The Orenda Read online

  Advance praise for The Orenda

  “Joseph Boyden has taken our memory of the past—myth and fact—and ripped it inside out with elegance, violence, emotion, and understanding until before us stands a new myth, a new memory, of how we became who we are.”

  —John Ralston Saul

  “Every so often, a book can bring the past back to life so vividly that it ceases to be history and becomes a part of the living world. Joseph Boyden has done this with haunting beauty and visceral strength, repopulating a destroyed world with characters so real and striking it is hard to think of them as fictional. The Orenda is not only Boyden’s finest work, it is one of the most powerful novels I’ve ever read.”

  —Steven Galloway, author of The Cellist of Sarajevo

  “Joseph Boyden writes with muscle and magic in impossible balance, and this profound exploration of the war between competing civilizations is his finest novel to date. The Orenda is a story so powerful it seems to belong to the very land itself, as brutal and beautiful as the Canadian Shield from which it feels carved, and you will read no better book this year.”

  —Andrew Davidson, author of The Gargoyle

  “I have spent almost forty years of my life studying both the archaeology of the Huron-Wendat and the annual accounts of the Crows, and only now, having read Joseph Boyden’s brilliant novel, do I feel the majesty and the horrors of the lives of these people. His work should be required reading for every Canadian.”

  —Dr. Ronald F. Williamson, co-author of

  The Mantle Site: An Archaeological History of an Ancestral Wendat Community

  and managing partner of Archaeological Services Inc.

  “The Orenda is a powerful story from history, folklore, and the imagination, based on the universality of human cruelty, superstition, and perseverance. Wonderful writing.”

  —Linden MacIntyre, Scotiabank Giller

  Prize–winning author of The Bishop’s Man

  “An important and engrossing novel. Boyden invites the reader to re-imagine a Canadian story you thought you knew.”

  —Jim Balsillie, co-founder of BlackBerry

  ALSO BY JOSEPH BOYDEN

  Through Black Spruce

  Three Day Road

  Born With A Tooth (stories)

  THE

  ORENDA

  JOSEPH

  BOYDEN

  AMANDA

  Gnaajiwi nwiidgemaagan

  BLANCHE

  Gnaajiwi nmama

  ONE

  We had magic before the crows came. Before the rise of the great villages they so roughly carved on the shores of our inland sea and named with words plucked from our tongues—Chicago, Toronto, Milwaukee, Ottawa—we had our own great villages on these same shores. And we understood our magic. We understood what the orenda implied.

  But who is at fault when that recedes? It’s tempting to place blame, though loss should never be weighed in this manner. Who, then, to blame for what we now witness, our children cutting their bodies to pieces or strangling themselves in the dark recesses of their homes or gulping your stinking drink until their bodies fail? But we get ahead of ourselves. This, on the surface, is the story of our past.

  Once those crows flew over the great water from their old world to perch tired and frightened in the branches of ours, they saw that we had the orenda. We believed. Oh, did we believe. This is why the crows, at first, thought of us as little more than animals. We lived in a physical world that frightened them and hunted beasts they’d only had nightmares of, and we consumed the mystery that the crows were bred to fear. We breathed what they feared. But they watched intently, as crows are prone to do.

  And when they cawed that our magic was unclean, we laughed, took a little offence, even killed a few of them and pulled their feathers for our hair. We lived on. But that word, unclean, that word, somehow, like an illness, like its own magic, it began to grow. Very few of us saw that coming. So maybe this is the story of those few.

  HUNTED

  I awake. A few minutes, maybe, of troubled sleep. My teeth chatter so violently I can taste I’ve bitten my swollen tongue. Spitting red into the snow, I try to rise but my body’s seized. The oldest Huron, their leader, who kept us walking all night around the big lake rather than across it because of some ridiculous dream, stands above me with a thorn club. The weight these men give their dreams will be the end of them.

  Although I still know little of their language, I understand the words he whispers and force myself to roll over when the club swings toward me. The thorns bite into my back and the bile of curses that pour from my mouth make the Hurons convulse with laughter. I am sorry, Lord, to use Your name in vain.

