The Orenda

  Medicine people try to dream where the sickness has risen from, and what caused it to come to us at an already desperate time. They sing and shake rattles and burn offerings, trying to divine what can be done. But still the disease spreads. The women rush to build new birch baskets to hold the dried corn or hang it high above us in the longhouses on rafters, hoping the smoke that rises will coat it, bless it, protect it. We all begin to eat just enough to get through the day, our stomachs moaning. Some of the children begin to cry at night. The village comes together to take note of how much we have, but it turns out to be little, and it will last no longer than one moon’s full sink and rise.

  “This will leave us in the coldest month without the three sisters to feed us,” the oldest healer says, and so the men, my husband included, double their hunting efforts, staying away for days at a time. And still they come back with little.

  As if in defiance of my body being fed less, my stomach seems to grow bigger every day, and Carries an Axe is off on the hunt the morning I first feel the baby kick. In his place I have Sleeps Long put her hand on my belly, and she smiles and tells me right away that it will be a girl. She herself is due any day now. Her stomach pushes her deerskin dress taut. I go out to find Gosling to tell her the news, the wind howling and snow blowing, the sun shining behind it, making the flakes glisten and dance.

  She’s not home, and so I head to my father’s longhouse to see if he’s returned from his hunting. He and Fox brought back a large buck, and he’s kept a haunch just for me. He wants his grandchild to grow strong. He doesn’t know, though, that the extra meat he gives me I in turn give away to the children in Sleeps Long’s house, my new home. I see smoke from his fire caught by the wind and racing away from the longhouse, and so I rush in to tell him the news. I see he sits with Gosling. They’re holding hands. She laughs, and his face doesn’t look like I’ve seen it before.

  “It’s true,” she’s saying to him. “You wanted this, and so I found a way to make it happen.”

  “Is it truly possible? I thought, I thought …” He looks at her, his face like a boy’s, looking younger than I’ve ever remembered seeing it, his eyes wide and his mouth slightly open, clearly not believing what he’s just heard. He’s about to say something more but looks up and sees me. He beckons for me to sit with them.

  “The baby moved today,” I blurt, truly struck now by what’s happening in my body.

  Gosling and my father smile. “Let me know when it moves again,” he says. “I want to feel my grandchild for the first time.”

  I want to ask them what news Gosling has given my father to make him act stunned like this, staring at me smiling, one hand rubbing the other, his eyes distracted, looking from me to Gosling, then back to me again.

  “Here,” she says, standing to scrape some stew from the kettle by the fire. “We’ve been saving this for you.”

  I don’t want to accept the bowl, but my stomach groans and Gosling smiles and my hands take it. I sit by my father and eat much faster than I mean or want to. He still sits there, quiet, but not himself, either. Gosling sits back down to join us.

  “What’s news with you?” I ask casually.

  He opens his mouth to speak, but shuts it again.

  Gosling laughs. “He seems to have lost his tongue,” she says.

  “Shall I tell her?” my father asks.

  She shakes her head. “Not yet,” she says. “This is Snow Falls’ time.”

  “Tell me what?” I ask and push his arm. “This isn’t fair. Tell me what?”

  Gosling laughs again, and just as she does, I feel the flutter in my belly and then the push, as if by my eating something, I’ve awakened it.

  “Here!” I say. “Give me your hand. Here.” I take my father’s hand and place it on my stomach, right above my belly button.

  His eyes go wide and for a second time today he looks like I’ve not seen him before. He smiles. I think he’s speechless.

  “Would you like to feel, Gosling?” I ask.

  She hesitates. Both of them are acting so strangely. They’re like children, unsure of what to do. Finally she leans toward me, reaching her hand out, a small smile on her face. The baby’s stopped moving, though.

  She takes her hand back and rubs both of them together quickly, as if heating them up. “I do want to feel your child move,” she says, leaning forward again and placing her hand on my belly. My stomach feels like I once felt when a bolt of lightning struck too close. The hair on the back of my neck stands up, and a tickle runs into my belly that isn’t quite uncomfortable, just strange.

