Bly stomped on Chayton’s ribs, and Chayton turned his face into the dirt, letting out an empty cry. The kind that takes your voice away.
“Get up, you coward!”Bly shouted in their native language.
My muscles stiffened, and I gripped the knife’s wooden handle in my fist.
Mother begged me in a whisper to leave it be, but before I could stop, I already found myself within the barriers of the wooden fence with only one goal in mind.
Bly turned to me, wearing animal hide as armor.
“What is the matter with you, wendigo?”
Monster. Assumptions had already been made about me.
Everything about me differed from them. My height, my hidden face, my gloved hands that were two doors into the past, and my eyes which I had been told many times mirrored the soulless creature living within me.
Though Bly could not see my lack of expression or hear my angry-stricken heart pounding inside my chest, I remained stoic beneath the sack.
I shed my gloves and picked up the club from the ground.
I tossed it into the air and caught it with my left hand.
The training club was heavy and unbalanced, intending to build muscle in the arms, when a memory invaded me:skinning wood into stakes under a sweltering sun and a pot of melting iron hanging over a fire, blistering my feet.A reminder that I had built them that way.
The boys surrounded me in a circle, howling with laughter at my brazenness toward Bly by standing here. I tried to shut them out of my mind and took a step forward when one shoved my left shoulder blade.
“Why do you not take off your sack?”the boy asked.
The question paralyzed me.
Then another shove to my right shoulder from a second boy.
“What are you hiding under there?”
And another.“Will you feed on our souls like the malevolent cannibal you are?”asked a third, and I urged my foot forward.
By this time, Chayton was standing again, but the insults had already shifted from him to me. Perhaps it was what I wanted. The reason I’d jumped the fence. To take back the taunting because I couldn’t bear to see it targeting someone who did not deserve it.
One more step, and I was peering down at Chayton’s domineering father.
Bly cocked his head with a challenge in his smile.“Are you just going to stand there?”
I scanned my surroundings. All the boys had their humor-filled eyes narrowed at me. William, a European settler the tribe had taken in, watched from afar under the tree’s shade, peeling an apple with the sharp side of his blade. Even he had stopped what he was doing to witness the exchange.
Bly poked the point of his club into my shoulder.
“Come on, then!”he shouted.
An animalistic growl left me, and I charged after him.
Our weapons clashed, and Bly blocked my advance. Kicking him in the midsection, I swung my leg up, followed by another blow to the staggering brick. Bly used his shield to block the impact, took many steps back, flexed his chest, and narrowed his eyes.
“Again!”he shouted, angrier than before.
Right step, swing, blow. Left step, swing, blow. Thunder erupted between us, the earth sustaining me in the fight, its pulses spreading through my feet and legs. All the boys stepped back and formed a large circle around us.
Bly was known to be the fiercest warrior in the tribe, and though he met each advance, he could not get ahead. While he remained on defense, sweat leaked from his brows. He was tiring, much like the white-tailed deer I would hunt every morning.
I took Bly to the ground and sat atop him. My blade pressed against his throat.
