The Orenda Joseph Boyden (27 page)

I watch Delilah contemplate this, and for a long time neither of us speaks.

“I will take it upon myself,” she finally says, “to try and do what you do, to try and live the way you tell me to live.” She glances back at her longhouse where the children’s faces have emerged into the light again. “I’ll do it because we’re suffering and face starvation. I’ll do it for my family.” She seems on the verge of tears. “I’m sad to do it, though, because I will be alone in death, separated forever from everyone I
love. But that’s a small price to pay, I think, if I can help save those I love.”

I want to correct her, to explain that if she persuades the others to be baptized, they will join her in Heaven. But Delilah’s already disappeared into her longhouse.

—

GABRIEL, ISAAC, AND I
begin our nine days of novena, saying a Mass each morning, petitioning the Virgin Mary for rain, our prayers fervent as we look through the smoke hole of our cabin at the high blue sky. Each day, Delilah joins us, watching closely, kneeling when we kneel, standing when we stand, blessing herself when we do. Each day, I offer her a piece of the body of Christ, and she accepts it on her tongue. For five days, Delilah is our sole apostle.

Gabriel grumbles about this but I tell him to be patient, that Delilah is a well-respected elder and it doesn’t go unnoticed that she joins us in prayer. “Can’t you feel the power of what we are doing?” I ask. “It’s as if the air itself is changing all around us. Have you even felt a sliver of fear since those dark days have lifted?”

Gabriel nods. “Yes, Brother,” he says. “I do feel the difference.”

We bow our heads together, Isaac joining us, with Delilah watching, trying to repeat our Latin words of praise, a child exploring the garden for the first time.

On the seventh day, I can feel a presence enter our cabin as the four of us whisper our novenas. I do everything I can to stay focused, to complete the prayer before looking up. I fear, though, that when I do, the petulant face of Gosling will be looking back at me, mocking. The sky remains as blue and as high as it has all summer.

When we finish, we stand as one and turn to the new arrival. My heart swells when I see that instead it is young Aaron, whom I thought we’d lost to the darkness once again. He stands in front of us for a long time. No one speaks.

Finally, I break the silence. “What do you wish from us?” I ask.

“There’s talk throughout the village that you’re working your magic in the hopes of rain.” He pauses, realizing that I bristle at the word
magic
. “They say you neither sleep nor eat nor drink for nine days. That on the tenth day you promise rain.” He stops. I gesture for him to get on with it. “The young warriors say that if the rain doesn’t come, your power is so weak they can kill you without fear of reprisal.”

“These brazen young ones say all sorts of things against me when Bird isn’t nearby.”

“They mean what they say,” Aaron continues. “Some among us who know the spirit world speak loudly that the magic you work is meant only to bring death to us.”

“What we work isn’t
magic
,” Gabriel spits. “And the diseases that have plagued you aren’t our doing, either. Just look at the filthy ways in which you all live.”

I raise my hand to him. “Now is not the time for anger,” I counsel him. “Let’s not undo now what we’ve worked so hard to achieve.” I turn back to Aaron. “The great wampum we call the Bible speaks of plagues descending on faraway lands when the people refuse to accept the Great Voice. Go back and tell your warriors this is no different.”

Aaron thinks about this for a moment. “They didn’t send me to talk to you,” he says. “They’d be very angry to know I’ve come to warn you of their intentions. There are only two days left after this one. There’s no sign in the sky at all of what you hope for. Some of the old ones are already preparing their own death feasts. Most of the village believes it’s not simple coincidence that since your arrival we’ve suffered both sickness and drought. It’s too much for them to accept.”

“So if we don’t bring rain,” Gabriel says, “we’ll be killed for having lost our powers. And if we do bring rain, we’ll be viewed as witches?”

Aaron’s lack of a response speaks for him.

“And what do you believe, Aaron?” I ask.

“My name is He Finds Villages,” he answers.

“You no longer accept your Christian name?” I ask, and I see he hesitates.

“I’m here,” Delilah interrupts us, “because I hope to save my children and grandchildren from starvation this winter. I don’t like being here, and I’ll miss my people in the afterworld, but I’ve decided it’s in everyone’s best interests that I take this chance.” I think she’s done, but then she continues. “If you were to join me, He Finds Villages, it might not be so lonely in the world beyond this one.”

