The Orenda Joseph Boyden Page 4

  I stare at the girl for a long time in the dim light, trying to understand her. I suddenly realize that I am trying to see her humanity. She’s not very beautiful, at least in comparison to the other children around her. She’d be better looking if not for the scars of some childhood disease that ravaged her face. Epidemics have begun to sweep through these people the last few years. I can only take this as a sign from God, a divine message. Any fool can see that when great change comes, the weak and the wicked will suffer. But the converted will live on.

  I bless myself and whisper prayers of devotion and of gratitude and of guidance. I pray most fervently for the salvation of the soul of the young one sleeping in front of me. When I’m done, I raise the silver crucifix, a gift from my dear mother before departing on this voyage, and kiss it, then decide to lower it to the girl’s lips. After all, she’s already shown such fascination with the cross.

  As Jesus touches her mouth, I’m shocked to see her eyes dart open. She raises her arms and pushes against my chest. Only now do I realize how closely I’m hovering over her. Her fists are a flurry of punches against me, and as I lean away, the crucifix in hand, she begins screaming. Panicked, I clap my hand over her mouth before she wakes the others. They’ll see me up here with her and will not understand. I plead with her in whispers to be quiet but her eyes only widen more. When she bites my hand, the pain shoots up my arm and I pull it away. The girl’s screams pierce my ears, ringing through the longhouse, and just under them I can hear the sounds of people awakening abruptly all around me, of men scuffling for their weapons. A rush of cold air sweeps up to send chills down my back and I hear feet scrambling up the ladder, then feel a hand grab my cassock and yank.

  Now I’m falling, and I close my eyes and grit my teeth just as my shoulder slams into the unforgiving earth with the crack of what must be a bone breaking, the dull throb followed immediately by a sharp pain that sucks the breath from me. Bird stands above, his face contorted in anger, a knife in his hand. He raises it as he straddles my chest. I can see that he’ll do it, and my first reaction is regret that I’ve come all this way only to fail in converting a single sauvage. I close my eyes and whisper to Jesus for another chance, wait for the burn of the knife across my throat.

  But it doesn’t come. Instead, I hear a strange voice, young but gravelly, speaking calmly, rationally, in Huron. It’s not quite human in tone, more like a small animal that’s learned to speak like a two-legged being. I pick up certain words. Spirit. Father. Illness. I slowly open my eyes. Bird stares at me, and, over his shoulder, up in the rafters on her sleeping perch, the girl peers down, talking to the back of Bird’s head, her thin face hovering above us in the early light that comes in from the smoke holes of the longhouse. Her face shimmers in the glow of morning and fire smoke so that I can’t help but think of her as a spirit, a ghost who’s appeared to intervene. Bird stands up, with one foot on either side of me. He says nothing, but his look tells me as surely as if he were screaming it. Never touch this girl again. He turns then and strides out. I look around and see the other families have risen from their beds and stand in a ring at a distance, staring. I look up to glimpse the strange sight of the girl once more, but already she’s disappeared.

  —

  FOR THREE DAYS, no one visits or speaks to me. I assume this is Bird’s punishment. And so, unsure if I’m even allowed to leave the long-house, I sit in a corner that offers some privacy and spend long hours in prayer and reflection. At least I attempt to, but a growing sense of isolation, of what by the second day I realize is malaise, sets in. Like snow built up on a roof too long, I fear I creak with too much weight. I fear I will collapse. My shoulder was dislocated in the fall, and the right arm hangs limply, now longer than the left. The pain is breathtaking. If only I had another Jesuit here to re-set it. If only I had another Brother here to speak with, another priest with whom I might seek confession and absolution. I try to sleep but it’s fitful, shot through with a deep-seated fear that I’ve gone so far into this bizarre and brutal land that even God has lost contact with me.

  What of the others? I set out from New France with the plan of reaching Huronia late last summer. I was promised that a group of Jesuits who were due to arrive soon from Normandy would follow if the season still permitted.

