Promises, Obligations and Consequences

[teddi]

The goddes of wisdom and  war takes her leave of me.  The spectre which will repeatedly and dutifully wail for me fades from my eyes.



"Forgive me I must pause.......Father....Mother....have pity....on  your son...and..... and the son you shall soon bear...and too for my yet unborn sister."  



"What shall be spoken of now....must be heard....I shall speak naught but the truth....but take warning.... what I must relay....is not for the weak or faint of heart.   And....sister.... if you must stay.....know that even now we both weep for you, it would be better if you left....and were not a party to the horror that follows.

[teddi]

In the year of our Lord, 1754, I find myself walking among the many wildflowers in the meadow besides our cabin.  I stop and smell many of them.  Game and water is plentiful and I especially delight in watching the eagles in flight.   Yet,  I wish that we hadn't moved from our home in Coventry.



I think back.... Father was headstrong, and complained bitterly to Mother.  He would eventually frazzle her to the bone....so that she eventually agreed to travel, but not to the newly founded provences of the Empire, but rather to the Illinois Country....which was now under French control.



We eventually had made our way to build our cabin about three kilometers west of the fort at Crown Point on Lake Champlain.  Of the times we visited the fort....rumors were always ripe and openly discussed...especially the war which would come as a whirlwind.



Eagerly supportive of this were the Irinakhoiw...either the settlers would leave before the war began or else, their homesteads torched and its inhabitants slain.  Father, still the headstrong man he always was would have none of it...he vowed to stay.



So it was in the year of our Lord 1753.   One year later the world would explode and I would be no more.



Again I must pause, my brother knows well what is to be spoken and even now begins to quake.  



My sister, hear your brothers pleas....leave....I too entreat you to begone.

[teddi]

So be it.



As I stoop to smell another flower, but... a buzzing... as if a large and angry bee passes behind me.  Moments later I hear the sound of musket fire. I look to the source and see that a billowy gas of white smoke is playing itself out upon the wind.



Again, but now,  at a further distance, coming from my cabin, I see more of the white discharge of arms.....and....eventually....the volleys of musketry come to my ears.  The smoking discharges rushing towards my cabin are numerous......only one return shot do I spy....I look to where Mother was tilling her garden .....but that was not now the case....instead she lays upon the earth being clubbed about her head by a savage.  She can offer no resistance....the brave unsheaths his knife and removes her hair at the scalp....he holds it up in exultation...his screams of conquest strike me.



She is lost and now I matter of factly presume that my Father will perish...if he has not already done so.  I turn my head to where the buzzing came which past me by.   There I see Szach-eh-waneh....almost too casually reloading.  



The several times we went to the fort he was there...and at the fort it was known that he possed the arts and skills of an evil priest......many times would he snear at me and run his thumb across his throat while nodding his head in my direction.....mouthing the word "soon."



I turn to run, thinking that perhaps I can hide in the deep forest.  



Another angry buzz passes me by to the right of my head.  I look back as I run, he throws away his musket and howls in anger.....pulling a  club from his belt he begins to run after me.  He is bigger and his strides bring him closer to me. His club finds my head and it explodes in pain.  As I fall, he is quickly upon me.

[teddi]

"Now I shall begin...and when I am done....know that your scalp will hang from my lodge pole as I sit and feast over what a fine one it is.   But first there are other matters, and I must savor this moment....for you I will torment in a manner I have not done to another.



And why you may ask...because my majic is powerful....it can withstand all that any future you or your great God may bring and because I have long coveted your scalp.  Know this too, if you cry out but one time...make but one tear, I WILL STRING YOU UP AND SKIN YOU.....ALIVE....then I will do to you what I will do now.  Do you understand?"  I nod my head...."yes."



His right hand moves to his belt and unsheaths the elkhorn blade he has sharpened to so fine an edge.  I look about in terror....I know that no one will come to rescue me....yet...as he begins to knife away my buckskin breeches....a child approaches....I shake my head from side to side....Szach-eh-waneh thinks I plead to him to stay his hand....while in fact in wide eyed terror I try to warn the youth to flee.  



The blade cuts through my breeches...I am exposed to the savage who sits upon my legs.  The youth comes closer still....the blade is forced down and through.....I am severed.....no sound do I make no tear do I shed.  The snear upon the savages face is self-satisfying and demeaning all at the same time.  The youth, stands besides us, in abject terror with a wash board of tears streaking his face.  I wonder why he is not also set upon by this savage.



It hurts so bad...I gasp.   The parts he has taken from me are cast away.  He incants, that I will never be whole in this life or the next...That I will bear no children and that the seeds of my father shall not be passed on.



He moves up to sit upon my waist and quickly grasps my long hair.  He pulls me up to face him and wickedly smiles and whispers,  "not a sound."  He places the bloody knife point at my side and ever so slowly, as if filleting a piece of meat, forces the point through my jersey and then punctures my skin.   He slides it in slowly....relishing his accomplishment...then qives a slights twist and turn to the handle.  Then ever so slowly withdraws it.  It has gone to the hilt.  Again I gasp.  But I do not cry out nor do I shed a tear.



