Windigo Moon

by Robert Downes

  In silence, she watched Misko humping for a long moment, taking his pleasure, and then walked on, uncertain of what to do, weak. It was as if Misko had struck her in the chest with all his strength. It was as if he had suddenly become someone she no longer knew. He had killed her.

  Oh, she should have flown at them like an angry swan, tearing at the woman’s hair and ripping her nails across the great Miskomakwa’s face! She should have stabbed him with her skinning blade and clawed at the eyes of his bitch. It was her right.

  Instead, she was overcome with futility and self-loathing and her face flooded with tears. She had failed to give Misko a babe, and now this was how he had dealt her. It was her fault, all her fault, yet even so, why, why, why? He was a man, a heartless wolf, and that is what men did—they skulked after other women. But Ashagi had always known him to be true only to her; it was her one great pride that he had held her above all others. And now it had come to this.

  The magic of their time together was broken.

  Yet what was she to do? With a word, Misko could be done with her in divorce, or she him. Divorce was common among the Anishinaabek and many of the clan had married and broken many times. In fact Ashagi and Misko’s bond was rare. Only fools held together when a bond was broken.

  Yet Ashagi had never had eyes for anyone but Misko, and she wondered where his betrayal would lead her, perhaps gone from each others’ lives forever. But where would she go and who would take her in? Every member of her clan was dead or had been taken captive and carried far away. There was nowhere for her to go, no mother to return to, no grandmother to smile on her return. She was the last of the Heron clan.

  Ashagi walked on past the wigwams of the next band and entered the forest, hurrying deeper into the trees. She would not return that night. She would spend the night in the forest to let Misko know it was over between them. He would call for her and search by torchlight, but she would not answer. Perhaps she would be dead, killed by some spirit in the night and he could have his plaything. But he would not have her! Not ever again.

  The forest swam before her as she hurried on, aching in every part of her body. Waves of fear rolled into waves of anger as she thought of what it would mean to lose Misko, and the humility of what it would mean to keep him.

  And then through her tears she saw a form on the path ahead. It was the golden youth she had seen at the games, the one who had reminded her of the warrior of the Sioux who had died in the sun dance. He was walking her way, silhouetted in the yellow-green of the forest by the falling sun, a bow in his left hand and a fox slung over his shoulder. Ashagi saw that he was naked except for his loincloth, suspended on a leather thong around his waist.

  The legs below his bulge were as bowed as twin sturgeons, rippling with muscle.

  “Mother, are you alright?” he asked kindly when they met.

  “Am I so old you would call me mother?” Her voice was full of misery.

  “I meant only respect.” He reached out and wiped the tears from her cheeks. “Truly, you are beautiful, but my own mother taught me well. I will call you sister, if you wish.”

  “I wish to be left alone.”

  He shrugged, easy in his skin. “As you wish, but it would make me happy to walk you home. Soon, it will be dark and this is no place for you. Sister, I will give you this fox to dry your tears with its tail if you like.”

  “Miigwech brother, I . . .” She looked up and met his eyes, so young, level and bright, and focused on her own. He was perhaps twenty summers, his skin clear, and the muscles beneath thrumming as if they might burst forth. She was a woman of almost thirty, yet still followed by the eyes of men when she passed. She held his eyes for a long moment as he caressed her cheeks, sweeping away her tears until she saw them flicker. There was the flicker of the wolf within his eyes, lurking close to the surface. Eya, even this sweet youth had it within him.

  “Yes?”

  “I . . . I forgot what I was going to say.” She swallowed hard and looked down where the carpet of red leaves spread below their feet. Suddenly, the glade grew very still and the two of them were illuminated by the gold of the sun, slanting toward its bed on the horizon. Ashagi felt a flush of warmth as the sunlight bathed them in its last rays. Her thoughts wandered back to Misko, the wolf who had betrayed her. She would teach him what a woman could do when she was angry!

  Her hands reached down to caress the runner’s legs, curious to feel the muscles beneath his taut skin. How well suited they must be for ramming a woman, so powerful, so strong. His cock was already erect, hard as oak, and now his eyes were blazing. His thing had slipped from the bonds of his loincloth and lay lolling against his leg. She took it in her hands, felt its heat.

