The Orenda by Joseph Boyden
I stick my own fingers down my throat, but the ottet seems to have lodged itself deep inside me. I can hear my baby screaming under the table now, and I struggle to crawl up and to her. The fire that shoots through me drops me flat.
My baby. My child. Help her. I don’t know if the words are in my head or coming out of my mouth. Help her. She’s screaming. I see Delilah on her back, her body doing little jumps. Her legs kick the floor. Christophe Crow leans over me, and the sparkling necklace I’ve known for so long hovers in front of my eyes. I want to grasp it. I want to touch my father. Delilah’s legs drum out on the floor. I remember my mother now, my brother, drumming their legs into the other world. My legs begin to drum now, too.
My father dangles above me, one arm pointed to where the sun rises and one arm pointed to where the sun sets, his legs crossed comfortably over one another, the halo of blood around his head. My baby still cries but not as hard now. The sound of her gets closer. Gabriel Crow stands over me with my baby in his arms. A burning knife cuts through my guts. I can taste blood in my mouth. My body vibrates. Gabriel Crow hesitates, then leans down to me. I reach up when my body stills and take her in my arms.
I’m not sure what I’m seeing anymore when my eyes open, the pain now a great rush of boiling water through my body. I can’t feel my arms or know if my daughter’s in them. I want my husband here beside me. Faces hover, all of them crying. But none is my husband’s. My body kicks then stills again. When my eyes are closed, I see Carries an Axe walking with me through a field of new corn, hand in hand. Our baby isn’t with us but I know she’s somewhere safe. When I open my eyes again, Christophe leans over me, touching my forehead, my chest, both of my shoulders. I see Gabriel, and Sleeps Long stands above me weeping, her baby in one arm, mine now in her other. I see Gosling, who forces my mouth open and stuffs charcoal into it. I can tell from her eyes that she knows it’s too late. I see Fox, who leans to me and touches my forehead. I see my father, Bird, his face blackened and the paint of war on his cheeks nearly smudged off. I’ve never seen him cry. His tears splash on my face. Please don’t cry, Father. It means I’m dying. He has my daughter in his arms now, and he lies down beside me. My daughter’s tiny hand tickles my lips and, as I close my eyes, I feel my child’s warm breath upon my cheek.
THAT PLACE DANCING WITH FIRE
I pull myself up from my lifeless daughter. Fox speaks to Sleeps Long. I know what he tells her. Her body acts as if it wants to collapse, but her face remains a mask. She comes to me.
“They died bravely,” I tell her.
She nods, and when my granddaughter begins to cry, Sleeps Long passes her own child to Gosling and takes the baby from my arms. “She’s hungry,” Sleeps Long says as she removes her breast from her loose top. Snow Falls’ daughter sucks hungrily.
The fighting outside gets closer. By now a few dozen women and children have made their way to us. Fox approaches. “We have to get them out,” he says.
Gosling gently rocks Sleeps Long’s baby, cooing to her. “I recently dreamed,” she says, looking at me, “that one day, years after our child is born, you will take him to the same rocks where you had your own dreaming.”
I’m about to say we can speak of this later, that we must get out of this place.
“You know those rocks,” Gosling says. “The ones with the ancient paintings of men in canoes being escorted by Mishipishu.”
I can suddenly see them as vividly as if I stand in front of them. I’d always thought the men in canoes were being pursued by the water lynx, not guarded by him.
A few men shout outside. “Fox,” I say. “Come with me. I have a plan.”
I limp out of the crows’ house as fast as I can, dragging my leg and keeping a careful watch for prowling Haudenosaunee. I lead Fox away from the fighting and to the little river that comes into the village. In the darkness, we see the canoes lining the banks. We were fools for not noticing what was right there before us. But isn’t this always the way? As Fox and I run to the gate, I explain that we’ll have everyone lie flat in the canoes while the men swim behind them, guiding them out. “Even if the enemy sees the canoes from a distance,” I tell him, “they’ll think they float empty.” We’ll sneak out right under the noses of the Haudenosaunee and then paddle to the Sweet Water Sea and the islands.
