The Porcupine Year (5 page)

T
hey woke covered by a blanket of yellow butterflies. Thousands of wings had fluttered down on them by night, and as the sun rose and warmed the creatures, they skipped everywhere—across the sand, over the light waves. Hundreds fanned their wings on the damp bark of the canoes, on the packs. They clung to the cooking pots, flitted around the baskets, and the blankets were covered with bright golden wings. The butterflies had black smudges on their wings that looked like staring eyes, and their wings were edged in soft black, too. With every movement the family made, the butterflies swirled up in a dance of light. Omakayas almost hated to leave them.
Bizheens put his hands up in wonder and waved his fingers. The butterflies landed on his hair, his arms, his little hands, even the tip of his tiny nose. Bizheens tried to catch and eat the butterflies at first, but at last he gave up and batted at their wings in play. The butterflies poured off Deydey's shoulders as he worked to load the canoes.

“This is a good sign from the Great Kind Spirit who loves us all,” said Nokomis. “This is like a smile from the Creator, my children.”

And the truth was everyone was smiling, even Quill, even Old Tallow. Who could help smiling when visited by these beautiful and fragile spirits? Only the dogs belonging to Old Tallow took little notice.

As the family pushed out onto the water, to cross the lake, a brilliant cloud of yellow wings followed them a short way, then disappeared, like a soft good-bye.

As they crossed the lake, paddling, their spirits lifted. The way was long, but they would find their family in the end. The family sang together, back and forth between the canoes. They sang traveling songs, surprise songs, nonsense songs, even a love song from Deydey to Mama, who laughed and flicked water backward at him from her paddle. Bizheens loved the surprise of the canoe and put his hands on the gunwales and his face into the wind. He laughed with happiness, and Omakayas laughed with him and kissed him. Once, looking up at Miskobines, she saw the old man smiling to see how much she loved her little brother. Paddling behind his father, Animikiins was smiling at her too, and she looked quickly down and hid her face in her baby brother's hair. Bizheens pulled at her braids, and she made a quiet game of counting his fingers to keep him from throwing the canoe off balance. That was her job—amusing lively Bizheens.

The lake was big, shallow, and sandy for a long way out, then deep and calm. The sun was much higher by the time they could see the other shore, but as land came into view they could all see that something was happening in the sky.

Their paddles dipped more slowly, then stopped, for the sky ahead was turning a gray color that had nothing to do with clouds or the weather. Deydey said it looked like fire, and Old Tallow nodded. In the heat of midsummer, lightning struck trees that burst into flames, or sometimes
mounds of deep rotting wood kindled all by themselves. White settlers, would-be farmers, also started fires to clear fields or pastures. But the woods were so dry by the middle of the summer that even campfires weren't safe. Everything was dry tinder, ready to catch fire. The whole family had been extremely careful in putting out their fires as they moved through the woods.

They approached this lake's far shore carefully, but at last they were in shallow water. As they drew their canoes close to the opposite shore, where they would prepare to portage all their belongings to the next lake over, Old Tallow suddenly signaled them to hush.

Her dogs were standing motionless in her canoe, hackles raised, staring at the screen of brush and trees just past the shoreline. The leaves were thick, and there was no doubt in Old Tallow's mind that something—more likely, someone—was concealed there. Whoever it was would have seen them approach for miles. Someone was waiting to ambush them. Once all of their canoes were ashore, they would be helpless on the wide expanse of sand.

Instantly, everyone except Old Tallow pushed back offshore and hunkered down in their canoes. Omakayas curled around Bizheens, who seemed to understand something was wrong and went tense and silent, watchful too. Mama both steered and paddled as Deydey pulled out his gun. Miskobines, Animikiins, Fishtail, and even Quill took out their bows and fitted arrows instantly into their
hands. Old Tallow motioned to them that she was going to go ashore first. She had her gun loaded and her spear at her side. She got out of her canoe and crept onto the sandy shore, her dogs in a circle around her. Suddenly the gray female, always the boldest, bounded forward and disappeared into the brush. Old Tallow crouched down, ready for an attack, but instead of an impressive Bwaan warrior, a young chimookoman stumbled out onto the sand with the gray dog holding tight to the leg of his breeches.

“Call him off! Please!” the boy cried. “We're lost! Help us!”

Old Tallow, who did not understand the English language, kept her gun trained on the boy. Deydey knew what he was saying and told Mama to bring the canoe close enough to shore for him to land. Deydey got out of the canoe holding his gun and waded over to stand next to Old Tallow.

