The Orenda Joseph Boyden (51 page)

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GOSLING’S ANXIOUS TONIGHT
. Half a moon’s passed since the boy’s funeral, and the first buds will soon show on the poplars. It’s time to go home. It’s not just Gosling who’s restless. We all are. She sleeps fitfully beside me, calling out and then hushing herself. When I try to sleep, I imagine wolves circling a deer, tensing to pounce.

Well before dawn, I’m so agitated I’m about to crawl from our robe when I hear someone running up. I reach for my club.

“Bird,” a man whispers. It’s Carries an Axe. “Gosling,” he says.

She wakes and sits. “It’s time,” she says.

We run with Carries an Axe to the longhouse. He’s too panicked to answer when I ask what’s happening. Rushing inside, we see Sleeps Long near the fire, kneeling with my daughter. Snow Falls cries out.

“She’s early,” Gosling says, crouching beside the two.

“Tell me,” I say.

Gosling looks up. “It’ll be fine,” she says. “Leave us to this. Go outside and light a pipe with Carries an Axe. Explain to him what it’s like to be a father.”

IT’S A WISE CHOICE YOU MADE

Maybe it’s the suicide of He Finds Villages that makes the baby want to come out too soon. What am I to think of all this? I’ve tried convincing myself that Carries an Axe is the father, and want to believe it, and I bolt awake less and less in the middle of the night from dreaming that Carries an Axe has found out and has left me to be alone. But with word that He Finds Villages has hanged himself, my body immediately feels sick and the pains in my belly, not long after, begin to come.

I try to will away the pain that sears through me because I know it’s too early. But when I can’t anymore, I tell Sleeps Long I think the time might be coming. I’ve already been told by those who know of such things that I need to stop walking about and I must command my body to lie still all day long. I’d begun going mad from the boredom of it. But as soon as the pains came shooting through me in earnest, I could only beg the boredom to please return.

Gosling makes me tea that helps some of the worst pain. She and Sleeps Long whisper to each other out of my earshot and turn their concerned faces to me. A wave of anguish comes and washes over me, then slowly recedes until I feel like I might be able to stand up again if only I were allowed to. For two days this pattern repeats itself till I almost get used to it.

Tonight, I have to get up to pee, and Sleeps Long accompanies me out of the longhouse to our place in a clump of cedar. “Slow down,” she says. “This isn’t a race, you know.”

I squat, barely able to crouch now that I’m so large, worried I’ll wet myself if I’m not careful. How did this happen? When did I become the woman that I used to make fun of and despise? It’s so difficult. I remind myself how happy I’ll be when this thing that grows inside me finally comes out of my body and I can have me to myself again.

As if I summoned something I shouldn’t have, when I stand from my squat, the shooting pain is far worse than any so far. It makes me fall to the ground. It’s as if the child in me took my thought for a challenge and has lit a fire inside my body. I scream out when the next pain shoots through me, and Sleeps Long rushes over and tries to pick me up.

When I’m standing again, bent over in pain, I feel the warm trickle of what I fear is blood running down my legs. I reach my hand and smear it, raise it to my face. Thank you, Aataentsic. It’s a clear liquid.

Sleeps Long sees what’s happening to me and carries me from the cover of the cedars. She calls for help, and my husband comes running. Together, they carry me back to the longhouse.

It’s as if the earlier pains were just warm winds blowing over my body. I lie on my mat and must bite a piece of thick hide that Gosling places in my mouth. I see my husband’s face hovering over me, but Sleeps Long sends him outside. Now the raven we’ve tied over our bed floats above me, its one wing lame, hanging down, its other out in a graceful curve as if in flight. My lower body feels like it’s being torn in half and put to fire. I can’t stand it.

But I must. I slip in and out of consciousness, jolting awake to screams that I realize are my own. The raven continues to hover above, and so I imagine myself climbing up and onto his back, wrapping my arms around his neck and whispering for him to fly me away. Just as Gosling once showed me long ago, I can feel the pulse of the raven’s muscles under his feathers as he begins to slowly beat his wings, the broken one not quite as strong as the other. The pain shoots through me again, and I beg the raven to beat his wings faster, to take me away. He looks back to me, twisting his neck slowly to my face, looking at me with one shining eye, his eyes the gift from Sleeps Long. I can see
my face in the eye, the fire in the hearth behind me burning, and I look frightened, my hair long and matted, my face drawn despite the weight of the pregnancy. The raven begins to beat his wings faster so that he floats now, freed from his tether, and either he grows bigger or I grow smaller, but soon I can barely wrap my arms halfway around his neck, and I must hold on to the feathers or else fall off. The raven, still turned to me as he beats his wings, one sparkling eye staring, opens his beak.