  “What makes it feel like that?” I ask.

  “It’s just an old trick my mother taught me,” Gosling says. “You can focus your orenda, you know. Maybe you’re feeling mine?” She laughs. “There it is,” she says as my baby stirs once more. Smiling, she moves her hand slowly over my belly, and the child inside, as if waking from a nap, moves its arms and its legs. I’m sure of it.

  I look at Gosling in amazement, and she looks back at me, her face relaxed. Closing her eyes, she hums something, and the baby continues to squirm and push. I’m between that place of liking and not.

  Gosling’s eyes dart open.

  “What is it?” I ask as she continues to rub my belly as though she’s searching for something, her eyes glazed. “Please,” I say. “Tell me what it is.”

  Gosling focuses again. Looking down at her hand as if it doesn’t belong to her, she lifts it from me, and I suddenly feel heavy.

  “Shh,” she says when I ask her again what the matter is.

  I look to my father, his forehead wrinkled with concern. He wants to say something, I can see. But he waits.

  “It’s nothing,” Gosling says.

  I don’t believe her. “What did you feel?” I ask.

  She says nothing. I push her further. “Do you really want to know?” she asks.

  Suddenly, I’m not so sure. I nod anyway.

  “You are going to have a girl,” she says. “That’s all.”

  “Sleeps Long told me the same,” I say, feeling relief.

  Gosling nods at me, and now I can see it as clearly as if she’s saying it out loud. This isn’t the only news.

  “You will have a girl,” my father says, clapping his hands, breaking my stare.

  When I look back to Gosling, she’s already standing. “It’s time for me to go,” she says.

  —

  CARRIES AN AXE finally comes home with just a few hares and partridge to show for his days away. He’s a good hunter, but the world seems like it’s turned against us. I can feel the worry, even a slow burning fear, when I leave our longhouse on my walks. Everyone knows what comes, and yet none of us, as hard as we try, can prevent it. The talk has turned to whether or not we go to the village of the crows before we run out of food. Some say that they would rather die than beg from the charcoal. Others argue that in their time of need, we looked after them. The least they can do is repay the favour. This debate divides the village. It’s the last thing we need right now, but too many people worry about their children and their families.

  Tonight, Sleeps Long and I listen to our husbands talk about it all.

  “We might have to go there,” Tall Trees says. “There’s little other choice.”

  “I won’t beg from them,” Carries an Axe says.

  His father explains that we won’t go to the crows with empty hands, that we still have furs and labour to offer in exchange. He says rumour has it that none of the regular winter traders, the Montagnais or Neutral or Anishnaabe, have come to us because they still fear last winter’s sickness, and now word has gotten out that our corn has become tainted.

  “What I’ve heard,” Carries an Axe says, “is that the crows and their people offer their kettles and knives and beads in exchange for furs and meat. They now have what our trade partners want.” I can hear the anger in Carries an Axe’s voice. “Don’t you see,” he says. “The crows have slid themselves like snakes between us a
nd our allies.”

  Sleeps Long and I look over at them. Tall Trees smiles. “What better reason to go to their village, then?” he asks. “If you think they’ve taken from us, then you must go to them and speak your truth.”

  Tall Trees is wise. I see what he’s done. His son has to now temper his anger and agree with his father about the importance of going to the crows’ village. I’m impressed until I realize we’ll all be making the journey back to the place that has caused me such pain.

  —

  NEARLY HALF THE VILLAGE decides to go. This is no longer the place of many longhouses. I’m sad to see how few of us are left. Now that deep winter sits upon us, and we travel with the old and the very young, the walk will take two days instead of one. When the skies relax and the weather relents a little, we set out, a long line, clad in deerskins and beaver robes, snowshoes upon our feet, the men ahead cutting trail and dragging toboggans of supplies so that those who walk behind will find it easier. Ahead of the men who cut the trail, our scouts sneak through the forest, seeking signs of enemy raiders and looking for good places for so many to camp overnight.

