Murky green light escaped the branches above me through their canopy of last leaves. Ever-changing sunlight illuminated the path as I rose beneath the forest shadows. Red hair, gifted from my mother, reflected the beams in ultraviolet luminescence. Wearing a fringed, old coat of goat hide, my back became the canvas for this painting of light, seeping through the wispy branches of oak. Retrieving a small bag at my side, I opened it and placed my treasure: moonflower blossom, leaves, and vine. Cinching the satchel tight, I looped its leather ties through my belt.

Hickory trees towered my petite frame as I crossed the creek with ancient knowledge, gained from many moonlit crossings through this, my last home in the forested mountain valley. Moccasin-covered feet paddled through the light and shadow, following the path of the rabbit, the deer, skittering in quick bursts before me. My feet glided unencumbered above the ground. 

Golden streams of light faded to hues of blue while storm clouds fronted their way into the sanctity of my quiet. Thunder in the distance woke the owl. His eyes opened, startled wide and golden. I stopped and held his gaze. Mind to mind, I acknowledged the owl’s warning of the storm’s approach this upcoming night. I turned forward to proceed home but stopped, in awe, mistrusting my vision.

Translucent against the grassy distance, Papa appeared, dressed in our people’s regalia; gray and black feathers adorned his buckskins. He reached for me. I feared running to him meant he might dim, disappear. Remembering his warmth, I watched him with my child’s eyes and followed his stained hands, pointing to the owl’s mighty talons grasping the top branch.

Papa’s spirit walked to me, free of limp and cane. Once beside me, he pantomimed his bedtime story of the woman who married the owl, one he’d told me hundreds of times.

Papa’s legend was just for me, one he didn’t share with my brothers or sisters. He began then as he did now, with arms stretched wide, like wings. In human form, the owl husband provided only insignificant creatures for his new wife to eat. Once learning his secret, the new wife released him from his marriage vow. He transformed back to his bird form and flew to the utmost branches. Although she shunned him, he watched her, protected her while she remained on Earth.

Papa’s spirit laughed at his tale again tonight, as he had many nights before, touching my cheeks and eyelids with a feather’s softness. His hands signed, 

“Don’t marry the owl, Moonbeam. No one is smart enough for you.”

Papa’s spirit rose to the heavens, although his smell remained, air tinted with pine sap and fresh ink, black pepper and saddle leather.

In Papa’s absence, my eyes met the owl as his attention shifted from protection to the hunt. He angled his head to the east and focused on the ground. His wings spread aside to dive, talons extended in silent might. His prey was lost to me after his descending swoop into the earth-littering brush. Owl attacked a sound, a rattle not reaching my ears.

Changing light from approaching clouds reminded me of my task. Proceeding to the edge of the valley, I slowed my pace and emerged from the dense forest to sense the rising charge. Hair on my arms lifted. Static traveled up from the ground and down from the air to connect through me. At this distance, lightning-filled clouds arced in blinding brightness, turning the sky’s gray-blues into hues of momentary purple. As I turned away, the heavens shook in long, slow vibrations of thunder following each incandescent crescent of light. Wind blew the storm to me. With attuned eyes, I followed its fate, shaming the clouds for snuffing emerging night’s stars.

With deliberate steps, I crossed the high grasses bordering my secluded valley. I waded through, like stepping in knee-deep water. Behind me, the suffocated, dusky sunlight faded as the approaching wind swarmed me. Like bees knocked from a hive, wind blew my coat away from my frame, filling and blowing it outward like blazing flames from the first fire. Loose red hair atop my head wound and twisted into an unformed crown woven by wind’s skillful hand. I tempted the same current to raise me to the Nightland, to Skili, to Honey, to Papa, to Momma.

Nearby, rabbits and squirrels ceased to scurry and burrowed for cover; birds hid their heads under their wings, preparing for the tumultuous night. Nature braced itself for the rain and wind, quiet and still. I knew this storm. Grandmother told me the story of the Brothers of Thunder: one brother wild, the other tame as they played ball in the sky, shaking the earth below. They were the sons of Selu, born from the corn, and Kanati, the hunter.

I pushed open the deer horn handle and stepped up slabs of slanted wood on their stone foundation to the awaiting calm of my single-room cabin. Aromas from herbs of summer’s last color blew from the sudden atmospheric change, filling the air with fragrances of plantain, jewelweed, yellow root, sassafras. These herbs were necessary for my work. Dried to death, these medicines healed the sick, both slave and Cherokee alike. My grandmother taught me, Papa’s mother. She trained me to watch the plant, to understand the root, to respect the illness, to administer the remedy. If the Great Spirit sent disease to take man or woman from the Earth, no intervention would prevail.

Digaleni, my sleeping redbone coonhound, sprawled beside my door with his hind legs stretched behind him. He opened one eye in acknowledgment as I pushed the door closed against the intrusive wind. I set the large, wooden latch swung from a nail in the wall. Outside, imminent rain turned the leaves of the sturdy oak downside up as the storm charged upon the land. Beneath my feet, the floor trembled.

I made this desk and its awaiting chair from driftwood flowing down the Oostanaula River near here. Lying open was my plant journal, homemade with brittle parchment of brown and gray, covered with goat hide. Edges and corners, bent and faded, were worn lighter than the cover itself. This volume contained secrets from the forest: pressed in life, preserved in death, and sketched with homemade ink from walnut shells and rusty nails. My journals contained the lessons learned from a life of sight; so many, they hid the floor. I pressed the moonflower between its blank pages. Captured this evening before the storm, this young blossom was open and full. Now, the bloom slept in perpetual night. Alive, the moonflower opened its petals only at midnight. Ground in mortar, pummeled by pestle, these blooms stopped life short. Flowers brought illness, tremors, visions, death. Some warriors fought with pistols, some with tomahawks; my weapons were not forged but grown. As if a warning against such weighty thoughts, the wooden planks renewed their rumblings.

