For Langford, this way of behaving came naturally, whereas for me, for the Emily Taylor of thirty years before, my nature was to share and explore and disclose completely with my friends. For some reason lately, I felt dissatisfied with continuing to be the other Emily Taylor. Now, sitting there with two burgeoning friendships, I realized the source of my discontent. I wanted my inner self, the quintessence of me, to be freed once more.
The discordant ring of Edgar's cell phone broke into our soft conversation and my reverie. He spoke quietly and forcefully, already on his feet before the conversation was over. We all looked up expectantly.
"Oona has regained some consciousness," he said, trying but failing to keep the excitement out of his voice. "May would like me to be there first thing in the morning. They don't expect her to get up and dance and talk right away, but I should be there along with the Ottawa police, just in case she does begin to speak." Edgar tugged on Frances's arms and gently helped her to stand. "Here we go again, my dear. I guess I'll drop you off now, 'cause by dawn I'll be hopping back into the car."
Frances, sleepy and rested a moment ago, was suddenly eager to leave. We could hear her questioning Edgar as they walked away in the night, no longer lovers, but colleagues. Frances had donned her Officer persona once more. We shut the door, Angel at our heels, and headed for bed.
The next morning, a brilliant, spring-like sun shone through the windows and energized us all. There was none of the sharp sting of cold in the air. Instead it was soft and seductive and smelled like spring. While Langford fairly bounced out to his studio, Angel and I went for a walk around the lake.
Everyone seemed to be outdoors, buoyed by the warmth and promise of green. Children were everywhere, throwing balls in the air, cavorting on swings, tumbling over one another in the joy of activities that winter had prevented. The Burchill students happily called to me and ran circles around Angel, who, once I let her off her lead, went dancing and wiggling and bounding through the park. She had a wonderful time jumping at sticks, nipping at dormant grass, leaping for the balls that some of the kids threw her way.
We talked to all the neighbours, smiled at passersby, and generally felt wonderful. The only cloud that hovered over me was worrying and wondering about Oona and how May was coping. We ambled along the canal, stepping around patches that were still snow-filled, leaping over puddles that gathered as the ice melted and flowed into the deep, concrete ditch that formed the channel.
I can't say whether I planned it or not, but very soon Angel and I—she panting from her antics, my nose red and my cheeks patchy from my body's reaction to inconsistent exercise as of late—reached the native museum. Once again, Bird greeted me affectionately, and then he made a huge fuss over Angel. In answer to my question about his headdress, his faced clouded over and he told me what I really already knew. There had been no sign of it. Bird assured me that it would be all right for Angel to come into the museum. In fact, he entertained her with a ball and a biscuit while I dug once more into the book of legends.
"Is it okay if I copy this legend out, Bird?" I asked, as my fingers traced the lines of the twentieth tale.
"No problemo, Mrs. Taylor. Wait until you see this modern convenience."
He led me into his office at the front of the museum, where a photocopier, a fax machine and a computer gleamed in the corner, incongruous but necessary. It took only a few moments to photocopy the legend, both Ojibwa and English, and then Angel and I took our leave of Bird.
He looked saddened and somehow not as enthusiastic about the museum and the artefacts. I had no idea how much the bear's headdress had meant to him. I patted him lightly on the shoulder and tried to reassure him that it would be found undamaged.
"I am certainly hopeful that you are correct," he said, his formal words bumping up against one another, his handsome face worried and doubtful.
Angel trotted happily back up the pathway, her tail lifted, her nose down, buoyed by her treat from Bird. We were coming around a bend in the canal, when we saw the dark-clad figure arise from the bench in front of us. A low, guttural growl from Angel forced me to pull back on her leash.
I bent down to reassure her. "It's Basil, don't be afraid, silly girl," I said, and then straightened to greet the squat, round individual who stood before us. "Basil, are you all right? Did you hear that Oona has regained some consciousness?"
He sat back down on the bench, huddled inside a thick wool cape that must have been overly warm, looking old, as though he had lost his energy, his will to keep going.
