The World Above the Sky (24 page)

They soon found a common work rhythm, moving like dancers through the trees. The opening figure of their maple sugar ballet was light and enthusiastic. Carefree. Filled with anticipation. Mid-dance, the full weight of the task fell on yoked shoulders.

Eugainia reconciled the swinging pail's arcs with her own considered movement. Hips slightly angled and knees softly set quickly established a counter rhythm. Her task, she found, was made easier when she also adjusted her attitude. In submission to the joy of work, she found harmony of thought and action. The power of simple repetition dissolved time and gave rise to contemplation. Accommodation reaps greater rewards than grim, determined slogging. This thought alone lightened Eugainia's load: she knew she could bear what was to come.

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk brushed away the layers of the ash and ember. He loaded the stones, vibrating with heat, on the hissing slings. The alchemy began in a frenzy of bubbles and steam. The sap quickly reduced to a fraction of its volume. At afternoon's end, a golden mass of a sticky, resinous substance coated the round stones and pooled in the spaces between.

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk poured two palm-sized patches of the warm syrup on the snow. It congealed instantly. He rolled the near patch onto a short smooth stick. He gave it to Eugainia. Sunlight danced inside amber mass. Eugainia nipped tentatively. Sugar's fire set her blood pounding and her mind spinning. She licked the sticky mass from her lips and teeth with an eager tongue. She rode an upward rush of spirit. Her sighs of pleasure rippled across the clearing. She cocked her ear to the unfamiliar sounds. She peered at Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk. He raised an eyebrow. The mewling sounds of pleasure, she gathered from his smile, were hers. Laughter erupted between them in short, startled bursts.

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk nipped congealed syrup from the shared stick. A long thread coiled on his chin. Eugainia stared.

“What?” he said.

She pulled him to her, licked his chin clean. He smiled. She pressed her mouth to his, licked his front teeth clean. She licked the maple-sweetened interiors of his upper and lower lips. Then scoured his tongue with hers.

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk responded, delicately at first, then with intent.

Eugainia rolled the second dollop. “What is this?” she asked.

“We call it
sismo'qonapu
.”

“Maple, ah, nectar?”

“Umm. I guess. Maple nectar is close. Do you remember the first food I gave you?”

“The moose butter. When you showed us the hunt and interpreted Henry's maps. The day I feared I'd fall in love with you. You gave us little birchbark-wrapped packets of moose butter, bone marrow, nuts and honey.”

“It was sweetened with this. With
sismo'qonapu
.”

“It tastes of leaves and wood and smoke. Roots and the earth. You make those little blocks of the sugar we carried from Claw of Spirit Bird Bay from this too, yes?”

“What's life, my dear,” Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk asked, “without a little sweetness?”

“Barely bearable. Thank you, Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk. You are a god and a saint.”

“You're welcome. I'm happy you enjoyed it too much.”

She moved to speak. He put a quick finger to her lips.

“I'm joking.”

“I'm not. I love you, Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk. I love you too much.”

“I love you too much too!”

“‘Too much too.' Sounds like Mi'kmaq word.”

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk tried it on. Giving the phrase a sibilant spin. “Too'much'too. Too'much'too. Too'much'too. I declare it a new word. Means ‘my heart is happy when my cranky wife finally smiles.'”

The walk back to camp was pleasant and companionable. The day's tensions set with the red late-winter sun. A bright fire soon replaced its heat. The lovers lay beneath their robes, faces dappled gold and scarlet in the flicker of the maplewood flame. Eugainia's sugar-induced ecstasy subsided. She admitted an urge to sleep.

“It's good we sleep a good deep sleep if we can,” Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk agreed. “Tonight when the Great Bear wakes, I'll show you another mystery. We'll hunt beneath the stars and feast like proper Gods.”

“God. Goddess. I begin to despise these words. All these years I was told I was the Goddess. I no longer believe such a thing to be true. I've strayed from my purpose, Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk. I fear I've lost my way.”

“Why?”

“They'll take all this away.”

“Who?”

“People. Your people. My people. People.”

“Not if we love them they won't. We're born to serve The People's need to worship something greater than themselves. We see more. Risk more. Bear more. We dream dreams. See visions. They need us. ”

“They say they love us. It isn't love. It's fear. They learn they can't kill death. But they can kill the god who they think controls it. I tell you, Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk. They'll aim their fear and anger and frustration at us like a weapon when the fantasy fails. I sometimes think we're worshiped because we're clever and beautiful. And young. That our innocence makes us dispensable. We don't age. Our beauty becomes an affront.”

“Your people ask you to show how they may live together kindly, in peace and harmony, as did your ancestor the Christ. My People ask me to interpret the ways of the animal powers, that they might survive, at one, with all Power of the Six Worlds. As the Creator guides me, so I do. Together you and I will show the way of all Power, human and animal, the
Kji-kinap
of sea and sky, rock and tree. No, no, dear one. Who we are isn't what we might wish for ourselves, or what others wish for themselves through us. Who we are is what we do with what we're given. Our only responsibility is to strengthen ourselves and share our gifts. That's all. Simple.”

“To whom much is given, much is expected.”

“Exactly.” Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk cupped her face. “Why did you say you feared you'd love me?”

“What?”

“In the maple grove. When you spoke of the day I showed you the moose-hunt dance. You said you feared you'd love me.”

