The Porcupine Year (4 page)

Later, they put the birchbark down and went back to working the hides. They moved together, talking of Nokomis's garden back on the island, and of Omakayas's pet crow, Andeg. Shadows lengthened, the light deepened, and soon there was the crackling sound of the hunters coming through the brush—two of them at least, Animikiins and his father. The old man appeared first, and Animikiins came after him, carrying a couple of fat rabbits. Though the two had gone out with the hope of killing something bigger, the snares set close to camp had paid off.

“It's not a bear, but at least we have something,” said Animikiins.

Omakayas smiled at him—he never teased her the way Quill did. He was taught to be careful and respectful, and
he tried to listen to his elders. She could see it. But Animikiins also had an explosive temper, like Mama's, and he was easily hurt or shamed. He could not always contain his feelings. He scowled and glared if he thought he was being teased. Omakayas was always careful around him, and she didn't talk very much.

“Miigwech,” she simply said now. She didn't dare say much else, for one never knew. Animikiins might take offense.

“Huh.”

That was his answer. He nodded his head abruptly and turned away. But there was something in the way he'd looked at her, almost with admiration, that made Omakayas feel unexpectedly warm. A soft, tingling blush rose and crept around her face.

Later, Omakayas skinned the rabbits with a few slices of her knife, and with a few quick jerks she peeled off their fur.

“You do that well,” said Nokomis.

Her praise was sweet, and Omakayas smiled. The night was warm, and after eating everyone slept outside, around the campfire. The first mosquitoes had hatched, but the smoke from the fire confused the zagimeg. They couldn't torment the family with their fierce, annoying whines and stings. As Omakayas drowsed, she heard Quill and the porcupine, just beyond the circle of the campfire. The little porcupine breathed quickly, in light panting gusts, and made soft chirrups in its sleep, as if it was dreaming a delightful dream. Omakayas stayed awake just to listen to the comical and charming way it breathed and even lightly snored, but then her attention was caught by talk from the grown-ups.

GOING NORTH

T
hey were not laughing at old times, as they did so often, or reviewing the day in low voices, either. After leaving the island, they had stayed close by the great lake, unwilling to leave it entirely. But the two winters had been very difficult. Now the family wanted to find land where they could settle. They had expected to meet up with relatives, but had missed them.

“We should continue north, giiwedin,” said Old Tallow. “Few chimookomanag have made their homes in
the great woods and lakes. We don't want them to kick us out again!”

“I still think that my brother might come through this way,” said Deydey. “This is our old stomping ground. We hunted here long ago. But now…”

“Game is getting scarce.”

“There is always good fishing on this lake. But I think we are camped close to the big path of our enemies, the Bwaanag. If their warriors come across us on their way back to their homes, after a raid—mad that they got nothing, howah!—we'd be in big trouble!”

“At least we know where my aunt Muskrat is,” said Angeline. “We can't miss if we have to move on, north. We'll end up at her camp.”

“
Without
her annoying husband, I hope,” said Mama. Yellow Kettle had never liked Albert LaPautre, and believed that he tended to drink the ishkodewaaboo, the white man's water that sent people out of their minds.
“Both Muskrat's and Fishtail's people live up there now. We could stay with them. They're all relatives. I miss those little girls, too.”

“Two Strike probably rules the islands by now,” laughed Nokomis, remembering Two Strike's imperious ways and ferocious scowl when crossed.

“She'll be surprised to see my dogs,” growled Old Tallow. “She'd best beware! My dogs have endless memories! They will never forget how that girl made war against them. They know as much as, or even more than, humans. Their ancestors speak to them in their dreams and tell them which humans to trust. They trust my Omakayas, who is always kind to them.”

Omakayas warmed to the rough approval from Old Tallow.

It seemed long ago that Omakayas's cousin Two Strike Girl had made war on Old Tallow's dogs and ended up receiving a thrashing from the fierce old woman. Deydey laughed, remembering how poor Pinch had gotten out of that jam—caught between his duty as a warrior answering to Two Strike, and his loyalty to Old Tallow and her dog tribe.

“I want to plant my garden,” said Nokomis. “The seeds in my bark packs are longing to be set in the earth and sprout!”

