Lawless Lands: Tales from the Weird Frontier Read online

  “Tomorrow?”

  She smiled. “Yes. We’ll come up with a name. We’ll find more poems, more songs and paintings. Who knows what the Fates might bring us. You’ll see.”

  I scanned the shelves again. Wood and dust and not a thing more. But Sera was right. The world wasn’t about to run out of stories.

  6

  Boots of Clay

  Laura Anne Gilman

  A Story of the Devil’s West

  In his dreaming, they still lived in the village he had been born in, family to every side, and when he woke each morning, it was with the cold knowledge that all of that was gone.

  Gershon swung his knees over the side of his bed, feeling cool wood under his feet, the scratch of rough wool blanket under his palms. One of the other beds in the cabin was empty, the other two still holding blanket-covered lumps. “I thank you, living and eternal one, who has returned my soul into me with compassion. Blessed art thou, who led us from fear and into this day, this Territory.”

  He thrust his feet into boots now, rather than the shoes he had grown up with, and they made a solid, still-unfamiliar noise on the doorframe. He reached up to touch the mezuzah as he passed, the battered tin casing a familiar reassurance.

  This much, they had been allowed to bring with them.

  Outside, the sun had risen over the treetops, filling the sky with light. He had gone to bed late, the stars thick-spread overhead and the howls of beasts in the distance all a reminder of HaShem’s glory, but the expanse of blue sky overhead always surprised him, reminding him of the vastness of this land.

  This strange, still-strange land.

  The right to settle here had cost them seven chickens—bright-eyed, brown-and-cream feathered—and two cows born on the way from Pennsylvania, plus a bull calf come next spring in payment to the native tribe who lived there first, but the water of the creek was sweet, and the lands gentle and free from rocks. Even the forest seemed kind, although the last settlement, an hour’s walk south, had warned them to use caution if they entered the woods.

  “Their gods live there,” Isaac had repeated, when the village was only an encampment of wagons turned inward, the men sleeping outside, starting awake at every unfamiliar sound. “And bears.”

  “I fear neither bears nor heathen gods,” Yakob had returned, and the two had fallen into discourse on the nature of gods that might live in a forest, and if a correlation might be drawn between the tribes of this land and the tribes of ancient Judah, and if so, might they also be brought to understand Yahweh.

  Gershon had left them to it; he had no Talmudic bent, no desire for an afternoon spent negotiating arguments that had little application to the moment, and he knew, of experience, that they would argue the matter until they had long ago forgotten the original question. They still, he assumed, had come to no conclusion.

  But in the meanwhile, the wagons were dismantled, homes built, and a village had grown.

  The community of Shaaré Tikvah was now seven months old. Through the grace of HaShem and careful planning, they had lost only one calf and Yosef Elder’s three fingers to the cold, and now the wooden slats of the wagons made a pasture fence, and the blankets rested on beds under rude but water-tight roofs, made with the aid of Strong Knee’s people.

  He still had trouble thinking of this as home, but others had adjusted more easily.

  “Good day, Gershon!” Miriam called, and he lifted a hand to acknowledge his cousin, her two young ones clinging to her skirts, but kept walking. His thoughts were too unsettled for prayer.

  They had paid—everything they had—to come to this land, chasing a dream. They had been warned that this was a harsh land, but how could it be harsher than what they had left? At least here, they were promised, there was no Church, no auto-da-fé for those who refused to renounce their faith. The Territory worked on a simple principle, they had been told: give no offense. And if the wild folk of the Territory were heathens who worshipped idols and animals, if the creature who kept the peace here was called the devil by those who knew no better? The unknown was better than remaining like sheep to be slaughtered by the known.

  Strong Knee had sent his people the morning after they arrived, unable to go farther, unwilling to leave this respite of open valley and fresh water. His warriors had eyed them carefully, circling around the small, clustered camp, and then disappeared, returning mid-day with venison and maize, skin blankets, and carved wooden toys for the children.

