Leif sat by Erik’s bed. The two weeks of sickness had withered his son from a strong, muscular man to little more than a fleshy skeleton; his skin was flushed and hot, and his breathing difficult. Leif had seen many men die before, in battle and in sickness, and he knew Erik had held out longer than most.

At first he had prayed daily to the White Christ: every morning and every night for days and days, long past when his faith began to fail him. Now he still prayed to Christ, but also to Odin, and Heonir, and Heimdall, and Freyr, and Thor, and the waters, and the heavens… Anyone or anything that would hear him. — Mere America

Steampunk Mystery: Ashleigh Isaacs (Outlining)

March 5th, 2012 § 3

So I’ve been wanting to write a mystery story. I’ve been jotting down random notes here and there, and drawn up an outline, and am just about ready to start writing. If you’d rather read the story before you read about how I came up with it, then skip this post: it contains so many spoilers, so many! It even contains spoilers of other future stories. (When I finish the story, I’ll post a link to it here.) But if you’re interested in following along as I cook up the tale, enjoy!

Ashleigh Isaacs

We’ve been enjoying a lot of Holmes, Poirot, Monk, and Leaphorn recently. I have in mind to do a mystery set in late 19th century Boston, at MIT, with a steampunk feel. I’ve also been wanting to do another story with Ashley Isaacs, the crazed inventor from The Time Machine and the Prince of Mars. Now Ashley isn’t steampunk, of course; but I’m the author, and if I want to write a “sequel” that takes place in the past with a sort of alternate-history version of my hero, who’s going to stop me?

Part of the cowling for one of the motors for a B-25 bomber is assembled in the engine department of North American [Aviation, Inc.]'s Inglewood, Calif., plant (LOC)

So! The heroine is inventor Ashleigh Isaacs, a student at MIT in about 1890. MIT does admit women at this time, unlike most colleges in the world; but Isaacs still suffers under general social expectations about how women should dress and be treated, and the sorts of vocations that are proper for them. For example, Ashleigh can’t really do anything except teach with her degree. There will be some mention of this in the story, but I’m aiming for a lighthearted mystery, so it’ll be backgrounded.

I think she’s a scattered, inattentive teacher. Some inventions of hers that I particularly want to include, in some story or other: (1) the aether-stretcher (more on that eventually), (2) a gender-switching device (though this should wait a bit — I don’t want to echo ‘All Men of Genius‘ too much!).

Ashleigh has a sidekick / boyfriend, Franklin, a Mohawk who has been accepted as a philosopher / mathematics student. (His real name isn’t Franklin, of course, but he’s called that because of his interest in writing and printing.) He is an excellent viewpoint character, since modern readers are probably just as familiar (if not more so) with Native American life as with life at MIT in the 1890′s.

The Story’s Structure and Theme

The keys to an awesome mystery story are (1) tons of red herrings and (2) a conclusion that is satisfying. A satisfying ending means that, once you read it, you realize that no other answer was remotely possible. One also wants to give the reader enough information to figure it out, of course; and this may be the trickiest bit for this case, since it’s a sci-fi story.

For Ashleigh’s stories, I also want to include elements of the fantastic or grotesque, so that they echo more Holmes and less Poirot / Monk. Maybe even add some Lovecraft influence?…

But one can’t follow Doyle too closely. One problem that Holmes’s critics note is that he’s is basically a bundle of eccentricities and little else. Now, this is part of his charm; if Holmes experienced deep self-doubt or inner conflict, he wouldn’t be Holmes. Watson, for his part, isn’t a compelling character either. There’s nothing to prevent deep character development for a detective, but one can’t sustain dozens of stories if the detective gets deeply personally involved in each one. Perhaps I should shoot for shallower, adventureish short stories, and reserve deeper development for novels.

Ok, that’s probably enough to start with. What’s the basic plot of our first short story?

