Spirit Quest Read online

  The Legend of Skyco

  Spirit Quest

  Jennifer Frick-Ruppert

  Amberjack Publishing

  New York, New York

  Note to Readers

  Spirit Quest is a work of fiction, and while it is inspired by real historical events, many aspects of this book are products of the author’s mind.

  The Raid

  Thwack! The arrow struck the tree directly behind me. I ducked involuntarily even though it was too late. The arrow was already vibrating in the tree, just above my left shoulder. A few inches more to the right and it would have hit me.

  The narrow miss wasn’t the worst of it, however. As I withdrew into the bushes, trying to hide from whoever had just shot at me, a powerful hand reached out and grabbed my ankle, jerking me to the ground. I struggled and kicked, but felt a heavy, muscular body fall on top of me, pinning me flat. It was no use screaming, even though I wanted to. We were on a war raid and a scream could only bring more enemies.

  As silently as I could, I tried to twist out from underneath but could hardly move under the smothering weight. Tree roots ground into my back, and I could barely draw a breath because the man’s entire mass rested directly on my chest. I squeezed my eyes shut, thinking I should try one big effort to buck him off me, but then I heard a familiar voice whisper into my ear, “Be still, Skyco. It is I, Roncommock.”

  I quieted instantly at the sound of his voice. When I stilled and relaxed my body, he released me, rising up off my chest, rocking back, and settling into a crouch. I rolled over quietly and imitated his stealthy moves, although a little less gracefully. A branch of musclewood, as tough as its name implied, scratched my shoulder while another poked me in the ribs.

  “Now follow me, quietly. Keep your head low. We must make our escape before the enemy warrior arrives. He will surely come after us.”

  We wiggled through narrow breaks in the rough, bushy scrub of musclewood, arrowwood, persimmon, and blueberries. Soon, we emerged into a meadow of longleaf pines and tall grasses. The small bushes disappeared.

  Roncommock darted among the majestic trees, pausing briefly to scan for the enemy warrior before dashing to the next big trunk. The tall trees, as straight as an Algonquin’s back, were so wide that two warriors could not encircle one with their outstretched arms, and they concealed Roncommock completely. The grasses were so high, and we crouched down so low, that I would never have seen him running between the trees if I hadn’t already been following his movements. We made our way quickly from tree to tree, protecting ourselves behind the dark trunks or dashing through the pale grass, always heading back toward our territory but alert for the enemy warrior we presumed was tracking us. Once out of this longleaf pine meadow, we would be much safer.

  This meadow was the no-man’s land between our tribe and the Mangoaks. We were Algonquin and shared the same language, called Algonquian, with most of the other nearby tribes. The Mangoaks, however, were different. They spoke another tongue and were fearsome warriors. Since their speech just sounded like hissing to us, and they were as mean as snakes, we called them the rattlesnake people.

  The meadow was also a land of reptiles. As we neared the edge of the meadow and I dropped my guard a little, thinking we were almost home free, I nearly stepped on a huge snake, which, thankfully, was not one of the deadly rattlesnakes. It was a strange half-colored snake, its front-end nearly black and back-end much lighter, almost white. It was skinny and long, longer than I was tall, and it raised its head off the ground until it was looking in my eye. I was so startled that I let out a little yelp, jumping backwards and straightening up from my half-crouch.

  As I jerked back from the menacing snake, I heard the thwack of another arrow, quivering now from its impact in the tree beside me. Once again, the arrow was barely off target, a little too far to the left. It had to be the same warrior, drawing his shots to the left like that. I saw Roncommock break from cover, waving me onward while drawing attention to himself like a grouse protecting its young. I needed no encouragement, but broke into a hard run straight for the forest edge where it gave way to a dense pocosin, full of dark shrubs and vines, which marked our nation’s boundary. If I could reach it safely, I just might survive this day.

