The Orenda by Joseph Boyden
“I wouldn’t feel right,” I say, “leaving you alone in your condition.” The words come out before I can stop them.
“And what is this condition I suffer from?” Gosling asks. She’s been short-tempered with me lately. I can’t blame her.
“It’s not what I meant to speak.” I stop now in order to choose my words more carefully. “I worry for you and my daughter both.” Again I think. “I don’t want to leave for any length of time. I’ll be honest. Something keeps waking me in the middle of the night.”
“I’m sure it’s just my groaning belly,” Gosling says. We laugh. She looks at me now, her eyes sparkling in the firelight. “I’ll be honest, too, and tell you I don’t want you to stray far, either, despite knowing you want to.”
I wait for her to tell me more.
“I lie awake as well, and not just because of this.” She touches her belly. “Perhaps it’s only because we’re forced to live so close to them, in this awful place. But most nights, I feel something’s very wrong.”
“Then we have to pay even more attention, don’t we?” I lean to her for a kiss.
—
THE CROW GABRIEL asks me if my daughter is married.
“How does that concern you?” I ask.
“It’s obvious to all she will give birth very soon,” the crow says, “and the Great Voice demands she wed the father.”
“Sometimes our differences aren’t so many,” I say. “Our children are well cared for. You know that.”
The two of us sit alone in the place where they speak to their voice. It’s drafty, with the fire barely burning in the hearth. I can hear snow water dripping from the roof into puddles on the ground. He’d asked me here to speak of important matters, and so I’m left confused. I’d expected a meeting to discuss the terms of my people’s stay with the crows now that it’s almost time to leave. I’d expected a conversation regarding what is owed.
“I don’t want to be the one to stir the kettle, but maybe I must in order for us to see what lies below the surface,” this crow says. “I’ve been told that Snow Falls, how shall I say it,” he says, placing his fingers on his chin, “that your daughter isn’t sure who the father of her baby is.”
I stand from my bench then, kicking it back so it clatters onto the ground. “What did you say?”
The crow also stands, now alarmed. “I mean no harm, Bird,” he says, holding out his arms.
My fists are clenched. “What did you say about my daughter?”
“Simply that there’s a rumour Aaron might be the father. Or maybe it’s Carries an Axe.”
I walk toward him.
He stumbles backward. “I mean no harm, but don’t you think it’s important to rectify the situation?”
I lunge for him, and he trips over a bench. I pick him up by his stinking robe and lift him to my face. “Where did you hear this lie?” I ask, so close I can smell his foul breath.
“I imagine everyone knows,” he stutters. “I thought you did, too. I mean no harm.” He’s shaking in my hands. Or maybe it’s because I’m trembling with anger. I tense, then pitch him away so that he flies back and crashes into more benches. He scrambles to his feet and flees from the room, and I consider going after him. Instead, I turn around and stalk outside.
I make it clear to everyone I see on my slow walk around the crow village that I look for He Finds Villages. This explains his odd behav-iour that day so long ago when I walked up to him and he ran away. Does Carries an Axe know? Why didn’t my daughter tell me there were two boys? I will find out the truth.
I go to Gosling. I find her standing in front of her wigwam and wave her inside. As soon as we sit, I ask if she knows anything about this. She looks at me as if she wants to apologize for something.
“It’s true, then?”
“Bird,” she says, “listen to me. Snow Falls came to me in a time of great need. It was after your return from this place last autumn. Your daughter was concerned that He Finds Villages had pushed himself on her while she slept.”
“She’s a deep sleeper, but not that deep,” I say, my face burning.
“Remember how ill she was the morning you walked back from here?”
I do remember. I remember it all in a rush, my concern, my even asking if she was pregnant.
“He Finds Villages and Snow Falls drank that foul water. She was unconscious.”
“I will kill him then,” I say, standing.
“Carries an Axe doesn’t know any of this,” Gosling says. “Think about him. Think about your daughter. Think about your grandchild and what’s right for all of them before you act.”
