Doe Or Die
By J.G.
A sequel-continuation to Jane Yolen's "Johanna" (please read first!!) with permission from Jane Yolen, whom I thank for a haunting story.
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A bee sting of fire creased Johanna's scalp the moment a fiery flash leapt from the muzzle hole pointed at her, followed by the loud crack of thunder that staggered her aback, almost reeling her off her feet. Instinctively she tried to touch her searing crown -- and fell on her face into packed snow sprinkled with red.
What the --??
"Dang it!!" the doctor sputtered in exasperation and consternation. "How in tarnation kin I miss that close??" He suddenly lunged for her in famished desperation, brandishing the gun's stock like a club. Astonished and bewildered, Johanna's stunned reaction was abruptly overridden by a wild impulse leaping her to her feet and dodging aside as the rifle's stock barely missed her head.
'Stop!!' Johanna's will cried. 'What are you doing??''
But all she heard belting from her throat were strange mewing bleats that were somehow familiar --
"Dang it, you frozen or just stupid??" the doctor cried, rising the stock to swing again only yards away.
Confused by pain and the attack, Johanna jumped back. Far further than she meant or expected because suddenly the doctor was dozens of feet away.
"Stop! What's wrong??" Johanna cried again into a chorusing stream of frantic bleating. "Why are you attacking me?? I need help! Momma's ill!! Starved! Please!!"
"Still here?? Mercy be praised! Yea, ya jus' keep on standin' brayin' thair, ya fool white doe! Mark!! Fetch the damn rifle!!" the doctor hollered, spinning about and running back inside the house, but through her pain and daze of confusion, the doctor's words started Johanna;
'Fool white doe??'
Why'd he say that?? Didn't he recognize me?? All alone out here in the open moonlight??'
There was a flurry of motion at the door and the doctor and his strapping son popped out, almost stumbling with haste in the deep snow, furiously packing powder into long rods.
"What are you doing?? It's Johanna!! Johanna Chevril!!" her soul cried out but no words reaching an atmosphere suddenly as frigid as her heart when she gasped at two far rifles trained on her --
Like a bolt of lightning leaping from the dark primal subbasement of Johanna's mind, an alien urge wrested her body from her fright-scrambled soul, jerking her about to bound for the edge of the woods just as another sharp report thundered from the backyard far behind and suddenly only a few feet ahead of her a spit of snow erupted like a tiny brief geyser. But Johanna didn't notice that nor the woods nor even her scalp's searing pain as a dark primal daze hijacked her mind.
"Dang it!! Missed again!!" echoed the doctor's far-off cry of exasperation, but Johanna didn't stop. Not until her chest was next bursting did she slow from bounding over snow-veiled fallen logs and rock outcrops and she collapsed upon a snow bank, rasping and gasping as her pain pushed away the dark daze and returned her to consciousness.
'He -- he shot me! Nearly killed me! Why??' Johanna cried in appall and bewilderment to herself. What could set a neighbor on another so? Granted, people were on pins and needles since the French and their Indian allies destroyed the English hamlet of Deerfield two months ago, and it didn't help that the Chevrils claimed both heritages, but the confusing war was as far from Hartwood's insular nook as the moon, and over generations there were good feeling and respect among neighbors despite the Chevrils being squatters for ages in a wild unforgiving frontier only a distant king claimed.
'So why'd they try to shoot me? Even club me?? Didn't they see it was me?? The moon's more than bright enough to see--!!'
And as though to reaffirm it to herself she looked toward her own shadow on the pristine carpet of sparkling snow under the blazing moon -- and gasped. For a wild second she echoed the puzzled glance behind her as she had in the doctor's backyard but as before there was nothing behind her but trees. She was alone. But the long-necked slim-headed shadow stretched before her by the burning moonlight -- wasn't hers.
It wasn't even -- even --
Human.
With a nonplused gasp of bewilderment, she impulsively tried to touch her face and jolted with a gasp as an delicately slim black hook bumped her nose -- farther from her eyes than the length of a hand.
What the --??
Even stunned astonishment chilled her as she watched the hoof instead of a hand answer her will and tentatively touched her somehow far and shiny black nose, Johanna barely accepted the mad reality. With trepidation she looked back over herself, and instead of a buckskin coat and shawl saw a broad milk-furred shoulder and sleek trunk, and instead of legs clad thick in leggings and moccasins stretched ivory-velveted spindly limbs tipped with almost delicate black hooves.
