“See you as witch,” she tells Naomi. She is at the stern, navigating with her paddle.
“A witch? Why?”
“Give Oyanoga buttons, Oyanoga get fever. Oyanoga brother take elk feet to cure. He say you are witch turning to wolf at night. In day, clumsy in woman shape.”
“That’s absurd,” Naomi says.
“Wolf whiskers come out there.” She points to the mole above Naomi’s lip.
Naomi turns around and puts her paddle back in the water. She is shocked and hurt. She has enjoyed speaking Wendat to the Wyandots and trading with them these last two days. For the first time she hasn’t felt quite so useless. But she knows about their fear of witchcraft. Sirus used to say they were worse than the Puritans. Once when he was hunting with Old Adam they saw an old woman running in a scattered, haphazard way as if trying to put off her scent. Later, three Wyandot men asked Old Adam if he had seen a wolf in the shape of a woman.
The soft rain comes down steadily as though marshaling itself out to last as long as possible. Naomi wipes her face with her hand. She can smell the rancid bear grease that her mistress uses on her skin as lotion. The river is as brown as the scrub trees. The brief glimpse of beauty she’d seen on the river was only a mockery, not a promise as she thought. If she had argued to go to Philadelphia they might be halfway there by now. She could have broken the tie. But instead here she is: a wolf, a witch. She pulls her paddle up out of the water and changes sides.
That evening Penelope and Naomi stand in a crowd to watch an old man bleed Oyanoga, hoping to save her life. He affixes a sharp piece of flint onto a short stick, presses it against her bare arm, and with a grunt pushes the flint into her skin. To cup her blood he uses a hollowed gourd. When he decides that Oyanoga has bled enough he wraps wet leaves around the wound and then lifts her arm to blow on it. He makes a sign with his hands that looks, to Naomi, very much like the sign of the cross.
Oyanoga shakes all night but the next morning she is able to sit upright, and by the afternoon she can paddle her canoe. However, the old woman who gave Naomi muskrat meat is found dead the following day. That night Naomi’s mistress ties Naomi to a tree after sunset, so she won’t be able to attack them while in wolf form.
Penelope thinks about food more and more often and with growing details: the color of pork, the texture of hominy. She knows that instead of letting her imagination run this way, she should be coming up with a plan. She needs to do something now that they are calling Naomi a witch. But what can she do? She has no idea how long they have been with the Wyandots, how many days on foot and how many in a canoe. Maybe it doesn’t matter. When she asks how far away their village is, a shrug is the answer. At least her hands have toughened up. She begins to knit again at night after she has finished her chores and before exhaustion sets in. She sits close to Naomi, who is now tied securely to a tree every evening.
Not everyone believes that Naomi is a witch. Tawakota, the leader, does not believe it. This is fortunate, for the rest can do nothing without his leave. Naomi’s mistress argues that anyone can see that Tau-tie-yost never takes on wolf shape, but of course she does not want Naomi killed since Naomi does chores for her every day.
Some believe Naomi’s mistress, some do not. A powerful witch can choose not to change her shape if it suits her.
“How can you tell if someone is a witch?” Penelope asks her own mistress.
“Make circle of fire, she walks west to east. If cross, woman. If stumble, day-hudah-ki.” Witch. She looks at Penelope and nods. “Witch killed,” she says. “Woman not.”
But they call Naomi Tau-tie-yost, There She Stumbles. Surely they must know she would fail that test.
“Sister cannot make good fire. Cannot make urica.” Stockings. “Don’t know good chert. All like witch, not woman.”
“She is not a witch, I promise you!”
Her mistress shrugs. “Tawakota not know,” she says. “Wait.” Penelope is not sure if she must wait, or if Tawakota is waiting. For supper, her mistress gives her a piece of dried fish folded over like paper.
“Eat,” she says. “But not giving to sister.”
She watches as Penelope puts the dried fish into her mouth, but when she looks away Penelope takes it out and hides it in the palm of her hand. She is the oldest. Naomi is her responsibility. She must come up with a plan. She thinks of the little fish they used to catch at a stream near their cabin. They were no longer than a thumb. Sirus didn’t know their name so he called them silveries because of their color. Ellen would fry them by the dozen in buttered breadcrumbs. She served them with cornbread or with eggs and bacon. Or fried up with hashed potatoes for breakfast.
