The Orenda Joseph Boyden (21 page)

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TODAY I’VE BEEN SENT
by the old women to wander the village in search of something that I’m told will catch only my eye. No one knows what it is, but when I see it, the old ladies say, I’ll know. When I find it, I’m to take this object to the women’s longhouse out in the fields, and then the ceremony will begin. For the next weeks, I’ll be expected to sit with them as they talk to me about what life can bring. I won’t be allowed to leave their special longhouse, they say, unless it’s to work the fields with them, and I will only be given certain foods to eat, the foods we’ve harvested together that they claim will bring me the strength and the wisdom a woman will need to survive in this world. As I wander aimlessly through the village, I tell myself that it’s mornings like this I wish I were a boy.

The middens at the edge where the women dump the refuse of the longhouses is the first place I head to. I walk around the large piles of fire ash and old, torn birch buckets and bits of rotting hide and smashed pottery hoping that someone might have dropped a few glass trading beads or a special amulet or a wood or stone carving in her haste to finish her chore. Kicking my feet through the dust, I want to uncover something, anything I can bring back to the women so that I might begin this rite and just be done with it. I find nothing but my nostrils filled with the acrid scent of the houses’ many fires.

I wander the perimeter of the village next, dragging my hand along the palisades, noting how many places it would be simple for a Haudenosaunee warrior to slip in. Now that spring is here and we’ve begun the planting, we’ll tend to this as well. These last weeks it’s as if the people here are awaking from a long nightmare. So many died the last winters that some days the wailing seemed to come from every direction. I’ve listened to Bird and Fox talk all night at the fire for a
long time now. The first year, their talking was filled with the worry that my people would hear of the sickness and swoop in to destroy the Wendat. The second year’s talk turned to how the Haudenosaunee were just as deeply struck by the illness and this is why they hadn’t come to take us. Over this last year the talk has come down to how whichever of the two enemies heals fastest will decide who wins the trade and, in this way, the war.

I cut down a path, listening for signs of life in this row of long-houses. Most of the community is out in the fields today. As I walk, though, touching my hand to the walls, trying to sense something from them, I hear a baby crying, its mother quietly shushing it. Farther down I hear voices through wood, and as I sneak up, I begin to make out words.
You will be mine.
A laugh.
You will.
A moan.
Not here
. Something in my belly tightens, and I want to sit and listen for a while longer, but the voices of young men walking by on the other side of the long-house make me move.

I circle around and head toward the path where I heard them. Peering around the corner, I recognize them as the ones who speak so loudly of becoming Bird’s next great warriors. These are the same ones who, when asked to collect water or weed the fields or bring firewood, spit and say it’s women’s work. They’re soon to be young men, and they’re disdainful of almost everyone. And lazy. Little do they know that Bird would never tolerate such behaviour on his travels.

There are three of them, their hair shining bright with sunflower oil, the sides of their scalps freshly plucked. All of them wear only breechcloths and moccasins. The middle one’s breechcloth is decorated with porcupine quills, and despite my not liking these boys, the muscles of their backs and legs are very pretty. The middle one with the porcupine quills carries a bow. The one on his left, a club, and the one on his right, a spear. Their faces are painted as if they’re going off to war, I see, as they turn to one another to talk and laugh. These are no warriors, though. They have no idea that I follow them.

A raven sits atop a longhouse in front of us, looking down at the
boys with its black eyes, its head turned to them as if it wonders what they might be. It’s a big raven, its feathers shining blue-black in the sun. The boy with the spear points at it. The porcupine-quill boy pulls an arrow from his quiver and strings it, draws back his bow. He takes aim at the raven, his taut arms tense. He releases the arrow, its flight so quick it’s just a streak through the air. I watch as it sings by the raven, inches from its chest, arcing up and out, over the palisades and toward the fields. The one with the club shoves his friend, laughing that his arrow might strike an old woman bent over weeding in the ass. The boy with the bow ignores him, draws another arrow and begins to pull back. But the raven, cawing loudly, pushes up and takes flight, catching an air current and riding up high above them within seconds. Laughing, it swings down and lands again on another longhouse. Watching the boy with the bow, I see in the slump of his shoulders that he deems the shot too far. The three of them soon move on, and I follow.