Brainstorming Plot

Idea for how the story starts: detailed description of the lab where Ashleigh works, in the early hours of the morning. Note in passing (early on) that there is a dead body. Dawn comes, and then Ashleigh, who has been asleep at her lab table, wakes up and finds the body. She has no idea who it is…

Victory Garden Plots Free For Employees ca. 1942 - ca. 1943

Other ideas for Ashleigh’s inventions:

  • Universal cleaning agent (but how does it know what’s ‘cleaning’ and what’s destroying part of the object itself? Is it actually psychic?)
  • Mental powers? Eh.
  • Something that reverses / decreases entropy in a localized area. Would be somewhat like going back in time. Could be connected to the aether-stretcher. Uses no power, because it increases entropy in another area. (This would be a universal cleaning agent, actually, as long as you don’t care about making another area very very messy.) …

I like this last idea a lot. Might be some kind of healing agent as well?… It would be (mildly) funny if Ashleigh created this because she got sick of having to clean her lab or take a shower or something. … Suppose the man was killed because he caught the increase of entropy when Ashleigh’s device suddenly worked in the middle of the night. Perhaps he was a young man, even a boy, standing outside selling newspapers (would the date on the newspapers change?), and got hit. He ages incredibly quickly, stumbles into the lab and dies of old age. Maybe his body even decomposes somewhat. His clothes no longer fit properly, but they’re just as ‘old’ as he is. …

Developing the Idea

Cute! Now to make it work at all, I should make it relatively clear how things work to the reader. And I definitely need red herrings everywhere. Maybe an old lady comes in and claims it’s her husband (for some reason — is he thought to be rich?). If the dates on the newspapers change, we have the additional question of why he’s carrying around newspapers from so long ago; and are they valuable antiques? Anything else that gets valuable as it ages — rings, jewelry? Wine! He’s carrying a French wine from like 60 years ago, so he MUST be wealthy — or a thief? …

How will the reader figure it out? How about Ashleigh? What is Ash’s style of deduction? … I think it’d be most exciting if Ashleigh’s style is to *work with the medium*: she’s not into abstract theorizing, she gets out there and tries things. Which leads to a lot of adventure. The reader should be able to (theoretically) figure it out from the armchair, but she won’t: she’s an experimentalist. … I like the idea of the newspaper (and wine bottle label) increasing in entropy, but this doesn’t mean they’d just be ‘older’ (necessarily? depending on how it works?), they might get their letters jumbled too. … But I tend to like the ‘time travel’ type of aging better. Basically it’ll work like Willy Wonka’s Vita-Wonk: this person / wine / newspaper now comes from an “alternate” past in which they actually existed and lived all that time. This works better to dovetail with how time travel works — they’ve been extended ‘sideways’ as well as backwards in time. No one’s memories have been changed, have they? Hmm… I need to think about this.

If someone went back in time and changed something, the changes propogate forward at one second per second, and never catch up to the ever-moving ‘present’. This means that changes propogate at one second per second, regardless of source, and probably of direction. That means that when the boy is made into a corpse, the changes start propogating *backwards* at one second per second. Now, how exactly does the change propogate? Via some kind of ‘reverse’ causality? Suppose a newspaper announcing the boy’s birth is in his pocket. When does it change? Right then? Or not until, say, 10 years pass (assuming the boy is 10)? What makes more sense? What makes a better story?…

Increasing the Jeopardy

What is Ashleigh’s problem? So an old man died in her lab — what’s the big deal? — Well, what is he doing in the lab? Obviously he arrived as a boy; and perhaps Ashleigh was the last one to see the boy alive. Did she give him a gift of some kind? A gift that the dead old man now has?… Anyway, yes, there are two aspects of the mystery: where is the boy (and Ashleigh is a suspect here — what is her motive thought to be? Children are sometimes kidnapped for ransom; or maybe it’s — yes — Franklin is suspected, basically because he’s an Indian and they think he’s going to eat the child or use him in a ritual or something. … In fact, why not go ahead and have Ashleigh be suspected of witchcraft? — Not by the professors at the college, but by the police or passersby. So both of them are sort of vaguely suspected, arrested, questioned.

