The Orenda Joseph Boyden (22 page)

His smile surprises me. I’d wanted anger. “Yes, I do,” he says. “But I’m willing to wait one more year until you’re the right age.”

The bear behind us huffs, as if it’s amused by our exchange. All three boys laugh.

“Killing that raven is as bad a curse as entering the threshold of a dead family’s home without their permission,” I say.

The boys stop laughing. Porcupine Quills looks a touch paler suddenly.

“Did you—?” the one with the spear begins to ask, but his friend hushes him.

“This is for you,” Porcupine Quills says, lifting the arrow and the raven from his shoulder and holding it out to me.

“I don’t want it,” I tell him.

He holds it closer. “Maybe I won’t be cursed,” he says, “if I give it to you.”

“And pass the curse on to me?”

“You’ve already admitted you’re a sorcerer. You can’t be harmed by this.”

I look down at the raven. Its eyes have turned a milky white. This makes me sad. They were so black they bounced back the light not long ago. Its claws have begun to contract in death. Without wanting to, I take the animal. Despite its size, it isn’t as heavy as I imagined.

“The great war-bearer Bird is your father,” Porcupine Quills says.

I nod.

“Make sure to tell him that I’m good with my bow, that I can take care of myself. Let him know I’m a fine hunter.”

“Killing a defenceless raven makes you a fine hunter?” I mock. “I can tell you this. He will not be impressed.”

“He will,” the boy says. I’m about to say again that Bird won’t, but the boy cuts me off. “And tell him that I plan for you and me to get to know each other very soon.”

I want to tell him that this will never happen but he’s already walking away, his friends following like dogs. I want to shout at him. I want to scream. I do. Instead, I’m left holding this dead raven, a young bear huffing behind me, and my face flushed hot.

THE CREATOR’S GAME

Fox signals for me to look up from the tall grass in which we hide. Five of their warriors have snuck out of the edge of the forest across from where we lie in wait, at the very place Fox said they would. They’re big and strong, and it looks like the four who flank the one who holds his netted stick more carefully than the others has what we want. They’ve skirted around our much larger group without detection and left them in the forest behind. All that’s preventing them from crossing this field and claiming their victory is our own group of five.

The sounds of fighting erupt in the forest behind our enemy as they crouch and scan the field. They know we’re here, that we’d never leave this last stretch undefended. A noisy hive of people from our village who’ve travelled all this distance to watch shout and laugh behind us, jeering at the five, urging them to dash across and claim their prize. Our people know where we are but would never give our position away.

The first two warriors begin weaving through the field, trying to draw us out of cover. But we wait. When they’ve made it halfway across, the shouts of our crowd growing louder with the tension, the other three stand and begin to make their way across as well, the front two protecting the one with the hide-wrapped sacred stone. Fox and I know that once they meet up with the lead two, the five will make a desperate charge to the tall post placed in the ground. And once they touch it with the stone, they will have won.

The five now squat in the field, the one with the stone whispering directions. They sense we’re close but I don’t think they know how close. Just as they begin to stand, Fox and I jump up from the tall grass and run directly at them, our three younger, stronger warriors quickly gaining on and then passing us, swinging their sticks above their heads, the other five standing and tensing to meet the approach. Our front three clash with the five, the shouting and clacking of sticks as they swing for each other’s arms and legs and torsos, mixed with the roar of the spectators a few hundred paces behind us, filling my ears with the noise of a waterfall. Two of their five break away from the fight, Fox and I breaking with them. Fox pounces upon the one with the stone in his netted stick as I duck the swing of the warrior who leads him, swinging hard with my own stick to crack it across his shins, causing him to fall. In that second, the air filling my chest, the blood pounding in my skull, I feel young again, young like this one whose eyes widen below me as my mouth opens in a wail and I jab the butt of my stick into his belly so that the wind leaves him and he can’t get up.

