Stormfeather Ch. 03

A lot of this is a narrative from Amy's point of view. As such, I struggled with her turns of phrase. I wanted it to come across as she'd say it and so it's written that way.

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Maeve found Amy about fifteen minutes later as she sat pulling her boots off. Amy carefully unloaded both the rifle and the Colt and set them into the cabinet to lock them up. Maeve had by now come to accept her great niece's "cowboy" ways with a matronly sigh. The truth was that she was happy to have Amy home again, and wanted to hear everything about the trip. She was saddened by the passing of her nephew and was cognizant of how Amy might feel and so she did her best to put a bright face to everything.

After inquiring about the funeral and getting Amy's condensed version of the proceedings, tea arrived and they sat together sipping. Maeve noticed that Amy was unsettled. She expected this, but there was something more, and so she asked as her great niece began to rattle around gathering her drawing material.

"I'm not sure if I can explain it, Aunt Maeve." Amy said as she sat back down with some pieces of sketch paper laid out on a board sized to fit on her lap. She began to sketch furiously. Maeve had always encouraged the girl's talents. She'd often said that if Amy could just bring herself to part with a few of her drawings, she'd have another income for herself.

"Well," Maeve remarked, "the beginning is always a good place to start dear, and I'm all ears."

"Alright," Amy replied, "but you'll have to bear with me while I try to sort this out as well." Maeve poured them both more tea and waited.

"I'd thought that I'd be able to say goodbye to Pa. I had it all set out in my head on the way over. I was even fine all through the stuffy service, not that there were many folks there. It was just hot and stuffy. That was all fine," Amy said, "but once they began to put him into the ground, I felt worse and more alone than I've ever felt in my life. I went home and cried for a long while, and then I fixed myself something to eat, and had a bit of Pa's whiskey before I went to bed all alone in that old house for the first time ever. I thought maybe it was the late meal and going to bed right so late, but I finally fell asleep. That's when the dreams began."

Maeve clapped her hands together. "Wait! Shall I call Ximena?"

Amy nodded with a resigned smile, "She may as well hear it too."

Ximena was Maeve's housekeeper, a lovely woman in her late-twenties. The three of them were more like old friends than employers and the servant and Ximena was Amy's best friend. Ximena and Maeve had both always loved to hear about Amy's vivid dreams, "Go on, Dear." she said, when Ximena arrived.

Amy thought for a moment and elected not to tell everything that she'd seen the second night. She'd simply lead them to believe that part of what she'd seen the second night had occurred during the first night. Without the images spread out before them, Amy doubted if they'd understand the way that he'd done the things she'd seen him do.

"I saw a man," she began, "I never got a really good look at him that time, but he seems to me to be someone who has always traveled alone. And he is big. Not big in the way that a fat man might be, but just large and muscular and very strong. And smart, Aunt Maeve, very wise in the ways of living off what one might be presented with on the road, only he rarely takes any road, whoever he is."

Ximena couldn't help herself, "Is he good-looking?"

Amy smiled, "You're such a romantic. Yes he is good-looking. He has long black hair and blue eyes, if you need to know."

Maeve was intrigued. She didn't think that Amy's dreams foretold anything or were significant in any way, but they were always so vivid and clear, and they seemed to run along the lines of stories sometimes.

"How long was his hair?" For some reason, Maeve thought it was important to know.

Amy rolled her eyes, "Very long, as though he hasn't cut it in years and years. It suited him, though. And in the dream he was clean-shaven. May I continue?"

Maeve nodded. When she was like this, Amy was certain that she could see what her great aunt had looked like as a beautiful young girl on the far side of the Atlantic Ocean.

"Well, he was walking across the plains all alone. It was late autumn, and the wind was cold. The man wasn't wearing much from what I felt, though he was dressed and he wasn't cold at all. He was traveling, but he was also keeping an eye out for something to hunt for dinner."

Maeve was confused, "Was he white, or brown, or red or blue? Did you get a feeling of his kind?"