  “Young brother, there is something you can do for me,” she whispered.

  Misko was waiting by the fire outside their wigwam when she returned past sunset, impatient for his food. He had not eaten that day.

  “Where have you been?” he demanded.

  “Playing.”

  “And where is my food?”

  “I made your favorite, but it was taken by some boys from across the way because you were not here. Where were you, Miskomakwa? Hunting a weasel? Go ask the boys for your food.”

  Misko was shocked that she had used his formal name. It was something she did only when she was angry or mocking him.

  She brushed past him before he could answer and nestled in her summer bedding of doeskin.

  There, she remembered what Grandmother Nookomis had told her. When a woman is angry, she sometimes does a rash and foolish thing. An angry woman will even give herself to a stranger as an act of revenge. But the thing was done and had been watered by her tears. Cold, that was how she felt. Cold and uncaring.

  Misko had seen the redness of her cheeks as she swept past, and a sense of fear crept over him, melting the warm satisfaction of his conquest in the forest. How did she know? Was he so transparent? Feeling glum, he filled his pipe and smoked as twilight crept over the encampment. The smoke made for a thin supper, but it quelled his appetite. As he smoked, he reflected that it would be a long winter.

  That seemed even more likely the next morning when Ashagi hissed at their neighbor’s daughter with the fury of a wolverine, driving her screaming from her lodge.

  “Out snake! Out witch! I would sooner have a skunk in my lodge than catch sight of you again!” Ashagi screamed at her heels, while threatening to crop her hair and her ears as the Anishinaabek did with adulterers. And though she did not name the deed, all within hearing knew and made faces, some stern and others hooting with laughter.

  Days later, she bit him in a tender place when they lay together, sending him howling in pain.

  “What? Why?” he cried.

  “You know why, Miskomakwa! That’s what you get from me when you seek another woman.”

  To this, Misko was wise enough not to answer nor to act. Father had told him that a woman must be beaten when she grows testy, yet his father had never beaten Niibinkosiw. It was said that Ogaa had slapped Niibinkosiw across the face one time early in their marriage and she had vowed to cut his cock off in his sleep if he ever did it again.

  But he wondered if things were at an end for them, for Ashagi only grew colder when he tried to make amends. Cold as the brewing winds of Gashkadino-Giizis, the Freezing Moon. Nothing he did could please her, even when he told her that he had ruled against a second wife and apologized for insulting her. She dressed his game and made his meals as she had always done, but in a brusque rage. Their time together had turned from spring to winter.

  Then, on the long paddle home, Ashagi suddenly vomited over the side of her canoe as they coursed along the shore beyond the straits.

  “A bad fish,” she muttered, thinking of the wretched morning meal, but the women paddling alongside exchanged knowing looks and smiled. In the weeks thereafter, she grew sweet again, with her eyes rising large as she met those of Misko, as loving as their first days together, and it was as if they
were new to each other once more.

  Misko did not know, but the miracle he had prayed for to Kitchi Manito and all the gods of fertility had been granted. Ashagi was with child.

  22

  THE NEWCOMER

  The baby came in the springtime under a crescent moon as Ashagi knelt on a doeskin rug. Her sister midwives cooled her brow with wet, fragrant herbs and urged her not to cry out, for just as a man of the Anishinaabek must endure pain without complaint, so too must a woman become a warrior when her time comes to bring a new life into the world.

  “Oh, I will not cry, sisters, for this is the day I have dreamed of,” she said. But she came close to crying for joy when she received the pain of it.

  That morning, after her sisters had left singing the news for the whole band to hear, Misko crept into the lodge and found Ashagi waiting there with the bundle wrapped in bearskin, just as his own mother had swaddled him. Shyly and brimming with pride, she pulled back the pelt to reveal the red crumple of life within, a boy.