  I heard another arrow whiz over my head, but from the opposite direction. Roncommock was defending me, shooting back toward the pursuing enemy. I thought I heard a groan from somewhere behind me, but wasn’t sure, and didn’t dare slow down or turn my head to look back. My heart was beating so fast that its sound deafened me to much else.

  I dove into the pocosin at Roncommock’s feet.

  “You are safe now, little one. I struck the one who was tracking you. He will not be missing to the left anymore,” Roncommock chuckled confidently. “You are lucky that he was not with the main war party. That is probably because the only thing he can hit is a tree. Always pulling to the left!”

  I stood up, relaxing now that I was safe, and had to agree that I was lucky. Roncommock, however, wasn’t finished teasing me.

  “I am surprised you didn’t whack your head on an overhanging branch back there. I have never seen anyone leap straight up off the ground the way you did when you saw that snake! It would make a good move for our next dance. Do you think you could teach the others? The snake jump?”

  He chuckled again and my face felt a little warm from embarrassment. “Now, snake dancer, have you learned your lessons well enough to lead us back to our village?”

  “Yes, I think I can,” I replied. “This pocosin marks the western edge of our boundary. We should head east back to the village.” I pursed my lips and took my bearings by looking at the sun’s position in the sky. “That way,” I indicated with my hand. “The sun has not yet reached its zenith. It lies in the direction we must travel.”

  “Well done, Skyco. That is why you have come on this raid, to learn our territory and its boundaries.” Roncommock clucked like a mother bird indulging a feisty chick. “Lead on!”

  Rather than cutting through the dense bush of the pocosin, which is a wet swampy area surrounded by thick shrubs and tangled vines, we skirted along its edge. I recognized that many vines were grape vines, which would soon bear the sweet, dark grapes that my mother liked to pick and squeeze into juice for us to drink. More common, though, were the green-briers, with thorns as long as one of my fingernails. They wrapped among the shrubs of musclewood and arrowwood like green snakes, binding them all together. Trying to push through that pocosin would be unpleasant. It was an effective barrier. I’d even heard stories about men getting trapped by the green-briers, entangled by the vines and impaled by the thorns until they could no longer move. Looking at the thick, tangled mess of vines and branches, I could believe the stories.

  As we walked along, unwinding now that we were back on our own territory, I felt the tension draining out of my body as my muscles relaxed. My first war raid was over, but I had nearly been shot! Considering my predicament, I began to worry about returning to the village. My mother would not be pleased, and I felt sure that her brother, Chief Menatonon, would hear of it as soon as we returned.

  I was daydreaming about the recent past and worrying about the future, when I heard a snorting, snuffling sound that yanked me back to reality. I stopped dead in my tracks and extended my hand down and out to the side to signal Roncommock to stop as well. There was hardly any breeze, but our scent might be drifting out ahead of us, especially since we were sweaty from the raid and our close escape.

  Roncommock quietly eased up beside me, shoulder-to-shoulder. Without speaking, I gestured to where I’d heard the sound and made the signal for “bear,” but hesitantly. I wasn’t certain. It
was just a soft sound of exhaled breath, not like the sharp grunt of exhalation that I have sometimes heard from a startled deer. I’d never heard a bear sound before, but it had been described by some of the hunters when I was listening to them around the campfire.

  Roncommock nocked an arrow in his bow and was creeping slowly around the pocosin’s edge, when suddenly a huge black shape hurtled out at him. One moment there was nothing there, the next, a great bear was abreast of him, black and furred, rearing upright on its massive hind legs to tower over him while aggressively clacking its teeth. Before Roncommock could even take a shot, the bear swatted him with its colossal paw and claws, knocking him flat. A big gust of air forced its way out as he hit the ground, lifting a puff of dirt and dead leaves into the air.

  This menacing giant must be the wily old bear that the hunters spoke of, the one rumored to live in the borderland between different tribes, where, fearing attack from hostile warriors, few men dared to hunt. He was enormous and as black as a moonless night.