They come to an abandoned longhouse and stop by its door, daring each other to enter. The one with the spear makes a move to open the door but then pauses. They don’t want to enflame the dead owners. Instead, he bends and picks at slim green shoots of tobacco that have begun to sprout where, sometime last year, the residents scattered the seeds.

The one with the spear says, “I’ll bet you there’s dried tobacco in the rafters.”

“Well, go in and find out,” the one with the bow says.

“You first,” the one with the club says.

The young man with the bow pushes the door open. He’s hesitant but I can see now he must go through with what he’s started. A plan forms quickly in my head. I sneak the long way around the house I spy from and make it to the other side of the empty longhouse. I can hear that they still hesitate at the front threshold. I know I shouldn’t do it for risk of offending the dead occupants, but I ease this end’s door open and, like a lynx, dart inside and under the closest bed platform.

The dust is so thick that I must pinch my nose hard and hold my
breath to keep from sneezing. My eyes take time adjusting to the darkness, but soon I can see the silhouettes of the three boys in the beams of light and dust floating in the air. They stand alert, tensed to run out. I follow their tilted heads to the roof, but the rafters are bare. From what I can see, the place is empty.

Porcupine Quills begins to walk in. What am I doing? What if they see me? I swallow that fear and decide I will act when the moment presents itself.

“Where are you going?” the one with the spear asks.

“There’s nothing here,” the one with the club hisses. “Let’s go. I don’t want okis haunting me in my sleep.”

Porcupine Quills looks back at them and spits on the ground. “What kind of war-bearers are you two?”

He moves forward more boldly now, his eyes obviously adjusted. He taps his bow on the sleeping planks on either side of him, as if he’s counting them.

“Do you remember the one named Leaps Water?” he asks the boys behind him. They don’t answer. “You remember her, the one with the big tits.” He laughs, but the others stay as still as the walls around them. “She used to sleep here,” he says, tapping a platform. “She liked to kiss me here.” He turns to his friends and lifts his breechcloth.

“Don’t speak of the dead that way,” the one with the spear says. “I’m leaving before something bad comes to us.”

Porcupine Quills turns back toward me and takes a few steps forward. “What do we have here?” he says, and I know he’s seen me, despite my having squeezed up against the wall as tight as I can. I can see his moccasins now. They’re well made. But then he walks away and lifts something from the opposite platform.

“Don’t touch that,” the one with the club says. “Are you crazy?”

“What is it?” the one with the spear asks.

I watch Porcupine Quills’ feet turn toward them. His calves are strong. “Just a broken arrow,” he says. “I’d hoped it would replace the one I lost shooting at that raven.”

His feet turn around again and step straight toward me. I take as large a breath as I can and then, just as he’s about to tap the platform I’m hiding under, I release the loudest screech I’ve ever made, my throat tight. I’m amazed that it sounds like a giant, angry raven.

The boy falls on his ass and skitters backward, his hands and feet frantically kicking up dust. When I take another deep breath and make the same piercing cry, he jumps up and runs to the door as fast as he can. I peer out from under the platform and see him disappear through it, his friends already gone. The broken arrow lies in the dust beside me.

Outside, the sun bright in my eyes, I continue my search, laughing whenever I think of the frightened boys. I hope the okis of the house forgive me for what I did. I hope they understand my intentions.

A few people have come in from the fields to take a rest and drink some water. The men stand in circles in front of longhouses, smoking pipes and talking among themselves, their robes draped over their shoulders. I can hear women and small children inside their homes laughing and talking and playing. A few people nod to me as I walk by, but I keep my eyes straight ahead. While most of these people still seem put off by me, because I am Bird’s they offer a quiet greeting.

