The Marrow Thieves

by Cherie Dimaline

  Isaac was behind me now. The struggling woman yelled from the room now, “Run! You have to run, now! They’re already on the way!”

  There came the sound of struggle and a crash. The man backed down the hallway in a hurry and ducked in the open door before slamming it shut. I could hear the bolt being slid into place, and then a racket of furniture banging and panicked dialogue.

  I wanted to kick down the door, ask a thousand questions, make them pay for bringing all this into our beautiful home with our books and the fireplace we’d built out of dry river rocks. But I knew we didn’t have time. I knew then the rumors were true and we had precious little time to get our Indigenous asses out of the house and into the shadows.

  I grabbed Isaac by the hand and brought him to our room. I pushed a chair against the doorknob in case those maniacs came for us themselves and pulled the bags out of the walk-in. “We’ll take all the ammunition we can find. We can take the quads. They’re loud, but we can get further into the bush with them. I’ll grab the camping gear from under the stairs. Might be roughing it for a few weeks before we can find another livable spot. Maybe we can even circle back in a bit.”

  Isaac snapped out of his tired shock and began stuffing some precious books and the more beautiful of his sweaters into a duffel bag. But it was too late. The vans pulled up outside, and our guests hollered at them from their bedroom window, “Upstairs. Two males. Second door on the right.”

  Isaac was at the window before me and covered his open mouth with a hand. “Holy shit …”

  I squeezed in beside him. Outside the sky was full of lights, blue and red reflecting off the clouds and the trees and the sides of our cottage. Five Arctic Cat quads were parked, lengthwise and haphazard, out front, and men, all wearing identical white parkas with round, red logos were scattering about the yard.

  “Isaac, just leave the bags. Get your shoes on now. Layer up as much as you can, hurry.” I pushed him away from the window.

  “Mi, it’s too late. If I can just talk to them, I’m sure …”

  “They won’t listen. You need to get ready to leave right this minute.” I watched half the men circle to the back. We’d have a shot if we got to the cellar and came up into the yard. It wasn’t a guarantee with all these men, but it was the best chance we had.

  Isaac slid a hand across my shoulders, and I turned away from the window. He had that look of calm resolve on his face, the look he’d gotten when the dog had to be put down and when fire took our apartment in North Town.

  “I really need you to trust me on this. This is our home. They can’t just come in here and do what they like. Now, I’m not sure what all of this is really about, but that stuff we heard? Miigwans, that’s just too ridiculous to be true.”

  I heard a sharp rap on the front door, and my heart jumped into my throat. Isaac didn’t have memories in his family of the original schools, the ones that pulled themselves up like wooden monsters coming to attention across the land back in the 1800s — monsters who stayed there, ingesting our children like sweet berries, one after the other, for over a hundred years. Isaac didn’t have grandparents who’d told residential school stories like campfire tales to scare you into acting right, stories about men and women who promised themselves to God only and then took whatever they wanted from the children, especially at night. Stories about a book that was like a vacuum, used to suck the language right out of your lungs. And I didn’t have time to share them, not now.

  “Isaac, I need you to run. Right now. We need to get the hell out of here, because those men down there —” I pointed behind me out the window “— they sent strangers into the woods to find us. Now they’re surrounding our home in the middle of the night. Does that sound like they might be reasonable to you?”

  We didn’t have time to come to an agreement. The front door banged open and heavy footsteps were on our wooden stairs. I pushed Isaac behind me and squared my shoulders, wishing we’d started sleeping with the shotgun, like we’d talked about. If I had honestly known what was in store for us, I would have used it to finish us both, right then and there.

  FINDING DIRECTION

  “Sometimes, French, you gotta trust that people are making decisions for the better of the community based on things they know that you don’t.” He spoke softer now. “They’re building a new school. I knew it was going up this way, but not where exactly. They know our people are moving north into the heavy forests and rocky earth. They aim to bring heavier manpower and facilities this way to shorten the transport time for those of us who get caught.”