  In the best of conditions the trip from Kebec to Huronia is a three-week-long act of brutality, back-breaking work of paddling and portaging great distances, which means lifting everything from the canoes and making multiple trips, sometimes of miles, through bogs or up steep embankments, half the weight of a man strapped to your back. Living daily with swarms of insects that sting and itch and bite, hoping for the short respite of rain and, when it comes, shivering in the downpours, then wishing for some sun again, despite this meaning the return of the insects. Starving even as the sauvages seem to grow stronger from the scarcity of food, waking before dawn each morning and bending their backs against the currents in their flimsy, wobbly craft until dark, smoking their wretched tobacco in place of meals. They grew more muscular as I began to wither.

  But the worst aspect of my journey was certainly the Iroquois, enemies of us French. To get to Huronia, one must pass through their country. Yes, being hunched from dawn to dusk on scabbed and bloody knees, the painful monotony of paddling into wind and rain, never resting or stopping to eat until light faded, this was simply crushing. The abject fear, though, that I tried to constantly quell was of being surprised by an Iroquois raiding party. I did all that I knew to do. I tried to place myself in Your hands. And I am so sorry that, for a time, I failed.

  I’d left New France last year with a small party of Algonquin who promised Champlain himself that they would deliver me safely to the Hurons. I forgive them now, as I write this to dear Superior in my book. After all, I admit I’m a weak paddler and despite my size, couldn’t carry nearly as much as them. I remember them grumbling and complaining amongst themselves for the ten days. One heathen even began to loudly suggest I was a demon in human form. But it’s when we came across a barely cold Iroquois campfire that the Algonquin made their decision. That afternoon, after they inspected the camp, silent and cautious as wolves, and just as I was relieving myself behind a clump of willow, they climbed into their canoes. They’d deposited my black cloth bag containing my chalice and diary and few personal possessions on the shore, along with a small sack of food. I emerged from the bush and watched as they paddled away at speed.

  The more I shouted for them to come back, the faster they worked to get away. I quit only when it dawned on me they wouldn’t return and that my shouts might very well alert the Iroquois, who couldn’t be far away, to my presence.

  The terror consumed me those first hours as I huddled behind that same clump of willow, peering out at the lake in hopes the Algonquin might return for me, pleading to You, Lord, that this not be the way I was to perish. Might not dying alone, slowly starving and going mad, lost in the tangle of forest as the mosquitoes ate me alive, be even worse than to die the death of a martyr at the vicious hands of the Iroquois? This morning, as I sit ignored in the corner of the longhouse, I truly come to understand that my life, and my death, are preordained, and I come to the understanding that fretting over all of this will not aid my mission but cripple it.

  This third morning of chastisement, I kneel on the hard ground shivering, and I finally feel the fear that’s consumed me release and begin to lift from my back, a fear that’s burdened me since I first set foot in this foreign and desperate place. With my left hand, I force my right arm up the wall until it’s above my head, my shoulder braying its anguish. I whisper now to You as I throw my weight hard into the wall. I feel the ball popping into its joint again as I collapse. I fall to the floor and bite my hand to stop a scream from escaping and awaking the house.

  I will die. We’ll all die. How many times have I narrowly escaped it in the past few months? The last few days? My death most probably will happen here in this foreign world, away from my family, a
t the hands of these people. So be it, Lord. So be it.

  THE WESTERN DOOR

  I am the western door of my people. My mother’s and my father’s brothers will not forget about me. They will rescue me. I don’t know how to mourn my parents properly. I miss my mother’s kisses, her whispering my name so close in my ear that it tickles. I miss my father kneeling down and rubbing his nose against mine. When I’m sad and scared like this, I remember what he told me to speak out loud. I am Snow Falls. I am the western door of the five nations of my people. I am a Seneca, an Onondawaga of the Haudenosaunee.

