Thieving Forest

by Martha Conway

  Escape is impossible. There are people everywhere who watch her. And anyway she is too hungry to think about anything other than how to get more food. Sometimes in the morning Akwendeh-sak gives Susanna a spoonful of the porridge but sometimes she forgets or is angry at her and refuses. After breakfast she and her daughters leave for their plots of land where they work all day, while Susanna helps old Akwa—mostly sewing or mending hide garments. Susanna is always hungry but Akwa is a little cowed by her daughter and will not give her anything without Akwendeh-sak’s leave.

  One morning, after Susanna has been there for over a week, Akwa takes her to a small trading house in the center of the village and leaves her outside to wait. Akwa needs a certain ingredient for a poultice she is making for one of her granddaughters. The rope dangles from Susanna’s wrist but she is not tied to anything since there are no trees immediately nearby. That morning she burned the samp porridge and as a result was given nothing to eat. Her stomach feels raw and angry. To distract herself, she tries to remember what Naomi was playing on her violin that last morning, the morning they were all taken. She is just trying to pull out the melody when the boy with the green leggings comes running down the path.

  He stops when he sees her. He squeezes the outside of one of his pouches and then shrugs: no nuts today. She smiles back: that’s all right. He has a dark smear of dirt over his chin that makes him look as if he’s been eating chocolate. Then he says something in Wendat that she now understands to mean, Come.

  “Hay-tet, hay-tet,” he says.

  Akwa is still bargaining inside. Susanna has a moment’s hope: maybe the boy knows something about Penelope and Naomi, maybe he will take her to them. She follows him, her heart beating hard even as she tells herself that she might be wrong. And she is wrong. He doesn’t take her to her sisters, but stops instead at a curiosity: a large enclosure with a bear inside. The bear is fully grown, with one torn ear and eyes as bright as a child’s. It is sitting like a short fat man with its legs stretched out before it. One side of the bear’s pen is fenced by the palisades that surround the village, sharp spears like prison bars, and a bowl with dried blue corn stands on the ground just inside.

  Susanna looks at the bear’s food, and then she reaches through the spears and takes a small handful. The dried corn is tough and hard to chew. The boy watches her as she eats it, saying nothing.

  Susanna swallows with difficulty. “What is your name?” she asks the boy in Delaware.

  “Tako,” he says. Later she finds out it means squirrel.

  At that moment Akwa comes around looking for her and scolds her fiercely, shooing Tako away. She continues to scold Susanna so much as they walk back that Susanna is afraid she might tell Akwendeh-sak, who will certainly beat her. But back at the hut Akwa busies herself making the poultice from the root she has obtained, and when Akwendeh-sak returns all the talk is about her daughter’s finger.

  That evening Tako comes by Susanna’s hut, this time carrying a string of small silver fish. He gives her one and calls her by her Wyandot name, Tarayma. How did he learn it?

  “Thank you,” Susanna says in Delaware. Wanishi. Then she says, “I like your green trousers.”

  She is not sure how much Delaware Tako understands, but he pushes one leg out to look at it and then nods as if he has only just now decided that indeed the trousers are good. How old is he, she wonders, eight? Nine? Something about his dark, upturned eyes seems familiar. After a moment she realizes that they remind her of Seth Spendlove.

  “Tako,” she asks. “Have you seen anyone in the village with red hair? Hair like my hair?”

  Tako chatters for a moment in Wendat.

  “Say again?” she asks in Delaware.

  “Oui, non! Oui, non!” Tako shouts.

  “It is my sister with the red hair,” she tells him.

  Tako runs off shouting, “Oui, non!” and laughing. When he has gone Susanna puts the little fish into the cooking fire embers, but one of Akwendeh-sak’s daughters, the one with the hurt finger, comes out just as Susanna is checking it and she takes it and eats it herself.

  The next day Susanna finds Tako sitting alone on the stream bank when she goes to fetch more wood at midday. Although he pretends at first not to see her, she has the feeling he’s been waiting there for her.

  “Hay-tet,” Tako says. Come with me.