“We need those northern berry patches,” said Miskobines. “An old man gets a longing for berries.”

“An old man needs his sweets, for sure,” teased Nokomis. “I think you want to see Auntie Muskrat because your tooth hurts for sugar!”

“Aiigh!” Miskobines swiped at Nokomis, but it was true that he had admired the round and capable Muskrat and praised her cooking to the skies. He'd made no secret of his disappointment when Muskrat's husband had returned.

“We need wild rice beds, for sure,” Yellow Kettle insisted. “We can't depend on these men to get lucky hunting all next winter. We don't want to starve. We'll have to make a cache to keep us going this year.”

Miskobines reminded them that at their last stop, Sandy Lake, they'd heard that the government had a plan for the Anishinabeg.

“There is talk of making one big home for all of us, over near the land of the Bwaan, where we get the white clay.”

Deydey did not trust the white people, the chimookomanag. He did not trust the chiefs. He did not trust the one they called “great father” off in Washington.
He is not my great father
, Deydey would say.
I have seen him starve our people. I have seen him take our land. No father kills his children and leaves them homeless!
So Deydey did not trust the idea of one big homeland for all of the Anishinabeg.

“That place where they get the white clay is beautiful,” said Old Tallow, “but once we are there will the agents keep their promises?”

“No home would be big enough. We do things very differently, even though we speak the same language,” said Nokomis.

“There could be fighting,” Miskobines agreed.

“And not enough food,” said Yellow Kettle.

“Yes, we should go north, way north, giiwedin, to where my Muskrat lives,” said Nokomis. “We should live near Muskrat.”

Omakayas's heart jumped. Her Auntie Muskrat had traveled north to the big lake, the one with the many islands. The French called that place Lac du Bois, but the people there had many names for its bays and points and narrows. Omakayas wanted to go there, too; her favorite playmates were there—her cousins Twilight, Little Bee or Amoosens, and even Two Strike. She missed them awfully, and the thought of going to live with them was so wonderful to her that she shouted out loud from her blankets.

“Geget, izhaadah! Let's go!”

“Was that a ghost?”

Deydey's rough voice hushed her up. But as she fell asleep she smiled at the thought of seeing her beloved cousins.

 

Omakayas woke to the delicate patting of tiny paws on her face. Quill's porcupine was curious and hungry, but gentle. He tugged on the end of her nose, as if wondering whether it was permanently attached. His hard, wet,
little nose burrowed under her hair, along her neck. At last, he stuck his nose in her ear and snuffled. That got results. Omakayas turned over and shrugged him off, careful to avoid his quills. Frowning, she surfaced out of a dream. She had dreamed of her cousin Two Strike Girl. As usual, Two Strike was taunting her. Two Strike held a huge fish she'd caught, a beautiful silver-white fish. The fish turned to Omakayas and cried, “Guess who caught me? Hah, hah, hah! You'll never be as powerful as Two Strike!”

This was not a dream that Omakayas wanted to continue, anyway. She rolled out of her blanket and laughed when the porcupine tumbled at her feet and groaned softly as it righted itself. In spite of her dream, Omakayas hoped that the elders had decided to travel north toward the vast islanded lake where her cousins lived. No matter how hard it might be to live in the shadow of her strong cousin, Two Strike, she missed them all. Omakayas could
almost smell the fish stew her Auntie Muskrat might be cooking. Soon, oh how soon, they would all be together, just the way they had been back in the golden days on the golden island, when she was small.

T
oday, Deydey had a job for her and Omakayas was relieved to hear that it was not tanning hides. He asked her to make his favorite traveling food—venison pounded dry with berries and covered with boiled fat. This food could be carried in hide pouches, over great distances, and it always tasted good when boiled with whatever could be found to add. A deer carcass, which Deydey had brought to the camp the day before, had hung the night in a tree. Now Nokomis helped lower it and they took it out onto the shore.

“Cut it thin,” said Nokomis. The meat would dry on the racks constructed of long birch sticks. Their knives,
bought from the trader back on Madeline Island, were very sharp, and each tender strip was sliced very thin to dry quickly. As for the berries, Old Tallow and Angeline were collecting more to add to the ones they had gathered. The day was hot, and already the berries from the day before were puckering nicely. If only the little porcupine could leave them alone! Every time Omakayas turned her back, he tried to waddle over to the berries and began delicately but quickly plucking them up and shoving them into his mouth with his black paws. He was like a naughty little boy, but very slow, and always when he turned to look up at her he seemed so sleepy and bewildered that she had to laugh.