“How could I give an uncertain heart?”

“I don't understand.”

“I'd always been told whom to love. Which is everyone and no one. And how to love. With my head, not my heart. I had no idea what physical love could be. Its Power. But I sensed it. I loved you immediately. Not to perpetuate the Holy Blood. I wanted you. Body and soul. It frightened me. You frightened me. I didn't know who you were.”

“Why should that matter?”

“Because from the moment I laid eyes on you, for the first time in my life, I thought I knew who I was.”

“This is not good?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“When I finally arrived at the feast, I wasn't whom I expected.”

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk withdrew a shining object from a chamois sack.

“This will show you who you are. And a new way to be.”

He handed Eugainia a copper bracelet, wide as her thumb was long, its curved edges rolled neatly upward to protect her skin. “Copper clears the mind and eases the heart,” Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk told her. “It ferrets out impurities. Makes us clean. I made it for you.” He reconsidered. “For us, really.”

“It's beautiful, Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk.”

“It's beauty comes from you. From my ‘Lady Wife,' as your people would say.”

“I prefer your new name for me. It has more truth to it. More beauty.”

“It tells our story, this bracelet. See here? On the outside? I etched two white whales streaming through turbulent waters.”

“You and I.”

“Travelling the great river...”

“Which Henry misguidedly named for poor St. Lawrence.”

“We prefer Way to the Setting Sun.”

“So do I.”

“Who is this Lawrence?”

“Morgase said Henry spoiled me with too much education. All those grim-faced friars. All those useless facts.”

“How can facts be useless? Unless they purposefully mislead. Can there be too much knowledge? No. Tell me the story of St. Lawrence and the grim-faced friars.”

“St. Lawrence. A Christian martyr strapped by the Romans to the iron cooktop of an outdoor stove.”

“
E'ee
! What was his sin?”

“He stole the Holy Grail and sent it to his parents in Spain.”

“So they cooked him.”

“They did.”

“Then ate him.”

“No.”

“Thank goodness. I'm still confounded by this Christian business of drinking human blood.”

Eugainia set further discussion of transubstantiation aside for the moment. “Lawrence was so eager to be helpful, to speed his passage to the waiting arms of God, he cried out ‘I am already roasted on one side and, if thou wouldst have me well cooked, it is time to turn me on the other.' God help us. We venerate this misery.”

“And the grim-faced friars?”

“Beat their perverted versions of God's simple mysteries into innocent foundlings. Ah… poor homeless little waifs and beggars in towns and villages. What a race of savages we've become.” She turned the bracelet in her hands. “But this great river! Regardless who we've named it for. This Gateway to the Setting Sun. I long to see it one day.”

“In the meantime, you have it here,” he indicated the bracelet, “in miniature.”

“Look! Bounding dolphins cleave the way. Our children?”

“Maybe. And here. See? Behind each, a walrus head pokes up through the foam.”

“Who are they?”

“I don't know.”

Eugainia considered a moment. A smile played at the corners of her lips. “Henry and Keswalqw.”

“Ha!” Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk liked the notion. “Such fearsome tusks! Yet they seem to smile.”

“Yes.”

“They do smile, happy they'll spend their lives near you.”

“And you.”

“With us.”

“Yes.”

“Look inside,” he urged.

“A beautiful tree, tall and elegant.”

“When we first saw you, Keswalqw said she'd transformed herself into a tree Person. She's gathering tree Power. Already she has the standing power of an old white pine. Mother earth supports her. Strong and solid like mountain oak she reaches up to the Sky World. Yet she remains lithe and wan as a willow. I thought, no, not an oak or a pine, but a larch in spring bloom, tufted with rosy plumelets. So inside I graved this tree.”

“My totem. Can there be such a thing as a tree clan?”

“I have two totems. Moose/Wood clan. You'll likely have a blended totem too. So it is with those who become great leaders of The People. You will be Pine Tree/Snow Goose Woman perhaps. Perhaps Pine Tree/Otter Woman. Who knows? No one until the Great Spirit shows you.”

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk slipped the bracelet on Eugainia's wrist.

“It's beautiful,” she replied at length. “Thank you, Mimktawo'qu'sk.”

“You're pleased?”

“I am. I was secluded. Pampered. Brood mare of the Holy Blood. Desired by all. Known by none. Feared and adored. A prisoner of the blood that runs in my veins. It will be our ruination, as it ruined my ancestor.”

“The ancestor, nailed to the tree and pierced with a spear. Killed for his love of the people.”

“Just so.”

“Your enemies are my enemies now. No harm will come to you.”

“The Christ, blessed be His name, wished three simple things for humanity: feed each other, he said; heal each other; let common decency prevail. Ten simple words.”

“Powerful words.”

“In My Reign on earth—”

“Your reign?”

“Forgive me. Our reign. No living person, priest or pope or king may proclaim who shall live forever or who shall not. Nor will any man or woman sanction or confound the redemption of another's sin.”

“We'll go to your people, across the sea. Our
Kji-kinap
will be a light in their darkness. We'll heal them.”

“We'd be more than the light in their darkness, I fear, my darling. When they see the Goddess has found her God, that Her God is not of them—
E'ee
, beloved! We'll be the flame and the torch. Consumed by our own fire. They will burn me for a witch. They'll crucify then dismember you. They'll feed your flesh to the dogs, then burn your bones.”