  “You run from pain,” Strong Knee had said. “You need run no farther.”

  They owed more than chickens and cows to their new neighbors. But how could one repay what was not a debt?

  The first warning had come two weeks before. Two of Strong Knee’s warriors had gone missing, their ponies returning, lathered and wild-eyed. Yosef Younger, Ham, and Abner had gone with the party to search for them, but returned empty handed, without explanation.

  Men died. This was fact. But to disappear in such a way?

  “It may be that another tribe took them.” Horsehair Boy had been one of the warriors to look them over that first morning, and become a regular visitor to Shaaré Tikvah, often sitting quietly while they prayed on the Sabbath, willingly fetching water or making fire as needed. The elders thought he might be willing to learn, but Gershon thought he merely found them curious, the way he might watch a new bird in the trees to better understand its song.

  The natives spoke of their own gods, of the winds that carried medicine, the myths they spoke of as though of relatives only recently deceased. They had no interest in the prayers or beliefs of their neighbors. And yet, there was a familiarity to their faith that made the folk of Shaaré Tikvah ease their shoulders a little, speak less softly, sleep more deeply in the night.

  Then one of the native camp’s fields was ravaged, something churning dirt, trampling the soft green sprouts, and the young woman who had been on guard against night-grazers left with a headache and a lump on the back of her head.

  Shaaré Tikvah’s fields, smaller, closer to their homes, were left untouched, but within their walls there was murmuring, worries.

  They knew, firsthand, that this was how it began.

  Two days later, an empty storage hut was torched, the thatch burning bright into the dawn.

  In the days after, the children of Shaaré Tikvah were kept closer to the houses, sheltered by the young women who carried hazel staffs, thick as a thumb, in unaccustomed but determined hands. An older boy, just past his mitzvot, perched on a roof with a ram’s horn to hand from sun rise to set. At night, they barred doors and waited, sleep restless, riddled with memories.

  And the men argued late into those nights, thoughtful, but heated.

  “We have the right to call for aid. When we came here, we were promised that.”

  “From the devil?” Anton scoffed, frowning his disapproval.

  “They call him that from ignorance,” Yosef Elder said. “He is the power in this land, and we have given no offense, to be at risk.”

  “We are not at risk. Our neighbors are. It is their problem, not ours.”

  “If they are at risk, do you think we will not be, soon? They have no claim on the Master of the Territory, and we are far from others, far from this devil. He cannot protect us from enemies at our front gate.”

  Not in time, they meant. Not before their homes could burn, their belongings splintered and destroyed again. Everything they had built, gone.

  “And how do you say we protect ourselves, then? Prayer? Or have you some secret training with guns or knives, to be our militares?”

  They had been forbidden weapons back home; forbidden any means to defend themselves. The handful of muskets they carried along the journey were used for hunting deer now, and they had only a few bullets left. The women carried staffs, and the younger men had begun learning the bow and arrow, but they were not competent hunters, yet.

  “We must distance ourselves from the village. Show that we are no danger, no risk to whoever t
hreaten them.”

  “Abandon those who aided us?”

  “This is their problem, not ours.”

  And thus it went, for nearly a week, until erev shabbat came, and the rebbe placed one weathered hand on the table between them. “We have eaten at their tables, slept under their roofs. They are our neighbors.” Once the rebbe spoke, discussion continued, but the matter had been decided. Shaaré Tikvah would stand with Strong Knee’s people. But how? They were farmers and scholars, not warriors.

  Gershon had leaned back in his chair and watched the candles flicker.

  Miriam and her younglings and the noise of the settlement now behind him, there was peace. Birds chirped and trilled overhead, the grasses sighed at his feet, the sky arched over him with the blue promise of HaShem’s lovingkindness. He could see Strong Knee’s village in the distance, half a day’s walk beyond, across the creek that served both.

  That peace was an illusion.

