The Porcupine Year (3 page)

“How did you get that porcupine to stay on your head?” asked Animikiins.

Nokomis threw tobacco in the fire to appease the real spirits of the dead, to thank the Manidoog for returning the children, and because she didn't know what else to do. Old Tallow sat motionless with a combination of disgust and relief on her face. Only little Bizheens ran up to Omakayas and hugged her.

“Giizhawenimin. Giizhawenimin,” he said. “I really love you.”

And Omakayas began to cry, as much ashamed of herself now as she was glad to be back, alive. Nokomis was the first to laugh. It was a tentative little snort, muffled with her hand, and she had tears in her eyes, too, so the laugh was half reproachful. But that laugh was enough for Fishtail, who let out a honk of amusement. Soon everyone in camp was either crying or laughing, and although Mama continued to pretend to strike her son he only ducked under her mock blows until she fell over, laughing too, in great relief.

The little porcupine looked up dreamily at them all and kept licking the flour from its paws. Omakayas grew dizzy with laughter and sat on the ground, holding Bizheens, who was always ready to coo and clap when he saw people happy. His sharp, lively eyes shone in the camp light, and he threw his arms again and again around Omakayas. He was the best thing that had ever happened to her,
ever
, she thought, this little brother who adored her no matter what she did.

Not long and the family was eating, dunking bannock in venison soup, talking, rehashing all that had happened to Omakayas and Quill. The porcupine was back on Quill's head, in its accustomed spot. It was beginning to smell a little funny, and Mama said that Quill would have to sleep outside with it or wash.

“I will choose to live with my medicine,” said Quill. “Even though my family shuns me!”

Everyone agreed that Quill was the perfect name for him from then on. Omakayas told about the lake at the end of the rapids, about its sandy, empty shores, and it was agreed that the family would break their camp and portage to that same lake. It sounded like the perfect place to set up camp and collect supplies of dried fish, meat, and berries so they could continue their journey.

O
n the other side of the lake with the golden, sandy shores, there was a broad patch of sunlit meadow, an opening in the dense pine forest. The grass was filled with juicy wild strawberries called ode'iminan, heart berries. All of the plants were either in bloom or bearing dewy fruit. Two thin, scruffy black bears were lapping and scraping the berries into their mouths, heads swinging in the morning grass. Suddenly they looked up, reared back on strong haunches, peered forward with their weak little eyes, and sniffed the breeze with their sensitive, all-seeing noses.
Ah
, they seemed to say, huffing and chuttering deep in their throats,
it is those unpredictable ones, those creatures
who sometimes fear us and sometimes kill us!
After a moment of hesitation, not wanting to leave before their bellies were bursting, they groaned, jumped away, and hid themselves in the woods.

They watched from behind the trees. Their noses twitched to catch information about the humans.

When Omakayas came into the field, she knew that the bears had been there first. There were the tracks, the scattered droppings, the raked-up plants, and even the faint, rotten, yet somehow comforting odor of bear. She gestured to Mama, Nokomis, and Bizheens.

“Over here, ambe! There's lots and lots of berries!”

The rest of the family came after her. Bizheens was now walking comically along on fat bowlegs. He carried a tiny makak made out of birchbark, a gathering basket that Omakayas had made especially for him. He could not remember berries from the year before, they were new to him all over again, so Omakayas carefully showed him how to pluck a berry with his chubby fingers and pop it into his mouth. His eyes widened with joy.

“Minopogwad ina? Does it taste good?”

Bizheens's silky curls bobbed up and down. Just like Omakayas, he'd been adopted into the family. The two were taken in by the bighearted mother of them all, Yellow Kettle, and by Nokomis. Nobody knew where the toddler's curly hair came from, but Mama was proud of its shine and beauty. She ruffled Bizheens's hair and arranged
it every morning. Deydey teased her, saying she'd spoil Bizheens, but she waved away his words and pointed at the empty black kettle. He'd best go out and find something to fill it!

Deydey and Old Tallow hunted for their meat, as did Animikiins and the old chief, Miskobines. Quill even brought back a partridge or trapped a fish from time to time. But though they could hunt, too, and set snares every morning, the women loved gathering the new fruits and berries of the spring. They could spend hours picking, eating enough berries to keep their strength up, of course, and filling their makakoon.

Now as they bent to their work in the sun of the new summer, the women talked. Omakayas told her grandmother, once again, about the little person she had seen at the rapids. Another memegwesi had once helped Nokomis when she was lost, long ago, when she was very young. These helping people, small and sometimes hairy, were friendly to the Anishinabeg and it was a special honor to see one. Grown people rarely did. The memegwesiwag usually showed themselves to children.

“Why is that?” Omakayas asked her grandmother.

“Children have open eyes, and open hearts. They see things that we cannot. Look at Bizheens.”

Her little brother was staring across the meadow of strawberries, past Mama, at something in the woods. Every so often he would stare into the leaves, then go back
to eating the berries that he carefully picked from the low plants.

“Does he have a single berry in his makak yet?”

“No,” said Omakayas, laughing.

She put a few of her own berries in his gathering basket, and he smiled at her, plucked them out, and ate them, too.

“He sees something,” Mama said.

Although she was bent low to the earth, picking with great speed and industry, she had noticed that her baby was watching something. Omakayas always marveled at this quality in her mother. She would seem absorbed by some task—say, cooking or sewing—and yet she could immediately tell when Omakayas was taking a break from tanning a hide, or when Quill was cooking up some mischief in his brain. She would bark at Omakayas—
Get back to it!
Or at Quill—
Put your mind on something useful!
It was as though Mama had an invisible hat made of eyes that noticed everything on all sides of her head. Nobody got away with anything around Yellow Kettle.

