The Porcupine Year

  “Cut it thin,” said Nokomis. The meat would dry on the racks constructed of long birch sticks. Their knives, bought from the trader back on Madeline Island, were very sharp, and each tender strip was sliced very thin to dry quickly. As for the berries, Old Tallow and Angeline were collecting more to add to the ones they had gathered. The day was hot, and already the berries from the day before were puckering nicely. If only the little porcupine could leave them alone! Every time Omakayas turned her back, he tried to waddle over to the berries and began delicately but quickly plucking them up and shoving them into his mouth with his black paws. He was like a naughty little boy, but very slow, and always when he turned to look up at her he seemed so sleepy and bewildered that she had to laugh.

  “I see that Quill has left his medicine animal to me,” said Omakayas, shooing him off. She brought an armful of fresh, sweet willow over and the porcupine dug into it like a little man into a feast. The sun grew hot overhead. Omakayas built a slow fire out of cedar sticks just where the smoke would flavor the meat. Then she retreated into a leafy strip of shade beside the beach.

  Soon the porcupine came toward her with his belly dragging, comical and huge. He groaned with satisfaction and curled on the ground close enough for her to smell him. She edged a bit away, wondering if she smelled as bad to him as he did to her. He sighed a little and closed his eyes. There was something about the porcupine’s happy sleep that made Omakayas sleepy too. Even though it wasn’t even the middle of the day yet, her eyes closed. The sound of lapping waves soothed her and she relaxed deep into the sand. There was a shadow, a swooping shadow. Her eyes opened. Nothing. She glanced over at the rack of meat and then jumped up, tumbling the porcupine into a tangle of tree roots. Gone! The strips of meat! Many of them were gone! And yet the seagulls hadn’t discovered the rack. She would have heard them. They never kept quiet. No, she suspected quite another culprit. But one that she could put to her own use. An eagle.

  She’d once heard Old Tallow and her Deydey speak of catching an eagle by putting fish out on a rack and crouching beneath. It had taken them a very long time to attract the bird, but Omakayas had a chance right then. For an eagle had already discovered the dried meat and would return for more. A feather plucked from a living eagle was much more powerful than a feather that an eagle has dropped—the feather still had life in it. The eagle was still flying to the creator, bearing prayers on the wind.

  Carefully, she crept over to the rack of sticks and put one of the extra pieces of birchbark over her head and shoulders. She poked holes in two slabs of the deer meat and used more of the twining root to secure the meat to her wrists with long cords. She draped the meat on the topmost rung of the drying rack. Then she crouched underneath the birchbark, in the broiling sun, to wait.

  The wait seemed endless. She saw through a strip torn in the bark. Clear sky. A cloud or two. The waves rolled gently up the shore and withdrew with a hissing sound that made her sleepy again. All of a sudden, she sensed the shadow before the bird, felt the sudden yank on her wrists as the meat was plucked from the rack. The eagle’s shock rang through her arms as she jumped up and clutched its tail with both hands. The eagle screamed and struck at her face with the cruel hook of its razor-sharp beak—but she felt nothing. The great bird let go of the meat and soared off and Omakayas stood still, upright, the meat rack collapsed at her feet. In each hand, she clutched two pure white eagle feathers. Feathers that had never touched the ground. Omakayas brought the feathers to her forehead and found that she was weeping.

  “N’dawnis! N’dawnis!” It was Deydey shouting. He had come out of the woods just in time to see his daughter hanging fiercely on to the tail of an eagle. He rushed to her and touched the side of her face. Her Deydey was big and forbidding, and never seemed to like to be around other people. But he could also be childish in his laughter and delight. Or, as now, he could be very tender. He pressed the edge of his tough thumb on Omakayas’s cheek, where the eagle had ripped at her with its beak.

  “N’dawnis, why did you do that?” he asked.

  “Deydey, I heard you say once that to take the feathers from the sky was good, that they should never touch the ground.”

  “You have done something, n’dawnis,” said Deydey, “that a warrior does. This is something that only grown men do. And you are just a little girl.”