  Two nights after the rebbe’s words, something destroyed the men’s sweating lodge at the edge of Strong Knee’s village, knocking an entire wall and half the roof down, as though a great wind had swept through, although none inside were harmed. Ham, who had a keen eye, had gone to look and found sign of metal hooks attached to the shattered remains.

  Not a beast, then, nor an angry spirit or bitter wind, but men.

  And from the works of men, there could be protection.

  Gershon had gone to sleep that night and woken with the madness of a plan.

  Now, he touched his fingertips to his tālēt, feeling the fringe move gently. A prayer rose to his throat, but he stifled it, holding back the words. The creek rushed at his feet, the banks smooth with mud. It might not be enough; it would have to be enough. Shedding his jacket and his narrow-brimmed hat and placing them on the grass behind him, he rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, picked up the rough-carved wooden shovel he’d carried from the village, and began to work.

  It took him the rest of the day to gather the clay, mounding it in the sun to dry so he could clean it of impurities, then slaking it down again with river water. Living water, fresh and running; for this, rainwater gathered in buckets would not do.

  The sons of Deer Walking appeared, as though drawn to see what the white man was doing, bringing him dried grasses and dung, watching with curiosity as he blended them into the clay, nose wrinkled at the sun-warmed smell. He had been raised with books and inks, not beasts, and while it was not unpleasant, it plagued the senses.

  “You are making…a doll?” The older boy soon became bored and wandered off, but the smaller son, a bright-eyed child of seven, moved closer, fascinated by the figure taking shape under Gershon’s hands. “A ceremony doll?”

  “Of a sort.” He had visited as well, his scholar’s mind always eager to learn, and had some sense of the ceremonies their people observed, with dancing and cries and brightly colored cloths; it had reminded him of Purim.

  “You are a….” The boy struggled to find a word in English. “A mystery-man?”

  Gershon did not recognize the term, but the tone the boy used suggested meaning. “I am no hakham,” he responded. “Not like our rebbe. I am merely a shaliah.”

  “Shal-leelah?”

  “A go-between,” he said, his fingers deep in the sticky clay, thumbs forming eyeholes and a mouth, bringing the excess clay back to form rudimentary ears. “One with authority to ask for things. To arrange things.”

  He had not asked for the role, but the weight of it had eased him, in the early days of their leaving. He could bargain, negotiate, ease the way. It was not the same, but it was something.

  The boy scrunched his face, then nodded once, with confidence beyond his years. “A medicine worker. What do you do now?”

  “It needs to dry in the sun.”

  “The sun is almost gone.”

  “And so it will wait until tomorrow. And you should be getting home for your chores, or else get no dinner.”

  The boy grinned at him and took off to find his brother, curiosity faded in the light of more immediate concerns.

  Alone, Gershon considered his creation. Tall as himself, which was to say not tall at all, but broader in the shoulder, with heavy hips and arms that hung graceless at its sides, the face a smear of features, the cheekbones high and wide, the ears lopsided, the mouth a shadowed, lipless hole.

  Gershon returned to the riverbank the next afternoon, heart in his mouth that something might have happened to the figure, that it might have cracked in the sun, or someone damaged it, beast or man. Instead, he found Deer Walking’s youngest son sitting cross-legged next to it, as though playing sticks with a friend.

  The boy looked up when Gershon approached, the morning sun finding red in the blackness of his hair, his eyes bright with anticipation.

  “May I watch?”

  He was a child. A child should not be exposed to such things.

  And yet, he was interested and eager to learn. Gershon could not bring himself to refuse such a student.

  “Move back and remain silent.”

  The clay was warm and rough-dried to the touch, giving only slightly when he pressed a thumb into it.

  Prying the half-dried mouth open slightly wider, Gershon reached into his pocket, and took out a tightly-rolled scrap of paper, carefully torn from one of the rebbe’s books, fresh letters inked in the blank space.

  This was no thing he should do, a reach he should not dare. And yet, the rebbe had tasked him with this; as shaliah, he could bind others to terms, could make agreements for his people.

