The Orenda Joseph Boyden (32 page)

So close to home, the men are restless tonight. They build great bonfires and begin to dance around them, urging the prisoners, arms bound tightly behind their backs, to stand and dance, too. There’s no meanness in this gesture. Our prisoners know as well as we do that if the situation were in their favour, they’d ask us to do the same. We celebrate the closing in on home, and allow them to celebrate their passage into the next world.

After the dancing, my three prisoners sit by my side. The oldest one leans to me. “We’re not so different,” he says. “And our nations aren’t so different. We are all peoples of the longhouse, yes?”

I don’t respond.

“All that the five nations of the Haudenosaunee wish is for peace,” he says. “We don’t hate you. It’s the charcoal you’ve allowed into your homes that we despise.” He then tells me that if we were to rid ourselves of them, the world might become a better place for all of us.

“And if we were to ask for peace with your five nations,” I say, “what would the conditions entail?”

“We would take your women and children as our own,” he answers. “We’ve suffered as wickedly as you and have lost too many to the sicknesses.”

“And what of the Wendat men?”

“Well,” he says, “those who can become Haudenosaunee will. And those who can’t?” He shrugs. “I think you know.”

“And so the Wendat will cease to exist?” I ask him.

He nods.

“This,” I say, “is a peace we can’t afford.”

With a clear night and no threat of rain, we fall exhausted onto our sleeping mats with the stars shining down on us. We’ve camped close enough on a sandy spit of ground that the waves washing on shore fill
my head with the promise of the coming dreams. I keep my three prisoners beside me and tell myself I will sleep lightly and remain vigilant. This night will be the last good chance for escape, and some of my cruellest war-bearers have been tormenting them about this all day.

As I sink into sleep, I awake to the moaning of the youngest one. I open my eyes and sit up, look down at him cast in the light of the fire. He’s of a good build, thin but strong through the shoulders and chest and tall for his age. If he hadn’t been caught, he might have made something of himself. I was particularly careful when removing his fingernails and slitting his shoulders. He’s still so young as to be particularly adept at snaking himself out of his bondage. I’m worried I might have been too focused in my cutting. He cries out in pain once more.

Others around us begin to stir awake. I can tell my two older prisoners haven’t closed their eyes all night.

“It’s your fingers that hurt the most, yes?” I ask the young man.

He looks up to me, his eyes pleading. “Yes,” he says.

“Be strong, you!” his relation hisses.

“Yes,” the boy says.

“Do you know it’s your very own clan who murdered my wife and daughters?” I ask the young one. He doesn’t reply. “Do you know your two relations who lie here beside you have already admitted to taking part in that killing?” Again he won’t respond. “The pain you feel now,” I say, “is nothing compared to what you will begin to feel tomorrow when our people greet you at our palisades.”

“I had nothing to do with killing your family,” the boy says.

“Be strong for your own!” his relation spits.

“But I have nothing to do with that history,” the boy whines.

“Be strong for your own,” I, too, whisper. “Tomorrow, when you arrive at my home, you’ll be greeted by a line of people who wish to meet you. It will just begin then. You won’t sleep tonight,” I say, “but you should rest and breathe in this fine air while you can.”

The boy grits his teeth. “If you freed me from these binds,” he whispers, “I would kill you now.”

“You would try,” I say. That’s the spirit, young one! The heat of anger, I hope you soon learn, diminishes all the other hurts. At least, young one, for a short while, long enough, hopefully, to dampen the ferocity of what approaches.

AN ABOMINATION IN GOD’S EYES

I note the quiet departure of the women from the fields as they lift all at once, a flock of sparrows, from their duties. Gabriel and Isaac, bent to their weeding, haven’t even noticed the exodus. At this very moment, my Lord, I realize I’ve begun thinking like one of them, like one of my sauvages, noticing immediately that the birds have stopped singing on this bright and sunny day, that the sounds of the grasshoppers have halted, that the women have left without so much as a whisper.

Fighting the urge to speak, I motion for my brothers’ attention, the corn so high and dense all around me I suddenly feel smothered. The enemy who’d threatened to swoop in for the last months has finally arrived, ready for slaughter. I sense them through the green stalks, watching.