"I have heard," he replied, his words clipped in the way that many of the Burchill born people speak. The influence of British and Native combined to give many of the older inhabitants a stilted, formal speech pattern.
I really have no idea how old Basil was, but he must've been at least seventy. He grew up in a time when the Aboriginal and British influences were both struggling to take hold. Basil was Henry Whitesand's best friend, thus I knew his connection with Oona was strong, and that he must be grieving, but he continued to appear more distracted than worried.
I sat down beside him, concerned by his lack of response as much as by his appearance. "Are you all right, Basil?" I repeated.
"I am sick in my heart, Mrs. Taylor." He paused, drew in a breath and looked at me, his round black eyes ringed with lack of sleep, his glance lacklustre and sad. "But let us not speak of that."
His words had such finality that I couldn't reply. I sat there for a few moments, watching Angel poke through the bushes behind us, sniff our feet and generally occupy herself quietly. I thought of the subdivision fire and the kidnappings. Did Henry and Basil know more than they were letting on? Was Basil's general apathy a result of guilt? Then Basil spoke again.
"You have been to the museum." It was a statement, but it was tinged with curiosity.
I happily took the opening to fill the awkward silence. "Yes, I've been back to reread the legends. You know, the ones that we've all been so interested in."
He glared at me sharply, but I kept going, pulling my scribbling out of my pocket. As I did so, I noticed a red welt on the thumb of my left hand, which, as though aware of the observation, began to itch.
"I photocopied one of them, number twenty, to be exact. I'm not really sure why. I just keep thinking that we must be missing something." And perhaps you shouldn't be telling that to this particular man, a voice said in my head, but it was too late now.
Basil took the sheets from me and read them very slowly. As the minutes ticked by, I began to wonder if he was deliberately stalling. Then suddenly, absurdly, he began to laugh.
"Crow Wing is such a lazy one," he said. I must have looked completely baffled, because he added, "Come, I will show you."
He got up and began to head toward Mahdahbee Craft Depot. When I hesitated, he called over his shoulder once again, "Come." Thus, Angel and I obediently followed.
The depot was vacant, as is the norm for this time of year. Later in the spring, it would be filled with the crafters, delivering and shelving their wares, or designing and sewing right on the spot. In the summer, the depot provided the product for the shelves in Mahdahbee Department Store. Here, the tourists always found gifts and souvenirs that were different, unique and made by hand in Sahsejewon.
Right now though, our footsteps echoed on the old wooden floor and the shelves were mostly bare. I could hear the murmur of voices in the back room, which is the direction in which Basil led us.
Angel sniffed the air, the floor and our feet once more, and then trotted proudly at my side through the store, her tail a question mark.
Basil opened the door to the back room to reveal Chief Dan Mahdahbee and Joseph Overland. They were sitting in rocking chairs, smoking stubby, pungent cigars. All around them were stacked the foundations of crafts that would be sold this summer. Cedar and birch bark, feathers, fine thread and paper, lacy twigs dried and stiffened, delicate stones, paints and brushes and other tools for creating.
I
shook hands with Chief Dan and with Joseph, whom I knew only vaguely. His children attended the private native school, and although he was prominent on the Sahsejewon Council, I had not been in his presence very often. He was a tall, thin man with thick black hair and large brown eyes. His hooked nose and pocked-marked skin kept him from being handsome.
Basil explained our presence. "Mrs. Taylor has been looking at the legends that Crow Wing wrote out, trying to make sense of the mysteries of Burchill," he told them.
In response, Chief Dan and Joseph both gave the same uproarious laughter.
I was beginning to take this personally. "I really would like to know why this is so funny," I said, my voice peeved and exasperated. I almost put my hands on my hips in my favourite principal attitude.
Chief Dan moved a pile of paper from a chair and motioned for me to sit down. "Sorry, Emily. Let us fill you in." He tapped his cigar into an ashtray and seemed to settle down for a long story. "We Aboriginal people are actually quite class conscious when it comes down to it," he began.
"No different from any other people," I opined.
