The Orenda by Joseph Boyden
At home, Bird and Fox stay up late every night, planning their summer journey. Now that I’ve come home, I listen from my sleeping place above them as they make decisions as to which young men are most worthy of accompanying them, which route is not just most expedient but safest, how such a large group will have to travel as many smaller ones in order for the world around them to accept their numbers. I listen carefully as they speak names, wondering if one, which one, will be Porcupine Quills’. Now I regret not letting Sleeps Long tell me what she named him. Will he go with Bird? I want him to stay back with those who protect us, the ones Fox says are most important for the well-being of his family, of all the families.
I note, too, how Bird once again awakes very early, a good sleep still left before dawn, and sneaks down the ladder and out of the longhouse. I know what he does. I know he goes to visit Gosling so they can make each other whisper out like they do. He doesn’t realize I follow him. I do worry Gosling might, though. I tell myself that despite her being a seer, I don’t think she sees much other than Bird when she’s in his embrace. Still, I stay back a good distance as he enters Gosling’s home. I’m tempted to slip closer to hear what they talk about, to hear how they come together, but I can’t take that chance.
I WANT
I keep an eye out for the boy I like, the son of Sleeps Long, the one I’ve named Porcupine Quills. All of us stand on the shore and watch as the men load their canoes. The sun’s out, bright and hot, too hot for this early in the summer. Still no rain, and I know this worries Bird. People are grumbling that the Crow and his helpers have brought this drought to us, are casting another curse. The mumbling is getting so loud that Bird told Fox last night that when they return from their trade mission, he’s worried the crows won’t still be alive. “We should bring back some more from that place, just in case,” Fox joked.
“That’s all we need,” Bird said, “more charcoal in the village.” They went quiet for a while before he added, “Maybe it’s not a bad idea after all. Having a replacement might prove good insurance.”
The men are wearing their breechcloths and moccasins and their skin glistens with sunflower oil, their heads plucked clean except for the plumes of hair down the centre, the hair glistening with the oil, too. They’ve painted themselves for this trip, for their meeting the Arendahronnon at the river that runs from the great bay and to the Iron People. Blood or squash-blossom ochre lines many of the men’s eyes or stands out in stripes on their cheeks, and some of them had their women paint their sacred animals upon their bodies, or stamped their women’s or children’s handprints upon their chests so that they remain close to the travellers’ hearts.
I’ve never seen so many canoes prepared for one journey. Almost all the men of the appropriate ages wanted to go. It has been a number of difficult seasons, and the village is the domain of us women. The men’s domain is the forest, where they can act without fear of upsetting the women, where they are in control of their fates—to some degree, anyway—and where they can be free. Eventually, many places on the mission were settled by a lottery. Most of the men who didn’t win are out clearing forest. But some, Porcupine Quills and his two friends among them, I now see, stand close to the canoes and watch everything, no doubt hoping Bird might change his mind at the last moment and invite them. In the throng of people, I can’t even get the boy to notice me.
Bird’s in his canoe with Fox and six others from our longhouse. They’re the first to push off. No goodbyes or displays of affection, for that would only attract the attention of any malevolent oki that might be nearby, an oki who wishes to cause pain by stealing the lives of loved ones. In groups of two or three, the other canoes follow, and it isn’t until the last of them disappears around a bend in the river leading to the big water that people silently begin walking back to the village. Something’s descended that can’t be seen but only felt, as surely as if the air has cooled. The chill of knowing we’re vulnerable to those who wish us harm now that the strongest of us have left. Not only are the travellers’ lives in danger, but so are ours.
I keep a close eye on Porcupine Quills, who, along with his two friends, is among the last to leave. They talk and gesture toward the Crow and his two helpers, one of them pale and white and sickly looking, missing most of his fingers from his time in Haudenosaunee captivity, the other with black hair covering his face, his black eyes like an osprey’s, seeing everything. All three stand with a few Wendat who listen to them, two old women, an old man, and a boy who mustn’t be much older than Porcupine Quills. They make the sign on their bodies that the Crow taught me so long ago, touching their heads and then chests and then each shoulder, before bending their heads and whispering to one another.
Porcupine Quills shouts at the charcoal to stop placing curses. They ignore him, but I can tell by the way their bodies tense that they’re scared. Porcupine Quills shouts again, and still they pay no attention. He clenches the club he’s carrying and runs at them, lifting it and glancing it off the head of the sickly one, who crumples to the ground. The old people cower, but the young Wendat who’s Porcupine Quills’ size charges at him, only to be pulled up short by the Crow. Porcupine Quills again raises his club and swings now at the Crow, who stands and appears willing to accept it. The club stops just shy of his forehead, his eyes cast down and closed. Porcupine Quills screams into the Crow’s face, loud enough that he stumbles back. Turning then, Porcupine Quills walks, laughing, to his friends.