“Something’s awry,” I whisper to Gabriel and Isaac. “I fear an Iroquois war party is nearby. We must get out of the fields.”

Gathering our few tools, we wind through the corn single file, my body tensed to run into a scowling warrior any moment, his thorn club raised to strike me down. Finally we emerge out of the fields, and it takes everything in my power not to run the last stretch of open ground to the gates of the palisades. It’s on a day like this that I’m thankful the Huron are such master craftsmen, having protected the entire community with three walls of tall, sharpened stakes, a rampart built high from which sentries see everything around them.

Inside, rather than a sense of panic, though, people chatter and smile. A large group gathers near the central longhouse. My brothers and I deposit our tools by our door and go to find out what’s happened. We see a face we haven’t in a long time, surrounded by men and women alike, his hands raised in the air, gesticulating. Fox has returned at last from the summer trade mission, and I move closer to hear what news he brings.

He’s come back a day ahead of the others, he says, and the mission was extremely successful. Someone mentions Iroquois captives, and I realize the Huron are bringing back prisoners and will soon partake of their brutal ceremony, one I’ve heard stories of.

That evening, after prayers and a simple meal of bread and thin soup, Gabriel asks me what he should expect. We sit out of range of poor Isaac, who doesn’t need to hear this.

“These people are extremely imaginative in their torturing,” I tell Gabriel. “As imaginative as any inquisitor ever was. Maybe more so.”

Gabriel listens intently, his eyes urging me to go on.

“There’s nothing random in their practice. Everything is intentional. This is one of their highest ceremonies.”

“But why?” Gabriel asks. “Why do they wish to cause such pain to another human?”

“Why does the Spanish Inquisition do what it does?” I ask. “Why does our own Church burn witches at the stake? Why did our own crusaders punish the Moors so exquisitely?”

Gabriel thinks about this. He knows I don’t beg answers for these questions.

“Of course it’s easy to say that we mete out punishment to those who are an abomination in God’s eyes,” I say. “But it’s more than that, isn’t it? I think we don’t just allow torturers but condone them as a way to excise the fear we all have of death. To torture someone is to take control of death, to be the master of it, even for a short time.”

I think Gabriel wants to debate this further, but Isaac approaches, asking what we so intently discuss.

“Nothing of importance,” I say. “I was simply expelling hot air.” I pause for a moment before speaking my next words. “Dear Isaac,” I say, “the Huron will apparently be bringing Iroquois captives home in the next days, and you know what they’ll do with them. I understand if you don’t wish to bear witness and try to save the souls of those poor wretches before they die. Gabriel and I, though, will need to be there for this very reason. Please do not feel obligated.”

Isaac looks paler than usual in the dim light of the hearth. “I,” he says, his voice shaking, “I prefer not to be present.”

—

THAT NIGHT I SLEEP
poorly, tossing on my reed mat with visions of Huron dancing around the fire and peeling the skin from their enemies. The tortured Iroquois beg me to help them, but when they open their mouths no sound comes out, their long hair, their faces becoming those of young European women, the fires growing brighter as they envelop the women’s feet. I want to stand up and release them from their ropes but my body refuses to obey and soon I can feel the heat of the fires begin to make me sweat. In my tossing I can smell flesh burning, hear the screams for mercy as inquisitors gnaw the fingers from the charred hands of the women, as soldiers in chainmail slice new victims’ breasts off with their knives and roast them over the same pyre they’ll soon use to immolate them. This is when I grow angry with these soldiers, ordering them to be tied and burned at the stake in their armour so their bodies cook in the ovens of their own chainmail. I become the one who makes the decisions now. In these troubled half dreams I imagine the sweat that pours from me is blood when I realize I’m no longer a spectator but an accomplice, helping to hold down a young English soldier no older than a boy as he’s burned with red-hot axe heads heated in the fire. And then it’s my turn. I’m tied to a post and a woman with long black hair gapes me open below my chest bone. Reaching her hand in, she
removes my heart, and, horrified, I watch her take a bite out of the still-beating organ. I jerk awake.