  For half a day, the rest of us who’ve decided to leave trickle out of the palisades, but not before we say our goodbyes. And then we wander out in groups of five or ten or fifteen. It’s as if our home exhales half its breath this day but can’t find a way to breathe in again.

  When it’s my time to go, I walk to my father’s longhouse and find Fox inside, sitting by the fire. He looks almost like a boy squatting there, but his size never stopped him from being one of our greatest war-bearers.

  He stands when he sees me. I approach him.

  “I’ll see you in spring when we return to plant,” I say.

  He nods. “Tell your father I don’t think less of him for going with you. I would too, to protect you, if you were my daughter.”

  I want to tell him it isn’t too late, that he can come, too. But I can’t imagine him living within the walls of the place of crows. It would kill him. That or he would strike out in rage.

  “It won’t be long,” I repeat. “Only until the winter breaks.”

  He nods again. And then he does something he’s never done to me before. He takes my shoulders in his hands, as if he cups a bird’s egg in each one. He looks at me, his eyes glistening, before pressing his forehead to mine.

  —

  CARRIES AN AXE walks with a group of us women. His job is to protect us, and I love how his chest puffs out with the mission. Not knowing what else to do with my raven, I’d tied a length of sinew to his feet and slung him over my shoulder, his length nearly as long as me. The women laugh and caw out to me as we walk through the snowy fields toward the forest.

  “Why don’t you make it fly,” one teases, “so it can carry you to the crow village?”

  If only she knew. I don’t mind being teased. They mean nothing cruel by it.

  As we reach the edge of the field, we all go quiet. It’s time to be careful and to pay attention now. I glance back at the village once more and the thought arises that I’ll never see it again. I push it away and focus on the journey.

  My father’s up ahead with the trail cutters. He’ll leave a sign in the forest for me. “Keep an eye,” he said. “I’ll snap branches from a spruce and arrange them by a birch not long before it’s time for all of us to gather and make camp. I’ll strip the branches and place them in a curved line beside the trail. You’ll be the only one who knows this means you’re within a short walk to the night’s shelter. And you will amaze everyone when you announce this and it indeed comes true.”

  All day we walk, our progress measured. We can only go as fast as the slowest in our group. Despite wanting to speak with Carries an Axe, I know not to waste the energy or take the chance of alerting an enemy scout. I feel twice my normal size, and it’s hard work to keep up, but Carries an Axe is always nearby. At the sun’s peak, we stop to build a small fire and warm ourselves.

  “Do you want me to pull you by toboggan?” he asks. He can tell I’m struggling.

  I shake my head. “Don’t be silly,” I say. “I’ll be fine.”

  He reaches into his pouch and pulls out a piece of dried deer meat. “Chew on this slowly as you walk. It’ll keep you going.”

  We push on through the afternoon, and to keep myself occupied, I chew on bits of the meat, trying to make it last as long as I can as I look for the sign my father says he’d leave me. I’m not paying attention on the slow walk, and as afternoon begins to darken, the toe of my snowshoe catches a root and I tumble forward, slipping down a short embankment beside the path, my torso banging along rocks or old stumps buried just under the snow.

  When I try to push myself up, I feel a sharp pull in my belly. Right away I lie still and whisper to my baby.

  Careful, I say. Are you all right?

  The other women call out to Carries an Axe, and he is down before I can fully catch my breath. He kneels by me without saying a word, placing one hand on my shoulder and another on my belly. I look into his eyes, trying to keep mine from giving away fear. He stares back. We both know when I’m ready for him to help me up. The sinew holding the raven snapped as I rolled down the small hill, and when I pick him up, I see that one of his wings hangs at an odd angle.

  “Don’t worry,” Carries an Axe says as he reties the sinew and places the bird back over my shoulder. “We’ll fix it.” I want to believe him, but I don’t know how we will.