Her words hit me as I walk out the door.
Despite my looking everywhere and asking everyone I see, I can’t find the boy. The snow’s mostly melted now, and the village paths are a ruin of mud. I can’t stand this place any longer and walk out the gates, the hairy ones watching me.
—
FOR TWO DAYS, I hunt for He Finds Villages. I’ve even gone so far as to wait by that place where the crows caw each morning while the others sit or kneel or stand according to some strange plan. He’s disappeared. No one I speak to has seen him. The second evening, when I think he’s run off into the forest for good, word spreads that he’s been found. Gosling tells me.
“He’s by the river.”
A small group of hairy ones has gathered at a small stone-and-wood house along the palisades, the water of the river rushing by on the other side. They part way for me when I come up.
I walk through them and enter the small building. In the dim light of dusk, I see He Finds Villages. He appears to be floating, his legs off the floor. A chair lies on its side. His neck is bent at an angle, and his face is bloated. His head is cocked as if he’s just asked a question.
The Crow pushes by me and walks up to the body. The other crow, the damaged one with the missing fingers, follows right after, crying like a child. Together, they try to lift the boy up, but he’s long dead. I watch them fumble with his body, useless in their attempts to free him from the rope that holds him.
—
GOSSIP TRAVELS AS FAST in this village as in any other. It appears that no one is quite sure why the boy killed himself, but everyone is certainly sure I hold the answer. After all, I was searching for him not so long ago, and it wasn’t with kindness. But I won’t speak. I’ve been avoiding Snow Falls and Carries an Axe out of necessity. I put on a stoic face, but inside I’m shaken by all of this. I won’t speak of any of it to my daughter or her man. Gosling’s right. Some troubles are better left alone.
They bury He Finds Villages outside their cemetery fence. Dawning of Day stands with Gosling and me, explaining it all. A large group of us stand here, watching from a safe distance. At first, I think he isn’t being buried with the others who’ve died because he’s Wendat.
“No,” Dawning of Day says. “There are many Wendat buried within that fence. He took his own life, though. According to their great voice, he won’t be able to go to the good place anymore.”
“Where does he go, then?” Gosling asks.
Dawning of Day shrugs. “Some place that is between this world and the other. It isn’t where everyone burns in fire, and it isn’t where everyone has everything they want.”
Near me, Snow Falls weeps, her head on her husband’s chest. I watch him wrap his arm around her. I can tell he doesn’t know. The crows talk in their strange language and make their signs and then throw dirt into the hole. When it is over, all of us walk away, sad and confused.
—
GOSLING’S ANXIOUS TONIGHT. Half a moon’s passed since the boy’s funeral, and the first buds will soon show on the poplars. It’s time to go home. It’s not just Gosling who’s restless. We all are. She sleeps fitfully beside me, calling out and then hushing herself. When I try to sleep, I imagine wolves circling a deer, tensing to pounce.
Well before dawn, I’m so agitated I’m about to crawl from our robe when I hear someone running up. I reach for my clu
“Bird,” a man whispers. It’s Carries an Axe. “Gosling,” he says.
She wakes and sits. “It’s time,” she says.
We run with Carries an Axe to the longhouse. He’s too panicked to answer when I ask what’s happening. Rushing inside, we see Sleeps Long near the fire, kneeling with my daughter. Snow Falls cries out.
“She’s early,” Gosling says, crouching beside the two.
“Tell me,” I say.
Gosling looks up. “It’ll be fine,” she says. “Leave us to this. Go outside and light a pipe with Carries an Axe. Explain to him what it’s like to be a father.”
IT’S A WISE CHOICE YOU MADE
Maybe it’s the suicide of He Finds Villages that makes the baby want to come out too soon. What am I to think of all this? I’ve tried convincing myself that Carries an Axe is the father, and want to believe it, and I bolt awake less and less in the middle of the night from dreaming that Carries an Axe has found out and has left me to be alone. But with word that He Finds Villages has hanged himself, my body immediately feels sick and the pains in my belly, not long after, begin to come.
