The Dagger X (The Dagger Chronicles) (6 page)

Closer and closer they came, and the western cliffs rose up before them. Closer still they came. The cliff
was not nearly as sheer as it had looked from a distance; in fact Ontoquas was sure that she could scramble up it if she had to, and she might need to do just that, as there did not appear to be a sandy beach along this end of the island.

When they were only a hundred yards from the rock face Ontoquas could make out details on the craggy tan rocks. Still the dolphins swam straight ahead, as if they would ram her into the cliff face itself.

Where is it that you are taking us?

The cliff bulged out at about the height of thirty feet, then curved in slightly, and as they drew to a distance of twenty yards, she could see that the color of the rock grew very dark in one spot quite close to the water level.

What is that?

Whatever it was, she would soon see it, as it seemed to be the very spot the school of dolphins had picked out. Ontoquas noticed that the larger group of dolphins had silently disappeared, and only five now surrounded her little bucket plus the one dolphin pulling her.

At just ten feet from the rock face Ontoquas could see that the dark spot of rock was actually some sort of a passage leading into the cliff itself. The opening was perhaps four feet wide and rose above the water level only a few feet. Ontoquas suddenly let go of the dolphin’s fin. Something was coming out of the passage! She startled and reared up on the bucket, but then smiled. It was a large sea turtle, paddling its way into the aquamarine brilliance of the water.

“Aaaaahhhhhhh!” complained the dolphin at her side. One of the dolphins dove and shot into the passage. With her stiffened muscles crying out in complaint, Ontoquas pushed herself off the bucket, careful to keep it from tipping. She took a breath and lowered herself into the water in time to watch the dolphin come shooting out of the passage again, twirling its white belly up at the surface. It snapped its mouth open and looked at her, as if with a satisfied grin, and a tiny turtle scurried along behind it.

Ontoquas rose to the surface.

“Aaaaahhhhhhh!” Another dolphin streaked into the passage, was gone for several seconds, then sped out again. It was clear that the animals wanted her to go inside. Ontoquas puzzled over whether to do so. The passage looked dark and forbidding, and she worried that it might lead to a place where there was nowhere to draw a breath. Another turtle, one as large as a split pumpkin, paddled its way out at the surface, its head held daintily above the water. It turned to look at Ontoquas, then dove and swam off.

And then Ontoquas knew. She knew what might well be inside. Hurriedly she hoisted herself back atop the barrel and grabbed hold of the dolphin’s fin. Ontoquas ducked her head against the bucket to avoid striking it on the rock as they entered, and she was gladdened to see that the passage opened up inside. The way ahead was dim, but a bright light pierced the blackness. It grew brighter until Ontoquas could see that she was
emerging from a narrow tunnel into a small chamber, a pool several yards in diameter. Above rose an uneven domed ceiling. Light filtered through a long crack at its peak.

Beneath her the dolphin rolled. Ontoquas slid off and felt her feet touch a sandy bottom. She stood in water to her waist, and reached into the bucket to give the baby a quick pat.

Mother!
Ontoquas remembered the prophecy her mother had bestowed on her. All her life the meaning of that prophecy had eluded Ontoquas, until now. She would survive. Her people were gone, but she had survived.

All six dolphins whirled about in the pool, swirling and playing and making their strange yipping noises.

Thank you.

Ontoquas ran her hand along the smooth snout of one dolphin that approached her. It wriggled its nose in the air as if to nuzzle her in return. Then it sank back into the water, and with a graceful flicker of its tail, it turned and swam back toward the dark opening of the tunnel. The other dolphins filed behind. The last dolphin lifted its head and turned to her.

“Aaaaahhhhh.”

“May the Great One smile upon you,” Ontoquas said in return, and then she and her baby brother were alone.

For several moments she stood there, luxuriating in the feel of sand between her toes and the gentle sound
the water made as it lapped against the edges of the surrounding rock. The bucket bobbed lightly. Turtles of various sizes paddled past, ignoring her.

It was time to see if the idea that occurred to her was in fact true. Ontoquas pushed the bucket ahead of her through the pool to its far side, giving way to a particularly large turtle that did not seem interested in going around her.

On the far side of the pool rose a broad bank of sand. It teemed with turtles, hundreds of them: small ones the size of her palm, medium ones the width of her shoulders, and a few so large they must have outweighed her. They clambered about lugubriously, each seeming to move toward a different destination. One slid down the embankment and into the water with a plop.

Ontoquas hoisted the bucket to her hip and began to climb up the rise of sand. As she neared the top, she could make out a shimmering division in the collection of creatures, a groove in the sand that reached back into the blackness.

“Nippe!”
She had been right! Animals need water, freshwater, and even sea creatures like turtles make their nests where they can have some access to it.

Ontoquas surged forward, nearly stumbling and dropping the bucket. Several tortoises spooked and threw themselves into the pool. Ontoquas set the bucket down as gently as her ebbing strength could manage and then fell facedown into the shimmering rivulet of water.

Nippe.
Water, and though not as fresh as would have been the creek water she had known as a young girl, it was not the salt water of the sea.

The trickle gave her little to work with, but Ontoquas sucked desperately at it until she lifted her head at a small pool that glimmered deeper in the cave. She crawled over to it on all fours, then waded in. Though only a few inches deep, the pool was several feet long, and made for easy drinking. There she gulped and guzzled the slightly brackish water until breathless and bloated.

Netchaw. It is his turn now.
Ontoquas considered for a moment, then pulled her shirt over her head. She plunged the weathered fabric into the water and drew it out dripping, then draped it over her neck and went back to the barrel.

“Come,
netchaw
,” she said, and lifted the little brown boy at his armpits. The baby’s head flopped back, and she turned to cradle him in the crook of one arm.

