Chepi The Butterfly Effect

Chepi The Butterfly Effect.

David Rory O’Neill.

Published by davidrory publishing at Smashwords.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. Copyright David Moody 2018

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Born and raised in Belfast until troubles and tribal violence drove him away, David grew to be a non-conformist and independent soul clinging to his counter-culture ideals. He found peace and his true calling as a storyteller in the literary Irish tradition. He now lives in a lovely restored old art and book-filled house in the lee of the Silvermine Mountains, Tipperary, Ireland. He shares his life there with beloved Brigitte. David Rory O’Neill has written twenty novels and more are bubbling and brewing. http://davidrory.com

Dedications:

My thanks go to Miriam Drori for editorial help and encouragement.

For Brigitte who showed me what love can be.

For Ria who is loved and is my one true legacy and who now has given me a grandson – Art Leonis Parker Elliott.

Cover art by the author based on a photograph by:

Nancy G Photography. spiritwolf@wi.rr.com

Book Layout ©2013 BookDesignTemplates.com

David Rory O’Neill. Ireland. 2018.

Published books:

The Novella:

Animal

Rachel’s Walk

Rachel’s War

The Daniel Series:

1 Conflict

2 Challenge

3 Passion

4 Grip

5 Judgement

6 Pyramid

7 Trial

The West Cork Trilogy:

1 Surviving Beauty

2 Beauty’s Price

3 Blue Sky Orphan

4 The West Cork Trilogy Omnibus.

Always Leoti (To be published Christmas 2018)

The Prairie Companions

The Butterfly Effect Trilogy:

Bonny The Butterfly Effect.

Lauren The Butterfly Effect.

Chepi The Butterfly Effect.

I welcome contact with my readers. Information on published and future work can be found on my website: http://davidrory.com

If you enjoyed this novel please leave a review on your suppliers website – reviews are the lifeblood of the modern author. UK English used so you will find grey not gray and colour not color – these are not mistakes. (Sorry Noel Webster)

Introduction:

Chepi was born into the void between male and female – the void between First Nation Cree and European Canadian – the void between native mysticism and science.

Chepi must forge a new path using her unique abilities that may be a burden or a priceless gift. Chepi will touch the lives of many and change their life-paths, but Chepi will always be separate and alone.

This, then, is the story of Chepi's astonishingly long journey.

Chepi The Butterfly Effect.

Chapter One. Mâcihtawin.

The grey wolf ran darting and diving through the thick forest, the wet mist parting before him and trailing in eddies behind. Above him a hawk swerved and swooped, easily following. The hawk squealed and the grey wolf stopped and raised his head in cry, howling twice. He sniffed the air and howled once more. The hawk landed above and chirped his high squeal in answer. The grey wolf said, The little fairy has no sex. The little fairy is not boy or girl and is both.

The hawk swooped and flew into a mist swirling above the canopy. Its call echoed and grew distant until it was a whisper. Sooleawa called in the mist, Manito, tell me what grey wolf spoke to you.

The hawk hovered above her and spoke its music high and piping and its words entered Sooleawa in her mind but not her ears. She smiled and nodded and gave thanks to her manito.

**

Sooleawa had smoked a pipe of herbs with just a little tobacco, and some dried peyote. She knew this would help her journey into the spirit world. She needed guidance from Kihci-Manito, the great spirit that she spoke to through her animal guide: her personal manito the hawk and the great sprit's earthly form – the grey wolf. Sooleawa was medicine woman to her band but also okiskinohtahiwêw, a word the English-speaking world would incorrectly take to mean shaman. Sooleawa was a spiritual guide and healer but not a witch doctor or shaman in the Asian or eastern way. She had gifts and insights and she had medicine but not magic. She was troubled and needed to find guidance from her manito through visions. The orphaned mukki of Mingan and Wawetseka was in her care now and the child was in need of medicine and guidance. The boy mukki was three years old now and he was unhappy and lost.

Sooleawa set down her pipe, and lay back on her robe. She watched the smoke curl up and escape to the stars. Makkitotosimew, called Makki, threw herbs on the fire that flared so the smoke smelled sweet and good. Sooleawa closed her eyes and began to softly chant a song of invitation. Her companion, Makki, sat cross-legged by the fire and she too chanted as she held the mukki in her lap. The boy reached under the robes seeking her breast. Her large breasts were what gave her the name Makkitotosimew, which means ‘she has large breasts.’ These breasts were always in-milk for she had nursed many mukki she’d help birth. She’d lost her own baby and her man to smallpox. The boy held the breast and suckled contentedly, humming as his nurse chanted and hummed her song. She looked across the lodge and saw Sooleawa stop singing, her head lolled back, and her eyes rolled in her head so the whites showed bright in the gloom.

