The Porcupine Year (9 page)

“What is it?”

“Nookoo,” Deydey said softly, blinking harder, “I can see a little light!”

 

The leaves fell off the trees in great windy gusts, and the days were cold, but with Quill's help rabbits continued to be caught in the snares. If there was nothing else to eat, there was always rabbit soup. Omakayas and Nokomis dug cattail roots and Mama boiled them and mashed them into the stew. Every day, they added one more item to their store of survival goods. At night, as they sat
together around the fire, they were closer than ever in their determination.

“Old LaPautre will not undo us,” said Yellow Kettle, “but it worries me. What did he do to those children? And what about my sister, Muskrat?”

“If he harmed one hair, I'll have his whole head,” said Old Tallow grimly, gulping at her soup.

She looked ferociously at the spoon she'd carved and smiled. Omakayas thought she'd bite the round part off just to prove her rage.

“I plan to hunt him down one day,” said Quill.

The cold nerve in his voice chilled Omakayas. It was as if her brother was becoming a different person.

“LaPautre will undo himself,” said Nokomis. “Nothing that you could do, any of you, could possibly be as evil as the spirit of the rum he drinks.”

They fell silent, knowing this was true.

Angeline passed around a basket of nuts—she was very smart about watching where squirrels and mice put their caches, and she raided them.

“The poor mice!” said Fishtail, teasing her.

“Poor mice!” said Angeline. “We are in no position to feel sorry for them! We are just one skinny rabbit away from starving!”

But they'd banked their birchbark house well with earth and leaves, and their stomachs were full—for now. They all slept well, even though that night it snowed for the first time and when they woke, the earth was shining and white.

T
he snow fell early, long, and deep. Five days passed and there was nothing to eat. Deydey sang his spirit songs until he was hoarse, hoping to conjure an animal near or at least pluck up their courage. Nokomis and Angeline ranged the woods for dried berries, more squirrel caches. Omakayas swallowed her pride and asked Quill to help her set snares. But it seemed some magic was upon the land, making animals scarce as ghosts. The porcupine had gone to sleep in a hollow log, a place that only Quill knew about. He was suspicious of Old Tallow, who had joked once about eating his medicine animal. He would not reveal where it slept. Instead, he took his bow and arrows
out each morning, though his clothing was now too thin for the harsh wind. Quill bravely went out hunting with Fishtail, and each night they returned, famished, empty-handed, hoping that the women had managed to find something. Anything.

This was usually the time of year when they had wild rice, fish, dried pemmican, stores from the summer to rely upon. This was the time of year when they could count on the bale of dried fish, the stash of mushrooms and nuts, the sacks of fat and berries, even some bits of last spring's maple sugar. All of this had been stolen.

Old Tallow ranged far with her dogs and her spear. Her dogs needed to eat, too. They had to have meat to live. They caught mice, flipped them in the air, and crunched their bones. As they weakened, she weakened, though she rose fierce as ever and made her way out into the biting wind. She was on the trail of a bear, she said, with bigger tracks than any she had ever seen. It had not yet gone in to hibernate, but was still fattening itself. On what?

One day, Old Tallow came back with a handful of mice, which she threw at Mama's feet.

“I return,” she cried with the air of a great hunter.

In spite of their dizzy pain, everyone laughed, even Quill, who suffered terribly from his worst nightmare—nothing to eat. Mama put the mice in the stew pot with
some bits of leather, and the whole family choked down the mice-leather stew for strength.

Day by day, Omakayas could feel everyone growing weaker. Bizheens's cries, so shrill at first when he suffered hunger pains, had dulled to a whimper. They all smoked kinnikinnick to dull the stabs in their guts. There were days when she hadn't the strength to move and lay still in her blanket, sick and listless. Every night, she tried to dream of an animal, a place to hunt. But even her dream animals had deserted her. Yet always, Old Tallow would rise and spend her day hunting. Wearing only her thin dress and a ragged deer hide, she would drag herself and her spear out the door with a growl and call her dogs, who would always come even though they suffered too. Sometimes she looked like an old oak tree, bent crooked. But as she strained to the hunt she grew lithe and limber as when she was young.

“Aaargh,”
she would say when she returned each night, warming her hands at the fire. “I can stand the hunger, it is the cold
I hate! Somewhere around here, a huge bear is wearing my coat. I mean to have it, tomorrow!”

Each day, too, Deydey tried to rise. Sometimes he got past Nokomis and stumbled out into the snow, but then he stood, bewildered and discouraged. Although with each day, each dose of balsam tea, his vision recovered just a little, he could still only distinguish the shadows of things. And in this time of aching hunger, he despaired.

“LaPautre and his big belly would feed us all for a moon!” he said. “I could eat him alive!”

“Saa! Don't talk like that!” said Yellow Kettle.

The dreadful cannibal spirit of the wiindigoo was on the land, the spirit that drove people mad with hunger as it hid the animals and put the fish to sleep. They could all feel its bitter breath.

That night, Omakayas dreamed at last. In her dream the bear woman, her helper, came to visit her. The bear woman was powerful, with a strange face that was both bear and human. She wore beautiful buckskin clothing. Her paws were silky with long, powerful, curved black claws.

“I must take one of you,” she said, “but the rest I will allow to live.”