Before I can correct her, Aaron says, “I’m not happy to be forced to make such a decision without proper reflection. You know if I’m to bow my head with you now, I’ll very likely be killed along with you in a few days when the rains don’t come.”

“This is the decision you alone have to make,” Gabriel says.

Isaac looks at him, at us, as if he needs to say something.

“I will join you if …” Aaron pauses. “If Bird’s daughter, Snow Falls, joins us as well.”

“Your decision,” I say, taken aback by his request, “must be based upon your own heart.”

“That is my heart,” he says. Delilah smiles.

“You must do this for yourself,” I say.

“I wish to do this for her as well,” Aaron says. “Isn’t this what you teach? That we must live for others?”

“He’s right,” Isaac says.

I hush him. “I can’t make the girl join us in prayer. Like yours, her decision must come from her own heart.”

“Will you promise to try, to ask her to join us?” Aaron asks.

Isaac nods. “Of course!”

Gabriel shakes his head at this madness.

“You must make the decision for yourself, for your own soul,” I tell him again, my voice firm.

I can see, though, that Isaac nods his head vigorously. “We all must do it for love! You must do this for love. What other reason is there?” The poor brother has gone mad.

Aaron looks at Delilah, then at Isaac, both of them smiling, nodding at him. “I will do it, then,” Aaron says. “Tell me, what do I need to do?”

I bow my head, partly in frustration. A soul saved, I tell myself, is not always a flawless undertaking. There’s no time to consider the means, just the end.

“Let us pray,” I say out loud.

—

TODAY, I WRITE
in my relations, is the tenth day, the Feast of Corpus Christi. I didn’t sleep last night, not out of fear but out of wonderment at Your ways, dear Lord. You have already decided this day’s outcome, and Your will shall be done. I accept it with open arms.

An hour before first light and the others around me rest fitfully, no doubt anxious even in sleep to witness this day, this day that may be their last on this physical earth. I bend to the weak flame of the dying fire and continue recording my thoughts.

Near first light, the footfalls of an approaching crowd make me dart up on my feet. “Awake!” I call to the others, and my brothers and Aaron and Delilah climb from their sleeping mats to stand beside me. The mob, a large one by the voices, makes no attempt to approach quietly. I can hear the seething, the thirst in it. They’ve come for their payment.

“Let us join hands and bow our heads in prayer,” I say. “Dear Lord, let those who wish us harm find us serene and in prayer. Let us face this day and its travails with grace and humility.”

Gabriel’s hand is sweaty, but his grip firm. I hold Isaac’s mangled stub as he shakes in fear and whines like a dog. “Please, please, please,” he whispers, “please kill me now.”

“Shhh,” I whisper to him, to all of us. “Have faith in the Lord. Trust in His goodness.”

The crowd now surrounds our cabin, the voices urgent, some shouting angrily. I can feel their heat through the thin walls. Then
they enter in a wave, their bodies upon us. A high-pitched wail fills my ears. I lift my head and see Delilah, her mouth open and her head back, singing her death chant. The bodies surround us, press into us, pull us roughly apart from one another. The hands grab me, pull at my cassock. Gabriel and Isaac and Aaron and Delilah disappear in the roar. And then I am pulled outside as well, dragged through the mob.

HOUSE OF CROWS

Opening my eyes, I hear the rush of feet outside and people shouting for their friends to follow them. My raven swings lazily on his string, watching me with his shining eyes. For weeks I’ve been trying to make him fly of his own accord, fixing him with my gaze, willing him silently to move, or begging him in whispers. Gosling has promised that if she finds me worthy she’ll teach me how, and much, much more. But first, she says, she needs to see if I’m worthy. How will she decide this? I have no idea.

More shouting. More running feet. My raccoon nestles in my hair, pulling it with his little hands. “Not so hard,” I tell him. “Let’s get up and see what goes on.”

I pick him up and rise from my sleeping mat. He’s grown quickly in the last few weeks and has begun to get into mischief, stealing food and being a nuisance to the old women. I look around me. Once again, everyone has already left the longhouse. The others tease me about sleeping so deeply but I’ve never cared about that. When more feet rush by, I too rush.