Makki said, Little one, Sooleawa goes to find your path and what troubles you.

After an hour, the infant had gone to sleep on Makki’s lap. Sooleawa suddenly sat up. She crawled on hands and knees and knelt over the child. She lifted the flap of hide covering his genitals and put her hand between his legs. Ah, ah yes. No balls. The boy’s balls are not in the sack. They should be by now. Gently she probed with her fingers above his tiny penis. Yes, no balls. They are not there to drop. This is not a boy but not fully a girl. My manito said Chepi. Chepi is her name for she shall be a girl now. We must dress her as a girl and teach her as a girl. She is special and shall be our apprentice and we must teach her the medicine and the tales of our spirits so she may take over when we are old.

The child opened its eyes, looked up at Sooleawa and smiled. "See, she knows her name. Wawetseka’s-mukki you are Chepi. You have found your name, little fairy. You are Chepi."

Chepi is good, said Makki lifting the child to its feet and stripping off its clothes.

Sooleawa said, You clean Chepi and I will go to Kisecawhchuck and get his daughter Sara to make new clothes. I will tell the Morningstar of Chepi. Then we will dance and sing and give her name to the earth and the people.

Sooleawa left her lodge, stopped outside the door and stretched, breathing in the fresh chill air. It was morning damp but the day was bright and the sun rising in the east was vivid orange and warmed Sooleawa’s face. She shooed a thin dog that came slinking and begging round her feet. Across the track, Sara came out of Kisecawhchuck’s lodge. She raised a hand in salute to Sooleawa; she waved back and crossed the track, speaking as she came close to the teenager. "Sara, the mukki has found a name. It is Chepi and he is girl not boy. This is why its spirit was restless. We must have the dance and sing. We need girl clothes now. Can you make a dress for Chepi who lies naked with Makki, smiling and happy now she has been found?"

Yes, she is a fairy. This name is well found. I have some skin ready that I prepared for one who was taken by the pox. I will sew it now, said Sara.

Is your father up?

The girl answered by stepping aside and pushing open the door. Sooleawa knew that in the band chief’s lodge everyone spoke English and her own was very poor. She understood why Kisecawhchuck insisted on his family using the English. He had told Sooleawa the future was English; the future was to be dominated by the white world. He had spent his early life working for the Hudson Bay Company as a hunter, guide and translator and knew the ways of the white world well. He had a big Sharps rifle and was a great killer of buffalo. Every year he supplied two or three beasts for the band to feast on and make pemmican and good robes. He said the buffalo would all be gone soon as the white settlers came to farm the prairies.

Sooleawa could not see these things yet and she’d met very few whites. Some Russians came to farm near the people’s settlement but they didn’t speak English or French or the language of the people so they kept away and did not treat the people as people. They seemed afraid and many died soon and the rest left. These were the only white men Sooleawa had seen and she had not seen them in her visions or dreams, but she trusted her chief who now spoke to her. Sooleawa, we are having the breakfast, come sit and eat. Will you have the porridge?

Sooleawa knew to call her chief Samuel in his home as his children did. This was strange to her ears and tongue but she respected his wish and said, No Samuel, I don’t love the oats as you do. I will have the coffee drink I… I taste in my…

Sam laughed and said, Smell, Sooleawa, smell with your nose.

Sam’s son Simon began to laugh but Sam glared at him so Simon bowed his head and said, Sorry, Sooleawa.

The whole family was seated around a large table eating with spoons and knives in a manner Sooleawa had only ever seen in Sam’s house, and house it was, not a traditional lodge. It was a large rectangular log-built house divided into four rooms. In the middle was the living and cooking area and either side were bedrooms. One for Sam and his wife, one for the daughters, Sara and Samantha, and another for the sons, Simon, Stephen and Stanley. The children and Sam himself had been given these names at their baptism by the Catholic priest who had performed the baptism. Sam had been converted to Christianity by missionaries he’d met as a young man working for the Hudson Bay Company.