The primary clue should be when Ashleigh happens to use the entropic device to do something else, and she sees that there’s a side effect of entropy increasing elsewhere. She set it up with the front facing her lab, and the back facing out the window behind her, and it caught the boy squarely (as he was peering in the window at her). Ashleigh was so sleepy she basically fell asleep at once, and the old man staggered in, trying to get help, but died as he came in the door.

Red herring: the reader is 90% sure Ashleigh and Frank didn’t do it, but they don’t have alibis (they were alone in the lab when it happened — Frank had already fallen asleep). But there is a fellow who hates them (not sure who — a professor?) who is trying to frame them — he suggests them as culprits immediately. He’s basically a misogynist who hates Indians. :-) Ash and Frank suspect him of setting the whole thing up to frame them. Perhaps he works with dead bodies; he could have kidnapped the boy and used the boy’s clothes on a corpse, simultaneously framing Ash and Frank for kidnapping and murder. So they’ll will spend part of the time seeing if they can dig up clues on him.

Something should happen partway through that make them afraid that they’ll be kidnapped or murdered. Will the professor strike again? …Or perhaps the misogynist professor will disappear, too, and a dead old man will be found at the scene… Again, in Ashleigh’s lab. Or maybe the misogynist slips into her lab trying to plant evidence, and leaves with her lab-cleaning device and a few other inventions. Later he disappears and a dead old man is found in his lab. This is a massive hint, of course, so Ashleigh will be very very close to figuring it out at this point, reverse the device and bring him back to life.

But that’s the problem — the whole point of this is to make Ash and Frank afraid they’ll be targeted next. But they’re already in jeopardy because of the planted evidence and so forth, so that’s ok. Maybe they’re picked up by the police, told about the new evidence (planted), and told that the misogynist is missing and a corpse found in his lab.

At what point should the readers be told *how* the lab-cleaning device works? Something as simple as “it reverses entropy” might totally give away what happened. Ashleigh should use 19th-century terminology, which would confuse the reader — something like ‘conversion towards Platonic forms’.

Resolution: Ashleigh should use the device to re-messy her lab, while bringing the old man back to boyhood.

The device works by finding a ‘timeline’ in which the area or item in question is in its highest-ordered state and moving it towards that state. (Not all the way there — highest-ordered states (high complexity) are not ‘neat’, and lowest-ordered states are just gases or something.)

Ok, I think I have all the necessary elements. Time to write an outline. :-)

ID Badge for MIT Radiation Lab.

The Outline

Remember: viewpoint character is Franklin.

  1. Ashleigh’s lab. detailed description of the lab where Ashleigh works, in the early hours of the morning. It is immaculately clean. Note in passing (early on) that there is a dead body. Dawn comes, and then Ashleigh, who has been asleep at her lab table, wakes up and finds the body. She has no idea who it is…
  2. Ashleigh screams and wakens Franklin, who runs downstairs. Discussion: who is this man? Details of his dress & c. He’s carrying a bottle of wine from 60 years ago. Note he’s wearing the same type of clothes of the paper boy from the early hours, though they are older and fit him fine. But he’s been dead a while; why would anyone drag a corpse in here? Some kind of sick joke? The boy’s stash of papers is outside, but the boy is missing — can’t have been more than a few hours. Ashleigh remembers seeing the clock before she fell asleep. She finds clock. Franklin then realizes the lab is gorgeous, comments that she got her machine to work. The two get lost in a discussion of the minutia, then remember the dead body and missing boy and call the police.
  3. Police interviewing Ash and Franklin. They are clearly suspected, especially since Ash was the last to see the paperboy that morning (she bought a paper and bumped into Dr Mordeaux, who is the witness). Mordeaux suggests they might have wanted the corpse for medical experiments.
  4. Ash & Frank, after class, buy an evening edition and see that they’re suspected of all sorts of nasty things. They, meanwhile, concoct a theory that it’s all Dr. Mordeaux, a doctor who’s hated them forever. Frank maybe quotes Doyle: when a doctor goes wrong, he’s the first of criminals.
  5. Ash & Frank sneak into Mordeaux’s lab (even as he is sneaking into theirs). They find all sorts of nasty things he was doing, but unfortunately it includes an alibi for him (ie evidence that he was there from when he bought the paper until well after the murder — eg paper all laid out, read through, coffee cup stains all over it. At end of scene they’re very caught breaking and entering; and the police say they have new evidence — they’re being arrested — the police found a note asking the old man to meet A&F there at the lab. Then — horrors! As they’re being led away, there’s a scream from Mordeaux’s lab. They rush back and find that Mordeaux is missing, too, and a long-dead corpse wearing his clothes was found… (maybe, to make it harder, the clothes are pretty much rotted away?) …and in the room with him are other items from A&F’s lab. It appears he WAS trying to frame them. Ashleigh figures things out, and brings Mordeaux back to life.