The two of us lift the heavy log from the gate and swing it open. The river is a black line in front of us on this moonless night. I let Fox go first as I limp back, my leg dragging badly, to begin the departure.
—
IT’S ALL WORKED OUT WELL. About half of the people have made their way safely to the little river and, if all goes as planned, they’ll reach the islands tonight. I stand in the crows’ house with Fox, listening to sounds we don’t want to hear. Haudenosaunee warriors have drawn closer, and I’m amazed they haven’t overrun this building already.
We’ve been sending out a group at a time to lessen the chances of being spotted but can no longer risk the delay. With the fighting out front, Fox has broken a hole through the back wall facing the little river. I usher the women and children through it and Fox leads them to the canoes. Our last handful of warriors wait there, and as each canoe fills and the occupants lie flat, the men slide into the water and guide each one out to the main river and freedom.
I remind the women to keep their children hushed. I’ve tried to get Gosling and Sleeps Long to leave already, but they refuse to go without me. I want to shout at them to stop being stubborn.
Finally, there are few enough left that we should fit into two canoes. Fox is waiting by the hole in the wall, and in the darkness the shouting and now triumphant singing of the Haudenosaunee grow louder. I ask him to help me carry my daughter’s body and her small bundle of possessions with us. We race as fast as we can to the water, pain shooting through me with each stride.
I urge Gosling and Gabriel Crow, a few old women who have diffi-culty climbing in, and three children who look around with big eyes to be as still and quiet as they can. The two canoes are loaded, my daughter beside my woman. Christophe Crow stands on the bank.
“Fox,” I whisper. “Is that everyone?”
He nods. “I think so. Sleeps Long and the two infants were in the last canoe to go out, yes?”
I’ve lost track and tell him as much. Then I point behind us at the warriors carrying torches toward the crows’ house.
“We’d better hope she was in that canoe,” he says.
I motion for Christophe Crow to get in. We need to go now.
He stares down at us, then shakes his head. “I will stay,” he says.
His helper, Gabriel, rises to his knees. “You must come with us. They’ll torture and kill you.”
“So be it,” Christophe says. “There are many still here who will need to be comforted.”
Light flares in the sky and we turn to see that the Haudenosaunee have put their torches to a small building on one edge of the crow house.
“Please, Father,” the helper begs. “Come with us. You’ll be needed on the islands.”
Again he shakes his head. He reaches into the arm of his robe and pulls out the papers on which he makes his markings, then hands them to Gabriel. “May it one day return home,” he says. He lifts his hand to us and makes his sign before walking up the bank and back toward his house, his large frame lit by the blaze ahead.
Just as I slip into the freezing water to begin to push one of the last canoes out of the village, the Haudenosaunee erupt in screeches. I try to climb back up the bank, but my bad leg’s gone dead. Fox sees me struggling and pulls me the rest of the way. We lie on the ground and watch their war-bearers drag a woman out of the crows’ house. My heart drops. It’s Sleeps Long. She must have thought we were coming back for her when she saw us gone.
“No,” Fox spits. Two of them take the babies from her arms and lift the tiny bundles in the air. She lunges for them but is knocked to the ground.
I try to stand, but my leg won’t allow it. We can see
In the bright light of the burning house, another Haudenosaunee, the tall one painted red who I recognize as their chief, Tekakwitha, walks up, and the men stop their whooping and listen to what he must say. They hand the babies back to Sleeps Long and then Tekakwitha escorts her away.
“We have to get her and the children,” I say.
“What do you propose you will do,” Fox asks, “drag yourself over and beat them with your useless leg?” He looks at me for a few moments, then reaches into his tobacco pouch. “Here,” he says. “Take this.” He hands me his favourite pipe. “I’ll expect it back when I get to the islands.” He rises to a crouch, his knife in one hand, his hatchet in the other. “You can’t walk,” he says, “but I imagine you still remember how to swim. Now take those two canoes and go.”
With that, my old friend sneaks away and is swallowed up by the shadows.