  Ashamed of her tears, Omakayas raised her hands to her face. Deydey took the eagle feathers from her hands. He brushed the tears from her eyes with the tips of the white feathers.

  “N’dawnis, you are no longer a child. You have the courage to call down an eagle, and you have taken these feathers. We must have a feast for you and for that grandfather, that eagle, and perhaps you will receive a new name, my girl. Your name Omakayas, Little Frog, was the nickname that we gave you when your first step reminded us of the hopping of a little frog.”

  “Deydey, please, dagasana,” said Omakayas as her father carefully put the white feathers in his shirt, against his breast, “I don’t want another name. I want to keep my baby name, my nickname. I am Omakayas.”

  Deydey smiled at her and stroked her hair.

  “That is a humble thing to say, my girl. And a brave thing you did. You make me proud,” he said.

  In the shade, there was a snorting as the porcupine woke and settled back into munching fresh willow.

  As she helped build the rack back up and replace the slices of meat on it, and as she washed sand off the pieces that had fallen onto the ground, Omakayas felt something balloon up inside of her like a cloud. It was a strange, buoyant feeling—she felt that she could be lifted away by it. As if she’d held on to an eagle and been dragged up into the air! After Deydey left, she understood what it was—pride. It was so rare that Deydey ever showed that he was proud of what she’d done.

  That evening, Deydey smoked his pipe and thought about what to do with the eagle feathers. The next day he talked to the family and said that they would have to build a sweat lodge right there. He had dreamed of a name for Omakayas and had to give it to her right away. So the sweat lodge was built. Fishtail cut pliable green willow and he and Animikiins bent the poles and anchored them in the ground. Angeline and Quill laced the poles together. Nokomis and Omakayas gathered the skins and blankets that they would drape over the sweat lodge to keep in the heat. Old Tallow hunted out the strongest grandfathers, the asiniig, the stones that would be heated white-hot and then carried into the fire pit in the center of the lodge. When medicines were placed on these rocks and water splashed over them, the steam would rise. First the women would use the lodge, then the men. There would be two separate ceremonies that night.

  Yellow Kettle was excited all day and worked on special feast dishes. She made a venison stew. She dug and softened roots for little cakes to fry in the grease of a huge beaver tail. Several times, she looked longingly at Quill’s porcupine.

  “My mother! Take your mind away!” Quill was shocked at her idea, which he could see clearly in her eyes. “Don’t think of making my little friend into soup,” he cried.

  When everything was ready at last, the women went into the sweat lodge. Old Tallow and Nokomis sat by the door, and Yellow Kettle sat to the north. Angeline and Omakayas sat close together in the south. The heated rocks were lifted in with the deer antlers, and Nokomis placed pinches of fragrant medicines on the rocks. Then the door was closed. There was utter darkness. Old Tallow splashed a ladle full of water on the rocks and the steam surrounded them, warm and cozy at first, then hot. Nokomis uttered prayers and the steam got even hotter. On Omakayas’s cheek, the wound from the eagle burned and ached. And then Old Tallow prayed and the steam became unbearable. Omakayas was determined not to put her head down to the place behind her where the skins met the earth. There, she could lift the edge of the skin and snatch a cool breath. She managed not to, but she had to lie down when she got dizzy. At last, when the door was opened and the women crawled out, it was the men’s turn. Old Tallow would keep the fire and bring the r
ocks.

  Outside, sitting in the cool air of the night, drinking gulps of pure water, Omakayas felt deliciously calm and happy. The sweat lodge always made her feel good—afterward. She listened to the songs and prayers of the men and heard the calling of the night birds, the thrum of crickets, the whisper of the pines. Deydey lifted the blanket covering the door to the lodge and called her over to him. Omakayas came and knelt in the entrance.

  “In my dream a bird appeared, great and white, and in its beak it carried these feathers.” Deydey fanned her with the feathers she had plucked from the eagle. “I heard my grandmother calling and then I saw her—but she was not old, as I remembered, but a young girl.” Deydey gave the feathers to Omakayas to hold and touched her cheek where the eagle had raked her. Most of the wound would heal, but she would have a tiny scar. He dabbed her wound with warm bear grease and put his hands on her head. He smoothed her hair with a powerful, gentle touch. Then his hands rested on her cheeks and he looked kindly into her face.

