The Beothuk Saga

by Bernard Assiniwi

  As their laughter mingled with shouts of pleasure, Anin knew that he was among people who lived as his people lived and spoke a language similar to his own. He wanted to stand up and show himself, to make their acquaintance, convinced now that these people were Addaboutik like himself. But he hesitated. Without knowing why, he did not dare to show himself to these people, no matter how friendly they appeared to be. None of them seemed to be armed. But he remembered that the Bouguishamesh had also been laughing delightedly when the giant attacked him from behind.

  “Among themselves they are happy,” he thought. “But would they be so with a stranger?”

  He remained where he was, not moving, stretched out flat on his stomach, watching the others laughing and eating, talking and playing, just as he had as a child. He began to sense a large emptiness within himself. He could hardly restrain himself from jumping up and shouting, “Hey! I am alone and I miss my people, whom I left three warm seasons ago.” But he did restrain himself. His emptiness was inside, and he kept it there. He was unable to reach a decision about it. The sun was high overhead, and the rocks around him were warm. He laid his head down on one of them and closed his eyes. He may even have fallen asleep, but only for a moment.

  The next thing he knew he was on his feet: frightened cries from the children had roused him. Quickly he threw himself flat again. The children were running about in all directions, confused and shouting. He saw one fall face-down in the water, a long shaft protruding from his back – the shaft of a fishing spear. He recognized it at once: it was the kind used by the Ashwans, the people who came from the cold. He saw the adults, those who had been cooking the clams, lying on the ground, their backs, throats, and chests pierced by arrows. An old man, brandishing a knife, was struggling to get up despite the arrow in his chest, and one of the Ashwans amused himself by knocking him down with a long pole. Several times the old man tried to get at his attacker, but he never succeeded.

  Anin saw two Ashwans come close to where he was hiding, chasing a young girl. Her face was contorted with terror as the two men gained on her. Anin looked behind him to check the distance between himself and his tapatook, and saw that it was too far away for him to reach it before the Ashwans reached him. He leapt to his feet and threw himself at the first of the Ashwans, dropping him with a single blow to the chest with the butt end of his lance and calling to the girl to launch the tapatook and wait for him offshore. Without hesitation the girl ran down the embankment, pushed Anin’s tapatook into the water, and jumping into it, began paddling furiously out to sea. The second Ashwan, smaller than the first, rushed at Anin swinging high above his head a large knife blade lashed to a whale bone; before he could bring it down, however, Anin’s spear pierced his body just below the throat. Anin raised his foot, pressed it against the small man’s chest, and retrieved his weapon. The Ashwan immediately fell over backwards, dead.

  By this time, the other Ashwans at the bay had become aware of the commotion above them. Anin spun around and ran down the embankment after the young woman. But when he reached the place where his tapatook had been, he saw the young woman still paddling in a panic towards the rising sun. She had already cleared the rough water close to the shore, where Anin remained stranded. Glancing about him, he saw that it was too late to escape from the Ashwans on land; his only hope was to dive into the water and swim to the first point of land, the one he had rounded before beaching his tapatook. He also realized that he must wait until the Ashwans were nearly upon him before he jumped, for if they saw what he intended to do they would simply run out onto the point to wait for him. He held himself ready, calculating the precise moment when he should make his move. In the corner of his eye he saw the tapatook rounding the point and heading for the first bay. Fully loaded as it was, he knew that the young woman would not be able to take it very far before he could reach her.

  Then the Ashwans were scrambling down the embankment. There were three of them. Seeing that Anin was waiting for them, they stopped at the bottom and regarded him warily. They had seen their two dead companions, and perhaps suspected that there were more of Anin’s people hidden behind the bluff. They hesitated long enough for Anin to take careful aim and hurl his spear into one of the Ashwans. Then, with a great shout of victory, he turned and plunged into the water and swam towards the point. The water was ice-cold, despite the lateness of the season, and Anin forced himself to swim quickly in order to keep his blood from thickening. When he reached the rocky promontory, he stood up and looked back. The two Ashwans were carrying their wounded companion up the embankment, apparently no longer interested in him. He let himself sink between two rocks, exhausted from his efforts and hidden from the view of the Ashwans. “They are savages,” he thought. “They live only to kill.”