Shivering, I push the canoes out of the village of the crows in the middle of the night, and when it’s safe, I climb into one, the last crow left paddling the other. Together we wind down the black river, turning to look back only once at that place dancing with fire before we push forward again and enter the Sweet Water Sea.
THE STOLEN FRUIT
My mother used to tease me that I grew into a Brittany giant because as a child I’d sneak into our neighbour’s apple orchards every day to steal the ripe fruit hanging just above my head. I tell this story now to my Iroquois captor, Tekakwitha, because I can see it infuriates him. It’s not the story itself, Lord, that makes him so angry, but that I tell it in French. I think he considers this an insult.
Tekakwitha, clearly the captain of these raiders, is as tall as Bird and me, with a scar that runs across his cheek and to his mouth that gives him a permanent snarl. He wears his hair in the standard thin roach down the middle of his plucked head, the hair reaching to his lower back and decorated with a beautiful assortment of feathers. His face is painted a solid blood red. He has me tied to a stake in my ruined chapel, the walls still somehow standing, though the roof’s no longer there. He sits perched on the altar and watches the proceedings. He’s already ransacked the tabernacle and claimed the tin chalice from which he drinks.
Now I want to tell him the story of how my father drank his cheap and strong apple brandy and how he used to tie me to a post like this one and beat me mercilessly for stealing neighbours’ fruit until the blood ran down my back. But Tekakwitha clearly doesn’t want me to speak my tongue anymore. He orders his warriors to squeeze my face until my jaws pop and my mouth unhinges. While one digs in with his dirty fingers, pulling my tongue out as far as he can, the other takes a red hot blade and saws it off at the root. Feeling the blood run down the back of my throat, I wonder if this might drown me. But my persecutors take an iron poker from the blazing hearth and stuff it in my mouth, cauterizing the wound. The burning flesh smells like a cow’s liver left too long on the fire. I am at the beginning of my second day of torture.
Yesterday morning, after Tekakwitha had me stripped naked, he held a mock feast in my honour and explained that he didn’t expect it would take very long to make me scream and beg like a woman. He ordered that a dog killed in the fighting the day before have its scrotum cut off. Then one of his warriors stuck it in the fire for a few seconds before forcing it in my mouth. This cruel act reminded me how much, so long ago, I loved dogs. It was then I took his challenge to heart, Lord. It was then I promised You I wouldn’t cry out no matter what they did to me. And I know You are here, watching me, Lord, for I witnessed a glowing armour descend from Heaven and wrap itself around me, covering my nakedness. I’m able to observe, as if from a distance, what these sauvages do to me and not shout out at the pain.
Yesterday, when I still had a tongue, I preached to the warriors who danced and sang all around me, telling them that, unless they accepted You, they’d end up in fires far worse than the ones they now stoked. They laughed at me as they complimented my grasp of their language and delicate accent as they prodded me with burning sticks and sliced at me with sharpened clamshells. By mid-morning, when I still hadn’t screamed, their caressing became more vigorous. They forced me to walk the length of my chapel with my hands tied behind my back while they smashed my toes with rocks and pushed me into the fires they’d built and shoved burning sticks into my orifices. I knew my time on this earth was short and fought my fainting, but slipped into unconsciousness despite my efforts.
I remember awaking to cold water being poured into my nose, and I sputtered awake to the sight of them standing around me, patting me on the back and clasping my hands and smiling at me as if we were all the best of friends. A couple fed me pieces of meat tenderly with their own fingers while still others tipped a birch cup to my mouth. Then they untied me and let me hobble around before tying me to the post again, this time with my hands in front of me where I could see them.
Tekakwitha chose his ten favourite warriors to stand, and each time he nodded his head, one walked up to me and twisted a finger till it snapped, then took his knife and cut it off, staring into my eyes. I smiled at each man who came and whispered a prayer for his soul. I finally felt I’d begun to understand my dear misguided Isaac’s travails. I just wish he’d not acted so insanely and caused such great harm.
Forgive me, my Lord, but yesterday after each finger was removed from my hands, and as each bleeding stump was cauterized by red-hot iron, my strength failed me again, and I sank to my knees unconscious.
