A November Sky

Chapter One

Part One: Kocoum

Laying in our furs that morning long before dawn, I heard the men go. Moccasins light on the packed clay path, they laughed and taunted one another, shoving at the shoulders of young warriors—boys who would take their first hunt naked save for blue warpaint and deerskin quivers strapped to their backs. It was the morning after huskanaw and huskanasquaw. A day of unfoldings, when the young would pass into manhood and womanhood, and the dead would pass into the stars. It was a day to prove oneself.

Listening to the men's footsteps through the birchbark slats of my longhouse, I pulled the furs tighter around my shoulders and curled my knees to my chest, sure I still felt the phantom chill of November air, let in when Kocoum had lifted the furs and slipped from our bed, murmuring for me to go back to sleep.

I remember this now, too clearly. How his thumb had traced my knuckles, outlining the dark swirls of my marriage ink, how he'd brushed a kiss to my forehead where the hairline began. My husband liked to believe that the morning of the powwow hunt was as special to me as it was to him and that he was letting me sleep in. But I hadn't been asleep, even before he stood. Since the age of fifteen summers, I'd worried myself awake each year without fail, first for my little brother Nehsandi, then for Kocoum, waiting until the moment when they would return to me, safe from their hunt.

For a brief moment, as Kocoum stood pulling at his deerskin leggings, I'd wanted to reach out and touch him, to lay the palm of my hand between his bare shoulder blades, not to draw him back to bed but to offer a wife's comfort and thanks for the duty he would perform that morning. The duty he performed every morning, he and his men, filling our smoke hut with meat to be salted for the coming winter, and now, filling our tables with slow-roasted white-tail deer, gobbler, and striped bass for the powwow celebration that night. But Kocoum, War Chief of my father's tribe, would not appreciate my thanks, or my worry. And so, I stilled my hand, as I had for many seasons, since father negotiated our marriage.

Kocoum was not a hard man. But, like my father, he thought comfort was for the weak, and he endeavored to keep himself calm and controlled always. This strength was the mark of a mamanatowick, a Great Werowance. Anything less was to insight challenge, to place everyone you cared about at risk. Raised as the second son of a lesser werowance, Kocoum had learned to protect the things that mattered to him, to be ruthless in a ruthless world. For better or for worse, his decision had been made the moment he laid eyes on me.

Thoughtful, he thought, to leave me sleeping in our furs while he led his warriors to hunt. And I let him believe this because the morning meant so much to him—though as the Powhatan's daughter, they were my warriors as much as they were his.

* * *

I lay abed until sunlight stabbed through the door reeds, throwing streaks across my pillow and the rumpled furs on Kocoum's half of the sleeping pallet. Then, my bladder near to bursting, I threw back the furs and stood, gathering my clothes. There was no sense in worrying. I knew this. But still the uncertainty churned in my stomach, as it would until deep into the night, when the powwow fires were doused and Kocoum and I lay warm in our furs.

I slipped on my moccasins and wove my hair into a long braid. I needed air. I needed to breathe. I slung my bow and arrowskin over my shoulder and threw aside the reed door flap.