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  Cloud trudged along the road, pulling a blanket from one of the horses and wrapping it around her shoulders as night came and an early snow began to fall. She had the sinking feeling that winter would come harsh and early. And now her clan was missing nearly a third of its young men. The others would all need to work harder to make sure they made it through the coming winter.

  She chewed her lip, her mind wandering as she sought to keep the impact of what had just happened from becoming too much to bear. Could her father really be dead? The man who was as broad and strong and immovable as the hills and mountains?

  She brought herself back, ignoring the tears that flowed soundlessly down her cheeks, chilling in the cold air. Her people would be blamed for the fighting that had just occurred. Maybe accused of attacking the white men. It would be an excuse to force them onto the reservations, if not just imprison or kill them outright. Her people would balk at using such tactics, but she knew the ones they fought had no such hesitations.

  She wanted to crumple to the ground and weep. But her people needed her to act like the chief’s daughter. They needed her to lead them back home with dignity.

  She took a deep breath around the clenched, burning pain in her stomach, ignoring the way it pulled at her wounds, which stuck to her shirt and started to itch and burn.

  A couple of days travel and they would return home. Her grandmother and the elders would know what to do. They were always more than willing to order everyone around. And this time she would be happy to let them have their way.

  She stumbled and caught herself against the side of the horse. They would keep going as long as they could before resting. Their dead needed to go home.

  ******

  The smell of smoke reached them before the clan’s encampment came into view.

  A raven soared overhead, its coarse caw galvanizing Cloud into action. She dropped the horse’s reins and pulled out her tomahawk as she ran.

  She smelled the blood mixed with the smoke as she entered the clearing where their settlement lay. Most of the wigwams were on fire, and she saw an overturned skin of oil near the central campfire. It had spilled, leaking fuel toward the nearest shelter. From there the fire would have spread to each home down the line around the circle that was closest to the campfire.

  But where were the people? Surely, they should be putting out the fires, or saving their belongings from destruction.

  Instead, the place was eerily quiet.

  A shrill scream erupted from across the clearing, somewhere in the trees. Cloud ran toward it, a cluster of braves at her back.

  What she saw when she reached the clearing froze her blood in her veins. “Grandmother?”

  The medicine woman stood in the middle of the clearing, radiating dark energy. Several of the elders ringed her in a loose circle, chanting to the spirits and using all their power. But she was the most powerful shaman in the tribe. No one in the tribe had even a fraction of her grandmother’s magic.

  Except Cloud.

  She paced to the edge of clearing, her mind racing. She might be second only to her grandmother in her shamanic abilities, but she was second to her. She was nowhere near as powerful as the elder. And she had refused to practice, to hone those abilities.

  Her grandmother was covered in blood, and trails of it traced down in dried black rivers from her mouth. Spirits help them, had she eaten someone? Dark energy suffused her being. Possessed her spirit.

  “What is going on here?” Cloud said, her tomahawk clenched in her fist.

  Her grandmother’s wild gaze latched onto her. “Shaman.”

  One of the elders whispered to her without taking her eyes off Cloud’s grandmother. “She walked with the spirits. She came back changed. And it has been getting worse. This morning she...we lost her.”

  Cloud shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

  The elder hissed as Cloud’s grandmother paced toward them. “She’s killed most of the others. The ones who weren’t with you.”

  Cloud’s heart stuttered in her chest. She had just lost her father. So many of her friends and tribe. She had returned home with the hope of finding comfort and support. Only to find...this.

  “Grandmother,” she whispered. “You are stronger than the spirits. Your spirit can overpower them.”

  The woman who had once been their voice of reason lunged. One of the elders stepped in front of Cloud. Her grandmother backhanded her so hard the woman’s neck snapped with a wet crunch.

  Cloud felt bile rise to the back of her throat. “Run,” she whispered to the remaining two elders. “Run to the braves. Then keep running. All of you.”

  She pulled on the little bit of shamanic power she possessed, calling magic to her from somewhere deep inside.

  When the elders ran, she stepped in front of her grandmother to keep her from chasing them. She knocked her away with her tomahawk, surprised at the old woman’s strength, which sent Cloud tumbling across the ground. She leapt to her feet. “Grandmother,” she pleaded. “Please. I know you are in there. I know you can stop this.”

  The old woman cackled. “Poor Cloud. Always stuck here with the women and children. Always wanting to get away. To hunt. To run.” She tilted her head at an odd angle. “I know how you feel, child.”

  Her eyes flickered for a moment, and they were the eyes of the woman who had helped raise her—who had held her hand and sang her lullabies and told her all of their old stories while she gathered berries and made maple syrup sweets.

  Then that woman was gone and the beast she had become was back. “Come here, little Anishinaabe. Let me taste your heart.”