  In the terror of the moment, I realized that I had nothing in my hands, not even a rock to throw, so I did the only thing I could think of. I stood up on my tiptoes, raised my arms above my head, took a deep breath, and roared. Rather than continue mauling Roncommock with his huge paws and claws, the bear turned his great, shaggy head toward me. Now what?

  Not knowing what else to do, I took a giant step toward the bear and roared again, as deeply and loudly as if my life depended on it, which, of course, it did. The bear froze in apparent astonishment. He seemed to consider me a new and threatening life form, or perhaps was just confused that such a small and skinny human could make such an unexpected noise. As he stood on all fours and gazed at me, a large drop of saliva dripped from the corner of his mouth and fell to the ground.

  Everything was moving in slow motion, but all the details were incredibly clear. I could see that one of his upper canines was broken, and the lip there was pulled up into a scar. Tufts of hair around his face were missing too, probably from other scars, and a fresh, pink welt curved in an angry line across the bridge of his nose. His nostrils quivered as he smelled me. A notch was torn in one ear, causing it to flop down slightly at its tip. He must be old to carry so many scars. I could smell him, a musty but sharp odor, like men smell after they have fought and sweated hard.

  All of this went through my mind as the two of us stood there staring at each other, Roncommock on the ground between us, not moving, drawn up into a fetal position in an attempt to protect his head and throat.

  A standoff with a bear. What was I thinking? I blinked and realized I had to do something else to break the link between us. It worked before, so I tried again. I took another step toward the bear, emitting another great roar, and this time I vigorously flapped my arms up high and then sharply back down to my sides. The bear was so surprised that he jumped a little, then turned and melted back into the thick brush.

  Although my heart was thumping wildly, I turned to Roncommock, still on the ground, and gently rolled him from his side to his back to see how badly he was injured.

  “Teacher, can you walk? I don’t know how long the surprise will last. The bear might return. He will smell the blood.”

  Roncommock gritted his teeth and reached up to my shoulder. “Yes, I think I can walk, but I will need your help.”

  Blood was oozing from Roncommock’s shoulder and thigh, where the bear had raked him with his claws and knocked him down. It was the thigh that looked the worst, with three parallel cuts so deep that they pulled apart at the edges. I could have stuck my finger in them without touching the torn flesh on either side.

  We had to get moving, but if he walked far on his heavily injured leg, he would pump out too much blood. We needed something quickly. I took off my loincloth and wrapped it tightly around his leg, applying some pressure with my hand to staunch the flow of blood.

  “Let’s get moving. If we find some moss, we can make a packing for the wound.” I knew that we needed to get the bleeding stopped, but we also needed to get away from the bear. The smell of blood would enrage him as soon as the shock of my actions wore off.

  We started walking east, Roncommock leaning on me, one arm around my shoulder and the other holding tightly to the wrapping on his leg. After putting some distance between us and the bear, we paused, Roncommock leaning against a tree for support. He looked pale.

  While he rested, I searched for moss growing at the base of a tree and found a nice clump of it large enough to treat his leg wound. Moss was the best packing for a wound, absorbing blood but also lessening a later infection. I was also very lucky and found a brown puffball still full of spores. After unwrapping his leg, I dusted the powder from the puffball into the gaping wound, which slowed the bleeding almost immediately. I dusted what was left onto his shoulder wound. Then I made a big wad of the moss and bound it up again with my loincloth, this time carefully wrapping my belt tightly around the package to apply more pressure and slow the bleeding even further. We should make it now, but because the exhilarating adrenaline rush of the bear attack was wearing off, pain and fatigue were beginning to overwhelm Roncommock.