And at the far end of her sleek milky trunk flickered a fluffy white tuft.
A tail.
Her heart flopped triple.
What -- What -- What's happened to me?? she bleated aloud in horror's denial.
The doctor's words returned to her;
'My God! It's a deer!!'
'Fool white doe!!'
White doe??
Deer??
No!
This -- this can't be!...
I'm a -- a -- ??
Like the old Indian tales relating the most infamous of moonlight wilderness hexes. Of hapless trespassing men and maidens turning into beasts.
Into bears. Into wolves. Into bats.
Into deer...
O NO!!
The slender shadow before her wavered as Johanna felt dizzy and felt herself sink into the snow bank, but deeper primordial instincts knew fainting was a fatal act out here and overrode her human foible once more and gathered her up on all fours and tweaked long black-tipped ears and crinkled a shiny black nose to the wind to comb for any whiff or whisper of danger.
Dimly, dream-like, Johanna sensed her body's faceless puppeteer like a creature lurking in the dark beyond a campfire, like a shy friendly woods sage coaxing a lost baby's hand to guide her from danger. In her total confusion and dismay she found herself willing to take its hand and draw herself into the protection of its keen bosom, but her own human instincts fretfully sensed it was really a wild soulless beast that was wired into the very fabric of her fresh form, programmed only to hunt and eat and procreate and survive in an existence where there was no room for irrelevant human thought or consciousness to dull its razor senses and cramp its primal mission of sheer survival.
So, to Johanna's dawning muddled dismay, It slowly began encroaching the needless light of her human mind, but her searing scalp was keeping it at bay from fully possessing her.
Pain saved her human soul. For now.
Jolted by the revelation, Johanna tossed her head free from the dark daze.
'No! I'm -- I'm a girl!! I'm human!!' she bellow like a crying beacon cutting the fog, shaking at the new insidious threat to her human existence. It was so seductive! Animal wiles knew far better than she how to survive out here, but she intuitively sensed that acceding to them would be the beginning of the evaporation to her self and soul.
And to her deeper angst, the implication of it dawned more dismay;
Pa!
Uncle Samuel!
Cousins Mary and Beth!
All lost in the night forest forever under full burning moons!
This must've happened to them! Seduced by their new animal instincts -- by their new inner beast! They forgot who they were. Forgot family and their loves and pleasures and everything it meant to be human! It must be so! If they still remembered who they were they would've come home regardless of their form for help and comforting love, just like I tried to see the doctor for help before he tried to...to...
Kill me!
The unthinkable thought itself was terrible enough, but a follow-up horror trickled cold down Johanna's spine as the doctor's words haunted her;
"That's enough meat to last the rest of this cruel winter!..."
Johanna nearly staggered under the raw terrible implications of the words.
How each time, the week after father and Uncle Samuel and Mary and Beth vanished, the Lord always saw pity on the surviving Chevils and gifted them a good hunting with hardy plentiful venison...
With a reeling gasp, Johanna's stomach and heart wrested into a cold horrible knot.
O No!
O Holy Father no--!!
I -- I -- didn't!! Couldn't!!
Pa! Uncle Sam! My pretty cousins!
How could I -- I...??
A daze of horror became Johanna as she fell on all fours and her body withered under hacking horror as she heaved and spewed steamy acorn soup over the snow while mewing and bleating a wail of dismay and remorse. Though her fitful pangs of human anguish kept the beast at bay, she fervently longed for it to now swallow her completely, to put an end to her plight and shame and near ultimate though innocent sin. Through tears she numbly sat to let the darkness creep forth to overwhelm and smother her irrelevant human mind, and between her prayers she bade farewell to family and fewer friends and to --
Momma.
Momma!!
Is still here! Waiting for me!
That startled Johanna from her slide into dissolution. Her sharp little hooves rattled over the crusty snow cover.
Momma! She needs me!!
Johanna started running on all fours, yet even in her anxious mission she was astonished by her flying leaps and bounds and awed by a quiet strength she never knew before. and how nearly dawn-bright the midnight woods were under the moon. Her tweaking ears combed the breeze for nearly every snow drop, her ever twitching nose gathering smells and alien aromas she never knew existed that seemed to have their own direction and time in their astral essence. It was all too new to understand and interpret, especially when along with her new senses came their dark drivers, as suddenly she was more terrified of moving shadows and sharp rustling and faint scents of distant wolves and bears than she ever experienced. Were her body human, Johanna would've abruptly stiffened in terror under such a pall of peril.
