“Haha,” I said politely. “How did you come to die? An accident?”
He grinned at me, showing teeth that were visibly worn but mostly present.
“Few people do it on purpose. A snake bit me.” He pushed back his left sleeve and showed me the scar on the underside of his arm: a deep, irregular hollow in his flesh, about two inches long. I took his hand and turned it for a better look. He was very lean, and well hydrated; the larger blood vessels were clearly visible, firm under the skin.
“Good Lord, it looks as though it bit you right in the radial artery. What sort of snake was it?”
“You would call it a rattlesnake.” He didn’t remove my hand, but put his other hand over it. “I knew at once that it had killed me; there was great pain in my arm, and an instant later, I felt the poison strike my heart like an arrow. I grew hot and then so cold that my teeth chattered, though the day was warm. My eyes went dark, and I curled up like a worm, hoping that it wouldn’t last too long.”
It had lasted three days and three nights.
“This was not pleasant,” he assured me. “The False Face Society came, they put poultices upon the wound and danced … I still see their feet, sometimes, when I dream—moccasins shuffling past my face, one after another, on and on … and the masks bending over me, a small drum beating; I can hear that, too, sometimes, and my own heartbeat unsteady, stopping and starting and the drum still beating …”
He stopped for a moment, and I put my free hand over his. After a moment, he took a deep breath and looked at me.
“And I died,” he said. “It was in the deep part of the third night. I must have been asleep when it happened, for I found myself standing by the door of the hut, looking out into the forest and seeing the stars—stars as I have never seen them before or since,” he added softly. “It was so peaceful, so beautiful.”
“I know,” I said, just as softly. We sat for a few moments together, remembering.
The beaver slid down the side of the lodge and swam off, making an arrow of dark water in the shining lake, and the Sachem sighed and let go of my hands.
“I walked—I suppose you would call it walking, though I didn’t seem to have feet—but I went into the woods and walked away from … everything. I was going somewhere, but I didn’t know where. And then I met my second wife.” He paused, an expression of warmth and longing lighting his face.
“She told me she was glad to see me, and would see me again, but not now. I wasn’t meant to come yet; there were things that I needed to do; I had to go back. I didn’t want to,” he said, glancing at me. “I wanted to go with her, toward …” He broke off, shrugging.
“But I did go back. I woke up and I was in the medicine hut and my arm hurt a lot, but I was alive. They told me I had been dead for hours, and they were shocked. I was … resigned.”
“But you weren’t exactly the same person you were before,” I said.
“No. I told them I was not the Sachem anymore; I could see that my nephew was able to lead men in battle and I would be his adviser, but that it was to him that they must look now.”
“And … now you see ghosts?” Jenny had told me what he’d said about Ian the Elder and his leg. Raised every hair on my body, she’d said, and my own nape was prickling.
“Now I see ghosts,” he said, quite matter-of-factly.
“All the time?”
“No, and I am thankful that I don’t. But now and then, there they are. Mostly they have no business with me, nor I with them, and they pass by like a flash of light. But then again …”
He was looking at me in a thoughtful way that raised a few more hairs.
“Do I … have ghosts?” I said, hoping that it wasn’t like having fleas.
He tilted his head to one side, as though inspecting me.
“You lay your hands on many people, to try to heal them. Some of them die, of course, and some of those, I think, follow you for a short time. But they find their way and leave you. You have a small child sometimes near you, but she is very faint. The only other one I have seen with you more than once is a man. He wears spectacles.” He made circles of his thumbs and middle fingers and held them up to his eyes, miming glasses. “And a peculiar hat, with a short brim. I think he must be from your place across the stones, for I have never seen anything like that.”
I honestly thought I was having a heart attack. There was an immense pressure in my chest, and I couldn’t breathe. The Sachem touched my arm, though, and the pressure eased.