  He had often thought that luck was not travelling with him on his voyage around the world. Why, he asked himself, had he saved the young woman? She would certainly be as terrified of him as she had been of the Ashwans. Then he thought that he would once again have to make a new tapatook, and that this would take him a long time. He must not be discouraged. He stood up and, crossing the point, began to walk back along the shore, in the direction from which he had earlier come in his tapatook. Every so often he would stop and look back to see if the Ashwans had sent some of their number to follow him, then he would turn and continue his slow retreat. As the waves withdrew from the shoreline he walked on the wet sand, which was much easier on his feet than hopping from rock to rock. He could even run, and put a greater distance between himself and any eventual pursuers.

  Towards nightfall, he began to look for a sheltered spot within the forest. All he saw, however, were isolated patches of stunted evergreens dotted here and there above the embankment. Then he stopped short: lying a short distance ahead of him on the sand was his tapatook. He slipped behind some large rocks and continued slowly, staying close to the cliff so as not to alert the young woman to his presence. He saw no sign of her near the tapatook, but when he was closer he saw footprints in the sand leading from the tapatook up to a small gorge cut into the embankment by a brook that emptied into the sea. Anin thought that the woman had been foolish to leave the tapatook out in the open, where an Ashwan could hardly miss it, and to show so plainly where she had fled. He dragged the tapatook higher up on the sand and hid it under some bushes above the tide line. Then he removed some dried meat from the pack that was still tied to the vessel’s thwart, noting that the woman had taken nothing of his but his bow and a handful of arrows. When he had taken enough food for his meal, he decided to follow the woman’s tracks at least until it was too dark to continue, and so he began following the brook inland, climbing over the many fallen trees that littered the ground. He did not have to go far. The woman’s tracks soon revealed where she had left the path several times to investigate possible hiding places. Walking very lightly now, he searched each recess in the rocks that bordered the narrow canyon, and eventually came to a place where a dark cleft interrupted the smooth canyon wall. He made his way towards it, focusing all his concentration on the cavity, as though he were hungry and knew there was game in it. Slowly he drew his knife from the sheath attached to his leg, and stooping low, crept silently forward, stopping several times to listen. The only sound that reached him was that of water tumbling over the rocky stream-bed. Almost without moving he entered the cavern. Immediately his eyes made out the form of a young woman stretched out on the ground, her head resting on one arm. Exhausted from paddling, she had simply gone to sleep on the gravelly cavern floor. “If an Ashwan had found her like this,” he thought, “she would be dead by now.”

  Quietly he approached and crouched down beside her. He wanted to study her. Her hair was the colour of the rich earth where plants grew between rocks. Her skin also was dark. There were still traces of ochre on her face. The Addaboutik coated themselves with this red powder in the season of plenty, when the mosquitoes were at their worst in the interior. She must therefore be from one of the inland
clans. She was very young, hardly old enough to bear children. Her breathing became irregular; she had sensed his presence, but she did not move a muscle. Anin waited. He glanced away for a second, and she was on her feet before he could react, an arrow clenched in her fist. As she brought it down towards his face he rolled to one side, avoiding the blow, and sprang to his feet with his knife held at the ready. They stood facing each other, poised to attack. This is ridiculous, Anin thought: Here I am, standing before a woman whose life I have just saved, ready to kill her if she makes a sudden move.

  “My name is Anin,” he said aloud. “I am an Addaboutik, from Baétha, a village two cold seasons towards the setting sun, across the big water. I do not wish to harm you. I killed the Ashwans who were chasing you. It was my tapatook that you used to get away.”

