The Porcupine Year (13 page)

“I don't think you have anything to worry about,” said Twilight, pointedly, to Omakayas. They were gathering armloads of dry branches to haul back to the fire.

“What do you mean, ‘worry'?” asked Omakayas innocently.

“I mean,” said Twilight, her gentle face suddenly full of laughter, “that you can't fool me. You've been dragging yourself around, you moony-face! You've been trying not to be obvious that you move with elaborate care when you know that Animikiins is looking. Here is how you purse your lips; here is how you touch your hair; here is how you hold yourself up straighter; here is how you walk when you see him approaching the camp.”

Omakayas watched her cousin in horror. “Do I really do all of those things?” she asked. “How idiotic!”

“I'm exaggerating a little,” said Twilight kindly. “But anyone can tell that you like him.”

After this, Omakayas tried to ignore Animikiins and to act normally. But she found that the more normal she tried to act, the more difficult it was. Her actions now felt false. Every gesture a little silly. One night she went to Nokomis, who was sitting alone by the fire.

“Nookoo, may I ask you something?”

“Always,” said Nokomis, patting a place on the blanket beside her. Omakayas sat down.

“Were you shy when you met your husband?”

“Very shy,” said Nokomis. “It is good. But my child, you are not yet a woman. You do not have to look for a husband. You are still too young!”

“I know I am, Nookoo, but I have these feelings.”

“I suppose the time is getting near, my little girl. When you do become a woman, when you do have your moon, I will make your little woman house for you.”

Omakayas smiled. She was not afraid. She knew she would stay by herself in the house, away from everybody else, and receive instructions and gifts from the older women.

“Nookoo,” she said. “What about Two Strike? She is older by a winter. Has she become a woman yet?”

“Yes,” said Nokomis. “But she is unusual, as we know. Your Auntie Muskrat told me that Two Strike refused her woman's lodge. She went out hunting when she had her first moon. She brought back some ducks that day and claimed that her moon affected nothing. To us, your body
has power. That is the way we are taught. When your body is ready to bring life into the world, you are a changed being. Two Strike rejects this.”

“Did Old Tallow also reject this?”

Nokomis smiled, remembering her dear friend. “Ah no, my girl. You must remember, Old Tallow was not always as you knew her. Old Tallow was not always rough and fierce. I grew up with her, of course, and once she was as tender as you are. In fact, you remind me of Old Tallow.”

Then Nokomis added something soft and strange. “I pray every night that the world does not treat you as harshly as it treated my friend Tallow.”

“Nookoo, what happened to her?”

But Nokomis merely shook her head and took Omakayas's hand in hers. She held Omakayas's hand for a long time and gazed into the fire.

“Let's wait up for Quill,” she said. Omakayas lay down and put her head on her grandmother's lap and dozed as her hair was stroked and smoothed by her grandmother's fingers.

THE BIGGEST CATCH

A
little while later, as they were sleepily banking the fire, Omakayas and Nokomis heard a cracking and banging in the bush just beyond the light.

“Help!” cried Quill. “I caught something
huge
!”

Gasping, he fell into the circle of light. As he fell, Omakayas saw the strangest thing happen to her brother. He began to leak fish. Small silver fish poured from inside his shirt, from the bark basket on his back, from his pants and makizinan. Fish slipped from his sleeves and flopped down under his hood around his ears. Then the blanket he was dragging opened and fish cascaded all around him until they stood in a pool of fish. The sucker run had started and Quill had been to the mouth of the mainland river, where the moving water broke up first in the spring. He had scooped up as many as he could. When the sucker ran, they came so thick they choked the water. Each one of them was small, but taken all together they were, as Quill said, “
huge.
”

“Aaiii!” said Mama suddenly. “That was my best blanket, Quill!” She grabbed the blanket Quill had sneaked from her to carry the fish and shook her head sadly as she put her nose to the weave. “I'll never get the smell of fish from it. But my son, even so, you have made me proud!”

T
he sleeping situation was really getting complicated. It hadn't taken long for Muskrat to decide that Miskobines would make a much better husband than LaPautre. In fact, they were so happy together that they decided to build a small lodge for themselves. However, that left Animikiins uncomfortable, for he could not share a lodge with Muskrat's daughters. Without his father sleeping in the big lodge with Yellow Kettle and Deydey's family, he now slept squeezed between Quill and Fishtail.

One warm March night the family was eating near the outside fire, when the issue came up. Twilight laughed softly and said that Animikiins should make his own lodge
and see what happened. This was a bold thing for Twilight to say, and Two Strike glared at her. She decided to be equally bold.