Are you sure you want me to fly you away? The others can’t come with you right now. They might soon. They will later. Are you sure?

The pain rips through me. I nod.

The child you carry inside won’t come with us.

I think of the baby. I see the face of He Finds Villages. I see my husband’s face hovering over me with concern. I will stay.

Take one of my eyes. It will help you see.

In my pain, I reach up and pull the shining shell from the eye socket of my bird.

It’s a wise choice you made.

When I open my eyes and look down my body, I can see Gosling’s head near my spread legs. “It’s a wise choice you made,” she says, smiling. She tells me that despite the pain I will feel, I must push. The baby wants to come out now. I do as she tells me, and each time it feels as if I’m forcing myself inside out and ripping myself apart.

When I think I can no longer take it, Gosling tells me to push once more, and I do, grasping my fists on my robe, my eyes squeezed shut. I try to will my body to open. I scream when I feel the rush of it bursting out of me. I look, and Gosling is smiling, her hands busy. The sound of crying, and I think of my little raccoon. My body feels empty, but my hand hurts. I lift it to my face and open it. In my palm lies a bloody shell. The sun breaks through a seam in the birchbark wall. I close my eyes.

—

CARRIES AN AXE
lies beside me, cradling my head in his arms. Gosling sits beside us, holding the baby wrapped in rabbit furs. She hands it to me. “Here’s your little girl,” she says.

I pull back the fur to look into the face of my child and am surprised by the thick charcoal hair covering her head. The baby’s eyes are closed, the eyelids almost translucent, and she moves her mouth as if she’s feeding. I look at Carries an Axe. His eyes are wet as he touches his child’s face. She opens her eyes then and starts to cry.

“She’s hungry,” Gosling says. “That’s all.”

When I place my girl’s mouth to my nipple, I feel a small shock. We two are one again. She nurses, and I let the pain of the last days slide away like spring snow from the longhouse roof. I still hold the shining shell in my hand. I turn it over and over. I look up to the raven that hangs above me and see that he’s missing an eye. In my delirium, I must have reached up and pulled it out. Not wanting to lose it, I look around and see the quill box from Gosling resting near me. She told me I’d find a use for it. I ask Carries an Axe to open the box, and I drop the shining shell inside. He closes it. I lean into him, dozing off along with our child.

GHOSTS FROM THE TREES

For two days, my daughter sweats and screams and bleeds. For two days, I prepare myself to lose her more times than I can count. Her baby is too soon and too stubborn. It wants to come out, then it won’t. Exhausted this night, I finally fall into sleep, lying on the porch of the longhouse, Carries an Axe pacing beside me. It feels like only moments that my eyes are closed, but when I open them, my body shivering from the cold, the sun breaks, shooting rays of light through the stakes of the palisades.

I’m alone, but I can hear voices inside. They seem happy. A woman sings a sweet song, and a baby starts mewling, upset and hungry. My body aching, I push myself up to greet my grandchild.

Shivering by the fire, I watch as the women fawn over the baby girl, bundled in rabbit furs. My body complains from the last days’ tensions and my falling asleep in the cold. I tell myself we can now leave this village for our own as soon as Snow Falls has her strength. It’s time to go home.

Gosling and Sleeps Long, her own baby on her hip, gather what food they can and heat the kettle. My stomach groans, and I realize I’m starved. We all are. It’s time to celebrate now, Snow Falls sleeping lightly by the fire, her new girl on her breast. When she awakes, we’ll eat to her growing strong again, to this new life’s growing strong, to the strength of the people. I crave my home, but this place will suffice for now.

The smoke rises up to the ceiling of this longhouse, the light filtering through so that I feel like I’m still in the dream world. The women laugh and the kettle bubbles and I’m finally starting to feel warm again. I reach for my pouch and search out my pipe.

Twisting a stick into the fire to light it, I look up as Gosling’s eyes meet mine. She smiles. Her stomach, I see, is starting to show. A late-summer child. I light my pipe and puff, beckon her to me. She sits and takes the pipe, puffs on it.

“It will all be all right?” I ask.

She nods slightly.