Sooleawa had struggled to understand why her chief lived and spoke like a white man and insisted his children spoke English at home. Sam had thirteen books other than the bible and he’d spend a few hours of every day with his children, teaching them to read and write on boards with white sticks called chalk. He would ride two ponies all the way to Saskatoon to buy these sticks and sometimes a new book.

When Sooleawa had asked him why he did this, he’d said, The future of our nation lies in these books and these words, not in our legends and in our old ways. We must not forget our ways but we must learn the new ways and have the factory-made magic of the Englishers and the Frenchies and the new Canook. They are making a new nation called Canada and we will not be part of it if we learn not its words and its magic and its ways. The bands who are afraid and stay away will perish and fade. They have tried to make wars sometimes but the rifles and guns kill them easy. You have seen what my Sharps rifle can do. My pistol can do this to a man too. We cannot win at wars with these people. There are too many and their weapons and what you call their magic is too powerful. I have seen their wonders, Sooleawa. More will come here to this place soon. Not like the Russians who came and perished from stupidity and hunger. They were foolish men. Others will come and make farms that have great foods and they will take lands if they want them and we cannot stop them. I must teach my children to live like they do and to learn their… their magic so they can live in this new place the Canadian will make here.

Sam had said this in his native language so Sooleawa would know what he said. She understood his words but could not see the new Canada he described. She saw how he lived and she understood this was how the Canook lived for he had told her this, but she’d never seen these places herself and didn’t want to learn their book-words.

Sooleawa said, "I have to speak words not English. Your brother’s mukki has found its name. I had it from my manito that he is she and she is like the wood sprite or fairy and is called Chepi. I felt and the mukki has no man-balls and will never be breeding so she should be raised up as a girl. Sara will make Chepi a dress for the naming dance when we show her to the earth and the people. The mukki is happy now and does not weep and wail like it did when we knew not its nature."

Sam set down his coffee and grinned at his children. "That is the first good news we have of my brother's mukki. I thought him cursed but maybe now it is found, it, she, can be happy and shed the ill spirits that followed Chepi. That is a goodly name. Will she be taken to the church priest now for the Christ name?"

Sooleawa looked into the white enamel mug with the dark pool of coffee and swirled it before taking a sip. She set it down and said, Kisecawhchuck, I do not have your Christ spirit in me and Makki has not him. We will wait for Chepi to reach the age when she can choose herself if she wants the Christ name and the church you follow.

**

The start of the new century was marked by a strange experience for Chepi that revealed a talent in the child that Sooleawa and Makki were both delighted and a little frightened by. The 2nd of January 1904 was a bitterly cold night. The fire in the centre of their sod-built wigwam was a faint glow. The women’s breath showed as puffs of vapour escaping from beneath the buffalo robes that covered them. Sooleawa woke and pulled the robe off her head and peered out at the fire. She nudged Makki beside her and whispered, Look, look.

Near the fire, Chepi stood naked and shivering, peering up through the smoke vent at the stars visible above. The child was speaking in a barely audible murmur: They come soon. They come soon to teach us. The Alsoomse will come and the Hurit and they will give us the knowing we need and there will be no more suffering in this band. I will learn the words and the seeing.

Sooleawa crawled out and pulled Chepi in to their bed so she lay between Makki and herself. They held the child close and felt its body cold and shivering. Chepi said, Why did you take me from my bed?

Makki said, Child, we did not do this. You were standing by the fire speaking to the stars. Did you dream?

Yes, I dreamed, but I do not see all the dream.

Sooleawa said, You spoke words about Alsoomse and Hurit. Who are these, Chepi?

Chepi turned her face and stared wide-eyed at Sooleawa. I am not sure but I see their faces and names in my dreams. They are white ladies and they are Sara’s age.

What was astonishing to Sooleawa and Makki about this was the fact that the five-year-old Chepi had never seen a white person. They asked her to describe in detail what these girls she’d seen in visions looked like. Chepi sat up between them and closed her eyes.

She lifted her head and began to speak, One, the one called Hurit, is very high, bigger than Sara by two spans. She has straw-coloured hair and pale skin and eyes that are like blue but on a raining day. She is called Hurit for her beauty. The other called Alsoomse is smaller and also has straw hair and eyes like new grass and she has dark skin, not like Sara, but dark. She is strong like a warrior and she will fight like a warrior. They are as you, they are together like Sooleawa and Makki. They will live in a great house bigger than Sara’s. It has many lodges and a big lodge twice as big as Sara’s house and it is for… I know not what it is. I did not see it well. They travel on… things with wheels like the cart I have seen but there are no horses. It is like magic but makes great noise as it goes over the ground. They come from the place Sara calls England were the English are.