“I see that Quill has left his medicine animal to me,” said Omakayas, shooing him off. She brought an armful of fresh, sweet willow over and the porcupine dug into it like a little man into a feast. The sun grew hot overhead. Omakayas built a slow fire out of cedar sticks just where the smoke would flavor the meat. Then she retreated into a leafy strip of shade beside the beach.

Soon the porcupine came toward her with his belly dragging, comical and huge. He groaned with satisfaction and curled on the ground close enough for her to smell him. She edged a bit away, wondering if she smelled as bad to him as he did to her. He sighed a little and closed his eyes. There was something about the porcupine's happy sleep that made Omakayas sleepy too. Even though it
wasn't even the middle of the day yet, her eyes closed. The sound of lapping waves soothed her and she relaxed deep into the sand. There was a shadow, a swooping shadow. Her eyes opened. Nothing. She glanced over at the rack of meat and then jumped up, tumbling the porcupine into a tangle of tree roots. Gone! The strips of meat! Many of them were gone! And yet the seagulls hadn't discovered the rack. She would have heard them. They never kept quiet. No, she suspected quite another culprit. But one that she could put to her own use. An eagle.

She'd once heard Old Tallow and her Deydey speak of catching an eagle by putting fish out on a rack and crouching beneath. It had taken them a very long time to attract the bird, but Omakayas had a chance right then. For an eagle had already discovered the dried meat and would return for more. A feather plucked from a living eagle was much more powerful than a feather that an eagle has dropped—the feather still had life in it. The eagle was still flying to the creator, bearing prayers on the wind.

Carefully, she crept over to the rack of sticks and put one of the extra pieces of birchbark over her head and shoulders. She poked holes in two slabs of the deer meat and used more of the twining root to secure the meat to her wrists with long cords. She draped the meat on the topmost rung of the drying rack. Then she crouched underneath the birchbark, in the broiling sun, to wait.

The wait seemed endless. She saw through a strip torn
in the bark. Clear sky. A cloud or two. The waves rolled gently up the shore and withdrew with a hissing sound that made her sleepy again. All of a sudden, she sensed the shadow before the bird, felt the sudden yank on her wrists as the meat was plucked from the rack. The eagle's shock rang through her arms as she jumped up and clutched its tail with both hands. The eagle screamed and struck at her face with the cruel hook of its razor-sharp beak—but she felt nothing. The great bird let go of the meat and soared off and Omakayas stood still, upright, the meat rack collapsed at her feet. In each hand, she clutched two pure
white eagle feathers. Feathers that had never touched the ground. Omakayas brought the feathers to her forehead and found that she was weeping.

“N'dawnis! N'dawnis!” It was Deydey shouting. He had come out of the woods just in time to see his daughter hanging fiercely on to the tail of an eagle. He rushed to her and touched the side of her face. Her Deydey was big and forbidding, and never seemed to like to be around other people. But he could also be childish in his laughter and delight. Or, as now, he could be very tender. He pressed the edge of his tough thumb on Omakayas's cheek, where the eagle had ripped at her with its beak.

“N'dawnis, why did you do that?” he asked.

“Deydey, I heard you say once that to take the feathers from the sky was good, that they should never touch the ground.”

“You have done something, n'dawnis,” said Deydey, “that a warrior does. This is something that only grown men do. And you are just a little girl.”

Ashamed of her tears, Omakayas raised her hands to her face. Deydey took the eagle feathers from her hands. He brushed the tears from her eyes with the tips of the white feathers.

“N'dawnis, you are no longer a child. You have the courage to call down an eagle, and you have taken these feathers. We must have a feast for you and for that grandfather, that eagle, and perhaps you will receive a new
name, my girl. Your name Omakayas, Little Frog, was the nickname that we gave you when your first step reminded us of the hopping of a little frog.”