Fear's distraction scrambled her body's automatic rhythm and made her lose her gait and she tumbled over the forest floor, skidding against a tree trunk. Dazed and abashed, she shook her head and staggered to her dainty hooves, relieved that she hadn't been moving faster and smashed into a tree or rocky outcrop, but suddenly she felt vulnerable again, like a naked babe lost in the woods. She almost felt human again, but knew that was hollow -- and fatal comfort.
'I'm like a baby who's just learning to walk, just learning there's another world outside the door, just learning not to touch the fire in the hearth, just learning ways to sniff danger and hide and protect itself, but I can't afford the time to learn or adjust,' Johanna soberly conceded, 'I have to let the beast help guide me, even if it wants to try to wrest my body from my soul doing so. I've got to reach Momma!'
Fretfully, Johanna gingerly allowed the savvy keen of the beast to seep her conscious as her seasoned co-pilot, ever mindful to not to be seduced by overconfidence to conceed it the reins over her wits and body. It made her a somewhat clumsy deer, even more awkward and clumsy than a fawn, but at least she was still human.
Still, it astonished her how quickly she arrived the homestead's dark huddle of five dark crumbling homes and long empty animal pens, and as she approached she caught a whiff that at once heartened and terrified her, and for a moment she found herself leaping back for the woods before catching herself at a tender and caring fragrance she knew since time began.
Mother's scent!
Love!
Human scent.
Danger!
Johanna hastily willed back the beast from sharing her reins, but still she felt the residual wariness.
Fear.
That I could fear my own mother now! No! I have to fight it if I'm to help mama -- somehow.
Gingerly, almost forcing herself, Johanna moved up to the door and to normal habit reached to push the door open -- and saw her slender left hoof rap the door.
Stupid! Stupid! I've no hands now, remember?
She put her broad shoulder to the door and shoved and her eye caught a yellow-red flicker in the hearth and suddenly a lash of alarm gripped her and mindlessly bolted her back almost out the woods before her human wits seized control of her wild instincts and fears.
Fire.
Beasts fear fire worst.
I -- the beast in me -- thinks fire is a wild dangerous creature too. But I'm not a beast! Least not yet!
Not while mama needs me!
Steeling herself again, Johanna reentered the tiny cabin, skittishly keeping her fluffy cottontail toward the low-burning hearth and her eyes away from the hearth as she approached the bed and its frail sleeping occupant. Suddenly, for the oddest and damnest of mindless habits in the humble surroundings she felt abashed.
'I'm -- naked --??'
"J -- J -- Jo--??" a woman's weak gravelly voice came and feeling helpless Johanna moved up and stroked her velvety snout along the woman's cheek. The old nearly blind women at first startled then moaned as though anticipating what happened. "Oh no, oh no! My dear poor Johanna!..."
Johanna's chest nearly burst as the old woman mustered the rest of her feeble strength and faced her and stroked the doe's sleek head. "Jo..."Jo -- listen to me," her raspy voice was barely a crackling whisper but steeled by a mother's love; "You must -- must seek the Old Tribe. The ones who the first Chevrils here lived with... married... and incurred -- the curse..."
Johanna's ears twitched high.
'Curse?? A family curse? So there truly is one!' She shook her head at that final admission of a haunting family secret and her mother seemed to perk at that sign of humanity.
"F -- F -- Fetch my -- shell necklace," the old woman moaned, and the doe went to the private little chest and teethed the lid open and took out the loop of small assorted seashells mixed with tiny cubes of bluish green stones Johanna never saw before. Her mother feebly motioned and Johanna bowed her head before her -- fighting jerky pangs of instinctive skittishness from a human touch while the necklaces was draped over her sleek head and neck to her broad shoulders.
"Jo...you must -- keep this on. Always!" the old woman's graveled voice strained through pain and weakness, "It is -- a sign of -- of the Old Tribe. It -- says you're sacred. No Indian will harm you. -- and a shaman might be -- wise enough to -- help you seek -- the Old Tribe. To -- to beg exemption from a -- past wrong..."
Coughing, Johanna's mother could read the question in the doe's soulful deep brown eyes. "If -- there's any way to change you back that's the only way, Jo. Either way, you will be safe with the Indians wearing this. But -- you must always remind yourself that -- that you're really Johanna Chevril. A woman. You must -- force yourself to remember that every day, every minute or your mind and soul will be overwhelmed by the beast of the wilds that dwells all animals. You'll -- be tempted to -- ride it to survive, to find food, to shy danger, but never never let it carry you! Don't..."