Amy shrugged, "A half-blooded warrior from somewhere where it snows in winter -- that's all I know. I know he has blue eyes in the dream. Anyway, it doesn't matter. He saw something up ahead of him and quickened his pace. He was hopeful of a meal, maybe, but when he got there, he knew that he wouldn't be eating that night. It turned out to be a mare. She was down alone out there giving birth, but the foal was large and it had gotten stuck."

"Oh my," said Maeve, "What happened?"

"Well, the mare was tame and had gotten loose somehow. It was miles to anywhere. I felt that she'd just left to get away and have her foal. She was very afraid of the man, but he tried hard to calm her. It took him a while, but she did calm down. He's very kind to animals mostly, though he rarely has any of them around him. They're all afraid of him. He understands this and doesn't mind. He just knows their ways very well. He knelt down and covered his chest and arms with dirt as best he could so that if he could help her with the birth, she wouldn't reject her foal because of his scent. It took him a long time, but she finally passed the little one, and he helped the foal to her mother so that he could nurse."

"The problem was that she'd been so long at it that she'd gotten very weak. The man looked all around in the cold wind for some kind of fodder for her. He did find some and stayed with them. The mare tried to get up, but couldn't anymore. The foal finally found his legs, wobbled about and then tried to canter, but the mare only grew weaker."

"That's not good," Maeve said, "for either of them."

Amy nodded, "He buried the afterbirth to hide the scent and stayed with them for most of a week. He'd leave now and then to find food for them all, but didn't dare to be gone for very long. After a couple of days, the foal would try to follow him, but he was patient and always brought the colt back to his mother to nurse. If the colt was nursing, he had a chance to forage for them. He had some water, and he gave almost all of that to the mare. The mare would eat, but never very much and she just got weaker. All of this really bothered the man because they'd been there far too long. He'd nap now and then, but his fear was finally confirmed when a pack of coyotes found the scent and came calling."

"What happened then, Dear?"

"That's where this dream gets really strange, Aunt Maeve," she said, "It was looking to me like the end of them all, but the man became very angry at the coyotes. He understands that every animal has a place. He just didn't think that the mare and her foal were getting to have much of a chance. The mare finally died, and he did his best to get what milk he could for the colt into a skin. Then as the confused little colt stood there nervously, the man made a large ring of fire around them. This was on the prairie, remember, but somehow the fire never caught in the grass. It only kept the coyotes at bay. I think it was some kind of magic fire."

"The man knew that he had to do something or the colt would die too, so he began to talk to the colt in a low and soft voice. He tried to see if the little one would follow him, and it did, back and forth, so he kept watch, and when the colt had laid down to rest, he put some sort of quieting spell on it and then killed all of the coyotes."

"How did he do that, Amy? He cast a spell?" Ximena asked her.

Amy smiled, "It's a dream, remember? Here's something strange that I've just remembered," she said as she sketched, "This man, he carries a pack on his back. But underneath the pack, he has very old weapons strapped there. He carries a sword and an axe. The axe, I guess you could use to cut down a tree with, but I got the feeling that it's a battleaxe. And my dream happens here, Aunt Maeve, not in Europe. Who carries a sword and an axe to fight with? Anyway, he didn't use either of them. He crossed over the flames and killed the coyotes with his hands and his teeth. His hands were different, and if he swatted a coyote, it didn't get up again."

"A man did this?"

Amy shrugged, "That's another strange part. While he was doing that, I don't think that he was a man anymore, but I don't know exactly what he was. Anyway, the mare and the coyotes were all dead, and the man put a blanket on the foal and walked away with his arm around the little one to guide him. If he had been alone, he'd have taken some of the mare's meat to eat, since he was so hungry himself, but he wouldn't do it with the colt there to see. He knew that he had problems now, because while he could live just fine all alone out there, he had another mouth to feed. That's how that one ended."

"That one?" Maeve asked, "That was a good story, though a little strange somehow. There was another dream?"

Amy nodded, "Yes, the very next night. Shall I tell it to you?"

Maeve grinned, "I think you'd be very cruel to us if you didn't, Amy. That last one was one of your masterpieces."

