Part II: Cloudburst (1847-1866)

Chapter 8: Drifters

Once upon a time a very long time ago there was an orphan girl named Maryushka. She was a quiet, modest, and gentle maiden. None could embroider as beautifully as she.

The fame of her skill reached the ears of merchants beyond the seas. One after another, they tried to persuade Maryushka to come away with them, promising her riches and glory. But she would only lower her eyes and reply modestly: "Riches I do not need and I shall never leave the village where I was born. but of course I will sell my work to all who find it beautiful." And with that, although they were disappointed, the merchants had to be content. They left, spreading the story of her skill to the ends of the earth, until one day it reached the ear of the evil sorcerer Kaschei the Immortal, who raged to learn that there was such beauty in the world which he had never seen.

So he took the form of a handsome youth and flew over the deep oceans, the tall mountains and the impassable forests until he came to Maryushka's cottage.

Her kind words and the sight of all that beauty made Kaschei even angrier. How could it be that a simple country girl could fashion finer things than he, the great Kaschei the Immortal, himself possessed. And he took his most cunning tones and he said:

Come with me, Maryushka, and I will make you Queen. You will live in a palace built of precious jewels. You will eat off gold and sleep on eiderdown. You will walk in an orchard where birds of paradise sing sweet songs, and golden apples grow.

"Do not speak so," answered Maryushka. "I need neither your riches or your strange marvels. There is nothing sweeter than the fields and woods where one was born. Never shall I leave this village where my parents lie buried and where live those to whom my needlework brings joy. I shall never embroider for you alone."

Kaschei was furious at this answer. His face grew dark and he cried, "Because you are so loath to leave your kindred, a bird you shall be, and no more a maiden fair."

And in an instant a Firebird flapped its wings where Maryushka had stood. Kaschei became a great black Falcon and soared the skies to swoop down on the Firebird. Grasping her tight in his cruel talons, he carried her high above the clouds.

As soon as Maryushka felt the power in those steel claws and realized she was being taken away, she resolved to leave one last memory of herself.

She shed her brilliant plumage and feather after feather floated down on meadow and forest. The mischievous wind covered the feathers with grass and leaves, but nothing could rob them of their brilliant, glowing rainbow colors.

As the feathers fell, Maryushka's strength ebbed. And although the Firebird died in the black Falcon's talons, her feathers continued to live, down on the ground. They were not ordinary feathers, but magic ones that only those who loved beauty and who sought to make beauty for others could see and admire.

ooooo

Sometimes change came like a tidal wave. It came in a moment. It buried the entire land under a deluge of water so all the peoples had to tie their canoes to the tops of trees and rocks or be swept away, like the peoples Hoh and Chimakum were. Only those who kept their canoes tied tight could find their way back to Quileute.

Sometimes change came like a misting rain. Little by little, so light and quiet that it was near invisible, it accumulated - until one's hair was soaked and rivulets of water dripped off the tips of ferns.

The change that crashed upon Rolling-Thunder was like the tidal wave. In a moment, it drowned out all of who he had once been. It was the night when Growls-at-Bears failed to meet him at the house by the Calawah that it all unraveled for the young warrior.

With a light and hope-filled heart, the second son of the Quileute chief made his way through the forest. The extinguishing daylight soaked the cedars with just enough darkness to reveal the pale light of the evening star and Rolling-Thunder's feet sprinted along the footpath on his way to meet the woman he knew would someday be his wife.

He did not quite reach the banks of the Calawah when he was stopped in his tracks by the approach of another woman. Rolling-Thunder recognized her immediately, despite never having laid eyes on her before. He had heard stories about her all his life, but none of the stories did her justice.

She wore only a dress made out of the skin of snakes, but how many snakes must have given their lives to make such a colorful, multi-patterned dress! The litheness of her footsteps so closely resembled the movements of a serpent that he almost expected her to have a forked tongue. She didn't, of course, but the way her black eyes lacked any and all evidence of a schlera only made her appear more reptilian. The woman's dark hair fell like a waterfall to her ankles, and she did not once blink nor take a breath. She was both old and young, ugly and beautiful, and the contradiction only made her all the more disconcerting.

She gazed at him out of those bottomless pools of uncolored darkness and he froze in place as if each and every one of his nerves and muscles had been replaced with unmoving iron instead of flesh. An icy chill that furrowed down his spine left every hair on his body prickled in fear.

"Dásk'iya'," he whispered out between his clenched jaws.

"Some have called me that," she answered in a stilted, clumsy Quileute, in a voice that sounded like rain. "I have many names, in many tongues, young one, but you, it has been long since I found one of your kind."

