Colors of War

Michael's chin quivered. Then with, relief, he saw his own arrow burried in the ground -- it was Tecumseh's weapon that had killed the buck.

'I see I have named you well,' laughed the chief. He sat down on a rotten log and pulled the teeth from the deer's mouth, which he hollowed out with a small drill used to make shell beads.

Michael felt as if Tecumseh were his own pa, and sat very close so he could feel his warm skin.

Tecumseh chewed on a piece of sinew from the deer's shoulder until it was soft enough to thread the teeth. 'This will be your opawaka, Gentle Deer.' He slipped the necklace around Michael's neck, and all the dignity of this ancient Algonquin tribe lay lightly upon his shoulders.

Michael couldn't talk. He saw smoke from the intestines steaming out of the deer's hide. The skilled hands of the chief cut the arrow from the warm heart, dividing it into strips and placing one in his mouth. He chewed it, shoving a piece at Michael. 'Wetheneto, eat some,' he said.

Michael bit into the deer's heart, cringing. 'Neaqueytha, you are no longer metticoseeah, white man's son. Squee, blood. You have taken courage of strong buck into your body. You will fear nothing now and he will live on forever in our hearts.' Quickly Tecumseh skinned, butchered and tied cuts of meat in the hide. 'We take meat, hide and brain.' He tied the legs together and slipped a pole between them to carry.

'I thought that was squaw work,' said Michael, swaggering behind. But Michael'd had enough. He yawned, dug into his pocket for his charcoal and squeezed the stick till it broke. They slid down the bank by the British Navy Yard together and lowered the deer into their canoe.

The day was clear blue and warm with a soft breeze blowing across the water. Michael gazed at the ships looming high above him. He grew dizzy looking up into the curved hull that cast its giant black shadow over him from far up in the air. Listening to the huge hulls creak with the swell of the tides, he could smell the tar, the musty ropes. He tried to memorize the lines of billowing sails stretched to the high masts, so he could sketch them later.

Suddenly he was aware of Tecumseh talking again. 'Tomorrow I will teach you to load the British pemqua teaquah, rifle.' He paddled vigorously toward Bois Blanc. Michael wondered why Tecumseh was so kind to him.

When Michael arrived at his wegiwa, he looked under his deerskin mattress. The bark strips he'd been saving to draw on were missing. He rushed from the wegiwa to ask Star Watcher if she knew where they were, but couldn't find her anywhere. When he tried to find Tecumseh, he had disappeared too; when he looked for the medicine man near the Stomp Ground, he wasn't there either. Where was everybody?