Chapter 9:

The silence of the the forest encased the cabin in peace. Dragonfly and Peter sat next to the fire to warm themselves. In the distance, the wolves were howling in the moonlit night. Their singing was eerily comforting to Peter. The animal songs of the night was in full force and echoed through the trees. Yet, the wind rested and the snow drifted around the cabin.

Mary and Marcus sat at the table writing a letter to Joseph about their visitor. They glanced over to the pair warming by fire and smiled. They felt certain that they do not have to worry about the boy running now that he and Dragonfly had their talk. They folded the letter and gave it to an owl and sent the letter on its way.

The tea kettle began singing and the steam was lofting out of the spout. “Screeeee” it sang, and Mary rose to tend to the kettle. She reached up and grabbed a jar filled with her special brew of tea from the shelf. She chanted a small spell and added hot water to the pot. As it steeped, she set four cups on the countertop and added in a touch of honey to each cup. In each saucer, Mary added a little cookie on the saucer to go with the tea. She poured the tea and called the friends to the table.

Marcus was weary from the day’s work and he wore the weariness like a mask on his face. “Peter, tomorrow I have to go to town. I see that you don’t have any winter clothes. What size do you think you will wear?”

After a sip of tea, and a moment of scribbling on the paper, he wrote, “I don’t know. I just wore what ever was given to me.”

A light in the corner began to flicker. The party looked at it and watched it flicker out.

“Crack!”, ”Crack!”, rang through the room.

”What’s going on?” Peter yelled to Mary.

“I guess we have company.”, she said.

Mary got up from her chair and walked behind Peter who was sitting in his chair. She covered the boy and Dragonfly prepared to fight. They listened and a knock sounded from the door.

“Markus and Mary! Open up!” Robert yell through the door.

With a sigh of relief with the familiar voice, Mary moved to unlock the door. A green light framed the door and receded into nothingness and Mary opened the door. Robert and Jack appeared through the opened doorway and entered the cabin.

“We came to let you know that more are coming. Sara’s rescue came with a glitch. Joseph went to rescue them and they will arrive her shortly.”

The night’s silence was broken once again and the loud cracking noise announced that the others were there. They ran to the door to see Joseph, Lyra, Jamison, Jacque and Sarah and a boy walking towards them. With a confused look on their face, Markus and Mary welcomed their friends into their home.

Mary walked up to Jacque and lowered the blanket that was covering Sarah’s face. The child’s scared eyes emerged followed by a nose. Sarah pushed tighter into Jacque’s shoulder for she didn’t know this woman. Lyra walked over to Mary and gave her a hug. Sarah watched the women with interest. She listened to their chatter and she emerged from under the blanket. Jacque placed her down on the floor and wrapped the blanket around her shoulders as she stood there.

“Sarah, come and meet Mary and Markus.” said Lyra.

Sarah stood still for a moment and looked up at Jacque. Jacque nodded and he smiled at her. An audible gasp could be heard through the room. Time stood still as everyone stood there staring at Jacque.

“Ah, just this quick, I forgot that Sarah had fixed my face.” said Jacque in a shy matter. He was not use to being stared at like they all were doing.

Lyra walked over to Jacque to examine his scar. The scar was no longer thick and bubbling on his skin. There was only a red mark that ran down the side of his face. He was no longer marred and he smiled at his friend.

Lyra turned to Sarah with a smile. “You did this child? You can actually heal injuries like this?”

Sarah looked at her feet. “I found out I could do that about three years ago. There was a young boy who was beaten and his welts went away when I told them to. They just listened to me and went away.” She looked up at her friend, “I thought I would give it a try on Jacque and it worked.”

Jack walked over the the child and kneeled in front of her. “Dragonfly, Please, show us her mark.”

Dragonfly rose off the floor and bounded over the table to stand in front of the child. Sarah’s eyes widened and she slowly walked backwards until she leaned on Jacque‘s legs. She had never seen Dragonfly’s kind. Dragonfly tried to smile to comfort the child but that only made her turn and hide her face in Jacques stomach.

“Here, here child, he will not harm you. We must see what can’t be seen. Dragonfly can show us. He will not harm you.” Jacque gave Sarah a little squeeze and turned her around to look at Dragonfly.

“My mark is covered. No one can see it now.” said Sarah.

Dragonfly reached for his quiver where the black arrow slumbered. Dragonfly snapped his fingers and the arrow jumped into his hand. He turned to face Sarah with a smile. His wide half toothless grin scared her a bit. His midnight dark eyes spoke of death yet, she knew, somehow, that she was safe. Sarah’s eyes widened as the tip of Dragonfly’s arrow was lowered to her face.

