The Kanc

  Wequai was not aware of the significance of the moment, or her role as part of it. She was not aware that the violent battle that raged around her was to be a momentous turning point in the history of her people, an unrecorded but significant instant in time, and though it was a mere speck on a page of the infinite calendar, it was a moment that closed a millennia of peace and started her people on a decline after enjoying thousands of years of prosperity. And she was not aware of the plight of her brave young husband and brothers who were off defending their stout woodland village from a vicious enemy invasion. For Wequai was with child and she was determined with every force of her being to protect it -- and though there was expected be one more moon before her first child's birth, the uncompromising pain in her belly demanded otherwise. She feared that the child she would bring forth might arrive to a village that would no longer exist to welcome it.

  Skirmishes among the coastal tribes were nothing new, and occasional raids to steal foodstuffs and weapons between rivals, and some occasional retribution, were an accepted part of everyday existence. But the sheer size of this attack was something different, much more forceful and vicious, and brought with it a current of doom and finality. The attack had been predicted by the elders, who watched the tension build for weeks. The warriors of Wequai's tribe had been sharpening their spears and crying out before the spirits, searching for the inner strength and skill they would need to defeat their great allies turned enemies and regain their village and way of life from the clutches of imminent annihilation.

  Wequai burrowed into a pile of soft deerskins stored at the back of a wigwam in a remote corner of the compound where the tribe stored the bulk of their winter supplies. In the distance, the horrifying crashes and echoes of mortal combat crept closer and grew louder. The urgent sounds of men running past her along the dry, pounded earth at first calmed her fragile nerves, a welcoming sound that the warriors of her village were charging ahead to defend and protect. But the longer she laid still in her hiding place, the more anxious she became. She worried the village would not have enough brave men to fight off the attack, and the waves of pain in her belly were growing more intense, closer together, more jagged, and more urgent.

  The battle raged through the afternoon, and as the sun retreated to the west, a moonless summer night fell over the stained battleground. Sweltering beneath the pelts, Wequai emerged and tore a small hole through the birch bark of the wigwam to examine what she could see of the scene. From her veiled corner, she could make out enormous fires glowing from the distant parts of her village, and she listened as the valiant songs of warriors were replaced by screams of pain, terror and death. She realized that the wails of the little children she was hearing in the distance were actually the cries of once brave men now dying -- some no more than 12 or 13 harvests old. She saw cragged old women and little children run by, terror welling in all their eyes, many stumbling and screaming. She saw hundreds of skirmishing warriors, as if dancing with their own shadows in the darkness, slowly moving toward her. Wequai began to chant and hum a peaceful song her grandmother, an honored medicine woman, taught her when she was just a little girl, to be applied like a salve to sooth her tattered nerves. The tip from an angry warrior's long, sharp spear slashed through the wall of her shelter, tearing a gash the length of a grown man, sending shards of wood and bark to rain down upon her. Though she remained unnoticed, she knew her time to move on, or die, had arrived.

  Though the compound had surrendered to darkness, the terrible battle raged on. The pain in Wequai's abdomen was continuing to build, and she crawled through the entrance of her shelter and emerged into the chaos with one arm wrapped firmly under her belly. Ahead by the shore, there was a clump of sassafras trees and juniper shrubs where she believed she could remain unseen, or failing that, behind it was an old dugout canoe, stored by her fisherman uncle, that she thought she might be able to use to escape. The village smelled of a smoke that Wequai recognized, but it wasn't the sweet, comforting smell of cod stew or venison turning over the dinner fire -- it was the unmistakable, unforgettable, horrific odor of seared human flesh.

  The fetid smoke helped shield and distract Wequai from the invaders who had now overtaken the village. All the buildings and wigwams had been set ablaze by enemy torches, and waves of intense heat were carried through the village by the cooling evening coastal breeze. Wequai dragged herself toward her new hiding place, and she leaned her exhausted, aching body against the side of the long canoe.

  The vessel was more than the length of three grown men, and contained all her uncle's seafaring hand-made nets and tackle. As a child, she had been assigned the tedious duty of hollowing out the great log herself, using a bone hatchet and red-hot oak embers from the dinner fire to burn and smooth the vessel into shape. Standing up to her waist in the cool, salty water of the cove, she tried to push it out to sea, but did not have anywhere near the strength. For the first time since she had begun her labor, she screamed aloud from the pain of the impatient child inside searching for its own means of escape. Lifting one leg up over the side, she flopped into the front of the canoe on her back upon the netting, and surrendering to her hopeless predicament, her eyes welled with tears, and she sobbed.

  Wequai was very small for her age of sixteen, but tough and wiry, and she wiggled and burrowed deep into the fishing nets. She braced her thin, spindly legs against the frame and did all she could to stay quiet between the sharp spasms of pain. She accepted that her child would be born here, in her family's canoe, as a gift from the gods, but without the aid or comfort of her husband or grandmother, sisters, or any of the trusted women of her village. Though the war raged around her, she tried not to think about the fate of her family. But now that darkness engulfed her, she was awash in fear and loneliness.

  Before she could weep for herself or her family too long, the boat rocked. Wequai felt a sudden thud and looked up. Standing in the canoe above her was a warrior, as if dropped by the gods from the dark sky above. Through the glow of the fires burning in the distance, she could see enough of the war paint on his face to realize he was not of her village. Wequai opened her mouth to scream in terror, but was so paralyzed with fear, no sound would come out. Then she realized he did not see her -- it was too dark and she was too low in the vessel. She also saw, upon his sweaty, painted face, a look of terror she had not seen upon a man's face before -- it was clear he was afraid of something, and looked to be escaping it. Upon her bare feet, she felt the trickle of a liquid, the warrior's blood, painting and tickling her dusty ankles and toes. She closed her eyes tight, held her breath and remained still and silent.

  The stranger grasped an oar, and straining with all his might, was able to push and detach the heavy canoe from its mooring, setting it afloat upon the tranquil cove. The hissing sound of invisible razor-sharp arrows sped by them both, a few embedding themselves in the solid, thick, oak walls of the canoe. Others splashed harmlessly into the water. The warrior paddled with fury, grunting and breathing deeply as the canoe picked up speed and headed into the shadows, toward the cove's narrow mouth and into the open sea.

  An especially intense pain struck Wequai's belly without warning, and she was able to control her silence no longer. Her sudden, high-pitched cry startled the warrior, who let out his own intense, terror-laden scream. Together, the pair screamed for their lives into the blackened night, spinning the vessel around in a circle upon the ocean. The situation might almost have been comical, had both inhabitants of the boat not assumed they were about to be killed by the other.

  The warrior reached out and grabbed Wequai by her clammy forearm and pulled her close. He clenched his teeth and peered into her eyes, trying to determine whether she was friend or foe. His breath was hot and rhythmic upon her face and he smelled of spice and tobacco smoke. He was much bigger and stronger and larger than any man in her village, and she thought the grip he had on her might snap her arm in half like a birch sapling. She gasped and trembled, and feared her heart m
ight leap from her breast. She knew that with very little effort at all, if he chose to, the man could toss her into the sea to drown. His arm brushed her stomach and he realized she was heavy with child. He paused, then extended his enormous, weathered palm to stroke her swollen belly. With little effort, he pushed her back down to the floor of the canoe upon the nets and resumed rowing, uttering not a syllable, content that she would be no threat in her condition. Wequai sensed his compassion, took a deep breath, arched her back in the agony and relief of the moment and the pain, and escaped consciousness.