  They’d all be screaming with glee, pointing and holding their bellies, if we weren’t being hunted. With a low sun rising and the air so cold, noise travels. They are clearly fed up with the young Iroquois girl who never stopped whimpering the entire night. Her face is swollen and, when I see her lying in the snow, I fear they killed her while I slept.

  Not long ago, just before first light, we’d all paused to rest, the leader and his handful of hunters stopping as if they’d planned this in advance, the pack of them collapsing against one another for the heat. They whispered among themselves, and a couple glanced over at me. Although I couldn’t decipher their rushed speech, I sensed they talked of leaving me here, probably with the girl, who at that moment sat with her back to a birch, staring as if in a dream. Or maybe they talked of killing us. We had slowed them down all night, and despite trying to walk quietly I’d stumbled in the dark through the thick brush and tripped over fallen trees buried in the snow. At one point I removed my snowshoes because they were so clumsy, but then sank up to my hips in the next steps, and one of the hunters had to pull me out, biting me hard on the face once he’d accomplished the deed.

  Now the snow covering the lake glows the colour of a robin’s egg as sunlight tries to break through cloud. If I live through this day I will always remember to pay attention to the tickle of dryness at the back of my throat at this moment, the feeling of a bad headache coming. I’ve just begun to walk to the girl to offer her comfort, if she’s still alive, when a dog’s howl breaks the silence, its excitement in picking up our scent making me want to throw up. Other dogs answer it. I forget how my toes have begun to blacken, that I’ve lost so much weight I can barely support my gaunt frame, that my chest has filled with a sickness that’s turned my skin yellow.

  I know dogs, though. As in my old world, they are one of the few things in this new one that bring me comfort. And this pack’s still a long way away, their voices travelling easy in the frozen air. When I bend to help the girl up, I see the others have already disappeared into the shadows of trees and thick brush.

  My terror of being left behind for those chasing me, who will make sure my death is slow and painful, is so powerful that I now weigh taking my own life. I know exactly what I must do. Asking Your divine mercy for this, I will strip naked and walk out onto the lake. I calculate how long all this will take. It’s my second winter in the new world, after all, and my first one I witnessed the brutality of death by freezing. The first ten minutes, as the pack races closer and closer, will certainly be the most excruciating. My skin will at first feel as if it’s on fire, like I’m being boiled in a pot. Only one thing is more painful than these early minutes of freezing, and it’s the thawing out, every tendril of the body screaming for the agony to stop. But I won’t have to worry about that. I will lie on the frozen lake and allow the boiling cold to consume me. After that handful of minutes the violent shaking won’t even be noticed, but the sharp stabs of pain in the forehead will come, and they will travel deeper until it feels my brain is being prodded with fish spines. And when the dogs are within a few minutes of reaching
me, I will suddenly begin to feel a warmth creeping. My body will continue its hard seizures, but my toes and fingers and testicles will stop burning. I will begin to feel a sense of, if not comfort, then relief, and my breathing will be very difficult and this will cause panic but that will slowly harden to resolve. And when the dogs are on the lake and racing toward me, jaws foaming and teeth bared, I will know that even this won’t hurt anymore, my eyes frozen shut as I slip into a sleep that no one can awaken from. As the dogs circle me I will try to smile at them, baring my own teeth, too, and when they begin to eat me I won’t feel myself being consumed but will, like You, Christ, give my body so that others might live.

  This thought of giving, I now see, lifts me just enough to pick up the girl and begin walking away from the lake’s edge. After all, if she’s alive, won’t her people—my pursuers—consider sparing me? I will keep her alive, not only because this is what You demand but also to save myself. The thought of betraying Your wishes feels more an intellectual quandary than what I imagine should physically cause my heart to ache, but I’ll worry about that later. For now I follow the others’ footsteps as best I can, my thick black robe catching on the branches and nettles, the bush so thick I wonder how it is that the men I follow, and those who follow me, are not part animal, contain some black magic that gives them abilities beyond what is natural.

  You seem very far away here in this cold hell, and the Superior’s attempts to prepare me before I left France, before my journey to this new world, seem ridiculous in their naïveté. You will face great danger. You will most certainly face death. You will question Jesus’ mercy, even His existence. This is Lucifer whispering in your ear. Lucifer’s fires are ice. There is no warming your body and your soul by them. But Superior doesn’t have any idea what true cold is, I realize, as I allow myself and the girl to be swallowed by the darkness of trees that the bitter sun fails to penetrate.