I sometimes feel, dear Father and Mother, as diseased as the three crows who hop around the village. I suppose I’m kept for the same reason they are. The desires of a few have outweighed the desires of the many. Even I know this. After all, I’m within earshot of Bird’s evening discussions with his followers. He’s become more powerful now that many elders have passed on to the other world from disease or age. He and his man Fox. It’s Fox who made the winning argument that if the village banishes the crows, another village will take them without hesitation, despite the dangers. And when this happens, the trade with the Iron People will leave us and flow to where the crows land. But their continued presence here, and their actually beginning to win over some Wendat to their ways, well, something will come of it. There was a balance here that seems upset, and so something must come of that. And when it does, I want to witness it.

Walking down the main path of the village toward Gosling’s lodge, I can see how the dust rises from the walkways, humans and dogs kicking it up into the air. We need rain again. The early spring was wet and promising but now the sky has dried up. And now that the illnesses have subsided, the threat of drought approaches. There’s much grumbling from all corners. We can’t afford a dry summer. The three sisters will wilt and die, and after them, so will we. A summer of drought promises to be the end of us. The special ones of the village have been working hard, urging all of us to do what’s necessary. We give one another our most important possessions, we hold dances that last for days, and some even, when it is dreamed, throw a feast and empty their pantries of everything. The sun above us, though, burns as hot as it ever has this late into spring and shows no signs of abating. We all pray for the storm clouds to rush over the great bay and to us.

Up ahead, I see dogs circling in front of a longhouse, barking and yipping, trying to get at something I can’t make out for their number. Fearing they’re trying to pull apart a smaller dog, I run up, picking a stick off the ground and swinging it at them, and the first ones I hit yelp and slink away with tails between their legs. When I’ve waded through them and sent most of them off to a safer distance, I come face to face with a bear cub, as big as the biggest dog here but much thicker, tethered to the longhouse. It froths at the mouth and bares its teeth at the closest dogs who still jump and strain at it. I hit the closest dog on the nose and it cries out, scattering the other dogs away.

I see the spit of dogs on the bear’s neck and back. It looks up to me with red-rimmed eyes and growls, but begins to calm when I sit down just out of its reach, showing it I mean no harm. The bear paces back and forth on its short leash, then sits on its hindquarters, looking past me to what I imagine must be its home. I’m tempted to untie the tether and let it free, but I’m too afraid to reach near the animal’s mouth. The people who live here are known for their ability to find orphaned animals. They’ve had baby skunks and fawns, rabbits and raccoons and
foxes and even hawks all living with their families at different times. Eventually, we don’t see the different animals anymore, once they’ve grown enough to become too wild. I assume that they end up freed into the forest or into the families’ cook pots.

The bear looks past me again, growling frothy spit. I turn to see the three boys have sneaked up behind me, close enough for the one with the spear to reach out and tap my shoulder. I’m surprised they were able to do this. I take pride in my senses.

“Is this your bear?” Porcupine Quills asks.

“Does it look like my bear?” I respond.

He holds a long arrow over his shoulder, and when he pivots to whisper something to his companions, I see the big raven pierced upon it, its body glistening black in the sun, the beak half open and pointing to the ground. Its wings spread out in death, the animal’s span is near my own height.

“That will bring you bad luck,” I say, pursing my lips and nodding to the bird.

“How do you know?” he asks, looking down at me, his hips thrust toward my face.

“Because I’m a witch,” I say.

“You have the marks of a sorcerer on your face and shoulders,” the one with the club says. “You were sick with the illness, but clearly it didn’t take your life.”

“I’m too strong for the illness,” I say. “It ran from me screaming when I was still a young child.”

“You’d be pretty,” Porcupine Quills says, “if you weren’t scarred.”

I stand up now, angry.

One of his friends notices my hand. “Look,” he says. “She’s missing a finger.”

“Were you tortured by the Haudenosaunee?” Porcupine Quills asks.

“I was,” I say. I laugh to myself. “But I lived to tell about it.”

“You have a nice body,” Porcupine Quills says. “Look, you two,” he says to his friends. “She’s already starting to grow tits.”

I give him a push. “Do you want to play with me?” I ask.