𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔏𝔞𝔰𝔱 𝔇𝔯𝔬𝔴𝔰

part ii

"Strange."

They started with that. Then added, "well, more like... creepy, you know. There's something seriously off about them."

"They're good girls, very well-mannered, charming even," one said, "but they're just unsettling. Something about the... way they walk? Move, really."

"They were definitely the weirdest students at school. Oh, oh, oh! The younger, I think her name is Meda, yeah, she broke the nose of her Senior Prom date," a youth confided in his friends. His circle assented with their addenda:

"Some of us have tattoos, like small and secret. Just for kicks. But they had tattoos."

"Oh, yeah! The sleeves, right? I could never make any sense of those."

"They're Mahican traditional tattoos. I heard it from the older one."

"Look like cheap fishnets to me."

"You remember that phase they had? When they wore purple contacts?"

"That was weird. Some goth phase shit."

Then, there were the cruel ones. A certain individual said, "they're devil worshipers. They should give up their diabolical ways and join the church."

"You know what Roosevelt said, 'the only good Indian is a dead Indian'. I stand by his words but I can't do none... there's laws and crap," declared another, "I'm just gonna watch the show and say 'I told you so' when they do something nasty. And they will. I know they will."

Donovan Silverheel was privy to them all, and to all those that were crueler still. Some he overhead himself, some his daughters overheard and told him about, others he was informed about by the few friends he had. He explained them all away with half-truths and white lies.

Papa, why did ma leave? "Her twin sister, your Aunt Maev, was in trouble. She went to help her. Wouldn't you leave everything behind to help Winona if she were in trouble?"

I would. But pa, when will she come back? "I don't know, baby..."

Kids at school told me we shouldn't have tattoos. "Pay no mind to them, Winona. Nobody has the right to tell you how to honor your life and your body."

But why did we get them? "When you were born, you'd come early. You were so small and so fragile, we weren't sure you'd live. But you did, as did your sister, so you bear the mark of warriors who have fought death itself. Be proud of it."

It was not the talk, nor the questions of his children that bothered him so much as the people's fear and hatred did, and the effect it had on them. Fear and hatred had the tendency to manifest in minacious acts. And to prevent those effects from raining down on his daughters, he trained them to fight, to stand their ground, to hunt, to fend for themselves – all the while reiterating what Chief Silverheel had taught him in his boyhood: In nature, you live on your knees. For you are here because nature allows it. In the battlefield, you die on your feet. For you are Mahican and you bow to no one but the Great Spirit.

It went without saying that no matter how much the people around them bristled, no matter what threats they posed, Donovan raised Winona and Meda to be better Mahican warriors than he'd ever been. He edified their mores in ways of the people of the waters that are never still; from being the rain that nourished the earth, to being the rivers that cut though the lands, and the tides that were unstoppable.

When he had nothing left to teach, he searched for greater knowledge and was rewarded. In Rorio Silva, a former street-fighting champion in his homeland, now a grocery store owner in Andover, and a close confidant, Donovan found understanding and empathy. "I know only too well about the world treating us as lesser because of our skins," he'd said, "I will teach your girls Vale Tudo."