  Not since he had left Baétha had he said so many words at one time. She was the first other human he had spoken to at all; even when he had talked to himself he had not done so out loud. The young woman did not answer him. She was still frightened.

  “I am Anin. I am an Addaboutik and I come from Baétha. Why did you take my tapatook and leave me alone to fight the Ashwans? I could have been killed.”

  The young woman seemed to have difficulty understanding him. Without relaxing her stance, and without taking her eyes from Anin’s, she said:

  “I am Woasut, Beothuk woman. I have heard of the Addaboutik. They are our cousins and live on the other side of the land, two moons towards the setting sun, along the rivers and lakes.”

  Anin was stunned by this intelligence. He had just learned that his own people, the Addaboutik, and this woman’s people inhabited the same land. He had undergone the most severe dangers of the sea for nothing. Had he been fighting the Bouguishamesh and the Ashwans on his own land? How, after having travelled for two complete season-cycles, could he be only two moons from where he started? He could hardly believe his ears.

  “Lower your weapon,” he said to the woman. “I will not hurt you. I understand your words. Listen to me now, for you can understand my words too. Beothuk is also the name of my people’s ancestors. We are related by our ancestors. Lower your weapon and I will lower mine. It would not be right for us to kill one another.”

  Woasut lowered her weapon and Anin returned his knife to its sheath. The two kept a wary eye on each other for a long time while they sat in the cavern, watching from the corners of their eyes, not sure what to expect. Night fell, and Woasut began to shiver with the cold. Anin stood up and left the cavern to find firewood and red evergreen boughs, which he brought back to make a fire. When Woasut was warming herself by the flames, he stood up again and told her he was going back to the tapatook to get some food. “I won’t be long,” he said to her, smiling broadly. “Watch out for Ashwans.”

  He had no trouble finding the tapatook in the dark. On his way back to the cavern, he thought to himself that all things considered it was good to have someone to talk to. When he entered the shelter, Woasut had not moved from the fire except to add more wood to it. Anin sat down before her and saw that tears were running down her cheeks. He did not interrupt her grief. They ate in silence, and tears continued to fill the young woman’s eyes.

  When it was time to sleep, they lay together under a single blanket, and Anin felt his manhood stiffen and his heart begin to beat strongly against his chest. Woasut pressed herself closer to him and did not move away when he let his hands explore her neck, her thighs, her chest. She even took his hand and placed it upon her breast, and then, without a word, she turned on her stomach, raised herself on her knees and loosened her dingiam, exposing herself to Anin, who moved behind her and loosened his own dingiam. With gentle insistence he entered her. Woasut received him with a small gasp and moved eagerly with his rhythm until, satisfied, he withdrew and lay down beside her again, holding her in his arms.

  “I have given you my first time,” she whispered into his ear, “because you saved my life.” Then she slept.

  When Anin awoke the next morning, Woasut was still curled peacefully in his arms. He felt boundlessly happy. Was it because of her, he asked himself? Was it the assuaging of his desire for a woman? Or was it because he knew he was not far from his own people? He did not know how to say what he felt. It was as though he were lighter. His arm under Woasut’s head was tingling, but he did not want to move it for fear of disturbing her. She was smiling in her sleep. When she opened her eyes, she raised her head and looked at him. Lowering the blanket, she regarded his sex gravely, as though seeking confirmation of his strength and virility. Then she put his sex in her mouth and caressed it with her tongue until it was hard and almost on the point of bursting. Then she raised herself on her knees and invited Anin to repeat his act of the night before.

  5

  For the first time since he had set out on his journey of initiation, Anin was undecided. Should he cross the forest in the direction shown to him by Woasut, to rejoin his people, or should he continue and complete his circumnavigation of their land, as he had given his word he would do? If he crossed overland to his village, he would never know if the earth were round, like an island, or just a long, narrow spit of land that stretched endlessly out to sea. And he would be going back on his promise not to return until he had found out.

