The Orenda

  “You aren’t afraid?” she asks. “Cold?” She doesn’t wait for my response. “My name is Gosling. I could ask if you wanted to be here but I already know you don’t.”

  I look up at her, the sunspots dancing, her face becoming focused. I think it’s beautiful, but her words, her voice, make my legs start shaking again. She raises her hand once more. They stop.

  “You will cause your new father much pain,” she says. “I can see this, too.” She smiles.

  “He’s not my father,” I tell her. The idea that he is makes me sad and confused.

  Although her mouth stays the same, I see her own confusion in her eyes. “I didn’t ask you to speak, Snow Falls,” she says.

  I want to tell her that she isn’t my mother, either. And how does she know my name? I try to find it in me to open my mouth and say this but it’s as if it’s been sewn shut with deer sinew.

  “You’re a strong girl, but not that strong,” she says. “If you would like me to prove this to you, I will.”

  I suddenly feel as if my head’s been shoved under water. I stare up at her, struggling with her, and I’m gasping for breath. The confusion in her eyes is now gone. She looks at me blankly, watching me drown. My mouth moves like a pike’s that’s been tossed onto shore. I feel my eyes bulge.

  She blinks, and a rush of air fills my lungs so fast that I begin coughing and gasping.

  “I’m not cruel,” she says. “But I won’t allow you to think that your strength can defeat mine.” She sits beside me. I want to run screaming but I’m paralyzed.

  She cups snow and pats it. “Spring will come earlier than last year. If you concentrate you can feel it in this.” She nods at her hands. “The last night’s snowfall was like our bodies when they reach that time. It’s breaking down. It’s dying.” She keeps patting the snow as she speaks, one palm cupping the other. “Your brother,” she says. “The special one.” Her hands stop moving and she cradles the packed snow now. I look, and my brother’s face stares back at me, as if carved by the most talented artist. His mouth slopes down at the edges, and his eyes, a little sunken, just as in real life, stare at me, unseeing.

  The woman talks again. “If your brother hadn’t been killed by Bird, if you’d all made it home this winter, he would have drowned two summers from now on a trading mission with your dead father.”

  She covers my brother’s face and begins patting the snow again. When she opens her hands once more, my mother’s face, her small nose, even the laugh lines at the edge of her eyes, astonishes me. “Your mother still had twelve or thirteen more winters but then would have been taken away by the coughing sickness.”

  She pats the snow again and there is my father, smiling at me as he always had when I climbed into my parents’ sleeping robe and tugged his hair to wake him. “This is the most difficult loss of all,” Gosling says. “Your father, had he not been killed, would have lived to be a very old man. He would have seen you marry, would have seen you give birth to many grandchildren, would have seen your hair begin to turn grey.” I can feel her looking at me, but my eyes remain on my father’s face in her hands. “And what’s most difficult to realize,” she says, “is that had he lived past this winter, he was to become the one strong enough to prevent the slaughter that now approaches.”

  Before I can protest, she covers my father’s face with her hand. I want to ask her to tell me more but my mouth remains sewn shut. She pats her hands quickly, showing me glimpses in the packed snow of my cousins who were killed with my parents, explaining their other deaths, too, some by warfare, some by disease, one by old age. “The time’s finally arrived,” she says. “It’s the most brutal that we’ll ever witness. Your father’s death has sealed that.”

  We sit in the snow, both of us quiet now, and watch as the day unfolds. Chickadees land close to us and blink, opening their beaks as if to say something important before flying away. The sun crawls across the sky almost fast enough that I can see its slow march. And yet for hours we sit there silently, the woman studying me without having to look at me. I don’t feel cold or cramped or damp from the snow.

  When she finally stands up, the sun is already weakening, and her shadow looks long. I stand too, and it’s only now that I feel the winter has seeped into my bones and made me heavy with it.

  “Don’t worry,” she says. “Spring is close.” She turns to me. “You can speak now.”

