The Going Back Portal by Connie Lacy

Author:Connie Lacy [Lacy, Connie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780999608463
Publisher: Wild Falls Publishing
Published: 2019-01-28T07:00:00+00:00

Amadahy’s Journal – Part 7 (May 1840)

“If you kill Jonah,” I said, my eyes on Degataga, “I will be torn from my family’s land. White leaders will not allow a Cherokee woman to own a farm. It must be a white man who owns the land. If you kill him, I will also suffer.”

“If I do not kill him, you will suffer as the fawn suffers when the mountain lion attacks. I will adopt Isham Barnes into the Wolf Clan and avenge his death.”

His eyes were like a bolt of lightning thrown by the Great Thunder.

I did not reveal that I could feel Isham’s ghost wandering the farm, that I knew his spirit could not rest. I also did not tell him I feared if he killed Jonah, the sheriff would hang him from a tree.

“Degataga, I also feel a bond between us. But we must not stumble and fall into a ravine from which there is no escape.”

“You have clung to this land, hoping your family would one day return. But they will not return.” He shook his head. “I offer you love and a home on Aniyunwiya land.”

I looked down at my dirty hands. He returned to his work and did not speak again.

He fixed the chicken coop and completed the fence enclosing the garden by the time darkness fell. The next morning he was gone when I rose to do my early chores. I was alone again with Little Butterfly and Bad Brother.

After nursing the baby, feeding the chickens, gathering eggs, cooking corn and bean bread over the fire pit and roasting squash for the day, I moved to the river to wash clothes. With Betsey strapped to her cradle board. I tried to warm my spirit by singing a traditional chant. I was startled when a woman’s voice spoke behind me. Even more so when I looked upon her.

“I’m picking some figs,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind.”

She spoke English, but it was not the kind of English I was accustomed to, even when I attended Mission school with the Methodists. She stood erect but she was very old, her silver hair cut short like a white man’s. She also wore pants like a man and a shirt. But the shirt was the color of a sunflower.

“My goodness,” she said. “You’re doing laundry in the river? You don’t have running water in your house?”

When I did not answer, she continued talking.

“My name is Edie. I live up the hill.”

She waited for me to speak. But words would not come.

“Welcome to the neighborhood,” she said, her voice like the sparkling burble of a mountain stream.

I watched her for a sign that she was a spirit. She did not seem of my world. Or the white man’s world. If Bad Brother saw her, I feared what he would do.

“Oh, dear. It appears you don’t speak English,” she said.

If she was a spirit, I decided she was a good spirit, not a bad one. And I knew how she traveled to my home.

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