The old woman fell back. The doe bleated a wail;
Momma!!
The old woman was still breathing but barely. Johanna was nearly beside herself.
'I've got to get help, but how? I was nearly -- killed trying! Almost left Momma here alone to die ... and she will if I didn't get help... or take her to help...'
Johanna's wild whim glanced the dog litter sled hanging on the wall.
Could I?...
I'm much stronger than a dog or who I was before! I could drag her there! If she's to die then let her die while moving for help, not stuck out here!
Johanna's strong teeth pulled the sled off its peg and to the side of the bed where she first covered it with coarse blankets then gently prodded her mother off the bed into the sled then pulled the blankets corners together over the old woman then after many attempts managed to pull the sled's strappings over its passenger.
That'll do it! Hold on Momma!!
Kneeling on all fours to duck under between the drag sled's two long carry arms, Johanna's black nose and snout wormed into the yoke at the end and found it tight going but managed it, but when she rose she found to her dismay that -- being nearly three times the size of a dog -- instead of dragging behind her, the sled halfway rode up on her back, upon her rump and mashing her tail.
Oh no!
Still, she's not heavy at all -- almost like a pouch of acorns! And off the ground so I could move faster than dragging!
I can do this!
At the door Johanna gave the tiny cabin a final look. She wondered whether it'd be safe refuge once her mission was done, but she knew that'd be fatal to her soul. That without some human contact fanning the flame of her humanity, the beast within was as perilous in consuming it as the wolves lurking outside. Her mother would return in the spring to see a doe skittishly bounding away no different from the forest's other denizens. If she was ever to be human again she couldn't hide here as a deer.
Johanna's teeth pulled the handle and stepped outside, adjusting to the weight slanted over her rump and moved out. She took long loping strides to even out the sled's bouncing on her rump as she bounded back a familiar path, and shortly her nose twitched in nervous awareness of--
Dogs.
Her new instincts bridled to turn back and Johanna fought to keep them at bay.
The far side of the village is safer, away from the houses where the animal pens are.
Almost all empty, thanks this long famishing winter.
Johanna shuddered and tried to shove away a stomach-churning haunting notion. Suddenly a wild notion of fringe hope clutched her;
Wait!
Why would they fire at me -- at a deer carrying a person on its back? Surely they'd think it strange, but they wouldn't try to slay me on sight! And once around people momma could explain!
Yes!!
Clutching desperation, Johanna started for the homes. It was like her mother read her mind.
"Jo --!!" her mother rasped loud as a frantic last breath and warning, and nonplused, Johanna unhitched herself of the sled and moved aside her mother. "Jo!! Don't -- meet -- white people! Witch!..."
Johanna blinked quizzically then understood as an ice fist of dismay seizing her heart.
Even if she could safely escort her mother among for help, even if she avoided being slain and quartered among the villagers, even mother made them realize who she was, superstition was religion here, and she'd labeled a bewitched soul, and even if by some miracle returning to human form on the spot she'd be branded a witch. Indelibly marked and cursed by the black arts.
Johanna shuddered at that all too familiar persecution and fate as violently as a pack of wolves lashing at her.
She couldn't come back to the village. Not until she was human again.
And they must never ever know what happened.
With a heavy heart Johanna nodded and nuzzled her mother and bleated 'good-bye' then using her teeth, pulled the sled down the broad snowy field in the long shadows of the towering fir trees toward near the fence of blacksmith Val's yard and stopped and mustered her strength and wits.
I must be quick if I'm to survive the alarm.
Johanna skittishly moved away from the cover of shadows, almost tiptoeing into the bright moonlit field. She expected a fiery bolt piercing her heart at any moment, yet by an ironic gross notion that didn't frighten her as before;
If Momma could get well better by my nourishment then let not my death be in vain...
Suddenly all the dogs in the village went totally berserk, their barks echoing in the dark forest.
"IT'S BACK!!" someone bellowed and Johanna didn't know who, but she was certain flintlocks were long reloaded for bear. She took off, her dismay and grief parting her mother shattered by fresh cracks of rifle fire. Johanna dashed and dodged into the woods like a jack rabbit following her tracks entering the village, tracks leading back to where she left her mother outside Val's pens.