“Tell all of your people to come out of hiding,” said Deydey, in English, to the skinny little boy, who wore dirty, tattered clothing and was no more than six or seven winters old. “We will not harm you.”

The boy's blackened face trembled as he tried to hold back his emotions. “There is only my little sister,” he said. He turned and whistled sweetly as a bird and called, “Susan!” A tiny little girl toddled out of the leaves. She wore a halo of soft red hair just like her brother, but she was so young that she had just begun to walk. Her face
was also dark with dirt, and she gazed at everyone soberly as she sucked on her hand.

“Your mother, your father, your family?” asked Deydey.

The boy turned away, hiding his face. He told Deydey that he and his little sister had come to the lake where at least they could find water. For a long time, said the boy, they'd had nothing to eat but a young robin, which the boy was proud to have caught, and a few turtle eggs they had dug out of the sand.

“Howah,” said Old Tallow, patting the boy's shoulder when Deydey told her about the turtle eggs and the robin. “You are a mighty hunter. You provided for your little sister.”

Deydey asked the little boy where their parents were. He offered to find them. But the boy shook his head and
slumped down suddenly on his knees. The memory was too much for him. He said that he and his little sister had been sleeping on the floor of their cabin, and awakened one morning to find it full of smoke.

“We tried to wake our mother and father,” he said, “but they would not move.”

The parents had been sleeping higher up, on a platform. The smoke had risen and collected all around them, but the floor was clear. The two children had stayed by their mother and father, trying to wake them, until the fire became so hot, and the smoke so thick, that they'd had to flee.

Old Tallow knelt down near the boy and continued to pat his sharp trembling shoulders. The little girl stared at them all with round blue eyes as her brother went on talking. It didn't look like they'd been on their own for more than a couple of days. They were skinny, but their bones weren't showing yet. They were covered with bug bites and sores. From the looks of the sky, the fire was still burning and had come closer. They could now smell the sharp smoke on the wind.

Nokomis waded to shore with a bag of the pounded venison and berries that Omakayas had made. She opened the bag and gestured to the boy and the little girl, then pretended to eat.

“It is good,” said Deydey. “Pemmican. Eat it!”

The boy reached in first and took a handful. He ate the
good pemmican as slowly as he could, but he was clearly famished, and soon he and his little sister began to wolf the food down, handful after handful, eyeing Nokomis to assess the moment she would close the mouth of the sack. But slowly and gently, she lowered the sack to the ground and made its opening wider. Old Tallow was already busy making a little cooking fire, and she had sent Animikiins and his father, along with Quill, away with the dogs to investigate the woods and make sure they were safe.

“Bring back a waabooz, or a fat squirrel,” she had ordered. “Let's feed them up and then go looking for their family.”

NIGHT ON FIRE

T
hey wouldn't have a chance to find the children's family for days, however, because suddenly the wind changed direction. Smoke billowed up over the trees. A black veil covered the sun, and the air grew thick with falling ash. Everyone scrambled back into the three canoes—the lost children both got in with Nokomis, Fishtail, and Angeline. Old Tallow and her dogs took Animikiins and Miskobines in their canoe. Deydey, Mama, Quill, Omakayas, and Bizheens piled into their canoe and the whole family paddled out onto the lake, just past the reach of smoke. From there, as the sun set, casting a stark radiance through the smoke and the flames, they watched the woods burn steadily toward them.

It seemed like the whole night was on fire. Hot winds from shore sickened everyone, and the smoke hung down in a choking mass. The grown-ups took turns lying down in the bottoms of the canoes, but they were cramped and could not stretch out. Quill, whose porcupine coughed on top of his head, slept sitting up with his arms folded for a while, then slowly wedged himself into the front of the canoe. It was better for Omakayas and Bizheens, who lay in the bottom and breathed cooler air. Deydey and Old Tallow roped each canoe to the next one and made a small flotilla. The waves were calm enough so that there was no danger of capsizing, and with one or two of the grown-ups keeping watch they drifted around in the middle of the lake.

Halfway through the night, with everyone awake, the family gave up sleeping and began to talk. The presence of
the pitiful settlers' children had reminded Deydey of something he rarely mentioned. His father had been a trader, his mother of the Anishinabe people. He gazed at the children in Fishtail's canoe and at one point shook his head and said, “I feel very sad for these lost ones. I was lucky my mother's people adopted me, and my uncle became my father and loved me as a father does. My own father, who was mostly white like these children, did not love me.”