Next: the actual writing!

A History of Reversed America: 1000-1600

December 28th, 2011 § 0

>One of the trickiest things I’ve found about writing about an alternate-geography-history is that the names of places keep getting confused. To alleviate this problem, in the below, all the real-world place names are in italics.

In 1000 AD, Lief Erikson sailed west from Greenland and discovered Alaska. He called it Vinland. A few colonies were established among the Aleutian Islands, and some exploration was made down the coast, perhaps as far south as Seattle; but as in normal history, the colonies were too far away and the weather was too forbidding for the Norse to stay long.

In 1492, Christopher Columbus arrived on the coast of Mexico, and claimed it for Spain. Columbus died in 1506, having made four voyages in all to the “new world”, but of course exploration continued. Spain established colonies along the eastern and southern coast of Mexico. In 1513, Juan Ponce de Leon went slave-hunting and discovered Baja California on Easter Sunday, calling it “Florida” after the holiday, which in Spanish is “Pascua Florida”.

Another explorer, Vasco Nunez de Balboa, was in Panama in 1513. He wandered inland in search of gold, not knowing that Panama was a narrow isthmus running east and west. The Atlantic lay to Panama’s south, and when Balboa crossed the isthmus, he found himself looking at what looked like another ocean — the Pacific — in the north. He therefore called it Mar del Norte, the “North Sea”, and that is the name that stuck. In 1519, Hernando Cortes explored the Mexican interior, and conquered the Aztecs, just as he did in real history. By the late 1520′s, other explorers began wandering the Caribbean, discovering Cuba, Jamaica, and the northern coast of the Gulf.

In 1539, Hernando de Soto led a party deep into North America, following the Colorado River from its mouth in the Bay of Mexico (as they called the Baja Bay) up into the mountains. They discovered the Mississippi as well. Later, Coronado explored the southwestern part of North America, making contact with the Cherokee for the first time.

Meanwhile, South America was also subjected to European invasion. In 1531, Pizarro destroyed the Incan civilization, right on schedule. The Line of Demarcation between Portugal and Spain was not established, since no part of the Americas was sufficiently close to Europe; so Brazil became wholly Spanish. The thin strip of arable land on the east side of the Andes became heavily populated.

In 1524 Giovanni da Verrazano, sailing for France, reached the San Francisco bay. He headed north, and discovered the Oregon River and Olympic Bay. He turned back around Juneau, Alaska, being unable to find a passage through the continent.

In the 1570′s, Sir Francis Drake of England sailed completely around North and South America. He sailed as far north as North Carolina before continuing on to Asia. The English also explored Alaska and the coast of Canada thoroughly, but were unable to go very far around the northern coast and so find the northwest passage they were looking for. Spanish influence at this time extended as far north as San Diego, which they called St. Augustine.

Meanwhile, across the continent, Hiawatha was establishing the People of the Long House in upper New York State.

In the 1580′s, Sir Walter Raleigh landed ships in San Francisco Bay calling it James Bay and naming that land “Virginia”. Virginia Dare, born in 1587, was the first English baby in the New World. Raleigh brought back potatoes and, instead of tobacco, gold.