“Deydey, please, dagasana,” said Omakayas as her father carefully put the white feathers in his shirt, against his breast, “I don't want another name. I want to keep my baby name, my nickname. I am Omakayas.”

Deydey smiled at her and stroked her hair.

“That is a humble thing to say, my girl. And a brave thing you did. You make me proud,” he said.

In the shade, there was a snorting as the porcupine woke and settled back into munching fresh willow.

As she helped build the rack back up and replace the slices of meat on it, and as she washed sand off the pieces that had fallen onto the ground, Omakayas felt something balloon up inside of her like a cloud. It was a strange, buoyant feeling—she felt that she could be lifted away by it. As if she'd held on to an eagle and been dragged up into the air! After Deydey left, she understood what it was—pride. It was so rare that Deydey ever showed that he was proud of what she'd done.

 

That evening, Deydey smoked his pipe and thought about what to do with the eagle feathers. The next day he talked to the family and said that they would have to build a sweat lodge right there. He had dreamed of a name for Omakayas and had to give it to her right away. So the
sweat lodge was built. Fishtail cut pliable green willow and he and Animikiins bent the poles and anchored them in the ground. Angeline and Quill laced the poles together. Nokomis and Omakayas gathered the skins and blankets that they would drape over the sweat lodge to keep in the heat. Old Tallow hunted out the strongest grandfathers, the asiniig, the stones that would be heated white-hot and then carried into the fire pit in the center of the lodge. When medicines were placed on these rocks and water splashed over them, the steam would rise. First the women would use the lodge, then the men. There would be two separate ceremonies that night.

Yellow Kettle was excited all day and worked on special feast dishes. She made a venison stew. She dug and softened roots for little cakes to fry in the grease of a huge beaver tail. Several times, she looked longingly at Quill's porcupine.

“My mother! Take your mind away!” Quill was shocked at her idea, which he could see clearly in her eyes. “Don't think of making my little friend into soup,” he cried.

When everything was ready at last, the women went into the sweat lodge. Old Tallow and Nokomis sat by the door, and Yellow Kettle sat to the north. Angeline and Omakayas sat close together in the south. The heated rocks were lifted in with the deer antlers, and Nokomis placed pinches of fragrant medicines on the rocks. Then
the door was closed. There was utter darkness. Old Tallow splashed a ladle full of water on the rocks and the steam surrounded them, warm and cozy at first, then hot. Nokomis uttered prayers and the steam got even hotter. On Omakayas's cheek, the wound from the eagle burned and ached. And then Old Tallow prayed and the steam became unbearable. Omakayas was determined not to put her head down to the place behind her where the skins met the earth. There, she could lift the edge of the skin and snatch a cool breath. She managed not to, but she had to lie down when she got dizzy. At last, when the door was opened and the women crawled out, it was the men's turn. Old Tallow would keep the fire and bring the rocks.

Outside, sitting in the cool air of the night, drinking gulps of pure water, Omakayas felt deliciously calm and happy. The sweat lodge always made her feel good—afterward. She listened to the songs and prayers of the men and heard the calling of the night birds, the thrum of crickets, the whisper of the pines. Deydey lifted the blanket covering the door to the lodge and called her over to him. Omakayas came and knelt in the entrance.

“In my dream a bird appeared, great and white, and in its beak it carried these feathers.” Deydey fanned her with the feathers she had plucked from the eagle. “I heard my grandmother calling and then I saw her—but she was not old, as I remembered, but a young girl.” Deydey gave the feathers to Omakayas to hold and touched her cheek
where the eagle had raked her. Most of the wound would heal, but she would have a tiny scar. He dabbed her wound with warm bear grease and put his hands on her head. He smoothed her hair with a powerful, gentle touch. Then his hands rested on her cheeks and he looked kindly into her face.

“Your name is Ogimabinesikwe,” he said. “That was my grandmother's name, and it is your name now. The spirits will know you by this name. Leading Thunderbird Woman. You can still let us call you Omakayas if you want, but the spirits will know you by this other name, too.”

“It is a good name,” said Old Tallow, delighted. She laughed out loud with rare excitement—a strange sound to hear, like the rasping of two branches together.

Nokomis clapped her hands and the others nodded and even Quill yelled “Howah!” at the sound of Omakayas's new name.