Witchy Winter

by D. J. Butler

  Animoosh was the People’s word for dog, and it was what most people called Ma’iingan most of the time.

  “Waabigwan has put fresh boughs in the wiigiwaam. It’s clean. We’ve collected summer fruits and berries. I’ve slaughtered a deer.”

  “You brought the second boy out to the fire,” Animkii said. “We danced with him, too. I felt joy in my heart for him, too. He is also my grandson. He is a Loon.”

  “Is he?” Ma’iingan looked closely at his father. “And tell me what you felt this summer as you met with the Midewiwin to play your drums and fill yourselves with spirit power. Surely, you thought of your little grandson then. What did you feel in your heart when you thought of him? What do you feel when you think of him now? Is he truly one of the Anishinaabe?”

  Animkii looked away.

  Ma’iingan nodded sadly. “Henh, you also feel it. Something is wrong. And the younger boy is sickly. He doesn’t eat, he doesn’t grow. Perhaps he can’t eat the People’s food because he isn’t one of the People.”

  “The boy is my grandson!” Animkii snapped.

  “Yes, and he’s my son. And Waabigwan’s. And so Zhiishiigwe has put asemaa in both the children’s hands and has promised to dream for them. And today we will feast, with our two sons, and their grandparents of the Loon doodem, and their aunt Miskomin and their uncles Waagosh and Omagakiins, and our sons will learn what names have been dreamed for them. And perhaps the feeling you and I both have that something is wrong will be healed. And perhaps my younger son will be able to eat.”

  “Henh,” Animkii agreed, hooking both thumbs into the leather cord holding up his breechcloth. “May it be so.”

  The two men stood at the edge of the lake, colored orange and gold by the rays of the setting sun on its other side. Having emerged from their sweat and bathed in the lake, they had then dressed in their best leggings, and both had feathers plaited into their bear-greased hair. Animkii wore a necklace of shells and the ring through his nose, the one he had taken off a Zhaaganaashii war leader from Penn’s people when he’d been a young man, and worn since on ceremonial and special occasions. He hadn’t worn it the night of the twins’ birth because a prudent man never goes to a wrestling match wearing jewelry that might be torn from his flesh. Ma’iingan wore a beaded armband he’d been given by Waabigwan’s father. That old Catfish warrior and his wife had died two years earlier, but Ma’iingan would represent their presence at the naming with the band.

  “Come, let’s go,” he said to his father.

  They arrived only moments before the namer. “Boozhoo,” Ma’iingan said to the dreamer. The word was a greeting the People had borrowed from the French, but it was more respectful than a relaxed aniin.

  “Boozhoo, Ma’iingan.” Zhiishiigwe had been a tall man once, but in age he was stooped. The medicine man was a full generation older than Animkii, had been an old man when he’d clutched the infant Ma’iingan to his chest and told Animkii and Niibin that he had dreamed that their son was a wolf. Zhiishiigwe’s nose jutted like a hawk’s beak, but his smile still hinted at the smooth danger of the rattlesnake he’d been named after. He, too, was dressed in finery, including a blue Acadian naval officer’s coat. Before Zhiishiigwe had begun to dream, he had killed many Frenchmen and Zhaaganaashii.

  Ma’iingan didn’t remember the day of his own naming—he had been a small child, not old enough yet to stand—but he had been told by his parents how it had gone, and he had seen the naming of his nephew Giniw; old Zhiishiigwe had dreamed that that child was an eagle, and not just any eagle, but a glorious golden eagle—a giniw.

  Later, Ma’iingan had fasted in the wilderness for his vision, and received another name. But that was a name not to share.

  “Come in, sit down,” Ma’iingan said. He pulled aside the skin door-hanging and then followed after the dreamer and his father.

  Waabigwan and Niibin sat opposite the small fire of embers within the wiigiwaam. Each sat on her right foot and each held one of the twins. Miskomin sat beside them on her right foot, and Waagosh and Omagakiins sat cross-legged.

  “Please sit down,” Ma’iingan said again. Animkii shushed him. Then both men sat, while Zhiishiigwe remained standing.

  “Pass me the older child,” Zhiishiigwe said. The infant was wrapped in a soft white rabbit-skin blanket, and though awake, made the journey around the fire and into the dreamer’s arms calmly. Zhiishiigwe held the baby tightly to his chest and looked upward. “I have dreamed of the forest.”