The Headaches of Jean-Baptiste

January 25th, 2011 § 0

>Catoctin Mountain
May, 1831

Jean-Baptiste cleared his throat. “Thank you all for coming and meeting today,” he said. He bowed to Red Sky and her advisors, sitting on the furs to his left, and then to Lone Fox and his advisors, sitting to his right. They nodded in return. The morning sunlight filtered through the walls of Jean-Baptiste’s tent and illuminated the swirls of smoke from their pipes. “All of us — Haudenosaunee, Cherokee, and French — have had our differences in the past. But now we have come together…”

Jean-Baptiste was barely listening to his own words: they were just diplomatic filler, the sort of thing he’d learned to spout out easily over the past decade. As his mouth worked, he watched the faces of the Indians carefully, looking for any sign of agreement or disagreement as he lay out the danger that the people of the Great Sun posed, and gave the French proposal again: favorable trade agreements and French approval of treaties, in exchange for French assistance and protection. For good measure, he tried the gambit he’d used with Lone Fox, talking about the French as a family, with the Emperor as Father, and the hope that all the tribes and the French together might be brothers one day. It sounded good to him, but the Indians were utterly stone-faced. At last Jean-Baptiste ran out of words, and sat down, spent.

Red Sky rose, and spoke. “Thank you, Jean-Baptiste. You have spoken of these things before now, but it is good to hear them again. We of the Haudenosaunee cannot agree to what you say, today. There are several reasons for this. First, I, Red Sky, do not have the authority to bind all the tribes of the Haudenosaunee to a treaty with the French. I am just an ambassador. Still, if I think the treaty would be good, I will take it back to the great council and see if they agree.

“But more importantly, Jean-Baptiste,” said Red Sky, “I do not think this agreement would be good for the Haudenosaunee. You speak of the French family; you talk about the Father Emperor. But we of the Haudenosaunee are not French, and we do not wish to be French. Your ways are simply not our ways. You have your ways, and they are good for you; we have our ways, and they are good for us. And I think that it would be best if we kept our own fathers, and did not take the French father.”

She paused, and Jean-Baptiste rose to speak again, but she held up a hand to show she wasn’t finished.

“Still,” she said, “I agree that the Great Sun and his people are a grave danger to us — an urgent danger. Even today, as we speak now, some of our people have been captured by the Great Sun and are being tortured by them. The Great Sun rules over dozens of tribes all along the Great River. We Haudenosaunee are only six tribes; we cannot defeat them by ourselves.”

“So you must agree to our terms,” said Jean-Baptiste firmly.

“There is another way,” said Red Sky. “Wait and listen, friend, and I will tell you. Generations ago, the five original tribes of the Haudenosaunee were always fighting with one another. Always this tribe or that tribe was making war. But at last one man, called the Great Peacemaker, came and showed us a new way to live. Through his wisdom, we became the People of the Long House. You know that we live in long houses, with several families together in a single building. In the same way, our six tribes live together as separate families in one dwelling.

“And since that time, a number of tribes have asked to join us in the Long House. The Raccoon People joined us a generation ago, and became the Keepers of the Eastern Door. I suggest to you, Jean-Baptiste, and you, Lone Fox, that we should consider joining in an alliance like that of the Haudenosaunee: not one family, but separate families under one roof.”

Red Sky bowed and sat. Jean-Baptiste said, “May I speak?” When Lone Fox smiled and nodded, he said, “Red Sky, thank you for your honest words. I will speak frankly also. You talk about our three peoples coming together for mutual protection, like the Haudenosaunee do; but I do not think that will work — for two reasons. First, the Great Sun is already on your doorstep. You must, you must decide quickly; and when you decide, you must act. If you, Red Sky, sign this agreement with me, I can send a message back to France, and French troops will begin marching within a month. They will come and protect you, and you need fear nothing more. But if I send a message back saying, “no, they want a loose alliance,” then there will be argument and talking for months or years while we decide on exactly how it will work. By the time we have decided, the Great Sun’s horses and ships will wipe you all away and enslave your families. I am sorry to speak so bluntly, but I have to emphasize that the danger is very real.