  Holy shit. It was a construction site. They were building another school.

  “But not everyone needs to know that right now. Sometimes, you have to not bring things into the open, put them aside so that people have the hope to put one foot in front of the other.”

  We walked side by side for another twenty minutes. I couldn’t bear to look behind us at our ragtag family as they shuffled along, Slopper and the twins singing what we pretended was a warrior song to measure out time on the trail.

  “About ten kilometers to the northwest of here,” I said to Miig. “I’d say the site is about a half-kilometer total size. The trees were coming down pretty fast. There must be a big group or large equipment or both to be moving at that pace.” I tried to remember every detail, to unburden and inform at the same time, not envying Miig’s role any longer. Missing the innocence of an hour ago when my only concern was touching the hand of a girl I thought I might love.

  “Good job, my boy. Good job.”

  That night we set up camp on a flat stretch of field in the midst of tall pines and ate a good dinner of canned beans and a couple of ground squirrels roasted on our new hibachi. Minerva was delighted by the contraption and even taught us a new word, all of us, not just the girls.

  We were sitting around the hibachi, feeling all modern and posh. I weaseled my way beside Rose, who had RiRi in her lap. RiRi was cleaning her new boots with spit and a finger.

  “Abwaad.” Minerva pointed to the birds on the grill.

  “Abwaad? Is that a bird?” Rose asked.

  That made her chuckle. “No, no. Abwaad. Cooking on a fire.”

  I put my head down on my bent knees and repeated it over and over as softly as I could, hoarding something precious. “Abwaad, cooking on a fire.”

  After we’d picked the bones clean and stored them in a canvas sack to boil for soup the next day, when we were all nestled in our blankets and allowing exhaustion to make the decisions, Miig spoke. “Tomorrow we turn east, northeast. For a bit, anyway. There might be more people up that way. Seems like the forest fires are in the west.”

  No one objected. Northeast or northwest, it didn’t really make a difference. It was all north and it was all more days of walking. I lay awake longer than even Chi-Boy that night, long enough to see him slip the white trapper hat under Wab’s pillow and linger to touch her long hair as she slept.

  I wanted to know the rest, wanted the story of Miigwans’ escape, because I thought just by knowing about it, somehow, it would make our escape seem all the more plausible. But I couldn’t ask. It didn’t take a genius to realize that Isaac was lost to the schools, that Miig was alone and heartbroken. He’d lost someone he’d built a life with right in the middle of that life. Suddenly, I realized that there was something worse than running, worse even than the schools. There was loss. I’d wait for him to tell me the rest in his own time, if that ever even came. I fell asleep watching the rise and fall of Rose’s breaths and tried to imagine us in another time, building instead of running.

  THE POTENTIAL OF CHANGE

  Miig was wrong about that last gust of winter. A week later and we were on our fifth day of constant snow. It was the kind of wet snow that’s almost rain and hits you heavy. Minerva was in the hitch now almost permanently, banging on its side with an open palm when she had to get out to take a bathroom break
. RiRi rode in there with her a bit, but Wab tried to keep her walking.

  “It’s warmer that way. Besides, you need to build your legs up. You’re not a baby anymore.”

  No one was really talking much, we were too busy concentrating on staying upright and mobile and warm. Between us we wore every piece of clothing we had, Tree and Zheegwon taking turns with their baseball cap every hour. Still, Slopper’s nose ran constantly and Miig had a cough that rattled around in his throat when he tried to hide it. Something had to change, and soon.

  And then one day it did. Forever.

  It was nearing dusk, not that the sky revealed anything other than a thick, wet fog, and we were preparing the ground to start setting up camp.

  “Wab, I found a toy!”

  RiRi’s pink boots squelched and sucked in the ground mush. She’d given up trying to keep them spotless and they were speckled and streaked with hard mud.