  Near the end of my grandfather’s long sickness, he told my father and his brothers that he’d die in seven days, and so they showed him the fine leggings and robe and moccasins he’d wear at his burial, and on the sixth day he asked my father to paint his face the colour of blood because his closest friend had been to the afterworld and saw that this is how the people looked, and on the seventh day, just as he said, he slipped into that world. There was a great rain of sadness. The women in my family wailed all night and for ten days after. My father and his brothers didn’t cry but made very sad faces. They painted my grandfather more, and then curled him up like a baby in his mother’s stomach, and then they wrapped him snug, tight in his robe, and laid him back on his sleeping mat. I watched all of this. I watched my father cover him with bark. My father and his brothers, they stood guard over his body all through the snowmelt. And all this allowed everyone to say goodbye properly. But how do I say goodbye to my family? I didn’t know they’d be taken away so suddenly. So quick. Despite the dreams, I didn’t know it was the morning when I awoke on the trail that today would be the last day of my family’s life. The sun shone bright on the snow, and braver winter birds came close in the hope I’d offer them a tiny scrap of deer fat. It’s only now I realize they came to forewarn us of what soon approached. But we paid no mind, for we didn’t expect to find our enemy in our winter place, so far away from his own home. But he came. And he took. And now he wants to become my father. But what he doesn’t yet know is that I have special gifts, and it won’t be long before I’m ready to show them.

  I’ve stayed up on my perch, hoping the people in this longhouse will forget about me, forget that I exist. Those first few days when I arrived, I planned to try and escape, but the one named Bird watches me too closely, even though it appears he doesn’t. Now I know I can’t escape, and a death song begins to form in my head and I try to find the song by humming just under my breath, but it won’t come to me. I want to be with my parents and my brother. I don’t want to be here surrounded by those who slaughtered them. I am trying, now, to learn how to die.

  The deepest night is when I sneak out of my warm robe to go outside and relieve myself, only having to do this every other night since I barely drink any water or eat any ottet. Despite how quiet I am, I know Bird awakes and listens for me to return. He can read my thoughts. He knew about my wanting to slip away. He knows about my wanting to die. He’s a smart hunter. He watches everything. But I watch, too.

  Early, early, before the light today, he awoke. I didn’t hear him right away but felt the cold on my face when the door to the longhouse opened, and when I searched for his form in the dark I saw it wasn’t there. I considered running away into the storm blowing outside but soon slipped back into bad dreams, flashes of things that scare me. Wolves. Being alone and lost in the forest. The spirit that lives under the water. And then I awoke to cold on my lips and the smell of sickness in my throat. I opened my eyes to see the bearded man hovering over me like a great charcoal bird, his eyes burning and wet, his whispers spitting onto my face. He held my father against my mouth, against my lips, as if to take the breath from me. My father didn’t want to do this to me. I know it. And so I began to scream, to struggle to get the Crow away from me, biting his hand hard until he let go, and when I screamed again it’s as if he flew backward, my father flying away with him, too. He just sprang backward like he wasn’t human at all, disappearing to the ground below.

  I crawled from my robe and peered down to see Bird crouched over the Crow. I could tell by the tension in his body that Bird was preparing to kill him. And despite not wanting to, I opened my mouth, and in a voice I hadn’t used in many days, I spoke aloud, my throat strained from the lack of water and the lack of talk.

  I told Bird that my name is Snow Falls and that this Crow had stolen the spirit of my father, that he kept him imprisoned in the glowing being around his neck, that if Bird killed the Crow now, my father would be his prisoner forever and I could never become Bird’s child. I don’t know where the words came from, but they came, and I watched the killing tension ease in Bird’s shoulders. I told him, finally, what I’ve been dreaming, what only right then I could put words to. An illness was slipping into this village, into this very longhouse, and even if he killed the Crow now, it was too late to stop. It had arrived. Killing him would only make things worse. The words, they poured out of me and were beyond my control. To kill this one would simply make those who sent him angry and eager to punish the Wendat. It was better to allow this one to live and to study him, to try and understand him in order to prepare for what was coming. Bird, he listened. Slowly, he stood up, and his stare, as pointed as an arrowhead, warned the Crow never to touch me again.