As soon as I’m outside I can feel something in the air, something that feels like happiness, as if a weight’s been shed. Many people have gathered near the palisades by the crows’ home. Immediately, I fear the talk has come to this, to doing. This last while, the anger directed at the three strange men has grown so intense I can’t go near them. I quicken my pace, the raccoon on my shoulder, holding on to my
hair for balance. Swarms of people move in circles around the house of the crows, and then I see them in the crowd, their charcoal robes standing out.

The mood isn’t violent at all, though. Everyone’s pointing and shouting and clapping hands at the horizon where a bank of cloud rises on a cool, stiff wind. Coming from that direction, the wind promises only one thing. The people surrounding the crows are celebrating their magic, not preparing to kill them for it. I can see that this isn’t apparent to the crows. As I push deeper into the people I see that the one called Isaac shakes and cries like a little child. Christophe and Gabriel have their heads bowed and pray to their great voice. The old woman, Dawning of Day, who’s been with them the last days, seems to understand the mood and begins to laugh and clap. She pushes through the people to Christophe and shakes him, points at the horizon. He looks at her, then looks up, and then his face is like the sun rising. He lifts both arms in the air and clutches his hands together, shaking them at the coming rain.

I lift my face, too, to the first drops. We all do. The sky opens itself to us and I thank the okis, Aataentsic the Sky Woman, even the crows’ great voice, for saving us. Even though the rain is beginning to fall hard, the women go out to the fields after the short rejoicing to tend to the shrivelled three sisters, to beg their forgiveness for abandoning them this last while, to ask if they’ll grow strong now that rain has come back. I follow the women from a distance and take in all that I see and hear just as the ground takes in rain.

—

WITH THE RAIN PLENTIFUL
, the tempers of the young men cool. I’ve taken to following the crows around the village as they try hard to get the people to come to them. Dawning of Day and the young one called He Finds Villages follow them again. I know the names that Christophe Crow gave to them. He calls Dawning of Day a name
I find hard to say. Delilah. I like the way pronouncing it makes my tongue click. Delilah. I don’t think, though, that I have learned how to say it right. He Finds Villages’ crow name is Aaron, and that isn’t so hard. It sounds solid and weighted like a Wendat word. I’ve caught this one staring at me when I allow them to see me. His eyes make me uncomfortable, like I must glance away. Something inside him is strong. Too strong, like he’s burning from the inside. Despite the same scars of sickness as mine, he’s not bad to look at, though.

—

FOR THE PAST WEEK
, the sun shines in the morning and the rain comes every afternoon. I work with the others in the fields, weeding and watching the three sisters grow bigger. The harvest will be a good one if the sky stays like this. But no one will speak this desire out loud for fear of ruining it. I keep my raccoon tucked in the folds of my dress that I tie about my waist in the heat of the sun. He likes to sleep there, tired from his excursions. He’s a creature of the night, like me. My breasts burn in the sun. I’m sore there, and when I feel each nipple, it’s like a small pebble grows under the skin.

Afternoons leave me free to wander. Sometimes I follow Carries an Axe and his two friends, careful they don’t see me. My new name for him, Raccoon Shit, suits him much better. I will not call him by his real name ever now that he has made it clear what he thinks of me.

It’s obvious he and his friends are horribly bored, and the crows have become the focus of their torment. I watch the boys shoot arrows into the crossed pieces of wood that stand above the door of the crows’ house, and each evening I watch Christophe Crow come home and lift his robe like a woman and climb up onto his roof where he struggles to remove them. I plan and plot and dream at night about how to find my revenge. I will show that boy what it means to hurt your child, Father and Mother. I will find my revenge, dear parents, in a way that would please you. I hate this boy with the pretty body and the stupid friends.

Tired of watching them, I go to visit Sleeps Long and show her how my raccoon has grown. As soon as I enter the longhouse this day, I can tell something’s amiss. It’s the odour in the air, the hushed tone of the adults, the absence of children and dogs playing loudly. I creep in and head to Sleeps Long’s family fire only to find her on her sleeping mat, shivering under a beaver blanket despite the heat of the day. I kneel by her. Her eyes are closed, but when I speak her name she opens them. Her skin’s grey, and her beautiful face looks so much older than it is.