  The sun is directly overhead. Akwendeh-sak is away at her field and will stay there for hours. Akwa might scold her for being slow but she has never yet hit her, so Susanna follows Tako up the streambed. After a while Tako ducks in between two saplings bending toward each other and enters the woods. Here is the best firewood, he signs to Susanna, and it is true. It is farther from the main path and not so picked over. After she has a good pile of wood, Susanna, in no hurry to leave, takes the time to pick some small, sour blueberries while Tako teaches her a few Wendat words: berry, wood, squirrel—tako. He points to a squirrel climbing the trunk of a maple tree, its tail sweeping up after it.

  Quietly Tako puts his hand into his leather pouch and draws out two small stones and a buckskin thong—his ammunition and slingshot. From this distance it seems to Susanna a foolish attempt, but Tako fells the squirrel with the first stone and they hear a thump as it falls on the ground. Tako pushes around the pile of leaves until he finds the body while Susanna, using his flint, makes up a small fire with as little smoke as she can manage. Tako nods when he sees it, and when he next looks at her she sees that his estimation of her worth has increased. This amuses her, and pleases her, too.

  Together they pull off the skin, cut up the soft meat, and roast it on sticks. Then they eat up every bite. Afterward Susanna feels some discomfort—she is now used to only a mouthful or two of food at a time—but that is an easy enough price to pay for the meal.

  “You will look for my sisters, with the red hair?” she asks when they part. He laughs, shaking his head. She does not know if he understands her or not.

  After that Tako meets Susanna every afternoon at the same spot at the streambed, always when Akwendeh-sak is away in the fields. Akwa never says anything about Susanna’s absences, and Susanna tries never to stay away too long. The Wyandots’ forest is brighter than the forests in the Black Swamp, the trees are not as tall or as thick, and sunlight breaks through their branches easily, warming Susanna’s head like a blessing. But like the Black Swamp it is quiet. There are no squealing pigs or barking dogs, no hatchets ringing out, no shouting quarrels. Akwendeh-sak is not screaming at her: bad fire, bad porridge! Instead the trees hold, like a sack, the soft noises she has come to appreciate: frogs and birds and pecking creatures, the wind rustling through heavy summer leaves, an insomniac owl. Sometimes a man, a sentry, appears and speaks a few words to Tako. Other than that they are alone.

  She helps Tako trap little animals and they make tiny fires to cook them. It is almost like playing house, but to Susanna it doesn’t feel like playing since it is all that she can do not to eat her share in one bite.

  Tako says, “Tarayma, let me show you, it is easy.” His little hide pouch is a store of tools: the buckskin slingshot, small round stones, horsehair, deer sinews, sharpened bits of rock, a flint. He takes out a length of horsehair and ties it into a slip noose, and then hangs the noose over a little trail where they saw a mouse run the day before. After that he bids Susanna to keep very still. When a mouse finally emerges and runs into the noose, Tako quickly pulls the string tight. Although the mouse fights as violently as a panther, Tako eventually prevails. After they cook and eat it he gives Susanna one of the mouse’s tiny teeth. He demonstrates its use by scratching himself up and down his arm with another tooth, his wide face nodding: yes that feels good.

  It isn’t the method of trapping that is hard to learn, but the patience. Sometimes they try to bring down larks and other slow birds, and once Susanna thinks she sees a wood vole among some rotting logs but it is gone before she can get to it. Besides trapping, Tako lets Susanna practice shooting with his slingsh
ot. One day he rewards her with a slingshot of her own that he has made for her. She is very pleased and thanks him as many times as he will let her. When she leaves the woods she folds it up and hides it inside her moccasin so that Akwendeh-sak will not see it and take it away.

  Every day when they part Susanna asks Tako about her sisters. Part of her feels better (the food and a friend), and part of her feels worse (Penelope and Naomi must not be here, Tako would have told her). The asters and dogbanes are beginning to bloom: the last flowers of summer. Soon it will be fall, and then winter. Whenever she thinks about running away she remembers the sentries who check up on them in the woods, and the lookouts stationed along the palisades every evening. The leather strip marking her as a captive dangles from her wrist. She would be identified in no time, brought back, and beaten.