"Maybe so," she said, "but I don't try to craft them, I'm just telling what I can remember of them. The second dream is of the same man. It was winter now, and the prairie then is a huge and very cold hell for anyone far from some kind of warmth. The man was walking along and the colt was a little older now and it was following the man. He spoke to it, and I understood the meaning of what he said to it, but the language was not English. The man was still dressed the same -- pretty much nothing. Oh, wait!" She began to sketch faster, very excited now.

Maeve was about to ask, but Amy just held up her free hand for a moment, and her great aunt settled back to wait.

"You're going to love this, Aunt Maeve. I've just now seen him clearly in my mind. I have to get this down before I forget it again. I see him in two ways and I'm going to try to draw them both. Just be a little bit patient with me."

Maeve nodded and sent Ximena for more tea, and there were several minutes of near silence but for the sound of Amy's pencil flying over the paper.

Ximena brought in the tea, and Maeve invited her to have some with them.

"They were walking across the frozen plain and it was snowing. There was already maybe half a foot on the ground. It wasn't not so much snowing as it was blowing hard. The colt was following along, but kept looking back and whinnying nervously to the man. He looked back and just said to the colt that he saw 'them' and not to worry. They were being followed by wolves."

"The man looked ahead and saw a line of trees. It was the edge of some woods, and he knew that they had to reach there, or he might not be able to defend them both. He was worried for the young colt. They were walking quickly, but the wolves were trotting. They'd been on the scent for a long time, and were starving. The man knew this -- he could feel their hunger somehow."

Amy continued as the tea was poured, "The man was worried and didn't dare to break into a run, because that would cause the wolves to run too."

She held up the paper for them to see, "This is how he looks to me -- when he's a man, anyway. Remember that he has really blue eyes."

The two women stared. She'd drawn him wearing a breechcloth and there were leather straps across his wide chest. The straps obviously were for the weapons on his back. The head of the axe and the haft of the sword could be seen protruding over his shoulders. His visage was proud and fierce, but not excessively so, and his black hair was long and hung down onto his broad shoulders. There were beaded leather thongs around the upper parts of his biceps, and one had dark feathers entwined in it. There was also some kind of small amulet hanging from his neck.

"That's some hero," Ximena said with a smile, "a really handsome Indian."

"I don't know if he is anymore though it's what he began as, he's half-blooded, as I've said. His father was European." Amy said, "I honestly don't know what he is, but I absolutely know that he has blue eyes."

"Why do you say it as though he's a living man? I can't say that I've ever seen any man who looked like that -- though I sure wish I could find one like him," Ximena grinned.

Amy shrugged, "That's just another thing that I don't know about for certain. And the strangest thing to me is that it's not as though he was a character in my dreams, it's as though I was seeing into his life, somehow. I have the oddest feeling that he really lives somewhere, that he's really alive, though that doesn't make much sense. Look at his weapons. They were the same in both dreams. Indians don't use things like that, well axes, maybe, but not shaped like that one, I don't think." She went back to her sketching.

"What are those marks there on him?" Maeve asked.

"These? They're tattoos of some kind. He's had them in both dreams. These others, well, they're scars from an old fight that he had. The way that I see him, he's not afraid of anything dead or alive, he just goes on traveling."

"What do you mean, 'dead or alive'?" Ximena asked.

"He has some very strange abilities," Amy replied, "I know that he can talk to the dead if he needs to know something that they've seen. I can't really explain it. Anyway, the two of them reached the woods, and the man found what he was looking for. There was a small clearing almost surrounded by trees, and he got them into it, and then turned around moving his hands in a certain way, and the trees just filled in, like they'd grown together touching. Now the two of them had some shelter, and a way for him to protect them both. The wolves were not far off now, but he spread a couple of horse blankets down and made a sign for the colt to lie down -- and that's just what he did. He lay down like a lamb. When I saw the man again, he was not a man."

Amy sketched a while longer. Ximena wanted to interrupt, but Amy continued, "Sometimes I don't see him as a man, he's, ... he's just something else. I'll have this in a minute or two. You'll see what I mean. In my dream, the man -- or whatever he is, was really busy now. He found some branches that had broken off the trees earlier and he threw them down in the opening of the ring of trees. He made this strange motion with his fingers, and the wood just caught fire. No matches, nothing. Just wooof! The wolves got to the trees, but couldn't get close because of the trees and the fire. The fire didn't catch in the wood of the trees, either. It was as though he controlled it with his will or something like that."