“I have something wonderful for you.
Cottatup
.”

She held a corner of the wet shirt to the baby’s cheek. The baby rooted after it, turning his head and taking the fabric into his mouth. He sucked away greedily as Ontoquas bundled the fabric in her hand to squeeze more to him.

She looked back toward the empty bucket and smiled. She had been wondering what to call the little boy. He was not a Wampanoag, so she did not want to give him a name of her people, and she did not know his people or what he might have been called by his own
mother. Seeing the cut barrel gave her the idea.

That barrel of the wompey, it saved your life. So I will honor it with your name, as I know how the English call it.

“You will be called ‘Bucket,’ ” she said aloud. “Bucket,
Noe wammaw ause
.”

I love you and I always will.

After Bucket had drunk all he could hold, Ontoquas crawled to a spot of sand the turtles had ignored. She lay on her back in the cool sand and placed Bucket belly down on top of her. In little time the world slipped away from them both.

Hours later the cave glowed with bright light. The sun hovered directly above the narrow aperture in the rock ceiling, and the rippling waves of the pool threw a dance of sunlight about the walls. Ontoquas eased the sleeping Bucket from her chest and nestled him on his side into the warm impression her body had made in the sand. Silently she crept to the puddle again. She cupped her hands and drank from the water she collected in them. Full again, she pushed back on her haunches. Her body ached and her head pulsated with pain. It was the most wonderful pain she could imagine. She gave a broad grin.

I have survived. Kean nitka was right. My mother was right.

Gingerly Ontoquas pushed herself to her feet, crouching so as not to hit her head on the low ceiling. She looked back at Bucket, twitching in his sleep.

The main part of the cave was comprised of the larger pool to which the dolphins had delivered her. At the far end the ceiling swept low, forming the tunnel that led to the open sea. During her nap the tide had risen, and now the water had almost entirely submerged the tunnel. Ontoquas made the observation with some dismay. She had grown up near the ocean and understood that the water rose and fell nearly four times each day there. She hoped it would not rise so high as to fill the cave with water.

It will not fill up, silly
nickesquaw.
That is why the turtles are here. It is their nesting ground. Here they find water and protection.

She turned to look deeper into the cave in the direction of the stream’s source. The light grew very shadowed there and it took her eyes a moment to focus. When they did, the eerie assemblage of shapes they beheld made her catch her breath. Her heart hammered. The shapes did not move, nor were they frightening in and of themselves, but they were arranged in tidy stacks.

Wompey sannup!
White man.

Only the white men would take such care to be uniform. But what were they? As she stepped toward the shadows, the shapes became clear. Barrels.

Barrels.
Everywhere the
wompey
went, there were his barrels. The traders who would enter the village to swap beads for furs had them. They hung from the sides of their horses. As a little girl she had watched her father conduct such a trading session with one of the white
men. He had removed a barrel from his horse, opened it, and beckoned her to come closer. He showed her, taking a pinch of the white powder inside and dropping it into his mouth. When Father had nodded his approval, Ontoquas took a pinch as well, and the taste exploded in her mouth.

Could these barrels contain the white sand?
She thought how happy Bucket would be to have a taste.

Each barrel stood to her waist. They were stacked two high in a tight formation that parted wide enough to allow the trickling stream to wind. It disappeared in shadow somewhere at the stone wall behind the stack. Little light reached this corner of the cave, leaving the barrels to lurk in dark obscurity. Something about them filled her with foreboding.

Maybe Abamacho lives inside them,
she considered. Ontoquas scowled.
Only a little girl fears evil spirits in a wompey’s barrel.
She would have more heart than that.

Still, when she stepped close enough to touch one, her fingers trembled.

“Sugar.” That was the
wompey
word for it. Sugar.

She knew barrels held other things too, more useful than sugar: salt pork, dried fish, cornmeal. Her stomach twisted with hunger. When was the last time she had anything to eat?

When had Bucket last eaten?
She turned a worried look back to him, but his peaceful stirrings quelled her worries.

Ontoquas grabbed the rim of the nearest barrel. It
balanced neatly atop an identical one beneath it. She wrestled it awkwardly, and it moved beneath her efforts. The barrel was heavy, but she found that she could rock it onto one edge and spin it slightly so that it shifted outward a few inches before settling flat. She yanked at it again, and again it curled out toward her. Ontoquas swooned from the effort, and she took a deep breath. She had little strength after the ship voyage, and nearly none after the long journey with the dolphins.

When her dizziness steadied, she heaved again. This time the barrel spun easily along the lid of the one beneath it, and Ontoquas had to step away quickly. The barrel teetered at the brink, overbalanced, and pitched to the stone floor. A loud
crack!
filled the air when it landed askew.

Ontoquas righted the barrel and saw that the ring of copper fitted over the top had come loose. She pulled at it, and the rusted tacks that held it gave way. She cast it aside and pulled at the staves.

Nothing. No movement. She pressed one palm against the far lip and pulled at the nearer one, gritting her teeth and straining.

Please please please!

Still nothing. She just was not strong enough. But she could not give up.

She cast her eyes about the gloom for a rock, but seeing none, she moved along the edge of the stacks, skimming her hands along the tops of the barrels.

“A quit, nees, nis . . .”
She began to count them aloud
but gave up after a few dozen. She figured perhaps fifty barrels were in the stacks all told. As she moved back down the line of barrels to the spot where she had begun, her fingers pushed against something hard. There was a scraping sound, and then some object tumbled in the space between barrel stacks, rattling its way to the ground. Ontoquas jumped backward in surprise, then crouched and reached into the darkness between barrel stacks. She withdrew the object slowly and held it toward the light.