Thieving Forest (40 page)

By the next afternoon the light rain has stopped, and Naomi and Susanna go outside to do their needlework. Around them, women are throwing skins on the roof of their huts to dry them. For a while Naomi sews in silence, but when Nadoko and Onaway go into the longhouse, she looks sideways at Susanna.

“Nadoko and I saw the bear yesterday,” she says. “It was performing tricks for bits of dried fish. It looked just like an enormous dog.”

Susanna has forgotten about the bear. “What will happen to it during the winter? Will it be fed?”

Naomi assures her that the bear will be fine. “But listen, Princess. While we were watching it, Nadoko told me something. She may have found a husband for you.”

Susanna feels a sudden heat rise to the top of her head. “A husband? Who?”

It is Nadoko’s other son, Naomi tells her, Hato’s younger brother. Detsukwa.

“Fishhook?” Susanna could not be more surprised. “But he is...” He’s ugly and a certain smell surrounds him—many foods disagree with his stomach, Nadoko explains all too often.

“He’s courteous to women and attentive to business,” Naomi says. “You could do worse.”

Susanna looks to see if Detsukwa is among the men talking outside the longhouse. She tries and fails to picture herself holding his hands, embracing him—she cannot even remember him looking at her, that’s how little he notices her.

“I’d prefer to stay with Onaway,” she says.

“Onaway is old. And at least married to Detsukwa you won’t be treated like a servant.”

But Susanna thinks differently. Who would treat her well now that she has been a slave? Tarayma, they call her. Holding Mud. Seth once saw her as a wife but that’s over, she’s changed too much. But what else can she do? Naomi said running away was impossible. The men are fast and know every inch of their land. But marriage to Fishhook? That seems impossible, too.

“Detsukwa is considering her proposal,” Naomi continues. “I believe they are bargaining.”

At that, Susanna stops working and stares at Naomi. Something pounds for a moment behind her eyes. “
Bargaining
for me? She’s
selling
me to her
son?
”

“Susanna, this is a good thing. At least he did not refuse outright.” She stops to feel the tear in the tunic she is mending. “They are a family of business,” she says, as if that explains it.

“But Seth—”

“You have to consider that Seth might not be successful. Believe me, I would be very sorry if anything happened to him, but we have to face the truth. If the Wyandots discover him in their woods they will kill him. And how can they not know who’s in their territory? They have scouts all around. Listen to me, Princess, Detsukwa was very good to me on our canoe trip. He’ll make a fine husband, I’m sure of it. If all goes well you could be married within the month. No longer a servant.”

“If Seth is...if Seth can’t help me, I’ll go alone. I’ll leave by myself. I’m not going to marry Fishhook. I don’t love him. I don’t even know him.”

“You can’t run off! You wouldn’t get half a mile away. And even if you did somehow get back to the Maumee, how would you get home? You don’t know what it’s like to live in the wild.”

“I do know.”

“You couldn’t do it by yourself, I mean. Susanna, you can’t even tell north from south!”

Susanna colors. “Yes, I can. And I have some food, and also a slingshot...”

“A slingshot!” Naomi laughs at her.

“Well I won’t marry Fishhook.”

“He’s not so bad. Be realistic, Princess.”

“Stop calling me Princess!”

Their voices rise and several women look over. Then, as if to underscore their argument, heavy drums start beating: Bomp bomp
boom
. Bomp bomp
boom
. The drumbeats are coming from the center of the village, and they go on and on. Nadoko comes out of the longhouse and looks toward the sound with her arms folded in front of her, and all the other women stop what they are doing and look, too.

Susanna’s first thought is that they have found Seth, and a chill runs up her arms. Wouldn’t they drum like this to announce a hanging? Or worse, burning a prisoner alive? But a few moments later a group of little boys run up the path shouting:

“Ononharoia! Ononharoia!”

The women look at each other, and Nadoko quickly pulls on her short fur cape and then gestures to Susanna and Naomi.

“What is
ononharoia
?” Naomi asks Nadoko as they hurry down the path.

It is a ritual for curing the ill, Nadoko explains. Someone must be petitioning the chiefs for the ceremony, and the drumming has started up to mark the event. Everyone is going to the center of the village to see who it is. Women throw blankets around their shoulders and step onto the path, while little boys cut through the trees and in and out between the bark buildings.

Not an execution, then. But Susanna’s heart is still racing as if slow to catch up with her logic. They pass the pet bear in its cage lying in a corner where sunlight has cut through the bars. His food bowl is empty but he looks fat and well fed.

“Over here,” Nadoko says.

The sound of drumming intensifies as they round the large elm tree that stands in the heart of the village. In the small clearing behind it, a woman is sitting in an enormous basket holding on to its two sides. She is dressed all in red, and her dark oiled hair hangs loosely over her shoulders. Men and women are standing on either side of the basket. They are Wyandot but not, Nadoko says as she stares at them, from this village. According to the practices of
ononharoia
the ill woman would have been carried in the basket, her attendants singing as they walked.

“But why bring her here?” Naomi asks. “Why not cure her in her own village?”

“
Ahntenyai-teri
,” Nadoko says. I don’t know.

One of the village chiefs comes to talk to the ill woman, and Nadoko bids Susanna and Naomi to move closer so she can listen. The questioning goes on a long time, and Susanna, who cannot follow what they are saying, finds herself looking around at the crowd. She sees a group of Ottawa and Potawatomi, the visiting warriors she’s heard about. Behind them, across the clearing, she can see Detsukwa holding his prized possession, the brown umbrella. Although he doesn’t look at her, for the first time she fancies that he is aware of her.

Then a figure catches her attention. There, behind a group of women—is that Meera? A short, stocky girl. Susanna tries to get a closer look. A moment later the crowd shifts, and Meera—or whoever it was—has gone. Meanwhile the drummers carry on, never varying their beat. Bomp bomp
boom
.