I try to will away the pain that sears through me because I know it’s too early. But when I can’t anymore, I tell Sleeps Long I think the time might be coming. I’ve already been told by those who know of such things that I need to stop walking about and I must command my body to lie still all day long. I’d begun going mad from the boredom of it. But as soon as the pains came shooting through me in earnest, I could only beg the boredom to please return.
Gosling makes me tea that helps some of the worst pain. She and Sleeps Long whisper to each other out of my earshot and turn their concerned faces to me. A wave of anguish comes and washes over me, then slowly recedes until I feel like I might be able to stand up again if only I were allowed to. For two days this pattern repeats itself till I almost get used to it.
Tonight, I have to get up to pee, and Sleeps Long accompanies me out of the longhouse to our place in a clump of cedar. “Slow down,” she says. “This isn’t a race, you know.”
I squat, barely able to crouch now that I’m so large, worried I’ll wet myself if I’m not careful. How did this happen? When did I become the woman that I used to make fun of and despise? It’s so difficult. I remind myself how happy I’ll be when this thing that grows inside me finally comes out of my body and I can have me to myself again.
As if I summoned something I shouldn’t have, when I stand from my squat, the shooting pain is far worse than any so far. It makes me fall to the ground. It’s as if the child in me took my thought for a challenge and has lit a fire inside my body. I scream out when the next pain shoots through me, and Sleeps Long rushes over and tries to pick me up.
When I’m standing again, bent over in pain, I feel the warm trickle of what I fear is blood running down my legs. I reach my hand and smear it, raise it to my face. Thank you, Aataentsic. It’s a clear liquid.
Sleeps Long sees what’s happening to me and carries me from the cover of the cedars. She calls for help, and my husband comes running. Together, they carry me back to the longhouse.
It’s as if the earlier pains were just warm winds blowing over my body. I lie on my mat and must bite a piece of thick hide that Gosling places in my mouth. I see my husband’s face hovering over me, but Sleeps Long sends him outside. Now the raven we’ve tied over our bed floats above me, its one wing lame, hanging down, its other out in a graceful curve as if in flight. My lower body feels like it’s being torn in half and put to fire. I can’t stand it.
But I must. I slip in and out of consciousness, jolting awake to screams that I realize are my own. The raven continues to hover above, and so I imagine myself climbing up and onto his back, wrapping my arms around his neck and whispering for him to fly me away. Just as Gosling once showed me long ago, I can feel the pulse of the raven’s muscles under his feathers as he begins to slowly beat his wings, the broken one not quite as strong as the other. The pain shoots through me again, and I beg the raven to beat his wings faster, to take me away. He looks back to me, twisting his neck slowly to my face, looking at me with one shining eye, his eyes the gift from Sleeps Long. I can see my face in the eye, the fire in the hearth behind me burning, and I look frightened, my hair long and matted, my face drawn despite the weight of the pregnancy. The raven begins to beat his wings faster so that he floats now, freed from his tether, and either he grows bigger or I grow smaller, but soon I can barely wrap my arms halfway around his neck, and I must hold on to the feathers or else fall off. The raven, still turned to me as he beats his wings, one sparkling eye staring, opens his beak.
Are you sure you want me to fly you away? The others can’t come with you right now. They might soon. They will later. Are you sure?
The pain rips through me. I nod.
The child you carry inside won’t come with us.
I think of the baby. I see the face of He Finds Villages. I see my husband’s face hovering over me with concern. I will stay.
Take one of my eyes. It will help you see.
In my pain, I reach up and pull the shining shell from the eye socket of my bird.
It’s a wise choice you made.
When I open my eyes and look down my body, I can see Gosling’s head near my spread legs. “It’s a wise choice you made,” she says, smiling. She tells me that despite the pain I will feel, I must push. The baby wants to come out now. I do as she tells me, and each time it feels as if I’m forcing myself inside out and ripping myself apart.