She came closer and closer to where he stood. He could not move or back away, despite how every fiber of his being longed to flee.

"I know what you are…or what you will be. How delightful! What games we shall have, Little Wolf," she purred into his ear. A fingernail, as sharp as any spear, delicately traced a path along his exposed shoulder blade until she reached his heart. She pressed her icy cold palm over his beating heart and for a moment, he thought she was going to steal his life away with her bare hand. His heart maintained its frantic, blood-filled beat, pounding against the foreign hand that listened to it and her beautiful lips pulled up to reveal sharp, perfect teeth.

"I can taste it, Little Wolf, both what you crave, and what you dread."

"I don't understand," he choked out, but he still could not move away from her.

"Of course, you don't, not now, not yet, but you will. You will." She drew even closer to him…so close that she overwhelmed all his senses. She smelled of fear, but tasted of desire, and he was torn between soaking in the heady scent of her and fleeing for his life. As she neared, the forest around him faded from sight. All he could see was the eternal darkness caught in her eyes and all he could hear was his own heartbeat echoed in the drum of her fingers against his chest.

Then his vision changed. Instead of the creature woven of fear and legend, he saw the woman who haunted his heart and dreams.

He saw hair like firelight and eyes like the ocean. Bare feet danced along the grasses as she threw her arms around him, of her own accord. Her eyes were alight with warmth at his presence and she welcomed him into her embrace. He was so overcome with his joy that he felt close to bursting.

In the next moment, his arms were empty. He looked down into sightless eyes and her arms embraced none save death. Then he knew a despair so deep it could have been the very roots of Mount Olympus.

"They are the same," came the quiet downpour of Dásk'iya's voice. "To obtain one is to grasp the other. But both will drive you to madness before the end. Your fear and your desire will intoxicate you until the day when you willingly throw yourself at my feet and beg me to end your life for you."

"Kill me now," he asked, willing himself to stand as straight and tall as he could. "I am not afraid of you."

"Oh no, Little Wolf! Now is not the time. Not when you feign bravery and do not truly know what you are asking. No, you must learn that it is not me you should fear, but yourself."

She caressed his face with her compassion-less fingers and laughed when she felt him shudder beneath her touch. "We are the same, you and I. I welcome your pursuit.

Then she vanished - as quickly as a star falling across the sky or the last glint of the setting sun over the ocean.

Rolling-Thunder waited until his heart calmed and he could breathe again. At first, he wondered if it had all been a dream or a vision. But no, all around him, perfect tracks of delicate female feet surrounded him and led onwards towards the nearby river.

On the porch of the hunters' cabin, he waited. While various members of the clan that dwelt in that region of the forest when about their tasks, he waited. But she never came. He tried not to worry what it all meant and watched the forest all the more eagerly for her arrival, but she never came.

When news arrived of the lifeless body discovered in the forest, Rolling-Thunder burned. His anger was so heated and so fierce he feared it would devour the entire sodden forest and he fled the presence of all others so they would not be scorched.

It could not be true. It must not be true.

His vision blurred and all became a tangled mass of branches and riverbends and tears and shouts and he knew he must kill her.

"Dásk'iya'!" he shouted, or tried to shout, but it came out more as a jumbled, gargled, blood-stained howl and he swore to any spirit listening that he would end the life of the Cannibal Woman, even if it took him a thousand lifetimes. He pursued the trail of footsteps as far and as fast as he could, not pausing to notice that he was no longer running on two feet, but on four, faster than a war canoe could paddle. All he thought of was to chase and to catch the fiend and ensure she died for the death of his beloved.

oooo

The Cannibal Woman was as hard to catch as the serpents whose skins she wore. She danced across mountains and the plains as if she had wings instead of legs and he could only just catch a glimpse of her before she vanished again, swallowed up in the unbroken expanse of land and sky. She scattered bones like dandelion seeds, leaving trails of those she had devoured behind her, her laughter bouncing off the cries of the bereaved as she went. Yet even clothed in the strength of the Spirit of the Wolf, he could not catch her.

When Rolling-Thunder returned to his people, they rejoiced. The People of the Wolf welcomed the presence of a new Guardian in their midst and his family rejoiced to have their son home. Rolling-Thunder, weary in heart and body, could not share their joy.

His first action, in the form of a man, was to cut off his hair and never let it grow long again. In a show of mourning for the woman he had loved, he took a knife to his long, black tresses and let them fall into the ground.