"True. But we often don't acknowledge our own prejudices, yet criticize everyone else's. Anyway, Sahsejewon is a unique case. Our people claim to be Ojibwa, when in actual fact we are a combination. Long ago when the Hurons and the Ottawayans asked for help against their enemies, the Ojibwa clans united and answered the plea. After years of warring, many of the tribes really became intertwined, though the Ojibwa culture was mostly dominant."
I shifted on the stiff, uncomfortable chair, trying very hard to pay attention. The red welt had spread down the pad toward the bend of my thumb and was very itchy now. I began to wonder about poison ivy and tried not to scratch it. I concentrated on Chief Dan's lecture once more.
"But the Ojibwa traditions that grew up around Sahsejewon and Burchill have many differences. We are largely from the Bear Clan and have often refused to be called Ojibwa, which was a derogatory name given by enemies of our people. Probably the most revered name is Anishanabe, which means the 'original people'. But we Sahsejewon inhabitants cannot really lay claim to that, since we evolved into our own little category."
"Our legends, though, have many similarities to the Ojibwa legends and to the creation stories from the Anishinabe traditions. It always comes back to the land, to our connection to the earth and the spirits of the animals and trees and plants. They are filled with lessons about stewardship and balance. Our songs and prayers and dances are all centred on trying to walk the sacred way—the way of healing, compassion, creation rather than destruction." Chief Dan leaned forward, his eyes full of the energy of faith. "Thus, we laugh, Emily, when we read Soaring Bird's father's interpretation of the written legends. The Oral Tradition is so much richer. It has level after level of meaning and morality. So many lessons are taught and they are complex and multilayered."
"That Crow Wing was a lazy one," Basil interjected, repeating his assessment. "He made all the legends almost sound the same. I didn't read that number twenty, but I bet it sounds like all the rest."
I recalled the legend of Walking Bear that May had told me and compared it to legend twenty. Basil was right. They were very much alike.
"Crow Wing was Soaring Bird's father?" I asked.
"Yes," Basil answered. "His white name was George and he was a very lazy man. Now his son is lazy too."
"Basil," Chief Dan said softly, admonishing without being harsh, "Soaring Bird means very well. He has done a great service to our people by preserving the traditions, and that was due to George's work in trying to put everything into writing. The Oral Tradition is no longer conserved in this busy world. Even my father saw many of the lessons being lost and wrote out a lot of the Oral tales. And since the themes of the stories are very similar, it stands to reason that the legends will sometimes sound the same. What does Bird's twentieth legend say exactly?"
Basil said nothing, though I was tempted to remind him that he, too, had read through Bird's book very recently. Instead, I handed my sheet of paper over to Chief Dan. He read it carefully, and without a word, got up and went to a shelf in the back of the room. He brought back a large, leathery, photo-album-sized book, which had bits of yellowed, crumpled paper and edges of pictures sticking out all over. He laid it carefully on the table in front of him and opened it to the first page.
I could see that it was filled not only with Ojibwa words and writings, but also with hieroglyphics. The lines and the tiny pictures raced throughout the pages like sheet music.
"You see, Emily," Chief Dan said, continuing his lecture kindly, "a great deal of our language was not easily translated because our ancestors used hieroglyphics. George did not spend a great deal of time on these unfortunately, which is why Basil is so disdainful." The Chief ran his stubby fingers, flashing with diamonds and gold, over the pages until he found the one he wanted. "This is Twentieth Legend. You see how it is mixed with some written language and some pictorial language. But I still believe I can fill in the missing pieces for you, even if I cannot read it exactly. We can compare the Ojibwa, the English and add in the hieroglyphics as well. That should give us as complete a story as possible."
I sat down beside him, with the copies of Bird's legend opened next to Chief Dan's book as a comparison.
"First of all, look at this mark above the story. It is supposed to be a lesson for the future, not the present. In other words, this tale was told down the ages as a prediction, or a warning about what might happen unless there is intervention," Dan told me, making his way through the page with his eyes and his fingers, as though partly feeling his way.