  And what about the woman? Would she stay with him, to travel as his companion, or would she return to her own people? Had all her people been killed by the Ashwans, or had some of them escaped into the interior? Were the Bouguishamesh of this land, or had they come from some other, stranger, place? By continuing his journey, would he run the risk of encountering them again, or had they left this land forever? When the warm season was over, should he move inland to hunt, or stay close to the sea and survive the cold season by fishing?

  All these questions must be answered before he could formulate a plan for the next several moons. Perhaps he should discuss them with Woasut? She knew the region well, and her knowledge would be useful to him. But she was a woman, and according to the elders women must not influence the decisions of men. He did not know what to do.

  “If I decide to continue and she agrees to come with me,” he thought, “she could sew my winter garments after scraping the skins. I must speak to her about it.”

  Woasut had gone to collect shellfish while the young Addaboutik gathered berries for the morning meal. While they ate, the woman seemed to rediscover her smile. She thought it likely that some of her people were still alive, all but the few adults and children at the bay. When Anin told her about the questions that were troubling him, her brow wrinkled. She did not know what she would do either. She thought she would first find out if her people were safe, and decide her own course after that. She asked Anin if he would help her find her people, but Anin refused.

  “We must wait a few more suns,” he said to her. “The Ashwans may not have left. They travel by land, following the rivers, with their sealskin boats well hidden and guarded. And they stay for the whole warm season. They go back to their own land only when it begins to grow cold here. We must wait.”

  Woasut said nothing for the rest of the day. When Anin told her he was going out to search the surrounding woods to see if there was enough game to support them, she lowered her head and still said nothing.

  When he returned at nightfall, the fire in the cavern had gone out and the coals were not even warm. He knew that she had left. He quickly left the cavern and ran down the slope to the seashore: the tapatook was gone. All his belongings were there, strewn about on the beach. Filled with anger, he returned to the cavern, relit the fire, and lay down beside it without eating. It was a long time before he slept. He had refused to help the young Beothuk woman find her people, and so she had gone to find them herself, once again taking his tapatook and leaving him alone to face their enemies and the coming cold season. Without a tapatook he could not fish; he would have to enter the forest to survive. His indecision had allowed her to make this decision for him, and he promised himself that never again
would he waver in his purpose. Then he slept.

  At sunrise, he left the cavern, descended to the seashore, took some of the dried seabird meat from his pack, and began walking back along the beach to the bay where he had first seen Woasut. He walked swiftly, with determination, almost incautiously, like a man lost in his own thoughts. His heart was still filled with anger at the thought that perhaps he would now have to hide his tapatook every night so that it would not be stolen by the very companion he had hoped would stay with him. When he reached the bay, he became more careful in his movements. He stopped and searched the whole area with his eyes. There was no sign of life. The bodies of the Beothuk were still lying where they had fallen, although the arrows that had killed them had been removed. The younger children, those who had been slain while they were gathering clams, had been washed out to sea with the tide. He picked his way cautiously to the head of the bay, avoiding the corpses. At the mouth of a brook that opened into the bay he discovered his tapatook, pulled up to high ground and resting upright. Checking the ground, he saw footsteps leading into the forest. Woasut had gone inland to look for her people.

  He turned the tapatook over and hid it in the forest, then sat down on a large rock well out of sight. He ate some of the dried puffin, thinking about what he would do if the young woman came back. After a while, he lay down on the moss beside the rock and went to sleep. When he awoke, the sea was high on the shore and the sun had almost set behind the shadows of the forest. The air was cooler, and Anin felt himself shiver. He considered making a fire, wondering if it would attract his enemies, and decided to take the risk. But the wood in this place was difficult to light, and he had to blow for a long time before a tiny flame finally licked at the curls of bark. He waited beside the fire, then decided to spend the night there in the hope that the young Beothuk woman would return. Before very long it was completely dark, and once again he fell asleep.