  Wab didn’t look up. She was laying out the tarp that would keep the wet from our bones, but not the freeze. “Okay then, go play with it.”

  RiRi ran off to show Minerva, who sat in the cart like a queen on a rickety throne. I was on the other side of the clearing, putting up the string of bells that we used as an alarm system, when she yelled.

  “Majan! Mudbin!”

  Miig was the first one to the cart, where Minerva had propped herself up on her knees, her eyes wide. She handed something blue to Miig.

  “I want it!” protested RiRi. “I found it.”

  I walked over to the cart with the others.

  Miig was holding a plastic lunch pail with a broken hinge. On the front was the half-torn, waterlogged image of a man wearing a blue suit with a wide red cape. He was flying over buildings, but I couldn’t make out much more through the wear. We’d found other junk out here. But when he opened the top I saw the reason for concern. Inside was a half a piece of bread wrapped in clear plastic. It wasn’t even mouldy yet.

  “Could be the same group Wab saw back before the resort.” He rubbed his chin then gave orders.

  “Chi-Boy, walk the perimeter. Tree, Zheegwon, lay extra wires.” He turned to me. “French, you know what to do.”

  I jogged to the trees, found the best specimen to hold my weight, and ascended. We all knew what was up: we’d found other evidence of travelers, and Miig’s first priority was to keep us safe. I got excited every time, hoping that we’d run into some friendlies, maybe even someone we knew from before. In the five years I’d been with my group, we’d found others only seven times, and each time we’d parted after several days. It was safer to be small, to be less of a disturbance for the Recruiters to track.

  The landscape had started to change, and here and there amongst the green were slashes of black where the Precambrian rock grafted sharp hills and cut into craggy cliffs. We did our best to avoid them when we were on the move. Shifting rocks with sudden drops were dangerous. And the incline was tough on us all, especially with the cart to pull. I saw a ridge of solid black cut through the forest like a vein. We were definitely getting more north now. I wasn’t up there for long before I saw them: two figures, huddled around an open fire in a small clearing about a three-hour march to the west. One was wearing camouflage; the other, foolishly, wore a bright red hat.

  Miig was talking with Minerva, who was still in the wagon, low and serious. Her face was smooth with stress, and she looked as coherent as I’d seen her in a while. Miig’s hair was tucked up into a grey woolen toque, and with the wide grey scarf wrapped around his neck several times so that his entire mouth was obscured, he looked much older. Rose stood up from where she was playing tic-tac-toe with RiRi in a crust of snow with a couple of sticks, but I went over to the Elders first.

  “I saw them.”

  “Where?” Miig and Minerva turned their whole attention on me, and I slowed down to tell my report right.

  “East. Three, maybe four hour’s walk, maybe a bit more with the wagon. Two people. Couldn’t tell who they were, but I didn’t see any vehicles so they’re probably not Recruiters.”

  “You don’t know that for sure. It’s dangerous to make assumptions.”

  “No, but they just didn’t seem like it.” I felt stupid and very young. “I mean, they were kind of hanging out around a fire.”

  “A fire? This early? And where you could see it?”

  I nodded. Miig squinted his eyes and tilted his head back so that his scruffy chin popped out of the scarf. “That’s odd. An early evening fire? And in the open?”

  I nodded again, not sure if he was really asking a question.

  “Recruiters might be that clumsy, but then, if they’re out this far, they’re hunting for sure. Got to be stealthy to sneak up on Indians.”

  Wab joined the circle. “Two of them? One bigger than the other? One in a red hat?”

  “Yeah.”

  She exchanged glances with Miig. “That’s them.”

  “Maybe they’re townies,” Tree piped up from behind me. Zheegwon got pale at the thought of it, took off the baseball cap, and fit it onto his brother’s head. The twins often reverted to small acts of care between the two of them when they were anxious. They hadn’t heard about Wab’s sighting, having already gone to bed that night at the fire.

