who had hesitated to translate the remark. Then he continued in a voice tight with indignation. “It is none of my concern what really happened to Pierre Larose. That is a matter for Sergeant Hawk and his superiors. I have come for my friend. Larose took him into the bush, and only Larose came out again.”
“We do not take what belongs to Wi-htikow,” said the shaman. “Did you leave the rest for him?”
“No,” replied Hawk. “We buried the rest.”