Someone has stoked the fire and I sweat through my nightshirt. I go outside and let the cool air calm me down. I know now that I must attempt to talk Bird out of what he plans to do.

SERPENT WITH A LYNX’S HEAD

We are up long before the sun, and I’m quite sure that no one’s really slept at all. We’re ready for the final push. With the canoes loaded with axe heads and kettles, glass beads, sewing awls, fishing hooks and strong rope, a few muskets and lots of powder and shot, our smartest dogs, and all the other bounty of a good trading summer, we put the prisoners in last, making sure their weight is distributed properly so that the canoes remain stable.

I also make sure they’re tightly bound. I don’t put it beyond my three to try and flip the canoe once we’re out in the open water, as I would certainly do the same. Drowning is far preferable to the alternative. But they’re calm, docile even as first one and then the others take turns singing their songs.

The sun will soon make its appearance over the trees on the eastern shore, but until it does we stay close to it, just far enough away to avoid the swells that wash onto the rocky beaches. The old ones tell stories of foolish young men overloading their canoes and paddling out in the hopes of crossing this big water, never to be seen again. The Anishnaabe tell us this water opens in turn to even bigger waters and then to a great inland sea. The world amazes me with all that it holds. I keep looking for the rock wall and drawings, hoping we won’t miss them in the darkness that soon will break.

As if it’s been destined, just as the sun hits the water and the sky lightens, the cliffs come into view. I turn my canoe to them, the other
men adjusting their strokes to mine. There’s no need to speak out loud. As the nose of the canoe heads for shore, they understand what it is I want to do.

We have to come in through the sharp rocks carefully as it only takes a nick to puncture the bark keeping us afloat. I have a young warrior hold the canoe steady and off the rocks while I take my other men and the prisoners up to see the drawings. The rest of our party’s kept going, but for now I don’t worry about catching up with them.

“This is where I found my secret name,” I tell them on a thin outcrop that leads us above the water. For a few moments I worry this isn’t the location as we continue up the cliff. I fear looking weak and foolish. But then ahead we see the first drawings, just a few etched into the rock in blood-coloured ochre, one a scene of a canoe full of paddling men, another of a moose, and another of a strange human with a deer’s head. I lift my finger and trace the outlines. When I place my palm flat upon the rock, it feels as if my hand sinks into the stone, as if I enter another world through its hard shell. My hand glows hot with the touching, and as I close my eyes I see the old ones paddling and singing, followed by a water snake, one longer than their canoe, the paddlers unaware of it. The world my body’s entered is as real as this one, bathed in light.

When I finally take my hand from the rock, I urge the others to do the same to see if they, too, experience what I do, if they, too, enter into another world when they touch the cliff. My young warriors awkwardly explore the paintings with their fingers, covering up their embarrassed laughs with coughs when I ask if they feel light or heat or cold on their hands or in their bodies. But Tall Trees, he’s different. It’s clear he understands what I experienced, that he experiences it too when it’s his turn. I watch his face go slack as he drifts into the other place. I’m happy for this, happy to know I have someone who might one day be close to a son, someone I’ll be able to entrust with my life. I’ll tell Fox about this when we have some time to ourselves. I nearly remove one of my prisoner’s bindings but then think better
of it. As much as I’d like to see if they feel what we do, I realize it’s best not to.

Instead, I lead the group farther along up the rocky bank to bigger life-sized drawings of more men in more canoes, and there, below them, the water creature that has haunted me all these years. It’s slightly different than I remembered it, still a snake, but horned, and not a water snake at all for he has the head and teeth of a lynx. We stop and gaze at this drawing above us. No one speaks. These figures are older than we can imagine and yet remain so sharp and clear. I look to the prisoners and they all look as well.

Breaking the silence, I tell everyone we must paddle hard to catch up to the others. I let all of them start back down but pause for a moment to look once more at these pictures. Knowing for certain I’ll not ever see them again, I burn the images into myself.

—

BEFORE WE CAN SEE THEM
, we know they’re there. We can hear the chattering of excitement through the trees.

“Be strong,” the older ones say to the boy. “It’ll get difficult now.”