  “Could be …” Miig was already looking into the trees for Chi-Boy. I could see the jump of adrenaline in his facial muscles.

  RiRi wandered over with her tic-tac-toe stick still in her hand. “Maybe they’re kids. Just dumb kids that don’t know better, Miig. On account of they got no grown-ups.”

  We stood around the wagon in silence, until Wab spoke up. “I think it’s worth checking.”

  Chi-Boy stepped out of the bush, and Miig made his decision. “We camp tonight. Tomorrow we keep walking east.” Almost as an afterthought he said, “And we’ll see whatever there is to see.” Then he started unloading the gear for the night.

  We woke up early, as usual, and immediately started the pack-up while Wab and Rose boiled water for the mush and got the youngest and oldest set for the day. We moved at the same speed, just with an alternate set of steps. There was a different potential to today, and we could feel it. Today we might catch up to the strangers. Today we might make new friends or fall prey to new enemies. A few weeks ago Tree and Zheegwon had told the story of cannibal people while the fire died down. I hadn’t been able to shake it yet.

  “They’re the wiindigo people, those who need to eat but can only eat human flesh.”

  “They lost their way but don’t want to get back on the path. All they want is meat.”

  “And they don’t care if it’s their own children, they’ll eat them just the same.”

  Chi-Boy shut it down early. “All right, all right. We don’t need no one screaming out in their sleep now. Let’s call it a night.”

  Now here we were, ready to walk towards the unknown. What if these two strangers in the woods were wiindigo people? What if their early fire right out in the open was for cooking up a third stranger who wandered across their path?

  “Mush?”

  “Ah, Jesus.” I hadn’t heard Rose’s footsteps, and her voice in my ear startled me to curse. “Sorry, Rose. Uh, no, I’m good.” I waved away the bowl she held out. “Give mine to Slopper.”

  She sat down beside me on the rolled-up tent where I perched, distracted in my packing. She handed me the tin bowl anyway, and I took a mouthful. We all needed to eat in the morning. It was dangerous to run out of steam on the walk. “What’s up?” She was kind in the question, without her usual edge and defense.

  “Not sure, really.” I swallowed the warm porridge and took another bite, thinking of what was really going on in my head. I reverted to the books I loved, those rare and impractical luxuries I’d happened on a few times in my life and hoarded until they fell apart, all pulp and tears.

  “It’s weird when you come to a spo
t in the story where the plot could go either way, you know?”

  She just stared. Maybe she wasn’t a big reader.

  “It’s just, when you could go one direction and have life turn out one way, or go another direction and have life be completely a different way, it’s nerve-wracking.”

  She nodded. “I know. Imagine if I’d gone west instead of north when I left my uncle. I’d have never found you. I mean, any of you guys.”

  I flushed hard and shoved more mush into my mouth to break up the smile that pushed its way onto my face.

  We sat in silence while I finished the bowl. The ground was still frozen and the warmth of another body so close was comforting. The air stung your nose on the inhale and there was water-smoke at the exhale. But the frost wasn’t as thick and the last of the snow was melting into crust. Soon enough the woods would begin to get dressed for spring.

  Chi-Boy must have started out ahead before the sun rose because now he came jogging back into the circle of our half-packed tents.

  “An hour’s walk.” He pointed his hand into the bush. The men. After three days’ time, we were gaining on them. Miig was cautious and slow, but he kept us on a path to intercept the two figures I’d been watching again from the treetops before bedtime, checking for anything unusual, trying to piece together their schedule and motives. So far I’d gotten nothing except that they seemed to have an abundance of food, gauging by the intensity and timing of their fires, and that they didn’t seem to be on the run, taking their time and even staying at one site for two nights instead of one. Two nights would get you killed if the Recruiters were on your trail.

  Miig sighed, looked around at the tops of the trees with his hands on his hips, and said, to all of us and to no one in particular, “Today’s the day.”