“And the other reason,” he continued, “is that while we French wish to join with you, to protect you from your enemies, we do ask some things in return. If we have an alliance, but we do not have favorable trade, and we do not have a say in these affairs, then what do we gain? The Haudenosaunee are great warriors, but they cannot sail to Europe and defend France from, say, England. What would France gain from such an alliance?”

Red Sky was frowning and staring at the door of the tent. Jean-Baptiste could tell she had stopped listening, and was turning his words over.

Lone Fox cleared his throat. “I will speak now,” he said. “I had words with Jean-Baptiste earlier today, and many thoughts afterwards. And it comes to this: I am not a chief of all the Cherokee; there is not now, and never has been such a chief. But if I agree to either of these plans — if the Cherokee join the French family, or become the Keepers of the Southern Door of the Long House — then I, or someone like me, may become such a chief. Certainly such a chief will be called for. Perhaps, like the Haudenosaunee, the Cherokee can become a set of clans in one great house.

“But is this a good thing? For many, many generations, since the land was hung from the sky, the Cherokee have lived as we live now, and it has been good. We did not all need to live in one house, or choose one chief. If we do this now, because of pressure from outside, how can this be good?

“We speak here of families. We all like families; families are good. But a nation, a tribe, is not a family. A family lives together, they eat from the same bowl, they heat themselves by one fire, their bones and flesh are one. They will die to save each other; they love each other more than they love themselves. Can you tell me truly, Jean-Baptiste, that if the Cherokee join the French family, that the French Emperor would lay down his life to save me? For that is what a true father would do for his son.

“The Long House is better; Red Sky, your idea is tempting. But even with that I am very uneasy. If the Cherokee keep the southern door, who will come to our aid if we falter? Will we be called to help hold the eastern door if the Raccoon People fail? Who will decide? What if no decision can be reached? If a decision is reached, how will it be enforced? If a decision is wrong, who will take the blame? How will it be rectified?

“I know,” said Lone Fox, before Red Sky could answer, “I know that the Haudenosaunee have answers for these questions. But I do not know if they are good answers for the Cherokee. I do not know if the Cherokee and Haudenosaunee can live in the same long house. If there are two families in a house, they can share a meal, share a smoke, and the grandmothers and grandfathers can reach an understanding. But this would not work for us.”

“Then what?” demanded Jean-Baptiste. “For something must be done.”

Lone Fox nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I have been thinking.” He took a long draw on the pipe. “This morning I walked in the forest. I have not been so far north before, and it was good to see this forest, so different from the forests of the south, but also much the same. Here there are many different kinds of trees, many kinds that we don’t have further south. You do not have so many pine trees; but you have more birches and maples. Still, the forest is strong and healthy.

“A forest,” said Lone Fox, “is not a family, but it is strong. A healthy forest can stand against disease, fire, and floods. It is made of many different trees, many different animals and plants, and they do not gather in meeting, or make plans, or guard doors, or have ceremonies. Each animal and plant lives its own life, sometimes in cooperation, sometimes not; and together they are woven into a strong fabric.

“If we are to be strong,” said Lone Fox, “and yet still remain Cherokee, and Haudenosaunee, and French, as we should be, then we must be like a forest. Some of us, like the wild cat, will fight. Some of us, like the spiders, will creep and spy, and capture enemies. Some of us, like the fish, will be strong in the water; some, like the hawk, will be strong in the air…”

“This is just chaos,” said Jean-Baptiste. “A forest isn’t strong; it’s — it’s just a bunch of trees and animals. It’s just — it’s messy. I have no idea what you’re trying to say.”

Lone Fox didn’t look at him; he just looked at Red Sky. Red Sky stared back at him, and slowly nodded. And Jean-Baptiste knew that, somehow, he had lost.

The Father of the French

January 25th, 2011 § 0

>Catoctin Mountain
May, 1831

The morning sun was finally starting to burn off the fog when Jean-Baptiste and Felix arrived in Lone Fox’s tent. The chief — one of several important Cherokee chiefs who had come to the gathering — was sitting on matted reeds and repairing a spear. He was an older man, his hair streaked with white, his face creased with old scars. He nodded as the Frenchmen were shown in, and gestured for them to have a seat on the mats next to him. “Welcome,” he said in French.

