FICTION
She Stands by Scott Corrao
She had been sleeping.
Now her cheek is to the ground. Blades of grass caress her and pebbles scrape and she hears what might be her own voice - some strange version of it. Night sounds are everywhere, the shrieks and moans of her people, the strange language of the New Ones. She sees fire. Likwik's wigwam. They built it for their Sachem after being corralled here, so he would not have to sleep under bare sky. Between her and the fire lies the shadow of a shape that was her husband, Aluncuk, who must be dead.
Behind her, New Ones are at work. She knows what they're doing, knows she cannot stop it and this reality suffuses her even as the action unfolds. She cannot believe it is happening, has happened, happens.
She's always been good at squirming. Her cousins never could catch her when they played find-a-moe in the warm months or find-a-ma in the cold. But the New Ones have her now, and though she squirms harder than ever, they hold firm. She tries every muscle, finds them all stymied. Her knees hurt.
The New Ones are nothing like her cousins, or any man she's known. At first the Narragansett thought them not men at all, for they were large. Not fat, but large in a more basic sense, in their bones. They were hairy as well, and their hair was coarse and every color of summer grass but never straight and shiny black as a Narragansett's. The New Ones growled, snuffled and snorted at one another, and at them.
She knows now it is their speech, and that they are not animals but a new breed of man. She knows because they kill not like animals, out of need, but for the sake of killing. While they kill they laugh, and laughter sounds the same from every animal and bird and man there ever was.
The New Ones were many and drove these Scarborough Narragansett — about 400 under the Sachem Likwik, scattered in small, warm-month villages between the river mouth and the Stony Point — west into a field within sight, but not reach, of the sea. They surrounded them here. It has been weeks since she touched water.
And now her cheek to the ground and poor murdered Aluncuk's blood pooled underneath, grassblades growing strange islands through reflected firelight. Hands are about her body; gigantic, stone hands. And now one enters, grunting his human animal grunt and the entry is a white-hot burning anger and hate and — beyond anything else — reality. It is happening. It has happened. It happens.
She hears her own cry, the most heartbreaking sound she's ever heard.
Now one of their voices changes. Laughter stops. A gurgle and a yip. Human noises. The pressure inside her is gone. The hand driving her head into the ground is gone. The hands about her body are gone. She is free to get up off the ground, but all she desires is to make herself small, to curl her knees into her chest and cry for what happened, is happening.
But she stands.
Aluncuk is alive, his body lovely in the firelight. Blood flows from his head, down his back, its current strong as a spring river; and he has killed a New One, cleaved its head with his tanning knife. The rest of the camp is in flames. After squeezing them into an area too small for half their number, depriving them of the ability to hunt, humiliating their Sachem and their children and their elders, the New Ones have moved in. Narragansett run about, naked and screaming. The New Ones walk slow and large, laughing while they kill.
She sees her mother, dead. She sees her cousin Alino, dead. She sees her friend Tequot, dead, and her friend Mawa, dead, and Kiawa, and Matanon, and Ritwit, all dead.
The New Ones came while they slept. They had no chance.
She thinks she is seeing not the present but the future. Her life is the past. This is the hereafter.
Her husband falls. His blade floats a torrent of blood to her feet. She cannot believe how much was in him. She looks into the eyes of Aluncuk's killer and those eyes are inexcusably human.
Other New Ones run toward her. She lifts the knife, Aluncuk's blood on the blade, dripping into the puddle below, seeping into the ground. Narragansett blood is all about this field, pooled in the atmosphere, leeching doen. This happens now.
She holds the knife by her side. This happens now.
They come for her. This happens now.
She lifts the knife up, for husband and family, for herself. This happens now.
And now she stands.
Scott Corrao lives in Narragansett, Rhode Island with his wife Candice. His work is currently online at http://JMWW.150m.com, and forthcoming in the Rose & Thorn e-zine.