“You!” I shout to him. “Tell me your name.”
He stops and looks at me. His friends watch with fascination. “You have no need to know my name,” he says. “With your father gone, you’re useless to me. Worse still, your scars make you ugly and you’re missing parts.” He and his friends laugh loudly as they stroll away.
I’m so dizzy that I sit down hard, the ground feeling unsure. Looking up to the sun, I see many of them and realize I’m crying. I haven’t cried in a very long time.
A voice behind me asks if I’m all right. I won’t turn my head to him. “That boy’s rotten inside,” he says. “If you wish to know his name, it’s Carries an Axe, and he’s the son of Sleeps Long.”
A voice I recognize as the Crow’s then says, “Come, Aaron. Help me with the brother.”
I hear them all walking away. Looking around, I see this boy is the one who wanted to fight Porcupine Quills. He assists the Crow and his dark helper in carrying the injured one up the hill, his feet dragging and blood dripping onto the dry ground.
—
ONCE I’M HOME, Fox’s wife comes toward me, cradling something in her hands. In the darkness of the longhouse I can’t make out what it is. Not until she’s next to me do I see the furry face, the black-ringed eyes.
“Bird asked me to give this to you,” she says, holding out the raccoon. “He said it will keep you company until he returns, and by the time he comes home, the raccoon will be ready to be released into the forest again.”
She places the tiny, warm body in my hands. The animal opens its mouth and begins to cry.
“You’ll have to feed him often or he will not live,” she says. “Take your finger and dip it in warm ottet, then let the baby lick it off.”
“I don’t know if I can do this,” I tell her.
“It’s easy,” she says. “All you need to do is keep him out of harm’s way until he’s old enough to fend for himself.”
I sleep fitfully that night, worried I’ll roll over and crush the animal that snuggles into my armpit. The raven above me hovers upside down, his tendons hardened and his body in the form that it’ll now hold forever. Tomorrow I’ll cut him from his rope and find a new place to hang him so he can watch over me and the new little baby.
Finally, I feel myself slip into the dark, deep place, the place where I feel safest, sleep wrapped around me and through me. I dream flashes of sunlight penetrating the forest, hear water splashing down rocks, children laughing. The raccoon is now grown and follows me like a dog wherever I walk,
“You sleep deeply,” the raven says, but I disagree. I’ve learned to sleep light to keep my ears alert. “But you didn’t hear me approach,” the raven says, and I tell him that’s because he’s got wings and knows the magic of silence. “Open your eyes and look at me,” the raven says.
I jolt, wide awake in my bed. My body is frozen in sudden terror, sure that someone lies beside me, but I’m unable to move my head to see who it is. The raccoon makes a yawning sound and I feel his little feet push against me as he stretches in sleep. Yes, there is somebody lying beside me. I can make out the light breathing. My body, though, refuses to respond to my asking it to move, to do something.
“That’s a lovely bird,” a woman’s voice whispers right next to me. It’s her. I know that she lies on her back right beside me, both of us staring up into the black. I can smell her. It’s her. Has she come to kill me now that Bird’s gone? I want to ask her how she got into the long-house without making the dogs bark, why she lies beside me, but my throat won’t work.
“You don’t need to speak at this moment,” Gosling says. “Too many speak too much without ever really saying anything, yes?”
I want to nod, to do something. I can’t.
“A bad storm’s coming,” she whispers. “It comes. Most, I think, know it, though they don’t want to recognize it. But it’s coming.” I hear her scratch her skin, maybe at a mosquito bite on her arm. “They don’t want to know this because they don’t think they can change the route they’re travelling. They think the river is far straighter than it is.”
She laughs as if there are others here with us, as if they agree and laugh with her. “No river is straight. And sometimes we have to picture what’s ahead so we can take the landscape into account.” Again she scratches. “You seem confused. Let me be clear. We’re all in such a rush to get through our lives, aren’t we? Let’s say that we make our way down the river, a river we’ve not travelled before. If the signs of faster water appear, isn’t it wise to pull the canoe out, to listen for a bit, to walk down the bank to see if rapids are around the bend?” I hear her scratching again. “Or is it wise to just keep paddling, despite the quickening water and the likelihood of danger ahead? Really, it’s very simple.”
Gosling laughs lightly again, again as if she’s talking with more than just me, as if we’re with others. “What’s beautiful,” she says, “is there are certain of us who can see what comes.” My eyes adjusted now, I can make out the broad outline of my raven, the wispy feathers, the curve of beak. “Certain of us know what comes because we can see through the darkness that’s the future as if we have a little fire. You,” she says. “You have something special. You might just have the gift of the medicine woman. But it’s something you need to learn to nurture as one nurtures the three sisters. And once it grows, then you’ll need to learn how to control it.” We lie on our backs beside each other, the raven above. Finally she says, “You can speak now.”