“Thank you for meeting with us this morning,” said Jean-Baptiste.

Lone Fox smiled. “This is why we have all come, isn’t it? To meet. You are welcome.”

Jean-Baptiste decided to plunge right in. “When you arrived a few days ago, Lone Fox, we spoke briefly of why we had all gathered here. We spoke of the armies of the Great Sun, and how they were moving further and further west.”

Lone Fox nodded. “Yes.”

“There is more news this morning,” said Jean-Baptiste. “A Seneca warrior has arrived in the Haudenosaunee camp. He was recently captured by soldiers of the Great Sun two days hard ride from here, and subjected to torture. Red Sky spoke with us about it. I talked with her about what the French can offer — weapons, advice, even the protection of our army. I think — ” he glanced at Felix — “I think she is close to agreeing to our terms.”

Lone Fox looked at Jean-Baptiste from under his gray eyebrows. “I hear the words you are not saying,” he said. “To the east of the Cherokee is the Great Sun. To the north is an alliance of the French and the Haudenosaunee. It would be wise, Lone Fox, to join this alliance also.”

“The decision is yours, of course,” said Jean-Baptiste. “But I think you put the situation well.”

Lone Fox took his knife to the spear shaft, whittling the end into a new shape. As the pause stretched on, Jean-Baptiste strained against the desire to fill the silence with something, anything. Felix began to fidget.

“A strange thing happens when white men speak,” said Lone Fox at last. “You speak, and create chiefs.”

“What?” said Jean-Baptiste.

“I am not the chief of all the Cherokee,” said Lone Fox. “There never has been such a chief. I am chief of a village. Chiefs of other villages are my friends; many of them say they respect my judgement. And so I was sent, among others, to this conference with the French and the Haudenosaunee.”

“But they gave you the power to sign treaties, to enter into agreements,” said Jean-Baptiste. “Didn’t they?”

“Yes,” said Lone Fox. “And if I do so, suddenly the other chiefs will look with more respect on myself and the other Cherokee negotiators here. We few have become the mouthpiece of all the Cherokee. We have never had such a mouth before.”

Lone Fox fell silent again, whittling. Jean-Baptiste said, “This is good, isn’t it? Unity among the tribe?…”

“The French,” said Lone Fox, “have one mouth, one pair of hands, one pair of ears, and one mind. You have an Emperor.”

“Yes,” said Jean-Baptiste slowly. “In a way. What are you driving at?”

“The French Emperor desires to make a treaty with the Cherokee. But he cannot speak to all the Cherokee one at a time. So he asks the Cherokee to become one people, under one government, so that he can have one treaty.”

“I think that — that’s not how it is,” began Jean-Baptiste.

Lone Fox laughed. “Before the French and Spanish came, we Cherokee did not even know we were one tribe,” he said. “It was not so long ago; we remember.” He touched a necklace he was wearing, and Jean-Baptiste noticed for the first time that, unlike the rest of his jewelry, it was gold: a cross, wound round with writhing filaments, with what looked like a golden flower in the center. “We had our village; we often visited with other villages nearby, and many of them spoke our language. Some of us traveled far, to villages where they spoke strangely.” He shrugged. “And then the white men come, and ask, ‘Where is your chief?’”

He fell silent again.

Jean-Baptiste said, “But it is good to have chiefs over more than one village. Look. What happens if there is an argument between villages? What happens if there is a disagreement about trade? Or fishing or hunting rights? What if there is a famine in one village, who coerces the other villages to help?”

Lone Fox did not answer. Jean-Baptiste waited a while, then decided to press on.

“Look how strong the Haudenosaunee are, Lone Fox. They are not one tribe, but six, and more tribes want to join, for mutual protection and aid. Look how strong the people of the Great Sun are: hundreds of tribes all up and down the Great River, all united and ready to help each other. The same with us, with the French.”