When I awoke in a crumpled pile, my cheek against the rough wood of the post to which I was tied, I heard babies crying. Looking up, I saw Sleeps Long, the beautiful young wife of the warrior I’d named David so long ago, cradling her baby in front of Tekakwitha. He himself gazed down at the infant cupped in his own large hands. I could tell by her throaty cry that this was the daughter of my troubled saint, Snow Falls, wailing out her rage.
“Come here,” Tekakwitha commanded of one of his warriors who stood nearby. “Look into her eyes and tell me you don’t see a child worthy of being Haudenosaunee!” The warrior, not sure what to do, nodded dumbly and skulked away. Then Tekakwitha announced in a loud voice to all in my chapel, “From this day forward, this child is mine. And you and yours,” he said, pointing at Sleeps Long, “will become mine as well. You will continue to nurse both this child and your own.” I smiled at Sleeps Long to try and give her some comfort as warriors led her and her babies away, but I fear she didn’t see me.
And now today, Lord, it is the third day of my captivity and of my torments. I smile at the coincidence, for did You not suffer for three days, too? Didn’t you wait another three days before rising up to Heaven? The trinity is a fitting thought for me, as I can tell that my physical body will not survive until tomorrow. And still I have not cried out. Tekakwitha is perturbed. I can see it. If only I had my tongue so I might tell him more stories.
They’ve built up the fires in my chapel so hot the air undulates as if I crawl through the desert. They’ve given me no water, and I swear my tongue is swollen, even though yesterday I watched an Iroquois roast and eat it before my eyes. I still have my eyes. The warriors applaud and hoot when I push myself up the pole and onto my feet. I look down at my body, now reddened and blackened, blood pulsing from my untended cuts with each heartbeat. My hands are especially ugly, the fingers gone, the stumps swollen twice their normal size, now just oozing charcoal knobs.
I can no longer speak, but I can praise You with song, my Lord. At first, the sauvages who rest in the chapel must mistake my humming for moaning, for they rush out and bring Tekakwitha back with them.
But I smile at him as I hum the lovely hymn “Ave Verum Corpus” as loudly as I can, and although I can’t speak the words, I hear them in my head, Lord, I hear them in my heart. Hail, true body, born of the Virgin Mary, who having truly suffered
Three warriors, two of them wearing French breastplates, the other a brass helmet, lace hatchet heads together with chain they must have taken from my dead soldiers. They smile at me and speak gently as they place their creation in a fire. Others have come in with a large kettle of water and set it over another fire. Tekakwitha smiles at me, and I smile back. The afternoon sky above us is beautiful, a blue so clear it’s as if I peer into the shallows of the Sweet Water Sea. I can feel its coolness. I know, now, what soon comes, Lord. Please continue to shield me.
Tekakwitha calls out and warriors stream into the chapel, singing in a high tone, dancing in their swooping gait. Many of them carry objects from my mission. One swings a rosary, the next wields a wooden chair, and another holds a squawking chicken up above his head while others point and shout and laugh. Still others have put on cassocks and pantaloons and leather shoes they wear on the wrong feet, and a few brandish muskets taken from my men. I watch all of this in wonderment.
But then I see him, dancing in the circle around me with the others, glancing at me, holding what he was so long enamoured of in his two hands. Young Joseph the betrayer, Hot Cinder, dances by, and the mission clock, the Captain of the Day, is his special prize. If anything makes me want to scream out, my Lord, it’s the sight of this naked boy passing by me with accusation in his eyes.
Tekakwitha stands as the warriors call out and drum and dance. Realizing that my physical strength is leaving me more quickly than he’d hoped, he orders his men to cut me from my stake. They lay me gently upon a beaver robe, careful as they pour cold water down my throat while others rub the few parts of me that aren’t cut or burnt. One chews a piece of venison to pulp and then places his mouth on mine, feeding me as a bird feeds its chicks. The chapel’s quiet as the afternoon lazes into dusk. The men around me are excited but respectful. When I am ready, I begin to hum “Ave Verum Corpus” once more, and I sit up on the robe, surrounded by these people.