Page 129 of Dark Tides
“I pass like a spirit from one world into another, I tell of what I have seen. But then I go back and speak of where I have been,” Wussaus-mon remarked. “And every day I fear that I am not translating one to another; but just making the misunderstanding worse. I am trying to bring these two worlds together but all they do is grind against each other. They don’t trust each other, nobody wants to hear what I say, and they both believe I am a liar and a spy.”
“Is that like Squanto? And Hobbamok?”
There was a silence, as if Wussausmon could not bear to say yes.
“You know you were afraid of the forest and I told you to take every step with knowledge? Knowing where you were and what was all around you?”
“Yes?”
“I feel like I have lost my knowledge,” Wussausmon said veryquietly. “Sometimes when I am walking alone I feel that someone is watching me. Sometimes at night I wake in the darkness and I think someone is looking down on me. I feel as if someone is behind me.”
“Who?” Ned asked. “Maybe an Indian? Maybe an English spy?”
“A ghost,” Wussausmon whispered. “Perhaps Death himself is walking beside me these days, following in my tracks like a friend.”
Ned shivered. “The times are bad, but you’ll pull through,” he said heartily. He poured another small cup of cider. “These are midwinter fears. Too much cold and darkness!”
Wussausmon did not argue. He sipped his drink, his eyes on the red embers of the fire. “I’ll tell you something strange about those two,” he said.
“What two?”
“Squanto and Hobbamok. Something no Coatman knows—unless they know our language well. Squanto had been kidnapped when he was a boy, poor child. He was taken to Spain to be sold as a slave, and then to London; he lived among you Englishmen, he knew all about you. He found a ship that was sailing for here and he got himself on board, he knew what he was doing, he was determined to come back to his home. The Englishmen on board used him as a guide and he directed them to his own village, hoping to get back to his own people. But when he found his village it was empty, completely silent.”
“Why?” Ned asked uneasily.
“It was the killing disease that the Coatmen first brought. All his people were dead, all his friends and family were gone, died of the Coatmen’s illnesses, the Coatmen’s curse. He guided the ship onwards to where they met with some people who were still alive. He told them he was a child of the dead and his name was Squanto.”
“Yes?” Ned said cautiously.
“His name was not Squanto.”
“It was not?”
“No. Never. That was the name he used when he came back to his own people, and found them dead, when he brought the Coatmen to his fields where they would release their own dirty animals. He took a new name that the Coatmen would not understand, and he went to his own people under that name. He spoke to his people under a namethat they would understand. As a warning, so they knew what he was, and that he was false to them.”
“Squanto?”
“Squanto is the name of a bad god: a devil, you would call him. One that brings mischief and despair.”
Ned shivered though the fire was warm. “We were guided here by a man who called himself a devil?” he asked.
“And Hobbamok.”
“What does that name mean?”
Wussausmon shrugged. “It’s almost the same. Hobbamok is another of our gods: a trickster god, one who loves wickedness and cruel play.”
“The guides who brought us here were devils? Roaming the world to set us against one another?”
Wussausmon nodded as the men sat in silence, as if they were listening for a ghost to answer them.
“It makes me think, Ferryman. What did they know, those men who crossed from one world to another, who tried to live between two worlds? What did they know that they both named themselves for the bringers of grief, of trouble, of death? Did they know more than you and me? Do you think they knew that if you go from one world to another you are bound to destroy them both? Do you think they were saying that a go-between is always a translator from one hell to another?”
“Have you told anyone this?” Ned asked. “Does Roger Williams have these names in his great dictionary of your language?”
“I’ve told no one but you,” Wussausmon said quietly. “Who would listen but another man who goes from one world to another doing the devil’s work?”
“I’m not doing the devil’s work,” Ned said staunchly.