Again, Jean-Baptiste paused, watching Lone Fox’s face for some hint of his thoughts. The old man continued whittling.

“Separate, the individual villages of the Cherokee are weak, Lone Fox. But together, they could be strong. Strong enough to defend themselves from the Great Sun, strong enough to be a valuable friend to the Haudenosaunee and the French. Strength brings security. Join together, and the Cherokee would be like one great family.”

Lone Fox paused a moment and looked at Jean-Baptiste, holding the white man’s gaze. Then he returned to his whittling.

“Lone Fox, I will speak from the heart,” said Jean-Baptiste, borrowing a phrase Red Sky had used that morning. “When I was young, there were many troubles in France. For hundreds of years, the French had been one great family, and the king was the father. But he was an unkind father; he betrayed his children. And so there was war, and revolution, and many people died, including my parents. I was six years old when I went to the orphanage, the house for children with no parents.”

“Did you have no grandparents?” asked Lone Fox. “No aunts or uncles? No friends?… Excuse me if these are rude questions.”

“No,” said Jean-Baptiste. “My parents had moved from the country, where their family lived, into the city, and had few friends there, I think. I know very little about it. But when the wars ended, the French were still a great family. Now we have our Emperor, and he is the father of the French. And because he is the father of all the French, he is my father, as well. France — France is my father, my mother, my sisters and brothers. Do you see?”

Lone Fox slowly nodded. He put down his spear and folded his hands.

“You have spoken from the heart,” he said. “So I will also. Jean-Baptiste, I was also an orphan. My parents were killed when the Spanish and French fought in the far south, in the Natchez territory. That was part of the Great Sun lands, and there was a great battle, in which my father fought. He was Cherokee, but he fought for the Great Sun; as you know, sometimes the Great Sun buys warriors. He was wounded and came home to his wife, and she nursed him, but he died. Soon after he died, my mother died as well. There is little left of them now, except my memory, and this.” Lone Fox pointed to the cross at his chest.

“I was wondering about that,” said Jean-Baptiste. “It is beautiful. Is it Cherokee make? It looks Spanish.”

“I think it is Spanish,” said Lone Fox, “but I’m not sure. My grandmother told me it had been in the family for generations. I lived with her and my grandfather for a short time before they died, and then went to live with cousins I barely knew, and from there to other distant relatives… It was not like living in a house of orphans, it was not bad. But a family, it was not.”

Lone Fox stopped and stared at his folded hands. Again Jean-Baptiste fought down the impulse to fill the silence.

“So I understand the need for family,” said Lone Fox at last. “But can a nation be a family? Can one man, one Emperor, truly be a father to a whole nation? How can he be a father if you never see him, never hear his voice? Never touch his hand? How can he be a father if you cannot cry on his shoulder?”

Jean-Baptiste said quietly, “I cannot explain it. But he is my father. He is.”

Lone Fox sighed. “I do not understand. Perhaps I cannot. I do see that you have a child’s loyalty to his father; but I do not see that the Emperor has a father’s loyalty to his child. Nevertheless” — Lone Fox clapped his hands — “I will think about it. Thank you, Jean-Baptiste, for speaking with me this morning.”

Jean-Baptiste stood up. For once he had no words to say.

“Perhaps,” said Lone Fox, “it is time for us together to meet with the Haudenosaunee, and see what wisdom will come from council.”

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    Greenland was rich in those days. He lay out cod and grayling, goose and caribou, and of course seal, and simple brown bread drenched with honey from his beehives. Mona had eaten much better when she was a child, and even at the convent; but it had been a few days since her last full meal, and it looked like a feast.
    She bowed her head. “Our Father, who art in heaven…”
    “Stop that,” he snapped. They stared at each other for a long moment.
    “I cannot eat without asking for a blessing,” she said quietly.
    “Not over my fire you won’t,” he said.
    “Do you want me to go hungry?”
    He looked as though he was about to bark back a reply, but stopped himself. Then he cocked an eyebrow and chuckled. “You’re a fool, but a brave one. Say your grace out of my earshot.     — Wild Enough and Free

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