  But she is learning how to survive here. And she is not so hungry every day. That is something. That is good.

  One evening Akwendeh-sak’s daughters decide to stay with their mother for the night instead of going into their own huts to sleep, which means Susanna must sleep outside. Their husbands will be at council far into the night, Akwa tells her, so they prefer to stay here. A great meeting is taking place. The Ottawa who arrived the same day as Susanna have been joined by others: more Ottawa, a band of Potawatomi, and two bands of Miami. Susanna is learning more Wendat, words enough for some comprehension, but she still prefers Delaware. She has not spoken English for weeks. There is no one to speak it to.

  Akwa gives her two blankets and Susanna lies down on one and covers herself with the other, her feet toward the smoldering cooking fire. A strong breeze ruffles the tree leaves, and then stops, and then ruffles them again like a woman trying to make up her mind. The wind is higher and cooler than it was a week ago. Summer is turning. Her hidden slingshot rubs against the skin of her ankle but she likes the feel of it. It is her only possession. She wonders, as she does from time to time, how Meera is faring. The village is large and they live at opposite ends, so Susanna is not surprised that she hasn’t seen her—or only a little surprised. She is still angry with Meera, but like the wind her anger feels a bit higher and cooler than it was last week.

  “Tarayma,” someone whispers.

  She pushes herself up. By the light of the moon she can make out a small shadow of a boy: Tako. But someone is behind him, another figure, someone taller. A man? She jerks away as long arms come down around her.

  “Penelope,” the figure whispers in her ear.

  It is Naomi.

  Susanna quickly puts her arms up to catch her. “Nami,” she says. A feeling bursts inside her like sparks of light, maybe more than one feeling. “It’s me, it’s Susanna.”

  A second of silence. “Susanna? But...?”

  They embrace hard and for a moment can say nothing. Naomi’s smell is different but not the feel of her arms. Susanna starts to cry, a hiccough in her chest that erupts into a gray cloud of feeling. It comes out of her whole body and envelops the night air. Naomi pulls back and looks at her face.

  “Susanna! I can’t believe it’s you! I thought the boy meant Penelope. In fact, I didn’t believe him at all at first, I was so stupid.”

  “Where is Penelope?” Susanna asks, trying to swallow and stop crying and talk at the same time. “Isn’t she here?”

  “They sold her to a fur trader up north. A Frenchman. A Canadian.” Naomi combs her fingers through Susanna’s cropped hair. “What have they done to you?”

  “And they pierced my ears, too! But my hair is the worst.”

  Naomi says, “Luckily you’ve always had a perfectly formed head.”

  They laugh, quietly. It feels good to laugh. Susanna hiccoughs again and wipes her face with the back of her hand.

  “Let me come under your blanket,” Naomi says.

  They sit under the pounded hide blanket with their arms around each other as close as they can get. In the moonlight it is difficult to make out Naomi’s features but her face seems round enough, not pinched with hunger. Her soft red hair is in two plaits with beads braided into them. There’s no rope on her wrist, and no chained earrings in her ears. Her voice sounds just the same. But something is different.

  “I never in the world imagined the boy meant you,” Naomi is saying. “I thought maybe Penelope had been traded back. We were on a fishing trip until a few days ago, and when we returned, here was this boy I didn’t know telling me about a sister with red hair. Only because he persisted...and then I had to wait for nighttime. But tell me about you. How did you come here?”

  Susanna doesn’t know how to answer. She begins crying again. Every feeling she has ever had in her life seems to be rising up and fighting each other for dominance.

  “Shhh, it’s all right now, Princess,” Naomi tells her gently. “Wait. Here.” From her pocket she takes a piece of fried cornmeal and gives it to Susanna. In that moment Naomi reminds Susanna of Beatrice, who could be so consoling when someone was ill, whereas Naomi was a terrible nurse, always looking for an excuse to get back to her violin. But of course Naomi doesn’t have her violin anymore. Maybe that’s what is different.