“Is there something wrong with us?” Two Strike asked him outright.

Animikiins flushed and looked away. “Well, you're girls…I mean, except you.”

Two Strike's eyes went wide with shock, as though she had been slapped. Her cheeks went dark. Tears splattered from her eyes as she whipped her head away to hide her expression. Her shoulders were hunched as she turned. But she straightened as she walked away and disappeared into the darkness. There was silence. So that was it! Animikiins thought of his hunting partner as another boy—perhaps he'd thought that he was paying Two Strike a compliment. Omakayas was completely unprepared to pity her cousin, and resented the tears that sprang into her own eyes in sympathy. Why should she care if Two Strike felt hurt? She deserved it. Omakayas looked down at her lap to hide her own expression.

“What? What'd I say?” Animikiins looked at Quill, who gave a what-can-you-expect shrug.

Both of the boys held out their makakoon and Auntie Muskrat dished out more stew. They ate, as always, with ravenous intent. Auntie Muskrat's bannock was charred on the bottom, but light and hot. She was down to the last fifty-pound bag of flour that Two Strike had hauled across
the ice from the trader's. Mean and proud though she was, Two Strike never ceased to work to keep her relatives fed. Omakayas was thankful that her Deydey was not like LaPautre. Two Strike had always been a hard girl, but without her own father to love her, or the adopted one, either, she had been forced to the extreme side of her nature.

THE ROAR OF ICE

T
he ice was rotten and could not be crossed. Yet since it had not broken yet, they could not use their canoes. This was a hungry time of year, a time of impatience. Everybody got on one another's nerves. Two Strike was a caged beast, sullen and furious. She slept outside. She roamed the island like it was a prison. She spent her time breaking sticks and kicking rocks. The snow turned to mush. The ducks and geese had not yet returned. If Quill hadn't brought back his huge load of fish, things would have been much worse. As it was, the family lived off the dwindling stores of rice and the dried and pounded weyass they'd put away from a moose that Fishtail and Deydey had killed.

Nokomis ranged the island and dug beneath the snow for wintergreen berries, for the bitter new shoots of spring tonic plants. Bizheens had become a strong little walker, and followed Omakayas everywhere she went. He could even point to what he wanted and talk to her, although
sometimes what he said came out in long, babbling, confused sentences. He was always eager and playful. He terrified his family one day by running out onto the ice, which was just strong enough to hold his weight, but too thin for anyone to follow him.

“Omakayas! Come quickly! Weyweeb!”

Nokomis and Mama stood onshore begging Bizheens to return, but he edged farther out, enjoying their frightened faces. The more they begged him to return, the more excited he grew. Nokomis had thrown a net out and begged him to catch hold of it. Bizheens merely danced around the links of the net, laughing and throwing up his hands.

Omakayas came running and Bizheens laughed even harder to see another of those he loved. Soon the whole family was standing onshore, begging him to return. They made big sounds every time he went a little farther out, so of course he went farther still, delighted that he could produce such excitement.

“Bekaa!” Omakayas shouted to her family. “He thinks we
like
what he is doing! We must all turn around as one and walk away from him. He'll follow.”

“I can't!” cried Yellow Kettle. “What if he falls in!”

“Just try it,” said Omakayas. Her heart was pounding. What if Bizheens broke through? The lake had underwater currents that could pull him beneath the ice. Yet if one of them walked toward him and broke through, he'd fall in for certain.

“Turn around, everybody,” she said, “and walk away. Just act like we are going somewhere wonderful. Talk like we're excited and happy.”

“Oooh,” said Twilight loudly. “I can't wait to get somewhere that we're going that Bizheens can't come! Can you, Amoosens?”

“Gaawiin,” said Amoosens in an undertone, shouting, “I guess not, sister. Let's try to leave him behind. Let's go to this exciting place!”

“Yes! Geget!” Miskobines said. “Muskrat, my wife, let us go quickly to this place we're going, somewhere…”

“Somewhere,” echoed Yellow Kettle, with a lump in her throat. She dragged her feet and kept her eye on Bizheens.

“Sure enough,” whispered Animikiins to Omakayas. “You're right. He's taking our bait!” Then he called, “Hey! Howah! We're going to go now! I can't wait! He's running after us! He wants to come, too! Let's try to get away from him!”

As his family disappeared into the brush, Bizheens suddenly darted forward and ran right off the ice yelling, “Gaye niin! Me too! Me go! Me go!”