  Ashagi had buried the placenta in the floor of her lodge to keep it from the dogs, as was the custom of all women of the Anishinaabek, but she saved the baby’s cord to be kept in a small leather pouch. Possibly, her son would wear it around his neck for good luck for the rest of his life.

  That spring, Ashagi was as proud as a duck with a new brood, singing the song of the first hill of life as she made her way through her chores with her son strapped to her back.

  Like every child of the Anishinaabek, the new babe would spend its first year in a cradleboard.

  Ashagi and Misko had shared in its construction, making moon eyes at each other now that all was well again between them. Misko had fashioned a slab of pine, cutting ridges at the top of the board, which he painted blue. He also fashioned a hoop at the top of the board, which could be covered for shade or to keep the babe warm. The board was lined with birch bark to hold the moss that would swaddle the baby. Ashagi had collected the moss from a nearby marsh, drying it lightly over a fire to kill any bugs.

  With the spring weather still chilly, the babe’s feet were wrapped in cuddles of rabbit fur, with the tufts of cattails added for insulation. His arms were bound to his sides in a soft wrap, which also held him straight to the board.

  The spidery hoop of a dreamcatcher was fashioned above the babe’s head to protect him from bad dreams and evil spirits, but Ashagi also placed a feather at its center so that good dreams could slide down its length. As final touch, she embroidered the doeskin hide covering the front of the board with designs crafted from porcupine quills. In addition to the markings of the Amik clan of the beavers, she added those of her own Heron clan so that her people might live on through her son. She also hung charms of love, protection, and good luck from the hoop.

  “Look at him, he has your eyes,” she said as the babe eyed the dangling charms before the fire in their lodge.

  “Yes, but he has your face,” Misko said. “Better yours than mine, pretty one.”

  Ashagi glanced sideways at her husband. In truth, she did not know if the babe had Misko’s eyes, but she was relieved that he thought as much.

  “He will be a great hunter and warrior,” she said firmly.

  “Or perhaps just a fool like me,” Misko replied.

  “That would be all the better,” she laughed.

  “He looks to be a heavy one.”

  “Eya, he is a bundle. I will carry him with love, but I will also be happy to set him down.”

  Indeed, for the next two springs and more, Ashagi would wear her son on her back, taking him on all her chores, be they foraging in the forest for firewood, berries or nuts, or toiling in the garden. Her only relief would come when she was able to prop the cradleboard against a tree so that the babe might see his omaamaayan at work.

  Misko, too, carried a burden in that by custom, a man of the Anishinaabek did not couple with his wife as long as she is nursing. This, because a woman who became pregnant often had less milk for her baby, and what then? Like most men of the Anishinaabek, Misko took pride in suppressing his desires, though all too soon he yearned for Ashagi’s cleft and the warm push between her legs.

  For a long time, the babe had no name, for no sign had come to Misko or Ashagi suggesting what their son should be called. Eya, some children went for years without a name, and who would care and what need of a name when every member of the band was addressed as brother, sister, father, mother, uncle, or aunt?

  But then one morning, more than a year after the birth, Ashagi felt a rustling beside her as she slept. Waking, she saw her son crawling toward the lodge flap as fast as he could manage. Indeed, she only just caught him by the heel as he disappeared out the entrance.

  The babe burst into tears as Ashagi pulled him back to the safety of the lodge and she peered out to see what had drawn him so. A smile of revelation lit her face with the rising sun.

  “What now?” Misko said irritably from his sleeping platform. The babe had awakened him deep in the night with its crying and he had missed the morning hunt.

  “Your son seeks to be a meal for the eagles and coyotes,” Ashagi said. “But he has revealed his name to us. It is Biidaaban, Comes the Dawn.”

  “That sounds too high flown,” Misko said.

  “Ha, this from a man whose mother named him Red Moon?” she teased.

  “People will say he is not humble.”

  Ashagi shrugged. “It is the name he has chosen for himself, so who are we to say?” she said. “Besides, you know that everyone will just call him Dawn Boy.”

  Misko lifted the babe from her arms and held him up, searching his bright eyes with his own. “Biidaaban,” he said solemnly. “Biidaaban.”

  The babe smiled back at him and squealed.