  We walk even slower now along the path, the women gathered around me like a flock of geese protecting their young. The pain in my belly recedes, but still something doesn’t feel right. When they ask, I tell them I’m fine.

  As dark begins to threaten, I see a large birch up ahead, and when we near it, I see the stripped spruce branches my father told me to look for.

  “We’re near the camp now. I’m certain of it,” I say.

  The women look at me.

  Sure enough, within a short walk, we smell the smoke and then see its light in a dense thicket beside the trail. The women are impressed.

  “How did you know?” one asks.

  “My raven took flight when you weren’t looking,” I say. “Then he came back to report to me.”

  —

  TONIGHT, I’M SLEEPLESS with the worry. My stomach no longer hurts much, but something in my body warns me. A fire burns hot in the middle of the clearing, and different families lie huddled together for more warmth under our birch roofs, the front of our lean-tos facing the fire. There are camps of us like this all over the area, our guards walking about and keeping an eye so that we might sleep peacefully.

  “I can’t sleep either,” I hear a voice whisper close to me. Carries an Axe lies behind, his arms wrapped about me. My father sleeps in front of me. It’s Gosling, burrowed like a mouse inside his robe. I didn’t know she was there. Her face is close to mine.

  “I fell today and worry I hurt my baby,” I whisper back. “It didn’t seem like much of a fall, but I felt something pull.”

  Gosling doesn’t say anything, but this doesn’t surprise me. She rarely wastes her words.

  When I think she must have gone to sleep, she finally whispers again. “You know that I didn’t tell you everything the other day,” she says.

  Rather than answer, it’s my turn to not speak.

  “This is because I myself am not sure what I saw in my head when I touched your belly.” She pauses. “I saw a young woman, about your age. Her face was pocked from a sickness, just like yours. But she lived in a crow village. A large one. She wore the charcoal clothes of the crow, wore one of their sparkling necklaces around her neck and a long cloth the colour of night that covered her hair.” Again, Gosling stops.

  “Tell me more,” I say. “Was she happy?”

  “I can’t say, but she didn’t look to be. She knelt like the crows do and whispered their words. She knelt in front of a very large carving of the one they love so much who was tortured and nailed to wood.”

  “Wh
at else? Tell me more.”

  “There is no more. Only that I could tell the crows held her in great regard. They told others to pray to her when they were sick and then they’d be cured. None of it makes sense to me.”

  I want Gosling to tell me more, but again she says there’s nothing else, just the imagination of a crazy woman.

  As the fire burns low and the cold begins to creep up from the ground and into our sleeping robe, I shiver. I can tell Gosling is still awake.

  “If there is anything else you remember, will you tell me?” I whisper.

  “I can tell you something now I’ve told no one but your father,” she says.

  “What?”

  “I too am pregnant. In the late summer I will give birth to your father’s child.”

  I want to ask how this is possible. Despite her beauty, I believed she was beyond the age to become pregnant.

  As if to answer my thought, she says, “There’s a reason you Wendat say we Anishnaabe have magical abilities. If one wishes for something hard and long enough, there’s no reason it can’t come true.”

  THE MISSION THRIVES

  They begin to trickle and then flood into the mission. The first arrive shortly after morning prayers, the guards on the ramparts shouting down in warning. Gabriel and Isaac and I rush out and up the ladder to look over the wall. I recognize Huron from the village where I once lived, standing just in front of the tree line, a dozen or more of them. In their language, I call to them that it’s safe to come forward, and then, scrambling back down the ladder, I order the gates opened.

  They come in with apprehension, looking about them at the buildings so different from their own. I recognize one of the older ones, a woman who used to tease me mercilessly.

  “Welcome,” I say. “What makes you travel all this way in such conditions?”

  “The three sisters became sick and perished. We came here so as not to starve.”

  I look at Gabriel. He gives me the knowing look back. “Our stores are in good order,” he says. “There should be enough for all.”