She has to stop thinking about food.
Their river meets up with a larger river, and then a larger one after that. As the days go on, Naomi grows more quiet and withdrawn. She no longer tries to speak Wendat with anyone and she does not try to barter for food. The spark Penelope noticed when they got to the river has vanished. One evening, after a particularly long day canoeing, Penelope is shocked to see Naomi’s bleak, inward expression as she pulls her mistress’s boat up the bank. It reminds her of a neighbor they had back in Philadelphia who was not ill, but who died anyway after her child died of yellow fever. She just turned her face to the wall and stopped breathing.
“I caught a fish,” Penelope tells her that night when they are collecting pieces of bark for their beds. “I boiled it when no one was looking.” She holds it out. It is the size of a small pickle. “Do you remember the silveries Mama used to fry up?”
Naomi looks at the fish as though it were a stone. “It’s strange, but I’m not hungry anymore. I think I’ll lie down.”
“Eat this first. Please, Nami. I took a great chance getting it, I stole some meat for bait. If they find out they’ll flog me...” She doesn’t know if this is true but she will say anything.
Naomi chews the fish slowly as if even eating is now a chore. The weather has turned warmer and a blue mist rises from the mud. Penelope brings her some water.
“It’s hard to find a clear stream around here, so much algae, and the weeds. But look at the gourd I found. Doesn’t it make a good cup?”
Naomi lies down on her bark and blinks, looking up at the clouds.
“What are you thinking about?” Penelope asks.
“Hmm. You know, I don’t suppose I was thinking anything,” Naomi says in a dull voice.
It’s as if her body is a loose sack around her, she cannot pay it sufficient attention. If this keeps up she will die. Penelope makes herself imagine the worst, hoping this will spur her brain into action. All she can think of is running away but they can’t run away. Where would they go? What would they eat? Could they find enough berries, could they fish? She thinks about breakfast, egg pudding and oatmeal and jam.
The next day the murky river widens as if approaching the sea. They are on the Maumee now, Penelope reckons. From time to time she can see fish skimming along only a foot under the water, ugly specimens with bulging eyes and whisker-like barbels. In the afternoon the two lead canoes bank on the eastern side of the river, beneath low willow trees. A few Wyandot men stand in the shallows waving everyone over. They are the ones who determine when and where the group lands, when they eat, and when they rest.
Penelope and her mistress paddle over and the men pull up their canoe. Although the river ahead looks clear to her, the Wyandots are preparing to portage through a break in the trees. The carrying place, her mistress calls it.
“Why are we not taking the river?” Penelope asks, shouldering the wet bottom of the boat.
“Hush,” her mistress says.
When everyone is on land the men on the bank untie their canoes and begin to walk in pairs, like everyone else, carrying their boats between them. As Penelope walks she looks for Naomi but cannot find her among the throng. Now she grows anxious. Did they make their decision? Did they drown her in the river? Each time she glimpses someone who might be Naomi but turns out is not her anxiety w
orsens. But when at last they stop to rest she spies Naomi up ahead holding the front end of her canoe. She stumbles as she sets down the boat, which makes her mistress speak to her sharply.
Penelope exhales the breath that has been tightening in her chest and lowers her end of the boat. They have stopped in a muddy acre of land dotted with standing dead trees with branches bleached as white as bones. A drowned forest. Beneath the trees are pools of the same fish she saw in the Maumee. But here the fish are dead and half-rotting. They must have somehow swum up from the river and then couldn’t get back. Her nose fills with the ripe odor of plants that feed on mud to no purpose, for nothing can eat them. They will only grow until they become too wet themselves to live, and then they will begin their soft, slow decay.
“They are talking about white men,” Naomi says when Penelope catches up to her. “A fort nearby. That is why we left the river.”
