SelfSame by Conway Melissa

Author:Conway, Melissa [Conway, Melissa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-03-19T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

Enid

Her mother was sitting cross-legged next to Enid’s sleeping furs. She pushed the hair back from Enid’s forehead and said, “You still sleep until you wake.”

Enid sat up and stretched her sore body. The furs were soft, but the ground underneath them was harder than the straw mattress she was used to.

“Yes,” she replied.

Bluebird looked around as if ensuring no one could hear. “My husband, Walks Like a Moose, suggested I apprentice you to the Haudenosaunee medicine man. It will bring our family great honor.”

Enid had thus far been convinced Bluebird’s uncommon resolve to get her back had been motivated by love and a desire to save her from her father’s callousness. She’d assumed it was an unselfish act and that Bluebird had convinced Walks Like a Moose to help her at the risk of alienating him.

Now all her thoughts of family closeness were dashed. “Apprentice?”

Bluebird nodded, her eyes shining. “If you please him, he may even take you as his wife. Then he would join our clan.”

Sorcha’s world intruded as the Twilight Zone theme song played slightly off-key in Enid’s head. Despite her shock, despite the automatic rejection of her mother’s proposal, Enid knew it would be illogical to protest. There was nothing she could do or say to sway her mother against this course of action. Enid knew better than to place the blame on Walks Like a Moose. The Haudenosaunee were a matrilineal society. Even though Bluebird had married into the clan, she had a voice in its decision-making. She saw Enid as a stepping-stone to power in the community.

“And if he does not like me?”

Bluebird beamed. “How could he not? You are pretty enough and younger than the other women who would have him, and you have a gift that they do not.”

With a cold feeling of dread, Enid asked, “What gift is that?”

Her mother’s head tilted to one side as she regarded her. “You said you still sleep until you wake. The Mahican medicine man told me your spirit was split in two, and when you were a child you talked of nothing else. What was her name? Your future self?”

Enid thought then not of Sorcha, but of her own future self. She could see her life as if it were laid out on a path before her. The Haudenosaunee medicine man would use Sorcha’s knowledge of history to predict things that would give him advantages unavailable to other leaders. If Enid cooperated, she could rule by his side. If she did not, he would get the information out of her one way or another. It was a scenario that she had long dreaded and one that she had vowed would never occur. She was worth more than the future half of her soul.

“I do not remember,” she lied. “Elizabeth told me the medicine man’s story, but I have long since stopped pretending I had another life.”

Bluebird’s eyes widened and for the first time, Enid saw anger in her face. She’d been all gentleness and persuasion, but Enid had heard her screeching at Black Wolf and knew she was capable of more.

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