 From the closed book, I reached for the emerging ribbon marking my page. Frayed from age, the green velvet ribbon slid between my thumb and finger, still soft on one side and silken on the other. Momma’s image collected behind my eyes, dressed in the ribbon’s same shade. From my memory, Momma appeared youthful, her red hair holding green ribbons in braided locks against blossoming white skin. Papa called Momma Dh Ani, his strawberry.

Opening my eyes, I reached for an older volume, one overflowing with scribed and sheathed memories. I traced my hands over Papa’s script in Cherokee syllabary and English letters. My lessons began before my feet met the end of the chair. Papa sat me on his lap, writing questions, asking for my answers in one language and then another. As I grew taller, he stood behind me, running his hands through my hair as I practiced. His notes became longer as my child’s scrawling script became smaller, each question more important and complex than the last. I turned each page where his hands had been. What would he write to me now? If I could only craft another answer.

Subsequent pages showed Momma’s small script in words, love behind drawings of flowers and herbs. “To my Moonbeam,” headed each rendering. No matter how tall I became, Momma addressed me the same. She’d write, “God made you from the sun and sent you to the Moon, who loved so bright.” This drawing held a moonflower, like the one I pulled from the ground. I bent to the words and rested my head. Momma’s breast returned my embrace.

Thunder shook the oak tree’s limbs, sheltering my cabin. Through the cracked glass, blue lightning cast a shadow on the floor: white man’s silhouette in a brimmed hat, black against the grain of the floor. I feared this sign, a warning of dangerous strangers. Cold rushed through me. The shape disappeared as fast as it revealed itself. White men still tempted, taking more than a single life could offer: Home, Heritage, Legacy, and Legend.

Storm clouds stole the last daylight while I removed my coat. In the sudden darkness, my hand reached for the cold pewter candle holder, topped with beeswax stick and wick. Carrying it to the wood-burning stove near the window, I pulled a twig from a thin broom, its usefulness long forgotten, and removed a switch, touching it to an ember in the banked fire. Smoke billowed into the cabin from the stove’s door. The switch sparked. I torched the candlewick in its man-made rest and returned to the wood-burning stove, dragging the chair behind me—the tree’s extension of my hand. Opening the stove door and loading the iron beast with oak, wood smoked, ignited. This weather premeditated more of its kind: a harsh, blowing fall that doused and chilled the bones of those left outside under tonight’s storm’s revenge.

I removed my leather shoes and woolen socks, stretching out my legs near the fire. Digaleni stirred and stood, expecting the stove’s radiant heat. He stretched his hind legs, extending his hindquarters high as his ears weighed his head low. He slunk for a scratch behind his namesake—Digaleni, ears in English—and sank low in front of the stove. I propped my feet atop his shoulder blades, both of us content to remain for the upcoming hours of this full moon’s rebellious storm.

Anxious rain pelted the roof with innumerable drops. Water collected in an old iron pot from a small hole in the roof where the oak’s branches grew through weaker boards. Neither limb nor rain intruded, was only a welcomed, accustomed guest. Like two people sitting with their backs together, my home and oak tree held one another upright.

I grabbed a spool and my hoop from Momma’s sewing box beside my chair. Using my teeth to separate a strand, I licked the thread to make it straight and held the needle steady to weave the cotton thread through the eye. With the muslin-covered hoop angled in my lap, I stitched from practice and skill. With continued minute and deliberate gestures, a border formed with each stitch. Then, with keen eyes, I rethreaded the needle. This time, instead of thread, I used a strand of my hair, licking the end before threading the eye.

From here, I sewed with my eyes closed, each stitch guided by touch alone. The door rattled against the wind. Not hearing, I sewed one petal of the incomplete moonflower. I must complete this task tonight. Opening my eyes, I saw the shape of the full bloom, filling with my hair, sewn by my fingers. I continued to the next. 

Digaleni stood with a slow-rumbled woof to the door while I sewed and prayed to the Great Spirit for an hour longer. The rain beat and blew. With one last elaborate pull and knot, the poisonous moonflower was complete but starkly different from the one between the pages. It contrasted in color from the bloom, as do I, with my blood from two nations. 

From exhaustion, the rain ceased its tantrum. The moon looked peacefully again upon the Earth. While the Thunder Brother, the one that lost the game, growled and rumbled with resignation from the far side of the mountain. I moved to my bed and dreamt of bird spirits who lost their wings and transformed into great white snakes.

Daylight found my eyes in the eastern sky’s morning haze. It turned colder. Digaleni pawed beside the door as I rubbed my eyes against the day’s masked sun. I moved first to sit and then to stand and walked to lift the latch. Digaleni bounded down the steps and pawed at the grassy ground. I could not see what he sought. Then, his body contorted and limped away, darkened within my standing shadow. He fell on his side, curled, and did not move again. With hurried steps, I reached for him. The rattler struck, jaws spread wide, clamping onto my outstretched forearm. I gasped with escaping breath—soundless.   

Poison seeped into my blood. My eyes clouded as I fell. My body spilled down the stairs. The snake slithered across my tousled strands into the grass. Having completed his quest, he rattled in triumph. Continuous ticks pulsed in time with my failing heart. Owl’s wings shuttered, and he flew northward.