When I think I can no longer take it, Gosling tells me to push once more, and I do, grasping my fists on my robe, my eyes squeezed shut. I try to will my body to open. I scream when I feel the rush of it bursting out of me. I look, and Gosling is smiling, her hands busy. The sound of crying, and I think of my little raccoon. My body feels empty, but my hand hurts. I lift it to my face and open it. In my palm lies a bloody shell. The sun breaks through a seam in the birchbark wall. I close my eyes.
—
CARRIES AN AXE lies beside me, cradling my head in his arms. Gosling sits beside us, holding the baby wrapped in rabbit furs. She hands it to me. “Here’s your little girl,” she says.
I pull back the fur to look into the face of my child and am surprised by the thick charcoal hair covering her head. The baby’s eyes are closed, the eyelids almost translucent, and she moves her mouth as if she’s feeding. I look at Carries an Axe. His eyes are wet as he touches his child’s face. She opens her eyes then and starts to cry.
“She’s hungry,” Gosling says. “That’s all.”
When I place my girl’s mouth to my nipple, I feel a small shock. We two are one again. She nurses, and I let the pain of the last days slide away like spring snow from the longhouse roof. I still hold the shining shell in my hand. I turn it over and over. I look up to the raven that hangs above me and see that he’s missing an eye. In my delirium, I must have reached up and pulled it out. Not wanting to lose it, I look around and see the quill box from Gosling resting near me. She told me I’d find a use for it. I ask Carries an Axe to open the box, and I drop the shining shell inside. He closes it. I lean into him, dozing off along with our child.
GHOSTS FROM THE TREES
For two days, my daughter sweats and screams and bleeds. For two days, I prepare myself to lose her more times than I can count. Her baby is too soon and too stubborn. It wants to come out, then it won’t. Exhausted this night, I finally fall into sleep, lying on the porch of the longhouse, Carries an Axe pacing beside me. It feels like only moments that my eyes are closed, but when I open them, my body shivering from the cold, the sun breaks, shooting rays of light through the stakes of the palisades.
I’m alone, but I can hear voices inside. They seem happy. A woman sings a sweet song, and a baby starts mewling, upset and hungry. My body aching, I push myself up to greet my grandchild.
Shivering by the fire, I watch as the women fawn over the baby girl, bundled in rabbit furs. My body complai
Gosling and Sleeps Long, her own baby on her hip, gather what food they can and heat the kettle. My stomach groans, and I realize I’m starved. We all are. It’s time to celebrate now, Snow Falls sleeping lightly by the fire, her new girl on her breast. When she awakes, we’ll eat to her growing strong again, to this new life’s growing strong, to the strength of the people. I crave my home, but this place will suffice for now.
The smoke rises up to the ceiling of this longhouse, the light filtering through so that I feel like I’m still in the dream world. The women laugh and the kettle bubbles and I’m finally starting to feel warm again. I reach for my pouch and search out my pipe.
Twisting a stick into the fire to light it, I look up as Gosling’s eyes meet mine. She smiles. Her stomach, I see, is starting to show. A late-summer child. I light my pipe and puff, beckon her to me. She sits and takes the pipe, puffs on it.
“It will all be all right?” I ask.
She nods slightly.
Sleeps Long sits with Tall Trees and their son, my son. They eat from their birch bowls. I get up to serve Gosling and me, but before I do, I kneel to my daughter and stroke her head. She opens her eyes. Her child sleeps, making soft sucking noises. Snow Falls smiles. When I smile, she closes her eyes again. I stand and ladle food from the kettle.
We all curl up and sleep in the longhouse, the fire keeping us warm through the spring day, waking only when the baby cries out and then nodding back into sleep again.
My eyes open even before I hear it. I can tell by the sun that late afternoon has arrived. The rest of us, exhausted from the last days’ trials, still dream. And then it comes. The voices of the hairy ones, shouting down from the ramparts. I lurch up, Tall Trees and Carries an Axe right behind me. We’re at the gate and climbing the ladder, pushing past the guards, who stare down and point.