"So while the wolves were losing their minds because food was so close to them, he just took one of the packs off the colt and found a skin. It was a skin full of goat's milk that he'd gotten from somewhere, and he sat down to feed the colt. The colt balked at it, but he said that he ought to be thankful, at least it hadn't frozen. When the skin was empty, he dug some wild oats out of another pack and laid it down for the colt. I could tell that he was very happy that the young one was almost weaned. Then he stood up to face the wolves."

"How did he do that?" Maeve asked.

"He has a staff, a walking stick. He doesn't need one, but it helps him over long walks since he was now carrying a lot more because he had to feed the colt. He turned to the wolves and listened to them snarl, and then he snarled back, only deeper and much louder. He pulled back his lips and showed them teeth that are longer and more cruel-looking than their own. A couple of the wolves began to back away because they'd gotten uncertain by then. Remember that I said that while he likes animals and understands them very well, like how they think, almost all animals are afraid of him. Only the colt has no fear of him because he was there when the colt was born, and he's looked after it after the mare died."

"He snarled?" Ximena asked.

"Yes," Amy replied, "the growl he made was almost like a roar. Remember that he's not a man anymore at this point -- and I know just what he looks like. When he's like that, his eyes are yellow or golden. I just don't know if there's a name for what he is then. Wait a minute, and you'll see."

"So he held the staff in his left hand, and reached over his shoulder for his sword. Right here is another part that's strange. The staff was made of wood, but in his hand, he could get lightning out of it with a word that he said. This comes from his mind, and not the staff. He hit one wolf after another. They all fell down for a minute after they'd been hit, but they got back up again after a time, and they really weren't sure about attacking anymore. The biggest wolf jumped straight at him, right over the fire, and it was what the man had been waiting for. One great slash of the sword and the wolf fell almost dead. He dropped the sword and grabbed the dying wolf by the scruff of the neck and just heaved it back out among them -- a full-grown wolf, one-handed. Then he picked up the sword again, but they all backed away, snarling."

"What happened next?" Maeve asked.

Amy shrugged, "I don't know. That's where the dream left them. But I hope that I get to have more dreams of him. I know that the colt loved him, and I'm pretty sure that the colt grew up and wasn't eaten. I'm also sure that they got out of that spot just fine."

"I can't explain it," she looked at them both, "but I seem to know things about him that aren't made clear in the dreams. I just know them about him. I know that he's traveled for a long, long time, and that while he's not unhappy, I know that he's not really happy either, though he feels better now that he has a friend in the little horse. He has those scars, but I don't think that he ever loses any fight that he's in. He doesn't want to ever fight anyone; he only wants to be left alone. But if he's dragged into a fight, he just wins and goes on. That's all that I know."

Amy's eyes opened wide, "Oh, and I know his name. Again, it's just something that I know. It's not spoken in the dreams. He has several names, but the one that he was called the longest," she pointed to the first sketch, at the beaded thong on his left arm, "is Stormfeather. He got that name from his mother. There's another name that his father gave him that I'm not sure about because he's almost forgotten it himself, and there's a name that some people called him once long ago because they were afraid of his vengeance."

Ximena looked at her friend curiously, "Vengeance?"

"I told you that he doesn't want a fight with anyone and it's how he wants to live, but they killed his wife and his mother," Amy replied, "When he came after them, he got those scars and almost died, but he didn't stop until they were all dead."

Ximena nodded, "I can understand that."

"What did they call him?" Maeve asked.

Amy stopped sketching and looked up, "They called him 'Blue-eyed demon'."

She held up the paper, and both women gasped. "Even like that, he's really interesting." Ximena said, "Look at his eyes."

Maeve shook her head, "I know what he is, Amy. I just didn't think there were any of them here. Are you certain that you saw him on this side of the ocean in your dreams and not in the old country?"

Amy nodded, "Absolutely certain. He was, -- is here somewhere. I know that before he saw the mare in the first dream, he was hoping to come across a herd of buffalo."