  Animkii nodded sagely.

  Ma’iingan smiled reassuringly at his wife. Waabigwan smiled back, a brief flash.

  “The forest was here before the People arrived, and the forest will always be here. The forest gives us life; its birch trees build our wiigiwaams and our canoes, its creatures fill our bellies, its colors brighten our vision. In the forest, the wolf hunts, and the flower grows, but who is king of the forest?”

  Ma’iingan meant wolf and waabigwan meant flower; Zhiishiigwe was connecting the name of Ma’iingan’s son to Ma’iingan’s own name, and the name of his wife.

  “You’d better not say the king of the forest is the frog,” Ma’iingan joked. Frog was Omagakiins in the language of the People.

  Omagakiins snorted and Niibin glared at her son. Zhiishiigwe chuckled. “Well are you named Ma’iingan,” he said. “The wolf is quick of wit, always the hunter. No, the frog is small, and sleeps too much to be king.”

  “The buck,” Animkii said. “Ayaabe is king of the forest.”

  Zhiishiigwe nodded. “Just so. He’s fast, he leads his family, he roams great distances, and in battle even the wolf must fear his antlers. And so I dreamed I ran with a herd of deer in the forest, and where we fed, and where we rutted, and where we did battle, were decided by this child, the buck.”

  “Ayaabe.” Ma’iingan nodded. It was a good name.

  “Ayaabe.” Animkii handed Ma’iingan a smoking pipe.

  Ma’iingan held the pipe in his hands and looked across the wiigiwaam to his wife. Waabigwan smiled and nodded; the boy would be Ayaabe.

  Ma’iingan took a deep draw from the pipe. The sacred sweetness of the asemaa herb filled his lungs, and he handed the pipe back to his father. “The boy’s name is Ayaabe,” he said.

  “Ayaabe,” the others said as they smoked.

  “The child will be Ayaabe,” Zhiishiigwe said as everyone had taken a turn at the pipe. He passed the child back to his Catfish uncle, who returned the baby to Niibin.

  The wiigiwaam was large, but the fire and the pipe smoke and the bodies were beginning to make it feel close. Ma’iingan focused on keeping his breathing regular as he waited for the dreamer to proceed.

  “Pass me the other,” Zhiishiigwe said.

  The other? Not the other child or the other baby, just the other? Ma’iingan held his tongue with effort. If this baby, too, could get a name from the Midewiwin dreamer, then the world would feel right again. The baby would be Loon and Anishinaabe, and not a stranger or a monster.

  And maybe the child would eat. His face was pinched and fearful as Ma’iingan passed him around the circle.

  The dreamer took this second bundle of white rabbit skins in his arms and looked deeply into the child’s face. From where he sat, Ma’iingan couldn’t tell whether the child’s eyes were opened, but if not, the Midewiwin was staring a hole in the baby’s forehead.

  Then Zhiishiigwe clutched this child to his chest as he had done with the first, and Ma’iingan saw tears on the namer’s cheeks.

  He forced himself to breathe.

  “I’ve fasted many days for this child,” Zhiishiigwe said, his voice a reedy wail. “I’ve offered many pipes of asemaa to the earth and to the four winds. I have begged for a vision.”

  And then he said nothing.

  Nothing.

  “What are we to call this child?” Animkii asked. It was a gentle prompt, but Ma’iingan heard a note of desperation and surprise in it.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Zhiishiigwe s
aid. “You may call him what you wish. It is I who have dreamed nothing. It is I who have failed.”

  “Your failure does not matter!” Waagosh sprang to his feet. “This is my nephew! He is of me, and of my people! If Zhiishiigwe’s dreams have failed him, then I will be namer to the child. I have dreamed, and in my dream I sat among the Midewiwin in their secret lodge and heard their secret talk and I laughed. I laughed in my dream, and this boy laughed with me. He is laughing still, though we cannot hear it. I name this child Giimoodaapi.”

  Giimoodaapi; he laughs in secret.

  It was a strange name. Was it a bad one? Or was it a queer name, such as a hero might receive, a name that would send the boy on a quest into the dangerous world?

  “It doesn’t matter,” Omagakiins repeated, but he looked into the fire.