Quill had doubled around and now he swiftly swooped out and caught Bizheens, who wiggled with excitement to be carried off to something he knew was wonderful.

“Now we have to go somewhere and have a feast!” Quill said hopefully.

In relief, Yellow Kettle took Bizheens in her arms,
cuddling him. Bizheens didn't want to be cuddled at all, and he made himself a heavy limp noodle and slipped from her arms. But everybody held him in turn, one after the other, laughing in relief.

“Yes, let's have a feast!” Yellow Kettle cried.

“On what, air?” said Two Strike. She grabbed a stick and hit a rock. The stick splintered. She hit the rock again.

“There's a little rice left,” said Twilight.

“Meat, we need meat,” said Two Strike, brandishing the stump of her stick and looking fiercely around as if a big caribou might walk into camp.

“Bizindaan!” said Deydey. Then he slowly grinned. “Fishtail, do you hear it?”

Everyone heard it coming. A faint and unmistakable honking high in the clear air. Soon, they saw the black thread of geese in the distance, raveling and unraveling against the sky.

That night, although their feast was slim, they ate what little they had happily. And all that night they heard the cracking and groaning, the grinding and shuffling as the ice began to break. It went on the next day. It was an exciting sound, a mad thunder. The booming whip snaps echoed far across the lake and bounced from island to island. The massive sheets of ice crashed up against one another. Close in, starting with the tiniest fringe of black water, the ice began to recede, crackling and tinkling, flailing, splitting, until soon there was a great black margin of
water. Then, one morning, there were just slabs of ice floating here and there.

Spring had come, and the fish would be hungry. Nokomis had her net ready and that morning she and Yellow Kettle set it at the point. When they pulled it in at dusk, they shouted from the canoe and the others laughed, hearing their excited cries from shore.

That night they ate fish roasted over hot coals until they could eat no more. Fishtail took out his hand drum and sang. Muskrat jumped up and did a swaying dance around the fire. She grabbed Yellow Kettle, who pulled Angeline up with her. Nokomis brought their shawls out and threw them around their shoulders. Even Deydey laughed, his eyes full of glimmering fire as he watched his wife and daughter. They were beautiful—the firelight glowed on their faces as they whirled lightly. Sparks pulsed into black sky as the logs cracked and collapsed on one another when Miskobines threw on more wood.

“Want to take a walk?”

Animikiins had bent toward Omakayas, asking her this in a low voice, but Twilight heard. Her eyes sparkled at her cousin, but she looked discreetly away.

Omakayas rose, wrapped her blanket around her, and slipped away from the fire. The moon was at half that night, and already up. The light rode the water and brightened the cold sand. The two walked a little way from the camp and sat down on a great beached log. At first,
Omakayas was silent. She felt numb, awkward, strange. Then she realized that Animikiins couldn't think of anything to say, either, and she poked him in the arm. They looked at each other, laughed, and laughed again. Then fell silent again. How many times could they poke each other, look at each other, and laugh? Someone would have to say something.

“That fish was good. I ate so much,” said Animikiins.

“Me too. I can hardly move.”

They nodded thoughtfully, as if they'd said something very serious. They looked again at each other, smiled a little, then looked down at their feet.

“My makizinan are wearing out,” said Animikiins.

Omakayas froze with shyness. She cleared her throat twice before she dared try to answer.

“I could make a new pair for you,” she said, so quietly that she was not certain he could hear her.

“That would…that would…be
great
,” said Animikiins. His voice choked and squeaked.

They were so overcome that they couldn't speak for a long while after that.

“I've been practicing,” said Animikiins at last, “on the other side of the island, where nobody could hear me.” He took the beautiful loon flute from the breast of his shirt and played a few notes. The sound was soft and clear.

“They won't hear you with Fishtail drumming,” said Omakayas.

Animikiins kept playing. The songs he had invented were wild and lovely. In the middle of one song, from far across the lake, loons answered in excitement and their song together made a dark and breathtaking music. Animikiins kept playing, now slower, now with a lilting quaver.

 

Back in the camp, Deydey said to Nokomis, “As long as we hear that flute, she's safe! But the minute he stops, go and find my daughter and bring her back here.”

Nokomis smiled.

“Yellow Kettle's father said the same thing to me. I went after the two of you as soon as your songs ended. But I let my feet walk slowly.”

“Thank you,” said Deydey. He smiled a little, too, and his eyes did not leave Yellow Kettle as she spun around and around the fire.