But even this potential piece of good news does not seem to stir up any life in her. Her eyes are dull and she speaks without inflection. She looks around as if the world is nothing more to her than a picture book she is paging through idly, having nothing better to do.
Penelope takes hold of her hand and squeezes it. “White men! Nami, that’s good news. Perhaps we can go to them. Make our escape! Did they say where they are?”
“I can’t, my head aches. You go. You can come back for me.” She says this without the least hint of hope in her voice.
“You need some water,” Penelope tells her. “Wait here.”
Naomi needs more than water but water is all that Penelope can offer. Carrying the gourd she now uses as a cup, she makes her way toward a little rivulet no wider than a grass snake is long. The land around it is muddy and rank, and the air is so humid that even the insects can hardly raise themselves. Her clothes seem to cling to every hollow on her body. But just as she is clearing algae away with a stick to get clean water, she sees a group of people come out from behind the dead white trees. At first she thinks they are Englishmen because the men are dressed in English clothes—white shirts and neck-cloths and white sashes around their waists. One woman wears a short fur cape. Penelope’s heart begins to race. But they are only more Wyandots. She sees their faces as they come closer.
This time no attempt is made to hide Penelope and Naomi. Penelope doesn’t know if this is because these new people are from their own tribe, or because by the time they see them it is too late. The tallest man calls out a greeting in Wendat as he walks though the wet grass and stops to talk with Tawakota. After a short conference, Tawakota follows the man and his company back through the dead trees, signaling for the others to follow. They leave their canoes and walk a short distance to a place where an outcropping of flat, brownish-yellow stones rise up like slanted shelves. They are warm from the sun and, more important, they make dry seats.
For the rest of the afternoon the Wyandots rest and eat and talk among themselves. The new women go from rock to rock as if making social calls. Penelope can only understand one word in ten. But her mistress, pleased with something—perhaps just the change that new people bring with them—gives Penelope a large piece of fried cornmeal. No one notices when she gives half of it to Naomi.
Naomi says, “They are calling them The Rich Ones.”
“The new group?”
“Apparently they are going back to the same village. But people are wondering where their canoes are. They don’t like them exactly I don’t think, but they envy them. They like their clothes. The tall man is called Hatoharomas. That means something like, He Draws Wood from the Fire.”
“Naomi, I had no idea you were so good with languages. When we get back you must start French or German.” She wants Naomi to think about the future. Naomi is someone who needs a dream.
“It’s easier to understand than to speak. And I’m not getting much practice speaking.” She says this with no bitterness. “I learned a new word this morning, tsi-day-heska. It means frog. At first I was confused because it’s the same word as stooping.”
Penelope takes her hand. She is rambling, but at least she is speaking.
“They scatter frog parts when I sleep,” Naomi tells her.
“What?”
“To keep the witch-wolf away.”
Penelope is shocked. But sure enough when their mistress calls them to retire she looks carefully on the ground until she finds, half buried, the leg of a frog. She puts it in her knitting bag. Tomorrow she will roast it for breakfast.
“Maybe I can untie you for a while when everyone is asleep,” Penelope says.
“I don’t mind anymore. I’ve learned to sleep without moving.”
“Don’t you feel cramped in the morning?”
“I don’t feel anything,” Naomi says.
That night Penelope can’t sleep. When will Tawakota decide his people are right, that Naomi is a witch who should be burned or drowned, she wonders? Whenever the next bit of misfortune occurs, she guesses, and that might be anytime. This is a hard life, a life full of misfortune. People leave Philadelphia to escape yellow fever only to die, like Sirus and Ellen, of swamp fever in Ohio. Farmers are kicked in the head by their horses or felled by trees in a storm. Whole tribes are brought down by smallpox or chickenpox or the blue cough. Women die in childbirth no matter where they live. She thinks of Aurelia somewhere in Thieving Forest with a tree stump as a headstone. Did anyone find her body? Would they bring her back to Susanna? Where is Susanna now?