  It did matter. The world still felt wrong.

  The boy didn’t have a name. He wasn’t Anishinaabe, he wasn’t a Loon, he had no name.

  “We will call him Giimoodaapi,” Ma’iingan said. “At least for now.”

  “It’s a good name.” Animkii nodded fiercely across the fire at his son Waagosh.

  “It’s a name,” Ma’iingan said. He nodded at Waagosh, a weary thanks.

  “When he is older, he’ll seek his own vision,” Zhiishiigwe said. “Perhaps he’ll receive his name then.”

  He passed the nameless baby back.

  No one handed around the pipe.

  Niibin burst into tears, squeezing the infant Ayaabe to her chest. Waabigwan took her other baby and then stared at Ma’iingan, and her eyes reflected his own heart back at him. You’re my wolf, they said. The wolf mates for life, the wolf is loyal, the wolf is a creature of family. You’re my wolf and this is your cub.

  Fix this.

  They ate squash and wild rice, deer and bear, and an abundance of berries.

  It all tasted of ashes.

  * * *

  “The Midewiwin have met for the year,” Animkii said. “I’ve been filled with power.” He touched Ma’iingan lightly on the shoulder. “I give you my blessing.”

  And yet the world still felt wrong. Neither of them said it, but Ma’iingan knew his father must feel the same. If his father felt the world had been healed, wouldn’t he tell his son?

  “Very good,” Ma’iingan said. “I’m counting on my family to protect both my sons while I’m gone. The younger may already be laughing secretly, but the buck is in no condition yet to lead his people to water.”

  “Giimoodaapi should have been your name, Animoosh.”

  “Henh,” Ma’iingan agreed. “Except I’ve never been able to keep my laughs secret, have I?”

  “Where will you go?” Animkii looked to the forested hills on the other side of the lake.

  “Where I went when I was a young man in search of my vision,” Ma’iingan said. “The only place where one can go.”

  “Where you’re led,” Animkii said.

  “Where I’m led.”

  “And you’ll seek a vision?”

  “Zhiishiigwe couldn’t help. The Midewiwin have given you power, but haven’t helped my son.”

  “You could wait. The boy can seek his own name when he’s older. He’s eating a little now.”

  “But not much.” Ma’iingan sighed. “The boy was born outside the People. You know it as well as I do. He isn’t Anishinaabe, not a Loon. It isn’t a name he needs, though I hoped the dreamer could help him. He needs to be part of his people, to eat and grow strong.”

  “They’ll say that you are a juggler.”

  “They can say what they like. They can call me a wizard, call me Zhaaganaashii, call me mad. It doesn’t matter. My son will have to seek a vision for himself before he can become a man. Now I will seek a vision for me—and for him.”

  “May Gichi-Manidoo be with you.”

  Ma’iingan nodded. “May the great spirit be with you, too, my father. May Gichi-Manidoo be with my son.”

  They said nothing more, and Ma’iingan walked into the forest. He had eaten nothing for two days.

  * * *

  He left his rifle and his steel tomahawk both in the wiigiwaam. He took a stone knife—a long obsidian flake with a leather grip bound around one end—a bow and arrows, the clothing he wore, and nothing else, and as he had done as a young man, he struck out into the woods, feeling his path.

  He left the tomahawk and rifle behind because they were too new. He could not choose to go to the spirits, he could only invite them to come to him, and he worried that they would find the German rifle and the steel axe too strange and would stay away.

  Alone and so lightly armed, he would be an easy target for a Sioux raider or an angry bear, so he walked quietly. His moccasins made that easy. He poured into his heart thoughts of the great divine force that filled the universe, Gichi-Manidoo, and before he noticed any ache in his long leg muscles, Ma’iingan was miles away from camp.

  He knew the trade routes used by his tribe to deal with other tribes, with the Germans, with the French Acadians, and with the Dutch Ohio Company men, and he stayed away from them.

  When night fell, he continued walking. He kept his eye on the Loon, fixed in the northern sky. As he had done those long years earlier, he followed his doodem into the wilderness. Ojiig, the Fisher, circled slowly about the Loon as Ma’iingan walked, and Mooz, the moose, rose behind his back. Noondeshin Bemaadizid, the man emerging from a good sweat, marched west across the sky, and as he touched the horizon and began to disappear, Ma’iingan stopped at a small torrent.