Johanna knew enough how the settlers worked. The measures they took to survive, so it was with bittersweet terror after her hooves stopped pounding snow to catch her breath when her ears tweaked up at a far rushing sound rapidly closing in.
Her heart went cold.
Dogs!
They set loose the dogs to take me down and cripple me long enough till they reach me with knives...
But if they don't catch me they'll retrace my scent and tracks all the way back to Momma.
Here I go Momma!!
Johanna bolted like a bat out of hell, dashing between trees and bounding over snowbanks and drifts and falling trees like a swift sparrow weaving through a forest ahead of a frenzy of barks and howling. She ran till the barrel of her chest pounded like a burning drum, shrugging off alien instincts contesting her confused direction, telling her to dart this way and that. trying to override her thoughts, doubling her terror of being torn apart by half-starved dogs.
I must!
Must!!...
The howling faded behind her and she pushed her burning breath a few more sprints before collapsing and tumbling in a snowbank. Her splendid form had exhausted its valiant energy.
'Let it end here', she gasped and wheezed to herself, surrendering to God; 'Just leave enough for Momma, please!...'
Johanna longed the beast to swallow her and blind her from jaws that'd be tearing her apart,
But there was only stillness under a burning moon.
Johanna dared to tweak her ears for sound and only gather the whisperings of the woods.
Nothing.
The hounds were too famished themselves to pursue her fresh swift strong body long and were likely staggering back home, following her old tracks back to Momma. Johanna was confident her mother was safe from the elements at least. The rest would be up to the skill of the doctor and the mercy of God. Johanna wondered how Momma was going to explain her disappearance, but, considering the misfortunes of the Chevils, she doubted she'd need provide anyone any deep explanation.
Johanna stood and looked around and in amazement realized that she was at the very fringe of her known tiny universe -- literally miles from the village. She wanted to pinch herself. Not even horses were known to cover so far so fast. She could sniff a river she hadn't visited since a girl with Father to fish. She vaguely recalled him explaining that it flowed west past the far mountains into a much larger river near a city called Albany, but she wasn't sure.
As she gathered herself she realized that she had collapsed against a stout cone of snow, and by some mix of curiosity and primal compelling she pawed the snow away and saw the small pyramid of stones that dotted the region like markers from a long extinct Indian nation.
The Old Tribe.
At least that's what local Iroquois tribes called their builders. There were all kinds of stories of the Old Tribe that each had of them, some even contradicting that there was a such single tribe or even people. The only thread common in the tales were that the Old Tribe were mystics beyond religion and left secret disciples in their wake in the land of thundering waters when they returned home far beyond the setting sun. Johanna faintly recalled 'overhearing' her strict grandmother murmuring something about a Chevril who was a beaver trapper from Fort Quebec long ago who stole off with an Indian maiden from a sacred place that had something to do with thundering water too, and that was more than just the start of the Chevril clan in New England.
'All that might be helpful for someone from the Old Tribe to help me by,' Johanna hoped and prayed. 'Whoever they were, if they still exist they hold the key to my restoration, but first I simply have to survive to get the chance!'
She sighed like a heavy pant, making her necklace softly tinker. 'I must find Indians who'll honor this necklace, who'll take me in and protect me from dogs and bullets like Momma said! But what of arrows and hatchets? Of tribes who don't believe??'
She shuddered from the cruel jester of doubt. 'Indians must be having a rough winter too. Is this necklace enough to keep me off their spit?' O woe!' Johanna rued, her hanging head glimpsing her slim ivory foreleg which perked her dismay with hope.
'Wait! I'm not just any deer! I'm a white doe too! And a white doe is very sacred to Indians, aren't they? To almost all of them! At least they wouldn't slay me outright until their whole tribe debated it. To slay a white doe is to evoke a terrible curse on all, that much I remember of Pa's chats with trappers and Indians. I have to trust them. After all I'm part Iroquois too, even if it's blood from way back! They'll help me! Someone must! I'm almost afraid to fall asleep and wake up a beast through and through! I can't die.
Mustn't!
I want to see Momma again!'
I will!!
Resolved, with her newfound speed and strength boosting her confidence, Johanna gazed deep the woods; 'Most tribes are moving west away from the settlers spreading from the far coasts east, so I should find at least a few living this river along the way. So west I must go.'
A sleek milk-white doe shook its proud head, and tweaking ears and nose for perils her human side barely knew to cope with, its delicate hooves began treading sparkling crusty snow toward a far river.
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