Glancing to our three young warriors, I see they struggle with their opponents. I’m disheartened to see one of my men, the one named Tall Trees, apparently unconscious on the ground. He towers even over me. His size and build alone sow fear into our enemies. Clearly, our other two will soon fall to their three so I must act quickly. Fox’s much larger man kneels on top of him, hitting him in the face with his free hand. I swing hard enough to send him tumbling, the hide-covered stone rolling from his netted stick. I scoop it up, the power of the prize pulsating through my arms. Lightning striking water buzzes in my head. Fox stands unsurely, bleeding from his nose and eye, which has already begun puffing shut. I gesture with the stick toward the forest and he understands, sprinting for it.

I begin to trot backward, away from the forest and toward my own crowd who stand just behind the pole in the ground. Two enemies who are left standing advance on me, slowing as they wonder what
I’m doing. Cradling the stone, gently rocking it back and forth in my netted stick, I taunt them to come get me. I glance back for a second to see the open mouths of my people screaming for me to run to where Fox is at the edge of the forest, waiting.

The two advancing warriors speed up, running toward me, and as they draw within ten paces, I lift my stick above my head, cock it back, and whip it forward with all my might, sending the hide-covered stone sailing high above their heads and toward Fox. Both of them stop, realizing their foolishness and growling at me just as Fox jumps up and catches the stone in the net of his stick. He raises the prize high to me before disappearing into the safety of the forest. My people roar behind me.

—

A GREAT THRONG
overflows the big longhouse, my villagers on one side, our hosts on the other, a row of fires burning between us and warming kettles filled with different stews. Injured warriors are given places of honour on the ground near the fires. I can see Tall Trees stretched out, resting his head on his arm. He came to shortly after Fox disappeared with the sacred stone into the forest, and I sent him back to our host’s village despite his wanting to continue the Creator’s Game. He’s too valuable to me. I will need him in a few weeks when we travel back to the place of the Iron People. This will be the first big trading mission in many summers, my love. It’s vital for the commerce, but more importantly to show our enemies that we remain in control. The Haudenosaunee, from every report I’ve heard, remain weakened by the sicknesses. We must go this summer, despite my worries about leaving so few of the strongest men back home to protect the village. The sicknesses were especially cruel to the ones who appeared strongest, and they were the most painful to lose. Many boys wanting to become men will have to prove themselves this summer, for they’ll act as our home guard.

The elder who speaks for our hosts is good, but he’s gone on too long. The stews will soon be burnt in their kettles. This is the third time now that he’s circled back to thanking us for bringing the Crow so that he might be studied and understood. I worry that the old man has become soft in the head as I can almost repeat, word for word, what he says yet once again.

I glance over at the Crow, who watches intently as the elder speaks, acutely aware of his being the centre of attention. How did it happen, my love? It seems like I’d loosened my attention for only the briefest time, but when I focused back on the visitor again, he’d nearly mastered our tongue. But what’s most frightening is how many he won over to his strange views at the depth of the sicknesses. Those who didn’t think that the Crow himself had brought this sorrow to us suddenly began listening to his lies about how we’ll find ourselves in paradise when we pass from this place. I can see why this would appeal to the simple-minded, and maybe it’s best that he take our weak ones to his side. No, that isn’t right. Forgive me, my love. I’m hungry and cranky. My thoughts wander and I need to eat.

“We welcome the Attignawantan, the Bear People, to our home,” the elder says again as he paces between fires. “You are our big brothers, and we look up to your wisdom and physical prowess. On the battlefield you vanquish your enemies, and you make pathways to those from over the great waters so we may in turn live in comfort and with bounty. You bring this charcoal so that he may teach us how his people see the earth and the sky, and by allowing him among you, despite the grumbling of some that he is a dangerous oki in the disguise of an ugly, diseased, and hairy beast, you allow him to walk freely among you and enable us to exchange our animal furs for their goods. We thank you for this.”

The old man squats on the ground as if to examine the dirt, and I think that finally he is done. The crowd is revived by the promise of feasting. But then he stands up again.

“You Attignawantan have travelled a great distance to challenge us in the Creator’s Game. And Sky Woman smiled down on us today.
Aataentsic has watched us suffer much these last years and I dreamed that she’s sad for us and is ready to take pity on us and so this is why I called you here to partake of her game. She told me in my dream that we’re to play in her honour for two more days and treat our brothers as fiercely as if we were true enemies so the blood pouring from our wounds will nurture the fields for the three sisters to grow strong this year. But Sky Woman wishes that when we end the game and when you Bear People depart, we’ll not be like cousins but like brothers. And the wounds that our young men suffer will serve as a sign of our fierce devotion to one another.”