  A MAN SHOULD FEEL HAPPY

  I stop to look up because the sun breaks, puffs of my breath shimmering in the first light. It’s you who shimmers, my love, in this first morning light. The sun will illuminate all of it. I know this most of all. The sun will show the Haudenosaunee who chase us exactly where to go, how many of us there are, what condition we’re in, and especially that we drag a crow with us. The sun today is not a friend. If we all die today, it will be because of it. And the sun won’t give true heat for three more moons, so it’s useless. The Crow who tries to follow is worse than useless. And the girl. Taking her was a bad idea. I knew this yesterday like I know it now. I’m older, my love, but still haven’t learned to listen to what my chest tells me.

  I ask Fox to set a sinew snare where the path narrows, just high enough to strangle the first of their dogs, now howling across the lake and not so far away. With any luck, the others will be hungry enough to stop and tear apart their friend, for surely they’ve not been eating much this last while. I dreamed all of this and spoke of it as the sky began to darken last evening. I know, my love, that yesterday you watched from somewhere above when my group stumbled across the smaller party of our enemy, both pursuing the same deer. Luck and the bit of tobacco I’d offered to Aataentsic the Sky Woman the night before allowed me to find our enemy’s tracks first, and we followed nimble and fast. By the drag of the Haudenosaunee’s snowshoes I knew they were close to starving. And by the lack of dog prints I knew what their last meal had been.

  I tied the Crow to a tree and then attacked the hunting party when we found them in a gully. It was almost too easy. We shot arrows through two and the other two could barely put up a fight. They didn’t even seem to care when Fox clubbed down one of the women, who at least bit him hard through his hide. I myself walked up to the biggest man, already singing his death song, and swung my thorn club into his temple, angry he wasn’t willing to fight for his woman. I will not forget having to stand on his head to wrench my weapon free. Yes, I’m older, but still strong. The only one as tall as me is that Crow who I can now hear stumbling through the snow and whining, trying to catch up. He’s big, thick through the chest and clearly strong, but is he not the most awkward man I’ve ever met? He is a holy one, though. I’ve watched him pray to his sky people for long stretches at a time, thumbing wooden and white metal beads that I think I want to possess once I understand their power.

  I took no pleasure yesterday in killing the last two women. They were already so wounded we knew they wouldn’t survive the trip home. Even though I asked Fox to do it, my asking is the same as if I myself had done it. Fox cut their throats with his knife so that they’d die quickly, ignoring the taunts of Sturgeon and Hawk and Deer to make it slow. When the three called Fox a woman for making the first leave so fast, he positioned the second woman, who was quite pretty, so the blood from her throat sprayed their faces. That shut them up, and despite feeling badly for these dead, I laughed. For all I knew, it was this group who was responsible for the slow and awful deaths of you, my wife, and you, my two daughters. There’s been no peace since. I no longer care for peace.

  As we gathered the few Haudenosaunee possessions worth taking, I caught the sound of a sniffle behind me in a clump of cedar. I didn’t turn immediately, for I was too tired to have to chase what was clearly a child through the forest. Fox looked at me and then walked away and around behind the cedar, circling it in a wide arc and cutting off the child’s escape. He emerged with the girl in his arms, her body as straight and stiff as if she were frozen solid. She stared ahead with eyes that didn’t seem to see but maybe saw everything. Was it this that stopped me from killing her, allowing Fox to suggest that I take her and make her my own child? Despite the pock scars from an old sickness, she’s beautiful, and will only become more so in the next few years.

  We shouldn’t have followed our own tracks back out. This certainty of direction gives away too much to an enemy who’s quick to learn. By late last night, a much bigger group of Haudenosaunee had found the killing grounds and were following us. It’s not that I could hear or see them. The cold air took on another quality, though, and the hair at the back of my neck had begun to stick out, something tickling me like blackflies buzzing my ears, waking me from an afternoon slumber. That’s when I hurried my pace last night and my hunters knew then, too, what we all now faced.