It was custom to either bury or burn the belongings of those whose souls had crossed the River into the Country of Shadows. To keep the possessions of the dead invited their souls or ghosts to linger in the Land of the Living. He didn't care. In his bentwood cedar box, he wrapped the necklace and pendant she always wore into a rabbit skin, and kept it locked away, along with her name and his dreams of her as his wife.

Perhaps Growls-at-Bears was correct and he had looked upon her as nothing more than an exotic bird to be kept and admired. Perhaps it was he who saw rightly and knew they could have forged a good life together. It didn't matter anymore. Her body belonged to the forest and her souls now dwelt in the sacred longhouses along the banks of the River

It was not many seasons after the death of the ho-kwat slave woman that her companions were gathered from the farthest reaches to which they had been sold and sailed away from the lands of the Quileute, Hoh, Makah, and Quinault. True to his word, Yutramaki helped arrange the ransom of his own ho-kwat slaves to the people of the White Drifting Houses. Eighteen months after they were first captured, the thirteen survivors of the Sv. Nikolai left the rugged shores of the Olympic Peninsula to return to the waters of the far north. Nikolai Bulygin joined his wife in the land of shadows. When the ho-kwat man heard of the death of his wife, he lost his will to live and withered away like a fallen log in the forest. He left his bones in the lands of the Makah long before his companions found their freedom.

The corpse of their White Drifting House decomposed on its rock, along with the memories of those who had sailed upon it, and served as a cautionary tale in the halls of Big Men in distant lands. The ho-kwat ships who came after feared the peoples of the peninsula. They forgot to build a fort on those shores and instead built their fortress in the regions farther south. Their ships still stopped to trade, but they would not build an outpost in the inhospitable, dangerous waters of the coast of Oregon Territory.

Their fear of the Peoples of the Wolf did not stop the ho-kwats from attempting retribution. It was some time after the captive slaves returned to their own peoples when another ho-kwat ship entered the waters of Quillayute Bay. They spoke words of peace and friendship and invited the People of the Wolf onboard to trade. The Quileute surrounded the White Drifting House with their canoes, but before they could board the vessel, a familiar face appeared.

It was the Aleut companion of Growls-at-Bears who had dwelt with the Quileute as wife of one of their nobles. She had been well-loved by the Quileute during her time of captivity. Now, she leapt into the water and swam toward them, shouting at them in Quileute.

"Go away from this place! Leave this ship! Go away! The ho-kwat's heart is not good. If you come aboard, you will be carried away as slaves. You will never see your people again. Go away! My brothers, in the name of the God of the ho-kwat and of K'wati and Sekahtil, your gods, I beg you to keep away from this ship."

The Quileute obeyed and the ship set sail, without any captured Quileute in their hold. Their wariness of the ships that passed only grew, even as their thirst for the goods the ships carried increased.

The White Drifting Houses came with their woolen blankets and iron tools and copper kettles until the potlatches were overflowing with foreign items and more Quileute wore blankets than bark cloth. The Peoples of the Rivers and Oceans hungered for goods they had never sought before and they worked furiously to obtain what they had never before needed.

Flags changed again and again, ships came and went, and the animals vanished from the waters and the forests, filling the unfillable appetites for "more" which were as ceaseless as the tide.

Paths were forged across continents and mountains and these were sailed by a new fleet of ships. This time the White Drifting Houses came across the mountains and the prairies, propelled by horses and oxen instead of the wind. When they came, they did not drift away again. They started building their own longhouses at river mouths and on prairie grasses until their gunshots rang out as loud as their flags and their voices and their saws.

Change fell upon the People of the Wolf like a slow misting rain. Nestled between the protective mountains, dense forest, and the sea, the People of the Wolf remained sheltered, undisturbed by the rapidly changing world of the Oregon Territory to the east and south. Their forests were too deep for farms, their mountains too high for wagons, and so their potlatches could continue, as they always had, unaware of the storms brewing beyond the mountains.

Oooooo

Rolling-Thunder muddled his way through the Land of the Living in which he dwelt halfway between the World of People and the World of Spirits. Claimed as he was by the Spirit of the Wolf, he was no longer the man he had been.

Over thirty years passed. The longhouses at La Push were filled with young warriors that Rolling-Thunder barely knew as babes and those he played with as a boy grew bent with age. The strong and raven-haired grew hunched and frosted like a sapling tree covered in snow. Canoes carried chiefs across the River to join their kin in the Land of Shadows and their bodies were laid to rest with their ancestors on A-Ka-Lat Island.

While the People of the Wolf changed little-by-little, drop-by-drop, the second son of the chief barely changed. His hair stayed as dark as a young warrior and his skin remained uncreased. Rolling-Thunder still stood tall, unbent by time or age.