  Misko made a funny face and exchanged a smile with his son. “Yes, little Biidaaban. You have a name now and we must respect it, oh great one, Comes the Dawn!”

  Yet as Ashagi predicted, the Anishinaabek came to know Biidaaban through all the days of his life as simply Dawn Boy.

  BOOK IV

  1601-1619

  23

  TALES OF THE OLD MAN

  Eya, the years rolled by and Biidaaban grew legs as thick as twin sturgeons, running along the beach as swift as a deer. Misko often marveled at how strong his legs were, to which Ashagi merely nodded, gazing down at her sewing whenever he spoke of it. One fall, when the time grew near to move to the winter hunting grounds, Biidaaban danced on the beach and pointed to a distant canoe making its way along the coast from the south.

  Then came laughter and shrieks of joy, for the Old Man had joined them once again.

  “There are none but you that I wish to spend the winter,” Animi-ma’lingan said that evening by the fire after they had supped on grilled perch, huckleberries and roasted cattail stalks. “If you have not grown tired of me,” he added.

  “Father, you are welcome to stay with us until the stars fall from the sky,” Misko said. “When you left last spring the children cried every night for your stories.”

  The Old Man smiled to himself and nodded. “It’s good to be back.”

  Ashagi presented them with another platter of fish which Animi-ma’lingan ate with good appetite. As usual, he had traveled lean, hunger being the constant companion of a trader.

  But for all his appetite, he had truly become an old man, she thought. Animi-ma’lingan’s braids had gone snowy gray and his face was riven with the lines of many winters. It was said that he was more than seventy winters old, though some claimed he was far older and that it was sorcery that gave him the strength of youth.

  “And what of that?” Misko asked, nodding to Animi-ma’lingan’s right hand where half of two fingers had gone missing. The stubs were still healing.

  “Oh, that is a story to save for a winter night,” Animi-ma’lingan looked up with a downcast mouth. “It doesn’t hurt now, but fuck me, I cried like a stuck rabbit when it happened.”

  “You are a braver man than any I eve
r met, but you are no warrior.”

  “Gaawiin, no, and that is what saved me,” Animi-ma’lingan said, his voice low.

  As the winter crept closer, the Amiks headed south from their village beneath the dunes, well provisioned with stores of dried fish and game, nuts, rice and berries. But more than that, they had the Old Man’s stories to get them through the long winter nights. Familiar stories that had been told many times by the glowing coals. Tales of ghosts and monsters, doomed lovers, and warriors too proud for their own good. Tales of Aayash, the hero who could change himself from a man to an animal at will, the killer of monsters who brought the great fire that destroyed and remade the world. Tales of the Great Flood, when mountains of ice melted in the time of their distant ancestors, drowning the world in their cold waters. But even more so, the brothers and sisters of Misko’s band loved to hear the stories of the Old Man’s own exploits, for none among the entire nation of the Anishinaabek had traveled further than Animi-ma’lingan, or risked as much in the dangerous world beyond their hunting grounds.

  Every child in the band had heard the story of how the Old Man had been named Outruns the Wolves at his curious birth, and all of the adults heard it anew as winter fell. The lesson was to be generous with an open heart and not judge too harshly for even a babe with a clubfoot and strange eyes might grow up to be of value to his clan. This was the story Animi-ma’lingan shared each year to much nodded agreement when he began weaving his tales.

  “Let me tell you a story of the Dakotas,” he began one night, after the winter encampment had been established along the broad mouth of the Ministigweyaa.

  Although the Amiks had spread east far along the river in individual families as was their custom to improve the odds for hunting, it was also customary to spend a few days visiting between lodges throughout the winter. No one’s lodge was more popular than Ashagi’s, in large part because the Old Man lived there. Thus, one night amidst bitter winds and snow drifts, fifteen souls huddled in a circle before the fire in Ashagi’s lodge, seated on thick piles of fur atop cushions of cedar boughs. A skein of dream catchers and charms dangled from the lodge poles above the listeners and pine sparks popped like shooting stars before drifting up through the smoke hole.