  I went back into my robe after that, my face warm, my stomach warm, my back feeling like it had the heat of the sun on it. For the first time since my family’s murder, I felt heat, as if a coal that I’d thought had gone cold in the pit of my belly had been fanned and come to life. I wanted to close my eyes and feel this warmth in my sleep, but I couldn’t. I am alive now with the understanding of something important. I have power over this one called Bird. I have power over the Crow. The coal in my belly begins to burn the edges of my deep sadness. This coal licks my pain with fire so that I can feel my pain becoming sharp as the lip of a clamshell. I can feel it turning into something else. Something coloured like blood and charcoal, and these colours ease my pain just a little. I can sense my hurt becoming something else, and in the warmth of my robe I can see what it is. The coal ignited in me creates a weapon, one that I will use against my enemies when the time is right.

  —

  A WIND THAT isn’t very cold blows in from the west. It takes the storm away with it and brings a sun so bright it calls me outside. I don’t ask Bird’s permission. I just rise from my sleeping mat, slow because my body hasn’t moved in so long. My body doesn’t want to listen to me as I try to get down the ladder and my legs feel as if they’re frozen but eventually I’m on the ground again. Children playing in the longhouse stop and stare. I rise up on my toes and stretch, making a sound that begins in my belly and escapes like a loud hiss. The children’s eyes go wide. They go wider when I crouch by the fire and rub soot on my face until it’s dark as night. I stand and glare at them until, one by one, they turn away in fear. A couple of old women who watch over the children study me as they sew, glancing up every few seconds to see what I’ll do next. I find my outside clothing stiffened and hanging, ready. Bird is off somewhere this morning, and I’m sure word will travel to him fast.

  The possibility of spring is in the snow. I walk through it as it softens in the sun, the bright line of it outlining the paths of the village, and it scares me how big this place is. It’s bigger than my own by far. Many, many longhouses with the smoke of the fires of all the families reaching into the air. How will my father’s brothers defeat all of these people? Although not too many are outside yet, I can tell that as many as a great flock of finches live here.

  My darkened face must stand out because people stop and look as I walk by. I growl deep in my throat when a young man laughs. He’d be good-looking if he wasn’t so stupid. I move around the village for a long while, circling its outside twice before exploring the pathways inside. The palisades are three rows deep and tall and thick and the tips are sharply pointed. The longhouses are built well, are built much like our own. A few bored lookouts star
e at me as I walk by them. I can feel their eyes on my back. I must learn the place of my enemy.

  When I begin to tire, I sense someone following me. I had no real plan in all of this but to get outside and look around, then imagined I’d walk until I fell to the ground with exhaustion. I’m weak from so little food, but I want my enemies to think I’m even weaker than I am. I want them to pity me. I want them to worry for me.

  I know who it is that follows. Word has reached him. He’ll certainly worry for my head, and this is what I want. I’ll keep him wondering about me until I’ve figured out how I’ll return to my people and he’s so confused by me that he’ll be happy I’m gone. He makes no secret of walking behind me. He hums a song that sounds like spring, and I like it despite wanting to hate it. I walk faster, but he keeps pace. After a while, I begin to feel as though he’s leading me, not me him. I don’t like this man. I don’t want to admit it, but he has powers too.

  I turn down a smaller path that by the sun’s place I think will take me back to his longhouse, and I consider slowing so that he’ll catch up and walk with me. Kneeling in a snowbank, I begin to draw circles and wait for his shadow to stretch across me, blocking out the glare of sun on snow. As I turn my eyes to him, all I can see is a black outline. It isn’t his. Bird is tall and this one who follows is small, her form as thin as a snake’s. My head tells me to stand, and I do, but when it tells me to run, my legs go weak, weaker than when I climbed down the ladder from my bed this morning. As if commanded, I sit on my haunches, my hands folded on my knees, though my eyes remain on the thin woman who has been following, my eyes adjusting so I can make out the strands of her messy hair, the cheekbones that look sharp enough to cut me, the bare hands with long fingers. She stares at me, and this stare holds me down. My legs begin to shake, my knees knocking against each other. She raises her hand and my legs go still.