  This is the right place. Tomorrow I’ll build a sweat lodge in this place.

  He lay on the ground in a small clearing and looked up at the open sky. Biboonikeonini, the Wintermaker, was just beginning to appear in the east when Ma’iingan closed his eyes and fell asleep.

  In the morning, he found the spot for his sweat lodge; six birch saplings grew together nearly in a circle. He trimmed the saplings with his knife, bent them inward and wove their tops together.

  He was weak from three days with no food. He rested often, drinking from a cool spring and feeling the weakness in his hands and arms. The fatigue was good; that meant that his own spirit was detaching itself from his body. Too strong an attachment to the flesh and the spirits wouldn’t come. He needed, if anything, to feel weaker.

  Ma’iingan cut withies from other trees and wove them into six saplings to make a small hut, totally enclosed but for a small entrance, and only big enough to accommodate one sitting person.

  While the sun was high, he started a fire outside the sweat lodge. He built the fire around a stone that was large, yet small enough for him to heft, and he tended to the fire as he worked, adding wood and slowly heating the stone.

  He thought about his sons, Giimoodaapi but also Ayaabe. What life would they lead as boys, as men? Would they one day hear the story of their father who had gone fasting into the wilderness, seeking a vision on their behalf?

  And how would that story end?

  He cut strips of bark from a birch tree and stitched the bark with thinner strips into a rough bowl. With pine sap he sealed the stitches, until he had a serviceable bowl that would hold water and not leak.

  He ached from the work, which wasn’t good—it reminded him more than he would like of his body. But he felt nearly faint, and light, and ready. He took a last drink from the spring.

  Putting his hands inside his moccasins to protect them, he grabbed the hot stone from the center of the fire and placed it in the sweat lodge. The sun was again going down—he had spent all day building his lodge. Now he laid his blanket over the entrance like a door, tucking the blanket’s corners into the lodge’s weave of branches. He stripped to his breechcloth and stooped to enter, bringing the bowl full of cold water with him.

  He moved carefully, not wishing to burn himself on the hot stone. When he was seated cross-legged with the bowl by his side, he reached out with a cupped hand and let water drip where the hot stone should be.

  He was rewarded wi
th a sudden hiss and the feeling of steam on his face.

  He poured more water, and breathed deeply.

  I am here. I am open.

  He sat, closed his eyes—pointless in the total darkness, anyway—and breathed.

  Sweat ran down his forehead, his chest and his arms. With the sweat, he felt pain and poison leave his body. His aches disappeared as he relaxed into the cross-legged sitting position in which he’d spent so many hours.

  He thought of his sons sitting beside him, and his father. What should I do?

  How do I bring my son Giimoodaapi within the doodem? How do I help him become one of the People?

  And then suddenly, he knew he was not alone.

  Ma’iingan opened his eyes. Sitting across from him was a man he had seen once before, in his youth. The man had ears like a wolf, and wings, and his clothing was made of stars.

  “Waawoono,” the man said. “You’ve returned.”

  The inside of the sweat lodge was not as Ma’iingan had built it. The saplings had thickened and grown farther apart, and the boughs woven between the saplings now bore white fruit that glimmered faintly, lighting the interior of the lodge. The lodge was bigger than it had been, too; though Ma’iingan had built it barely large enough to fit a single man, and placed the heated stone nearly against the lodge wall, the stone now sat in the center and opposite Ma’iingan, legs crossed, sat the same spirit Ma’iingan had met in his youth, the spirit that had named him Waawoono. Ma’iingan’s manidoo.

  For all that the sweat lodge was changed and alien, that didn’t mean that it was less real than it had been before. If anything, it was more real. The leaves on the boughs were more crisp to Ma’iingan’s sight, he could smell the sweet and tart juices of the glowing fruit right through its skin, he could smell the wolflike musk of his spirit visitor. He was in the realm of spirits, now. He had been brought here by his spirit-namer.

  He was in the real world.

  Waawoono meant he howls in the language of the People. It was a good name, and it fit neatly with old Zhiishiigwe’s dreams of Ma’iingan the wolf, running free along the great rivers, running wild in the forest, wandering far but always coming home. The wolf, he howls.