Omakayas woke in the dark, dizzy and frightened. She could not rise, nor could she compel herself to do so the next morning. It was as though the bear woman had frozen her. She listened to the others in the wigwam.
Fishtail was too famished and weak to go out. Yellow Kettle tried to comfort the whimpering Bizheens by giving him one of her makizinan to chew. Deydey was silent and Nokomis could barely drag herself about to keep the fire going. Omakayas managed, at last, to help her grandmother brew swamp tea and balsam tea with melted snow. It was all they had. At least, along with the kinnikinnick, it helped with their stomach cramps. Hours passed, and Omakayas thought perhaps she would describe her dream, but her mind was invaded by dread. Who would the bear woman take? She tried to fall asleep again and find her spirit, tried to offer herself, but now her sleep again was black.

Outside, even the dogs were still. At last, from the corner, Quill's choked voice emerged.

“My medicine animal would save our lives. My family, I will get him for you. As my strength is gone, I have asked him for help.”

Omakayas closed her eyes in relief. Just a bit of meat, a tiny morsel, and she was sure that she would be strong enough to set more snares.

“Gaawiin,” snarled Old Tallow from her nest in the very corner. “He tried to save us, that porcupine! I will never forget how he quilled LaPautre! That brave little creature took our only revenge. He is medicine for us all!”

Slowly, she hoisted her body into a sitting position. Then, crouching, she grinned at them all. Her teeth were
long and yellow in the light from the door, her face was shrunk as death. Her skin blazed, white as a skull. There was a mad light in her eyes that frightened Omakayas, but amazed her, too. She had the same look as her bear spirit. Crawling forward, Omakayas tried to stop Old Tallow from going out, but she fell in a faint. She could see her own hand, the fingers like whittled sticks. How could the old woman be capable of anything when even their strongest young men could not move?

“My relatives, nindinawemaganidok,” Omakayas heard her beloved protector say, “it is time for Old Tallow to hunt the bear!”

There was a flash of light as she crawled out the door and dropped the bark back in place. Her dogs howled with savage need as Old Tallow called them to her aid. Then darkness, stillness, a swoon of hunger and pain. She was gone.

TO THE DEATH

H
ours passed and Old Tallow did not return. Omakayas felt the life leaving her body, though she struggled to rise. She remembered her dream of the bear woman and knew that in facing the spirit of the bear Old Tallow was in great peril. Everybody wanted to go after Old Tallow, but one by one, they tried to move, and could not. Bizheens lay quiet, and Yellow Kettle gave him her other makizin to chew. Snow to sip. Nokomis had nothing for
them, again, but tea. At last, after drinking the balsam tea, Fishtail spoke to Quill, gasping for breath. The hand he raised was skeletal. He touched Quill's skinny arm.

“Let us die well, little brother. We must find our grandmother. I have two bullets left. Let us go out and slay a bear! And a moose!”

“I am with you,” said Quill.

Painfully, slowly, the two dragged themselves onto their hands and knees, and then they stumbled out the door. They wrapped skins around their shoulders and set off in the tracks of Old Tallow, weaving slightly, praying for strength. Omakayas now rose. Somehow she found the will to follow them. It seemed to her a great surprise that her feet could move beneath her. All she knew was that she must find Old Tallow. When she was a tiny girl, the old woman had saved her and brought her to Yellow Kettle so that she could live. Omakayas could not abandon the old woman who had rescued her as a baby, and who had loved her ever since. Even if it meant that she herself fell dead in the snow, Omakayas was determined to find Old Tallow.

 

Each step was agony. Omakayas staggered after the hunters, who had found Old Tallow's trail. After a while, she could see, with amazement, that instead of weakening, the steps of Old Tallow had gained strength. The old woman had taken great strides. She had leaped rocks, outpaced her dogs. She
must have been carried by the sight of the bear, thought Omakayas. Or perhaps by the bear itself. She could see, here and there, a giant track of the creature that Old Tallow was intent upon slaying.

The wind vibrated in the trees with a dismal growl. Omakayas knew it was the spirit of the wiindigoo and she found the strength to growl back. She asked the bear woman to help find Old Tallow, and so spare the old woman, although she had killed so many of her kind.

But first Omakayas came upon her brother. He was curled in the snow, too weak to move.

“Go on, go on, my sister!” His voice was thin.

She came upon one of Old Tallow's dogs, stone dead and frozen. It had dropped from weakness. Then another dog, bloody, with Fishtail dragging it slowly behind him.

Omakayas knew that Fishtail was going to bring the dog back to eat.

“No,” she said, “come with me. We must find our grandmother.”

“Yes,” said Fishtail. “You are right, little one.”

He dropped the dog's carcass and tried to follow Omakayas, who now moved with a strength that was not her own. She saw that her feet were taking step after step. The wind had ceased to cut her. She felt light now and warm. She did not notice when Fishtail dropped behind her, stumbled in the snow, and fell. She was following the tracks of the old woman she so loved. And from their swift
sureness, she could tell that Old Tallow was closing in on the bear.

And there it was.

Around the corner, in a clearing red with blood, Omakayas saw a sight that would remain with her all of her life.

She blinked, then rubbed her eyes. Old Tallow and the bear were standing in the clearing together. They were clenched, upright, in an unbelievable embrace.

Omakayas put her arms out and stumbled toward them in joy, crying out.

“Tallow! Tallow! My mother! My grandmother!”

She was sobbing with relief, then sobbing with a dawning realization. The huge bear's face was caught in a snarl, its chest pierced by Old Tallow's spear. Old Tallow's dead eyes stared into the eyes of the dead bear. She was caught by its tremendous claws, which had raked into her neck. They had died together, upright, frozen in their struggle.

Omakayas found herself at Old Tallow's feet, holding the edge of her tattered dress. Darkness took her. Later, much later, she heard voices. Felt herself carried. Tasted a heavy broth. But for a long time she knew nothing. She did not want to emerge. She wanted to stay in the darkness with the old woman she had loved.