“Maybe he's watching a little bird,” said Mama. “A little gijigijigaaneshiinh. I hear one calling.”

Omakayas heard the gijigijigaaneshiinh, too. The tiny bird with the black cap sang,
Shii-me, shii-me.

“Looking for its little sister,” said Nokomis. Last winter, she had told a story about how those little birds had once been boys who lost their little sister in the
woods. Omakayas wanted to ask for the story again but knew that Nokomis would only tell her to wait until the snakes and frogs were sleeping. The Ojibwe told stories only in the winter.

Shii-me, shii-me
, sang the birds, hopping from branch to branch.

They were singing
at
something, thought Omakayas, standing up suddenly. They were calling out a warning, perhaps, or just scolding at something in the woods with them. Birds are always giving notice of intruders. It is hard to hide in the woods when wings have such watchful eyes. Omakayas took a step after Bizheens, who had toddled toward some particularly juicy berries, and then she saw the bears, as they materialized suddenly from the light shield of leaves.

When bears are still restoring their lost winter fat, they can be dangerously hungry. They usually respect humans.
But a small human, a little fat one like the boy tumbling toward them, might be tempting. The two bears had lingered, hungry for berries, their stomachs aching. The longer they waited to get back to the berries, the more their bellies hurt. And then that juicy little animal came ambling right toward them. A treat! They were just deciding whether to jump forward and grab the tender young creature and speed away, when another human was suddenly before them. This one was bigger, unafraid, and definitely more difficult to deal with. It made an awful noise. A surprising noise.

“Gego! Gego! Gego!”

Omakayas ran forward and jumped in front of Bizheens.

“Saa, shame on you bears! He's my little brother!”

Omakayas held Bizheens back with her legs and waved her arms at the bears to make herself bigger. She let them know they wouldn't get to the sweet little morsel behind her so easily.

“Majaan!” She shouted at them to shoo, to get out of the way. Mama ran up too and began to bang on her pail. Nokomis yelled as loudly as she could. Bizheens began to whimper, surprised and frightened at the commotion. Then he screamed, and his scream was as loud as his namesake's, the lynx's, or even a bigger cat, the cougar. That did it! The startled bears stepped backward and then panicked, tumbled over each other, whirling to get away
from these furious beings who had just moments before seemed so calm and vulnerable.

Omakayas had to laugh—they looked almost embarrassed by what had happened. She had been close to bears many times, and although she respected them, she was somehow not afraid of them. That was because when she was very little she had had a dream in which bears were her protectors.

“There they go,” said Nokomis, fanning the heat from her face.

Scooped into Mama's arms, Bizheens stopped crying and began to play with her bead necklaces. After this, although the three women continued to pick, they kept themselves in a circle around Bizheens. At last, his belly tight, his mouth, cheeks, and face red with berry juice, he tumbled over and slept. Mama hoisted him onto her back and tied him to her with a cloth. Now he would be safe.

Nokomis sighed, looking at him.

“There was a girl who was a bear, once, in the old times,” she said.

“Really?” said Omakayas, and in spite of herself she asked for the story.

“I can't tell you about it until the frogs and snakes are sleeping,” said Nokomis, predictably. “Don't forget to ask me once the snow falls.”

Omakayas stood up, grumpily wishing for that story. But she knew that if underground and underwater creatures
heard the stories, they might repeat them to the powerful underwater spirits, or the great spirits of the animals, who might be angry at the Ojibwe for talking about them. But her disappointment melted at the sight of her little brother's rosy, stained face. She loved him so dearly and she'd never let the bears steal him away!

They were soon done, except for a patch by the place they had seen the bears.

“We should leave them some,” said Nokomis.

“After all,” said Omakayas, “they didn't bother us much.”

“Huh, what we left them is hardly a mouthful to a bear,” said Mama.

“Still, they'll know we thought of them,” said Omakayas, staring thoughtfully at the place the bears had vanished.

WORKING HIDES

W
hen they returned to the camp on the shores of the wide, calm lake, Mama added some of the berries to the stew that she was making and spread the others out to dry on a big piece of birchbark. She sat down near the berries to work on reed mats for the floor of their wigwam, and to shoo away birds. Nokomis had one hide draped over a log and she was working on it with a thick piece of wood. Using a sharpened deer's horn, Omakayas began to help her sister, Angeline, scrape and work a deer hide
stretched out between two trees.

She sighed deeply. When the family had left the island, she'd also left the special scraper that her father had made for her out of an old gun barrel. Perhaps she'd imagined that she'd get out of the constant hide-scraping. No such luck! Now she wished she had the old scraper, which was better. It was boring work, and stinky too. But doing chores with Angeline was not so bad anymore, because ever since they'd left home, they'd been homesick together. As they worked, they often spoke of their island.

“Remember that funny old trader, his big belly?” asked Omakayas.

“You are still wearing the dress we bought from him with that dried fish!”

“And the chimookoman girl, the Break-Apart Girl—do you think she's taking good care of my dog?”

“She is feeding him her own food,” said Angeline kindly. “I'm sure she's being good to him.”

“I hope so,” said Omakayas. “Do you ever think of the school you went to?”

“I practice the chimookomanag writing,” said Angeline. “I keep trying to teach Fishtail, but his hands are big and clumsy! Do you want a lesson?”

Whenever Angeline was in the mood to teach, Omakayas always took the chance to learn from her. Angeline had written the chimookoman alphabet on a piece of birchbark. Omakayas had tried to impress her sister by memorizing it. When they took a break from working on the hides, Angeline helped Omakayas with the letters.

“Your
S
letters look better than mine,” said Angeline. That was all it took for Omakayas to try even harder to follow and remember the squiggles and dots that held meaning.