Revenge

Wabeno - Part 1, Chapter 11

The sun dipped below the western horizon, casting the forest into twilight. Tall white birch trees swayed in the breeze, standing as silent sentinels witnessing Wabeno’s revenge. As the shadows grew longer, night creatures scurried near the clearing, curious about the strange ritual. Through the thin veil that separates the spirit world from Earth, the manitous watched. Many opposed Wabeno’s actions, but a few approved and lent their power to his cause. 

The Anishinabek feared witches because they could deny free will and disrupt the natural order of creation. They compelled people and animals to act against their will, controlling hearts and minds, holding them spellbound, and leaving no memory of their crimes. They manipulated nature, drawing power from friendly spirits to summon storms, cause droughts, and even call upon Wendigos, hungry cannibal spirits that grew more ravenous the more they fed. While a shaman represented the community, healing and communicating with the spirit world to aid their people, a witch worked solely for selfish reasons, seeking revenge or profit from someone else's suffering. 

Wabeno sat on a stump behind the old cabin near the river, mashing white baneberries into a pulp with an antique mortar and pestle. His teacher called them “Doll’s Eyes” because the berries resembled narrow pupils gazing out from gleaming white corneas attached to blood-red stalks. They turned into a white paste with black streaks, emitting a vaguely pleasant aroma. A few paces away, hanging from a low branch by a thin sinew thread, a white-washed wooden effigy carved in a man’s shape swung back and forth. Closer inspection showed a notched hollow in the chest, into which Wabeno had put a chunk of rotting bear meat, with a single porcupine quill embedded in the flesh. As if influenced by malevolent forces, the wind picked up and rocked the effigy, grinding its sinew tether against the bark. 

Looking at the swaying white man, Wabeno grinned and went back to his work. Reaching into his pocket, he took out the stolen hair from Dietrich's fortress and mashed the strands into the gray paste. Next to him, a foul-smelling plastic bag held the final ingredient to complete the bichibowin, the witch poison. He pulled out a piece of rotting bear meat, gagging slightly at the awful smell, cut a slit down the middle with his penknife, and filled the cavity with the hair mixture. Carefully, he stitched the incision closed and hid the decaying flesh inside a new carved effigy, a twin to its brother hanging from the tree, except for the addition of breasts and hair. With his preparations finished, Wabeno waited for nightfall.

He built his fire before dusk but waited until the day’s last auburn glow to ignite it. The birch bark stuffed amid the kindling caught immediately, setting the conical pyre ablaze. Whipped by the wind, the flames danced wildly, seemingly intelligent and full of terrible will. Wabeno turned to the death tree as the wind harassed the white man, fraying his sinew-bound spirit until the effigy fell to the earth. Andrew landed face down in the fertile river soil, meaning he could never return to Earth for revenge. In the distance, a screech owl howled. Wabeno spoke into the fire, a single word: “Netamising.”

The first. 

Stepping on the fallen man and pressing his face into the ground, Wabeno tethered his second victim to the death tree. The wind immediately caught the thin cord, rubbing it against the bark. Peter Dietrich’s daughter now lived on borrowed time, maybe days or weeks, but sooner or later, her lifeline would be cut. Even as Wabeno stood there, Ellen succumbed to the wasting sickness. It was an old trick—hurting enemies by killing their loved ones. Dietrich took everything from Wabeno, and now he suffered through his children’s agonizing death. A poetic memory from his youth flashed in Wabeno’s mind: “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.”