Elevated to the honored status of Guardian, Rolling-Thunder's father expected his son to protect the longhouses of the People of the Wolf with his new power. But Rolling-Thunder could not haunt the beaches of La Push for long before his feet itched and his paws left the lands of the Quileute to follow the sickly-sweet trail of the Cannibal Woman. No matter how many months or years traversed, he swore he would have vengeance on the one who killed Growls-at-Bears and ease his own grief by removing the heart of the Cannibal Woman. His heartsickness compelled him onward and pierced him like a well-sharpened spear.

Rolling-Thunder returned to the longhouses at La Push less and less. At first, he stayed away because the parents said his show of sadness would "make the young children grow ill." He returned to the sacred convergence of waters when a whale was caught or a potlatch was held or a new family was formed. The constant quarrels with his father kept him from staying long.

"You must marry!" his father said, again and again.

"Not yet. I no longer age. There is no hurry," Rolling-Thunder answered, long after his father's hair had turned white with years and heavy cares.

His father sighed and grumbled to himself about "stubborn sons" and praised the filial respect of his other sons.

The other quarrel revolved around the appropriate role of Guardian. Of course, Rolling-Thunder acted to protect his people and keep threats from reaching their lands, but he could not fulfill his father's dearest wishes.

"You have been granted great power!" his father cried. "Now is the time! You must use it! We can become even greater than the greatest Makah or Nootka chief! None of their warriors can defeat you. My son, you can make me the greatest chief of all the peoples ever remembered in song! Let us gather our warriors and attack and claim our glory!"

"No!" Rolling-Thunder replied, again and again. "I will defend us from our enemies, but I will not attack others for glory. The Power of the Wolf is meant to protect and I will not misuse it."

The glimmer of disappointment in his father's eyes haunted Rolling-Thunder's dreams...even more so when the old chief crossed the River and his songs were given to his eldest son.

ooooo

The lands between the mountains and the ocean rumbled with a coming tidal wave of change. In the same way the earth shook before ash and smoke burst from the Smoking Mountain, so the land beneath his paws shook in anticipation of the metamorphosis to come. It was not upon them yet, but it would come. He knew it would come.

For decades, he saw the White Drifting Houses cross the mountains and prairies. The Cannibal Woman delighted in their rutted wagon trails crossing the lands like a trail of ants. She shadowed their wagons, spreading fear around like a feathered shawl of plumage, and she waited for her offerings.

"It's all part of the game, Little Wolf," she told him once. "These ones have no roots. They are drifters…easy to fell."

He thought he had cornered her in a rocky crevice of the Blue Mountains that time. He came upon her too late to keep blood from spilling, but he thought for sure her head would be his. With her back against a cliff face and his giant lupine form towering over her petite form, instead of cowering, she tangled her hands through his fur and patted his head as if he were a lapdog. "You are too young to understand, dear one. When you are as old as I, you will understand…and despise the mortals as I do. You will come to wish death upon them and rejoice when they reap their death from my hands."

He could not answer her with anything but a lunge, bared teeth, and an angry growl. She evaporated from between his paws…again…with all the grace of a young doe. Her laughter clung to the air long after her form and footsteps vanished around him.

The trails between the mountains and the plains were her new favorite place to crouch in the shadows. In the clash between the wind-swept wagons and the stampeding hooves of the war ponies, tensions were as volatile as gunpowder near a flame. Fear breeds violence in the same way stagnant water breeds mosquitoes. If the diseases, starvation, and accidents did not provide enough convenient fodder for her lascivious appetite, the rifles and tomahawks filled her to overflowing.

During his long decades of travels, Rolling-Thunder learned as many of the trade languages as he could. He spoke with the influx of fur trappers and the bands of migrating groups on their horses as well as the traders and hunters he came across along the way. He inquired of all they had seen and experienced in hopes of discovering more of the movements of the Cannibal Woman.

He left La Push when a passing Chinook spoke of rumors of the Ogress in the south. He followed the tales until he came across a recent trail along the sluggish blue banks of the Colombia River. Some days he travelled as a wolf, both to increase his speed and his senses. Other times he travelled as a man so he could inquire of other peoples he met along the way.

In Umatilla, a large settlement of Cayuse tipis was swarming with activity. Herds of horses grazed on the rich grasses that grew in the Colombia Plateau. Cayuse warriors on horseback kept a tight watch around the perimeter of their camp and within, interspersed among the Cayuse, were over forty ho-kwat women and children.