“Ah-ho! Ah-ho!” the people respond as the old man’s talk crests up higher than it has all evening, as if he’s finally found his head. Even I, despite my hungry belly, begin to feel caught up in his words.

“I dreamed, too, that the Haudenosaunee, still feeble from the coughing plague, will not interfere in your trade this summer. I dreamed that in the coming years, though, they will grow even angrier with your refusal to stop crossing their country in order to trade with the hairy ones, that they seethe that you allow their charcoal into your village, and so we must all continue to act not just as cousins but as brothers, for we can’t defeat the enemy alone but only as a group. And so I encourage you, you young warriors before me, to play as hard as you can for the next two days, to try and wound one another for the next two days, for your wounds will bind well and make you stronger instead of fearful when you hear the screams of your enemy in battle. The Creator’s Game will teach you this and make our two communities as close as family. Only in this way will we be strong enough to resist our common enemy.”

With that, the old man finally sits and raises his arms to the women across from him, who stand with ladles in their hands as we guests are urged to partake of the kettles.

Our hosts have spared no expense with this feast and fill our birch-bark plates with steaming mounds of trout and sturgeon and pike stew, with deer and bear and moose meat, with corn flavoured with berries
and the syrup from maple and birch. When one plate is finished, our hosts urge us to stand for more, for we must all eat until the kettles have been scraped empty. My belly that was groaning for food now moans from fullness as the quiet talking of neighbours and the sighs of the sated and the pop of dry wood being consumed by the fire blanket the great longhouse. Indeed, our cousins have been good to us, and tomorrow on the field we will fight hard again as if we’re hated enemies, for the old man is right in saying that this game will teach our young men to think clearly in battle, toughening their bodies and their minds for what they’ll soon face.

My head has dipped down to my chest, my plate resting on my thighs, when a hand on my shoulder wakes me. Fox, his one eye swelled shut, he’s smiling the smile he saves for news I don’t want to hear. “Get up, Bird,” he whispers coarsely. “Awake. Their great chief asks you to speak now.”

I wipe away the drool that’s slipped onto my chin with the back of my hand, hoping no one has seen it.

“Get up!” Fox says again, pushing on my arm. “Say something. Say something good.”

I lurch to my feet, my exhaustion falling away just enough that I stand with some semblance of authority once I see how many wait for me to speak.

“Arendahronnon, yes, you, people of this great rock upon which you decided to eke out your existence,” I begin, trying to be funny but now worried it sounds more like an insult. “Arendahronnon, you People of the Rock,” I begin again, “you’ve found an idyllic world in which to spend your days, close to our friends and great hunters and medicine people, the Anishnaabek to the north, and you are surrounded and protected on the three other sides by water. Yet your fields are as large and plentiful as any in the country of the Wendat. But do not assume this will prevent your Bear brothers, we Attignawantan, from crushing you tomorrow and the day after, as we crushed you today, in the Creator’s Game.”

The crowd, listening intently, laughs just enough to free my tongue.

“My cousins, you Arendahronnon, no, my brothers, we all indeed become closer by participating in this little brother of war with each other.”

People nod and exclaim, “Ah-ho!”

“As your elder so rightly says, we must band together as one if we are to continue dominating the Haudenosaunee.” I wonder what else to say, something that will impress them, and before I can think better of it, I open my mouth. “I offer you this, my brothers. Travel with us to the land of the hairy ones this summer. We will go as a single force, an unbeatable force. We will go as one in order to show the Haudenosaunee that we can’t be defeated.”

I can feel Fox’s eyes on me, even as our hosts respond with enthusiasm. He knows that a group this size travelling through Haudenosaunee land will be taken as more than a great insult. It will be a declaration of war. Not only that, the Iron People will certainly drive down prices when they see the large volumes of furs that arrive with such a large contingent. I look at Fox, who shakes his head at me. But I’ve certainly won our hosts over as they stand and call out my name. They’ve wanted this offer from us for a long time and I’ve just given it away.