  She dodged the swipe of a clawed hand, then spun, tripping over a snow-covered log. She rolled to her hands and knees and stared down at the log.

  And screamed. She screamed as if her heart had indeed just been ripped from her chest.

  Binishii. The frozen log was a leg. One whose pale, frozen flesh still bore the strange, star-shaped birthmark Cloud would remember anywhere. She had teased that it looked like a little bird.

  She registered the footsteps behind her and rolled away in a flurry of dusty snow. Binishii.

  Where was Animikii?

  Her mind supplied the answer all too readily. If their little bird was here, ripped to pieces. Then he was dead too. Nothing would have stopped him from protecting her.

  Cloud’s grandmother raked Cloud’s side with her claws, drawing blood, then pausing to lick her fingers. “They think they know everything, the little Anishinaabe. But they see too much. The new ones. The pale ones. They see nothing. We will keep them like livestock.” She surged forward, and Cloud spun away, slashing with her tomahawk.

  Her grandmother’s hand hit the snow, painting the white and brown ground with vibrant red.

  The old woman howled in fury. “All the shamans,” she shrieked. “We will devour them all! Then who will fight us?”

  Cloud backed away. “Grandmother,” she whispered. “Please, grandmother. Please. Come back.”

  She dodged another swipe, kicked out at the creature and barely kept her footing. Her magic thrummed in her body, unused.

  “Please.”

  She lifted her eyes to the white sky above, beseeching the Great Spirit with everything she had. “Please.”

  Her grandmother tried to rush past her. To chase after the other elders. The only two weakened shaman left to guide the tribe.

  She didn’t think. She went numb. Cloud leapt, taking her grandmother down and holding the inhumanly strong body to the ground, grappling, punching. Tears slid unchecked down her cheeks as sharp claws shredder her forearm. But she kept the thing’s shoulder pinned, back to the ground.

  Long enough to slit her grandmother’s throat.

  Hot blood gushed out, staining the world. The creature thrashed and gurgled. Then the eyes were her grandmother’s once more. They stared at her as the body heaved.

  “I will do what you wished. I will do what I must,” Cloud whispered.

&nbs
p; Then she grasped her tomahawk in both hands and removed her grandmother’s head from her shoulders.

  *****

  Cloud still knelt in the blood-soaked clearing, tears streaming down her cheeks, when what was left of the clan returned.

  The braves she had brought back with her from the failed meeting. Two weak, elderly medicine women. A couple of small children the one remaining young woman had hidden from the creature her grandmother had become—and from the other creatures that had attacked the village shortly before she returned with the men.

  Cloud took a deep breath, wiped the tears and blood from her face and stood.

  Her father was gone. Her lovers killed by the spirits they had always treated with wary respect. And her grandmother was dead by Cloud’s own hand. Had there been a way to save her? Should Cloud have tried harder to save the woman trapped inside the beast? She tamped down her doubts. The creature had taken over her grandmother’s mind. Even if Cloud’s magic had been enough to save her, what then? How would her grandmother have lived with the knowledge that she had been part of the slaughter of half their village?

  The weight of responsibility had settled heavy on Cloud’s shoulders. She struggled to settle it around her like a blanket, insulating her from her emotions. She had people to serve and protect. The tribe would look to her for answers and guidance. It seemed both her father and her grandmother would have their wishes fulfilled in the end. Cloud would have to be both shaman and chief.

  The two remaining elders carried bundles of herbs and various shamanic refuse that Cloud had always resented. “Hanging Cloud,” one of them whispered. “You are the only one who can save us.”

  She noticed then that one of the elders was leaning against the other, pale, blood leaking from her ears in a slow trickle.

  “Soon you will be all they have left,” the uninjured one said, her back hunched, showing every bit of her age, her shamanic energy depleted by the battle with her grandmother.

  Cloud nodded. “Show me what must be done.”

  That sense of responsibility settled even more firmly over her, but it was made of cold, rather than warmth, freezing her emotions, making her into a statue that felt no sadness or fear, only a deep, weary sense of duty.

  The process was completed right there in the bloody clearing. Smoke and incense curled around Cloud, her nostrils filled with the scents of magic and blood. The had obtained creature blood from somewhere—Cloud did not ask, did not want to know, but deep down she suspected it was her grandmother’s blood, potent with shamanic power and darkness. It burned as she drank it down, calling to her own power.

  “You take of the blood of the enemy until they are banished from this earth,” one of the elders whispered.

  Cloud’s vision blurred, and she felt as though she were floating above her body, above the thin mist of incense smoke and magic that hovered over her corporeal body. It was as if she viewed the world through a smoky veil. Voices whispered around her, the hallow voices of the ancestors joining with those of the elders, chanting words of protection, strength, purpose and power.