  “Your name is Ogimabinesikwe,” he said. “That was my grandmother’s name, and it is your name now. The spirits will know you by this name. Leading Thunderbird Woman. You can still let us call you Omakayas if you want, but the spirits will know you by this other name, too.”

  “It is a good name,” said Old Tallow, delighted. She laughed out loud with rare excitement—a strange sound to hear, like the rasping of two branches together.

  Nokomis clapped her hands and the others nodded and even Quill yelled “Howah!” at the sound of Omakayas’s new name.

  SIX

  THE PATH OF BUTTERFLIES

  They woke covered by a blanket of yellow butterflies. Thousands of wings had fluttered down on them by night, and as the sun rose and warmed the creatures, they skipped everywhere—across the sand, over the light waves. Hundreds fanned their wings on the damp bark of the canoes, on the packs. They clung to the cooking pots, flitted around the baskets, and the blankets were covered with bright golden wings. The butterflies had black smudges on their wings that looked like staring eyes, and their wings were edged in soft black, too. With every movement the family made, the butterflies swirled up in a dance of light. Omakayas almost hated to leave them. Bizheens put his hands up in wonder and waved his fingers. The butterflies landed on his hair, his arms, his little hands, even the tip of his tiny nose. Bizheens tried to catch and eat the butterflies at first, but at last he gave up and batted at their wings in play. The butterflies poured off Deydey’s shoulders as he worked to load the canoes.

  “This is a good sign from the Great Kind Spirit who loves us all,” said Nokomis. “This is like a smile from the Creator, my children.”

  And the truth was everyone was smiling, even Quill, even Old Tallow. Who could help smiling when visited by these beautiful and fragile spirits? Only the dogs belonging to Old Tallow took little notice.

  As the family pushed out onto the water, to cross the lake, a brilliant cloud of yellow wings followed them a short way, then disappeared, like a soft good-bye.

  As they crossed the lake, paddling, their spirits lifted. The way was long, but they would find their family in the end. The family sang together, back and forth between the canoes. They sang traveling songs, surprise songs, nonsense songs, even a love song from Deydey to Mama, who laughed and flicked water backward at him from her paddle. Bizheens loved the surprise of the canoe and put his hands on the gunwales and his face into the wind. He laughed with happiness, and Omakayas laughed with him and kissed him. Once, looking up at Miskobines, she saw the old man smiling to see how much she loved her little brother. Paddling behind his father, Animikiins was smiling at her too, and she looked quickly down and hid her face in her baby brother’s hair. Bizheens pulled at her braids, and she made a quiet game of counting his fingers to keep him from throwing the canoe off balance. That was her job—amusing lively Bizheens.

  The lake was big, shallow, and sandy for a long way out, then deep and calm. The sun was much higher by the time they could see the other shore, but as land came into view they could all see that something was happening in the sky.

  Their paddles dipped more slowly, then stopped, for the sky ahead was turning a gray color that had nothing to do with clouds or the weather. Deydey said it looked like fire, and Old Tallow nodded. In the heat of midsummer, lightning struck trees that burst into flames, or sometimes mounds of deep rotting wood kindled all by themselves. White settlers, would-be farmers, also started fires to clear fields or pastures. But the woods were so dry by the middle of the summer that even campfires weren’t safe. Everything was dry tinder, ready to catch fire. The whole family had been extremely careful in putting out their fires as they moved through the woods.

  They approached this lake’s far shore carefully, but at last they were in shallow water. As they drew their canoes close to the opposite shore, where they would prepare to portage all their belongings to the next lake over, Old Tallow suddenly signaled them to hush.

  Her dogs were standing motionless in her canoe, hackles raised, staring at the screen of brush and trees just past the shoreline. The leaves were thick, and there was no doubt in Old Tallow’s mind that something—more likely, someone—was concealed there. Whoever it was would have seen them approach for miles. Someone was waiting to ambush them. Once all of their canoes were ashore, they would be helpless on the wide expanse of sand.