Sooleawa pulled Chepi down and held her close as she began to shiver again. She looked over the child’s head at Makki’s face. Her eyes showed wide and bright in the moonlight. The women were astonished by Chepi’s story but they had no doubts that what she said was real and true for they had begun to see that Chepi had power and magic to see what even Sooleawa could not. Chepi was to be believed absolutely when she told her visions.

Makki put her hand on Chepi’s head and asked, Did you see when they will come, Chepi?

Three seasons.

Sooleawa was bothered by Chepi’s vision and went to get counsel from Sam. When she’d told Chepi’s dream, Sam said, I have seen some of these things in books and the news-sheets they have in the library in Saskatoon. Library is their lodge-of-books, Sooleawa. I have seen these carts with no horses. They call them automobiles or motorcars and they have machines that eat spirit like whisky for food to make them go. They are like the iron road engines but smaller and they need no iron rails. The iron road is coming near us soon, the newssheets said. It is in Moose Jaw now and will come to Saskatoon. It is wondrous that little fairy can see in her visions what she has not seen in her life. Has she powerful magic, Sooleawa?

Yes, she has. It is greater than mine already. I will teach her the ways and she will be wiser and guide the people when I am gone. Makki teaches her the ways of birth and medicine and herbs and she learns much already.

**

Chepi lay on her tummy holding her face in her hands. She was on a small rise looking over an area of flat earth used by the children for games. There were ten, aged between five and twelve, playing lacrosse. As usual there was a lot of yelling and shouting and some bruises were being acquired. Chepi knew it was only a matter of time before some injured player would come to her for medicine. Chepi always had her medicine bag over her shoulder. In it were poultices of moss, bandages of strips of fine buckskin, powdered herbs and her magic talking stick and a big eagle feather. The bag had been sewn by Sara and was beautifully beaded and painted with patterns and images of sacred beings. Chepi’s medicine was always growing as she learned more and more from Sooleawa and Makki. She was nine years old now. She also learned things from her visions and dreams and had begun to explore the herbs and berries that grew within walking distance of the village.

A boy came to her with blood streaming from his nose. He stood before her and waited. Chepi said, Kneel and put your head back. She got a little dry moss from her bag and put it up his nose, then pinched it hard and said, Drop your head now so you will not swallow."

The boy sat still for three minutes, then Chepi lifted his head and felt his nose carefully. It is broken and I must fix it. Be ready for a little pain. She watched his eyes as she gripped and waited for him to ready himself. When he closed his eyes she twisted quickly and felt the click. She held still and then knelt so she was at his face level. She let go and looked. Yes, this is good. It is not bent now. She reached up and pulled out the moss caked in blood clots. Do not blow your nose or play again. Sit still now."

The boy sat beside her and she looked at him in profile. He was a very beautiful boy and she had an urge to kiss him and wondered why. He looked at her and saw something that made him raise a questioning eyebrow. Why do you look at me this way, Chepi? Is my nose bent?

No, it is straight. You are a beautiful boy so I look, like I would look at the beauty of anything.

Oh. Chepi…

What?

Nothing.

No, what?

They say you are not as other girls. Is this true?

Yes, that is true. I am not boy or girl.

"Oh… oh. Does that mean you can’t make mukki?"

Yes, but I can…

"Can what?

Nothing… leave it. You can play now but don’t let anyone hit you on the nose again.

The boy stared hard at Chepi’s face. He liked it. She was a very pretty girl with bright almond-shaped eyes and full red lips. She was fine and thin but strong, too. He wanted to touch her but he was afraid, for he knew Chepi had great magic and was special. But now he wanted to lean close and kiss her. He was stunned when she leaned close to him and whispered, Yes, kiss me. He did and then rose and jumped on the spot and whooped in celebration. He looked down at her and a tear came to his cheek, then he ran back to the game.

I wonder what this is I feel? I can’t be like girls because I can’t have mukki. I am not built for sex like boys or girls so what is this I feel? Kissing made me feel good and I want more but I do not know what more is? Should I not let boys kiss me again or girls – girls do kiss other girls. Sooleawa and… my little pee