  “Make my family alive again,” I blurt, and my voice sounds old and scratchy.

  She gives me that blank look once more, and I become frightened she’ll take my breath away again, or worse. “I can’t do that. That isn’t my world.” She smiles, but it isn’t warm. I don’t know if she can smile that way. “I’ve heard word that the Crow openly tells people that he can, though. He says to anyone who’ll listen that the man he most admires came back from his murder three days later. I’ll have to go and listen to him speak.”

  My ears perk at that. I, too, will have to start listening to the Crow and his sad attempts with Wendat words.

  “Go back to your father now,” she says. “He’ll be worried for your safety.”

  “He isn’t …” But then I stop, fearful of her reaction.

  She stares at me, and her lips curl a little at the edges. “You think I mean Bird.” She looks away. “I’m not referring to him,” she says. I want her to look back at me but she won’t. Then she says, “I’m talking about the Crow.”

  —

  AND SO AN IDEA begins forming in my head as winter thaws, dripping into spring. I take long walks every day, sneaking out by squeezing through a break I found in the palisades, and I know this makes Bird mad. He tells me I’m not to do this anymore. It’s dangerous beyond the village, he says. Out there is a place the humans don’t control. I tell him I’ll wander where I please, and if he doesn’t like it, he’ll be forced to tie me up, for that’s the only way he’ll keep me in his stinking home.

  The village lies on a river that, if you walk it for not very long at all, takes you to a great lake that looks so big it must be impossible to cross. I walk out onto the ice, listening as it moans, speaking, I guess, to the season about to come. I go as far as I can before my feet refuse to take me out any farther, and I gaze down at the black river of water that snakes through the lake where the stronger current must be. It grows wider each day, lapping at the ice that sometimes cracks so loud it makes me jump. I speak to the water, asking if it wants me to come into it. My father told me never to do this when I was a child because the spirit that lives in the water will hear me and want to meet me, and if that happens, well, it would be the end of me. But I do it anyway, in part because if I’m to leave this world for another, I can’t imagine it being worse. Maybe I’ll find my family. Maybe I’ll find the place where the path turned in the wrong direction.

  On my walks, this idea continues to form, and I find something like peace away from my enemy’s home. I will make him hurt for hurting me so badly. Today, instead of following the river to the lake, I cut into the forest where the women collect wood. I want to memorize all the details of this land so that when the time is right and my people swoop in, they’ll know it, too.

  Just ahead of me, I see bloody snow where something was killed. As I get close, tufts of fur blow when the wind picks up. A large deer, it must have been, by the mess that’s left behind, fur and so much blood that of course I think of your deaths. I search out the area with my eyes, trying to imagine what happened so recently. Last night, maybe? A pack of wolves must have followed a deer this big for a long time, bothering it, nipping at the tendons in its legs when they got close enough, biting at its belly, keeping a wary eye for the quick flick of hooves that can break ribs or crack skulls. The wolves would take turns pursuing, a couple driving the deer at a fast pace, the others hanging back and holding on to their energy. My father was careful in teaching me all of this.

  You told me, Father, that wolves will pursue for days, will wage a war that’s slow and patient, that wolves
are so frightening not because of their fangs and claws but because of their intelligence, because of their hunger. I see this now, right here. I see the moment in the snow when the deer finally has nothing left, and the wolves join together as a pack, hungry and smart. I see the deer knowing that its fate has arrived and yet it prepares itself to fight as hard as it can for the slim chance its gut is telling it wrong, for the simple fact this is what it’s meant to do, this fighting to live. The deer’s tongue sticks out from its mouth it’s so tired, and in this clearing in the half moon of last night, the wolves slip around the animal, weaving like shadows, growling directions to each other, the lead wolf holding back, allowing the younger ones to keep the deer’s attention. And then the time presents itself. The lead wolf, having slowly, slowly crept close as the others snap and growl, the deer pawing snow and pinned between them and the cedar too thick to pass through, then lunges low and hard and from the side when the deer turns its head away, and the lead wolf latches onto the deer’s thigh as hard as he can, feeling his teeth penetrate the coarse fur of the winter coat. He holds on to the thick strap of skin and muscle he’s taken into his mouth and the others know as sure as they know anything that he has the deer as it tries to bolt away through the pack, screaming out in fear as the others descend and begin biting, too, their teeth as sharp and pointed as flint knives, the deer being dragged to the ground now, trying to kick itself back up but exposing its belly in the process and the strongest of the pack, so hungry, so desperate to feed, snap hard at the soft flesh, ripping skin and tasting the blood that drives them to snap and rip more.