“So child, where do we look for your mark?” hissed Dragonfly.

With a shiver, Sarah lifted her sleeve to reveal her arm. Nothing but skin was all that could be seen. The creature thumped a few steps and touched the arrow onto Sarah’s arm and said, “Reveal.”

The white light from the arrow began to glow and, as it worked, it grew warmer. Soon, the outline of Sarah’s mark began to appear. First a slight red swaying line began to appear. The arrow’s heat increased and the mark became clearer to those watching. The warmth of the arrow began to fill Sarah with comfort as she watched the brown windlike birthmark appear on her arm.

“Whoa! Look at that!” Sarah turned to see Chavo standing behind Joseph.

“Chavo. What are you doing here?” said Sarah.

Chavo stopped when he realized that Sarah didn’t know he stowed away in the truck. He mindlessly kicked at a chair leg as he thought about what to say. The day had been unexplainable so far.

“Well, you see, Jade put me in the truck so I could get a message to Robert. Then, Joseph had to come and rescue us from the Wendigo. Somehow, we ended up here.” He looked around the cabin and the guest there in.

”Well, I guess I better make more tea so we can hear this whole story.” Said Mary. “Lyra, will you summon Verna to this gathering? I think she might find Sarah very interesting.”

Just then, a bowl from under the sink flew up to the countertop, and with a sweep of her hand, Mary filled the bowl with spring water for Lyra to use. In a matter of minutes, the bowl was glowing and Verna agreed to travel to them. A moment later, a crack could be heard outside and Markus went to greet the arriving guest.

The stout little lady came into the house and took off her coat and hat. Verna’s freckles could be seen easily and her dark curls sprung to life once the hat was removed.

“So, what’s the emergency?” Verna asked.

“There is none, but I want everyone here to hear all that had happened today.” said Joseph. “I believe we are in a pickle here.” He steadied his eyes on Chavo. “We had two things happen today that we had never anticipated.”

Chavo lowered his eyes for he felt ashamed to be a part of the problem. However, he knew that his part was a minor one, but how does he tell them all about the monster. He wondered; What is a wendigo? Why was he brought here? Where was here? He began to shake from fear and exhaustion as all eyes were leveled upon him. He felt all his nerves at edge for he never had to speak n front of so many people.

“Jack, run a smudge for us please, before we have the boy tell his tale.” said Robert.

The older medicine man began the chore of preparing the smudge. His leather backpack was placed on the table where he extracted the sage and his little iron pan. Everyone watched in silence as Jack prepared the sage for smudging. Before lighting the sage, Jack pulled out a long red covered card like case from the bag and pulled out his feather and placed it on the table.

As Jack worked, the children inched closer and closer to the table to watch the man work. They watched every move he made and how intent in his work he was. For the first time, in many years, they were with their people. When Jack took out a stick, walked to the fire, they watched him walk a little fire lit stick back to the pan. They watched the fire on the stick catch the sage afire. After a moment, they could smell the smoke fill their noses with a familiar smell. For a moment, Sarah closed her eyes to just breathe in the scent. Jack worked to smudge everyone and Sarah waited for her turn.

Six years had passed since Sarah had been with her own people. She watched everyone before her so she knew what to do. Jack’s eyes focused in on the young girl and placed the burning sage in front of her. Sarah took in a deep breath and held it for a moment. It burned her lungs slightly then she exhaled a sigh of relief. She washed her hands, arms, hair and face in the smoke. Jack in turn smudged the front and the back of her. Sarah felt lighter and her mind was clearer as Jack moved on to the next person.

”Now, that everyone has been cleaned,” Robert turned to Chavo, “It is time to tell your tale.”

”Let’s get comfortable first.” said Mary. She waved her wand and chairs appeared and the guest took off their coats and sat down around the table.

Chavo watched chairs popped up out of nowhere. No one, including Robert and Jack, seemed to think that this was an odd thing to happen. He watched people situate their chairs around a the table that seemed to grow in size. The table grew so big that it nearly filled the room. However, everyone seemed to have their own comfortable space. This was absolutely crazy and even the Medicine Man accepted the odd events as normal. Once everyone was seated, he watched cups of tea floating in the air as a teapot filled it. Chavo just sat there feeling very overwhelmed. At the chaos in this unfamiliar surroundings.

Peter walked up to Chavo and handed him a note that said, “No, you are not going crazy, they are magic folk. I’ll explain more later.” He smiled at Chavo and walked away and sat down in his seat.