For the first time she felt a kinship with the white race. She was Indian yet she could see that the Plantscheman people had a heart like hers. Joy of life and of laughter had gone out of them as it had out of her. Like her, they mourned for a young god killed by his enemies and banished to Assowajame, the Place That Is Beyond Our Sight.

IT WAS a spring that must have come straight from the Lands of the Great Spirit. Snow went early. Mud dried. The Plantscheman festival called Pâques passed and after that, La Fête-Dieu, which the priest called Corpus Christi. Kaak, the wild goose, passed in great winged prongs overhead. At night Stone Girl had heard them like dogs barking in the sky. It stirred the wild flavor in her blood. Psquall, the frog, called again from the wet places. Michalappotis, the spider, spun his lace. Madame Corbusier sent both girls out to river fields to gather Masgik, greens, for Plantscheman dishes. The south wind blew. The air warmed and Otter Boy romped in the sun.

Siquonk, spring, did something for Stone Girl, poured balsam on the deep wounds. The past was past now. What was, was, and what is, is. Espan, she felt sure, had found content in the Joyous Hunting Ground. She had begun to feel content herself but Madame Corbusier would not let the past die. Ever since she learned of Espan’s death, she had pressed Stone Girl with questions about her white origins.

“I am sinning against God and your white mother to keep you here so long,” she said firmly. “Now that you lost your Indian husband, we must find your white father.”

She had Stone Girl tell again what she remembered of the red clouds and the pink stone house, of the lady with the yellow hair and what Never Laugh had told her. She brought home Yengwe officials from the east to question her, including the great Sir William Johnson, who had given a ball in the colonel’s quarters. She hoped that one of them might identify her, but all shook their heads. They said they could make nothing from such a hodgepodge of recollections.

Then one day she fetched a big Yengwe officer from Pennsylvania dressed in a blue coat, a wig, and three-cornered hat. Simone reported she did not like the looks of his eyes when she let him in. They saw too much.

“Remember you are of the tribe of Turtle,” she warned Stone Girl in the kitchen. “The turtle has a thick shell. He can draw his head under when others bother him.”

“Sister. I can’t draw my head from Madame Corbusier.”

“No, but you can tell her your mind is Pomi, tallow, and all day you have Wipte, the toothache.”

It wasn’t long before the Madame called Stone Girl into the front room. Otter Boy went after.

“Ah!” the big Yengwe officer began. “So this is the mysterious white captive of the Lenni Lenape?”