  “We all thought you escaped!” Naomi says.

  “I did. That is, they didn’t take me. I came here myself looking for you and Penelope.”

  “You came here by yourself? But Susanna, how astonishing!”

  “I had help. An Indian girl...but that’s over. Now I’m a captive like you. Naomi, I’ve made such a mess of things. How will I ever get you out? And then we have to go get Penelope from that fur trader, but I have nothing to trade for her, they’ve taken it all!”

  “Hush, don’t, it’s all right. You don’t have to worry about that tonight,” Naomi says. She draws Susanna closer to her. An owl hoots nearby. “Princess, I have to go. My family might miss me. But I’ll arrange something. Is your Wyandot family good to you?”

  “They hit me and won’t feed me. I have to scrape the bottom of the kettle for my supper.”

  “I’ll try to have you traded to another family.”

  “You can do that?”

  “My family is wealthy...they have some power. And they’re kind.”

  “Meanwhile I’ve been treated like a slave,” Susanna says bitterly. “Nami, let’s leave this place together right now! You must know the woods around here, places to hide.”

  “It would never work. They know the woods much better than we do. And you’re in no condition to run. Just look at you—a ghost of a child.” A phrase of their mother’s.

  Susanna looks up. The stars seem to pulse for a moment. “That seems so long ago, doesn’t it?”

  “Another life,” Naomi agrees.

  The owl hoots again and Susanna realizes that it isn’t an owl at all, but Tako. He is sitting on the ground some ways off, a rock in the shadows.

  “I must go,” Naomi tells her. “Tomorrow I’ll see that you’re moved closer to me. Remember, you have me now.” She rearranges Susanna’s blanket over her thin shoulders and kisses the top of her head. “We’ll get you a thicker blanket, too,” she says.

  Twenty-Three

  Naomi follows Tako through the village although she does not need him as a guide. She has only been gone for a month. When she gets to her longhouse she lifts the bark door and makes her way carefully to her blanket, stepping over many sleeping people, including Nadoko, her foster mother. Nadoko partially wakes and says without raising her head,

  “Hat-kah-keta?” What are you doing?

  “Aja-yai-haw. Iskwanyo,” Naomi whispers. I went outside and now I have come back. But Nadoko falls back asleep even as Naomi is speaking.

  Naomi settles herself on her blanket and looks up at the bark ceiling, trying to breathe evenly. Smoke holes are scattered along the far end, and near them the bark has turned black with soot. Her heart is still beating hard with surprise and something else—what? Something she does not want to examine too closely. How did Susanna find her? Why did she come here?

  The answer to that last,
of course, is that Susanna thinks Naomi is a captive and needs her help. Naomi is strangely irritated by the thought, although she knows she’s being unjust. She was a captive once, but now she is not. Now it is her choice.

  When Naomi first went off with Hatoharomas and his mother Nadoko, she wasn’t thinking about choices, for she had none. She was just hoping to live out the day. She’d been traded for a dozen silver brooches, about half the price of a good horse, and she felt both lucky and despondent. Lucky because Hatoharomas—whom his family called Hato—did not think she was a witch, and despondent because she felt in her bones that she would never see Penelope again, no matter how many times Penelope assured her that they were both heading to the same village and would meet up again in a matter of weeks. But in this case Naomi was right. By the time she arrived at the village, Penelope had been sold to a fur trader who wanted a wife. A white man called Boucherie.

  From the first, the difference between Nadoko and Naomi’s old mistress was marked. The canoes Hato and his group had hidden were miles away, and they made their way to them carefully through forests of hugely tall poplars and trees that Nadoko called “sugars,” all of them intertwined with so many vines that scarcely any sunlight could penetrate. Naomi often stumbled, but each time, instead of scolding her, Nadoko helped her up and asked if she needed to rest. She fed Naomi peas and bear meat, though not in the same dish—that, Naomi learned, was unacceptable—and taught her how to skim clear water out from a layer of algae.