The peoples of the plains were fierce warriors who counted their wealth in the horses, the people they kept under their control, and the respect paid them by others. Raids on other peoples gave them what they sought and the new influx of wandering wagons filled with newcomers provided an abundance. Newly captured horses, supplies, women, and children were distributed between allied chiefs and incorporated into each camp.

By the barely healed wounds and fevered eyes marring the captives, it was little wonder that the Cannibal Woman's trail had led him here. By the continuing path of the scent, he knew she continued eastward along the Colombia, no doubt to where this party was captured. Judging by the tear-stained faces and absent men, he assumed Dásk'iya' had feasted well.

In the side of camp nearest to where Rolling-Thunder hid in the shadows, an argument broke out. A ho-kwat man spoke to a ho-kwat woman. The man wore a long robe and spoke English with a French accent. The woman wore a torn gingham dress and a blanket wrapped around her shoulders.

"Five Crows insists he wants a 'golden-haired wife' and says I must stay with him," the woman said. "He says that the white fur trappers and traders come and take the loveliest Indian women as their wives and he would like to do the same."

"We are but a handful of white men among a nation of savages on the warpath," he told the woman. "Five Crows is a much finer character than most. I will do what I can to reason with him and delay as long as possible. We are all caught in this trap and are helpless. But do not weep, daughter. This great trouble is not your fault."

The ho-kwat man left her in the care of Five Crows. The Cayuse chief wore ho-kwat clothes, though his hair fell in long braids to his shoulders and long feathers adorned his head. He was young and handsome and he walked with the bearing of a man who carried the respect of many on his shoulders.

"You will want for nothing," Five Crows pleaded. "I own a herd of over a thousand horses and servants to do your every bidding. I will build you a house finer than any other white woman in Oregon country could boast."

The woman shook her head.

"If you marry me, I will go with you to the Willamette Valley to labor and live as a white man," he said, gazing at her as if she were worth more than every one of his thousand horses.

"No," she said. "I will not marry you."

She shook her head again and her golden hair shone in the sunlight. Then she turned around and Rolling-Thunder caught the first glimpse of her face…and his heart stopped.

He knew her.

She was too tall, her arms strong, and her hair too light. It couldn't be. Yet when their eyes met, it was the same as before, but stronger, firmer, and more resolutely binding. Instead of a blanket of snow settling over him, it was an avalanche. It was the flash of lightning by which the darkness is expelled and he did not know how it was possible, but it was her. Thirty-seven years since her souls departed for the Land of Shadows and now Growls-at-Bears had returned.

Rolling-Thunder stood dumbstruck and with all the awkwardness of a sea lion on land, he mulled over how to proceed. He did not have long to fret for the lady in question acted first.

She did not hesitate. Once her eyes met his, she did not walk. Her bare feet sprinted across the distance separating them. She threw herself into his arms, wrapping her own around his neck.

"I will wed none but this one," she said, her eyes bright and fixed only on him.

All present, Rolling-Thunder included, gaped in shock.

Oooooo

Author's Notes:

As always, thanks for reading and sharing your feedback!

I don't intend to include much of the history of Washington outside of the Olympic Peninsula, but 1847 was a pretty important year that set off the domino chain of events that transpired across the state, so we had to branch out a little. We will only be in Eastern Washington for another half chapter before we return to the rainy northwest again and we won't have to travel much further east than the Cascades again.

After the wreck of the Sv. Nikolai, the Russian American Company decided to build their outpost, called Fort Ross, in northern California instead. By the time 1846 rolled around, Spain, Great Britain, Russia, and France had all ceded their rival claims on the Oregon Territory (which included parts of Idaho, Montana, Washington, Wyoming, and Oregon) to the U.S.

The original seed of this entire story came from the life of Cynthia Ann Parker. Her story always resonated with me and I thought it would make a fascinating story…but she was in Texas which is a very different context. So, I am adapting the elements I found compelling of that story along with the account of Lorinda Bewley's experiences in Umatilla…and some pure fiction too, of course. Bewley's eye-witness account of dialogue is used nearly verbatim here from letters she wrote describing her experiences in Umatilla…I'm not crazy about some of the word choices or phrasing, but it was a quote. I do want to be true to the overall ideas and worldview of each era…but it may mean some parts of this get rather uncomfortable and culturally distanced from present times.

The Russian legend of the firebird, quoted in the introduction of this chapter, is quoted from The Land of the Firebird by Suzanne Maisie.

I quote directly from The Wreck of the Sv. Nikolai, again here as well.

Dásk'iya, the Cannibal Woman, is often used more as a cautionary tale than anything else. I am adapting parts of recorded Quileute mythology about her and expanding and taking extensive creative license.