  Suddenly it was as if time stopped. Cloud hovered there, between places, between sound. And she knew she had a choice. She could accept the power and responsibility that was pressing in around her. Or she could refuse.

  She saw their faces then—her lovers, her grandmother, her father and mother and siblings. The entire tribe, living and dead, flitting before her like the delicate flash of butterfly wings.

  Yes.

  The single thought entered her mind and her decision was made. She slammed back into her body with a jolt, like plunging into ice water, then being immediately warmed by fire. She felt heat within her—a blazing sense of determination and purpose.

  Opening her eyes, Cloud realized she was lying on the muddy, bloody ground as snow fell. The little pinprick stings of the snowflakes melting on her exposed skin were a hundred times more intense than usual. She slowly pushed herself up to stand, swaying.

  The shadows under the trees danced and called to her, like unexplored pathways to the unknown. The forest around her was silent. The chanting had stopped. What was left of her clan ringed her in a loose circle. They were breathless and utterly still.

  One of the elders—the injured one—lay slumped on the ground near Cloud. As she came back to herself, she caught the other elder. The old woman was light and fragile as a bird in her arms. Her body slack, power and spirit used up with this last shamanic feat.

  The elder’s last breath left her in a sigh and Cloud lowered the body to the ground.

  The one woman who remained in the tribe paced forward and threw a blanket around Cloud’s shoulders. It smelled like smoke, but was otherwise clean. And warm.

  Cloud shuddered, then got a hold of herself. “Have the braves gather what wood they can find,” She said calmly. “Are the wigwams still burning?”

  The woman’s brown eyes were sad. “Yes, the elder’s home won’t seem to stop burning.”

  Cloud nodded. “Have them bring the wood there. And the bodies.”

  Their customs said that it took four days for the spirit of the dead to make the journey westward to the land of everlasting happiness. Usually, if someone died, they were not buried until the fifth day. But there was no time for ritual.

  And Cloud feared what might happen to the bodies if a vengeful spirit creature happened by.

  She strode away, toward her own small wigwam, situated away from the central area, miraculously safe from the blaze. She knelt at the door, bowed her head, and thought of her lovers as she had last seen them, curled around each other in the lingering twilight, warm and sated and happy. She could still feel them here, their skin against hers in passion, the taste of their lips.

  And yet they were gone, swift as an extinguished flame.

  She set to quickly packing up the belongings she needed, with an eye out for what was the most useful and easily carried. Hanging Cloud didn’t own much. She had never put value in things. And their band moved with the seasons. It was almost time to pack up camp and make the winter move even before all of this.

  She took one last look around the nest she had shared with those who were no longer there. “I will carry you with me always,” she said to the empty space. “May your spirits be free.”

  She left her wigwam and set a group of warriors to burning her grandmother’s body.

  The elders joined her on the pyre. Then the fallen warriors and any remains they could find scattered about in the snow. Herbs of cleansing and protection were burned with the bodies. The bodies of the dead deserved more respect than they were given. Their spirits deserved more than this. But there wasn’t time. And they had to be sure the taint of the creature who had inhabited her grandmother’s body was well and truly purged.

  Cloud pulled on the little magic she possessed, finding it had been bolstered by her transformation into...protector. She led the tribe in a brief blessing and then set them to packing up anything they could use.

  The tribes all gathered by the river in a place the white men called Saginaw, for the winter months. She would lead her people there. But she knew that was only the first step.

  There would be battles. There would be fear and treachery. And Cloud would lead her people through it all. Protect every last one of them, until there was nothing left.

  What she would become then, she had no idea. She had a feeling that this was the beginning of a war that would take everything she had.

  But she would gladly give anything, if it meant she could prevent what had happened to her people from happening to the other tribes.

  She mounted her horse and led the remains of her tribe in a silent march toward the rest of their people.

  Overhead, a raven cawed, its voice strong and startling in the silent, snowy wood. Cloud remembered the voices that had whispered to her in that place in between. The ancestors would watch over them and guide them.

  With that steadying thought, Cloud kept her eyes on the ho
rizon, and her heart with the people around her. She was no longer herself. She was the tribe’s warrior. Shaman. Chief. Their last hope.

  **********

  Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this story, please leave a review.

  The rest of the Wendigo Girl series can be found at most major e-book retailers.

  About the Author

  Kaye Draper is the author of numerous novels and short stories available in e-format and print. Kaye inhabits the forests and waters of Michigan, where she often finds inspiration for her stories. Sign up for her mailing list to receive free short stories and book updates. Visit her website kayedraper.com, her blog Write Me, Twitter, or Facebook.

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