"Now....so you may not speak to your God as to who has done this, nor bear witness against me with your words and before I take your scalp....I will take your tongue.   For even if your God is so great...you will always chew and stumble upon your words....and know that you cannot speak of this..... now or in the future...should you return from the dead.  The only manner to break my spell is for it to come to light...which ...I... forbid YOU  to do.



Now his forces my mouth to open and in his casual manner severs my tongue from me...the taste of my own blood fills my mouth.......the youth beside us is on his knees pleading in vain for the savage to stop...and yet I am still amazed the the brutal one... ignores him.



"Now....before you die....I will take my prize!"  I see the blade move to my head and agonize with the pain that now rips my head litteraly off.  Again, for him...there is no rush....but a steady sawing of flesh ....until he holds it to my eyes to see....the prize he has taken.   The blood which drips from it falls upon my face.   My last visions are of the youth who cries and of the eagle which circles above us......I did not cry nor did I shed a tear.

[teddi]

I find myself in amazement.  I stand but eight meters from the macabre and gaze upon it..... with revulsion.  I recognize my clothes but little else for... it is I... who lies mutilated..... beneath the savage who lifts my hair to the sky....and   exclaims his pleasure.



I panic, and pray that the savage continues to ignore the crying boy who is but a meter from his grasp.  But...why?....How so?   Does he not see? Does he not hear his screams of terror?  I am puzzled but also startled to note that the child looks upon me, and not the one who lays before him.



He stands and steps across my corpse and moves towards me. Thru the living flesh of the savage he strides. I fear the boy with hair as pure as gold and whose dark green eyes burn with the fear and loathing of his witness to my death.  His breeches are wet and his jersey is marred with the bile and contents of his stomach.  



"He lifts his hand... I thought... to strike a blow....at me?...but why?  But with his other hand he slowly pulls the long sleeved clothe back up his arm....and points to the mark which he bears.  In turn, he points to my arm....we share identical markings.



Through his sobs he tries to talk but is constantly brought up short.  No attempt to speak would succeed.  In frustration, he beckons me to kneel beside him....at a small patch of dirt he has spied.   There he scribes, "I will not forget ....I will cry for you....and me."



I muse..."You and me?.... You and me?..... Me......you?... he nods "yes." I wish to cry but cannot.....for I now recognize the face which looks upon me....while I am...or was.....twelve in age....the child who faces me is but six perhaps even seven or eight ...at the most.  But, it is not the face of a stranger....no....a looking glass memory of my image at that age strikes home.   I shudder as I look upon myself....he nods....as if he can read my thoughts....and....it is...."yes."

[teddi]

Moments later the savage lifts himself from my corpse and runs towards us.  His right hand is raised to the sky and with undulating voice....celebrates.  He passes thru us both, the spectres or ghosts that we are or have just recently become, five meters beyond us he stops and turns.  A look of puzzlement crosses his face, it is but momentary, he snears....perhaps in disbelief...then continues his trek.



The eagle which I had spied moments before lands before us.  I dare not move...but it is not me...well yes it is I....but it is the younger soul he is most attracted to.  The youth does not flinch, but instead extends his hand to the large bird of prey and softly tousels the snow white feathers which crown his head.  The eagle in turn approaches ever closer - and with coc-ked head ....eyes the wailing child....then ever so gingerly drinks from his tears.



Moments later, he takes flight, with but one mighty beat of his two and half meter spaned wings, he brings himself to the head off my corpse. He turns his head and looks to us...spreads his wings and stands defiantly.



My younger self scribes in the dirt...."he will stand and protect....until we are carried away."



Thru three sun rises and sun sets - we sat.  The mightiest of birds was ever on guard....slaying the many vultures that would feed upon me in the day, the fox, who would tear the flesh from my bones in the evening and the wolf who would have made off with me in the dead of night.



Not until the "Red Coats" came upon me did my protector leave my side.   With a screech he took flight and left in his wake the work he had so dutiful performed.  As my body was carried away he looked down upon the moment and left.  I look to my right and my younger self is gone as well.....I am drawn to a light and enter its domain.

[teddi]

Mother - Father to be, I must pause...I entreat you both...do not speak.....for I also am in need of respite from this most gruesome happening.   Sister....if you remained to hear the words of your brother.....his tears for you as well as the one's I would shed are done so in great remorse.



"You ask.... how it is that I,  know of these and can speak for him? "How can I speak of such a horror as you have heard with out stumbling or as you say "stuttering" upon my very words?  How is it that I can bring to "light"....that which I was commanded not to?



The evil one commanded that I must never relay or speak of this....ever....either then or in the future.  But I, the late son of Hector, am and was of the past.....before this most heinous of circ-umstances came to pass.....I am not bound by the words of this most foul of humans....for by his own incantations only referred to the "present"...in which he lived.... and the next....to what may be.... but ...nothing of the past.



"It....is I.....to  whom on each of his nightmarish visits..... would relay a portion of such happenings.......... without fear.....without the stumbling or tongue tied speech.....that was cursed upon him.  It is I, late son of the mighty Hector, who heeded the word of Athena.   I would speak for him, stand by him ...in his hour of need..... when called upon.....and if necessary, in some future life....even die for him.



"While there are many other spectres or haunts to his mind and very soul...there is but one more on this odyessy of fear which presses him.



"With your indulgence....I will speak again....for I know his mind."