  Despite her slowing us down all night and as her people pursue us this morning, I still don’t regret taking her. She contains something powerful. This has become more and more clear in the last while. I’m willing to take this great risk because of the promise of what’s inside her. And if the Crow is able to not only keep up with my hunters but also keep the girl alive, he will have proved to me that both of them have something worth studying.

  Now that the Crow appears through the trees, the girl in his large arms, I decide to push forward. It’s a good plan. If the Haudenosaunee catch up, they’ll find the Crow first, and when they see their child in his arms they’ll celebrate her survival with a feast that ends in the consumption of the Crow. Yes, they’ll immediately send a much smaller party to pursue the rest of us, but these odds are better than what we now stare at. I point out the snare to the Crow as he stumbles up, breathing heavily.

  When he sits in the snow, the young girl stiff again with her eyes staring straight ahead, my men and I stand. The Crow’s confused expression fast turns to anger, and I like this sign very much. He has energy left and maybe he will make it through today after all. My four hunters and I walk to where I see a sharp drop to a creek below. Crouching and leaning back, I slide down the hill on the heels of my snowshoes, and feel like I’m flying as I pick up speed to where the creek will offer us a much faster route. I feel happy. A man should feel happy on the day that will be his last.

  DREAMS

  I dreamed all of this. I told my father but he was too tired, too hungry, I think, to listen. I told my mother as well, but she, too, was tired and hungry. I see the arrow that strikes my father’s neck before it even flies. I see the blood on the snow, steaming for just a bit
before freezing into something that looks like a soup he fed me when the shaking sickness came. Before my mother bites the small man who is like a lynx or maybe a fox and he smashes her head and she falls to the ground and shakes like she dances in the snow, I have already dreamed her being held roughly by them and finding my eyes as I hide in the cedar. She tells me with her eyes that she’s going to do something important, and when she does I am to run as fast as I can and not stop until I find my father’s brothers and their children who aren’t far from here. I will run faster than I ever have and I won’t stop until I find my father’s brothers or I am dead. Her eyes flash to me that if these ones here catch me I will wish I had died already. And then she bites the man like she’s a crazed wolf and he screams out and begins smashing her in the head with his club and she flops in the snow like a pike pulled from a hole in the ice or maybe a rabbit that has been clubbed and shakes toward her death, feet thumping the ground. It’s a good thing my father lies dead on the ground near her with an arrow through his neck or he would not stop until all of them are dead. But he is dead and my mother shakes toward him and my oldest brother, who is blind and deaf and cannot see or hear our parents dying, leaves the world with them when the big older man clubs him in the head. My whole family shakes on the ground today before leaving me and this is something I’ve already dreamed, the shaking of my family in the snow, feet and arms thumping, then vibrating, then humming before eventually going still.

  I will not shake into my death, I tell myself in my dream, and again when I’m swallowed up in the arms of the fox man, who sneaked up behind me quick as a lynx, so I go stiff and wait for him to smash me on the head. Instead, he carries me to the big man who struck down my brother, and as I pass the others who are dead, my father, my mother, his two young hunters and their wives who squirted blood onto the men laughing at them, I keep my eyes forward and try not to see any of it, pretend I am my brother who cannot see, who I’ve mimicked since I can remember, that look of seeing nothing and seeing everything. But I do see. I see that my father lies in the snow, a ring of blood circling his head like a bright ring around the moon in autumn, and his arms stretch out from him as if he’s pointing with one to where the sun rises and with the other to where the sun sets, and I see one foot crossed over the other as if he can finally relax now that he has slipped through to the other side. I remain stiff, though, believe that if my body stays still and hard as I can make it that these men will lose interest and they’ll think I’ve turned to wood or ice and they’ll leave me in the snow because my weight is not worth carrying, especially when my father’s brothers and their sons and their dogs find out what’s happened. These men who have killed my family, these men who I’ve dreamed of, they better start running now, for my father’s brothers and their sons who will pursue them soon will never stop chasing until they’re done with it. And so I’ll stay heavy and stiff and let my feet and arms and head catch on the branches as these men try to carry me away. If I stay frozen they’ll eventually be forced to drop me.