  This animal’s death wasn’t a pleasant one. But I begin to understand it probably never is. How can it be? But it has to happen, doesn’t it? Can you hear me, Father? Do you believe what the woman named Gosling said? That your dying will cause so many more deaths? It’s not fair. This world isn’t fair.

  The wolves eat, and when they’re so stuffed they can barely move, they drag what’s left of the carcass away from this place that smells of humans and fire, leaving only the fur. If it were up to them they wouldn’t have eaten here at all, but they’re happy to be given the gift of more days of life. Wolves can’t live on berries and twigs, after all, and their viciousness is what allows them to keep going, and will allow those who will one day follow to do the same. I bend to pick up a tuft of the deer’s fur and lift it to my nose, and it’s then I see that had this deer not died last night it would have before spring, in just as panicked and horrible a way, by breaking through the ice as it crossed a lake, kicking and struggling for a long time to get out, its eyes wide with terror until the exhaustion consumed it and it allowed itself to slip under, its last snort bubbling the water, its last breath drawing the cold water into its lungs. No, it’s not that life isn’t fair.

  I lift the fur and let the wind take it away. I realize something important. Something you want me to see. It’s a big decision, isn’t it? I can hear your voice asking it, Father. Do I grow up to become a deer? Or do I grow up to become a wolf?

  —

  THIS MORNING WHEN Bird awoke early again, sneaking from the long-house to do what he does so early like this every few days, I crawled out from underneath my beaver robe and into his, taking in his scent. I had to piss, and so I climbed back out, crouched over his thick fur blanket, and released a long stream.

  I lie awake now, waiting for him to return and discover what I’ve done. I consider how he’ll choose to punish me. He’ll probably not say anything at all until the longhouse gathers for our meal, and then he will announce this insult to everyone.

  I wait and wait but he doesn’t return. It must be noon when my legs begin to bounce with boredom, so I crawl down from my sleeping place and see that no one’s inside. That’s strange. I can’t remember a time when there weren’t at least a few people in the longhouse, tending to the fires or preparing meals or talking and laughing. I can tell that outside the sun is bright by the way it pierces the shadows in what are usually the dark corners of this place.

  Pulling my coat over my head, I walk out and am amazed to find the ground brown and muddy all around me, as if winter’s disappeared overnight. Is it possible I slept for days? Weeks? I’m suddenly confused and feel the fear come padding back around me on its large paws. No one’s outside, either. It’s as if I’m the only one left in the world. I walk through the deserted village, little mounds of snow in the shadows of longhouses the only evidence of winter.