  His hand shook as he placed the tiny scroll into the figure’s mouth and pressed the hole closed.

  “My name is Gershon ben Adão, of Shaaré Tikvah of the Territory. I have been tasked with ensuring the protection of our synagogue from those who would harm it, and those who have given us friendship and shelter. Adon Olam, if you find these goals to be worthy, grant life to this, most humble figure of mud and dung. Ain Soph, who caused Creation in your wisdom, grant spirit to this flesh, that it may protect your children, all born of Adam, though they know it not.”

  “You give it life?”

  “Not I. I merely ask.”

  The boy nodded, more serious than a grandfather. “The winds will bring it life, and it will protect us?”

  Horsehair Boy spoke of the winds thus as well, in tones of respect and caution. Gershon shrugged, stepping back from the figure, his fingertips touching the fringe of his tālēt, words of prayer gathering behind his lips.

  The golem’s eyes remained empty, its mouth pressed shut, its limbs clay without breath.

  “Your will be done,” Gershon said, and placed his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Walk me back to your village?” Because children had not been attacked did not mean they would not, but it would injure the boy’s pride to suggest he needed a white man’s escort home.

  On the riverbank, the wind shifted in the grass, and two fish splashed against each other in the creek. And when Gershon returned that evening to return the clay to the river, the figure was gone.

  That night, he ate his meal with the rebbe’s family. The old man was pensive, a single lamp on the table between them, the remains of dinner cleared away, his wife the rebbetizin shushing their daughter as they moved about in the kitchen.

  “Why now? What here?”

  The rebbe turned his hands palm up, a familiar gesture of acceptance, resignation. “Who are we to question HaShem?”

  “Who are we not to question HaShem?”

  That made the rebbe smile. “And did he not answer?”

  No, Gershon thought, looking down into his tea. Not the question I am asking.

  A runner came a day later, in the hour before dawn. He waited, panting slightly, while the men finished morning prayers. Unlike others, the runner did not exhibit impatience, but waited until ritual was satisfied and the rebbe came to speak with him.

  “Sweeps Water would show you a thing, if you would come to see it.”

  Ev
en in a hurry, Gershon thought, they were polite. It was oddly unnerving to those used to being ordered about, forcing them to question the intent behind every request, sifting through words offered sideways to see where the sword waited. Offer no offense, they had been told, as though their very existence had not been considered offense enough, nearly two thousand years now.

  “We will come,” the rebbe said.

  By “we,” the rebbe had meant Gershon, who was younger and stronger and could walk more swiftly, and three of his choosing. Even so, the sun was well-risen by the time they came to where Strong Knee and the medicine man, Sweeps Water, stood in the debris, his ink-marked eyes narrowed, knees half-bent as though caught between a crouch and rising. Behind them, a young man Gershon did not recognize waited, his eyes more lightly marked, hair clubbed back to show a scar along his neck, livid and raw. An arrow, stung across flesh and half-healed. One of those restless young men, proving their worth by raiding other towns.

  But this had been no raid.

  They stood on the bank above the creek, the village too-quiet behind them, as though those within all held their breath. Even the dogs, rawboned and yellow-coated, lay still outside the doorways, waiting for humans to set things right.

  “We heard them come, past moonset.” Sweeps Water did not rise, but he was clearly addressing the newcomers. Abner and Ham shifted uncomfortably behind him, and Old Yosef coughed politely, waiting for the native to face them. Gershon did not bother.

  “And they did this?”

  “No. But you knew that already.”

  Sweeps Water did rise and turn, then. His skin was smooth, save for a cut through one eyebrow, but his hair grayed in thick streaks where it was tucked behind his ears, and the bare arm that gestured around them was corded with lean muscle and scar tissue. Gershon let his gaze follow the gesture, and wished he hadn’t. What they had taken for debris was bone, flesh intact save where it had been severed, more like a deer’s haunch than a human limb.