“The chief is satisfied with her answers,” Nadoko says finally over the noise. She tells them what she has heard: the woman suffers from weakness of the bone. She has tried many cures but nothing has helped. Three nights ago the moon appeared to her in the form of a beautiful woman, who told her she would be healed if she returned to the village where she was born.

“You can see that she is dressed in red like the moon,” Nadoko tells them, “which is made of fire.”

Ononharoia
lasts several days. The villagers will give the ill woman gifts, and in exchange she will interpret their dreams. Afterward, a feast to celebrate. And then she will be cured.

“What if she isn’t cured?” Susanna asks.

“She will be cured,” Nadoko insists. “Within a month, she will walk by herself.”

A month, Susanna thinks. About the same time she is to be married—if all goes well, as Naomi said. Susanna looks across the clearing at Detsukwa again. This time he looks back.

Naomi feels bad for speaking so plainly to Susanna. She remembers what it was like to be treated as a servant. But Susanna is unrealistic. She’s just not being practical. And Naomi can’t help thinking that even as a servant she is treated much better here than Naomi was treated back on the Maumee. She’s fed. No one thinks she’s a witch. No one scatters frog parts near her while she sleeps, hoping to curb her powers.

They walk back to the longhouse past a line of women skinning and gutting three stags, and a moment later Naomi hears the squeals of pigs being slaughtered. Susanna walks looking down at her moccasins. Is she pouting?

She must be persuaded to think realistically about her choices, Naomi decides. She has to grow up. I grew up. She can see in the distance a great cloud moving west, almost but not quite cleft in the middle. Sometimes she likes to think that she really is a witch, and she conjured Nadoko and Hato out of the misty fog that day to rescue her. She still doesn’t understand why she felt, almost from the first, easy in their company, or why she finds pleasure here in this crowded village with its packs of dogs and snorting pigs. There are many things she’s surprised by. Her interest in how Nadoko makes clothes or meals and, once she concentrates, her own success at doing these things. Back home the only thing she was good at was her music. Here, Nadoko is constantly picking up things Naomi has made to praise them.

Of course the biggest challenge will be having a baby. She has not told Nadoko the rumors about her family. Naomi knows she’s not barren. She is not. Nevertheless there is a woman she sees secretly in the southern part of the village, who gives her a strengthening potion in exchange for firewood. It tastes like sour milk and cinnamon.

The ragged frog legs did not curb her powers, they only hardened her against other people’s ideas about her. This is what she tells herself.

Inside the longhouse everyone is putting on their finest clothes for the
ononharoia
. Nadoko is wearing so many silver bracelets that they clink together like wind chimes. She has oiled her hair with sunflower seed oil and fingers some though Naomi’s hair too. Naomi likes the feeling of being made pretty by someone else. If only Hato were here! The new moon is next week, and he’ll be back then. This year’s training will be over. She’s desperate to see him, to hold his hands and smell his smell, to press her lips against the spot on his neck she likes. She wants to hear what he has to tell her of the world, what he has noticed, which is always something unexpected. He surprises her. She likes being surprised.

Onaway gives Susanna an embroidered shawl to wear but Naomi thinks the embroidery down the front of her dress is the most beautiful in the room. The pattern is made from yellow and green beads, and only when you stand off a ways can you see what it is: a bird’s head. Naomi runs her hands down along it and tries without looking to distinguish the tiny rows with her fingertips. Nadoko made it for her daughter, the one who died of the blue cough, but the girl never grew tall enough to wear it. It fits Naomi perfectly.

Nadoko clucks at her in approval. As she adjusts one of the sleeves, her bracelets ring with the movement.

The ill woman does not arrive until late in the evening, dressed in her red clothing and supported by two young girls wearing plain hide dresses with colorful waistbands. They walk down the length of the longhouse, passing so near the fires that they seem to walk right through them. Nadoko, who is the most important person in the longhouse, gives her their presents: white ribbon, four segars, and a mokuk with embroidered purple flowers on all four sides. Then the woman announces that anyone who wishes can come up to her one by one to tell her their dreams, and she will determine their meaning. After she seats herself one of her attendants covers her with a long raccoon-skin robe, although the longhouse is very warm from all the fires and the bodies.

Susanna does not go up to her. For one thing, she does not know enough Wendat, and for another she not allowed to, as a captive. Anyway, all her dreams are the same: slogging through mud and cattails in the Black Swamp, and worrying that she has lost sight of the path. But Nadoko takes her turn with the woman, and then Naomi does too. From where she sits Susanna can hear the woman’s high, light voice speaking to her sister. The sound but not the words. There is a musical quality to her voice, and in spite of her bone illness, or whatever it is, she moves her arms gracefully as she speaks. When Naomi returns, her eyes are wide and unfocused, as though she can see through the bark wall and out to the world beyond.

“She did not guess my dream,” she whispers to Susanna. “But she knew something about me. She knew I would have a child.”

Susanna draws in her breath. “What?”

“She said that by the first snow I would feel his life.
His
life! Susanna, it will be a boy!”

“A boy? But that’s impossible.” No one has given birth to a living baby boy on her mother’s side of the family for at least three generations.

“It’s true,” Naomi says fiercely.

The longhouse is cramped with people, and hot. Two young girls stay by the fires to keep them built up, and Susanna feels a thread of sweat run down the knobs of her spine. She stares at Naomi. This is her dream, she realizes. To be in love, to marry, to have a son. But it will never come true. At least not the son.

“Naomi,” she says. She looks at her sister’s flushed, pretty face and feels a wave of tenderness, a wish to protect her from disappointment. She takes her hand.

“I’m glad for you,” she says.