In bed, his dreaming self heard his own voice give a long, low moan, partly in distress, mostly in confusion. His other self outside in the snowstorm wasn’t confused at all, though. His body pushed up with one scaled back paw, taking flight, using the wind to soar, banking against the blizzard’s sudden gusts.
He smelled the cold of the snow, but also the musky heat of the dragon. He felt an irrational fury toward the creature and what it had done, for burning the St. Louis Government House, the carriage with the horses still in harness, and for the more general attacks on the expedition, how the revenants had killed the three men who had stolen the whiskey. Now the dragon was searching for…my birdie and her egg?
Meriwether did know that he would defend that poor “bird” against the dragon with all his might.
Due to his anger, a sound like a screamed roar emerged from his mouth, and he found the dragon above him, a huge figure, three times the dream-Meriwether’s own size and ten times as threatening.
The dragon didn’t expect him flying here in the dream, and Meriwether beat his wings and came at it from behind, half hidden by the dragon’s own wing. The dragon tried to turn, to gush flame at Meriwether, but before he could, Meriwether had sunk his teeth in the dragon’s neck. Something like liquor flowed down his long throat, powerful, burning, and intoxicating.
Flying and fighting through the winter storm, the dragon let out a cry like the screams of a dozen dying men. And then it vanished.
Meriwether found himself flying alone in the storm, dizzy and drunk on dragon blood, his mind full of thoughts that weren’t his.
“Captain, Captain!” a voice called. “Captain Lewis!”
His dragon-self hurtled down through the sky and crashed painfully into his human body.
And Meriwether sat up in bed, soaked with sweat and shivering.
One of the two inside sentries faced him, Captain Clark’s man York, who had accompanied their expedition from the beginning. “Are you all right, Captain?”
“I…I was just having a nightmare. I will be fine.”
Though the large man mostly served Captain Clark, the men had forgotten he’d once been a slave, and none of them asked questions about the turmoil of the territories back east, the wars for and against slavery, the different systems of government that had sprung up since the Sundering. During their perilous journey up the Missouri, York had saved and been saved by them as much as anyone else. He was so good at cards, in fact, that most of the men in Fort Mandan owed him money.
Now, York still clutched his hand of cards, but he didn’t look at all happy. “I came to wake you, sir, because we have a visitor. The outside sentries say they have a woman who needs our help. She came through the storm.”
“A woman?” Meriwether asked, running his hand through his hair, trying to bring some sort of order to the locks sleep and his wild dream had disarrayed.
“A native woman, sir. She looks in very bad shape, they say. She’s pregnant, very much so…and, sir, she may be giving birth right now.”
As he swung out of bed, Meriwether considered that it might be a trap, some sort of ambush sprung by the evil force, by the voice of the dragon. After walking revenants, giant lizards, and actual dragons, anything was possible. Might not the dark enemy insinuate a weak person, a seeming victim into their midst, and thus take advantage of their compassion?
On the other hand, he had acquired a strange knowledge when his dream self had swallowed the dragon’s blood. The dark enemy had truly been running on dregs of strength, trying to find a target, a connection it couldn’t otherwise reach. After the fight in the dream, Meriwether knew he had taken the dragon by surprise and nearly killed him. “I’ll come. What are the sentinels doing? Where is this woman?”
“Pryor is bringing her in, sir.”
Meriwether nodded. “Bring her to my room. Quickly. Is she wounded? I presume she is not a revenant, like the possessed tribesmen?”
“No, sir. She’s alive, but she looks like she’s been walking for months, and starving most of that time. Her clothes are torn and dirty, and she’s not dressed for the cold outside.”
He pulled on his buckskin breeches and a heavy shirt, which warmed him from the coldness inside, though the cozy interior of Fort Mandan was not cold, despite the continuous snow and wind outside. The walls were snug, and they kept a fire going in the central fireplace. Without interior doors, the warmth permeated everything.
This close to his disturbing dream encounter with the dragon, he would and could trust nothing. “If she’s human, she has survived a land filled with magical depredations. We’ll do what we can for her.”
He did, however, make sure his rifle was near at hand, should he need it.
The big pot of water that hung near the fire steamed with the heat, and Meriwether mixed hot water with some snow in a basin for the appropriate temperature. He rolled his shirtsleeves and washed his face and his arms up to the elbows, using a hard cake of soap.
If he was greeting a woman, however bedraggled, he wanted to look somewhat presentable, and if she was truly in labor, then he would need to be as clean as possible. In his youth, his mother had taught him much about practical medicine and as the household healer to Thomas Jefferson, it had been part of his duties to deliver the children of all of Jefferson’s dependents. Plants and magic often eased the delivery.
By the time he’d dried his hands, some of the men had piled blankets atop his bed. Pryor came in carrying in his arms a girl in native clothing. Her long hair was tangled and windblown, her deerskin clothes caked with dirt, torn, ragged. Pryor laid her carefully in the blankets and one man brought lanterns closer, so Meriwether could see her.
The girl was young, very young. Personally, he’d never found the native women handsome, though he was sometimes shocked at how casually they disrobed in front of men. It seemed to represent a certain lack of modesty. But this one had a striking character, an exotic quality that went beyond her race. He sensed that immediately. Also something akin to a bond, as though they were two of a kind, as though she were a friend, long parted from him. The feeling shocked him, and he forced himself to evaluate her dispassionately.
She had straight black hair, bronze skin, and the wide, flat facial features of the local tribes. In the keelboat, the expedition had passed many such women and girls, hard at work in manual labor, or just standing still in their buffalo hides. She could have been one of the native wives of interpreters who had traveled with the expedition or one of the women who had formed casual liaisons with the men since they’d been at Fort Mandan. This woman was very young, very tired, and very pregnant. The candlelight and the fireplace softened her features and made her prettier.
But when she opened her dark eyes and looked directly at him, Meriwether understood that she was someone unique, special, and again he felt as though they’d known each other a long time. The moment their eyes locked felt like an instant, inarguable connection. It drew an exclamation of startled recognition from Meriwether, and made him say, “Oh.”
He asked the men to fetch one of the interpreters, preferably LaBiche, to communicate with the girl, to explain that he meant her no harm and that he would try to help her with the birth of her child, if she was indeed in labor.
He thought she would feel better if a woman were present, but the women still with the expedition were those casual liaisons of the men. Not exactly trustworthy midwives.
He cast his eye at her swollen belly with some misgiving. He’d delivered babies a few times before in his life, but this girl was so young. Her midriff seemed enormous, much too big for her small frame.
From his experience, the native women had little or no modesty. He guessed that what she needed most was gentling, being told that he would help her. When LaBiche did not immediately arrive, Meriwether tried in his rusty and scant French, “I do not hurt you. I see how baby is coming.”