  I was tiring, too. He was a grown man, and I was still a boy. Supporting him was not an easy task, and we had a long way to go. Why weren’t other warriors from our village here with us? Surely they would come along any minute? No, I realized. We’d kept the raiding party very small, only a handful of warriors plus me. I’d been positioned on the far side of the skirmish, presumably out of harm’s way. The idea was that I was along to learn the route and to see how a raid was set up and executed, but I was not to fight, not even to get close to the enemy village. All was going well until that arrow struck near me. It must have been fired by a rogue scout, out away from the central part of the enemy village where our warriors launched their raid. Our warriors would have made a direct return to Chowanook, whereas we’d been diverted first by being positioned well to the south of their strike, and then by the unexpected chase by the left-biased scout. No, Roncommock and I were on our own.

  As slowly as we were moving, Roncommock leaning heavily on me, I realized that we would be unlikely to return to Chowanook before dark. We were hungry, having eaten nothing at all that day, and very little the day before as we prepared for the raid. We had slept the night before in the longleaf meadow to be ready for the raid at dawn.

  The sun was now well past its zenith and we still had some distance to go. Roncommock needed food, water, and rest in addition to attention to his wounds. Remaining in the forest overnight would be dangerous, for the smell of blood might attract the cougar or wolves with whom we shared the forest. I had heard a cougar’s scream the previous evening, when we camped in the meadow before the raid, and I shivered to recall its eerie wail.

  “I am going to run ahead to our village for help. You lost a great deal of blood. That bear was powerful and we need the medicine man’s healing abilities to help restore your spirit while it fights that of the bear.”

  “Can you find your way?”

  “Yes, teacher. I know where we are. We are near one of the sacred groves you showed me.”

  “Good, Skyco. Remember these sacred places and treat them accordingly. Do not enter them when you are bloodied and impure.”

  I helped him to lean back against a tree, leaving him a gourd—which my tribe called a macócqwer—that held a few mouthfuls of water. I placed it, along with his bow that I had been carrying, next to him. He still wore a reed pouch of arrows slung across his back, and I helped him to remove it. I checked his wrapping, replacing the soaked, bloody moss with a fresh handful, and I added some elderberry leaves that I saw nearby, for they were good at stopping bleeding. He had my loincloth and belt as a wrapping for his wound and still wore his own.

  Oh well, I thought. It will be faster to travel naked. Nothing to hinder me!

  I began to trot in the energy-conserving way I had learned
, much faster than walking, but not a full-out run that would exhaust me. I could maintain this pace for a long time if I needed to, but today the distance was not that great. The sun would be low in the sky, but not all the way to the horizon when I reached Chowanook. The forest, with its large trees spaced far apart, was relatively open and easy to move through. I skirted the occasional pocosin, but kept moving in the same general direction.

  As I predicted, I arrived in the village just as the sun touched the branches of the big live oak on the village’s eastern side, on the bank of the Chowan River. I stepped out of the forest, passed the crop fields, and entered the large, open clearing that was our village. Running to the central group of wigwams, I quickly located Chief Menatonon, who was in council with the returned warriors, and I related my story as succinctly as possible, which was easy since I was already winded.

  “Roncommock is injured. I left him near the sacred grove and need help to retrieve him. Two strong men can carry him, but I doubt that he can walk any farther. We were attacked by a big boar bear at the pocosin in no-man’s land. The bear spilled his blood and weakened him.”

  “Inform Eracano, the medicine man,” the chief said. “Tell him what has happened so that he is prepared to treat Roncommock.” He pointed to a man, who immediately left the wigwam. Signaling to two others, he said, “You two are appointed to retrieve Roncommock. Go with Skyco.” The other two men were at my side before the chief had even ceased speaking; when the chief spoke thus, there was no hesitation to obey. We left quickly, without so much as an acknowledgment that I was even there.

  We found Roncommock without difficulty, but his spirit was busy fighting that of the bear. He just groaned when the men picked him up from the base of the tree where I had left him. When they saw he would remain unconscious and unable to walk, one cut a supple vine with a piece of sharp quartz he carried, and the other found two downed limbs that were still strong enough to bear his weight. In a short time, they created a sling by wrapping the two stout limbs with the vine, and then they carefully eased Roncommock and his gear onto it.