I feel the muscles in my body relax, the fear, just a little, draining from me. My jaw, clenched since she woke me up, suddenly releases. “I don’t want power,” I manage to say.
“You don’t want that boy who hurt you today to want you?”
The question stops me. Eventually I say, “He doesn’t deserve me.”
“That’s a fine answer,” Gosling says. “But it doesn’t stop you from wanting him.”
She lifts her finger in the light that’s just starting to sift in from the smoke hole above. She slowly turns it in a circle, and the raven, as if a wind has entered, begins to follow her movement. “That’s not so hard to do, you know, once you learn how.”
Gosling raises her other hand, and with both in the air above her, she joins her thumbs together and begins to open and close her hands like a child mimicking the flight of a bird. Above us, the raven makes me open my mouth in surprise and fear as it opens and then closes its wings over and over again. Gosling quickens her pace, and the raven soon lifts up and rights itself to fly above us in circles, tethered by the length of rope attached to its feet.
“He has such lovely eyes,” Gosling says. “Did you make them?”
I shake my head.
She continues to work her hands, steering the raven around and around, the wind from its wings causing the tears that come out of me to slide down my cheeks. It’s so scary, so beautiful. I know, right now, that I want this power, too.
ALL THINGS TO ALL MEN
They force Gabriel, Isaac, and me to work the fields with the women, something considered a great insult. Poor Isaac who’s already suffered so long and so hard in this cruel world, now recently concussed and making little sense when he speaks. We toil in the heat with the women who avoid us, our backs bent and the sun beating against our black robes until we swoon from thirst. For hours every day we pull at weeds, the only things that seem to grow in these desolate fields. They spring up overnight and choke the meagre crops if the pulling goes unattended for even a few days. The three of us have taken to kneeling a number of times through the mornings and afternoons to pray for rain that refuses to come, the cornstalks now shrivelled and dying like starving children. Every day, the dirt pushes farther under our nails so that our fingers swell with pain each night as the nails separate from them.
When we kneel, the women stop their own toiling to watch, not with curiosity but with something close to hatred. I feel the heat of their anger, Lord, and I ask that You soften their hearts so they can understand we wish for rain for their sake more than for our own. I’ve accepted that I will die a brutal death in this heathen and hostile land, and I accept this with humiliation and with joy, for I’ll die for You in my attempts to harvest even a few souls.
Isaac, too, senses that our time here probably grows short. With so few fingers left, he’s useless at working the weeds. Often, he just sits and speaks mindlessly. “That boy with the club hit me because he wants me dead,” Isaac often says. “They all want me dead. They’ll kill the three of us this summer because they believe we’ve cursed this land. Have we cursed this place, Père Christophe?”
Hot-tempered Gabriel grows short with him, and many times I have to calm Gabriel, his eyes blazing with something that frightens even me. I must calm Isaac and Gabriel both, soothe them with reminders that we’re not here for ourselves but for our sauvages, yet just one more burden for my back that only grows stronger with each challenge. I’ve found something in recent years that nourishes me not just spiritually but physically. I’ve grown stronger with each new punishment. Even the Huron comment positively when we travel and I pick up the early-morning paddle, not putting it down until the end of the day with the others, lifting my fair share of the load as we portage long distances up rocky slopes. I thank You for this, Lord, for this flush of power that courses through my body. I bend down to pluck weeds in the field and consider this not an insult but a great blessing.
Each evening that we return to our small and simple residence, I must climb onto the roof and remove the arrows that young, angry warriors have fired into the cross atop the entrance, welcoming all who enter. Each evening as I struggle to pull arrows from the wood, I await the one that will pierce my back. Clearly, we’re no longer welcome here. The drought has become so bad we now ignore the weeds and instead march back and forth all day like ants, hauling birchbark buckets and hide skins of water, trying desperately to keep the dying crops alive. From morning till night we struggle across the fields and to the river, a mission that seems akin to trying to put out a tremendous blaze with thimblefuls of water. There’s nothing else we can do.
—
A RUMOUR’S BEEN circulating that an Iroquois war party has entered our country and is about to attack. A young man from a neighbouring village was caught loitering near our own and was accused by some of the younger, more volatile warriors of spying for the enemy. He’s since disappeared and is now presumed murdered.
—
TODAY I AWAKE to Isaac screaming. Gabriel and I burst out of our blankets to soothe what I imagine is a nightmare, only to find him sitting up in the early-morning light, cradling something and rocking.