"Look here, where it says 'the people continued to wail and cry as the land was abused and usurped'. There is a great deal more explanation in the Ojibwa translation than in George's. As well, there are pictorials to go with it." He was silent for a moment. His lips moved noiselessly as he transformed the pictures and Ojibwa writing into English for me to understand. "This tells us that an ancient secret will be torn away," he said slowly, his words stilted as he tried to give the tale meaning. "I believe this is saying that the secret will be stolen. It has something to do with a scroll on which the secret is written. The sacred grounds will be excavated, defiled to even greater extent, unless the scroll is recovered."
"Are the sacred grounds the caves?" I asked.
"Not necessarily. In fact, probably not. All of Burchill and Sahsejewon would have been considered hallowed, just as we Aboriginals continue to believe that all of the earth is meant to be revered. The caves were reserved for burial and none of the translations in any way reference those rites. But some secret will be kept from the people, which will cause the earth to be violated and mistreated to such a degree that the Original People will be forced to move away unless someone does something. In turn, even the animals will flee, just as it says in George's translation." Once again, Chief Dan was silent as he translated.
I suddenly realized that I had been scratching my thumb again and looked down, startled. The red rash had spread to the base of my finger and was tracing its way over the pad of my hand. It was excruciatingly itchy. I had to see Doc Murphy, I thought. This must be poison ivy.
"There is a lot more detail in the Ojibwa about how hunting will become rampant and how conspiracies will abound to take over the land completely, until no Original People will be able to live there. The descriptions of how the land is dug up and defaced are pretty strong." Again, he translated in his head before speaking it aloud. "There is also a great deal more information about the English sentence, 'Their hands were stained with gold'. There are probably several interpretations, but the Ojibwa is a little clearer. There is a connection between the scroll, the land and the gold. Perhaps money exchanges hands, or maybe there is actual gold found on the land. It's not that specific. Either way, though, the transactions are illegal and immoral, and result in the land being 'swallowed…with their greed'."
Again, he was silent as he read, his thick fingers flashing
with diamonds and gold as he traced the letters, the Ojibwa vowels, the pictorials. I wondered briefly about this man, about the apparent contradiction between his native roots and the wealth that he flaunts.
"This section is very interesting," he said finally, and he read aloud, "'The People began to become jealous as they saw their brothers and sisters clothed in finery and surrounded by the best the land could offer. They were in danger of being enticed toward the evil themselves.'" Chief Dan looked up at me, his eyes lively with enthusiasm as he explored the story. "There's a dire warning in the Ojibwa and in the hieroglyphics. I can't tell how many, but there are people from the village who have betrayed others and who are destined to bring disaster upon everyone unless they are stopped. It looks like they will even bring ruin to themselves, because in turn, they are duped and betrayed."
"When I read this part from George's English translation and look at the Ojibwa, they match almost completely," he continued thoughtfully, and read loud, "'Walking Bear began to appear to the people who had been influenced by the Evil Ones, to frighten them back to the ways commanded by Nanna Bijou'. But that doesn't seem to reflect what has happened. Walking Bear has appeared to many people, some who are clearly innocent of any wrong-doing."
I thought about the appearances that occurred over the weekend to anyone out walking near the forest areas. I thought about our own encounter with the apparition. Something didn't quite make sense.
Chief Dan went on, reading George's English translation, and then going into more detail. "'He set traps for them and confined them while he ministered to their broken and misshapen spirits'. The Ojibwa and hieroglyphics support this translation, stating that Walking Bear does confine the evildoers, but in the Ojibwa part of the tale, some of them will heal and some will not. The pictorial translation goes on to warn that unless the secret scroll is discovered and the wicked ones who have not changed their ways are driven from the land, the sacred spaces will be ruined forever. There is a lot more detail about how Walking Bear must heal the sinners, turn the people back to their previous good behaviour, and how he must replace the scroll that contains the ancient secret. This hieroglyphic," his large finger pointed to a picture that appeared to be hands crossing, "suggests that the scroll must be put back into the right hands."
The Emily Taylor Mystery Bundle Page 31