  When panic is about to consume me, I look up and see smoke coiling from the longhouses into the blue sky. People must be around, then, must be close. It’s too warm for my coat, so I take it off and walk to the gap at the palisades. When I squeeze through, I finally hear the noise of humans, people speaking and walking and digging through soil with their tools. All across the fields that stretch out over the rolling hills, the people of the village stand or walk on the black earth, the ground muddy and rich, heavy with the smell of spring, of past crops, of worms and seeds and the sweat of those who’ve worked it. For a long time I watch all the people who live here, thousands of them. Most don’t do much, just hold their faces to the sun or to one another, enjoying this first day of true spring. The air’s filled with their happiness, their relief that they’ve made it through another winter and the good spring is upon them. Not wanting to, I lift my face to the sun as well and let its warmth fill me, the smell of loam so strong in my nose that I crouch down, lift handfuls of it to my face and breathe in deeply. My people are a farming people, just like these Wendat. We are a part of this earth. We speak similar tongues and grow the same food and hunt the same game. Yet we’re enemies, bent on destroying one another. I don’t understand it. But then I think of you lying dead, my family, the snow soaked with your blood, the same snow melting with your blood into the black earth at this very moment, and the anger rises in my throat and I do understand. Standing, I turn and throw the handfuls of mud at the palisades, watch as it speckles across a few of the sharp poles. I turn my back on these people. I will not let them change me. I won’t let him become my father. The sun on my scalp is warm like blood trickling down onto my neck, making me shiver in the bright light.

  —

  AGAIN I AWOKE EARLY this morning. Yesterday, that first day of the new season, feels like a long time ago. When everyone had returned from the fields for their evening meal, I sat among them and waited for Bird to announce what I’d done to his sleeping robe. I waited for the reactions, the staring adults, the children laughing at me and pointing. But Bird never uttered anything, even though I knew he’d discovered what I’d done when he went up to his sleeping place earlier to retrieve his pipe and came down wiping his damp hands on his legs.

  I waited until the meal was finished and the Crow stood and began to speak in his child words about his god being the one who brought the sun to the people today, most of the longhouse ignoring him, standing and going off to their night games and stories, the few who remained laughing at the idea of a maggot-pale god bringing sunshine to the Wendat world. Bird stood with the rest and left the longhouse without so much as looking at me. It wasn’t until our bedtime, though, that I realized why he hadn’t punished me in front of the others. Climbing into my robe, long after I believed Bird had already fallen asleep, I felt the wetness before I smelled the sour stink of my own piss. He’d switched our sleeping robes.

  And so this morning I lie in my own dampness, needing to piss again, Bird already up and out of the longhouse. I crawl out from his robe, squat over my own, and do it again.

  SHE KNOWS I WATCH

  The Crow is nowhere to be found, which worries me, not because of my concern for his safety but because the village elders have decided he will stay, that it’s good for trade relations with his fellow Iron People to allow him to talk to us. And the elders have told me I’m to be his minder, and I’m not to let anything happen to him. It is as it appears, then. This malevolent spirit has already worked his magic on us. When not so long ago I laughed at him, pitied
him even, now I have learned that he can’t be trusted and I must watch him closely, and never leave him alone again with the girl. I caught him trying to work his magic on her, and I would have killed him then and there if it hadn’t been for her words.

  She has something special. She has a gift. Gosling verified this to me on our last visit. I know you had a gift, too, dear one. Yours was the ability to heal, and those of us who still remember you, we all miss it very much. There’s talk among the wise ones that next year we’ll move the village to new ground. This coming time of planting is the last that the earth around us will support our corn, and our scouts are out looking for suitable places. As you know, my love, we’ll then hold the great feast and the great time of mourning when remembrance will commence, and I’ll hold you in my arms once more for a little while. I look forward to that very much.

  Dark will settle in soon and I’ve checked in every longhouse for the Crow. He’s taken to walking outside the palisades. He strolls with his head lowered, holding the sparkling necklace in his hands, counting the beads on it, mumbling to himself. He’s a strange one. And a stupid one, clearly, walking with his eyes cast down, not paying any attention to his surroundings. Now that the snow has left, the time of raiding parties approaches, and while it’s still very early, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that some of their hungrier warriors have slipped onto our land and taken a scalp or two. It’s a game we play with one another, a chance for the young men to prove themselves and collect a little bounty. I hope they take the Crow. Maybe I’ll do it myself and blame it on them, though allowing him to be harmed will certainly diminish my stature. We’ll see. But for now, I must find him before night falls.