The procession grinds to a halt. Wagon wheels leave deep tracks in the snow, and Qaletaqa yearns to follow them back to her log house hundreds of miles away. Babies wail, elders wheeze, oxen bellow. U.S. Army soldiers, cheeks flushed not by the biting cold but the whiskey in their bellies, debate how to cross the frozen river.
Qaletaqa peeks at her secret companion nestled inside her apron. Her beloved gosling, Sa-Sa, cocks its head, its beady eyes looking at her with curious anticipation. She grabs a chunk of stale bread from the basket slung across her shoulder and offers it to her feathered friend.
***
She was filling that basket with beans from the garden when her mother was dragged out of their house by her hair and thrown into a wagon by soldiers. While the rest of her family was rounded up, Qaletaqa dashed to the coop and tucked Sa-Sa into her apron before hurtling herself into the back of the wagon.
***
A horse steps alongside Qaletaqa, chuffing a warning.
“Your time has come,” says her grandmother, astride the horse. “Use the gifts our ancestors passed on to you.”
Horses whinny, the wind howls, soldiers shout.
Qaletaqa closes her eyes. Snowflakes kiss her cheeks. Her heartbeat becomes a drumbeat as the world fades away. She quietly sings the song that has been passed down from Chosen One to Chosen One, generation after generation — it is her duty. Her voice rises, carried by the gale until she is joined by every man, woman, and child on this treacherous exodus. Their chorus reverberates around the valley.
“Quiet, you savages!” a soldier yells to no avail while another fires a round toward the heavens in an attempt to gain control of the captives.
The song swells to a crescendo. Qaletaqa begins to tremble, eyelids fluttering, hands raised to the sky. Sa-Sa flutters from her apron.
To her left, a man screams in agony as his body morphs into a black bear and charges a soldier, ripping his throat out. Three brothers from Qaletaqa’s village transform into wolves. They stare down a soldier who’s slicing the air with a trembling bayonet, trying to ward them off. They bare their teeth and raise their hackles. The soldier lunges toward one of them, but the wolf dodges his strike and his brothers go in for the kill.
Qaletaqa, still singing, levitates off the ground.
Storm clouds gather above the valley. Thunder joins the chorus. Bolts of lightning rain down from the sky like arrows, piercing soldiers as they flee. Giant falcons with feathers as impenetrable as steel swoop down, grasping soldiers with razor-sharp talons, and carry them out of sight.
The remaining soldiers are huddled, bayonets raised, forming a blockade between the river and Qaletaqa’s people.
Qaletaqa, hovering above the crowd, raises her eyes to the Great Spirit and summons, “Uktena. Uktena. Uktena.” Hundreds of voices below her echo the chant.
The frigid ground begins to rumble. The soldiers lower their bayonets and turn to face the icy river where cracks are spreading like spider webs. An explosion rips through the surface of the ice as if an underwater cannon has been fired. A horned serpent bursts out of the water, towering above the soldiers, breathing fire from its nostrils. Faster than the beat of a drum, the beast’s tail lashes out and sweeps the remaining soldiers into the river, disappearing along with them under the ice.
Qaletaqa drifts back down, moccasins settling in the snow. She returns Sa-Sa to her apron and leads the way, retracing their steps, back to their homeland.
Comments