Penelope hopes she’s found her way back to Philadelphia, where she has always wanted to be. Susanna never liked Ohio. But no place is safe. You make your choice and take on those risks, Sirus argued before they set out for Severne. That year the yellow fever had been particularly bad in their neighborhood. She herself, a child prone to sore throats, had nearly died from it. But after that she never had a sore throat again. Beatrice used to claim, half joking (but also half bitterly), that Penelope had passed her sore throats on to her.
The night air is warm and still and the frogs belt out their deep, plaintive cries like lost cows. Naomi is lying very still beside her. Not too long ago, Naomi’s calm acceptance would have irritated Penelope, but now it brings on a kind of frozen feeling in her chest. If she turns her head she can see sparks from a dozen small campfires flickering like so many fireflies, and although she wants to believe that she can steal out and soundlessly pull a canoe into the river and paddle it alone until she finds this fort, this company of white men, she knows that she will be detected before she even puts a paddle tip to the water. The boats are guarded like gold. There might be white men out there somewhere, Penelope thinks, but they cannot help me.
She checks again on Naomi, who at last has fallen asleep. She gets up carefully and stands for a moment looking around. Then she takes a few steps trying not to make noise. With her blanket over her head she might be any Wyandot woman, and she picks up her mistress’s kettle. If stopped, she will say she is fetching water. She does not know where Hatoharomas has set up his shelter. She passes a few shadows, men talking to each other in low voices, and smells their hemlock smoke. A fat yellow moon is rising.
As she makes her way through the encampment she sees a cluster of lilies growing near a wet hollow. It is the kind of lily her mother loved, a ditch lily. Perhaps it will bring her luck. She thinks of Susanna again. Sirus used to say that if there were any luck to be found then Susanna would find it. But to be lucky you must believe in luck. Penelope has never before had to rely on something so changeable. Her own abilities have always been more than sufficient.
When she straightens up she senses someone behind her, but before she can turn a warm hand comes up over her mouth and another around her throat. Her heart jumps.
“You are far from your mistress tonight,” a man’s voice says in English.
She moves instinctively but his grip tightens.
“Why do you lurk here?” he asks.
He is standing close behind her, his voice like breath in her hair. She can smell di
rt and smoke on his fingers. His grasp is firm, but not violent. He lifts his hand away from her mouth so she can speak.
“I am looking for you.” Her voice comes out in a whisper.
“Who are you looking for?”
“The man they call Hatoharomas.”
“And how do you know that is me? Are you a witch like your sister with eyes behind?”
“No one has yet spoken to me in such good English. It stands to reason, you must be from the group who arrived today.”
He takes his hand from her and she turns around. He is still wearing an English shirt but has changed into hide leggings. A string of beads hangs from his neck. Now that she sees him, she feels less frightened. She doesn’t know why.
“Why do you look for me?” he asks.
“I come to beseech you. Please, buy my sister and myself. Take us to Sandusky where you can trade us for gunpowder. I know you will get a barrel at least.”
It is not the eloquent speech she planned but it is all she can manage at the moment. She tries to gauge his reaction but he looks at her with no expression. His white shirt shines in the moonlight. He is handsome, she notices, with his straight nose, his prominent cheekbones.
He is assessing her, too. Finally he says, “Come with me.”
He leads her to his bark shelter. She is confused by his good looks and gentle voice, at odds with his tight hold on her arm. A light seems to be rushing up her body. No, not a light, sharper than that. As they walk the smell of wet moss becomes stronger, and later whenever she smells moss she will think of him.
At his shelter a woman is sitting on a skin feeding sticks to an already healthy fire, and she moves to make room for them. It is the woman with the short fur cape that Penelope noticed earlier. Hatoharomas does not introduce her. His mother? Penelope wonders. On her arms she wears many copper bracelets, which jangle every time she adds another stick to the fire. After he settles himself on the blanket, the woman takes up a long clay pipe, lights it with a twig, and hands it to him.
Hatoharomas draws from the pipe and then passes it to Penelope, motioning for her to sit down beside him. She hasn’t smoked a pipe above twice in her life, although she likes the smell. Her husband Thomas Forbes smoked one. The great thing is that after she smokes for a while, passing the bowl back and forth with Hatoharomas, she does not feel so hungry.
Thieving Forest Page 15