Sleeps Long sits with Tall Trees and their son, my son. They eat from their birch bowls. I get up to serve Gosling and me, but before I do, I kneel to my daughter and stroke her head. She opens her eyes. Her child sleeps, making soft sucking noises. Snow Falls smiles. When I smile, she closes her eyes again. I stand and ladle food from the kettle.

We all curl up and sleep in the longhouse, the fire keeping us warm through the spring day, waking only when the baby cries out and then nodding back into sleep again.

My eyes open even before I hear it. I can tell by the sun that late afternoon has arrived. The rest of us, exhausted from the last days’ trials, still dream. And then it comes. The voices of the hairy ones, shouting down from the ramparts. I lurch up, Tall Trees and Carries an Axe right behind me. We’re at the gate and climbing the ladder, pushing past the guards, who stare down and point.

In the empty fields, my dear friend Fox stands and searches the men above him for a familiar face. His own is smeared in blood and his body’s blackened by soot. A handful of others huddle near him, in just as poor shape. Still more appear like ghosts from the trees beyond.

Fox finally finds me. We look at each other. His eyes, they tell me everything.

FLITTING IN DREAM

The day passes as if in a dream, all of us sleeping, then me waking to feed before we fall back to sleep again. We’re exhausted from the stress of these last days.

At some point in the afternoon, my child and I awake to the shouting of men, but we continue to doze, not wanting to hear or know of anything that might be wrong. Just a little more rest. That’s all I ask.

I awake to darkness, and for a moment I don’t know where I am until I feel my baby squirm beside me, waking as well. I place her on my breast and listen to the fire pop and to the voices of men, hushed and serious. I think I’m still dreaming when I hear Fox’s voice. Isn’t he back at home? What’s he doing here? I begin to question whether I’ve somehow ended up back home after all. I want to get up, but my body is too sore. Instead, I listen carefully for what they talk about.

Our village overrun. A vicious surprise attack. Hundreds of Haudenosaunee. Too early in the year. Nobody expected it. I don’t quite believe what I’m hearing. I force myself to a sitting position, careful to balance my girl, my body crying out. My legs are weak. I look down at my child’s face in the firelight. She’s beautiful. The hair on her head is so thick and dark. She suckles and raises both hands, making fists. A tiny bit of milk runs down her chin that I wipe away. I walk to the fire, where I stand behind them so they don’t take notice of me. I want to hear what’s going on without their leaving anything out for my sake.

“They came so fast we didn’t even get the gates shut,” Fox says. “Who’d expect an attack in early spring? Many of them carried the shining wood, and they knew how to use it.”

Tall Trees shakes his head, and my husband crouches silently beside him. “I wouldn’t have believed it if it weren’t coming from your mouth, Fox,” Tall Trees says.

Bird asks the hard questions, apparently not for the first time. I can see he’s having difficulty with what he’s heard. The village taken after a short skirmish, maybe a dozen managed to escape, possibly more, but this is all Fox saw with his own eyes. The Haudenosaunee must have left in late winter by foot to make it here at this time of year, an unprecedented and near-impossible feat with such a large group.

“That,” Fox says, “or they wintered on our land without us knowing it. It doesn’t matter now. What does matter is that their allies supplied them with the same weapons we’ve always asked of the French. This new imbalance worries me greatly.”

“We must go in force and try to save whoever’s left alive,” Bird says. “We must leave right now.”

Fox shakes his head. “The destruction and violence was unlike anything I’ve ever seen.” He pauses, having a hard time speaking. “Very few will be left.”

“And so what does that leave us with?” Carries an Axe asks.

“We can surrender to them,” Bird says, “or we can fight. I don’t see us surrendering.” He looks around him. The men clearly agree. “We must finish this war, then. There’s nothing left now to do but that.”

I look down at my tiny child, her eyes closed, lids flitting in dream.

IT’S TOO LATE NOW, ISN’T IT?

I send out scouts, led by Fox, to report on any enemy sighting or movement. If I know the Haudenosaunee, they’ll revel in their victory for at least a few days, taking their time with the prisoners they choose to caress, sending other prisoners back to their land to be adopted by those at home. I don’t imagine they’re done with us yet. They’re so close to ridding themselves of the Wendat. Now that most all our brother nations have surrendered or been defeated, all that really stands between them and their goal is this group of us, the people left in this strange crow village. If I were my enemy, I’d certainly strike while I had the chance.