  Instantly, everyone except Old Tallow pushed back offshore and hunkered down in their canoes. Omakayas curled around Bizheens, who seemed to understand something was wrong and went tense and silent, watchful too. Mama both steered and paddled as Deydey pulled out his gun. Miskobines, Animikiins, Fishtail, and even Quill took out their bows and fitted arrows instantly into their hands. Old Tallow motioned to them that she was going to go ashore first. She had her gun loaded and her spear at her side. She got out of her canoe and crept onto the sandy shore, her dogs in a circle around her. Suddenly the gray female, always the boldest, bounded forward and disappeared into the brush. Old Tallow crouched down, ready for an attack, but instead of an impressive Bwaan warrior, a young chimookoman stumbled out onto the sand with the gray dog holding tight to the leg of his breeches.

  “Call him off! Please!” the boy cried. “We’re lost! Help us!”

  Old Tallow, who did not understand the English language, kept her gun trained on the boy. Deydey knew what he was saying and told Mama to bring the canoe close enough to shore for him to land. Deydey got out of the canoe holding his gun and waded over to stand next to Old Tallow.

  “Tell all of your people to come out of hiding,” said Deydey, in English, to the skinny little boy, who wore dirty, tattered clothing and was no more than six or seven winters old. “We will not harm you.”

  The boy’s blackened face trembled as he tried to hold back his emotions. “There is only my little sister,” he said. He turned and whistled sweetly as a bird and called, “Susan!” A tiny little girl toddled out of the leaves. She wore a halo of soft red hair just like her brother, but she was so young that she had just begun to walk. Her face was also dark with dirt, and she gazed at everyone soberly as she sucked on her hand.

  “Your mother, your father, your family?” asked Deydey.

  The boy turned away, hiding his face. He told Deydey that he and his little sister had come to the lake where at least they could find water. For a long time, said the boy, they’d had nothing to eat but a young robin, which the boy was proud to have caught, and a few turtle eggs they had dug out of the sand.

  “Howah,” said Old Tallow, patting the boy’s shoulder when Deydey told her about the turtle eggs and the robin. “You are a mighty hunter. You provided for your little sister.”

  Deydey asked the little boy where their parents were. He offered to find them. But the boy shook his head and slumped down suddenly on his knees. The memory was too much for him. He said that he and his little sister had been sleeping on the floor of their cabin, and awakened one morning to find it full of smoke.

  “We
tried to wake our mother and father,” he said, “but they would not move.”

  The parents had been sleeping higher up, on a platform. The smoke had risen and collected all around them, but the floor was clear. The two children had stayed by their mother and father, trying to wake them, until the fire became so hot, and the smoke so thick, that they’d had to flee.

  Old Tallow knelt down near the boy and continued to pat his sharp trembling shoulders. The little girl stared at them all with round blue eyes as her brother went on talking. It didn’t look like they’d been on their own for more than a couple of days. They were skinny, but their bones weren’t showing yet. They were covered with bug bites and sores. From the looks of the sky, the fire was still burning and had come closer. They could now smell the sharp smoke on the wind.

  Nokomis waded to shore with a bag of the pounded venison and berries that Omakayas had made. She opened the bag and gestured to the boy and the little girl, then pretended to eat.

  “It is good,” said Deydey. “Pemmican. Eat it!”

  The boy reached in first and took a handful. He ate the good pemmican as slowly as he could, but he was clearly famished, and soon he and his little sister began to wolf the food down, handful after handful, eyeing Nokomis to assess the moment she would close the mouth of the sack. But slowly and gently, she lowered the sack to the ground and made its opening wider. Old Tallow was already busy making a little cooking fire, and she had sent Animikiins and his father, along with Quill, away with the dogs to investigate the woods and make sure they were safe.

  “Bring back a waabooz, or a fat squirrel,” she had ordered. “Let’s feed them up and then go looking for their family.”